The Protocol: Berachain Follows Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade With ‘Bectra’

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, the Ethereum protocol reporter on CoinDesk’s Tech team.

In this issue:

Berachain Taps Ethereum’s Pectra Playbook With ‘Bectra’ Upgrade
Ethereum Foundation Lays Off Some Staff Amid R&D Restructuring
Elon Musk Announces ‘Bitcoin-Style’ XChat, But Tech Experts Are Skeptical
Taiwanese Crypto Exchange BitoPro Likely Hacked for $11M in May, ZachXBT Says

Network News

BERACHAIN’S PLAY ON PECTRA; BECTRA: Berachain is gearing up to be the first non-Ethereum Layer-1 blockchain to fully activate Ethereum’s new execution-layer features. Its Bectra hard fork –– named for Ethereum’s recent ‘Pectra’ upgrade — goes live today, giving more than 100 apps on the chain access to tools that could enhance how users and developers interact with the platform. Because Berachain’s consensus model is different from Ethereum’s, it doesn’t include Pectra’s consensus changes. But since it’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible, developers don’t need to rewrite existing contracts — a relief for the 200-plus apps already live on Berachain. For users, the Bectra upgrade means every wallet can now work like a smart account. They will be able to batch transactions in one click, set spending limits, pay gas with HONEY (Berachain’s stablecoin), or even set up recurring payments. Previously, these features needed custom contracts or third-party implementations (which carry security concerns). — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

ETHEREUM FOUNDATION LAYOFFS AMID RESTRUCTURING: The Ethereum Foundation has laid off some members of its research and development team as part of a broader restructuring effort aimed at refocusing on critical protocol design challenges, the organization said in a blog post. The shake-up comes as the Switzerland-based nonprofit grapples with ongoing criticism over its management and strategic direction. Some in the Ethereum community have warned for over a year that failure to address key technical hurdles could threaten Ethereum’s status as an industry leader, and the organization has already undergone leadership changes in part to address these concerns. The foundation is rebranding its Protocol Research and Development division under the simplified name “Protocol,” and is repositioning the group around three main priorities: scaling Ethereum’s base layer, expanding blobspace (a key part of its data availability strategy), and improving user experience. Due to these changes, several staffers were laid off, though the EF did not disclose how many folks were affected by these changes — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

TECH EXPERTS UNIMPRESSED AT MUSK’S BTC X-FEATURE: Billionaire X owner Elon Musk shared over the weekend the launch of a brand-new messaging app called XChat. Neither the bitcoin market nor the tech community is impressed. A key feature of the new offering is that it’s written with the Rust programming language and uses what Musk touted as “Bitcoin-style” encryption. While it sounds exciting, the crypto community is not particularly psyched, raising doubts about the platform’s Bitcoin-inspired technical promises.. “Bitcoin primarily uses signatures, not encryption. This is like saying, we decided to run our rocket on water, since NASA uses Hydrogen and Oxygen,” Ian Miers, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, said on X. — Omkar Godbole Read more.

CRYPTO EXCHANGE BITOPRO LIKELY HACKED FOR $11M, ZachXBT SAYS: Taiwanese cryptocurrency exchange BitoPro is suspected to have lost over $11.5 million worth of tokens in a May 8 exploit, widely-followed blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said in his Telegram group. The exploit involved unauthorized access to BitoPro’s hot wallets across multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Tron, Solana, and Polygon. The stolen assets were then sold on decentralized exchanges, with proceeds laundered through privacy protocols such as Tornado Cash and Thorchain, and eventually moved to Wasabi Wallet, a Bitcoin mixing service. BitoPro has not issued any public statements acknowledging the breach since the supposed explicit. Users were informed of a temporary service suspension due to “system maintenance” last month, and there was little social chatter in popular crypto X circles around the incident at the time. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

In Other News

A representative of the Trump Organization said the group “knows nothing” about a crypto wallet project called the “$TRUMP Wallet,” despite the app’s branding and claims being tied to the U.S. president. “The Trump Organization knows nothing about this project,” a spokesperson for the Trump Organization told CoinDesk. Meanwhile, an X account linked to the President’s memecoins said that the wallet was “coming soon,” even after several of his representatives denied the rumors.— Helene Braun Read more.
World Liberty Financial, the Trump family-backed crypto firm, just dropped $47 worth of its USD1 stablecoin to each wallet that participated in its WLFI token sale. The move comes as USD1, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar and backed by Treasuries and fiat reserves, expands across blockchains as result of Chainlink’s CCIP integration. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

Regulatory and Policy

French authorities have charged 25 people, including six minors, for their roles in a spate of crypto kidnappings in Paris, with the majority of the suspects connected to the recent failed kidnapping attempt of a crypto exchange CEO’s family, Paris’s public prosecutor’s office said, Le Monde reported Saturday. The investigation is focused on the kidnapping attempt of the daughter and grandson of the CEO of crypto exchange Paymium, Pierre Noizat, that occurred on May 13, the report said. — Camomile Shumba Read more.
The U.S. Senate may be fast approaching a final vote on regulating stablecoins, which would be a high-water mark for crypto legislation in Congress, but Representative French Hill said the Senate’s bill has some key differences with a similar effort in the House of Representatives, and those would need to be ironed out before it can become law. “The bills are substantially similar,” said Hill, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee that has been at the forefront of the congressional negotiation over stablecoins for years, at an Atlantic Council event on Tuesday. “There are some differences that are not insurmountable but do need to be rectified and clarified.”— Jesse Hamilton Read more.