Hey Edge readers,

Ethereum just rolled out Fusaka, a network upgrade that doesn’t change how you use ETH day to day, but quietly makes rollups cheaper, UX smoother, and the base layer more robust for the long haul. Let’s take a deep dive into it.

Stay sharp. 🫡

-The Exponential team

What is Fusaka and Why Was it Needed?

Fusaka is Ethereum’s newest network upgrade, improving both the execution layer (“Osaka”) and the consensus layer (“Fulu”). Its goal is simple: make Ethereum cheaper to use, handle more activity, and feel smoother for everyday users. To understand why this upgrade matters, we first need to define two concepts that sit at the center of it: rollups and blobs.

• Rollups: Rollups are separate networks like Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync that handle most of the actual user activity. They process transactions, bundle them up, and send the results back to Ethereum for verification. Think of them as “express lanes” built on top of Ethereum, faster and cheaper, but still secured by Ethereum underneath.

• Blobs: A blob is a temporary “data package” that rollups post to Ethereum to prove what happened on their network. Ethereum doesn’t keep this data forever, but it stores it long enough to verify the rollup’s state. The cheaper and more efficient blobs become, the cheaper it is for rollups to operate, which directly affects the prices users pay on L2s.

Most people today use Ethereum through rollups, not directly on the base chain. That means upgrades affecting blobs, data handling, and network capacity end up improving the experience for millions of users. Fusaka brings all of these pieces together: it makes blobs cheaper to store, gives rollups more room to post their data, increases Ethereum’s overall capacity, and paves the way for smoother wallet and app experiences.

The Big Improvement: More Space, Less Cost

Fusaka introduces a new way for Ethereum to store and check blob data more efficiently. In simple terms, Ethereum no longer needs every node to download all rollup data, instead, each node only checks a small piece making the system lighter and allows more rollup activity at once without raising hardware requirements.

This shift opens the door for rollups to post far more activity without overwhelming the system. More room for rollups means more capacity, and more capacity naturally helps keep fees stable, even when the network gets busy.

Smoother User Experience

Alongside the data improvements, Fusaka also brings faster-feeling apps Ethereum can now “peek ahead” to know who will propose the next block. Apps can use this for faster transaction confirmations, almost instant acknowledgments that “your tx will be included.”. On top of this, Fusaka modernizes wallet security through supporting device-native passkeys, meaning wallets can integrate Face ID, fingerprints, or hardware-backed security directly.

A Safer, More Stable Base Layer

Under the hood, Fusaka strengthens Ethereum’s foundation. It adds a ceiling on how large a single transaction can be, preventing one oversized operation from slowing the entire network. It cleans up some of the rules Ethereum uses to process more complex operations, reducing edge cases and making the system easier to reason about. And it slightly increases how much activity each block can contain, giving the base layer just a bit more breathing room.

A Simple Before / After View

Fusaka isn’t a flashy upgrade, but it’s an important one and very needed one. It quietly expands Ethereum’s capacity, improves how rollups operate, and opens the door to smoother, more modern wallet experiences. It’s another step in Ethereum’s slow, steady climb toward being faster, cheaper, and easier to use for everyone.

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In the news 🗞️

• Yield Basis Activates Fee Switch After Investors Deposit $130M Bitcoin: Curve founder Michael Egorov’s Yield Basis has turned on its fee switch, allowing eligible users to claim 17 BTC (~$1.6M) earned since launch as deposits surpassed $130M. The protocol uses leveraged strategies to avoid impermanent loss in Curve’s BTC–crvUSD pool, with YB tokenholders now receiving a share of revenue. As DAOs face pressure to give tokens real value, Egorov argues fee distribution is essential for “closed-loop economics,” joining Uniswap, Aave, Ethena, and others in directing revenue to holders.

• Terminal Finance Shuts Down After Ethena’s Converge Chain Fails to Launch: Terminal Finance has canceled its DEX launch after Ethena and Securitize’s Converge blockchain failed to go live, leaving the fully built protocol without its intended ecosystem. The team cited indefinite delays on Converge, underscoring the risks of building on pre-mainnet infrastructure amid recent shocks like deUSD’s collapse and Compound’s withdrawal pauses. Converge’s failure adds pressure to Ethena, whose USDe market cap has dropped to just over $7B.

• Polymarket Users Suspect Insider Trading After Google Trend Markets Crown Surprise Winner: Polymarket traders are raising alarms after a wallet known as 0xafEe profited $1.15M by correctly betting on Google’s most-searched person of 2025, d4vd, a candidate priced at just 0.2% odds days before the outcome. The account also nailed multiple related markets, prompting speculation of insider access. The episode has reignited debate over whether unregulated prediction markets inherently enable insider trading or whether such behavior improves market accuracy by reflecting real-world information.

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