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Less than a month after the Pectra Upgrade, the Ethereum Foundation believes that the world’s second-largest crypto, both as a technology and as an ecosystem, is approaching major breakthroughs with higher stakes for a broader audience.

Yet those stakes could be at risk if the people steering it are entrenched in what it calls a messy process: shipping protocol.

“We must rethink our current approach to designing, developing, and stewarding the protocol,” the foundation wrote Monday, announcing the restructuring of its Protocol Research & Development teams.

The move is set to consolidate development efforts under a new “Protocol” division, focusing on three immediate goals. The foundation touts the move as a way to “respond proactively” to demands that it claims are “hard to articulate and even harder to fulfill.”

“Ethereum already powers the lion’s share of internet capital markets, onchain communities, and secures $200 billion plus in value,”  Binji Pande, growth lead at Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution Optimism, told Decrypt. “Protocol now gives it the clarity and execution it deserves by scaling what works, improving UX, and keeping Ethereum useful for the world.”

The overhaul divides teams into three initiatives: scaling the main blockchain (Layer 1), scaling blobs for data storage, and improving the user experience.

Each initiative is assigned dedicated leadership: Tim Beiko and Ansgar Dietrichs are responsible for L1 scaling, Alex Stokes and Francesco D’Amato will oversee blob scaling, while Barnabé Monnot and Josh Rudolf are tasked with improving user experience.

But not everyone is staying and making the cut for Protocol. Some members “won’t be continuing with the Ethereum Foundation,” it said, while encouraging ecosystem projects to recruit departing talent.

Decrypt reached out to the Ethereum Foundation to learn more.

Strategic roles

The three teams will be supported by Dankrad Feist, a prominent researcher and cryptographer renowned for “Danksharding,” a blockchain optimization process named after him. Feist will work as strategic advisor to all tracks.

Last year, Feist was involved in a conflict of interest controversy, when he, alongside fellow core developer Justin Drake, confirmed they received tokens for their advisory relationship with EigenLayer, a restaking protocol for Ethereum.

“It is clear that relying on culture and individual judgment has not been sufficient, and we have been working on a formal policy to address this,” Aya Miyaguchi, the foundation’s former Executive Director, said at the time.

Still, the Ethereum Foundation’s efforts at restructuring with Protocol aim to bridge a perceived gap between research and actual implementation.

Previous upgrades, such as Pectra, faced several hurdles: testnet failures earlier this year delayed the rollout by weeks as developers scrambled to patch bugs.

Now, through Protocol, the foundation is attempting to show “the world is ready for the world computer.”

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

Less than a month after the Pectra Upgrade, the Ethereum Foundation believes that the world’s second-largest crypto, both as a technology and as an ecosystem, is approaching major breakthroughs with higher stakes for a broader audience.

Yet those stakes could be at risk if the people steering it are entrenched in what it calls a messy process: shipping protocol.

“We must rethink our current approach to designing, developing, and stewarding the protocol,” the foundation wrote Monday, announcing the restructuring of its Protocol Research & Development teams.

The move is set to consolidate development efforts under a new “Protocol” division, focusing on three immediate goals. The foundation touts the move as a way to “respond proactively” to demands that it claims are “hard to articulate and even harder to fulfill.”

“Ethereum already powers the lion’s share of internet capital markets, onchain communities, and secures $200 billion plus in value,”  Binji Pande, growth lead at Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution Optimism, told Decrypt. “Protocol now gives it the clarity and execution it deserves by scaling what works, improving UX, and keeping Ethereum useful for the world.”

The overhaul divides teams into three initiatives: scaling the main blockchain (Layer 1), scaling blobs for data storage, and improving the user experience.

Each initiative is assigned dedicated leadership: Tim Beiko and Ansgar Dietrichs are responsible for L1 scaling, Alex Stokes and Francesco D’Amato will oversee blob scaling, while Barnabé Monnot and Josh Rudolf are tasked with improving user experience.

But not everyone is staying and making the cut for Protocol. Some members “won’t be continuing with the Ethereum Foundation,” it said, while encouraging ecosystem projects to recruit departing talent.

Decrypt reached out to the Ethereum Foundation to learn more.

Strategic roles

The three teams will be supported by Dankrad Feist, a prominent researcher and cryptographer renowned for “Danksharding,” a blockchain optimization process named after him. Feist will work as strategic advisor to all tracks.

Last year, Feist was involved in a conflict of interest controversy, when he, alongside fellow core developer Justin Drake, confirmed they received tokens for their advisory relationship with EigenLayer, a restaking protocol for Ethereum.

“It is clear that relying on culture and individual judgment has not been sufficient, and we have been working on a formal policy to address this,” Aya Miyaguchi, the foundation’s former Executive Director, said at the time.

Still, the Ethereum Foundation’s efforts at restructuring with Protocol aim to bridge a perceived gap between research and actual implementation.

Previous upgrades, such as Pectra, faced several hurdles: testnet failures earlier this year delayed the rollout by weeks as developers scrambled to patch bugs.

Now, through Protocol, the foundation is attempting to show “the world is ready for the world computer.”

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

While crypto gaming has long been seen as a key use for blockchain, letting gamers really own and freely trade their unique items and perhaps profit from a game’s success, developers are struggling to sustain their games and digital economies.

Some games, like Gunzilla Games’ Off the Grid, have punched through to a broader audience, gaining adoption from top streamers and gamers alike—albeit ahead of full blockchain integration. But many other games and studios building with tokens are struggling to find players and maintain funding. 

In 2025, a number of once-promising crypto games have already closed up shop, and the list has been growing recently with each new week. Here’s a look at some of the biggest games to go offline or shut down entirely.

Deadrop

Deadrop game developer Midnight Society announced that it was closing shop in January. The studio, which had previously removed co-founder Dr. Disrespect in 2024 after alleged misconduct, gave employees just two days notice, according to an employee post on X.

The extraction shooter game spent around two years in early access, selling players NFT access passes on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, as well as other non-NFT items that ultimately became useless. In March, players started rallying around the abandoned community Discord, helping each other secure refunds via credit card chargebacks and bank reversals by claiming the product was never fully delivered.

Ember Sword

Ethereum game Ember Sword at one point received more than $200 million in pledges for an NFT land sale, conveying the level of hype around metaverse gaming land NFTs in 2021. But the final sale brought in much less than that, and in May, the game was ultimately shut down.

Developer Bright Star Studios cited a lack of funding in its closing announcement—a common theme among crypto games ceasing development of late. The MMORPG entered closed beta last July and early access later in the year, but drew criticism from players. After moving chains multiple times in search of a permanent home, it’s since gone offline. 

“We explored every possible way forward. But in today’s market—where even some of the most promising projects are shutting down—we couldn’t find a path to keep building,” the project said.

Nyan Heroes

The Solana cat-mech shooter game Nyan Heroes ended its run in May, as well. 

The game, which had racked up more than 250,000 wishlist additions across PC gaming platforms, was unable to secure the necessary funding to complete development and push ahead with its planned full launch next winter.

Its closure rendered its NYAN Solana token useless, plummeting its value to more than 99% off its all-time high established in 2024. 

“It’s been a difficult last few months,” 9 Lives CEO and Creative Director Max Fu told Decrypt following the announcement. “Currently, we are exploring acquisition of the studio and/or the IP. Some discussions are underway, but I suspect it may take some time to finalize a decision.”

Realms of Alurya

A funding issue also signaled the apparent end of the line—at least for now—for Realms of Alurya. The game, which was initially expected to launch on Treasure’s blockchain, was forced to migrate to the Ethereum gaming-focused sidechain Ronin as Treasure pivoted to focus on AI initiatives.

The developers claimed in a message to its community that Treasure unexpectedly cut grant funding that was expected along developmental milestones. Without that funding, the studio is no longer able to complete its roadmap, and has yet to secure additional backing.

While the team explores future solutions, the game is offline until further notice.

Symbiogenesis

Final Fantasy creator Square Enix will bring its Ethereum-based blockchain game Symbiogenesis to an end this July. 

The browser-based narrative game, which has links to multiple Ethereum scaling chains, like Arbitrum and Polygon, was first announced by Square Enix in 2022 and billed as a “digital collectible art project,” offering multiple chapters and quests to players in a new continent set in the sky. Just recently, the game did a crossover promotion with a couple games on Sony’s new Ethereum layer-2 network, Soneium, but the end is still nigh.

Unlike other games which have been forced to fold due to a lack of product market fit or funding, the Symbiogenesis roadmap has been intentionally designed to end in July 2025 as the storyline comes to its conclusion. And to be clear, Square Enix has ample resources to keep a game like this live, making this an anomaly on this list; maybe the game just ran its course.

The Mystery Society

The Mystery Society, an Ethereum game that blended vibes of the casual Among Us game with murder mystery, suspended operations in February. 

The game’s developer, Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, was unable to find the funding necessary to complete the game, despite having previously raised $3 million.

The game first launched on Polygon before migrating to gaming-centric scaling chain Immutable in late 2024. 

After the announcement, the game developer’s CEO Chris Heatherly told Decrypt that “greed and stupidity from just about all players is killing the space before it can prove itself.”

The Walking Dead: Empires

Gala Games’ zombie-themed MMORPG The Walking Dead: Empires will find its way to the graveyard this year. The Ethereum game, which was officially licensed from the AMC show The Walking Dead, will only be playable through the end of July.

“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to sunset The Walking Dead: Empires, with the last playable date set for July 31, 2025,” wrote Gala Games in early May.

The game challenged players to craft weapons and build bases to protect themselves from the undead, at one point commanding major price tags for its NFTs on the secondary market. As compensation for the game’s shutdown, players will get mystery boxes filled with NFTs from other games published by Gala.

MetalCore

Mech shooter MetalCore closed its game servers and Discord community in March, ending communications with its community as developer Studio 369 makes “important changes to the game.” The official X post on the matter even restricted replies to only those that the MetalCore account follows.

The game, which is still listed as available in the Epic Games Store, started on Ethereum layer-2 network Immutable zkEVM, but began a migration to Solana last October. But no updates have come since that March 25 announcement, despite a mention in the post that the team will “return soon.”

Blast Royale

The developer of mobile game Blast Royale signaled its discontinuation in mid-May “after exploring every path and possibility,” it said. 

The creators of the battle royale-style game, which had a collection of Ethereum NFTs, will open its source code on June 1, allowing anyone in the community to pick up where they left off and further develop and modify the game. But otherwise, the game will close to players on June 30.

The game’s NOOB token will still be distributed and trade freely on Base, the Ethereum layer-2 built by Coinbase, but it has plummeted more than 99% from its all-time high price.

Mojo Melee

And the latest addition to the list, coming on Friday, is Mojo Melee—the NFT-fueled auto-battler game in the vein of Teamfight Tactics. We went hands-on with Mojo Melee back in 2023 and enjoyed it, and the game subsequently held a promotion with Amazon to give out free in-game assets to Prime subscribers.

But now developer Planet Mojo is closing up shop, making a pivot to AI with plans to launch a movie-making platform. Mojo Melee and the studio’s WWA platform for AI gaming agents will shut down on July 1.

“While we’re incredibly proud of how far these projects came and and the passionate community that grew around them, shifting market realities have made it unsustainable to continue developing them at the level they deserve,” the studio said Friday in a Discord message cross-posted to X.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

South Korea is gearing up to elect a new president on June 3. And while the election may be more dominated by other issues in Korean politics, such as the recent impeachment of the previous president, candidates have positioned digital assets as a key campaign issue in a nation where nearly one-third of citizens own crypto.

Dr. Sangmin Seo, a South Korean technologist who leads the Kaia DLT Foundation, views crypto as becoming increasingly politically instrumental.

“This election, Korean politics sees crypto as a narrative to gain voters’ favors, positioning it as another national growth engine besides AI and semiconductors,” Seo told Decrypt. 

“There is widespread support for the idea that the Korean crypto industry cannot lose its competitiveness on the global stage. Both sides of politics feel the urgency to catch up with regulatory advancements in other countries.”

Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung and People Power Party nominee Kim Moon-soo have found rare common ground supporting crypto ETFs.

Yet the two candidates diverge sharply on stablecoin policy.

Lee supports won-backed stablecoins to curb capital flight, or money leaving its shores, citing roughly $40.8 billion in outflows from Korean exchanges in Q1.

The country needs “to prevent national wealth from leaking overseas,” he said during policy discussions earlier this month.

As the front-runner, Lee plans to create a monitoring system and reduce transaction costs, providing investors with regulated access to crypto.

Kim, meanwhile, seeks to dismantle the one-exchange-one-bank rule to ease banking restrictions on crypto firms. He plans to slash taxes for the country’s growing middle class, enabling a transparent crypto market, and allowing crypto-linked funds to operate.

But for those crypto ETFs to come in, regulators would need to work with the parties and their positions on digital assets.

Last week, the country’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) released details of a May 1 discussion that would allow non-profit organizations and crypto exchanges to sell digital assets starting in June.

In the same week, South Korea’s Democratic Party launched a Digital Asset Committee to establish comprehensive regulations.

Decrypt reached out to both parties for comments on their respective crypto policy positions.

Learning from the past

The consensus between the two major parties suggests that crypto and digital asset regulation in the country could soon relax, even with concerns of repeating what happened with Do Kwon and the collapse of Terra, an algorithmic stablecoin.

In addition to the impact on consumers, the collapse of Terra has led to South Korea’s crypto industry being “reviled as one of the darkest markets, with some calling it gambling,” according to Seo. 

Coupled with several other high-profile scandals, including one involving a politician’s trading activities, reigning in the industry is a priority. 

“Now, lawmakers are communicating with industry experts who have studied the first movers, such as the EU, Singapore, the US, and the UAE, to create the most applicable regulatory framework for the Korean market, and this includes the consumer protection measures,” Seo added.

ETFs

Candidates are also showing interest in launching crypto ETFs in Korea, although the topic has been floated multiple times by politicians since the U.S. launched its spot Bitcoin ETFs and little concrete progress on their introduction has been made. 

“[The] first step should start from judging which party can operate spot ETF, including custody,” Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, a Web3 market analytics firm with expertise in Asian markets, told Decrypt.

“Investor classification depends on their risk tolerance, but I think an ETF will open to all,” Yoon noted.

KP Jang, chief strategy officer at Seoul-based data intelligence platform Xangle, told Decrypt this is likely to happen, but with certain conditions.

“Won-backed stablecoins are likely to circulate primarily within Korea,” Jang said.

Those would be “relatively less prone to triggering global market shocks like the Terra-Luna incident,” given how the Korean won (KRW) isn’t used “as a settlement currency” elsewhere.

The proposed won-backed stablecoin would also be issued as a “fully-collateralized model,” Jang noted, adding that “actual Korean won reserves” would be “held in full against the issued amount.”

Such clarity in collaterals would greatly enhance stability and reduce “the likelihood of a collapse like that of past crypto-algorithmic models,” he said.

Tiger Research’s Yoon echoed this, saying that a repeat of that kind of failure is unlikely.

Still, South Korea lacks “official discussions or regulations to protect stablecoin users,” Yoon said, citing the U.S.’s GENIUS Act could serve as a “potential reference.”

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

Strategy CEO Michael Saylor touted Bitcoin as a virtually foolproof path to wealth creation for “everyone”—from business owners to families, and even one’s enemies—in his speech at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas this week.

During the roughly 35-minute presentation on Thursday entitled “21 Ways to Wealth,” the famous Bitcoin maxi said the world’s oldest cryptocurrency is “perfected capital,” championing its “incorruptible… [and] programmable” nature. He urged his audience to buy Bitcoin to enrich themselves. 

“Bitcoin is engineered to outperform everything,” Saylor proclaimed.

Of course, juicing demand for Bitcoin would likely benefit Saylor and Strategy and boost the value of the company’s holdings. The firm added billions of dollars in Bitcoin to its corporate treasury this month, bringing its total holdings to 580,250 BTC—worth more than $60 billion as of the time of writing, according to data provider CoinGecko.

Although speaking before Bitcoiners, the executive stressed that his sales pitch was largely for crypto-curious listeners watching via livestream at home, stressing that Bitcoin is “not [just] for multi-billion-dollar companies.”

“It’s for everyone,” Saylor claimed. “Take your fiat currency, trade it for Bitcoin. Take your long-term capital, trade it for bitcoin. Sell your bonds, trade [them] for Bitcoin. Sell your inferior equity, sell your inferior real estate property, buy Bitcoin.”

The Strategy executive also urged his listeners to embrace AI tools, touting their ability to transform the average person into “100 super-geniuses.”

“I tell all my executives, before you ask a lawyer, before you ask a banker, before you ask any expert, go to the AI,” Saylor said. “Make it think. Grind the silicon overlord.”

Saylor recently shared that Strategy used AI to help craft its unique stock offerings to help power the firm’s bountiful Bitcoin buys.

Its Bitcoin acquisition spree has inspired a growing number of firms to stockpile the token, with public companies like Metaplanet, Semler Scientific, and most recently GameStop allocating massive amounts of capital to increase their Bitcoin holdings over the past few months. 

Similarly, institutional investors are also increasingly investing in Bitcoin via exchange-traded funds, pouring billions of dollars into spot Bitcoin ETFs over the past year and a half since their debut in the U.S. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF recorded nearly $6 billion worth of inflows in May once all was said and done, coming close to the monthly record, Farside Investors data shows. 

Investors’ growing appetite for Bitcoin has pushed the token’s price to new all-time highs. The asset surpassed $109,000 on May 21 before cresting to nearly $112,000 a day later, although its price has since moderated, sitting just above $104,000 as of this writing.

Saylor’s speech seemed largely geared towards ensuring Bitcoin would continue its climb to new record highs, bolstered by investments from individuals and institutions across the world. 

The Strategy founder rounded out his speech by eschewing loftier ideas such as “changing the world” or chasing one’s passions as “dilutive distractions,” advising his disciples to narrow their focus to buying Bitcoin if they wanted to get rich. Saylor acknowledged the work of pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto in his advice.

“Satoshi gave you an idea worth half of everything on Earth,” Saylor said. “You don’t have to topple any particular system that exists in this world… don’t fight lost causes.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Wall Street giant Cantor Fitzgerald is debuting a new Bitcoin-focused fund with downside protection based on the price of gold, the financial services firm announced Thursday. 

Speaking later in the day at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Cantor CEO Brandon Lutnick said that by balancing Bitcoin’s volatility with the precious metal’s relative stability, the fund would address investors fearful of the cryptocurrency’s frequent dramatic price drops. 

“We are launching a gold-backed Bitcoin fund with the idea that there are still people on the earth that are scared of Bitcoin, and we want to bring them into this ecosystem,” he said. 

He added: “We are going to provide them upside while giving them downside protection secured by physical gold.”

A statement from the firm said the fund “aims to deliver uncapped upside participation in Bitcoin, while providing 1-to-1 downside protection based on the price of gold.”

It will be available to investors in the coming weeks, the firm said but did not specify a date. 

Bitcoin has risen nearly 14% this year and investors in recent days have treated it increasingly as a risk-off asset. But its path upward has included multiple drops. It rose to a record $109,000 in mid January around the time of U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration, sank below $75,000 in April and set a new all-time high earlier this month above $112,000 before retreating over the past few days to its current level below $106,500. 

Gold has been steadier and is up more than 25% in 2025, trading above $3,340. It set a record high near $3,450 per ounce in April and is currently trading at about $3,300. 

Crypto-focused funds have been among the fastest-growing with 11 spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds that began trading only last year generating more than $45 billion in assets, according to data from U.K. asset manager Farside Investors. 

The popularity of those funds, which are based on the ongoing performance of BTC, have helped spawn a flurry of products and proposed funds based on altcoins. Spot Ethereum funds have received more than $2.9 billion in net investments. 

Cantor was among the early, vocal Wall Street supporters of Bitcoin. The firm helps custody the Treasury reserves for stablecoin giant Tether’s USDT product. 

Brandon Lutnick spoke with Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino at Bitcoin 2025, praising the stablecoin’s “real-world use cases.”

Edited by James Rubin

The SEC issued new guidance on crypto staking, confirming Thursday that most of the common staking activities aren’t subject to federal securities regulations, as long as specific conditions are met.

Protocol staking involves locking crypto assets that are “intrinsically linked to the programmatic functioning of a public, permissionless network,” the regulator wrote in its latest guidance on Thursday.

The same crypto assets could also be used “to participate in and/or earned for participating in such network’s consensus mechanism,” it added.

Consensus mechanisms are rules that help participants agree on the network’s state and verify transactions.

Staking on specific protocols does “not involve the offer and sale of securities” as defined under the Securities Act of 1933. The non-security status and definition of “Protocol Staking Activities” also extend to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

The guidance effectively ends uncertainty following a tumultuous period under former SEC Chair Gary Gensler during the Biden era, who previously labeled most crypto as securities.

“The SEC’s decision-making process is more open and transparent than most regulators, which is a real strength of the U.S. system,” Michael Bacina, an executive in residence from the global policy think tank Global Digital Finance, told Decrypt.

“Given securities laws are designed to protect people from situations where others can mismanage (or steal) their assets, it’s hard to see the policy reasons why non-custodial staking services should be pulled into a regulatory net,” he added.

Under federal laws, a security is any financial instrument, like stocks, bonds, investment contracts, and derivatives, through which people invest money expecting profits derived from the efforts of others.

The SEC’s latest statements come less than a month after major crypto firms urged the agency to provide clear rules on staking, defining it as one “technical function necessary to secure” proof-of-stake networks, not a securities offering or investment scheme.

Types of staking covered

The guidance covers staking crypto on proof-of-stake networks and third-party operators, such as validators and custodians, for earning rewards.

The coverage includes three types of staking: self-staking, where participants stake their own assets; self-custodial staking, where owners delegate staking to node operators but keep ownership; and custodial staking, where custodians stake assets for customers.

However, the guidance does not cover practices like liquid staking and restaking, where providers have control over staking decisions that may still be subject to securities laws.

The staff guidance later claimed in a footnote that this was because the statement addresses protocol staking “generally rather than all of its variations.”

It’s worth noting that the guidance only reflects the views of SEC staff, which means it’s non-binding and does not carry the force of law.

Commissioner disagrees

SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw issued a sharp rebuke on Thursday, declaring crypto staking activities exempt from securities regulation run counter to applicable laws. 

The dissenting commissioner also said the new guidance contradicts court precedent, citing two cases involving U.S. crypto exchanges Kraken and Coinbase. She also cited a separate dismissal for Binance, released on the same day.

As a result, Crenshaw said the agency was undergoing a “‘fake it ’till we make it’ approach to crypto.”

“Rather than promote clarity, this approach continues to sow uncertainty around what the law is and what parts of it the Commission is willing to enforce,” she wrote.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

Editor’s note: Adds comments from Michael Bacina

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