Ethereum Foundation Revamps, Bybit Recovers After Major Hack

Ethereum Foundation Reforms and Bybit Hack Aftermath Dominate Crypto Week

The crypto market experienced a week of significant events, with the Ethereum Foundation announcing reforms and the Bybit exchange recovering from a major hack. Meanwhile, meme coins saw a decline in interest.

Ethereum Foundation Reforms

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced the creation of the Silviculture Society, an independent group that will provide informal recommendations on key ecosystem development issues. The society aims to uphold the fundamental principles of the project, such as open source, privacy, security, and anti-censorship. Matthew Green, a senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the original Zerocash white paper, is among the society's members. EF also appointed researcher Xiao-Wei Wang and Nethermind founder Tomasz Stanczak as co-executive directors, effective 17 March.

Leading EF researchers, including Vitalik Buterin, Justin Drake, and Dankrad Feist, participated in an AMA session to address scaling, L1 revenue, and security concerns. Developers discussed improving the network's economics by returning revenue from L2 and promoting native rollups. They also emphasized the need to scale native "data availability" (DA) on L1 instead of alternatives like the restaking platform EigenLayer.

On 24 February, developers activated the Pectra hardfork in the Holesky testnet, which stopped finalising slots. Paritosh Jayanti of Ethereum Foundation clarified that the upgrade encountered a configuration issue on three core network clients, but it did not affect the core network. The activation of the Pectra hardfork on the Sepolia test network is tentatively scheduled for 5 March.

The Aftermath Of The Bybit Hack

Bybit fully recovered Ethereum (~444,870 ETH) reserves stolen in the 21 February attack by 24 February. The exchange raised funds through loans, whale deposits, and direct purchases to cover the losses. On 25 February, Bybit returned a 40,000 ETH debt to Bitget. Blockstream co-founder Adam Back attributed the hack to the faulty design of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which he believes hurts trust in the ecosystem.

An investigation by Sygnia