- Polygon and Berachain minimize workers to refocus on funds and core dev, whereas Base pivots its app towards trading-first customers.
- Base dominated Ethereum L2 charges with ~70% share, highlighting widening income gaps throughout rollup ecosystems.
- Ethereum utilization surged with document new wallets, whereas Aave crossed 50% DeFi lending share for the primary time since 2020.
Restructuring, product shifts, and utilization milestones influenced the crypto sector this week throughout a number of networks. Developments emerged between January 14 and January 18, spanning Polygon, Ethereum, Base, ZKsync and Berachain. The updates replicate staffing cuts, strategic pivots, rising on-chain exercise and altering income dynamics throughout main blockchain ecosystems.
Staffing Cuts and Strategic Refocusing
Polygon applied inner layoffs affecting almost 30% of its workforce, in line with worker disclosures on social media. The corporate has not formally confirmed the cuts. Nonetheless, the reductions adopted Polygon’s shift towards stablecoin funds after buying Coinme and Sequence.
Equally, the Berachain Foundation introduced layoffs throughout most retail-focused advertising and marketing groups in its 2025 year-end replace. The inspiration redirected assets towards core improvement. It additionally confirmed lead developer Alberto will depart to co-found a Web2 agency with former banking colleagues.
In the meantime, Base co-founder Jesse Pollak stated the Base app will reposition as “trading-first.” He cited person suggestions pointing to extreme social options and restricted high-quality tradable belongings. Because of this, Base will prioritize buying and selling instruments and finance-focused person experiences.
Protocol Roadmaps and Income Information
ZKsync launched its 2026 roadmap by Matter Labs co-founder Alex Gluchowski. The plan facilities on Prividium, ZK Stack, and Airbender. Notably, the roadmap targets institutional adoption with privateness by default and verifiable threat controls.
On January 14, CryptoRank information confirmed solely three Ethereum Layer 2 networks generated over $5,000 in each day charges. Base led with about $147,000. Arbitrum adopted with roughly $39,000, whereas Starknet generated roughly $9,000.
Base accounted for almost 70% of all Ethereum L2 price income that day. In distinction, all different L2s mixed produced simply over $15,000.
Platform Shifts and Community Progress
Kaito AI founder Yu Hu introduced the shutdown of the Yaps incentive system. He launched Kaito Studio as an alternative. The change adopted X’s API restrictions on reward-based posting and persistent low-quality content material points.
Brevis, BNB Chain, and 0xbow additionally expanded cooperation on privateness infrastructure. They plan to launch an Clever Privateness Pool on BNB Chain in Q1 2026.
In the meantime, Aave reached a 51.3% share of DeFi lending on January 14, in line with DefiLlama. It turned the primary protocol since 2020 to exceed 50%.
Ethereum exercise additionally surged. Santiment information confirmed about 327,000 new wallets each day final week. A single-day document reached 393,000, whereas non-empty wallets climbed to 172.9 million.
