gm frens! 🫂
This edition brings you a full recap of the biggest shifts across the Ethereum ecosystem this past month, plus a shoutout to our Security Partner and a heads up on two major events happening in Europe. We're dropping the fixed format explainer this time around, you know the drill by now.
Here's a TLDR of this month's edition:
🛡️ Adevar Labs Partnership — Our Security Partner sponsors this newsletter, and their pre-audit promo is almost gone: only 2 spots left.
💻 EVM News Roundup — From Base's Cobalt upgrade to ETH surging past $2,300 on White House crypto remarks.
🛡️ Ethereum Ecosystem Exploits — AFX Trade, VerusCoin, and a handful of smaller hits, plus a cross-chain Coldcard alert every self-custody holder should read.
🗓️ Upcoming Gatherings — ETH Belgrade is next week, and Amsterdam's Cypherpunk Week follows right after.
Security isn't a nice to have bolted on before launch. It's the foundation everything else stands on. That's why we're proud to keep Adevar Labs as the official Security Partner powering ETH Bucharest's newsletter and community.
Adevar Labs covers the full attack surface, not just a single code review: whiteglove audits, formal verification, infrastructure audits, custom fuzzing, penetration testing, protocol design consulting, and operational security. Their senior researchers have shipped audits across Ethereum, Solana, Sui, Aptos, Monad, Fogo, Algorand and more, helping protect hundreds of millions in on-chain funds along the way.
They're also recognized across the ecosystem as an official service provider for Base and BNB Chain and a Circle Alliance Program partner.
If you're building toward mainnet, they're the team to have in your corner before the clock starts.
👉 Check out Adevar Labs to secure your stack, and don't miss their pre-audit offer in the Builder Tools section below.
A full month of ecosystem news, protocol launches, and regulatory movement. Here is what shipped and mattered since our last dispatch:
Base Announces Cobalt Upgrade: A network upgrade bringing native account abstraction with support for EIP 8130, shipping in September. Read more
Kohaku Wallet CLI Goes Live on Ethereum Mainnet: Kassandra's terminal wallet for shifting funds between public accounts and private balances is now live. Read more
Aztec Activates Alpha V5 Upgrade: Cuts private transaction proving times by more than 2x and reduces average block production time from 14 to 6 seconds. Read more
Morpho Launches Fixed Rate Markets on Base: A new protocol for fixed rate, fixed term credit markets is now live. Read more
Uniswap Ships New V4 Hooks: DualPool and Permissioned Pools address capital efficiency and AMM liquidity for regulated asset issuers. Read more
Senate GOP Unveils Updated CLARITY Act: New draft includes an added ethics provision as the digital asset market structure debate continues. Read more
Morgan Stanley and Fidelity Deepen ETH Exposure: Morgan Stanley launched its MSSE Ethereum Trust ETF (read more), while Fidelity filed with the SEC to add staking to its Fidelity Ethereum Fund, which already holds roughly $898M in ETH (read more).
Ethereum Turns 11: ETH Daily published its 1,000th episode on Ethereum's 11th birthday, marking over a decade of shipping. Read more
Lido Core Upgrade Consolidates Staking Infrastructure: A major upgrade bringing consolidation across roughly 265,000 validators. Read more
Aave to Wind Down Six Chain Deployments: Lending markets on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos are being shut down. Read more
Quick Slots Proposed for Hegotá: Would cut slot times from 12 seconds to 10, enabling faster transaction finality. Read more
SEC Proposes Regulation Crypto Assets: New proposal creates two exemptions from Securities Act registration requirements and introduces a conditional safe harbor. Read more
ETH Surges to $2,300: Price jumped nearly 20% following a White House crypto briefing featuring leaders from Coinbase, Robinhood, and Chainlink. Read more
Staying secure means studying the battlefield. Here are the confirmed Ethereum ecosystem hacks and exploits from the past month. Stay safe out there, frens.
July 22: AFX Trade (~$24.15M, Arbitrum) A compromised validator quorum signed off on a fraudulent bridge withdrawal. No smart contract broke, the off-chain signing system did. Details here
July 23: VerusCoin (~$7.54M, Ethereum) The Verus-Ethereum bridge authenticated a forged cross-chain export as genuine, minting payouts against transfers that were never actually backed on Verus. Second exploit of the same bridge in three months. Details here
August 5: Unistreets (~$17.75K, Ethereum) Access control failure allowed an arbitrary external call. Details here
August 6: Panther Protocol (~$7.5K, Base) A malicious governance proposal passed, part of a broader summer wave of governance takeovers across DeFi. Details here
August 9: USM (~$136K, Ethereum) An arithmetic and pricing logic error in the defund path let value be extracted incorrectly.
⚠️ Cross-Chain Alert: Coldcard Firmware Vulnerability
Worth flagging separately since it hits self-custody users directly, regardless of which chain they hold. July 30: Coldcard (~$130M and rising, Bitcoin) A firmware flaw silently swapped Coldcard's hardware random number generator for a guessable software fallback, letting attackers brute-force seeds offline with no phishing or malware involved. At least 15 attackers, most funds untouched, nobody caught. If you generated a seed on firmware v4.0.0 through v4.1.9, move your funds now. Details here
🟡 Also Making Headlines: BNB Chain
Not Ethereum, but worth a glance if you're building or bridging across EVM chains this month.
MOKE (Aug 2, ~$907K): Spot price manipulation combined with an unprotected claim function and LP/dividend accounting flaws. Attacker used flash loans to extract value. Source
LOOPSDAO (Aug 2, ~$693.5K): Oracle and spot price manipulation. Source
Fox Market (Aug 15, ~$120K): Oracle and spot price manipulation tied to Pancake AMM accounting in staking and LP bonds. Source
We've got your back. Here are this month's custom offers and collaborations tailored for ETH Bucharest builders.
Adevar Labs Inc.
Pre-Audit Promotion: 50% Off Pre-Audits, Only 2 Spots Left
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Offer lasts until the end of the month. Reach out to Adevar Labs and mention ETH Bucharest sent you.
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All eyes on Europe this month. Here is what's on, where, and how to join frens on the ground, through the end of September.
🔥 ETH Belgrade (26–27 Aug): Happening next week! The Ethereum event in the Balkans, part of Belgrade Blockchain Week. 100+ speakers, 1,500+ attendees, and a hackathon running alongside the main conference. Sava Congress Center, Belgrade, Serbia. Claim your free ticket here · Event site
🔥 Common S3nse & Cypherpunk Week (31 Aug–6 Sep): A full week dedicated to privacy, security, and digital freedom. The headline event, Common S3nse, is a two day conference and hackathon on September 4 to 5, bringing together privacy engineers, cryptographers, and cypherpunks from around the world, alongside a week of satellite meetups, workshops, and hacker houses across the city. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Common S3nse details and tickets · Event site
ETHOnline 2026 (4–16 Sep): Registrations are open now. ETHGlobal's flagship async hackathon, build from wherever you are, no travel required. A great fit for builders who can't make it to Belgrade or Amsterdam but still want in on the action. Online. Apply to attend
Get those registrations sorted, frens, especially for ETH Belgrade since it's happening next week. LFG 🔥
That's all from us this month.
Whether you're heading to Belgrade, planning your trip to Amsterdam, or just keeping up with everything shipping across the ecosystem, you'll be in good company.
Stay connected, keep building, and we'll see you out there. As always, hit reply if you have questions, feedback, or just want to say hi.
Until then, build something worth talking about.
— The ETH Bucharest team