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🐳 Daily Edition: New Ethereum Proposal Could Change ETH Forever

🐳 Daily Edition: New Ethereum Proposal Could Change ETH Forever

As Robinhood's month-old chain continues to dominate onchain volumes, Ethereum researchers have submitted an interesting proposal

Will McKinnon & Beluga
August 05, 2026

While the majors remain trapped in a range that feels all-too familiar at this point, onchain activity is heating up - in more ways than one. In the month since it officially went live on mainnet, Robinhood has amassed over $400M in DeFi TVL, almost $600M in stablecoins, and over $3.6B in onchain volume.

The chain’s tech in and of itself is honestly nothing special (Arbitrum-based Layer 2), but the distribution engine offered by Robinhood is virtually unparalleled in the land of crypto. The question still remains whether they can interest retail users in their stock and RWA products, but as we’ve seen in the past memecoins can be a powerful onboarding tool for new ecosystems.

Robinhood Chain Key Metrics, Source: DeFiLlama

A proposal published yesterday by several authors including Ethereum Foundation’s Justin Drake explores a significant structural change to our favorite programmable blockchain, in which the issuance curve would be adjusted such that net issuance is driven to 0 once about half the current supply is staked. Today about 41 million ETH sits in staking pools (roughly 34% of the supply), a number which has only increased since migrating to Proof of Stake at the end of 2020; in other words, that 50% mark is likely coming sooner rather than later.

A co-author of the proposal Jerome de Tychey projects ETH could pass 70 million in staked supply by January 2028 if nothing changes, which he argues will push more ETH into exchanges and larger staking providers at the expense of solo stakers and the decentralization of the network. While the proposal technically landed a few days ahead of the deadline for inclusion in the upcoming Hegota upgrade, given the complexity and impact we’ll likely see deliberation last a few upgrade cycles before a consensus is reached.

If the proposal ends up passing, a reduction in net issuance should have a positive impact on the price of ETH as the yield is derived from inflation, but it also means staking yields would be less predictable. This could end up being one of the more significant monetary policy changes to ETH we’ve seen since the merge, so we’ll be keeping a close eye as discourse continues.