The Protocol: Ethereum Foundation Fracas

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Ben Schiller, CoinDesk’s Opinion and Features editor.

In this issue:

• DAO governance tool merger
• Ethereum Foundation drama
• Stablecoin USDh comes to Bitcoin
• $25 million grant program for DePIN

Network News

DAO GOVERNANCE PLATFORM ACQUIRES RIVAL: Agora, a blockchain governance startup, is set to acquire its competitor Boardroom. The company framed the acquisition as a strategic move to enhance governance within the broader Ethereum ecosystem, citing expectations of renewed growth in decentralized governance due to President Trump's promise of regulatory clarity for the blockchain industry. "2025 is the year we make good governance the standard for all protocols in Ethereum," Agora co-founder Yitong Zhang told CoinDesk. Agora was founded in 2022 by Zhang, Charlie Feng, and Kent Fenwick. The trio initially started working on governance tooling at Nouns DAO, one of the buzzier blockchain protocols to emerge from 2021's DAO and NFT hype cycle. Agora was founded on the premise that token governance is central to the value of crypto protocols. It aims to provide user-friendly, open-source governance tools for DAOs like Uniswap and Optimism, which both currently use Agora to organize token holders and hold governance votes.Boardroom, which predated Agora and has similar goals, took a more horizontal approach to blockchain governance. Boardroom has gradually transitioned from an Agora-style DAO tooling software to a data feed — similar to a "Bloomberg" for crypto governance data. Agora declined to disclose how much it paid to acquire Boardroom. Boardroom's employees have been offered roles at Agora, and Boardroom's founder, Kevin Nielsen, will remain as an advisor. "There's no plan to deprecate" Boardroom, according to Zhang. Rather, the Agora team will keep both platforms running and will work with users to determine how the tools might gradually be integrated. Read more. – Sam Kessler

ETHEREUM TURMOIL: Konstantin Lomashuk, the founder of the Lido staking protocol, has teased his intention to build a "Second Foundation" to advance Ethereum's ecosystem. Over the past several days, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined plans for a major restructuring of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), the nonprofit organization responsible for supporting Ethereum’s development. In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Buterin shared details of the reorganization, which he said would streamline decision-making processes and address inefficiencies. The announcement has sparked criticism, with some arguing that Buterin’s central role in the restructuring process undermines Ethereum’s ethos of decentralization. The EF has long been scrutinized for its own centralizing influence. Over the past year, the organization has faced mounting pressure to define a clearer vision for Ethereum’s future as competing networks like Solana make strides. Read more. – Sam Kessler

BITCOIN GETS NEW STABLECOIN: The developers of USDh, a stablecoin built on Bitcoin layer 2 Stacks, have completed a deal to bring around $3 million in liquidity to the token. Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Hermetica has secured the liquidity, which it says will make it the largest stablecoin on Stacks, through collaboration with Bitcoin lending protocol Zest. The two plan to offer yield on USDh through lending against sBTC, the bitcoin-backed bridging asset that users can use to put their bitcoin wealth in the Stacks ecosystem. The initial liquidity boost could create a short-term window of higher yields, Hermetica said, with projections of an annual percentage yield (APY) as high as 50%. It currently provides an average APY of 18%, Hermetica said in an emailed announcement on Wednesday. Stablecoins play an integral role in the crypto economy, giving users a means of holding their assets in a token that isn't prone to such significant ebbs and flows in value, because they are pegged to a fiat currency (usually the U.S. dollar). Provision for stablecoins therefore would naturally be an important development in Bitcoin's evolution into a network that can support DeFi capabilities, a trend that has gathered momentum in the last couple of years. It should be pointed that, however, that the $3 million in liquidity that USDh provides is tiny compared to the dominant stablecoins in crypto. USDT and USDC have market caps of over $138 billion and $51 billion respectively, highlighting the relative infancy of the Bitcoin DeFi sector. Read more. – Jamie Crawley

DEPIN GRANT PROGRAM: World Mobile, a decentralized wireless network, has announced a $25 million grant program aimed at fostering Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) projects. Tenity, an early-stage investor and global leader in innovation programs and startup acceleration, is a partner in the initiative, which will make available its six international hubs. “By partnering with Tenity, we’re ensuring that the World Mobile Chain Grant Program doesn’t just fund projects but provides the guidance and resources necessary to drive scalable, impactful innovation,” said Micky Watkins, CEO of World Mobile Group. The $25 million offers funding starting at $5,000 and has a focus on decentralized communications, on-chain governance, and the tokenization of real-world assets. World Mobile is an EVM-compatible “Layer 3” developed on Base. Read more.

In Other News

L2s Getting Faster

• Layer 2 protocols have achieved record throughput, led by Base.

Letters of Credit for DeFi

• Anvil, an Ethereum-based smart contract project, is a step towards creating a new form of money, says its founder Tyler Spalding.

Regulatory and policy

• Trump issues executive order on digital assets, among host of post-inauguration initiatives

Calendar

• Jan. 20-24: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland
• January 21-25: WAGMI conference, Miami.
• Jan. 24-25: Adopting Bitcoin, Cape Town, South Africa.
• Jan. 30-31: PLAN B Forum, San Salvador, El Salvador.
• Feb. 1-6: Satoshi Roundtable, Dubai
• Feb. 19-20, 2025: ConsensusHK, Hong Kong.
• Feb. 23-24: NFT Paris
• Feb 23-March 2: ETHDenver
• March 18-19: Digital Asset Summit, London
• May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto.
• May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas.