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Vitalik Buterin is arguing that Ethereum’s long-term credibility hinges on a standard usually applied to applications, not base layers: the chain should remain meaningfully usable even if its stewards “walk away.” In a Jan. 12 post on X, the Ethereum co-founder framed the “walkaway test” as a requirement for a settlement layer meant to host “trustless and trust-minimized applications” across finance, governance, and beyond.

Buterin’s premise is that Ethereum’s core promise breaks down if the protocol itself depends on continuous, human-managed upgrades to stay safe and competitive. “But building such applications is not possible on a base layer which itself depends on ongoing updates from a vendor in order to continue being usable — even if that ‘vendor’ is the all core devs process,” he wrote. “Ethereum the blockchain must have the traits that we strive for in Ethereum’s applications. Hence, Ethereum itself must pass the walkaway test.”

Ethereum Can’t Rely on Endless Upgrades

The post lands amid a broader, recurring tension in Ethereum’s culture: the desire to keep evolving versus the benefits of stability. Buterin’s formulation doesn’t call for freezing the protocol immediately. Instead, he argues Ethereum should reach a position where it could “ossify” without sacrificing its value proposition.

“This means that Ethereum must get to a place where we can ossify if we want to,” Buterin said. “We do not have to stop making changes to the protocol, but we must get to a place where Ethereum’s value proposition does not strictly depend on any features that are not in the protocol already.” In other words, Ethereum can continue to improve—but it should not need to, in order to remain a credible base for durable, user-owned systems.

From there, Buterin lays out the technical and economic conditions he views as prerequisites for passing the test. The most time-sensitive in his framing is cryptography. “Full quantum-resistance” should not be treated as an upgrade to postpone until the last possible moment, he argues, warning against “the trap” of delaying in exchange for short-term efficiency.

The protocol, in his view, should be able to make a straightforward claim about long-lived safety: being able to say Ethereum “as it stands today, is cryptographically safe for a hundred years.”

Scalability is presented as an architectural destination rather than a perpetual series of feature-driven forks. Buterin points to “ZK-EVM validation and data sampling through PeerDAS” as key components, and suggests an ideal end-state where improvements increasingly come via “parameter only” changes—potentially implemented through validator voting mechanisms akin to how the gas limit can be adjusted.

He also emphasizes state growth as a durability risk that must be addressed at the protocol level. The goal, as he describes it, is a “state architecture that can last decades,” including “partial statelessness and state expiry” so that sustaining thousands of transactions per second over long periods doesn’t make syncing or hardware requirements untenable. Alongside that, he flags future-proofing storage structures to match that environment.

Other items in the framework target known fault lines for decentralized execution: moving toward a more general-purpose account model via “full account abstraction,” ensuring the gas schedule is resilient against denial-of-service risks in both execution and ZK-proving, and hardening proof-of-stake economics so the system “can last and remain decentralized for decades,” including ETH’s role as “trustless collateral.”

Finally, Buterin highlights block building as a centralization pressure point, arguing Ethereum needs a model that can “resist centralization pressure and guarantee censorship resistance even in unknown future environments.” Buterin’s closing message is less about a single roadmap item than a governance and engineering posture: do the heavy lifting now so later progress can be dominated by client optimization and parameter tuning, not perpetual redesign.

At press time, ETH traded at $3,132.

Monday 12 January 2026 – Over the last 24 hours, the meme coin market moved up by 3%, with gains coming almost entirely from just three sectors, while the rest of the market stayed mostly in the red.

One of the strongest performers has been dog-themed tokens, which climbed 5.1%, powered by dogi (DOGI) and its massive 1,528% explosion in the same timeframe. But there’s another pup starting to turn heads, one that looks ready to outrun the whole crypto pack, already pulling in a total of $4.4 million in raised funds. That pup is Maxi Doge (MAXI).

Seen as the clear heavyweight of the 2026 meme coin scene, Maxi Doge is aiming for the same kind of face-melting vertical move DOGI just delivered – maybe even something far bigger. Still, leading a pump isn’t everything. MAXI is also building a tight crew of loyal bros, all locked into the same code: no weak hands, only solid, chiseled gains.

The clock is ticking though. There are just two days left to get into the presale at the current price of $0.000278 per token. After that, the price moves up.

The Dogecoin Copycat or the Muscle-Loaded Moonshot

Dog-themed, 4chan-style, and Elon Musk-inspired tokens have fully taken over the meme coin spotlight, posting big gains even while the wider market struggled in the red.

Dog-themed coins pushed up 5.1%, 4chan-related tokens rose 6.2%, and Musk-inspired projects led the charge with a 7.7% jump. Still, despite Elon’s picks winning on percentages, one dog-themed underdog completely dominated the conversation: DOGI, sitting at an $18 million market cap.

Based on live CoinGecko data, DOGI shot straight up from $0.053805 to a high of $1.36 in a single day, marking an insane 2,427% move at the peak before cooling down to a 1,528% gain at the time of writing.

DOGI markets itself as the first token built on the Dogecoin blockchain (DRC-20), which many see as a second chance at what they missed with the original DOGE. It’s clear the market is still craving a true moonshot that carries Dogecoin’s DNA but trades at a much smaller market cap.

Smaller caps come with bigger upside. Once serious money steps in, these tokens can light up fast. That’s exactly why the meme space is packed right now with dog-themed challengers all fighting for attention.

So what happens when you take that familiar DOGE narrative, load it up with pure muscle, and soak it in nonstop Red Bull energy?

You get a lean, mean, Dogecoin-slayer built for max gains, rocking 1,000x the swagger and 1,000x the pump potential. That’s Maxi Doge. While others are still chasing yesterday’s charts, MAXI is already in the gym, warming up to make DOGI-style moves the baseline for 2026.

The Muscle-Driven Counterculture Behind Maxi Doge

Maxi Doge is nothing like the usual “be cute like Dogecoin and hope for a billion-dollar breakout” kind of project.

It goes in the opposite direction a road most copy-paste “Inu” tokens were simply too soft to walk. While the rest of the meme pack is busy begging for scraps, Maxi Doge stands as the anti-cute alternative. Think of it as crypto’s worst parenting advice: instead of turning the other cheek, it shows you how to crack the bears straight across the jaw.

Winning the 2026 meme coin supercycle isn’t about recycling some worn-out formula. Respect to the OGs, sure but Maxi Doge isn’t here to copy them. He’s here to crank that legacy up by 1,000x. That’s the wavelength high-leverage, high-conviction traders operate on the ones who actually move markets instead of chasing leftovers.

In meme coins, taking yourself too seriously is the fastest way to fade into irrelevance. Maxi Doge gets that. It’s not just retelling the same joke it’s spinning off a far more brutal version with a punchline that actually hits.

Crypto is easy when you got the playbook.$MAXI about to take over. pic.twitter.com/0Oq3rXdi2D

— MaxiDoge (@MaxiDoge_) November 11, 2025

And once that punchline connects, the pump isn’t far behind. Picture a pup with a shredded 140-lb frame, eyes glowing red like charts after a 48-hour trading binge. That level of intensity gives Maxi Doge an edge over the sleepy, legacy DOGE and pulls in the attention of serious players who can send an asset straight into orbit.

So while DOGI enjoys its moment under the lights, the market should stay alert. The real alpha is only just starting to warm up.

Get In on Maxi Doge’s $4.4M Presale

As noted earlier, Maxi Doge has already secured $4.4 million in total funding. To take part, visit the Maxi Doge token presale page and connect using Best Wallet, which is widely seen as one of the top crypto wallets available.

Participants can swap ETH, BNB, USDT, or USDC, or choose to pay directly with a bank card. Best Wallet is available for download on both Google Play and the Apple App Store.

MAXI tokens purchased during the presale can be staked right away through the project’s native staking protocol, currently offering a dynamic 70% APY.

For added investor confidence, Maxi Doge’s smart contract has undergone full audits by both Coinsult and SOLIDProof.

You can also join the community on X and Telegram.

Visit Maxi Doge Token.

Ethereum’s main network is witnessing a dramatic surge in activity, signaling renewed confidence and accelerating momentum across the ecosystem. Aspects like transaction throughput and user engagement appear to have pushed significantly higher over the past few weeks, breaking past prior peaks.

Another Historic Moment For Ethereum Network

Since the beginning of 2026, the Ethereum network has been hitting major milestones that reflect the blockchain’s efficiency and expanding ecosystem. Even in a volatile crypto landscape, ETH’s network usage and adoption have increased sharply, as evidenced by its rapidly growing active wallet addresses.

On-chain data reveals that the network has recently crossed a key threshold in terms of active wallet addresses following a sudden spike. From the report from Joseph Young, a market expert and narrator, the number of active addresses on ETH has surged to the highest level ever in its history.

This spike in user activity and interest signals more than just routine market noise and speculation. It shows growing adoption, increasing on-chain activity, and rekindled conviction in the leading ecosystem in the midst of general market instability.

After delving into the metric, the expert disclosed that the number of active 7DMA wallet addresses on Ethereum is sitting at over 811,500. As active address counts reached historic levels, the network’s fundamentals appear to have started surpassing its price performance. Should this performance hold, it is likely to play a huge role in shaping ETH’s next major move.

The blockchain’s performance extends beyond just massive active wallet addresses. Young added that Ethereum is the most proven network with more than 10 years of track record, underscoring its reliability and robust scalability.

During the period, ETH remained one of the most active and liquid crypto ecosystems by far. With several key updates over the years, such as the Fusaka Upgrade, the ETH network is now scaling faster than it ever did since its launch. 

ETH Carry Out More Transactions Than Ever

Given that a significantly high level of transactions is carried out on the network, Ethereum is still showing robust strength and a growing ecosystem. On-chain Foundation head of research, Leon Waidmann, shared a report that reveals that ETH is experiencing a wave of transactions, reaching unprecedented levels.

With over 2.2 million transactions being executed per day, the network has just hit yet another all-time high. The chart shows that the previous peak was positioned at 1.89 million per day, as recorded on January 10, reflecting its rising real-world usage in a period where network fundamentals are gaining robust significance.

While transactions continue to increase, the network’s transaction costs have remained extremely low. Swapping on the blockchain now costs just $0.04, Non-Fungible Token (NFT) sales cost about $0.06, borrowing fees are $0.03, and bridging costs, which are the lowest, are around $0.01.

Бразильская ассоциация криптоэкономики (Abcripto) публично выступила против идеи местных властей ввести налог на операции со стейблкоинами. По словам президента организации Джулии Розин (Julia Rosin), если правительство Бразилии решит ввести такой налог, ассоциация подаст в суд, поскольку подобные действия противоречат конституции.

Сооснователь Эфириума Виталик Бутерин распродал токены WOOLLY, IZZY, CHIB и OP, которые были присланы на его публичный адрес некоторое время назад. Токены обменяны на 9,4 ETH общей стоимостью около $29 400, отследили аналитики Arkham Intelligence.

21Shares is set to launch its Dogecoin ETF after gaining approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Nasdaq. This is expected to provide some bullish momentum for the meme coin even as DOGE funds see muted interest from institutional investors. 

21Shares To Launch Dogecoin ETF After Filing Final Prospectus

Crypto ETF issuer 21Shares has filed the prospectus for its Dogecoin ETF, signaling plans to launch this fund this week. However, the asset manager has yet to announce a specific launch date. This will be the third spot DOGE fund to launch after Grayscale and Bitwise’s DOGE ETF, which launched last year. 

21Shares Dogecoin ETF will launch on the Nasdaq under the ticker ‘TDOG.’ Crypto exchange Coinbase is listed among the Trust’s custodians alongside BitGo and Anchorage. Meanwhile, the fund will offer in-kind creations and redemptions, similar to other existing spot crypto ETFs. 21shares will charge a 0.50% management fee for the fund. 

The Dogecoin ETF will be 21Shares’ fifth spot U.S. crypto ETF, as the asset manager already offers Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP ETFs. The DOGE fund’s launch is bullish for the foremost meme coin as it could attract more institutional flows into its ecosystem. However, it is worth noting that the other existing spot U.S. DOGE funds have only seen moderate demand so far. 

SoSoValue data shows that the inflows into these Dogecoin ETFs have been minimal, with these funds currently boasting net assets of just under $10 million, which is less than 1% of the meme coin’s market cap. They have also mostly recorded zero-flow days since launching, with most inflow days below $1 million. However, it is worth noting that these funds saw greater demand at the start of the year, when DOGE rose to around $0.15. As such, they could attract more inflows as the market recovers. 

A Generational Buying Opportunity

Crypto analyst Hokage described the current DOGE price level as a generational buying opportunity amid the imminent launch of the Dogecoin ETF. This came as the analyst remarked that while the short-term is extremely hard to figure out, the long-term support will eventually get hit. His accompanying chart showed that the leading meme coin could rally to as high as $1.6 in the long term. 

The crypto analyst highlighted the potential integration of Dogecoin into Elon Musk’s X as one catalyst that could spark this run. He opined that the meme coin will eventually get integrated into X as a payment and tips feature. Hokage added that it is just a matter of time and not if. 

Related Reading: Dogecoin Is Breakout Ready: Analyst Shows Major Target For The Meme Coin King

At the time of writing, the Dogecoin price is trading at around $0.137, down over 2% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Покинувший 1 января пост мэра Нью‑Йорка Эрик Адамс (Eric Adams) запустил собственный мемкоин NYC Token. Политик заверял, что монета должна помочь ему в борьбе с «антисемитизмом и антиамериканизмом».

Соучредитель проекта Bitcoin Vector и сооснователь инвестфонда CMCC Crest Вилли Ву (Willy Woo) заявил, что биткоину критически важно преодолеть уровень сопротивления $90 000–100 000, чтобы начать ралли.

Российская сеть ломбардов «Мосгорломбард» объявила, что рассматривает возможность выдачи займов клиентам под залог криптовалют.

Bitcoin Core’s maintainer set has expanded for the first time in nearly three years, with pseudonymous contributor TheCharlatan (also known online as “sedited”) added to the project’s small group of “Trusted Keys” holders, an operational role that carries commit authority to Bitcoin Core’s master branch.

The move matters because it touches the narrowest choke point in Bitcoin’s most widely used node implementation: who can cryptographically sign and merge the code that ultimately ships to users. TheCharlatan was added on January 8, 2026, according to the project’s trusted-keys history on GitHub, which shows a new entry committed under the “sedited” account.

Bitcoin Core developers sign software updates with their PGP keys, but only a small subset of keys are recognized for commit access in the project’s verification tooling, a practical constraint designed to keep release signing and merge authority legible, auditable, and socially accountable.

With TheCharlatan’s addition, the Trusted Keys group now includes Marco Falke, Gloria Zhao, Ryan Ofsky, Hennadii Stepanov, Ava Chow, and TheCharlatan. The prior addition to the trusted-keys list was in May 2023, when Ofsky was added.

Protos reported the promotion as having broad support among Core contributors, citing a group chat in which at least 20 members agreed and no one objected to the nomination language. The nomination framed the decision in terms of review quality and judgment about what should ship. “He is a reliable reviewer… worked extensively in critical areas. He thinks carefully about what we ship… . He understands the technical consensus process well.”

Who Is The New Bitcoin Core Key Holder?

Protos identified TheCharlatan as a University of Zurich computer science graduate from South Africa, with a focus on reproducibility and Bitcoin Core’s validation logic.

In practice, that points to two areas that Core contributors tend to treat as release-critical. First, reproducible builds aim to make the path from source to binaries independently verifiable, an important property for a security-sensitive client where users want assurance they’re running what maintainers reviewed.

Second, Protos said TheCharlatan has worked on validation logic in ways that build on Carl Dong’s kernel library effort, separating validating from non-validating logic used to determine whether a block extends the best-work chain.

While Bitcoin’s development process is intentionally consensus-driven and diffuse, commit keys remain a concrete locus of responsibility. Protos situated the current model historically, noting that early Bitcoin development concentrated commit access in Satoshi Nakamoto’s hands before moving to a succession of maintainers. “Only Satoshi Nakamoto possessed Commit-level access… . Nakamoto first passed his key privilege to Gavin Andresen…”

Protos also referenced the later push to decentralize commit-key control into a group under Wladimir van der Laan, in the shadow of legal threats tied to Craig Wright’s claims, part of a broader effort to avoid any single maintainer becoming a practical or legal single point of failure.

At press time, BTC traded at $92,367.

Председатель комитета Госдумы России по финансовому рынку Анатолий Аксаков рассказал, что в новом законопроекте о регулировании криптоотрасли для неквалифицированных инвесторов введут лимит на покупку криптовалют: до 300 000 рублей.

Создатель блокчейн‑платформы Cardano и сооснователь Эфириума Чарльз Хоскинсон (Charles Hoskinson) заявил, что администрация президента США Дональда Трампа поставила американскую криптоиндустрию в более сложное положение, чем при предыдущем главе государства Джо Байдене. В частности, Хоскинсон раскритиковал запуск мемкоина Trump Coin и общую политику в сфере цифровых активов.

Криптобиржа Bitget опубликовала итоги 2025 года, представив ключевые показатели развития модели Universal Exchange (UEX) — экосистемы, объединяющей криптовалютные рынки, ончейн-инструменты и токенизированные традиционные активы в рамках единого интерфейса.

Биткоин ненадолго поднялся выше $92 000, но не смог закрепиться на этом уровне. Причина падения — позиция розничных трейдеров, начавших сокращать свои позиции на рынке, заявили аналитики компании QCP Capital.

Columbia Business School adjunct professor Omid Malekan challenged what he called five common banking-industry misunderstandings about stablecoin yields as Congress moves a market structure bill toward markup this month.

He pushed back on claims that stablecoins will automatically drain bank deposits or collapse lending, and argued the real fight is over who receives interest on the reserves that back those tokens.

“I’m disappointed that market structure legislation seems to be held up by the stablecoin yield issue,” he said. “Most of the concerns bouncing around Washington are based on unsubstantiated myths,” Malekan added.

Misconceptions About Stablecoin Yields

Based on reports, Malekan listed five specific points where industry talking points have wandered from the facts. He said stablecoins are fully reserved in many cases, and that issuers often park reserves in Treasury bills and bank accounts — activity that can feed, not sap, banking business.

I am disappointed that market structure legislation seems to be held up by the stablecoin yield issue. Most of the concerns bouncing around Washington are based on unsubstantiated myths.

So I’ve written a new article tackling the 5 biggest. They include:

1) Whether stablecoins… https://t.co/U2fQcPNZyV

— Omid Malekan (@malekanoms) January 12, 2026

He also noted that much US credit is delivered outside community banks, through money market funds and private lenders, so the link between stablecoins and bank lending is not as direct as some industry statements imply.

Banks Press Lawmakers Over Yield Rules

Lawmakers are racing to settle those questions before a committee markup. The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to mark up the market structure text on January 15, 2026, and sources say negotiators remain split on whether to restrict third-party yield arrangements tied to stablecoins.

Community banks and trade groups have urged senators to close what they call “yield loopholes,” saying unregulated rewards could lure deposits away and raise liquidity risks.

Who Captures The Interest Matters

Malekan focused attention on the distribution of interest from reserve assets. According to his comments, the policy choice is not about banning stablecoins but about deciding whether banks or crypto issuers capture returns on reserves.

If issuers are allowed to share interest or rewards with customers, that could pressure bank profits — a point banks are making loudly in hearings and letters to lawmakers.

File Drafting And Last-Minute Haggling

Reports have disclosed that committee staff were racing to file a bipartisan market structure text and reconcile yield language ahead of a deadline this week. Negotiations continued into late sessions as senators weighed compromises that could allow some forms of rewards while guarding against run risks and bank disintermediation.

Featured image from Global Finance Magazine, chart from TradingView

Инвестиционный директор компании Bitwise Мэтт Хоуган (Matt Hougan) опроверг идею критиков криптовалют, будто пенсионные фонды не должны вкладывать средства в биткоин из-за его сильной волатильности.

В этом году эфир может продемонстрировать ралли как в 2021 году, поскольку значительно опередит другие активы за счет растущего внедрения ончейн-решений для крипторынка. Об этом заявил глава отдела исследований цифровых активов Standard Chartered Джеффри Кендрик (Geoffrey Kendrick).

Криптовалютный рынок уходит от модели, где курсы монет зависели от хайпа розничных инвесторов к новой модели, где все решают крупные фонды с Уолл-стрит и долгосрочное планирование, заявили эксперты Binance Research.

Ripple has sent a new market-structure letter to the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, urging the agency to draw a hard line between a securities offering and the underlying token that may later trade in secondary markets, a framing that could matter for how XRP (post SEC lawsuit) and other tokens are treated in disclosure and jurisdiction debates.

In the January 9, 2026 submission, signed by Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty, General Counsel Sameer Dhond, and Deputy General Counsel Deborah McCrimmon, Ripple positions its comments as input to ongoing Commission rulemaking or guidance, explicitly tying its argument to parallel legislative efforts on Capitol Hill.

The company references earlier letters from March 21, 2025 and May 27, 2025, and points to the House’s CLARITY Act of 2025 and Senate discussion drafts as evidence that classification choices will cascade into “jurisdiction, disclosures, and secondary-market treatment.”

Ripple Presses SEC To Cement XRP’s Post-Lawsuit Status

Ripple’s core thesis is that regulators should move away from “decentralization” as a legal metric because it is “not a binary state” and creates “intolerable uncertainty,” including both “false negative” and “false positive” outcomes.

One of Ripple’s key concerns is that an asset could be treated as stuck in a securities regime simply because an entity still holds inventory or continues contributing to development, a point with obvious parallels to Ripple. The company still holds a large chunk of all XRP in their escrow while developer arm RippleX contributes heavily to the development of the XRP Ledger.

Instead, Ripple pushes the SEC to ground jurisdiction in “legal rights and obligations,” emphasizing enforceable promises rather than market narratives about ongoing efforts. The letter argues that regulatory theories focusing on “efforts of others” risk collapsing the multi-part Howey analysis into a single factor and, in Ripple’s view, sweeping too broadly.

The most consequential section is Ripple’s argument that the SEC’s jurisdiction should be time-bound to the “lifespan of the obligation,” rather than treating the asset as permanently labeled. In a passage that goes directly to secondary-market implications, Ripple writes:

“The Commission’s jurisdiction should track the lifespan of the obligation; regulating the ‘promise’ while it exists, but liberating the ‘asset’ once that promise is fulfilled or otherwise ends. The dispositive factor is the holder’s legal rights, not their economic hopes. Without that bright line, the definition of a security, and the SEC’s jurisdictional limits, become amorphous and unbounded.”

That framing matters for XRP and draws parallels to the SEC lawsuit: whether secondary-market trading of a token can remain subject to securities-law oversight long after any initial distribution, marketing, or development-era statements. Ripple explicitly rejects the idea that active secondary trading is itself a jurisdictional hook, comparing high-velocity crypto markets to spot commodities like gold and silver and even secondary markets for consumer devices.

Ripple also spends meaningful time on the “capital raising” boundary, arguing for privity as a bright line that distinguishes primary distributions from exchange trading where counterparties are unknown and the issuer is “merely as another market actor.”

In that context, the letter warns that treating every issuer sale as a perpetual capital raise creates “perverse outcomes,” including what it calls a “Zombie Promise” and “Operational Paralysis”: language that, while generalized, clearly speaks to concerns around issuer-held token inventories and the compliance burdens that could attach to treasury management and sales practices.

Separately, Ripple endorses “fit-for purpose” disclosures in cases where securities regulation is actually warranted, rather than forcing “full corporate registration designed for traditional equity.” For XRP holders and market participants, that is a directional signal: Ripple is arguing for a regime where disclosure triggers attach to specific promises or specific forms of ongoing control, not to the token as an object indefinitely.

The timing is also notable. Ripple dated the letter January 9, 2026, less than a week before a January 15 markup on comprehensive digital-asset market structure legislation in the US Senate Banking Committee, an approaching deadline that could shape how classification language, jurisdictional lines, and disclosure concepts harden into legislative text.

At press time, XRP traded at $2.05.

Власти Таиланда намерены запретить анонимные криптовалюты: компании, которые предоставляют криптоуслуги, будут обязаны идентифицировать всех участников цепочки транзакций.