Ethereum News: Vitalik Puzzle Solved, ETH UTXOs and Bitmine Updates

Ethereum News Today: Vitalik Puzzle, Native UTXO and Bitmine ETH Stack

An AI tool cracked a two-year-old mystery in under two weeks — and Vitalik himself confirmed the winner on July 6. For anyone tracking Ethereum's privacy roadmap, this reveal lands right as two other major shifts hit the network in the same 48 hours.

Here's what most reports aren't telling you about how these three stories actually connect — and why traders are watching all three together.

What Happened This Week on Ethereum:

Vitalik Reveals the Winner Behind His EIP-7503 Identity Challenge

Earlier this year, Vitalik Buterin challenged the public to identify a document he had secretly authored under a pseudonym. On July 6, 2026, he confirmed researcher Franklyn Wang had cracked it using an AI-assisted analysis tool called Co-Invest, less than two weeks after the challenge began. 

The mystery document turned out to be the December 2024 revision of EIP-7503, known as Zero-Knowledge Wormholes, submitted through the anonymous GitHub handle 0xwormhole. 

Buterin revealed his own trick: he wrote the original draft in Chinese, ran it through a local AI translation model, then manually cleaned up the English output — a workflow that left subtle stylistic fingerprints Wang's tool picked up on. 

EIP-7503 itself proposes letting users burn ETH into an unspendable address and later re-mint it elsewhere using a zero-knowledge proof, breaking the on-chain link between sender and receiver without needing a separate mixing app.

Source: Vitalik X

Ethereum Researchers Propose Native UTXOs to Cut Permanent State

On the same day, Ethereum news published a detailed design for bringing Bitcoin-style UTXOs to Ethereum without giving up accounts. Right now, every new address that receives ETH or a token creates a permanent entry in Ethereum's state forever. 

The new proposal treats simple payments as one-shot objects instead: a UTXO is proven from history and only a single "spent" bit is stored on-chain, cutting permanent state usage for payment-only transactions by roughly 99.8%. 

The design leans on Frame Transactions (EIP-8141) so a UTXO can pay its own gas and fund its own spend, even if the receiving address holds zero ETH. That solves a long-standing problem for fresh, one-time-use addresses like stealth payments, which previously had no way to cover transaction fees.

Source: X

Bitmine's ETH Treasury Climbs to 4.8% of Total Supply

Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR) disclosed it added 42,197 ETH in a single week, pushing its total holdings to 5,742,237 ETH — worth roughly $10.3 billion at $1,800 per ETH and about 4.8% of Ethereum's entire supply. 

Combined with 206 BTC, minority stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings, and $527 million in cash and securities, Bitmine's total crypto, cash, and "moonshot" holdings now sit at $11.1 billion. 

The company also holds 4,879,157 ETH in staking through its MAVAN validator network, generating an estimated $235 million or more in annualized rewards. Chairman Tom Lee says Bitmine remains on track toward its long-stated goal of owning 5% of all ETH before the year is out.

Source: Wu Blockchain X

Why It Matters for Traders and Investors

A privacy upgrade, a state-efficiency redesign, and a corporate buying spree hitting in the same week signal Ethereum's roadmap and its market structure are advancing on parallel tracks — protocol research on one side, institutional accumulation on the other.

What to Watch Next

• Whether EIP-7503 or the Native UTXO design gets scheduled into an upcoming hard fork like Hegotá

• Bitmine's progress toward its 5% supply target is expected within the next few months at its current pace

• Continued MAVAN staking growth and its effect on ETH's circulating float

• Any client team commentary on Frame Transactions (EIP-8141), on which both proposals depend

Conclusion

Between a solved authorship puzzle, a state-shrinking UTXO proposal, and Bitmine's climb toward 5% of supply, Ethereum's protocol and market layers both moved fast this week. Whether these research proposals make it into a live fork may shape how much cheaper — and more private — the network gets by next year.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile; always conduct your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions. CoinGabbar is not responsible for any losses incurred based on this content.