WebN Group, the blockchain and Web3 incubator backed by billionaire Alan Howard, is closing its doors after seeding a clutch of digital infrastructure startups over the past several years, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Most recently, the venture studio backed tokenization specialist Libre (now called KAIO), crypto staking shop Twinstake, blockchain infrastructure firm TruFin and zero-knowledge proofs startup Geometry.

In addition to Howard, WebN also received an undisclosed investment from Japanese bank Nomura’s crypto partnership, Laser Digital, back in 2023.

The incubator was described as having “successfully completed its mission” the person said. Some of the staff who worked at WebN moved across to work at Brevan Howard, the hedge fund founded by Howard, they said.

The decision to close down the WebN incubator has no bearing on Howard’s digital asset aspirations, said the person, who is close to the situation at WebN.

“Those who know Alan, know that he has long been convinced that blockchain technology would be used in traditional markets,” the person said.

The last 12 months have been a challenging time for crypto-exposed firms. Brevan Howard’s digital asset fund lost almost 30% last year, according to a report in the Financial Times. This follows gains of 52% in 2024 and 43% the year before.

Like many other hedge funds, Brevan Howard has trimmed its bitcoin BTC$68,989.58 ETF positions, cutting holdings of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust by some 85%, according to data from Bloomberg and CF Benchmarks.

2025 also saw the departure of BH Digital CEO Gautam Sharma, who had been overseeing crypto investing at the firm for a few years. Brevan Howard also decided to spin out Nova, a hedge fund run by former Dragonfly investor Kevin Hu, who joined the firm with his own money pool in 2023 as part of an acquisition.

“Brevan Howard isn’t scared off by temporary volatility, remains bullish on digital assets and has a huge VC business focused on the broad opportunity set,” said the source.

WebN Group did not respond to requests for comment. Brevan Howard declined to comment.

TLDR:

• Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake proposed roughly seven protocol forks through 2029 on a six-month cadence.
  
• The EF protocol team targets 1 gigagas/sec L1 throughput via zkEVMs, equating to approximately 10,000 transactions per second.
  
• High-throughput L2 via data availability sampling aims to support up to 10 million transactions per second across Layer 2 networks.
  
• The strawmap introduces post-quantum cryptography and native privacy-preserving ETH transfers as long-term first-class protocol goals.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has released a protocol document called the “strawmap,” proposed by the EF protocol team.

The plan outlines roughly seven forks through 2029, operating on a cadence of one upgrade every six months. Five long-term goals anchor the roadmap: faster L1 finality, 1 gigagas/sec throughput, high-throughput L2, post-quantum cryptography, and native privacy-preserving ETH transfers.

Drake Proposes a Six-Month Fork Cadence Through the End of the Decade

Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, put forward the strawmap as a technical coordination tool for the EF protocol team.

The document covers seven planned forks stretching from the present through 2029. It was originally drafted during an internal EF workshop held in January 2026 before being shared publicly.

Drake introduced the document on social media, writing that the strawmap is “an invitation to view L1 protocol upgrades through a holistic lens.”

By placing all proposals on a single visual, the EF protocol team aimed to present a unified perspective on Ethereum’s long-term ambitions. The time horizon extends well beyond what All Core Devs typically covers in its near-term planning cycles.

The six-month fork cadence is central to how the EF protocol team structured the strawmap. Each fork is limited to one consensus headliner and one execution headliner to keep the pace manageable.

For example, the upcoming Glamsterdam fork features ePBS and BALs as its two headliners across the respective layers.

Fork names follow a star-based naming convention on the consensus layer, with letters incrementing from Altair onward.

Upcoming forks like Glamsterdam and Hegotá carry confirmed names, while others such as I* and J* remain placeholders.

The roadmap is publicly accessible at strawmap.org and will receive at least quarterly updates as the protocol evolves.

Five Long-Term Goals Shape the EF Protocol Team’s Technical Vision

The five north stars proposed by the EF protocol team define the technical direction through the end of the decade.

Drake described them clearly: faster L1 targeting finality in seconds, 1 gigagas/sec throughput via zkEVMs, high-throughput L2 via data availability sampling, post-quantum cryptography through hash-based schemes, and native privacy-preserving ETH transfers via shielded transactions.

Each goal connects directly to specific upgrade tracks mapped across the consensus, data, and execution layers. The gigagas target of 1 gigagas/sec translates to roughly 10,000 transactions per second on L1.

The teragas L2 goal targets 1 gigabyte per second, supporting approximately 10 million transactions per second across Layer 2 networks.

Post-quantum cryptography addresses the long-term durability of Ethereum’s security model. Hash-based cryptographic schemes are the proposed mechanism for protecting the network against future quantum computing threats. This upgrade track reflects the EF protocol team’s focus on securing Ethereum well beyond the current decade.

Native privacy through shielded ETH transfers rounds out the five goals. The strawmap treats privacy as a first-class protocol feature rather than an application-layer concern.

Drake described the document as a work-in-progress living document, not a formal prediction, but a structured path proposed by the EF protocol team for advancing Ethereum’s core infrastructure.

Polkadot’s native token DOT soared on Wednesday, Feb. 25, making it the top performer among large-cap cryptocurrencies just weeks before the network’s planned supply halving.

DOT is currently trading at $1.54, up about 23% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The token’s market cap is near $2.6 billion, while daily trading volume has climbed above $420 million.

The rally comes as Polkadot approaches a major tokenomics change scheduled for March 14. The network plans to cut annual token issuance in half and cap the total supply at about 2.1 billion DOT. The move aims to lower inflation and make the token more scarce over time.

This upcoming change, called a “halving,” may be one reason the market is paying more attention to DOT. However, other analysts say the timing of the rally suggests it may be driven more by market sentiment than by Polkadot itself.

“We’re seeing double-digit green candles across the altcoin space. DOT just happens to be one of today’s leaders,” said Danny Nelson, a research analyst at Bitwise. “Nothing’s changed about Polkadot, its users, or its usefulness. There’s no new ‘news’ to catalyze a DOT repricing. I chalk DOT’s 20%+ surge up to market-wide speculation.”

Nelson added that investors are speculating that Bitcoin has reached its bottom. “If that’s so, then you’d certainly expect altcoins to rally, too,” he said. “You can see some positive indicators in Bitcoin’s 24-hour chart.”

Meanwhile, Brian Huang, co-founder of Glider, pointed out that trading activity has also spiked, but the reason for the move remains unclear. “The odd part is there is no clear catalyst for DOT surging today,” He said. “Because of this surge, both spot and perp volume are at their highest levels in the last three months.”

Huang added that while the supply change is important, it doesn’t take effect until mid-March, “so today’s timing feels unrelated.”

The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) picked Revolut, Monee Financial Technologies, ReStabilise, and VVTX to test stablecoin issuance in its Regulatory Sandbox as regulators move toward a full rulebook.

The FCA said the cohort will trial stablecoin products in real-world conditions, with safeguards in place. The regulator plans to focus on issuance and review use cases that include payments, wholesale settlement and crypto trading. Testing begins in the first quarter of 2026, and the FCA said the results will feed into final stablecoin rules later in 2026.

“We are supporting U.K. stablecoin issuers to ensure they can be trusted for payments, settlement and trading,” said Matthew Long, director of payments and digital assets at the FCA. “It will benefit consumers and financial transactions and help to deliver the FCA’s strategy and the Government’s National Payments Vision.”

Industry pushes back

However, industry leaders have pushed back against the Bank of England’s (BoE) stablecoin caps, saying they limit innovation and prevent the U.K. from becoming the global hub it aims to be.

The BoE published a paper on Nov. 10, 2025, announcing stablecoin caps of between £5,000 and £20,000 for individuals and £1 million to £10 million for businesses. Armstrong asked U.K. users to sign a petition to Parliament for these caps to be reconsidered. The petition has 81,909 of the 100,000 required signatures.

“Stablecoin rules in the U.K. are being finalized, and are at risk of preventing the U.K. from being globally competitive in the digital economy,” Brian Armstrong, CEO and co-founder at Coinbase, wrote on X on Tuesday. He cited a Bank of England proposal to cap stablecoin holdings.

The government has repeatedly pledged to position London as a center for global digital asset activity. However, comprehensive legislation governing stablecoins and wider crypto activity is expected to be approved by parliament only later this year and won’t come into force until 2027.

The regulatory timeline contradicts U.K.’s goal of remaining globally competitive within the industry, Andrew MacKenzie, CEO of sterling stablecoin developer Agant, told CoinDesk in a recent interview at Consensus Hong Kong. He said the introduction of rules is not moving fast enough to support the aspirations of the global crypto hub.

“The U.K. has a long history of being a financial hub,” said Armstrong. “Embracing and encouraging innovation, especially when other countries are moving fast here, is important for maintaining that.”

The tokenized US Treasury market has surged by over $1 billion since the beginning of 2026, despite macroeconomic uncertainty and concerns over the US government’s growing national debt.

Tokenized US Treasurys are government debt instruments that are a form of real-world assets (RWAs) represented onchain by a token.

The market capitalization of tokenized Treasurys climbed to more than $10.8 billion at the time of writing from $8.9 billion on Jan. 1, according to data from RWA.xyz.

The tokenized US Treasury market has surged 50x since 2024, according to data from Token Terminal, aided by the March 2024 debut of asset manager BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which now has a market cap of more than $1.2 billion.

Tokenized US Treasurys continued to surge despite a broad crypto market downturn that began in October 2025, rising US government debt levels and investor uncertainty about the macroeconomic outlook in 2026.

Related: Tokenized RWAs climb 13.5% despite $1T crypto market drawdown

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation to launch US Treasury tokenization service

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which provides clearing and settlement services for global financial markets, announced plans in December 2025 to launch an asset tokenization service, beginning with US Treasurys.

DTCC will eventually expand the service to include a “broad spectrum” of assets, according CEO Frank La Salla. 

“Following the tokenization of US Treasurys on the Canton network, DTCC anticipates that exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and equities will come shortly thereafter,” La Salla said.

The DTCC is the largest clearinghouse in the world and settled $3.7 quadrillion in transaction volume in 2024, according to the company.