Ethereum

On 9 January 2026, Morgan Stanley outlined plans to merge digital assets, private company exposure, and traditional investments into a single operating model aimed at long-term wealth clients. The bank intends to enable E*Trade users to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana and launch its own digital wallet in 2026, while also expanding access to private-company shares through partnerships with Carta and the planned acquisition of EquityZen. In parallel, it has filed an S-1 with the U.S. SEC for a spot Ethereum Trust, following earlier registrations linked to Bitcoin and Solana as part of a broader institutional crypto strategy.

On January 8, 2026, Cyvers Alerts reported a suspected incident involving Truebit after its system detected a transaction tied to an estimated loss of 8,535 ETH, valued at about $26 million. Around the same time, on-chain data showed TRU's price collapsing by 99.95% in one day, a move more consistent with a DEX liquidity failure or pricing issue than normal selling. The situation has raised questions for trading desks about potential exposure to a labeled Truebit purchase contract and renewed concerns over ticker confusion between Truebit (TRU) and TrueFi (TRU).

On 9 January 2026, Nexo launched Zero-interest Credit (ZiC), a fixed-term borrowing product at 0% interest for users pledging Bitcoin or Ethereum. The framework sets predefined price thresholds, removes liquidation risk during the loan term, and lets borrowers settle at maturity in stablecoins or via collateral, with an option to renew under updated terms.

Nexo introduced "Zero-interest Credit", a fixed-term borrowing product for Bitcoin and Ether holders with no interest. Borrowers set size and duration upfront, face no liquidation before maturity, and can settle in stablecoins or with collateral; the structured model previously facilitated over $140 million in 2025 via private and OTC channels.

Ethereum’s latest BPO fork raises the blob limit from 15 to 21, expanding data capacity for L2s and reducing user costs while boosting scalability. Although earlier 2025 upgrades cut fee revenue by about $100 million as L2 earnings fell roughly 53%, growing network usage and TVL above $300 billion are helping support Ethereum’s fundamentals heading into 2026.

On January 9, the TrueBit computation scaling protocol suffered an on-chain exploit that resulted in the loss of approximately 8,535 ETH, valued around $26.4 million. The attack targeted TrueBit contracts on Ethereum and moved funds from affected addresses to wallets controlled by the attacker, while the team has not yet released a full technical post-mortem. Ethereum's market reaction has been limited so far, with price data indicating only moderate impact despite ongoing concerns over DeFi protocol security.

On January 8, 2026, Coincheck Group said it will acquire about 97% of Canadian manager 3iQ via a stock exchange valuing the firm at roughly $111.8 million. Monex Group will swap its stake for 27.1 million new Coincheck shares at $4 each, with 810,435 additional shares enabling full ownership, and closing is expected in the second quarter of 2026.

On January 8, 2026, Vitalik Buterin argued that prioritizing higher bandwidth is safer for Ethereum's scalability than pushing for lower latency. He highlighted PeerDAS and Zero-Knowledge Proofs as paths to potentially scale the network thousands of times, and outlined P2P improvements and smaller per-slot node counts (e.g., 512 vs 30,000) to cut propagation delays without sacrificing decentralization.

SharpLink (Nasdaq: SBET) said it has moved $170 million in ETH onto Linea, aligning with a $200 million crypto treasury program announced last fall. The structure involves Anchorage Digital, ether.fi and EigenCloud to combine qualified custody with onchain yield tools, signaling a push toward institutional-grade DeFi on Ethereum.

On Jan. 8, 2026, Ethereum set a new throughput record at 58,786 TPS, 78% above the previous ATH of 32,950, according to Joseph Young. He attributed the jump to post‑Fusaka scaling and growing layer‑2 activity, and said further gains could come with the Glamsterdam upgrade.