First, allow me a "boomer whose been in crypto for a longer than you" moment: Prices dictate news and fundamental analysis, not the other way around. Second, I chuckle at all these takes that claim "ETH is rallying because of the major pivot earlier this year by Ethereum." I respectfully disagree. Ethereum has not remotely changed. It's still a lower performance L1 that is taking a modular approach to scaling. It's still prioritizing decentralization and censorship resistance more than the competition. It's still underpricing DA to take market share and not taxing/tariffing successful L2s. It still cares more about mitigating MEV than the competition. It still believes in neutrality, even in the face of one of the largest hacks in history. It's still a very low inflation chain where there's only a Foundation and it holds a tiny fraction of the overall supply. Sure, there's inspiring new leadership at the EF, they are more hands on, and have re-prioritized L1 scaling. But in the grand scheme of things almost nothing has changed except for a few minor changes to future updates that 95% of people in crypto never understood in the first place. So why is the price of ETH rallying today? Mostly because it didn't rally earlier when BTC and SOL and some other coins did. At some point ETH will stop outperforming and some other coins will take over. It's the typical noise we see in literally every crypto cycle, but the kids who haven't been around long enough don't know their history and overinterpret market noise. Remember, there was a point a few years ago where Bitcoin was the big underperformer and the maxis were shvitzing. Then the ETFs launched and Wall Street showed up and king corn took out the prior ATH while nothing else did--even though literally nothing about Bitcoin itself changed. Now Wall Street is excited about stablecoins and staking yield and DeFi, so the focus shifts. In conclusion, to paraphrase a cheesy line from some movie I don't recall, it's not Ethereum that changed, it's everything else. PS: XRP IYKYK

Looking forward to Jackson fun next week: SALT: I’ll be chatting on the 19th with @EleanorTerrett & @KMSmithDC on SPI and Driving Policy. AIP: On the 21st, I get to sit with @millercwl @milesjennings @RebeccaRettig1 & @iampaulgrewal re our tokenized future and how to get there.

BAM is live on testnet We’ve rolled out with an initial set of validators! This is the first step toward bringing private, verifiable block building to Solana. 🌐 Open testnet → coming soon 🔥 Mainnet → right after Get involved 👇

Code is (still) not illegal

Jito is setting the gold standard for token alignment. @jito_sol now plans to route 100% of Block Engine + new BAM fees to their DAO treasury (prev split ~50/50 with Labs), following their 39/40 score on @blockworksres' transparency framework

If you liked @HesterPeirce’s speech from today, we did, too. :) Peep the footnote…. a @fund_defi paper by @glzavatone & Henry Michaelson — sooooo cool! Our team has done an insane amount of great work on this topic.

Another packed month for Jito! • Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM) launched 💥 • Anchorage Digital added JitoSOL custody, mint & burn • REX-Osprey Solana + Staking ETF $SSK added JitoSOL rewards • TipRouter upgraded to support Priority Fee distribution • & much more! 🔗📗⬇️

The official BAM community forum is LIVE! 1st post is a Plugin proposal for Application-Controlled Execution (ACE); giving apps that opt-in the ability to prioritize txs like market maker cancels, liquidations, oracle updates, or others specific to their needs. 🔗 to forum ⬇️

1/ PROJECT CRYPTO A mandate from the SEC Chair for the entire agency to update federal securities regulations so that crypto can flourish in the USA 🇺🇸 This is the start of the biggest push for regulatory clarity in crypto's history. The SEC has 3.5 years to make it a reality.

New episode with @buffalu__ out now! We discuss: - What is BAM? - The @jito_sol origin story - Solana perp DEXs vs Hyperliquid - Jito's impact on Solana - How to improve Solana, toxic flow & more! Links below ↓