NakamotoDrip

Last week Ethereum turned 10, and now the world’s second-most valuable blockchain must cut the baby fat, argues Justin Drake, an Ethereum Foundation researcher.
His vision, named Lean Ethereum, aims to streamline the blockchain’s bloated code, and shield it from future encryption-smashing quantum computers.
The diet could also unlock performance improvements, including boosting transaction throughput, Drake said.
“Lean Ethereum is a generational oath to keep Ethereum online no matter what — to scale it without compromise,” he wrote.
At this stage, it’s just a proposal. But it appears to have the Foundation’s tacit approval: the Foundation published an explainer on its blog on July 31.
Lean Ethereum comes six months after the blockchain faced a mini-crisis, as longtime supporters agonised over its cryptocurrency’s lacklustre performance as the price of Solana and other rivals skyrocketed.
Now, Ethereum appears to have reclaimed its mojo. Exchange-traded funds and so-called treasury companies are gobbling up Ether.
US lawmakers have also passed legislation that allows banks and tech giants to issue stablecoins, a class of crypto asset dominated by Ethereum.
Lean Ethereum has its roots in a talk Drake delivered at last year’s Devcon conference where he proposed the “beam chain,” an update to Ethereum’s so-called Beacon chain.
As Tim Craig explained at the time, Ethereum is made up of two layers: the Beacon chain, which handles Ether staking and keeps track of transactions, and the execution layer, where users submit transactions.
Fast-forward to May, and Drake told colleagues his vision had broadened. This was spurred, in part, by his receiving a cease-and-desist letter from another project that had trademarked the word “Beam.”
“If we do change [the name],” Drake told colleagues in May, it should be “a really strong meme.”
Finding a new name with memetic potential could be an opportunity for the rest of Ethereum, Drake added.
The beam chain was supposed to be better than the beacon chain. But it was also supposed to be simpler, to feature more streamlined code. Leaner, if you will.
There are “huge opportunities” in trimming the execution layer as well, Drake said.
“Ethereum entering the Ozempic era,” quipped Sophia Gold, an Ethereum Foundation engineer, in the comments, referencing the popular diet drug.
The result? A massive transaction bump, according to Drake’s July 31 blog post.
A lean Ethereum could deliver eye-popping throughput: 10,000 transactions per second on Ethereum itself, 10 million on layer 2 blockchains, Drake wrote. That’s 49,900% and 4,999,900% more than what Ethereum has processed in recent months, according to data from L2BEAT.
While it’s generally understood that scale comes at the expense of decentralisation, Drake argued that Lean Ethereum can achieve both.
Advances in zero-knowledge technology, data availability sampling, and hash-based cryptography will allow Ethereum fans to have their cake and eat it too, he argued.

Altseason wen?
That’s the question crypto market stakeholders are asking in anticipation of a lush season where altcoin investors will harvest the rewards of their patience as attention and capital flow from Bitcoin into other cryptocurrencies like $SOL and $XRP .
Online interest in altcoins is rising. Data from Google Trends shows search interest for altcoins overtook Bitcoin in July for the first time since November 2024. But even with retail enthusiasm stirring again, some analysts say the market isn’t ready for altcoins to explode.
“The broader altcoin market still lacks the sustained capital rotation and structural demand necessary to break out of its historical range,” analysts at Bitfinex, a crypto exchange, told DL News.
“Until this changes, altcoin rallies are likely to remain short-lived and vulnerable to broader market pullbacks.”
That change might not happen this quarter. Illia Otychenko, lead analyst at CEX.IO, a crypto exchange, previously told DL News that up to $64 billion in value could flow from altcoins into Bitcoin this summer.
Sharper price slumps
The flows shifting towards smaller cryptocurrencies tend to happen after a period of Bitcoin dominance, such as the one seen this summer, where the top cryptocurrency’s price has reached a record $122,000.
Yet, Bitfinex analysts said sharper price slumps for so-called high-beta tokens like the major altcoins point to signs that investors are still cautious and that traders are waiting for the next major narrative spark.
All of that adds to the high-stakes nature of altseason, especially for retail investors. With institutions piling into Bitcoin via exchange-traded funds and corporate treasuries, smaller market participants are looking for their vehicle for outsized gains.
But for some analysts, even when altseason comes, it won’t be the case of the rising tide lifting all boats.
Peter Chung, head of research at Presto Labs, a crypto trading firm, said that several altcoins posting massive price rallies this time around is “unlikely.”
“While a $50 million market-cap token rocketing to $5 billion valuation may still occur sporadically, such events will be exceptions rather than the norm,” Chung wrote in a report.