Polygon surpasses Ethereum in daily fees
For the first time, daily fees on the Polygon network were higher than on Ethereum, according to Token Terminal data. On February 14, Polygon users paid $407,100 in fees, compared to Ethereum's $211,700. The gap narrowed the following day, but Polygon still retained its advantage: $303,923 to $285,480.
According to growthepie co-founder Matthias Seidl, the revenue surge was almost entirely driven by the Polymarket prediction platform. It generated over $1 million in fees for the network in a week. By comparison, the second-most profitable app, Origin World, generated approximately $130,000. Polygon also noted the excitement around Polymarket markets, noting that users placed over $15 million in bets on Oscar-related events alone.
Zcash development team launches new wallet
Former Electric Coin Company employees announced the launch of a new organization: Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL). At the same time, the flagship Zashi wallet has been rebranded and is now called Zodl. The team emphasized that nothing will change for users: there is no need to update the app, transfer funds, or change the seed phrase.
As a reminder, in January, the entire ECC team left the company due to a conflict with the Bootstrap Foundation board. According to former CEO Josh Swihart, the foundation's management acted contrary to Zcash's core mission. The developers stated that the creation of ZODL will allow them to develop the protocol and promote ZEC more independently, without being tied to the previous governance structure.
50% of Ethereum's supply is staked
For the first time, Ethereum staking accounts for over half of the historically issued supply, according to analysts at Santiment. According to their calculations, 80.95 million ETH are staked in contracts—approximately 50.18% of the total supply before the burn mechanism was implemented. Approximately 120 million ETH are currently in circulation.
36.9 million ETH are locked in the mainnet, equivalent to 30.4% of the current supply. The number of active validators is approaching 966,000. The queue to enter staking has almost reached a record high—3.8 million ETH, with a waiting time of approximately 67 days (the maximum of 4.1 million was recorded on February 12). Approximately 6,000 ETH are waiting to exit staking, with unlock times of just a few minutes.
The turning point in this dynamic occurred on December 27, when the volumes of entering and exiting staking equaled approximately 460,000 ETH.
Base will split from the Optimism ecosystem
The Coinbase-backed Base L2 network announced its migration from the Optimism technology platform to its own unified architecture. Currently, key infrastructure elements, including the sequencer, are developed by different teams and stored in separate repositories, complicating support. The new base/base model will combine these components into a single system using open-source solutions like Reth, making the architecture more compact and manageable.
Updates will now be distributed as a single official Base binary. The project will also retain its open nature: the specifications will remain public, and third-party developers will be able to create alternative clients.
The team estimates that this transition will reduce dependence on external technology providers and speed up releases. Plans call for up to six small hard forks per year instead of three. The migration will take place in four stages, with node operators switching to a new client through which all future updates will be released.
The Ethereum Foundation published a protocol development roadmap for 2026
The Ethereum Foundation has released an updated roadmap for 2026, focusing on three priorities: network scaling, improving the user experience, and strengthening the base layer.
In terms of performance, developers plan to gradually increase the gas limit to over 100 million, prepare the Glamsterdam hard fork, launch the zkEVM attestation client, and optimize data storage. At the same time, they are increasing their emphasis on native account abstraction and cross-chain interoperability.
EIP-7702 is seen as an interim step, while the strategic goal is to make smart contract wallets the standard without unnecessary overhead or intermediaries. Proposals EIP-7701 and EIP-8141 propose integrating smart account logic directly into the protocol, which will also lay the foundation for transitioning to post-quantum authentication mechanisms instead of ECDSA.
In the area of interoperability, the Open Intents Framework will continue to be developed to simplify interactions between L2 networks. Particular attention will be paid to preserving Ethereum's key properties as the network load increases—improving security, censorship resistance, and network stability.
Harvard chose Ethereum over Bitcoin
Harvard's management firm reduced its Bitcoin ETF holdings by more than 20% in the fourth quarter, simultaneously opening its first position in an Ethereum-based product. As of December 31, the university owned 5.35 million shares of BlackRock's IBIT, worth $265.8 million, having sold 1.48 million shares during the quarter. Despite some profit-taking, this ETF remains the fund's largest publicly traded asset, exceeding its holdings in Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Concurrently, Harvard acquired 3.87 million shares of iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA), worth $86.8 million. The fund's total crypto exposure reached $352.6 million. The investment drew criticism from a number of academic experts, who deemed the strategy excessively risky. The university's decision coincided with a general trend: according to CoinShares, outflows from crypto products continued for a fourth week, with the bulk of the selling coming from the United States. Meanwhile, funds in Germany, Canada, and Switzerland saw inflows, and demand for altcoins like XRP and Solana increased.
