The U.S. Justice Department has spent nearly a year investigating Andreessen Horowitz over whether partners at the venture capital firm are improperly serving on the boards of competing artificial intelligence companies.

Bloomberg News reported on Aug. 17, citing people familiar with the matter, that the inquiry involves Databricks and Fivetran, two data and AI companies backed by Andreessen Horowitz, with regulators examining the firm’s representation on both boards.

Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz sits on Databricks’ board, while partner Martin Casado serves as a director at Fivetran. Both companies provide technology used by businesses to collect, organise and analyse large amounts of data, according to the report.

Casado had also served on the board of dbt Labs before Fivetran acquired the company in June. People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the Justice Department reviewed the transaction for months after it was announced in October, but ultimately cleared the deal without conditions.

The separate board investigation began around the same period as the merger review and has continued after the acquisition closed, the people said. The Justice Department has not made a final decision on whether to take action, leaving open the possibility that the inquiry could end without enforcement.

Andreessen Horowitz probe focuses on competing board seats

At issue is a provision of the Clayton Act, the 1914 antitrust law that restricts certain cases in which directors or officers simultaneously serve at competing companies. Such arrangements are commonly referred to as interlocking directorates.

During previous enforcement actions, the Justice Department has often resolved concerns by having a director leave one of the competing boards. Under former Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the department revived enforcement of the provision and pushed directors at multiple companies to give up board seats.

Ari Emanuel, then chief executive of Endeavor Group Holdings, stepped down from Live Nation Entertainment’s board in 2021. Directors connected to more than 10 other companies also left boards during enforcement actions in 2022 and 2023, according to Bloomberg.

The Andreessen Horowitz investigation involves another question because regulators are examining the venture firm’s representation through more than one partner. Bloomberg reported that the law is written to apply to companies as well as individuals, and several courts have accepted that interpretation.

Andreessen Horowitz could still challenge that reading if the government eventually brings allegations, according to the report. No such decision has been made.

Spokespeople for Databricks and the Justice Department declined to comment to Bloomberg. Andreessen Horowitz and Fivetran did not respond to requests for comment.

Databricks has become one of a16z’s biggest AI holdings

Databricks is one of the most valuable private technology companies in Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio and remains a potential candidate for an initial public offering.

The company last week announced $5 billion in new funding at a $190 billion valuation. Andreessen Horowitz has backed Databricks since its early years, with Horowitz leading a $14 million investment in the company in 2013, according to Bloomberg.

Years of follow-on investments have left Horowitz sitting on billions of dollars in potential returns tied to Databricks, the report said.

Databricks develops software that companies use to organise, process and analyse business data, including tools used to build AI applications. Fivetran also operates in the enterprise data sector, providing technology that moves and centralises information from databases, applications and other sources.

Andreessen Horowitz’s exposure to AI extends well past the companies involved in the DOJ inquiry. Bloomberg reported that the firm had $90 billion in assets under management as of January and recently raised a $15 billion fund, its largest fundraising haul, to invest across the startup sector.

The firm has put billions of dollars into AI businesses, including coding company Cursor and voice AI developer ElevenLabs. It has also backed OpenAI and holds a major investment in SpaceX, according to the report.

Its investment activity remains significant in crypto as well. crypto.news reported in July that a16z completed 18 deals during the period tracked by CryptoRank, putting it behind Animoca Brands among the most active investors in the dataset.

A few months earlier, the firm’s crypto division launched a $2.2 billion vehicle focused on stablecoins, tokenised assets and blockchain infrastructure. The new crypto fund came as Crunchbase data cited at the time showed AI startups had raised $242 billion during the first quarter of 2026, or roughly 80% of the $300 billion raised globally.

Washington ties have put a16z closer to federal policy

The antitrust investigation has continued while Andreessen Horowitz has developed close connections with Washington during President Donald Trump’s second administration, Bloomberg reported.

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each donated millions of dollars in 2024 to a group aligned with Trump while he was running for president. Later that year, Horowitz also contributed $2.5 million to a super PAC supporting Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Andreessen has since taken a role in a federal policy initiative focused on artificial intelligence. The Federal Reserve appointed him in July to co-lead an AI task force studying the technology’s effects on productivity and employment.

The panel also includes Stanford University economist Charles I. Jones and Microsoft executive Asha Sharma. Federal Reserve staff will support the group, while its research and feedback will feed into the central bank’s review of how technological changes can affect economic output and jobs.

Within the Trump administration, Andreessen Horowitz has also become an influential participant in AI policy discussions. Bloomberg reported that the firm successfully pressed the administration to remove several safety guardrails governing the use of artificial intelligence.

Political spending connected to the firm has extended into digital assets. A July review found that Andreessen Horowitz contributed $24 million to Fairshake during the second half of 2025, part of crypto industry spending that left the political action committee and its affiliates with about $193 million on hand in January.

People familiar with the DOJ investigation told Bloomberg that regulators have not reached a final decision on how to proceed, and the inquiry could still close without any action against Andreessen Horowitz.

The European Union has expanded its Russia crypto sanctions to 14 foreign service platforms while creating a country-level transaction ban that could cut EU operators off from crypto providers in jurisdictions accused of repeatedly enabling sanctions evasion.

According to the Council of the European Union, the measures were adopted on July 23 under the bloc’s 21st sanctions package against Russia, extending transaction bans to crypto platforms based in Georgia, Panama, the United Arab Emirates, the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus.

The package also added four designations connected to Russia’s cross-border A7 payments network, including entities linked to its operations in Africa. EU officials said the network forms part of the financial infrastructure used to maintain payment channels despite restrictions imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

More significantly, the package gives the EU authority to block transactions with crypto service providers across an entire third country if the Council determines that the jurisdiction has systematically failed to stop platforms from providing services that help Russia bypass sanctions.

The mechanism turns a measure proposed in June into an available sanctions tool. At the time, the European Commission proposed restrictions against 20 non-EU entities and sought authority to prohibit crypto services from jurisdictions hosting platforms used by sanctioned Russian actors.

EU crypto sanctions can now target entire countries

Under Article 5bc of amended Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, EU operators can be prohibited from dealing directly or indirectly with crypto-asset service providers or platforms enabling crypto exchanges or transfers when they are established in a listed third country.

A country can be added only when the Council determines that it has systematically and persistently failed to prevent crypto services or exchange and transfer platforms from facilitating activity covered by EU restrictions.

No country has yet been added to that list, according to economic sanctions specialist Nick Turner, meaning the provision currently gives the EU the legal mechanism without immediately imposing a nationwide crypto transaction ban on any jurisdiction.

Turner described the measure as an important change in the EU’s approach to secondary sanctions, which can place pressure on entities outside the bloc because of their dealings with sanctioned parties.

“Under the new Article 5bc, a country’s regulators are on the hook for failing to stop EU-sanctioned activity,” Turner wrote in his July 24 analysis.

The sanctions expert said the rule could create legal conflicts where domestic laws allow activity that EU sanctions require local authorities to prevent. In his assessment, the tool may initially be used to increase diplomatic pressure on governments hosting crypto businesses connected to sanctioned Russian activity.

Turner said it was “hard to say” whether the EU would ultimately place a country on the list, particularly because a nationwide designation would affect providers beyond the individual platforms accused of facilitating restricted transactions.

The authority had already been flagged when crypto.news covered the proposal in June. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the time that allowing country-level restrictions would serve as a deterrent for jurisdictions hosting platforms that help Russia evade EU sanctions.

Fourteen crypto platforms face direct transaction bans

Before any country-wide restrictions are used, the latest package has already imposed transaction bans on 14 crypto-related service platforms operating outside the EU.

The Council identified Georgia, Panama, the UAE, the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus as the jurisdictions hosting the affected platforms. The sanctions prevent EU operators from conducting covered transactions with the listed entities.

July coverage of the package showed that the crypto restrictions formed part of a much larger financial sanctions action involving 218 individual listings, including 48 people and 170 entities. The Council also imposed asset freezes and restrictions on making funds available to 94 banks and major financial institutions.

Another 33 Russian credit and financial institutions were placed under transaction bans, while four non-Russian banks were also targeted. The Council said one of the foreign banks was linked to Russia’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages, or SPFS, while three others were accused of helping entities circumvent sanctions.

Crypto infrastructure received separate treatment through the 14 platform designations and the four additions connected with the A7 cross-border network.

The EU had already targeted the A7A5 ruble-backed stablecoin and entities behind it in its 19th sanctions package in October 2025. The asset has been associated with the A7 payments network, which Western authorities have scrutinized over its role in maintaining Russia-linked international payment channels.

The 21st package extends that pressure to new A7-linked entities, including connections with Africa, while allowing EU authorities to address platforms operating from countries where enforcement against sanctioned crypto activity is considered insufficient.

Russian and Belarusian control of EU crypto firms faces tighter rules

Separate provisions also expand restrictions on Russian and Belarusian involvement in crypto businesses operating inside the EU.

From Aug. 25, the prohibition covering ownership, control and management positions will apply across crypto-asset services described under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, extending the restrictions beyond wallet, account and custody providers.

The expanded scope covers MiCA-regulated services including crypto advice, portfolio management and transfers carried out on behalf of customers under the amended sanctions framework.

For Belarusian nationals and residents, separate July measures prohibit them from owning or controlling MiCA-regulated crypto-asset service providers or holding positions within their governing bodies from Aug. 25. The final package followed a June proposal and expanded the number of foreign crypto platforms facing transaction bans from 11 in the proposal to 14 when adopted.

The restrictions arrive shortly after MiCA’s final EU-wide transition period expired on July 1, leaving crypto companies without the required authorization unable to continue providing covered services under their previous national registrations.

An Aug. 11 analysis of MiCA firms citing TRM Labs found that only 281 of 1,343 identified crypto service providers operating across the European Economic Area had secured authorization by the deadline, leaving 1,062 without approval.

TRM also found a difference in sanctions exposure between the groups. Unauthorized providers sent about $5 billion directly to sanctioned counterparties, roughly three times the $1.7 billion attributed to authorized firms, while 12% of unauthorized providers carried High or Severe risk ratings compared with 2% of authorized businesses.

Within that unauthorized group, exchanges accounted for 42% of providers, compared with 29% among authorized firms. TRM said every provider carrying its Severe risk classification was in the unauthorized group, while a small number of those firms sent between 1% and 12% of their transaction volume directly to illicit addresses.

The EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority has asked supervisors to closely oversee customer exits and asset transfers as unauthorized providers leave the market, while coordinating with regulators in other jurisdictions when customers and funds move across borders.

Apple shares remain under close scrutiny after several notable developments. On 10 August, Jefferies downgraded the stock from Hold to Underperform and lowered its price target from $285.56 to $263.66. The investment bank suggested that Apple may have abandoned plans for an all-glass iPhone intended to mark the product line’s 20th anniversary due to manufacturing challenges. According to Jefferies, this decision could limit the company’s ability to increase average selling prices at a time when memory component costs are rising.

At the same time, Apple announced the opening of a new manufacturing facility in Houston, where Mac mini production is expected to begin at a later stage. The project forms part of the company’s broader $600 billion initiative aimed at expanding its manufacturing footprint across the United States.

Technical Analysis of Apple

The four-hour chart highlights a significant technical event that occurred on 31 July, when the price moved below a rising trendline through a gap accompanied by trading volume well above recent averages. Despite the strength of that move, the breakdown has not yet developed into a sustained decline.

Instead, the stock has entered a consolidation phase, creating a well-defined market profile. Apple is currently trading between the Point of Control (POC) at $305.50 and the lower boundary of the profile at $300.00, while testing the POC area from below. Beneath the current consolidation zone, the next major support level can be found around $273.50.

Should the trend breakdown ultimately fail and buyers regain control, attention would shift towards two key resistance areas. The first is the upper boundary of the profile at $326.00, followed by a more substantial resistance zone near $344.00.

The RSI + MAs indicator currently stands at 42, 39 and 45. Both the RSI and the fast-moving average remain slightly below the neutral zone, while the slower moving average has yet to cross beneath the lower threshold, indicating that bearish momentum has not been fully confirmed.

Key Takeaways

Apple’s current sideways movement around the POC reflects a period of balance following the high-volume gap that disrupted the previous uptrend. While the market has yet to confirm a decisive bearish breakout, buyers have also been unable to push the stock back into a clear upward trajectory.

The divergence between the faster and slower components of the RSI + MAs indicator leaves the technical outlook unresolved, suggesting that the next directional move will likely depend on whether the price can either reclaim the upper part of the profile or break convincingly below the current consolidation range.

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Crypto has spent years building faster blockchains, cheaper transactions, decentralized applications, and increasingly sophisticated financial protocols. Yet one of the industry’s biggest challenges remains surprisingly fundamental

Building on crypto is still harder than it should be.

For crypto to move from an industry dominated by early adopters and specialized developers into a technology used by millions—or billions of people—it needs more than better protocols. It needs better developer infrastructure.

The next phase of blockchain growth may depend less on creating another Layer 1 and more on making it dramatically easier for developers to build, test, deploy, monitor, and scale applications on existing networks.

The Developer Experience Problem

In traditional software development, developers have access to mature tools for almost everything.

They can use established cloud platforms, databases, authentication systems, payment APIs, monitoring tools, analytics platforms, testing frameworks, and deployment pipelines. Much of the complexity is hidden behind reliable abstractions.

Crypto is different.

A developer building a decentralized application may need to understand wallets, private keys, RPC providers, smart contracts, gas fees, chain-specific infrastructure, indexing, token standards, bridges, signatures, transaction finality, security assumptions, and multiple blockchain environments.

That creates a steep learning curve.

Instead of asking:

“What can I build?”

developers often have to ask:

“How do I make all these infrastructure components work together?”

That is a serious barrier to innovation.

Infrastructure Is the Invisible Layer of Crypto

Users rarely think about infrastructure.

When someone sends a message, they don’t care which database handles it. When they stream a video, they don’t think about content delivery networks. When they purchase something online, they don’t need to understand payment-processing infrastructure.

Crypto should eventually work the same way.

A user shouldn’t need to understand RPC endpoints, nonce management, transaction simulation, gas estimation, block confirmations, or chain abstraction simply to interact with an application.

Developers shouldn’t have to rebuild those systems for every project either.

The more infrastructure becomes standardized and invisible, the more developers can focus on product design and user experience.

RPC Infrastructure Needs to Become More Reliable

Remote Procedure Calls, or RPCs, are one of the fundamental interfaces between applications and blockchains.

Yet developers frequently deal with issues such as:

• Rate limits
• Unstable endpoints
• Network congestion
• Provider outages
• Latency
• Inconsistent responses
• Difficult debugging
• Chain-specific configurations

For a consumer application serving thousands or millions of users, infrastructure reliability isn’t optional.

Crypto applications need RPC infrastructure that feels more like mature cloud infrastructure: predictable, scalable, observable, and easy to integrate.

Better infrastructure providers can abstract much of this complexity away from developers.

Indexing Is Another Major Bottleneck

Blockchains are excellent at recording transactions, but retrieving meaningful application-level information from raw blockchain data can be complicated.

Imagine building a decentralized marketplace.

You may need to answer questions such as:

• What assets does a particular wallet own?
• What transactions occurred during a specific period?
• Which NFTs changed hands?
• What is the user’s historical activity?
• What events occurred across multiple contracts?
• What are the current balances and positions?

Developers often need specialized indexing infrastructure to transform blockchain data into something applications can efficiently query.

Better indexing tools could turn blockchain data into something closer to a traditional developer-friendly database experience.

That would significantly reduce development time.

Testing and Debugging Need a Revolution

Smart contracts are immutable once deployed in many environments.

That makes testing especially important.

A small mistake can result in financial losses, broken applications, or serious security vulnerabilities.

Developers therefore need powerful tools for:

Simulation → Testing → Security Analysis → Deployment → Monitoring

The industry needs better local blockchain environments, transaction simulation, automated security testing, debugging tools, and production monitoring.

Imagine being able to reproduce a complex on-chain transaction locally with a few clicks and understand exactly why it failed.

That kind of developer experience could dramatically improve both productivity and security.

Wallet Infrastructure Should Become Invisible

Wallets are another major source of friction.

Traditional applications allow users to create an account with an email address, phone number, or social login.

Crypto often introduces concepts such as:

• Seed phrases
• Private keys
• Network switching
• Gas management
• Signature requests
• Transaction approvals

These mechanisms are important for self-custody, but developers need better ways to integrate them into applications.

The goal shouldn’t necessarily be to eliminate wallets.

The goal should be to make wallets easier to use without sacrificing security or user control.

Account abstraction, smart wallets, passkeys, embedded wallets, and better transaction flows are moving the ecosystem in this direction.

Chain Abstraction Could Change Everything

One of the biggest infrastructure challenges is fragmentation.

Crypto users and developers increasingly interact with multiple chains.

Ethereum, Layer 2 networks, Solana, appchains, alternative Layer 1s, and specialized networks can each have different architectures, tooling, transaction models, and developer environments.

For developers, supporting multiple networks can mean maintaining multiple infrastructure stacks.

For users, it can mean confusing network selection and asset management.

Better chain abstraction could allow applications to interact with multiple blockchain environments through a much simpler interface.

Instead of forcing developers to think about every chain individually, infrastructure could handle much of the complexity underneath.

The blockchain becomes the backend. The application becomes the product.

That’s a much more scalable model.

Security Must Be Built Into the Infrastructure

Crypto has another problem that traditional software can sometimes avoid at the same scale:

The infrastructure can directly control financial assets.

A vulnerable smart contract isn’t merely a software bug. It can become a financial catastrophe.

Developer infrastructure therefore needs security to be embedded throughout the development lifecycle.

That includes:

• Automated smart-contract analysis
• Dependency monitoring
• Transaction simulation
• Runtime monitoring
• Threat detection
• Permission analysis
• Key-management systems
• Automated alerts
• Formal verification tools

Security shouldn’t be something developers remember at the end of the project.

It should be integrated from the beginning.

Better Infrastructure Could Unlock More Developers

The crypto industry has often focused on attracting users.

But there is another equally important growth strategy:

Make it easier for developers to build things users actually want.

A developer shouldn’t need years of blockchain-specific experience to create a crypto-enabled application.

Imagine a world where a developer could integrate blockchain functionality using a few familiar APIs.

Want stablecoin payments?

Use an API.

Want tokenized assets?

Use an SDK.

Want wallet authentication?

Use an authentication layer.

Want on-chain analytics?

Query an indexed data service.

Want to deploy across multiple chains?

Use a unified deployment framework.

That is how crypto becomes accessible to the broader software-development community.

Infrastructure Is Becoming a Competitive Advantage

As blockchain networks become increasingly similar in areas such as transaction costs and performance, developer infrastructure could become a major differentiator.

A technically impressive blockchain is not enough if developers hate building on it.

A network with excellent documentation, SDKs, debugging tools, indexing, analytics, security infrastructure, and reliable APIs can potentially attract more developers—even if its raw technical specifications aren’t dramatically different from competitors.

This creates a powerful flywheel:

Better Infrastructure → More Developers → More Applications → Better User Experience → More Users → More Economic Activity

And more economic activity creates demand for even better infrastructure.

The Next Crypto Breakthrough May Not Be Another Blockchain

Crypto has historically celebrated protocol launches.

New chains receive attention. New consensus mechanisms generate headlines. New token standards create excitement.

But the next breakthrough may be less visible.

It could be an infrastructure layer that makes blockchain development dramatically simpler.

The biggest crypto innovation might not be another chain competing for blockspace.

It could be the tools that allow developers to stop thinking about blockspace altogether.

That’s the paradox of great infrastructure: when it works perfectly, nobody notices it.

What Better Developer Infrastructure Could Look Like

The ideal crypto developer stack could eventually resemble modern cloud development.

A developer could have:

One unified API layer
Connect to multiple blockchain networks without managing dozens of endpoints.

Powerful indexing
Query blockchain data without building custom data pipelines.

Built-in simulation
Test transactions before they reach production.

Integrated security
Automatically detect vulnerabilities and suspicious behavior.

Simple wallet infrastructure

Provide secure authentication without forcing users through confusing workflows.

Cross-chain tooling
Build applications that operate across networks without maintaining completely separate systems.

Real-time observability
Monitor contracts, transactions, users, and application health from a single dashboard.

One-click deployment
Move from development to production with significantly less operational complexity.

When these pieces work together, blockchain development begins to look less like a specialized discipline and more like ordinary software engineering.

The Real Goal: Hide the Complexity

Crypto doesn’t need to eliminate complexity.

It needs to move complexity away from developers and users.

The internet succeeded partly because developers didn’t have to understand every layer of networking before building websites and applications.

Cloud computing succeeded because developers didn’t need to operate physical servers to launch software.

Crypto can follow the same path.

The underlying blockchain technology can remain highly sophisticated while the developer experience becomes remarkably simple.

That is the infrastructure revolution crypto needs.

Final Thoughts

The future of crypto won’t be determined solely by transaction speed, token economics, or the number of blockchains competing for users.

It will also depend on how easy it is to build on those networks.

Better developer infrastructure can reduce complexity, improve security, accelerate experimentation, and open blockchain development to a much larger pool of software engineers.

The winning crypto ecosystems may ultimately be the ones that make developers forget they’re building on blockchain at all.

Because when infrastructure becomes invisible, innovation becomes visible.

Crypto doesn’t just need more developers.

It needs to make development easier.

And that may be one of the most important infrastructure challenges—and opportunities—of the next decade.

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The Hyperliquid Policy Center and Douro Labs submitted a joint comment letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 17 supporting the proposed repeal of Regulation NMS Rule 611.

Rule 611, commonly called the trade through rule, generally prevents trading centers from executing orders at prices worse than protected quotations displayed elsewhere. The framework uses consolidated market data to establish the National Best Bid and Offer, or NBBO.

HPC and Douro argued in their 22 page letter that this quotation system does not map cleanly onto automated market makers, onchain order books and markets operating continuously outside traditional exchange hours.

Douro Labs is a core contributor to Pyth Network. HPC is an independent advocacy organization focused on creating a regulated path for U.S. users to access onchain markets, including markets available through Hyperliquid.

SEC Rule 611 repeal would change order protection

The SEC proposed rescinding Rule 611 and Rule 610(e) on June 11. Rule 610(e) restricts locked and crossed quotations, where bids equal or exceed available offers.

The agency’s proposal would also remove related definitions from Rule 600 and make corresponding changes elsewhere in Regulation NMS. The SEC has not adopted the proposal, meaning the existing rules remain in force.

Rule 611 was adopted as part of Regulation NMS in 2005. It requires trading centers to establish procedures designed to prevent executions at prices inferior to protected quotations available through other connected venues.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said in June that the proposal was intended to simplify market structure and reduce costs. He also said the agency would take a “careful, deliberative approach” while reviewing public feedback.

HPC and Douro supported the repeal “without qualification.” They argued that the current framework assumes executable interest appears as firm quotations collected by securities information processors.

Automated market makers work differently. They calculate an execution price from a liquidity pool when an order is placed. Some onchain central limit order books display bids and offers, but those prices are not currently incorporated into the consolidated feeds used to calculate the NBBO.

Onchain markets require updated best execution guidance

Repealing Rule 611 would not remove brokers’ duty to seek favorable execution terms for customers. HPC and Douro said that obligation should remain the central investor protection standard.

Their letter asked the SEC to coordinate with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority on principles based guidance for onchain execution. The groups said existing guidance does not fully address network fees, atomic settlement, transaction ordering risks or markets operating when the NBBO is unavailable.

An onchain venue may also calculate prices based on the size of an order and the liquidity available when it executes. As a result, one displayed reference price may not capture the final cost that a customer receives.

The groups proposed evaluating the effective execution price after accounting for protocol charges, network fees and market movement caused by the order. Settlement speed and reduced counterparty settlement risk could also form part of that assessment, according to the letter.

HPC and Douro further asked regulators to recognize qualifying independent reference prices when an NBBO does not exist or does not reflect onchain conditions. They said such benchmarks should use transparent methodologies and resist manipulation.

The filing cited Pyth as one possible model. Pyth receives pricing information from exchanges and trading firms involved in price formation, then publishes aggregated data onchain. The proposal did not request that the SEC endorse Pyth as the mandatory provider.

Tokenized stocks would stay within securities rules

HPC and Douro asked the SEC to confirm that tokenized versions of NMS stocks remain inside Regulation NMS and the wider best execution framework. Under that approach, investor protections would not depend on whether ownership records use a blockchain.

The request comes as tokenized stock products expand across crypto networks. As previously reported, Ondo brought 35 tokenized stocks and ETFs onto HyperEVM in June.

Such products can use different legal structures. Some represent claims against an issuer or special purpose entity rather than direct legal ownership of the underlying company shares. The structure must therefore be assessed separately from the blockchain used for trading or settlement.

In related coverage, an onchain platform launched trading for more than 70 tokenized equities across Ethereum and Solana. That system uses public market information to help keep token prices aligned with the underlying shares.

HPC and Douro also argued that onchain transactions may qualify for Rule 611’s existing exception for trades that do not use “regular way” settlement terms. They asked the SEC to confirm that interpretation if the repeal is delayed or rejected. This remains the groups’ legal position, not an SEC determination.

The SEC must decide whether to adopt the repeal

The public comment period for file S7-2026-20 closed on Aug. 17, according to the SEC docket. The joint submission arrived on the deadline alongside comments from exchanges, investment firms, trade groups and other market participants.

The SEC will now review the responses before deciding whether to adopt, revise or withdraw the proposal. A repeal would require a final Commission vote and an adopting release establishing the final text and effective date.

Not all commenters support removing the rule. Some responses warned that repeal could weaken an objective price protection standard and place greater reliance on individual brokers’ routing systems.

SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda also acknowledged those questions in a June statement. He said removing Rule 611 could raise issues involving best execution, transparency, trading mechanics and investor confidence.

The next decision rests with the SEC. No final vote, adoption date or implementation timetable had been announced as of Aug. 18.

The Ethereum Foundation has warned that wallets, indexers and gas estimators could break as Glamsterdam changes the 21,000-gas assumption for some ETH transfers, with the upgrade due to activate on the Platåberget testnet on Aug. 20.

The Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol DevOps team said on Aug. 17 that any tool relying on a hardcoded maximum gas limit “will break,” naming wallets, indexers and gas estimators among the software likely to be affected. The team urged application and infrastructure developers to test their systems on Platåberget, a public testnet designed to stay online for several months.

Forkcast data shows Platåberget launched on Aug. 13, giving developers an early environment for Glamsterdam before the upgrade moves to Sepolia and Hoodi. The Glamsterdam fork is scheduled to activate on Platåberget on Aug. 20, according to the foundation, with public validator and builder deposits available as part of the testing process.

Glamsterdam could break hardcoded gas assumptions

Under the planned gas repricing package, the foundation said software can no longer safely assume that Ethereum has a single fixed gas ceiling or that common operations will continue to cost the same amount in every case. The changes are designed around a roughly 200 million gas floor and alter the price of individual operations as well as assumptions tied to the block gas limit.

For application developers, the immediate issue is software that sets fixed boundaries when estimating transaction costs. The Protocol DevOps team said such systems need to be reviewed before Glamsterdam reaches mainnet because the repricing touches wallets, indexers and gas estimators across the network.

The warning follows June 17 Glamsterdam upgrade coverage from crypto.news, which reported that Ethereum developers were already testing the full set of planned EIPs on development networks. At the time, Ethereum Foundation developer Parithosh Jayanthi said the upgrade would change the cost of actions on Ethereum, with high-level computation becoming cheaper while state becomes more expensive.

During the same testing phase, Jayanthi said developers had made “massive progress” but noted that no fixed mainnet timeline had been set. Deployment would depend on the results of testing and whether Ethereum client teams were ready to support the new rules.

EIP-8037 changes how new state is priced

A central part of the warning concerns EIP-8037, which introduces a separate state-gas dimension for operations that create new state. The foundation said creating an account, deploying code or writing a new storage slot will be metered at a fixed cost per state byte and charged at runtime.

Because of that change, a basic ETH transfer will not always carry the same gas cost. Sending ETH to an account that already exists will continue to cost 21,000 gas, with the amount broken into the base transaction cost, cold account access and the value-transfer cost. Sending funds to an address that does not yet exist will also incur a state-gas charge tied to creating the new account.

Developers should therefore revisit applications that treat 21,000 gas as sufficient for every ETH transfer, the Protocol DevOps team said. Gas estimators built around only one gas dimension may also return incorrect estimates once new state is metered separately.

EIP-8037 had already moved close to its final form by May. A May 11 protocol development report said the proposal had reached final-draft status and was being parameterised on a Glamsterdam development network. At the time, its cost-per-state-byte model was designed around limiting annual state growth to roughly 60 GiB at a 300 million gas block limit.

Under the parameters reported in May, new account creation could become roughly 8.5 times more expensive, while contract deployment costs could rise about tenfold. Separate metering for code deposits was designed to keep large contracts deployable, including code-heavy decentralised finance applications.

The state-gas model also changes where Ethereum accounts for the cost of permanent state. The foundation said account creation, new storage slots and deployed code will incur charges based on the amount of new state created, making applications that frequently add permanent data particularly important targets for testing before mainnet deployment.

Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade also changes block production

Gas repricing is only one part of Glamsterdam. The foundation said the fork also includes enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, which changes how blocks are built, proposed and validated inside Ethereum’s core protocol.

Under ePBS, the split between the block-building process and the proposer role is incorporated into the protocol, alongside a new builder API flow and payload-timeliness checks. Infrastructure tied to Ethereum’s block-production and validation pipeline should expect to be affected, according to the foundation.

With Platåberget open for public participation, the Protocol DevOps team has encouraged solo stakers, distributed validator technology projects, custom software operators and large staking providers to test their infrastructure. The testnet allows users to deposit new validators and experiment with validator and builder-deposit workflows before the same changes move to longer-lived networks.

Block-Level Access Lists form another major component of the fork. The foundation said the lists will record state locations accessed during execution and post-transaction state changes, with BAL data stored separately from the block body and exchanged between execution-layer peers through the eth/71 networking protocol.

Earlier June reporting said the access-list design gives Ethereum clients advance information about which accounts and smart-contract data a block will use. The system can allow nodes to preload required data and process transactions in parallel when transactions do not access the same state, according to Ethereum.org.

Glamsterdam will also increase size limits for deployed contracts and initialisation code. The foundation said the maximum deployed contract size will rise from 24 KiB to 64 KiB, while the maximum initcode size will increase from 48 KiB to 128 KiB. Forward-compatible consensus data structures are also included in the planned fork.

Platåberget gives developers a longer testing window

Unlike the shorter development networks used during earlier Glamsterdam work, Platåberget is intended to remain available for several months. The Protocol DevOps team said the longer lifespan should give developers time to test post-Glamsterdam behaviour and identify failures before the changes reach Sepolia and Hoodi.

Its validator set is relatively small but open to public participation. For the initial testing period, the foundation has listed container images for consensus clients including Lighthouse, Lodestar, Nimbus, Prysm, Teku and Grandine, alongside execution clients including Besu, Geth, Erigon, Nethermind, Reth, NimbusEL and Ethrex. Tagged client releases remain optional while development teams prepare their own builds.

After feedback from Platåberget has been incorporated into specifications and client software, a non-finality devnet is expected to follow within the month to test difficult consensus scenarios, according to the foundation. Sepolia and Hoodi are due to receive Glamsterdam after the development networks remain stable, while Ethereum mainnet activation will follow successful upgrades on the long-lived testnets.

Development on Ethereum’s next scheduled fork is also proceeding separately. An Aug. 16 Hegotá planning report said developers were considering 66 proposals for the 2027 upgrade, although Fork Choice enforced Inclusion Lists was the only EIP formally scheduled for inclusion at the time.

Several proposals under review for Hegotá concern future gas and state pricing as Ethereum increases Layer 1 capacity. EIP-8368, for example, would recalibrate state-creation pricing if the block gas limit rises beyond the reference level used by Glamsterdam, while developers have discussed preparing Ethereum for a possible path towards a 600 million gas limit.