Q2 2025 Protocol & Security Updates

Q2 2025 delivered a steady mix of protocol achievements and hard security lessons, so the quarter shaped the road map for the next cycle.

The largest headline on the protocol side arrived on 7 May, when Ethereum activated the long-planned Pectra upgrade, which merged the Prague and Electra hard forks into one package that introduced eleven improvement proposals and lifted the validator stake ceiling from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, thereby enabling node operators to consolidate hardware and reduce overhead. The bundle also implemented EIP-7702, which lets ordinary wallets behave as temporary smart contracts and which advances the goal of broad account abstraction. (Kraken)

For decentralised-finance builders, the upgrade matters because higher blob throughput and cheaper calldata promise lower fees on roll-ups, and the refined withdrawal logic gives staking pools more flexibility. (Kraken)

The security picture remained demanding. Chainalysis recorded more than 2.17 billion United States dollars in assets stolen from services during the first half of the year, already exceeding the total for 2024, and the largest single incident involved the ByBit exchange, where attackers linked to the Lazarus Group removed roughly 1.5 billion dollars in Ether on 21 February. (Chainalysis, trmlabs.com)

CertiK’s Hack3d review calculated 801 million dollars in losses across 144 incidents in the second quarter, a fall of 52% in value relative to Q1, and it noted that phishing emerged as the most expensive attack vector at nearly 395 million. (Cointelegraph, globenewswire.com)

Industry collaboration advanced as the Security Alliance expanded the SEAL-ISAC threat-sharing network, which has already helped recover assets and distribute real-time intelligence feeds to both exchanges and open-source developers. (Cointelegraph)

Our own stack absorbed those lessons. During Q2 we deployed out-of-band transaction simulation that halts deposits when abnormal gas patterns emerge, we completed a line-by-line audit of the cross-chain rebalance module, and we joined the SEAL 911 rapid-response channel so that triage can start within minutes of an exploit report. The code base now runs on Release v2.3, which enforces strict role-based access on all upgradeable contracts and logs every privileged call through OpenZeppelin Defender.

Looking to Q3, the focus moves toward roll-up settlement efficiency and expanded bug-bounty coverage because the investment climate rewards projects that combine yield with visible resilience. Regular readers can expect monthly transparency notes while our teams continue to align with the evolving European regulatory landscape.