Top crypto stories of week 15, 2025
Mon 7 to Sun 13 April 2025
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 7 to Sun 13 April 2025, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 35 comments in total. Most-shared sources: x.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- What to do before someone puts a gun to your head and asks for your Ledger (x.com)
This article describes a "double-decoy" method for protecting cryptocurrency on a Ledger hardware wallet in case of a robbery. The author suggests setting up a decoy wallet with about $10k and a second, hidden wallet with $1k using a passphrase and a second PIN, then storing a new 24-word seed phrase split across metal plates in separate locations. It also says to wipe the device once the seed phrase is secured.
- Kiwis on Twitter follow list (x.com)
- What is Ethereum Worth? (whatisethereumworth.com)
This essay revisits John Pfeffer's 2017 paper on native blockchain assets, using Ethereum as the base example, and concludes that ETH is difficult to justify as an investment on a long-term, risk-adjusted basis. The authors say Pfeffer's core thesis largely held, since competition and fragmentation are compressing rent toward zero. They note, however, that Ethereum's lock-in and network effects proved more defensible than Pfeffer expected, with scaling activity such as rollup kits like Conduit, Caldera and Altlayer building on Ethereum rather than forking away from it. The piece adds that Uniswap has been forked 791 times, Compound 142 times and Aave 63 times, citing DeFiLlama.
- A maximally simple L1 privacy roadmap (ethereum-magicians.org)
The author's roadmap proposes practical privacy improvements for Ethereum users that require few consensus changes, covering onchain payments, partial anonymization within applications, RPC read privacy, and network-level anonymization. Key steps include adding privacy tools such as Railgun and Privacy Pools to existing wallets with a default "send from shielded balance" option, and moving toward one address per application by default. The roadmap also proposes implementing FOCIL and EIP-7701, using TEE-based RPC privacy as a short-term mitigation (with Automata's existing version to be verified and hardened), and eventually replacing TEEs with private information retrieval.
- New version of Kiwi Weekly (paragraph.com)
This Kiwi Weekly newsletter curates seven Ethereum links from the previous week, covering topics such as wallet identity, stablecoins and protocol economics. It notes that embedded wallets fragment web3 identity, according to nonlinear, and that stablecoin market cap is up 15% since the start of 2025, a rise on a $200B base that the newsletter says would signal something big if it reflects real adoption rather than traders moving out of markets. It also highlights a proposal by Jerome de Tychey et al. to increase R&D on dynamically adjusting blob pricing based on L1 gas, and says Marc Zeller sees a positive outlook for Ethereum and Aave despite very low sentiment.
- Making Family Simpler & Safer (family.co)
Family, an Ethereum wallet product, has announced a major upgrade aimed at simpler and safer onboarding and onchain navigation. Users can sign up with a phone number or email and add a passkey or password, with no secret phrases to manage. The new features are live on Family's iOS app and web browsers, and developers can access them through ConnectKit. Updates include a web dashboard, a "Sign in with Family" option for other apps, passkey-based instant login that is password-free by default on iOS, and multiple account recovery methods.
- Stop Using 20th Century Words for 21st Century Tech, Says Gitcoin Founder (decrypt.co)
Gitcoin and Allo.Capital co-founder Kevin Owocki argues that Web3 should stop using 20th-century political language, such as socialism, communism or capitalism, and instead design new governance models for DAOs. He says AI and crypto open far more design space than past ideologies, and he points to "cluster matching," a mechanism that algorithmically dampens the influence of coordinated voting blocs. Allo.Capital co-founder and Gitcoin Executive Director Rena O'Brien dismisses ideals like "one token, one vote" as dumb and says the priority is shipping, since Ethereum's tools are broken. Owocki argues that DAOs are still young and will mature over time, like corporations.
- Local Ethereum #3 - March 2025 Roundup (localethereum.beehiiv.com)
Local Ethereum's March 2025 roundup highlights community events and projects across regions, covering Ethereum's geographic spread. Taiwan's ETHGlobal Taipei (4-6 April, 2025) drew 730 attendees from 43 countries, and the ETH Warsaw Spring Hack (21-23 March, 2025) saw 8 teams submit projects. Tim Berners-Lee and Vitalik Buterin are scheduled for a fireside chat at EthPrague (May 27-29, 2025). Brazil's Itaú Unibanco is considering launching its own stablecoin, depending on local regulations and the success of U.S. financial institutions' stablecoin efforts.
- @binji: Developer activity signals crypto's critical moment (x.com)
Developer activity in crypto, described in the post as one of the clearest signals of long-term health, is down meaningfully from its peak, and the author argues the sector needs more support for developers rather than just more developers. The post says attention has shifted, incentives have dried up, and speculation has once again moved faster than utility. It calls for teams that think about end-to-end products, focus on usable primitives, and help projects reach real users, with builders and incubators that take apps from zero to one. The post states that adoption has to be earned and that the next era depends on meaningful things to do onchain that people actually want.
- $AAVE buybacks address (debank.com)
- Gnosis Chain Prague/Electra Hard Fork Announcement (blog.validategnosis.com)
Gnosis Chain has announced its upcoming Pectra hard fork, which it describes as an upgrade to scalability, fee structures and network functionality. Node runners must upgrade before April 30, 2025, and client teams will be published by April 23 at the latest, like Ethereum. The fork includes EIP-7702 for smart wallet functionality on externally owned accounts, EIP-7251 for higher validator stake limits, and a change under which the blob base fee is collected rather than burned, starting at the fork timestamp. Gnosis Chain says detailed guides, client releases and AMAs will follow in the coming weeks.
- Ethereum Impact Stories (ethereumstory.paperform.co)
- ENS x Octant Public Goods Round Results & Wrap-up (forum.giveth.io)
The ENS x Octant Public Goods Quadratic Funding Round, held March 18 to April 1, 2025, has concluded, with 103 eligible projects sharing an 80,000 USDC matching pool on Optimism. The round recorded 2,886 donations from 744 unique donors, totaling $28,890, and used the COCM algorithm, which gives higher matching to projects backed by a diverse set of donors. rotki received the largest match at 5,600 USDC, followed by Regens Unite at 3,481.34 USDC. The matching funds were distributed on April 23.
- Zodiac Pilot: Smart Execution for Smart Accounts (gnosisguild.mirror.xyz)
- Ethereum's cypherpunk roots: insights from post_polar_ (warpcast.com)
- tacct: Germany’s „Kryptowertpapier“ Finally Get Interesting (bitcoinblog.de)
Donaustahl, a German drone and weapons startup, has issued a bond as a crypto security through the tacct app, launched last week by ecrop, to finance its planned expansion. The company plans to raise up to eight million euros, with interest of up to 8.4 percent per annum, and it chose this route because banks are hesitant to finance weapons makers. Stefan Thumann says the crypto security lets the company filter investors by origin, while Michael Stoussavljewitsch says tacct already has 20 defense startups in the pipeline and almost 2,000 registrations after two days.
- Retro on Sound.xyz (xcancel.com)
- „Our money has been put to good use“ (t.me)
- interested.fyi reborn... again (x.com)
- @eawosikaa: stepping away from 2077 Collective and Ethereum (x.com)