Dear imToken users, partners, and friends,

Ten years ago, when we started building imToken, there was no clear map of the industry. Blockchain was still in its early days, and crypto wallets had not yet become a mature product category. For most people, private keys, seed phrases, signatures, gas fees, and smart contracts were unfamiliar and difficult concepts. The world did not yet fully understand crypto assets, and few believed that individuals could truly own and control their own value.

But we made a choice that later proved to be very important: we chose to build a wallet. We believed that the internet should not only give you accounts; it should also give you assets, identity, and choice. What truly belongs to you should be in your own hands. This is where imToken began.

Over the past ten years, we have gone through bull and bear cycles, the rise of DeFi and multi-chain ecosystems, and repeated tests of trust, risk, and long-term thinking together with tens of millions of users. Many things have changed, but one belief has remained the same: imToken has always believed that what truly belongs to you should be under your control.

Digital Assets, Under Your Control.

This idea sounds simple, but it has been our most important product principle over the past decade. It is also the starting point for where we go next.

The First Decade: Store, Send, Stake

Looking back on imToken’s first ten years, the core value that wallets created for users can be summarized in three words: Store, Send, and Stake.

Store means enabling users to truly hold their own digital assets. Wallets first solved the challenge of self-custody: how to hold assets securely, how to avoid relying on centralized institutions, and how to return final control over value to individuals. Self-custody is not merely a feature; it defines where control resides. It means that assets that truly belong to you do not need to be entrusted to another centralized account.

Send means enabling value to move freely. Once users can own assets, the next step is to transfer value freely. Send is not just about making transfers. It is the ability for value to flow across an open network, allowing anyone to move what belongs to them across geographic and institutional boundaries without needing permission.

Stake means helping users move from holders to participants. As open networks evolved, wallets became more than tools for storing and transferring assets. They became gateways for users to participate in networks, earn rewards, and support ecosystem operations. From staking to DeFi, from governance to broader forms of on-chain participation, wallets helped users move from “owning assets” to “participating in networks.”

Store, Send, and Stake have formed the core product value of imToken’s first decade. Over these ten years, imToken has grown much like a tree. Our mission, vision, values, and long-term principles are the roots of this tree; our products, technology, security, user experience, and services are the branches growing upward. Only deep roots can support flourishing leaves. And the farther we go, the more clearly we understand what must never be lost.

The tenth anniversary is not an endpoint. It is a new beginning after looking back. As we stand here today and look toward the next decade, a larger shift is taking place.

The Intelligent Age: Abundant Agency, Scarce Control

AI is bringing the internet into a new era. In the future, more and more software will no longer simply wait for people to click buttons. It will understand goals, break down tasks, call tools, and act on behalf of people. We are entering the age of intelligent agents: AI agents will have increasingly powerful agency, enabling them to search, reason, trade, collaborate, pay, and execute in the digital world.

This will bring enormous productivity, but it will also create new risks. In the past, the core question of the digital world was: How can people own assets? In the future, an increasingly important question will be: When intelligent agents can act on behalf of people, how can people still remain in control?

We see three forces converging. First, AI is sweeping across the world, transforming software from “waiting for human operation” to “acting on behalf of humans.” Second, the value of blockchain is becoming visible again. Permissionlessness, censorship resistance, self-custody, verifiability, and traceability were once foundations of open finance. In an AI-native internet, they will also become important defensive infrastructure for collaboration between humans and intelligent systems. Third, control is becoming a new personal challenge. In the future, every individual will not only manage assets, identity, and data, but also their own AI agents, automated tasks, and authorization boundaries.

Agency will become increasingly abundant. What will truly be scarce is control.

This is not an abstract issue. In the future, users will need to know: Who can act on my behalf? What are they allowed to do? What is the spending limit? How long does the authorization last? Which actions require my confirmation? When something abnormal happens, how can I pause, revoke, and trace it? Without clear mechanisms of control, intelligent agents may become a new kind of black box. The more powerful they become, the easier it will be for people to lose boundaries, accountability, and final decision-making power.

So for imToken, the mission of the next decade is not to build another AI agent, nor is it simply to add AI features to a wallet. What we truly care about is this: In an AI-native internet, how can people still retain final control?

The Fourth S: Sign

If the 3S of the first decade were Store, Send, and Stake, then the fourth S for the next decade is Sign.

In the past, Sign usually meant signing a transaction. But in the age of intelligent agents, the meaning of Sign will expand. It will no longer be just a transaction approval. It will become a foundational interface through which humans express authorization, define boundaries, delegate actions, and retain control.

In the future, what you sign may not only be a transaction. It may be an intent, a permission and delegation, a policy, or a revocation.

AI agents can propose plans, execute tasks, and amplify efficiency. But their actions must be built on top of your clear, verifiable, constrained and revocable authorization.

Sign to permit intelligent actions under your control.

This is how we understand the fourth S. It is also the core product thesis for imToken’s next decade.

From a Trusted Main Wallet to a Personal Control Interface

Over the past ten years, imToken has become a trusted main wallet for many users. We treat this with deep respect. “Main wallet” is not a title we take lightly. It means users have entrusted us with long-term assets, important identities, critical transactions, and a sense of security. It also requires us to remain restrained, reliable, and long-term oriented in product, technology, security, user experience, and risk communication.

In the future, imToken will still first and foremost be a trustworthy wallet. We will not abandon the clarity of what a wallet is in order to chase concepts, nor will we push users into complex systems they cannot understand or control. But we also know that the role of the wallet is naturally expanding. In an open and intelligent internet, individuals need to manage not only assets, but also identity, permissions, data, AI agents, automated tasks, and increasingly complex digital relationships.

Therefore, imToken will gradually evolve from a trusted main wallet into a personal control interface — an interface that helps you control your assets, identity, permissions, and intelligent actions.

This is not a leap from wallet to abstract platform. It is a natural extension of the wallet’s core logic: keys are the root of control; signatures are the expression of authorization; permissions define boundaries; policies set the rules for actions; revocation protects freedom; and auditability is the foundation of accountability.

The wallet of the future will not only be an entry point for assets. It will also become a trusted control interface for collaboration between humans and intelligent systems.

The Direction of the Next Decade

Guided by this direction, imToken will continue to protect the root of self-custody. No matter how technology changes, users should not easily give away final control over their assets and critical rights.

We will also move from transaction security toward authorization security and action security. In the past, users were most concerned about private key leaks, signing the wrong transaction, or interacting with malicious contracts. In the future, users will also need to know whether they have authorized an agent to act over the long term, whether they have granted excessive limits, and whether they can pause or revoke that authorization at any time. What imToken needs to do is make these originally complex, hidden, and hard-to-understand authorization relationships clearer and more controllable.

AI can help people accomplish more. But people should always be able to understand, approve, limit, and audit those actions. We want to make intelligent actions more controllable, not make control more ambiguous.

This is a long-term direction, and it is not a question that imToken can answer alone. But it is a question we must help build toward.

Building for the Long Road Ahead

Ten years is not an endpoint. It is a clearer starting point.

We will continue moving forward as builders: fewer slogans, more products; less chasing of hype, more infrastructure; less short-term noise, more long-term trust. We will also continue to stay true to why we started, sense the direction of change, understand what is essential, endure through time, keep iterating, and move forward with conviction.

If imToken’s first decade was about helping you truly own your digital assets, then imToken’s next decade is about helping you continue to control your digital world in the intelligent age.

Your Digital World, Under Your Control.

Thank you to every user, developer, investor, partner, and team member who has experienced, believed, and built with imToken over the past ten years.

The road ahead is still long. We will continue exploring, continue building, and continue moving toward the horizon.

Ben He
Founder & CEO, imToken
June 2026

Over the past decade, imToken has been committed to empowering everyone to securely and independently own and manage their tokens. As the on-chain world evolves, wallets are also evolving from simple tools for storing assets into personal digital hubs for managing assets, identity, and AI.

AI now makes it possible to build applications with natural language. At the same time, the core wallet capabilities imToken has built over the past decade are gradually being opened through Token Core resources and infrastructure.

To celebrate imToken’s 10th anniversary, we are officially launching the “Co-create with AI and Build the Wallet You Want” community co-creation campaign, inviting users to explore the future of next-generation wallets and digital sovereignty together.

Campaign Overview

This campaign consists of two independent parts: the Vibethon Warm-up Event and the Community Co-creation Campaign. Eligibility, rewards, and judging criteria are handled separately for each part.

Vibethon Warm-up Event｜AI Creation Battle Livestream

Vibethon is a live AI creation challenge platform where participants create and compete in real time around the same theme. Themes are not limited to wallets. Viewers can watch the livestream, try demos, vote, and post live comments to support their favorite creations.

Event Period: May 11–15, 2026, every evening from 20:00–21:00 UTC+8

Format:
Multiple themed sessions will be held each day, covering wallets, AI, security, lifestyle, and more. Outstanding projects and participants may receive invitations to the main campaign, as well as opportunities to be featured on official channels.

Creation Rewards

1st Place: $50 USD equivalent reward
2nd Place: $30 USD equivalent reward
3rd Place: $20 USD equivalent reward
All other valid participants: $10 USD equivalent reward

Viewer Rewards

In each session, 5 participating viewers will be randomly selected, with each receiving a $10 USD equivalent reward.

Join Now: Please use the entry link posted on imToken’s official X account.

Community Co-creation Campaign｜Co-create with AI and Build the Wallet You Want

Participants describe the wallet they want in natural language and use AI to build a demo-ready, functional wallet or wallet application using Token Core capabilities and resources.

There are no restrictions on project format. Participants may submit interactive prototypes, AI-generated webpages, wallet demos, mobile or web wallets, AI skills, wallet skills, or other innovative applications based on Token Core.

Projects do not need to run on mainnet to be eligible.

Submissions should include the project name and description, demo video and/or links, feature overview, and a brief explanation of the creative concept and implementation approach.

Recommended Directions

Participants may choose one of the following recommended directions for their projects, or define their own direction. The categories below are intended as creative guidance only and do not serve as mandatory competition tracks.

Rewards & Incentives

The total reward pool for the community co-creation phase is $20,000 USD equivalent, including project awards and milestone incentives.

Vibethon warm-up rewards are calculated separately and do not affect the co-creation award quotas.

Project Awards

1 First Prize: $2,500 USD equivalent reward
2 Second Prizes: $1,500 USD equivalent reward each
3 Third Prizes: $500 USD equivalent reward each
4 Special Awards: $1,000 USD equivalent reward each
200 Participation Awards: $20 USD equivalent reward each

Special Awards

Special Awards include:

Best User Sovereignty Award
Best Security Design Award
Best On-chain Scenario Award
Best AI Wallet Award

Special Awards may be awarded in addition to First, Second, or Third Prize awards. Each project may receive at most one Special Award. Participation Awards are open to all participants who submit valid projects.

Milestone Incentives

Daily Progress Sharing Rewards:
1–2 participants will be selected each day, with each receiving a $50–$100 USD equivalent reward.

Community Contribution Award:
Rewards will be distributed after the campaign based on participants’ contributions to helping others solve problems.

All rewards will be distributed in stablecoins equivalent to the stated USD amounts and sent to the wallet addresses submitted by the winners.

Project awards will be distributed within 7 working days after the results are announced. Milestone incentives will be distributed after the campaign ends.

Join Now

Official Campaign Website 👉https://10th.token.im

FAQ

Q1: Do I need to know how to code?

No. You can describe your requirements in natural language, and AI can help you build the wallet or application. Official tutorials, sample prompts, and workshops will also be provided to make it easier to participate.

Q2: Do projects need to use Token Core resources?

Yes. This campaign is focused on Token Core, rather than general AI creativity. All submitted projects must be built using Token Core resources, and participants must specify which capabilities, materials, or examples were used.

Q3: What AI tools can be used?

Participants are free to use any AI coding tools or other AI creation tools.

Q4: Can both individuals and teams participate?

Yes. You may participate individually or form teams as you wish. However, each participant may submit and receive rewards using only one wallet address.

Q5: When will rewards be distributed?

Project awards will be distributed to the submitted wallet addresses within 7 working days after the results are announced. Milestone incentives will be distributed after the campaign ends.

Q6: What may lead to disqualification?

Projects may be disqualified for reasons including, but not limited to:

• plagiarism or unauthorized use of others’ work;
• submitting multiple entries or claiming rewards using multiple addresses;
• malicious behavior, attacks, or prohibited content;
• projects unrelated to Token Core;
• tricking or inducing users into revealing mnemonic phrases or private keys;
• projects that cannot be run or fail to demonstrate basic functionality.

imToken reserves the right to make the final decision on campaign rules and eligibility.

Q7: Can I build on existing or open-source projects?

Yes, as long as you have the necessary rights to use them and clearly cite your sources and explain what you modified in your submission.

Direct copies, superficial reskins, or projects without substantial modifications may be disqualified.

Q8: How will projects be judged?

The Community Co-creation Campaign will use online judging via Discord. Projects will be evaluated based on creativity, user value, completeness, security, and the quality of the co-creation process.

Risk Disclaimer

This campaign is intended solely for product experimentation, technical exploration, and community co-creation. It does not constitute investment advice or a guarantee of wallet security.

Digital assets and AI-generated content may carry market and technical risks. Please participate responsibly.

If your demo involves mainnet assets, please use only small amounts and clearly specify the security boundaries in your submission.

Participants should never input real mnemonic phrases or private keys into third-party AI tools, public environments, or uncontrolled demo environments.

We recommend using wallets created specifically for demos, test assets, or isolated environments when creating and recording your submission.

Ten years is a moment for reflection. More importantly, it is a moment to reaffirm where we are heading.

In the past, the digital world in crypto was largely centered around assets. From BTC and ETH to ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, DeFi, and RWAs, the forms of token have continued to expand, and wallets have helped users securely hold, manage, and use these assets.

Now, AI is reshaping digital infrastructure and the way people interact with it. As users’ relationship with the digital world become more flexible, efficient, and intent-driven, they are also becoming more complex. “You” are no longer just an address or an account, but a more complete digital presence — carrying identity, permissions, ownership, and boundaries of action into the open network. And the “digital world” is no longer limited to assets. It also includes identity, authorization, smart accounts, AI agents, and more automated interaction scenarios.

That is why imToken needs to continue evolving. What remains unchanged is “under your control.” No matter how far the digital world expands, users should retain ultimate control over their assets, identity, and actions.

imToken’s brand evolution starts from its role as a trusted main wallet. Built on Trust, Control, and Becoming, imToken is gradually evolving into a personal control interface for the open, intelligent internet.

A Wallet Begins with Trust

For many users, a wallet is not just another app.

An ordinary app can be replaced, uninstalled, or re-registered. A wallet is different. It holds the digital assets users truly own. It is the starting point of every on-chain action, and the entry point through which users build their relationship with the open network.

That is why the core value of a wallet is not how many features it has, but whether it can be trusted.

Over the past ten years, imToken has built around this foundational value: users hold their own private keys and control their own assets; assets are not held by the platform, nor is ownership defined by a centralized account. A wallet needs to be reliable, secure, stable, and worthy of being trusted with users’ primary assets.

This is imToken’s most important product role today: a trusted main wallet for your digital world.

This positioning is simple, but important. In an open network, true control is never just a slogan. It is supported by a series of concrete capabilities: users need to manage private keys securely, confirm signatures clearly, understand what they are authorizing, know what each transaction may result in, and receive clear risk signals in a complex on-chain environment.

These specific and foundational capabilities form the basis of imToken’s trust. Ten years later, we still believe that wallet is imToken’s clearest and most important starting point. Now, we are building on top of it to answer the next question.

The User’s Digital World Is Opening Up New Possibilities

In the past, when we talked about wallets, we were mostly talking about assets: which tokens users hold, how they participate in DeFi, how they manage NFTs, and how they complete an on-chain transaction.

Today, AI, smart accounts, cross-application authorization, and richer on-chain applications are opening up more possibilities for users’ digital worlds. A wallet will no longer only help users store and transfer assets. It will also take part in identity verification, permission management, application access, and more digital actions assisted by AI agents.

The digital world is becoming more capable and more automated. Users can enter applications more easily, call services, combine assets and identity, and let systems assist with complex operations that used to require manual effort.

When more actions can be authorized, delegated, or executed automatically, users need to understand more clearly: What identity am I using to enter an application? Who have I authorized? Which permissions are still active? Which actions represent me? Who holds the final right to confirm and control?

These changes will continue to drive the evolution of the wallet. A wallet will no longer be just an asset container. It will increasingly become the central interface of a user’s digital world: connecting assets and identity, managing transactions and authorization, and helping users stay in control across a broader digital world.

From a Trusted Main Wallet to a Personal Control Interface

This is the direction imToken is moving toward: from a trusted main wallet to a personal control interface.

In the past, that entry point was the wallet. In the future, the wallet will remain the foundation of that entry point.

imToken remains committed to its legacy: a trusted main wallet for long-term self-custody, where users retain full control and true ownership of their assets. At the same time, we are building for what’s next. We are transforming imToken from a secure vault into a dynamic interface — supporting not just your assets, but your identity and every intelligent interaction in the open network.

In short, your main wallet today. Your personal control interface tomorrow.

Trust, Control, and Becoming

‘Under your control’ is not just a slogan — it is a reality built on three unbreakable pillars: Trust, Control and Becoming.

Trust is the foundation for a wallet to carry users’ assets over the long term. Without trust, users will not entrust a product with important assets, key identities, or high-value permissions.

Control is the core that imToken has always upheld. In the past, this control was mostly reflected in asset self-custody. In the future, control will become broader. As identity, permissions, smart accounts, AI agents, and more on-chain behaviors enter users’ digital lives, users need to control not only “where the money is,” but also “who can act on my behalf,” “which permissions belong to me,” and “which actions require my final confirmation.”

Becoming is our commitment to evolution. We are building beyond the traditional wallet to create the ultimate personal control interface. It is a gateway designed to solve the friction of the next digital era, turning complex permissions and interactions into a seamless, user-controlled experience.

Our journey is defined by pragmatic innovation, and these are our commitments.

Your Digital World, Under Your Control

The tenth anniversary is not an endpoint. It is a new beginning.

Over the past ten years, imToken has accompanied users as they entered the on-chain world, managed assets, understood self-custody, and built trust in the open network. In the next ten years, users’ digital worlds will continue to expand. Assets will become more diverse. Identity will become more important. The Permission relationship will become more complex. AI agents will participate in more digital actions. And the open network will carry more real user needs.

What imToken wants to uphold remains unchanged: users should own their digital world, understand their digital actions, and control their assets, identity, and permissions.

So this brand evolution is not a conceptual shift. It starts from the trusted main wallet and continues to answer the same question:

In an ever-changing digital world, how can users remain in control?

Your Digital World, Under Your Control.

This campaign is available only in compliant regions. Users in restricted regions are not eligible. Please refer to the campaign page and Terms of Service for details.

Gold has long been a store of value, valued for its hedging and value-preservation properties. In recent market conditions, these qualities have once again drawn attention.

However, physical gold often comes with practical limitations — hard to carry, costly to store, and limited in liquidity. To make tokenized gold easier to access and experience, imToken and Tether are launching the imToken Gold Giveaway, centered on Tether Gold (XAUt).

Through the all-new imToken Web platform, you’re invited to explore a secure, convenient Web3 gold experience.

Rules

The campaign features three phases, with a total prize pool of $50,000 USD.

Phase 1: Hold to Earn

Experience the value of holding XAUt and earn rewards.

• Duration: February 9, 2026 — February 23, 2026.
• Prize Pool: $18,000 USD.
• How to Participate: Hold USDT in your non-custodial imToken Web wallet.

Reward Rules:

• Tiered APY: Rates adjust dynamically based on the number of participants:

0–199 participants: 10% APY

200–399 participants: 20% APY

400–599 participants: 30% APY

600–799 participants: 40% APY

800+ participants: 50% APY

• Minimum Holding: 0.1 USDT
• Per-User Cap: Rewards are calculated on up to 1,000 USDT per user. Amounts above this cap do not earn rewards.
• Distribution: Equivalent XAUt tokens will be distributed T+3 days after the phase ends.

Phase 2: Swap to Earn

Complete XAUt swap tasks to earn daily rewards and lucky prizes.

• Duration: February 23, 2026 — March 2, 2026.
• Prize Pool: $12,000 USD.
• How to Participate: Complete your first USDT/XAUt swap of the day with a value greater than $50 USD.

Reward Rules:

• Daily Fixed Reward: The first eligible swap receives $3 USD worth of XAUt.
• Lucky Grand Prize (Hash Match):

A set of lucky digits (e.g. “5–2–0”) is pre-defined before the campaign.

Every other day, the lucky digits from the previous day are revealed.

From all eligible users that day, the top 2 users whose transaction hash contains the lucky digits the most times will each receive $150 USD worth of XAUt.

In case of a tie, the transaction with the earliest on-chain timestamp wins.

• Distribution: All rewards will be distributed T+3 days after the phase ends.

Phase 3: Spend to Earn

Use the imToken Card to unlock Mystery Boxes and earn cashback.

• Duration: March 2, 2026 — March 16, 2026.
• Prize Pool: $20,000 USD.
• How to Participate: Apply for and use the imToken Card for purchases.

Reward Rules:

• Early Bird Mystery Box: The first 200 users to activate their card (complete the first Top Up) will receive a Mystery Box. The prize distribution is as follows:

🌟 SSR (Grand Prize): $800 USD × 1 winner

✨ SR (Hidden Edition): $80 USD × 9 winners

⭐ R (Basic Edition): $8 USD × 190 winners

Total Mystery Box value approx. $3,040 USD.

• Spending Cashback: During the campaign, users earn 2% cashback on each purchase, capped at $88 USD worth of XAUt per user.
• Distribution: Mystery Boxes are granted immediately upon qualification. Cashback rewards are distributed T+3 days after the phase ends.

👉 Join Now: https://web.token.im/get-tokenized-gold/XAUt

About XAUt

Tether Gold (XAUt) is a gold-backed token issued by Tether. Each XAUt token represents ownership of one troy ounce of physical gold that meets LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) standards.

Key Advantages

• Physical Backing: 1:1 backed by physical gold stored in Swiss vaults
• High Liquidity: 24/7 on-chain transfers and trading, without physical constraints
• Low Entry Barrier: Highly divisible (up to six decimal places), making gold ownership more flexible

About imToken Web

This campaign takes place on imToken Web, a new non-custodial web application built by imToken. It carries forward nearly a decade of security standards and delivers a smooth, ready-to-use browser experience.

• Built by imToken: Developed by the same professional team behind imToken, with a long-standing security record
• No Seed Phrases: Powered by Passkey and Account Abstraction, enabling one-tap login with fingerprint or Face ID and gas-free transfers
• True Self-Custody: Following the principle “Not your keys, not your coins”. Passkeys are stored only on your device — your assets remain fully under your control

FAQ

Q1: What is imToken Web?

A: imToken Web is a non-custodial web application by imToken. It uses Account Abstraction to let you create and access a wallet with passkey — no app download required.

Q2: Who can participate in the Gold Giveaway?

A: The campaign is available only in compliant regions. Some features (such as imToken Card or swap services) may be unavailable in certain regions. Please refer to the campaign page and product terms.

Q3: Can I withdraw funds during the campaign?

A: Yes. imToken Web is non-custodial, and you have full control of your assets. Note that rewards may be calculated based on snapshots; withdrawing early could affect eligibility.

Q4: When and where will rewards be distributed?

A: Rewards are distributed T+3 days after each phase ends and will be sent directly to the wallet address used to participate.

Q5: How do I apply for the imToken Card?

A: During Phase 3 (March 2–March 16, 2026), you can apply for the imToken Card in the imToken App. Complete KYC using your passport to activate it. Eligible users may enjoy a fee waiver (free card issuance) during the campaign. Reference: imToken Card Application Tutorial.

Q6: Why is my reward showing as 0?

A: Possible reasons include:

• Hold to Earn: USDT balance below 0.1 USDT
• Swap to Earn: No eligible $50+ USDT/XAUt swap completed that day
• Spend to Earn:
• Card not activated or no top-up has been completed.
• Cashback is distributed after the phase ends

You can track progress on the My Rewards page.

Q7: What are the reward caps?

A:

• Hold to Earn: Rewards are calculated on up to 1,000 USDT per user.
• Swap to Earn: $3 daily fixed reward; lucky prize has no per-user cap
• Spend to Earn: 2% cashback, capped at $88 XAUt
• Early Bird Mystery Box: One box per eligible user (first 200 users)

All rewards are paid in XAUt, calculated at 11:00 UTC+8 on the distribution day.

Q8: If I miss one phase, can I still join later phases?

A: Yes. Each phase can be joined independently. You can skip earlier phases and still join later ones. However, the imToken Card fee waiver requires participation in at least one previous phase.

Risk Warning

This campaign is for promotional and feature-experience purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset prices are subject to market volatility. Please participate based on your own risk tolerance. Final rules are subject to the campaign page.

If someone had told you a year ago that gold would quickly rise to $5,000/oz, most people would have dismissed it as wishful thinking.

Yet that’s exactly what happened. In just over two weeks, gold surged past $4,700, $4,800, and $4,900/oz, pushing toward the closely watched $5,000 level with little pullback.

It’s fair to say that as global macro uncertainty keeps being confirmed, gold has returned to its most familiar role: a consensus asset that doesn’t depend on any single country’s promise.

At the same time, a more practical question is emerging: as gold regains consensus, can traditional ways of holding it still meet the needs of a digital era?

I. A Macro Cycle That Feels Inevitable: The “Old King” Returns to the Throne

From a longer macro perspective, this move in gold isn’t short-term hype. It looks more like a structural rebound driven by persistent uncertainty and a weaker U.S. dollar.

Geopolitical risk has spread from the Russia–Ukraine war to key resource and shipping-route regions in the Middle East and Latin America. Trade has repeatedly been disrupted by tariffs, sanctions, and policy standoffs. U.S. deficits continue to expand, and long-term confidence in the dollar is being questioned more often. In this environment, markets naturally look for a value anchor that doesn’t rely on any single country’s credit — or anyone else’s endorsement.

From this angle, gold doesn’t need to prove it can generate yield. It only needs to prove one thing, repeatedly: when trust in credit is uncertain, gold is still there.

This also helps explain why Bitcoin (BTC) — once widely seen as “digital gold” — hasn’t fully played the same consensus role in this cycle, at least as a macro safe-haven. Markets have already made their choice, so we won’t dwell on it here. (Further reading: From Trustless BTC to Tokenized Gold — Who’s the Real “Digital Gold”?)

Still, a return of consensus doesn’t solve everything. For a long time, investors have had to choose between two imperfect ways to hold gold.

Option 1: Physical gold. It’s secure and self-custody — but it’s rarely liquid. Storing bars in a safe brings real costs (storage, security, transport) and makes it hard to use for real-time trading or everyday spending.

Recent reports of bank safe-deposit boxes being hard to secure highlight this tension: more people want direct control of their gold, but the practical setup isn’t always available.

Option 2: Paper gold or gold ETFs. They lower the barrier of physical custody. In essence, paper gold is an IOU from a bank or broker — an account-entry promise to settle, backed by that institution’s ledger.

But that liquidity is never truly “open.” Paper gold and gold ETFs are liquid only within a single financial system: you can buy and sell inside one bank, one exchange, or one clearing framework — but you can’t move the asset freely outside it.

In other words, it’s hard to split, combine, or use alongside other assets across systems — let alone use directly in different contexts. It’s “account-level liquidity” rather than “asset-level liquidity.”

My first gold investment product years ago — Tencent “Micro Gold” — worked the same way. Seen this way, paper gold doesn’t truly solve liquidity; it simply replaces physical frictions with counterparty risk.

Ultimately, security, liquidity, and self-sovereignty have been hard to achieve at the same time. In a highly digital, cross-border world, that trade-off is becoming harder to accept.

That’s why tokenized gold is now drawing broader attention.

II. Tokenized Gold: Giving “Full Liquidity” Back to the Asset

Tokenized gold, such as XAUt (Tether Gold), isn’t just about making gold easier to hold or trade — paper gold can do that too. It targets a more fundamental question:

How can gold stay fully physically backed, while gaining the same cross-system mobility and composability that crypto assets have?

Take XAUt as an example. Its design is conservative: 1 XAUt represents 1 troy ounce of physical gold held in professional London vault storage, with holdings that can be audited and verified. Token holders have a right to claim/redeem the underlying gold under the issuer’s rules.

It doesn’t rely on complex financial engineering, algorithms, or credit expansion to “enhance” gold. Instead, it follows a traditional logic: establish genuine physical backing first, then talk about what digitization enables.

Ultimately, tokenized gold such as XAUt and PAXG isn’t “a new gold story.” It uses blockchain to wrap one of the oldest asset types in a digital form. In that sense, XAUt is more like “Digital Physical Gold” than a speculative crypto derivative.

The more important shift is that gold’s liquidity moves to a different layer. In traditional finance, paper gold and gold ETFs are liquid only within an account system — inside a bank, broker, or clearing network — where trading and settlement stay within fixed boundaries.

With XAUt, liquidity travels with the asset. Once gold is represented as an on-chain token, it can be transferred, split, combined, and used across protocols and applications — without repeatedly asking a centralized institution for permission.

This means gold can, for the first time, circulate globally 24/7 without relying on an “account” to prove liquidity. (Further reading: Peter Schiff vs. CZ: A Trust Battle Between TradFi and Crypto) In an on-chain environment, XAUt is no longer just “a tradable gold token” — it becomes a basic asset unit that other protocols can recognize and compose.

• It can be freely swapped for stablecoins and other assets.
• It can be incorporated into more sophisticated asset allocation and portfolio strategies.
• It can even serve as a store of value for payments and everyday spending.

This is the part of liquidity paper gold can’t provide.

III. From “On-Chain” to “Usable”: The Real Watershed for Digitally Represented Physical Gold

That’s why tokenized gold doesn’t reach the finish line just by being “on-chain.”

The real watershed is whether this digitally represented, fully backed gold is easy for users to hold, manage, and trade — and even use for payments. If it’s ultimately locked inside a centralized platform or a single gateway, then it’s functionally no different from paper gold.

This is where lightweight self-custody solutions like imToken Web matter. For example, imToken Web lets users access via a browser and manage tokenized gold and other crypto assets across devices — quickly and directly.

In a self-custody setup, you control the private key. Your gold isn’t held on a provider’s servers; it’s held by the on-chain address you control.

Thanks to Web3 interoperability, XAUt doesn’t have to sit idle. It can be purchased in smaller amounts, and when needed, tools like imToken Card can bring gold’s purchasing power into everyday spending — globally and in real time.

In a Web3 environment, XAUt isn’t just tradable. It can be exchanged and combined with other assets — and extended into payment use cases.

When gold combines high certainty as a store of value with modern usability, it can finally move from an “old-school safe haven” toward a more future-ready form of money.

After all, gold itself isn’t outdated — what’s outdated is how we hold it.

So when gold comes on-chain as XAUt — and returns to personal control through self-custody options like imToken Web — it isn’t a brand-new story. It’s an enduring principle: in an uncertain world, real value means minimizing reliance on the promises of others.

imToken 2025 Annual Overview

In 2025, the focus of the Ethereum ecosystem evolved from purely scaling to the broader vision of Unified Ethereum. As liquidity fragmentation and fragmented user experiences on Layer 2s became increasingly evident, imToken shaped its annual strategy around addressing these divides through infrastructure enhancements.

Over the past year, through deep integration with Account Abstraction, interoperability protocols, and the exploration of new interaction paradigms, we moved significantly closer to a “single-chain–like” experience — without compromising decentralization.

In the face of the AI wave, we are also exploring a new paradigm for wallets. Our goal is to build a defensive bulwark — using the certainty of code to shield users from the opacity and risks of the AI black box.

1. Trends: From Fragmentation to Unified Ethereum

Over the past two years, while Layer 2 solutions have successfully reduced gas costs and increased throughput, they have also introduced a new challenge — fragmentation. User assets are now distributed across networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base. Moving funds between chains has become more complex and costly, and developers face higher operational burdens from deploying and maintaining applications across multiple networks.

Against this backdrop, Ethereum established “Unified Ethereum” as its core annual objective. This is not merely a marketing slogan, but a comprehensive reconstruction.

imToken’s 2025 Journey:

We stayed true to our core values of decentralization, trustlessness, and security. We believe better user experience should never come at the cost of self-sovereignty. Throughout 2025, our work focused on closing L2 gaps and enabling equal access and verifiable security — without compromising user autonomy — reshaping how users enter Web3.

2. Infrastructure Reconstruction: imToken’s 2025 Practices & Milestones

To realize the vision of Unified Ethereum, imToken built five technical pillars across the account, transmission, and application layers.

2.1 Account System: Building on Account Abstraction

To bridge the fragmented ecosystem under a Unified Ethereum, reconstructing the account layer is critical. With ERC-4337 and EIP-7702 maturing, Account Abstraction (AA) delivers programmable capabilities that fundamentally transform the user experience:

• Signature Abstraction: Decouples accounts from private keys, enabling diverse verification (e.g., passkey) and facilitating multi-chain operations via a single signature.
• Transaction Batching: Bundles complex workflows like ‘Approve + Bridge + Stake’ into a single, atomic transaction.
• Permission Firewalls: Enforces account-level security rules — such as spending limits and whitelists — acting as programmable armor for assets.
• Gas Abstraction: Allows gas payments in stablecoins or other tokens, eliminating the friction of managing ETH across chains.

These capabilities make AA the essential infrastructure for driving Web3 mass adoption.

imToken’s Strategy: Decoupling Accounts from Keys

To deliver the superior UX promised by Account Abstraction (AA), imToken tackles the challenge of balancing security with convenience. We have transformed AA’s core mechanism — decoupling accounts from keys — into a solution that combines Web2-grade smoothness with Web3-grade sovereign security:

• Seamless Daily Access (Passkey): Leveraging Signature Abstraction, we enable users to sign transactions using biometrics (Face ID/Touch ID). This provides an instant, frictionless experience for daily interactions.
• Security Fallback (Recovery Key): To mitigate the single-point-of-failure risk associated with cloud services, we implemented a decentralized recovery mechanism. Users can bind their keys (private key/mnemonic) as a safety net. This ensures that even if passkeys are lost or services fail, the user retains ultimate authority to reclaim the account — guaranteeing sovereign control and true trustless security, even in extreme scenarios.

2.2 Value Transmission: Send to Anyone

Traditional crypto transfers face a problem: the recipient must first download a wallet, back up a seed phrase, generate an address, and even hold tokens for gas before they can do anything. This drastically hinders new user onboarding

imToken’s Send by Link enables users to effortlessly transfer tokens to anyone.

• Breaking Barriers: The sender simply shares a link (or QR code) to initiate the transfer.
• Seamless Claiming: The recipient clicks the link and uses passkey to quickly create a wallet — skipping complex seed phrase backups — to claim the tokens directly.
• Value Transfer: This solution utilizes Account Abstraction to handle gas fee sponsorship. It delivers on the vision where “anyone can send tokens to anyone without permission,” making value transfer as simple as sending a text.

2.3 Interoperability: Building a Unified Liquidity Network

With the explosion of L2s, liquidity fragmentation became a nightmare. Moving funds across multiple chains via bridges involved cumbersome steps, long wait times, and low capital efficiency.

imToken is aligning closely with the Ethereum Foundation, actively exploring and integrating OIF (Open Intent Framework) and EIL (Ethereum Interoperability Layer).

• Strategic Alignment: While these standards are primarily led by the Ethereum Foundation, imToken views them as a high-priority annual goal, dedicated to translating protocol-layer progress into user-layer value.
• Unified Network Experience: Through these protocols, users will only need to focus on “Intent” (e.g., “I want to swap A on Chain X for B on Chain Y”) without worrying about the underlying cross-chain path. imToken assists users in completing cross-chain interactions with one click, breaking the invisible walls between L2s and enabling the free flow of capital.

2.4 Identity: Introducing Chain-Specific Addresses to Eliminate Ambiguity

The reuse of the mainnet address format (0x…) across L2 and EVM ecosystems has created ambiguity and deposit errors in multi-chain environments — a primary cause of user asset loss.

Addressing this is a key UX priority for imToken. We are actively exploring the adoption of ERC-7930 & ERC-7828 to introduce email-like addresses (e.g., address@chain)

• Error Prevention: When this feature goes live, both users and wallets will explicitly identify the target network. Typing user@optimism will automatically switch the wallet to the Optimism network, rooting out asset loss caused by selecting the wrong chain.
• Enhanced Readability: Transforming obscure hash values into human-readable, semantic labels significantly boosts user confidence and peace of mind during transfers.

2.5 Interaction Experience: Evolving Toward Intent-Based UX

Traditional wallets require users to think like programmers (authorizing, selecting routers, setting slippage), resulting in a high barrier to entry and frequent errors.

Recognizing this shift, imToken is actively exploring intent-based solutions.

• Declarative Interaction: Users simply express “what I want” (e.g., “Exchange 100 USDT for as much ETH as possible”) without worrying about “how to do it.”
• Outcome-Oriented: The system finds the optimal solution via off-chain matching and presents a deterministic result (What You See Is What You Get) before the transaction goes on-chain, reducing slippage and mitigating MEV attacks.

3. Future Outlook: Exploration and Defense in the Age of AI

Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, wallets will undergo a fundamental evolution driven by AI integration. imToken is actively exploring how to reimagine the role of the wallet in this new era.

3.1 Short-Term Outlook: Interoperability Takes Center Stage

imToken predicts that as OIF and EIL matures, 2026 will be the breakout year for Interop.

• Unified Liquidity: Ethereum ecosystem liquidity will no longer be fragmented by L2s but will converge into a massive unified market. Projects will only need to maintain one network interface to reach all L2 users.
• Invisible Interaction: Users won’t even need to know which chain they are using. imToken will continue to invest resources to drive this vision from usable to delightful.

3.2 Unified & Verifiable UI

We are crafting a unified interface to simplify complex multi-chain navigation. However, the UI itself can be a potential attack vector. To advance decentralization, imToken champions Verifiable UI, empowering users to verify the interface’s authenticity. This ensures full control over assets and the interface, even if centralized services go offline.

3.3 Embracing AI without Compromising Security

In the long term, if AI agents become the primary interface for user interaction, imToken believes the wallet’s responsibility is to establish a dynamic balance between “Intelligence” and “Security.” If we liken AI to a radical “Spear,” then Crypto and the wallet are the guarding “Shield.”

• AI is Probabilistic: AI agents interpret ambiguous natural language intents. While intelligent and efficient, they carry risks of hallucinations, errors, and even manipulation.
• The Wallet is Deterministic: In the AI era, the wallet must be more than just a gateway; it must serve as the final line of defense for transaction execution.

Constraining the Probabilistic with the Deterministic: imToken is exploring ways to audit and constrain probabilistic AI behaviors using deterministic code and rules (hard constraints). No matter how intelligent the AI becomes, it cannot bypass the security barrier enforced by the wallet. This ensures that every transaction operates within a framework of verifiability and guaranteed privacy.

Conclusion

In 2025, imToken is undergoing a significant shift: evolving from a simple asset management tool into both a bridge across fragmented Layer 2 ecosystems and a security gatekeeper for the AI era.

By integrating Account Abstraction, delivering the frictionless ‘Send by Link’ experience, and alignment with Ethereum Foundation interoperability standards, imToken is building a foundation for a unified user experience.

As we move into an AI-driven future, imToken remains anchored to the principle of determinism — ensuring that in a world of algorithms and probabilities, users retain ultimate control over their wealth.

Could an Ethereum ETF start to resemble a bond — paying out yield on a regular schedule?

Earlier this month, Grayscale said its Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF (ETHE) distributed staking income to existing shareholders. The payout reflects rewards earned from Oct 6, 2025 to Dec 31, 2025 — marking the first U.S. spot crypto exchange-traded product to pass staking rewards through to investors.

For Web3-native users, this may feel routine. But historically, it’s a milestone: for the first time, Ethereum’s native yield is being packaged into a standard TradFi wrapper.

More importantly, this isn’t happening in isolation. On-chain data shows the staking ratio rising, the validator exit queue largely clearing, and the entry queue building again.

These seemingly separate signals point to a deeper question:

Is Ethereum shifting from a price-driven portfolio allocation asset to a long-term, yield-generating asset that institutional capital can hold with confidence?

1. ETF Yield Distributions: TradFi Investors’ First Staking Experience

For a long time, Ethereum staking was a niche, highly technical activity largely confined to the on-chain world.

It required crypto basics (wallets and private keys) and an understanding of validator mechanics, consensus rules, withdrawal timelines, and slashing. Liquid staking protocols such as Lido Finance lowered the barrier, but staking income still largely remained within crypto-native instruments like stETH.

For most Web2 investors, it wasn’t intuitive — or easily accessible.

Now ETFs are helping close that gap.

Under Grayscale’s plan, ETHE holders would receive $0.083178 per share, reflecting staking rewards earned during the period and sold by the fund. Payment was set for Jan 6, 2026, for investors holding ETHE as of Jan 5, 2026 (record date).

Put simply, this income doesn’t come from a company’s operations — it comes from network security and consensus participation. For traditional investors (including those investing via 401(k)s or funds), it offers a way to access Ethereum’s staking yield through a familiar ETF wrapper — without managing private keys — and receive payouts in USD.

It’s worth emphasizing that this doesn’t mean staking is fully “regulated” for ETFs, or that regulators have reached a unified position. But in practice, something important has changed: non-crypto-native investors can now receive Ethereum’s native staking yield indirectly — without running nodes, managing private keys, or interacting on-chain.

Seen this way, ETF yield distributions aren’t a one-off — they’re a first step toward bringing Ethereum staking to a broader capital base.

Grayscale won’t be the only one. 21Shares also said its Ethereum ETF would distribute staking income to existing shareholders — $0.010378 per share — and published the ex-date and payment details.

This sets a meaningful precedent. For firms like Grayscale and 21Shares — active across both TradFi and Web3 — the impact goes beyond a single payout: it accelerates institutional adoption of staking and yield pass-through, and signals that Ethereum ETFs may evolve from pure price exposure into products with cash-flow potential.

Over time, if this model proves out, traditional asset-management giants such as BlackRock and Fidelity could follow — potentially bringing long-horizon allocation capital on the order of hundreds of billions into Ethereum.

2. Record-High Staking — and a “Vanishing” Exit Queue

If ETF distributions are the narrative milestone, staking levels and queue dynamics better reflect what capital is actually doing.

The staking ratio has reached a new high. The Block’s data shows that over 36 million ETH is staked — nearly 30% of circulating supply — with a staked value above $118 billion. The prior peak share was 29.54% in July 2025.

From a supply-and-demand perspective, when more ETH is staked, it effectively leaves the liquid market for a time — suggesting part of the supply is shifting from short-term trading to long-term allocation with a network role.

ETH is increasingly more than gas, a transaction medium, or a speculative instrument — it can also act as productive capital: securing the network through staking and generating yield.

Queue dynamics are shifting too. At the time of writing, Ethereum’s PoS exit queue was close to empty, while the entry queue kept growing (over 2.73 million ETH) — suggesting more ETH is choosing to commit to the system for the long term. (Further reading: “Cutting Through the “Ethereum in Decline” Noise: Why Values Are Its Strongest Moat”)

Staking is a low-liquidity, long-duration strategy that targets steadier returns. Capital re-entering the staking queue suggests more participants are willing to accept the opportunity cost of long-term lockups.

Taken together — ETF yield distributions, record-high staking, and shifting queues — Ethereum staking appears to be moving from a crypto-native opportunity into a yield source that TradFi can recognize and long-term capital is starting to price in.

No single signal is decisive on its own, but together they point to a steadily maturing staking economy on Ethereum.

3. What’s Next: A Rapidly Maturing Staking Market

This doesn’t make ETH a “risk-free” asset. As participants change, risks shift: technical risk matters, but structural risk, liquidity risk, and the learning curve around staking mechanics become increasingly important.

In the last regulatory cycle, the U.S. SEC stepped up enforcement around liquid staking, including unregistered-securities allegations involving MetaMask/Consensys, Lido (stETH), and Rocket Pool (rETH). This added uncertainty to the long-term outlook for Ethereum ETFs.

In practice, whether — and how — an ETF participates in staking is primarily a product-and-compliance design question, not a judgment on Ethereum itself. As institutions test the boundaries, capital is already responding.

For example, BitMine has reportedly staked about 1.032 million ETH (roughly $3.215B) — around one quarter of its total ETH holdings (4.143 million ETH).

In short, Ethereum staking is no longer a niche activity limited to technical insiders.

When ETFs begin distributing yield consistently, when long-term capital is willing to wait 45 days just to enter the consensus layer, and when nearly 30% of ETH serves as a security buffer, we’re seeing Ethereum build a native yield system that global capital markets can increasingly accept.

And understanding this shift may matter just as much as deciding whether to participate.

In earlier articles in this Interop series, we covered OIF (the intent framework) and EIL (the interoperability layer). OIF standardizes cross-chain intents (so the network can understand what you want to do), while EIL provides execution rails (so funds can move in a standardized way).

But to deliver a truly seamless “single-chain” experience, you still have to balance speed and trust. Today, interoperability often means choosing between slow finality (for example, Optimistic Rollups may require a 7-day challenge period) or weaker decentralization (by relying on the trust assumptions of multisig bridges).

To break this trilemma. Ethereum needs a core capability that links the Interop roadmap’s Acceleration track with finality: real-time proofs powered by ZK technology. (Further reading: Ethereum Interop Roadmap: Solving the Last Mile to Mass Adoption)

And in the Fusaka upgrade that just went live, an unassuming proposal — EIP-7825 — clears the biggest engineering obstacle on the road to that endgame.

1. The underrated EIP-7825 in the Fusaka upgrade

On December 4, Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade went live on mainnet. Unlike the Dencun upgrade, it drew less fanfare, and most attention stayed on Blob scaling and PeerDAS, especially the prospect of even lower L2 data costs.

But beyond the spotlight, EIP-7825 removes the biggest obstacle to bringing L1 zkEVM and real-time proofs to Ethereum — quietly paving the way for Interop’s endgame.

In Fusaka, most attention has been on scaling: Blob capacity increases 8×, and with PeerDAS sampling-based verification, the cost of the DA (data availability) layer becomes far less of a bottleneck.

Lower L2 costs are important, but for Ethereum’s long-term ZK roadmap, EIP-7825 is more consequential: it sets a per-transaction gas cap of about 16.78 million gas.

This year, Ethereum’s block gas limit has risen to 60 million. Even so, in theory, someone willing to pay a very high gas price could submit a highly complex mega-transaction that fills the entire block — effectively clogging it.

This was previously allowed, but EIP-7825 adds a new rule:

• no matter how large a block is, a single transaction cannot exceed ~16.78 million gas.

Why the per-transaction cap matters

For most users, this change has no impact on simple transfers. But for ZK provers (proof generators), it’s a make-or-break constraint — because of how ZK proofs are produced.

For example, before EIP-7825, if a block included a 60-million-gas mega-transaction, a ZK prover had to run that transaction end-to-end in sequence — no splitting and no parallelism. It’s like a single-lane highway with a slow, oversized truck up front: every other car (the remaining transactions) gets stuck behind it.

That makes real-time proving effectively impossible, because proving time becomes unpredictable — potentially tens of minutes, or longer.

After EIP-7825, even if blocks expand to 100 million gas, each transaction is capped at ~16.78 million gas. Blocks become predictable, bounded units that can be processed in parallel. In effect, proving shifts from a hard systems constraint to a pure money problem:

With enough parallel compute, we can process these smaller units quickly and generate ZK proofs for large blocks in a short time.

As Brevis co-founder and CEO Michael has noted, EIP-7825 is an underrated upgrade for Ethereum’s ZK path and “100×” scaling. It turns real-time proving from “theoretically impossible” into “engineering-schedulable.” With sufficient parallel compute, even 200 million gas blocks could be proven in seconds — providing the foundation for EIL to achieve second-level cross-chain settlement.

This upgrade may not look like the main event, but it’s a major step forward for Ethereum’s ZK roadmap — and for scaling ahead of 2026.

2. L1 zkEVM: The “trust anchor” for Ethereum interoperability

EIP-7825 makes real-time proving physically feasible by enabling parallelism. But the bigger question is: how will Ethereum mainnet use that capability?

That brings us to one of the most technically ambitious parts of Ethereum’s roadmap: L1 zkEVM.

zkEVM has long been seen as a “holy grail” for scaling — not just because it improves performance, but because it reshapes the trust model by giving Ethereum mainnet the ability to generate and verify ZK proofs.

Put differently, after each block executes, Ethereum could produce a verifiable proof so other nodes — especially light clients and L2s — can confirm correctness without re-executing everything. If this capability is built into L1, proposers can publish blocks with proofs, and validators can verify the small proof instead of replaying all transactions.

What L1 zkEVM unlocks for Interop

In an Interop context, L1 zkEVM matters far beyond scaling. It can serve as a trust anchor for every L2 — unlocking two major changes:

• Eliminate challenge periods: confirmations can shrink from “7 days (optimistic)” to “seconds (ZK).”
• Decentralize connectivity: cross-chain no longer relies on third-party multisig bridges, but on Ethereum mainnet’s verifiable proofs.

This is also the foundational prerequisite for EIL (the interoperability layer) to work as intended: without real-time finality on L1, L2-to-L2 interoperability can’t fully escape latency.

The goal is clear (L1 zkEVM), and the key constraint has been addressed (EIP-7825). The next question is: what’s the practical implementation path?

This leads to a subtle shift in the ZK stack: moving from zkEVM toward zkVM.

3. Fusaka & EIP-7825: The Interop roadmap breaks free

If EIP-7825 creates parallel-friendly conditions for ZK by capping transaction size, then the ZK stack’s evolution is about finding a more efficient software architecture. The distinction matters — and it maps to two stages of ZK development. (Further reading: ZK Dawn: Is Ethereum’s Endgame Accelerating?)

The first stage is zkEVM, which focuses on compatibility.

The goal is to mirror EVM behavior so developers can deploy Solidity with minimal changes — lowering migration cost and friction.

In short, zkEVM’s biggest advantage is compatibility with existing Ethereum apps, allowing teams to reuse much of today’s tooling — clients, explorers, debuggers, and more.

The downside is that the EVM wasn’t designed to be ZK-friendly. To stay compatible, zkEVM proving efficiency often hits a ceiling — proofs are slower, and the design constraints add overhead.

By contrast, zkVM takes a more radical approach: it uses a ZK-friendly VM (for example, RISC-V or WASM) to speed up proving and improve execution performance.

The trade-off is reduced compatibility with some EVM features and less access to certain existing tools (such as low-level debuggers). Even so, a clear trend is emerging:

• more L2s are optimizing proving speed and cost aggressively and exploring zkVM-based designs.

So why is Fusaka a key enabler?

Before EIP-7825, both zkEVM and zkVM could see proving time spike when a block included a mega-transaction — because the work couldn’t be split.

Now, EIP-7825 forces transactions into predictable units and enables parallel processing. That lets efficient architectures like zkVM perform at their best — so even complex blocks, backed by parallel compute, can move toward real-time proving.

What does this mean for interoperability?

As zkVM adoption grows alongside EIP-7825, proof costs can drop sharply. When cross-chain proofs become cheap and fast enough to feel instant, traditional “bridges” may fade into the background — replaced by general-purpose messaging at the protocol layer.

In closing

Interop’s end goal isn’t only moving assets across chains. It goes beyond “asset bridges” to a broader set of system capabilities — covering:

• cross-chain data communication
• cross-chain logic execution
• cross-chain user experience
• cross-chain security and consensus

From this view, Interop is a common language across future Ethereum protocols — about sharing logic, not just transferring value. ZK’s role is to guarantee correct execution and enable real-time state verification, so cross-domain calls are both safe and practical. Without real-time ZK proofs, truly usable Interop UX is hard to achieve.

With EIP-7825 now live in Fusaka — and L1 zkEVM moving closer to reality — we’re approaching that end state: execution, settlement, and proving are fully abstracted in the background, and users barely notice the chain at all.

That’s the Interop end state many of us are working toward.

In the previous article of our Interop series, we introduced the Open Intents Framework (OIF). Think of it as a universal language that lets users express intents like “I want to buy an NFT across chains,” and have network-wide solvers understand them. (Read more: Intents Standardized: How OIF Ends Cross-Chain Fragmentation.)

But understanding an intent isn’t enough — something still has to make it happen.

After you broadcast your intent, how does your funds move safely from Base to Arbitrum? How does the destination chain verify your signature? And who pays gas on the target chain?

This brings us to the core of the “Initialization” phase in Ethereum’s interoperability roadmap: the Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL). At the recent Devconnect, the Ethereum Foundation’s account abstraction team officially pushed EIL into the spotlight.

Put simply, EIL has an ambitious goal: without a hard fork and without changing Ethereum’s base-layer consensus, make using any L2 feel just like using a single chain.

1. What exactly is EIL?

To understand EIL, don’t let the word “Layer” mislead you. EIL is not a new blockchain, and it’s not a traditional cross-chain bridge.

At its core, EIL is a suite of standards and frameworks. By combining account abstraction (ERC-4337) with cross-chain messaging, it aims to create a virtual, unified execution environment.

In today’s Ethereum ecosystem, each L2 is effectively an island. For example, your EOA on Optimism and your EOA on Arbitrum may share the same address, but their states are completely isolated:

• A signature on Chain A can’t be directly verified on Chain B.
• Assets on Chain A are invisible to Chain B.

EIL attempts to break this isolation through two key components:

1) ERC-4337-based smart accounts — account abstraction decouples account logic from keys. With EIL-style extensions:

• Paymasters sponsor gas on the destination chain, solving the “no gas where I’m going” problem.
• Key Managers help keep account state in sync across multiple chains.

2) A trust-minimized messaging layer — a standard way to package and transmit UserOps across chains via official rollup bridges or light-client proofs, so messages can move safely without relying on new centralized relayers.

Here’s a simple analogy:

Cross-chain today is like traveling abroad: you exchange currency (move assets), apply for a visa (re-authorize), and follow local traffic rules (buy destination-chain gas).

Cross-chain in an EIL world is more like paying with a Visa card: you sign once, and the underlying banking network — the EIL infrastructure — automatically handles FX, settlement, and verification. You don’t feel the border at all.

That’s the future the Ethereum Foundation’s account abstraction team is describing: with a single signature, you can complete a cross-chain transaction directly from your wallet, seamlessly settling across L2s, without relying on centralized relayers or adding new trust assumptions.

In many ways, this is closer to the “final form” of account abstraction. Compared with today’s high-friction, fragmented workflows, this model helps automate account creation, private key management, and complex cross-chain execution behind the scenes.

And with native account abstraction (AA) maturing, every account could become a smart account. Users would no longer need to worry about gas — perhaps not even know it exists — and could focus purely on on-chain experiences and asset management.

2. From “Cross-Chain” to “Chain Abstraction”

If EIL lands as envisioned, it could unlock the “last mile” of mass Web3 adoption. It marks a shift from multi-chain competition to chain-abstracted convergence, tackling the pain points that trouble both users and developers most.

For users: a true “single-chain experience”

For users, EIL enables a true “single-chain experience.” Under the EIL framework, you no longer need to switch networks manually.

For example, your funds are on Base, but you want to play a game on Arbitrum: you just click “Start,” sign once when your wallet pops up, and you’re in.

Behind the scenes, EIL packages your UserOp on Base, sends it through the messaging layer to Arbitrum, and a Paymaster covers gas and entry fees — so it feels as smooth as playing directly on Base.

For security: beyond multisig bridge single points of failure

From a security perspective, EIL moves beyond the single-point-of-failure risk of multisig bridges. Traditional bridges rely on external validator sets (multisigs): if they’re compromised, billions in assets are at risk.

EIL instead emphasizes trust minimization, leaning on L2-native security — for example, storage-proof-based verification — to validate cross-chain messages rather than third-party trust. In short, as long as Ethereum L1 remains secure, cross-chain interactions are comparatively safe.

For developers: one account standard across chains

For developers, EIL offers a unified account standard. Today, a DApp that wants to go multi-chain often has to maintain several code paths.

With EIL, you can assume users effectively have a cross-network account: as long as you build against the ERC-4337 standard, your app can naturally serve users across L2s without worrying which chain actually holds their funds.

But there’s still a major engineering problem: how do we let hundreds of millions of existing EOA users enjoy this experience? (See also: From EOA to AA: Will Web3’s Next Leap Happen at the Account Layer?)

Migrating from an EOA to an AA account usually means moving assets to a new address — far too much friction for most users. This is where Vitalik Buterin’s EIP-7702 comes in. It neatly resolves the long-standing compatibility debates among EIP-4337, EIP-3074, and EIP-5003 by doing something clever: it lets an existing EOA temporarily “transform” into a smart contract account during a transaction.

This means you don’t need to register a new wallet or move assets from your current imToken address into a new AA account. Instead, with EIP-7702 your existing account can temporarily gain smart-account capabilities — like batch approvals, gas sponsorship, and cross-chain atomic operations — and then revert to a fully compatible EOA once the transaction is done.

3. EIL’s Path to Reality — and What Comes Next

Compared with OIF’s more community-driven, bottom-up approach, EIL carries a much stronger “official” imprint. It’s a pragmatic infrastructure effort led by the Ethereum Foundation’s account abstraction team — the same group behind ERC-4337.

Current progress mainly shows up along three key tracks:

1. Multi-chain expansion of ERC-4337 — extending the UserOp structure with cross-chain parameters such as destination chain IDs, the first step toward giving smart accounts real “cross-chain visibility.”
2. Coordination with ERC-7702 — as EIP-7702 rolls out, everyday EOA users can plug into the EIL network seamlessly, sharply lowering adoption barriers.
3. Standardized messaging interfaces — similar to how OIF standardizes intents, EIL is standardizing message transport at the infrastructure layer. Optimism’s Superchain, Polygon’s AggLayer, and ZKsync’s Elastic Chain are all exploring interoperability within their own ecosystems; EIL’s goal is to connect these heterogeneous worlds into a shared, network-wide messaging layer.

Even more interesting, EIL’s vision goes beyond just “connecting” chains — it’s also filling in another key base-layer capability: privacy.

If EIP-7702 and AA solve accessibility, then the Kohaku privacy framework that Vitalik unveiled at Devconnect may be the next puzzle piece, echoing another core idea from the Trustless Manifesto: censorship resistance.

At Devconnect, Vitalik was blunt: “privacy is freedom.” He noted that Ethereum is already on a privacy-upgrade path aimed at delivering real-world levels of privacy and security. To that end, the Ethereum Foundation has set up a dedicated privacy team of 47 researchers, engineers, and cryptographers, working to make privacy a true “first-class” property of Ethereum.

This means privacy will no longer be an optional add-on, but a basic capability as natural as sending a transfer. As a concrete step toward that vision, the Kohaku framework uses your public key to create temporary stealth addresses, allowing you to perform private actions without revealing links back to your main wallet.

Under this design, future AA accounts will be more than asset management tools — they’ll also act as privacy shields. By integrating protocols like Railgun and Privacy Pools, AA accounts can help users protect transaction privacy while still providing compliant “proofs of innocence”: you can show that your funds are not illicit without exposing your full spending path.

The Roadmap

Taken together, Ethereum’s interoperability roadmap becomes clear:

• OIF (Intent Framework): helps the application layer understand what users want.
• EIL (Interoperability Layer): lays the infrastructure to execute those intents seamlessly.

This is likely the signal the Ethereum Foundation wants to send: Ethereum shouldn’t be a loose collection of L2s, but a single, unified supercomputer.

When EIL truly lands, we may no longer need to explain what an L2 or a cross-chain bridge is to new users — they’ll simply see their assets, not the borders between chains.

In earlier articles in this Interop series, we covered OIF (the intent framework) and EIL (the interoperability layer). OIF standardizes cross-chain intents (so the network can understand what you want to do), while EIL provides execution rails (so funds can move in a standardized way).

But to deliver a truly seamless “single-chain” experience, you still have to balance speed and trust. Today, interoperability often means choosing between slow finality (for example, Optimistic Rollups may require a 7-day challenge period) or weaker decentralization (by relying on the trust assumptions of multisig bridges).

To break this trilemma. Ethereum needs a core capability that links the Interop roadmap’s Acceleration track with finality: real-time proofs powered by ZK technology. (Further reading: Ethereum Interop Roadmap: Solving the Last Mile to Mass Adoption)

And in the Fusaka upgrade that just went live, an unassuming proposal — EIP-7825 — clears the biggest engineering obstacle on the road to that endgame.

1. The underrated EIP-7825 in the Fusaka upgrade

On December 4, Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade went live on mainnet. Unlike the Dencun upgrade, it drew less fanfare, and most attention stayed on Blob scaling and PeerDAS, especially the prospect of even lower L2 data costs.

But beyond the spotlight, EIP-7825 removes the biggest obstacle to bringing L1 zkEVM and real-time proofs to Ethereum — quietly paving the way for Interop’s endgame.

In Fusaka, most attention has been on scaling: Blob capacity increases 8×, and with PeerDAS sampling-based verification, the cost of the DA (data availability) layer becomes far less of a bottleneck.

Lower L2 costs are important, but for Ethereum’s long-term ZK roadmap, EIP-7825 is more consequential: it sets a per-transaction gas cap of about 16.78 million gas.

This year, Ethereum’s block gas limit has risen to 60 million. Even so, in theory, someone willing to pay a very high gas price could submit a highly complex mega-transaction that fills the entire block — effectively clogging it.

This was previously allowed, but EIP-7825 adds a new rule:

• no matter how large a block is, a single transaction cannot exceed ~16.78 million gas.

Why the per-transaction cap matters

For most users, this change has no impact on simple transfers. But for ZK provers (proof generators), it’s a make-or-break constraint — because of how ZK proofs are produced.

For example, before EIP-7825, if a block included a 60-million-gas mega-transaction, a ZK prover had to run that transaction end-to-end in sequence — no splitting and no parallelism. It’s like a single-lane highway with a slow, oversized truck up front: every other car (the remaining transactions) gets stuck behind it.

That makes real-time proving effectively impossible, because proving time becomes unpredictable — potentially tens of minutes, or longer.

After EIP-7825, even if blocks expand to 100 million gas, each transaction is capped at ~16.78 million gas. Blocks become predictable, bounded units that can be processed in parallel. In effect, proving shifts from a hard systems constraint to a pure money problem:

With enough parallel compute, we can process these smaller units quickly and generate ZK proofs for large blocks in a short time.

As Brevis co-founder and CEO Michael has noted, EIP-7825 is an underrated upgrade for Ethereum’s ZK path and “100×” scaling. It turns real-time proving from “theoretically impossible” into “engineering-schedulable.” With sufficient parallel compute, even 200 million gas blocks could be proven in seconds — providing the foundation for EIL to achieve second-level cross-chain settlement.

This upgrade may not look like the main event, but it’s a major step forward for Ethereum’s ZK roadmap — and for scaling ahead of 2026.

2. L1 zkEVM: The “trust anchor” for Ethereum interoperability

EIP-7825 makes real-time proving physically feasible by enabling parallelism. But the bigger question is: how will Ethereum mainnet use that capability?

That brings us to one of the most technically ambitious parts of Ethereum’s roadmap: L1 zkEVM.

zkEVM has long been seen as a “holy grail” for scaling — not just because it improves performance, but because it reshapes the trust model by giving Ethereum mainnet the ability to generate and verify ZK proofs.

Put differently, after each block executes, Ethereum could produce a verifiable proof so other nodes — especially light clients and L2s — can confirm correctness without re-executing everything. If this capability is built into L1, proposers can publish blocks with proofs, and validators can verify the small proof instead of replaying all transactions.

What L1 zkEVM unlocks for Interop

In an Interop context, L1 zkEVM matters far beyond scaling. It can serve as a trust anchor for every L2 — unlocking two major changes:

• Eliminate challenge periods: confirmations can shrink from “7 days (optimistic)” to “seconds (ZK).”
• Decentralize connectivity: cross-chain no longer relies on third-party multisig bridges, but on Ethereum mainnet’s verifiable proofs.

This is also the foundational prerequisite for EIL (the interoperability layer) to work as intended: without real-time finality on L1, L2-to-L2 interoperability can’t fully escape latency.

The goal is clear (L1 zkEVM), and the key constraint has been addressed (EIP-7825). The next question is: what’s the practical implementation path?

This leads to a subtle shift in the ZK stack: moving from zkEVM toward zkVM.

3. Fusaka & EIP-7825: The Interop roadmap breaks free

If EIP-7825 creates parallel-friendly conditions for ZK by capping transaction size, then the ZK stack’s evolution is about finding a more efficient software architecture. The distinction matters — and it maps to two stages of ZK development. (Further reading: ZK Dawn: Is Ethereum’s Endgame Accelerating?)

The first stage is zkEVM, which focuses on compatibility.

The goal is to mirror EVM behavior so developers can deploy Solidity with minimal changes — lowering migration cost and friction.

In short, zkEVM’s biggest advantage is compatibility with existing Ethereum apps, allowing teams to reuse much of today’s tooling — clients, explorers, debuggers, and more.

The downside is that the EVM wasn’t designed to be ZK-friendly. To stay compatible, zkEVM proving efficiency often hits a ceiling — proofs are slower, and the design constraints add overhead.

By contrast, zkVM takes a more radical approach: it uses a ZK-friendly VM (for example, RISC-V or WASM) to speed up proving and improve execution performance.

The trade-off is reduced compatibility with some EVM features and less access to certain existing tools (such as low-level debuggers). Even so, a clear trend is emerging:

• more L2s are optimizing proving speed and cost aggressively and exploring zkVM-based designs.

So why is Fusaka a key enabler?

Before EIP-7825, both zkEVM and zkVM could see proving time spike when a block included a mega-transaction — because the work couldn’t be split.

Now, EIP-7825 forces transactions into predictable units and enables parallel processing. That lets efficient architectures like zkVM perform at their best — so even complex blocks, backed by parallel compute, can move toward real-time proving.

What does this mean for interoperability?

As zkVM adoption grows alongside EIP-7825, proof costs can drop sharply. When cross-chain proofs become cheap and fast enough to feel instant, traditional “bridges” may fade into the background — replaced by general-purpose messaging at the protocol layer.

In closing

Interop’s end goal isn’t only moving assets across chains. It goes beyond “asset bridges” to a broader set of system capabilities — covering:

• cross-chain data communication
• cross-chain logic execution
• cross-chain user experience
• cross-chain security and consensus

From this view, Interop is a common language across future Ethereum protocols — about sharing logic, not just transferring value. ZK’s role is to guarantee correct execution and enable real-time state verification, so cross-domain calls are both safe and practical. Without real-time ZK proofs, truly usable Interop UX is hard to achieve.

With EIP-7825 now live in Fusaka — and L1 zkEVM moving closer to reality — we’re approaching that end state: execution, settlement, and proving are fully abstracted in the background, and users barely notice the chain at all.

That’s the Interop end state many of us are working toward.