Ethlabs Launch, the EF Restructures, Starknet Brings Private USDC, Crypto Neobanks Go Mainstream

Welcome to our weekly digest, where we unpack the latest in account and chain abstraction and the broader infrastructure shaping Ethereum. This week: Ethlabs launches as an independent EF-origin R&D lab backed by Bitmine, Sharplink, and Joe Lubin; the Ethereum Foundation reorganizes into five focused clusters and parts ways with a fifth of its staff; Starknet brings confidential USDC payments to DeFi through its STRK20 framework; and a new industry report charts how crypto-native neobanks went mainstream and why account abstraction matters more because of it. Ethlabs Launches as an Independent R&D Lab The Ethereum Foundation Restructures Into Five Clusters Starknet Brings Private USDC to DeFi Crypto Neobanks Cross From Experiment to Infrastructure Please fasten your belts! Ethlabs Launches as an Independent R&D Lab A coordinated group of Ethereum contributors has launched Ethlabs , an independent nonprofit research and development lab built to ready the network for its next wave of institutional and agentic adoption. The funding effort is led by Bitmine, Sharplink, and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, with support from Anchorage, Octant, and SNZ. Ethlabs is cofounded by five former senior Ethereum Foundation researchers — Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma — who between them shaped finality, scaling, data availability, and protocol economics over the past decade. Dietrichs serves as Executive Director. The lab’s early work centers on what institutions need to move onchain at scale: faster settlement, native issuance, cross-chain movement, and more mainnet capacity, alongside research into ETH’s monetary properties. The team frames the moment as Ethereum’s shift from infrastructure buildout to an age of adoption, where the architecture that settles global activity is being decided now rather than in ten years. To preserve neutrality, funding flows through an independent grants administrator that handles screening and