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- 🪨 Pectrified!
🪨 Pectrified!
👩💻 Major Ethereum protocol upgrades, 🤝 U.S. Senate advances Trump’s SEC pick, 🎈 Babylon’s 600M token airdrop, and 🤺 EigenLayer begins slashing.
Adrian Zmudzinski
April 04, 2025
Hi! In today’s edition:
🚀 Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade locked in for May 7
➡️ Senate advances Trump nominee Atkins for SEC Chair
🎈 Babylon’s 600M BABY token airdrop
⚔️ EigenLayer to enable slashing on April 17
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By Tikta
Ethereum's highly anticipated Pectra upgrade is now confirmed for May 7, following months of technical challenges and delayed timelines.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Alex Stokes confirmed the date was locked in for May 7 at a Consensus Layer meeting between developers on Thursday.
The news comes after Pectra faced a number of setbacks during testing on the Sepolia and Holesky testnets. There was a final bug-free test on March 25 on the Hoodi testnet.
Pectra introduces 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), including EIP-7251, which increases staking limits from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, streamlining validator operations.
It will also enable gas payments in tokens outside of ether, such as stablecoins, and enhance wallet recovery mechanisms.
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee advanced President Donald Trump’s nomination of American businessman Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a 13-11 party-line vote on Thursday.
Republicans, led by committee chair Sen. Tim Scott, praised Atkins for his commitment to deregulation, capital formation, and providing "clarity for digital assets.”
On the other hand, Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, opposed the nomination, citing Atkins’ post-government career advising financial firms and his stance during the 2008 financial crisis.
In 2009, Atkins set up consulting firm Patomak Global Partners, which includes crypto exchanges and DeFi platforms as its clients, according to its website.
Unchained first reported that Trump nominated Atkins for the role of SEC Chair in December.
The Babylon Foundation, the entity behind Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon, announced a 600 million BABY token airdrop as part of its upcoming token generation event (TGE).
The foundation shared plans to airdrop 6% of the total 10 billion supply to early adopters at launch.
In a newly published tokenomics document, it outlines that the team will receive 15% of supply and early private investors will receive 3.5%, with both allocations subject to vesting schedules across three to four years. Early investors include Paradigm, which led a $70 million funding round for Babylon last year.
While crypto exchange OKX has launched pre-market futures listing for BABY/USDC, the official airdrop date remains unconfirmed.
BABY will also serve as a native gas token for the Babylon Genesis Chain (a Bitcoin secured network) as well as a governance token and dual staking asset alongside Bitcoin. Total value locked (TVL) in Babylon sits at just over $4.3 billion.
Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer will implement slashing for its protocol starting April 17, marking its transition to a "feature-complete iteration" of the platform.
The mechanism penalizes node operators or restakers who fail to meet performance standards or engage in misconduct, a critical security feature for proof-of-stake ecosystems.
Node operators and restakers won’t automatically be opted in, but can gradually adopt slashing by choosing to participate.
“This is by design—ecosystem evolution at a sustainable pace,” the EigenLayer team said.
EigenLayer’s native token EIGEN unlocked in October and began trading with a fully diluted value (FDV) of $7.2 billion. The token hit an all-time high in December, but has since retreated by around 85%.
Mantle is building the largest sustainable hub for on-chain finance. Launching three new core innovation pillars: Enhanced Index Fund, Mantle Banking and MantleX.
✋ A U.S. court temporarily barred Singapore-based Genius Group from expanding its bitcoin holdings due to a legal dispute over its merger with Fatbrain AI.
🤝 Former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao will advise the Kyrgyz Republic on blockchain and crypto regulation after signing a cooperation deal with the country’s investment agency.
📉 DeFi TVL fell 27% to $156 billion in Q1 2025 due to economic uncertainty and a major hack, while AI and social app usage surged despite the downturn.
☀️ Crypto exchange Gemini is expanding to a new Miami office as regulatory pressure from the SEC appears to ease.
🇨🇳 Cango is selling its legacy auto-financing division operations in China to an entity linked to Bitmain Chairman Micree Zhan for $352 million as part of a full shift into Bitcoin mining, gaining 32 Exa hash per second (EH/s) in the process.
👍 A U.S. House committee approved a Republican-backed bill to block federal CBDCs, advancing it for a full House vote amid privacy concerns.
🚨 The U.S. Treasury sanctioned eight crypto wallet addresses linked to Russia’s Garantex exchange and Yemen’s Houthi group for moving nearly $1 billion in funds tied to terrorism and money laundering.
💰 Lawmakers in Minnesota and Alabama introduced companion bills that would allow their states to invest in Bitcoin. In Minnesota’s case, the bill, if passed, will also permit tax payments and retirement contributions from state employees in crypto.
