Ethereum

Coin Metrics reported that stablecoin dust activity on Ethereum rose 2–3x after the Fusaka upgrade in December, based on an analysis spanning November 2025 through January 2026. Across 227 million USDC and USDT balance updates, 43% were under $1 and 38% were under a penny, while dusting was estimated to be 11% of transactions and 26% of active addresses on an average day.

On a Tuesday post on X, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said his earlier view of layer-2 networks as the main path for scaling “no longer makes sense,” citing their limited decentralization and growing base-layer capacity. He now favors expanding Ethereum’s mainnet through gas-limit increases and native rollups, while suggesting L2s focus on specialized use cases instead of serving as the core scaling engine. Developers are already discussing raising the gas limit from 60 million to 80 million, and researcher Justin Drake has outlined a roadmap targeting 10,000 transactions per second on Ethereum over the next decade.

On February 3, the crypto market saw a sharp sell-off as Bitcoin briefly fell to the $72,000 area before rebounding to around $77,000–$78,000. Over $2.5 billion in positions were liquidated within 48 hours, with more than $700 million wiped out in a single day and most losses hitting overleveraged longs. Ethereum dropped toward the $3,600–$3,800 range, while major altcoins like Solana and BNB recorded double-digit intraday declines amid heavy spot selling and extreme fear in sentiment indicators.

Vitalik Buterin moved 705 ETH, including a 493 ETH transaction valued at about $1.16 million after an earlier 211.84 ETH swap. The activity prompted concern, but it aligns with his recurring practice of converting ETH to stablecoins for charitable initiatives, notably funding Kanro and other research-focused projects. Ethereum traded near $2,274 with mixed technical signals.

On Feb 3, 2026, a guide introduced the Wei Name Service (WNS), a minimal Ethereum naming experiment. It provides human-readable .wei addresses via a single NFT contract and IPFS frontends, with pricing from 0.0005 ETH per year for five-character names to 0.5 ETH per year for one-character registrations.

Ethereum core developers added "Frame Transactions" (EIP-8141) to the shortlist of Hegota headliner proposals after a pull request merged on January 29, 2026, and Vitalik Buterin joined the discussion by linking the design to ERC-4337 paymaster-style mempool rules. At the time the headliner debate was circulating in developer channels, ETH traded around $2,304.7 with a 24-hour move of -0.6%, while desks weighed the implications for mempool policy, order flow segmentation, and protocol-level MEV protection narratives.

On February 3, 2026, crypto-linked equities and major tokens sold off alongside broader tech weakness. According to the report, Galaxy (GLXY) plunged 20%, Coinbase (COIN) fell over 7%, and ETH- and BTC-focused treasuries dropped nearly 10% intraday, while BTC, ETH, and SOL recorded 4%+ daily declines as TOTAL slipped 3%.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said the market has been in crypto winter since January 2025 and suggested the downturn may be nearing its end. He noted Bitcoin is down almost 39% from its October 2025 all-time high and Ethereum 53%, while ETFs and DATs bought over 744,000 BTC, providing roughly $75 billion of support.

On 3 February 2026, Bitcoin traded under $74,000 after the U.S. House approved a tight 217–215 procedural vote tied to a Senate-supported funding bill aimed at reopening the federal government. The total crypto market cap fell to about $2.5 trillion, with Bitcoin down roughly 6% in 24 hours and nearly 15% over the week as broader macro and political uncertainty kept risk appetite muted.

On February 3, 2026, Arbitrum warned that its ArbitrumDAO governance X account had been compromised and used to post an airdrop-themed phishing link at gov-arbitrum[dot]com, urging users not to engage until control is restored. The incident lands amid heavy phishing activity, with January losses estimated at $311.3 million out of roughly $370.3 million in total exploits.