The Fusaka hard fork has occurred on the Ethereum network
The Fusaka update, a key upgrade aimed at increasing the scalability, efficiency, and security of the blockchain, has launched on the Ethereum mainnet. This is the second most significant update after Pectra, and includes 10 improvements, the most important of which is the implementation of the PeerDAS protocol (EIP-7594). This innovation allows validators to validate only portions of BLOB data rather than the entire volume, increasing data availability in the ecosystem.
Fusaka also more than doubled the gas limit in Layer 1, potentially increasing network throughput to 12,000 TPS. The next stage will be the Glamsterdam hard fork, part of The Surge phase, which, like Fusaka, is aimed at further scaling Ethereum.
Bitcoin price returns to $93,000
At the beginning of the week, Bitcoin fell below $84,500, under pressure amid unfavorable macroeconomic signals and the Yearn Finance protocol incident. However, just 24 hours later, the digital gold price recovered its losses, reaching $93,800, recovering from its sharp drop to $84,500.
Dogecoin meme coin launch anniversary
On December 6, Dogecoin celebrated its 11th anniversary. Ahead of the anniversary, the asset's price rose above $0.46, but fell short of its November peak of $0.48—its highest in three years.
Dogecoin's all-time high, however, stands at $0.73 in May 2021. The meme coin is currently trading at $0.4377, ranking seventh on CoinGecko's market cap rankings with a market capitalization of $64.4 billion.
Drop in validator activity on the Ethereum network
Shortly after the Fusaka update was activated, a glitch occurred in the Prysm consensus client, affecting some Ethereum validators. A bug was identified in v7.0.0: when processing old confirmations, the client generated stale blockchain states.
According to one of the lead developers, this disrupted the operation of Prysm-based nodes. Specialists released a temporary fix, disabling the problematic feature.
Nevertheless, at epoch 411,448, network activity dropped sharply: only 75% of nodes signed block headers, and consensus participation fell to 74.7%. Less than 9 percentage points remained before finality completely stalled. By epoch 411,760, network performance had almost returned to normal.
Base launches a bridge to Solana based on Chainlink's solution
The team at Base, a layer-two solution backed by Coinbase, has launched a cross-chain bridge to the Solana ecosystem. It's built on Chainlink's CCIP interoperability protocol. The new tool allows developers to integrate SPL assets into their dApps, users to trade them on Base, and communities to pool liquidity from both networks. The bridge uses a "specialized cross-chain oracle": data is independently verified by nodes from Coinbase and Chainlink, which, according to the developers, ensures the security and resilience of transfers.
Babylon Labs and Aave Labs team up to integrate Bitcoin staking
Babylon, a BTCFi project, is integrating Bitcoin-backed lending into Aave V4. Users will be able to borrow in stablecoins and other tokens by pledging native BTC as collateral, eliminating bridges and "wrapped" versions. The key to the integration is Babylon's Bitcoin Vault, which locks Bitcoin on the main network and creates a cryptographically verifiable equivalent for use in DeFi.
The team noted high demand for this type of lending: in 2025, the volume of issued BTC-backed loans exceeded $1 billion. Babylon expects interest in the solution to grow as institutional players attract new players. The developers emphasized that the market is currently limited by centralized services and wrapped tokens, which creates risks and reduces the benefits of Bitcoin.
