A group of Ethereum projects have announced a new effort aimed at fixing a growing problem in Ethereum: its ecosystem is becoming too fragmented. Revealed at the EthCC conference in Cannes, the project — called the “Ethereum Economic Zone” (EEZ) — is designed to make Ethereum’s many add-on networks (known as layer 2s, or L2s) work together more seamlessly.

For months, Aave, one of decentralized finance’s (DeFi) largest lending protocols, has been at the center of a very public debate about what it is supposed to be. At the core, much of the community wants the network to be a decentralized financial layer governed by token holders, while a fraction of it warns that it is evolving toward a more coordinated model shaped by major contributors.

Bittensor’s TAO has rallied 90% so far this month, and the tokens in its ecosystem are running up even harder. The network’s subnet token category reached a combined market cap of $1.47 billion on Monday, with $118 million in 24-hour trading volume, according to CoinGecko data .

XRP is holding near $1.33, but the setup is getting fragile. Price isn’t collapsing, but it’s not recovering either — and that kind of drift lower, paired with rising leverage, usually doesn’t resolve quietly.