Ethereum devs huddled in the Arctic Circle to fix the network. Here’s what to know

Ethereum's core developers have delivered their most significant technical milestone in months, emerging from a week above the Arctic Circle with a credible roadmap to dramatically scale the network's capacity.

Last week, just over 100 core contributors gathered in Longyearbyen, on Norway's Svalbard archipelago — some 78 degrees north, where the sun never sets — for the Soldøgn interop, a week of intensive work on the Glamsterdam network upgrade.

By Friday, the team had locked in a post-Glamsterdam gas limit floor of 200 million, stabilised external block builder implementations, and finalised gas repricing numbers for EIP-8037.

"At their best, interop weeks can compress a month of asynchronous progress into each day," Ethereum Foundation researcher Tim Beiko wrote in a recap shared with developers on Friday.

The breakthrough lands as Ether trades at $2,377, still more than 50% below its August peak of $4,946. However, signs of hope are emerging. Ethereum has jumped 14% over the past month, CoinGecko data shows.

The 200 million gas limit target is notable because it determines how many transactions Ethereum can process per block. The higher the limit, the more activity the network can handle without congestion — and the stronger the case for Ethereum as the backbone of a global financial system.

Beiko billed it as one of the most productive weeks in recent memory for the Ethereum team.

Foundation sells, Bitmine buys

The Ethereum Foundation wasted no time translating its technical progress into operational runway.

On Friday, the Foundation completed a third over-the-counter sale of 10,000 Ether tokens to Bitmine Immersion Technologies — the largest Ethereum treasury company — at an average price of $2,292 per coin, bringing the total transaction value to roughly $23 million.

It is the third such deal between the two parties. In March, the Foundation sold Bitmine 5,000 ETH at around $2,043 per coin. Last Friday, another 10,000 ETH changed hands at $2,387. The Foundation has also conducted a separate 10,000 ETH sale to rival treasury firm Sharplink.

The money goes straight back into funding Ethereum's development, including research, grants, and the kind of work that just happened in Svalbard, the Foundation said.

But despite the price downturn, Bitmine, led by prominent Wall Street bull Tom Lee, is not flinching.

Earlier this week the company disclosed its largest Ethereum purchase of the year — 101,901 ETH worth roughly $235 million — bringing its total holdings above 5 million Ether and cementing its position as the dominant corporate accumulator of the asset.

Bitmine bought most of its Ethereum at much higher prices. At today's levels, the company is sitting on an unrealised loss of more than $6 billion.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com