Ethereum’s (ETH) genesis block turned 11 on July 30, closing quite a busy year. The network now runs on a 60 million gas limit, double where it sat two years ago, with rollups carrying roughly 95% of its transactions.
On the morning of the anniversary, blocks were landing about 229 transactions each, close to 21 per second on the base layer, and running 55% full. The base fee sat near 5.3 gwei, which works out to about $0.20 for a plain ETH transfer, $0.52 for an ERC-20 transfer, and $3.79 for a swap, according to data from Etherscan.
Scaling and ETFs
The fund wrappers arrived alongside the scaling. Morgan Stanley began trading the cheapest US ether ETP at a 0.14% expense ratio on Tuesday, staking 50% to 80% of its holdings and passing the rewards through.
Likewise, BlackRock’s ETHB holds spot ETH and stakes a portion of it, the firm’s first crypto fund to do so. Both lean on Revenue Procedure 2025-31, the safe harbor letting exchange-traded products stake and distribute rewards without a separate tax charge.
Two upgrades are queued for this year: Glamsterdam and Hegotá. The 2026 protocol roadmap sets three tracks – scaling, user experience, and hardening the base layer – and targets a gas limit beyond 100 million per block, and names post-quantum readiness a consideration across protocol development.
Despite all of this, it has been a painful year for the native token. ETH traded at $1,920 on July 30, down 49% over the 12 months to the anniversary and 61% below the $4,946 record it set on August 24, 2025. Its market capitalization stood at $231 billion across 120.7 million coins, second behind Bitcoin.
Two Directors Out in Five Months
The network had some interesting developments, and the overall project managed to thrive, despite all the duress the Ethereum Foundation (EF) went through recently.
Around 54 colleagues had departed, close to 20% of its workforce, and reorganized what remained into five clusters covering the protocol, access, user, community and institutional layers, plus operations and management.
Investor Ryan Berckmans, an eight-year figure in the community, attributed the wider wave of exits to disagreements over sub-strategies. He said confidence in the network itself was not the reason. Researchers Carl Beek, Julian Ma, Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, Trent Van Epps and Josh Stark all left during the same stretch.
Tomasz Stańczak stepped down as co-executive director on February 13, effective immediately, with Bastian Aue named interim co-executive director. The board said Stańczak left “after extensive contributions to the Foundation’s mission and operations.”
Hsiao-Wei Wang resigned as co-executive director and board member in June, writing that she had decided to step down “after my sabbatical.” That leaves Vitalik Buterin, Patrick Storchenegger and Aya Miyaguchi on the board.
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