Fusaka is coming, Lean Ethereum update and more - The Daily Gwei Refuel #849 - Ethereum Updates
- •Institutional Era, Not Four-Year Cycle: Dan argues that crypto has shifted from a retail-driven four-year cycle to an institution-led market where Bitcoin and ETH behave like macro assets and most altcoins lack a structural bid.
- •Meme Coin Damage: Dan views meme coins as the single most destructive trend for crypto, arguing meme coins extracted retail capital, added no innovation, and helped permanently shrink the retail investor base.
- •ETH Over BTC Macro Thesis: Dan believes Ethereum’s technology, role in DeFi and stablecoins, and lack of VC overhang give ETH a stronger long-term macro case than BTC, including eventual “flippening” potential.
- •Aggressive Ethereum Scaling Path: Dan highlights Fusaka (with Podas and blob-only forks), gas limit increases, Glamsterdam, and Lean Ethereum as a coherent path to a “Giga-Scale Layer 1” that can obsolete alternative Layer 1s.
- •Privacy As A Core Feature: Dan emphasizes the Kohaku roadmap and wallet-side privacy as crucial, arguing that privacy embedded in an expressive chain like Ethereum is more viable at scale than standalone privacy coins.
- •DeFi Token Model Reset: Dan treats the unis swap proposal to turn on protocol fees and burn UNI as a regime shift that will legitimize fee-switch models across DeFi now that the Gensler era of fear around profit-sharing is ending.
- •Policy And Institutional Positioning: Dan notes that the new institutions.ethereum.org site and the Ethereum protocol advocacy alliance signal a coordinated push to court institutions and shape regulation around Ethereum and DeFi.
Market Structure And The “End” Of The Four-Year Cycle
Dan argues that the classic “four-year cycle” narrative is incoherent because market participants cannot even agree if the cycle is top-to-top or bottom-to-bottom. Dan believes what really explained past cycles was macro liquidity, not Bitcoin halving schedules. In Dan’s view, the current environment already invalidates the old pattern: Bitcoin and ETH have recovered but the broad altcoin market remains structurally dead, with new launches going “down only” due to a lack of marginal retail buyers. Dan thinks waiting for an “alt season” replay is a recipe for capital destruction.
Meme Coins, Retail Exit, And Altcoin Prospects
Dan is extremely negative on meme coins. Dan argues that DeFi “food coins” at least left behind working protocols and composable primitives, while meme coins produced no lasting innovation and functioned as opaque casinos where rules were hidden and extraction was maximized. Dan believes meme coin season wiped out a large cohort of retail, who will not return after being “extracted from,” and that this is a key reason why the long tail of tokens has no bid today. Dan sees some DeFi tokens as fundamentally undervalued but views most altcoins and all meme coins as non-investable outside short-term trading.
ETH Versus BTC
Dan remains long-term bullish on ETH as a store of value that should grow purchasing power over time, despite ETH’s already large market cap. Dan is increasingly bearish on BTC, arguing that Bitcoin has failed to sustain the “digital gold” narrative in macro data, contributes little technological progress, and lags Ethereum in real usage: stablecoins, DeFi, and most serious institutional experimentation live on Ethereum. Dan expects ETH to outperform BTC over the macro horizon and eventually flip Bitcoin.
Glamsterdam, Fossil, And Protocol Design Tradeoffs
Dan explains that Glamsterdam planning is already live on forecast, with roughly 49 proposed EIPs but only EPBS and bals scheduled so far, and fossil considered. Dan reports that researchers and core developers are reluctant to pack EPBS, bals, and fossil into one fork because of engineering complexity and risk of delaying Glamsterdam into late 2025. Dan prefers a pragmatic split: keep EPBS and bals in Glamsterdam, move fossil into the following “H fork,” and accept two smaller forks in 2025 rather than one oversized upgrade. Dan stresses that fossil is critical for censorship resistance and for safely cranking up gas limits, blob usage, and even optimistic rollup withdrawal times, so fossil must not become another repeatedly-deferred and eventually abandoned EVM upgrade.
Lean Ethereum And The Long-Term “Endgame”
Dan presents Lean Ethereum, as described by Justin Drake, as the culmination of a decade of work: a lean consensus layer light enough for smartphone validators and a ZK-powered execution layer that enables the “Gigas L1” vision. Dan points to the leanroadmap.org timeline that stretches toward 2028–2029 and sees aggressive efforts to pull milestones forward. Dan believes a successful Lean Ethereum would make alternative Layer 1 chains unnecessary, since specialized environments could exist as L2s while Ethereum L1 becomes maximally scalable, decentralized, and secure.
Ethereum Privacy And The Kohaku Roadmap
Dan highlights Vitalik’s Kohaku roadmap, which focuses on wallet-side privacy, state-reading privacy using TEEs plus ZKVMs, and cheaper zero-knowledge proofs. Dan argues that privacy as a feature of a general-purpose chain like Ethereum is more sustainable than fully private chains such as Monero or Zcash, which face delisting, optional-privacy compromises, and on-ramp friction. Dan sees expressive L1 privacy as the only realistic way to deliver privacy to mainstream users while keeping Ethereum integrated with exchanges, institutions, and broader financial infrastructure.
Institutions, Policy, And Ethereum's Political Strategy
Dan points to institutions.ethereum.org as an important move by the Ethereum Foundation to provide a professional, enterprise-focused “front door” distinct from the more playful main ethereum.org site. Dan believes this will ease institutional onboarding by bundling case studies, metrics, and contact paths. In parallel, Dan notes the creation of an Ethereum protocol advocacy alliance by Ave, Aragon, Curve, Lido, Spark, Graph Protocol, and unis swap. Dan expects this alliance to act as a unified technical lobbying arm, educating regulators in the US, EU and elsewhere, and reducing the risk of ill-informed rules that could stifle DeFi.
L2 Liquidity, ZKYNC, And The L1 Capital Hub
Dan highlights a new ZKYNC initiative to let L2 users tap Ethereum L1 liquidity atomically while retaining L2 cost and speed advantages. Dan frames this as part of Ethereum’s “holy grail”: unifying L1 and L2 so users can access deep L1 collateral and DEX liquidity from L2 environments without today’s fragmentation. Dan expects more designs like this as Ethereum moves toward a user experience where the ecosystem feels like a single unified chain.
DeFi Business Models And The Unis Swap Shift
Dan views the new unis swap proposal to activate protocol fees, burn UNI, send UNI chain sequencer fees to a burn, and even retroactively burn 100M UNI from the treasury as a turning point. Dan argues that unis swap is explicitly internalizing MEV and other protocol value, confirming Dan’s long-standing claim that applications will not willingly leak value to Layer 1. Dan interprets this proposal, combined with political change in the US, as “the last nail in the coffin of the Gendler era,” giving DeFi projects cover to turn on fee switches and share value with token holders without immediate fear of SEC litigation. Dan expects Lido and other major protocols to follow, which could structurally re-rate DeFi tokens and further deepen the economic flywheel between Ethereum and DeFi.
Dan's Fitness Framework
Dan briefly outlines a nine-month transformation driven by sustained calorie control, heavy focus on cardio and then weight training, meticulous nutrition tracking, and strict sleep and recovery discipline, using tools like DEXA scans and a Whoop tracker. Dan emphasizes that consistent sleep, moderate but regular training, and high-fiber, high-protein home-cooked meals have delivered major improvements in body composition, cardiovascular markers, and day-to-day energy, and Dan encourages listeners to prioritize physical health alongside work in crypto and finance.
- →Monitor the rollout of Fusaka, subsequent blob-only forks, and Glamsterdam decisions, since these will define Ethereum’s near-term capacity and fee dynamics for L2s and DeFi.
- →Track emerging L2–L1 liquidity designs and fee-switch activations across major DeFi protocols, as these will reshape where value accrues in the Ethereum stack.
- →Watch how institutional tooling, policy alliances, and privacy roadmaps evolve, because regulatory clarity and credible privacy are likely to be decisive for large-scale institutional adoption.