April brought a wave of momentum for both infrastructure and adoption. Stablecoin transfer volumes officially surpassed Visa's payment volume, underscoring crypto’s growing role in global finance—with TradFi players like Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa themselves jumping in. Circle filed for an IPO and took full control of USDC governance, reinforcing its central role in the stablecoin ecosystem. Meanwhile, Celestia and portfolio company Gensyn launched their public testnets, setting the pace for scalable rollups and decentralized AI compute.
The Ethereum Pectra upgrade, originally expected this month, has been officially postponed to May as final refinements are being completed. Pectra remains one of Ethereum’s most consequential upgrades since the Merge, notably doubling the blob data capacity per block to significantly reduce Layer-2 transaction costs and improve rollup throughput. Introduced in the upgrade is EIP-7702, which will introduce temporary smart contract capabilities to EOAs (externally owned accounts), streamlining wallet UX and L2 performance. Aside from its continuous development, Ethereum has lately been struggling against its closest competitor Solana. In this struggle, Ethereum is trying to actively fight back and find their way, for example the Ethereum Foundation (EF) outlined a renewed focus on decentralization and updated priorities include scaling Ethereum L1, enhancing blob capacity, and improving UX. Aya Miyaguchi emphasized the EF’s role of “purposeful subtraction” meaning stepping back intervention where possible. Additional developments include Ethereum developers moving forward with the EVM Object Format (EOF), a major upgrade that restructures how smart contracts are deployed and executed. EOF separates code from data, improving contract safety, tooling, and future extensibility. It’s set to be introduced gradually via multiple EIPs in upcoming hard forks. Now suddenly, after years in the works, the same Ethereum developers who proposed the EOF, are now voting against it. It seems Ethereum developers and the EF are constantly looking for ways to overcome their current struggle, but it seems to be creating fragmentation and uncertainty. Lastly, Ethereum researcher Dankrad Feist proposed EIP-9698, aiming to increase the gas limit from 36 million to 3.6 billion over four years. The plan involves tenfold jumps every two years, potentially enabling 2,000 TPS. A shorter-term proposal to raise the limit to 150 million by the Fusaka hard fork is also under consideration.
April was heavily dominated by stablecoin developments, highlighted by stablecoin transfer volume surpassing Visa’s payment volume for the first time. On this note, Visa announced their entry into the Paxos-Robinhood stablecoin consortium, becoming the first TradFi institution to join the Global Dollar Network (USDG), a yield-sharing stablecoin model aimed at embedding stablecoins directly into mainstream financial rails. Other big news is traditional payment giant Stripe has begun testing a new USD-pegged stablecoin product, developed using Bridge, the stablecoin platform it acquired for $1.1 billion. The pilot targets businesses outside the US, UK, and EU, aiming to facilitate cross-border payments in regions with volatile currencies and high remittance costs.
Traditional banks are moving towards stablecoins as well as Japan’s second-largest bank, SMBC, is exploring a stablecoin launch in collaboration with Ava Labs. To add to that, Dutch bank ING is also said to be working on a new stablecoin with multiple TradFi and crypto firms. Additionally, Mastercard further accelerated this trend by launching a global stablecoin payment network that encompasses wallet enablement, card issuance, merchant settlement, and on-chain remittances. As part of this initiative, Mastercard has partnered with OKX to launch the “OKX Card,” and is also working with Circle, Paxos, and Nuvei for direct stablecoin settlements with merchants.
On the policy front, Arizona’s state legislature passed a bill to establish a Bitcoin reserve for public funds, which now awaits signature by the governor. More US regulatory changes include Paul Atkins being confirmed by the Senate to lead the SEC, ushering in what appears to be a new, crypto-positive chapter for securities regulation.
EigenLayer, Babylon, and Hyperliquid Push Forward on Security and PerformanceCircle officially filed for an IPO, with timing still uncertain. In this filing it also revealed a $210 million equity deal to acquire Coinbase’s stake in Centre (the consortium originally created by Circle and Coinbase to govern USDC), now consolidating full control over USDC governance. Furthermore, PayPal introduced yield-bearing opportunities for holders of its PYUSD stablecoin, and also added support for Solana (SOL) and Chainlink (LINK) within US jurisdictions. Major US bank Charles Schwab, confirmed they are likely to launch spot crypto trading services within the next 12 months, reflecting growing institutional demand for our industry. Coinbase is set to launch a new institutional Bitcoin fund offering native yield, another big step towards integrating crypto yield products into legacy capital markets. And lastly, world's largest telecommunications company, AT&T, entered the Web3 infrastructure space by announcing that its mobile subscribers will automatically connect to nearby Helium hotspots under a new commercial agreement.
Restaking platform EigenLayer rolled out its long-awaited slashing mechanism this month, completing its initial feature set and marking a major step forward in protocol security and maturity. Ether.fi, previously an EigenLayer AVS focused on non-custodial ETH staking, has now pivoted its strategy to become a full-service crypto neobank, launching physical cash cards across the U.S. Meanwhile, Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, which previously faced backlash after its livestream feature was misused for disturbing content including staged self-harm incidents, has cautiously reintroduced livestreaming to 5% of users as part of a limited, moderated trial. In the Bitcoin ecosystem, Babylon (Bitcoin staking protocol) launched its Genesis mainnet of its staking product and is now open to all users. Babylon is a platform comparable to Eigenlayer, where users can stake their BTC to secure other chains and earn rewards, without bridging or wrapping. A big upgrade for Hyperliquid came in the form of the recently implemented “Read Precompiles,” which optimizes the way smart contracts access on-chain data, especially large or frequently accessed datasets. Read pre-compiles enable EVM contracts to tap into powerful L1 features (like reading a perp position) without needing external calls or APIs. Next development will be ‘write pre-compiles’, which will allow developers to both read and signal actions to the L1, unlocking seamless integration between DeFi logic and high-performance order books. And lastly, Interchain Labs released “IBC Eureka,” enabling permissionless bridging between Ethereum and the Cosmos ecosystem.
Celestia introduced mamo-1, a public testnet featuring 128MB blocks and a data throughput of 21.33MB/s, setting the stage for high-throughput rollups and scalable modular execution environments. Portfolio company Gensyn also launched its long awaited testnet, allowing developers to access verifiable, decentralized machine learning compute. The testnet enables efficient coordination of large AI workloads with cryptographic guarantees. A big reveal from RiscZero was the introduction of “Boundless”, their application layer designed for verifiable computation based on zero-knowledge proofs. Boundless aims to provide seamless ZK integration for developers and enterprises alike. Furthermore, Bleap announced a strategic partnership with Mastercard to bring stablecoin payments into the mainstream, complementing Mastercard’s broader Web3 payment strategy. Maven11 has participated in two exciting funding rounds this month; Resolv Labs who raised $10 million to expand yield-bearing stablecoin opportunities, and we also participated in MagicBlock’s recent fundraising round, reinforcing its position in the increasingly modularized Solana ecosystem. Lastly, portfolio company Camp Network secured an impressive $25 million in its recent fundraise to track and distribute AI-related royalties using blockchain
