StarkWare announced on April 7 that Starknet is entering its fourth phase, aiming to improve network speed, decentralization, and privacy. New features include support for the STRK20 framework for ERC20 privacy, the strkBTC asset for redeemable Bitcoin, decentralized block validation, and progress toward full decentralization of the network. In addition, Starknet is also researching Bitcoin bridging solutions and promoting DeFi development, working toward achieving comprehensive quantum security.

Polygon announces that the Giugliano hard fork will be activated on April 8, aiming to improve transaction confirmation speed and fee transparency, and support high-throughput payments and tokenized assets. The upgrade will embed fee parameters into the block header and roll out new RPC endpoints to optimize the developer experience. In addition, this upgrade is a major improvement for Polygon after experiencing multiple issues; despite market expectations, the POL token is still down by nearly 5%.

The Polygon mainnet will undergo a Giugliano hard fork upgrade on April 8, with improvements including faster block finality, integrating fee parameters into the block header, and new RPC endpoints that support fee queries. Node operators need to upgrade to the corresponding version to ensure the network functions normally.

Gate News message. On April 6, according to The Block, South Korea’s payments and banking giant Toss disclosed that it is considering developing its own blockchain network and issuing a native cryptocurrency. Insiders say Toss may build on a Layer1 mainnet and is exploring Layer2 expansion solutions, but has not yet made a final decision on what architecture to use. Related decisions are influenced by the progress of South Korea’s “Digital Asset Basic Act,” which will regulate key areas such as token issuance, stablecoins, and crypto ETFs.

F2Pool co-founder Wang Chunzi said on X that a Bitcoin protocol upgrade should not be like an “omnibus bill” from American politicians, opposing BIP-110 and BIP-54. He noted that timestamp attacks offer miners no significant benefits, and that block validation efficiency has improved substantially; today, only the “repeated transaction” issue is worth fixing.

On April 3, a miner who mined solo through CKPool successfully mined block #943,411, earning about 3.139 BTC in rewards, worth about $210k. Solo mining is still a low-probability event; in the past 12 months, only 20 blocks were mined. Mining competition has intensified, and network difficulty has shown fluctuations.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the State of Illinois from regulating prediction markets, arguing that the state’s actions infringe on federal regulatory authority. This case marks the CFTC’s first legal action to challenge state-level gambling regulation. The dispute began when Illinois issued a cease-and-desist order to the prediction market Kalshi, alleging it violated the state’s gambling laws.

X platform product lead Nikita Bier announced that it will roll out new measures against crypto phishing scams. The account that is first to publish relevant content will be locked and will need to complete identity verification. It is expected to eliminate 99% of malicious actors’ motives. He also pointed out that Google failed to effectively block phishing emails.

Polygon announced it will roll out a Private Mempool feature, providing MEV protection by routing transactions directly to the block producers selected through the validator election, avoiding the risk of transactions in the public mempool being manipulated, thereby reducing the likelihood of user slippage and transaction failure.

Gate News message, April 2, according to Gate market data, as of the time of writing, GWEI (ETHGAS) is currently trading at $0.05486. Over the past 24 hours, it is up 26.36%, hitting a high of $0.05673 and dipping to a low of $0.04187. The 24-hour trading volume reached $2.4061 million. The current market cap is approximately $96.005 million. ETHGAS is a pioneering real-time Ethereum infrastructure protocol. Through a commoditization mechanism for block space, it turns Ethereum block space into a tradable asset. The protocol increases Ethereum transaction speed by more than 100 times, giving users a truly instant, no-gas experience, while significantly boosting validator earnings. ETHGAS enables participants to buy and sell future block space via trading platforms, where participants can directly source from ver