The Daily: Vitalik Buterin maps Ethereum's path to 2030, and more

The following article is adapted from The Block's newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.

Happy Monday! Bitcoin is trading nearly around $83,500, with crypto markets losing some steam after the recent rally as fresh macro uncertainty puts pressure on risk assets.

In today's newsletter, Vitalik Buterin maps Ethereum's path to 2030, Strategy buys another $143 million of bitcoin, Tom Lee's Bitmine tops 6 million ETH, Bitget starts restoring withdrawals, and more.

Meanwhile, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce reflects on her time at the agency with The Block, Citi expands its Coinbase partnership for stablecoin payments, and Strive adds another $94.5 million of bitcoin.

P.S. Don't forget to check out The Latent, our new sister website covering AI. Get The Latent Daily here and all other The Block newsletters here.

Vitalik Buterin maps how Ethereum will change by 2030

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin laid out how Ethereum's architecture will change by 2030, describing it as "really not just a blockchain anymore" but a combination of blockchain design and modern cryptography.

• Buterin said Hegota, the upgrade planned for next year, is likely to be Ethereum's last "normal" fork, with later upgrades involving recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms and quantum-safe cryptography.
• By 2030, Buterin expects nodes to sample data through PeerDAS and verify SNARKs instead of downloading and re-executing every block, while signatures would be aggregated offchain.
• He projected slots of 4 to 8 seconds and finality of 8 to 32 seconds by 2030, though he said Ethereum itself won't match server latency, while infrastructure around it could.
• Buterin also said modern cryptography could allow Ethereum's decentralized architecture to improve performance in some areas, including parallel data storage and computation, rather than decentralization only adding overhead.
• He identified managing and parallelizing access to very large amounts of Ethereum's state as a major remaining challenge, potentially harder than making zero-knowledge proofs efficient and safe.

Strategy buys another $143 million of bitcoin, taking holdings to 847,666 BTC

Strategy acquired another 1,665 BTC for around $142.7 million between Sept. 21 and Sept. 27, paying an average price of $85,681 per bitcoin.

• The purchase brought Strategy's total holdings to 847,666 BTC, worth around $70.6 billion at current prices, acquired for a total cost of around $64 billion, including fees and expenses.
• The latest acquisitions were funded by proceeds from the issuance and sale of Strategy's Class A common stock, MSTR.
• Strategy sold about $246.2 million of MSTR shares last week, with $18.84 billion of shares still available for issuance and sale under the program as of Sept. 27.

Bitget starts restoring withdrawals after $388 million exploit

Bitget has begun restoring withdrawals in stages after the Sept. 24 exploit, starting with BTC on Monday, followed by ETH on Sept. 29 and USDT on Sept. 30, with remaining assets, fiat withdrawals and P2P transactions due back Oct. 2.

• The exchange said it patched the vulnerability and contained the incident, with no further unauthorized transfers, while its user protection fund will fully cover the $388 million loss.
• Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said the attacker exploited a zero-day vulnerability in a third-party security product to obtain valid admin credentials, then injected fraudulent withdrawal commands into Bitget's wallet backend systems.
• Chen said the attacker made two small test transfers about 30 minutes before the larger transfers began, with the first falling below Bitget's risk-control threshold and triggering no alerts.
• Bitget's reconciliation system detected a significant discrepancy within seven minutes of the first large transfer and blocked user-initiated withdrawals platform-wide.

Tom Lee's Bitmine tops 6 million ETH after latest purchase

Bitmine bought another 17,362 ETH since its Sept. 21 update, taking its total holdings to 6,001,302 ETH, worth around $16.1 billion at current prices.

• The company's ether holdings now represent more than 4.9% of Ethereum's circulating supply, putting Bitmine 98% of the way toward its "Alchemy of 5%" target.
• Bitmine said its total crypto, cash, marketable securities and other investments stood at $17.2 billion, including 213 BTC and stakes in Eightco Holdings and Beast Industries.
• More than 5 million ETH of Bitmine's holdings are currently staked, with annualized staking revenue projected at $358 million.

Analyst links $18.4 million in Robinhood Chain memecoin extractions to single operation

Pseudonymous onchain analyst Wazz said a single operation extracted at least $18.43 million from 53 memecoin launches on Robinhood Chain between July 10 and Sept. 21.

• The Block's review found the same pattern across nine launches from late August onward: creators exempted 15 to 25 wallets from the launchpad's anti-sniping tax, with those wallets and creators holding 82% to 86% of token supply at launch.
• The Block also traced funds from wallets tied to the DRAFT launch to wallets involved in DEED, which went live 40 minutes after its creator and other exempt wallets were funded.

In the next 24 hours

• Korea Blockchain Week kicks off Tuesday in Seoul with the Upbit Institutional Summit, ahead of the main conference on Wednesday and Thursday.
• U.S. September consumer confidence and August job openings data are due Tuesday, with Fed officials including Austan Goolsbee and New York Fed President John Williams scheduled to speak.
• Euro Area economic sentiment and consumer confidence data are due Tuesday, with ECB President Christine Lagarde and other officials scheduled to speak.
• Collector Crypt (CARDS) and Falcon Finance (FF) are among the crypto projects set for token unlocks.

Never miss a beat with The Block's daily digest of the most influential events happening across the digital asset ecosystem.