Personal updates, Core protocol news and more - The Daily Gwei Refuel #863 - Ethereum Updates

Dan returned to The Daily Gwei Refuel on May 22, 2026, after a months-long gap, and used the episode to explain a deliberate step back from public Ethereum commentary. He traced his involvement from entering crypto in 2013, returning in 2017 after discovering Ethereum, and sustaining intensive output through roughly early 2025, a period he says damaged his physical and mental health. Over the last 18 months he has prioritized fitness, is expecting to become an uncle, and is considering starting his own family, all of which he frames as reasons to redirect time away from crypto Twitter and Discord. The podcast has never been monetized, and when producing it stopped giving him energy he chose to reduce frequency rather than continue under obligation. Future episodes will publish irregularly and only around major Ethereum events. He also plans to reduce Twitter activity, avoid long public debates, and launch a separate YouTube channel tied to a book in progress.

Approximately 10 of around 200 Ethereum Foundation staff have recently left or moved on, and the EF has issued no official explanation. Speculation centers on departing members refusing to sign something described as the crops mandate, though the speaker stressed that no one, including people inside the EF, has the full picture, with conflicting accounts circulating. The EF is known for paying below-market rates, and some departures may reflect staff wanting to pursue similar technical work elsewhere after completing past upgrade cycles. The speaker's primary criterion for concern is whether the Ethereum roadmap continues to ship, and he attributed most criticism of the EF to ETH price underperformance rather than genuine governance problems. He predicted speculation will persist regardless of any public statement given a general low-trust environment.

Glamsterdam is progressing through testing phases and the speaker predicted a mainnet launch in August or September 2026, placing it in Q3. The upgrade includes ePBS, Block Level Access List, and a range of other EIPs. The following upgrade, Hegotar, is in the scoping phase, with Fossil confirmed for the consensus layer and frame transactions described as a strong candidate for the execution layer. Hegotar is expected to ship in late Q1 or Q2 of the following year. Post-quantum Ethereum work is advancing under the lean Ethereum initiative with Justin Drake as one of the leads, with a dedicated resource at pq.ethereum.org. The broader roadmap, called the straw map and available at strawmap.org, covers Ethereum development plans through 2030 and beyond.

Solana is down approximately 60 percent against ETH since its peak hype period in 2024 and 2025. Many prominent Solana bulls have shifted to promoting hyperliquid and are directing the same critical patterns at ETH they previously used against Solana. The speaker argued hyperliquid is not decentralized and that anyone claiming otherwise is delusional, but that its centralization is precisely the source of its product market fit as an on-chain centralized exchange. Solana was outcompeted by hyperliquid because hyperliquid's centralized architecture is better suited to high-speed trading than a general-purpose chain attempting partial decentralization. The speaker described a barbell model where pure centralization and pure decentralization each have strong product market fit while products in the middle are outcompeted from both sides. He cited LIDAR, described as a true ZK rollup on Ethereum with a functioning escape hatch, as outcompeting perp dexes on other general-purpose chains. He contended no new or existing L1 meaningfully competes with Ethereum on decentralization and that many existing L1s are fading. The speaker views ETH reaching multiple tens of trillions of dollars in market capitalization as plausible but frames it as a multi-decade play against a current market cap of approximately 250 billion dollars.

An exploit involving rsETH and Kelp restaked ETH caused significant fallout with Aave and triggered broad outflows from liquid staking and liquid restaking protocols. Over the past month LIDO saw a 7 percent outflow, ETHify 24 percent, Stakewise 11 percent, and Mantle 27 percent, while Rocket Pool experienced a 22 percent outflow over the last six months. Total ETH staked declined from 41 million to 39 million ETH. The speaker attributed much of the damage to holders not previously understanding the risk difference between an LST and an LRT, and argued the APY offered by these products does not adequately compensate for the risk taken. Some of the decline has been partially offset by new large stakers including Tom Lee and Sharp Link conducting in-house staking operations, as well as a staked ETH ETF.

The speaker noted that Bankless has ended what it calls era one, with Ryan stepping back and David now running the show, and that the content has shifted toward topics such as Zcash in which the speaker has no involvement. He does not expect to appear on Bankless going forward. He described public shaming of people who step back from the crypto industry as disgusting and toxic, arguing it reveals insecurity among holders who expect others to keep working to appreciate their positions.