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Several key figures from the Ethereum ecosystem have been involved in the creation of Ethlabs, a new organisation unveiled this week. Ethlabs is co-founded by five former senior researchers at the Ethereum Foundation, which has historically been the driving force behind Ethereum development.
“The launch reflects a natural evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem,” a press release by Ethlabs stated. “As the Ethereum Foundation refocuses on its core mandate and embraces a multi-node future, Ethlabs emerges as one of several independent organisations advancing the network in parallel.”
The organisation received funding from various sources, including the two largest ETH treasury companies, Bitmine and Sharplink, and Joe Lubin, a co-founder of Ethereum and the CEO of Consensys.
Ripple USD (RLUSD), the USD stablecoin launched by Ripple Labs, has seen a notable shift in where its supply is based. Effectively since launch, the stablecoin has been available on Ethereum mainnet and XRP Ledger.
The bulk of the supply has long been on Ethereum, but that appears to be changing. As of this week, 52% of RLUSD is on Ethereum mainnet, compared to 48% for XRP Ledger. The margin has not been this narrow since the early days of RLUSD.
This trend may be suggestive of expanding use cases on XRP Ledger. Indeed, increasing the number of RLUSD integrations and overall supply has been a stated goal of Ripple Labs’ for a while now. Notably, the company has leveraged mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to help it achieve this goal.
For example, last week, Ripple Labs participated in the funding round of Flutterwave, an African payments company. In announcing this investment, Ripple Labs said that Flutterwave had agreed to integrate RLUSD into its payments infrastructure, allowing businesses to settle some international transactions using digital dollars rather than relying solely on traditional banking networks.
RLUSD supply on Ethereum mainnet ($838M USD) and XRP Ledger ($781M USD) (Source: RWA.xyz)
Aerodrome (AERO) is one name in the decentralised finance (DeFi) sector experiencing relative growth so far in 2026. The project is a decentralised exchange (DEX) allowing users to execute low-fee swaps, deposit tokens to earn rewards, and actively participate in the onchain economy.
As per the below chart, Aerodrome started the year accounting for just 4% of spot DEX volume across all blockchains. That percentage has more than doubled to 10% as of the end of May.
Aerodrome’s growth comes ahead of sweeping changes in July that have been years in the making. This will include Aerodrome merging with Velodrome (VELO), its sister protocol on the Optimism network, into a unified cross-chain DEX called Aero.
As a cross-chain exchange, Aero will soon go live on Ethereum mainnet and Circle’s Arc blockchain. Expansions to other blockchains in the Ethereum ecosystem are planned.
Another element of Aerodrome’s comprehensive upgrade in July will be the introduction of a mechanism called Predictive Allocation. This new primitive is designed to facilitate real-time allocation of liquidity incentives based on where demand is expected to go, not where it’s already been.
The release of Predictive Allocation effectively replaces the protocol’s weekly gauge-voting system, where users lock tokens (e.g. AERO) to earn voting power (e.g. veAERO) and direct emissions or yield incentives to specific liquidity pools. Other DeFi projects that utilise similar gauge-voting systems include Curve (CRV) and PancakeSwap (CAKE).
Aero’s mission statement ahead of its launch (Source: aero.xyz)
