BSCNews just dropped a loud one: Ethereum has been stacking real momentum over the past few weeks, even while price chopped sideways and ETFs bled.

They weren't just yelling into the void – they linked a proper deep dive that covers everything from new lending products to fully decentralized L2 launches and actual privacy tech that Vitalik himself demoed.

Here's the breakdown of the biggest moves and why they're legitimately bullish, especially if you're trading or launching memes on Ethereum L2s.

Coinbase Rolls Out ETH-Backed Loans on Base (Finally in the US)

Coinbase now lets US users (outside NY, of course) borrow up to $1M USDC against their ETH without selling it. It's powered by Morpho and lives entirely on Base.

Over $1.28 billion in loans originated already, $810 million still outstanding, and 12,920 active borrowers.

For meme coin traders, this is huge – you can stay long on your favorite dog coin or political meta while pulling liquidity to ape the next 100x without triggering a taxable event. Base has been the hottest meme ecosystem all year, and easier leverage/liquidity just pours more gas on that fire.

Aztec Ignition Mainnet Goes Live – Fully Decentralized From Day One

Aztec, the privacy-focused L2, launched its Ignition mainnet on November 19. It produces blocks right now and is one of the only completely decentralized L2s in existence – no central sequencer, no training wheels.

Smart contracts come later, but the fact they shipped a fully decentralized rollup while everyone else is still running centralized sequencers is wild.

Community-only staking for the $AZTEC token is already live (minimum 200k tokens, roughly $6k at current prices), and the team and investors are locked out of the first round.

Privacy L2 + meme meta = eventual chaos. We're all thinking it.

Kohaku Privacy Suite – Vitalik's Devcon Demo Wasn't Just Theater

Vitalik showed off Kohaku at Devcon: an open-source SDK that lets developers build actually private wallets on Ethereum.

We're talking shielded balances, private transfers via Railgun, Privacy Pools for provable compliance without revealing everything, and even light clients so you don't have to trust centralized RPCs.

The base layer transparency problem has been the meme coin community's dirty little secret forever. Kohaku looks like the first serious attempt to fix it at scale. If this stuff ships cleanly, anonymous meme sniping and private degens become real.

Institutional Doors Keep Opening

Singapore Exchange (SGX) is launching ETH perpetual futures today (November 24) for accredited investors – regulated, no expiration, proper adult finance stuff.

More regulated products = more institutional money eventually trickling down to the chains where memes actually live.

BitMine Going All-In on Massive US-Based ETH Validation

BitMine is building the "Made in America Validator Network" (MAVAN) – large-scale ETH staking cluster launching Q1 2026, already in pilot with three providers.

They're basically turning their giant ETH bags into network security and yield. More decentralized staking capacity is always good for the chain's health.

Market Context: Yes, Price Dumped, But...

ETH spot ETFs saw $500M outflows last week, price dropped 15%, $460M in longs got wrecked.

Yet futures funding rates climbed from 4% to 6%, top traders are adding long exposure again, and the network keeps shipping actual upgrades.

This feels like the "quiet building" phase before the next leg up – exactly the kind of environment where meme coins on Base, Arbitrum, and eventually privacy L2s go absolutely parabolic.

The fundamentals are getting stronger while most people are looking the other way.

Check the full BSCNews breakdown here: https://bsc.news/post/ethereum-recent-updates

Original tweet: https://x.com/BSCNews/status/1992893669934850100

Ethereum isn't dead – it's upgrading faster than the price suggests, and the meme coin ecosystems riding on its L2s are about to feel the benefits.