Ethereum infrastructure provider ConsenSys has submitted a comment letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission advocating for the approval of a spot Ethereum ETF. The letter refutes the SEC's concerns about potential fraud and manipulation, as well as concerns about Ethereum's proof-of-stake consensus design. ConsenSys emphasizes that Ethereum's security is superior to the framework supporting existing Bitcoin ETFs. The letter highlights Ethereum's fast block finality, distributed validation process, high cost of attack, reduced penalties, and environmental benefits.

Consensys has released an article introducing the fourth part of the Ethereum Dencun upgrade series, focusing on EIP-7514 (which will change validator churn limits) and EIP-1153 (which will introduce a transient storage opcode in the EVM execution layer). The article considers one EIP in 7514 as a proactive measure to prevent unsustainable consensus layer inflation, while the second EIP in EIP-1153 is seen as a major improvement to the EVM codebase that will benefit dApp developers and ultimately benefit end-users by reducing gas costs for more complex transactions.

Consensys has announced the winners of its inaugural Fellowship Program, which includes 16 projects: 1. Decentralized social platform Common Ground; 2. DAO governance protocol Butter; 3. Smart contract integration tool Bonadocs; 4. Wallet recovery service Tezoro; 5. Payment protocol Denota; 6. One-stop DeFi platform Toaster Finance; 7. Data service PADO; 8. Data service Noves; 9. Privacy stablecoin zkUSD; 10. Payment protocol Epoch Protocol; 11. Wallet service Greg; 12. ZK SaaS service Taigalabs; 13. Web3 marketing platform Relayer; 14. Web3 marketing platform Holder; 15. Transaction routing optimization service Xtremely; 16. Wallet service Caddi.

Consensys has announced the first batch of 16 start-ups selected for its scholarship program, which aim to use the Consensys software suite to completely change Ethereum and Web3. The 16 start-ups are: interactive protocol Common Ground, DAO governance protocol Butter, smart contract integration and collaboration platform Bonadocs, smart contract solution Tezoro, payment protocol and SDK Denota, DeFi integrated service platform Toaster Finance, IZK proof smart contract tool PADO, Noves, zkSNARK platform zkUSD, web3 trading protocol Epoch Protocol, wallet solution Greg, ZK proof Taigalabs focused on verifiable computing, on-chain performance marketing protocol Relayer, web3 CRM and marketing automation platform Holder, trading routing and arbitrage platform Xtremely, and DeFi trading expansion suite Caddi.

Former employees of Ethereum infrastructure firm ConsenSys have filed a lawsuit against the firm’s founder and CEO, Joseph Lubin, alleging that he diluted employee equity shares against earlier promises. The plaintiffs claim that Lubin breached a “no-dilution promise” made in 2015 and got rich while they got nothing.

ConsenSys, the parent company of MetaMask, has recently been sued by over 20 early employees of the company. These lawsuits allege that Joseph Lubin attracted employees with lower salaries in the early days of the company, but promised them equity rewards. Around 30% of the company's shares were distributed to employees, and the employees involved in this lawsuit hold approximately 9% of the company's shares.

Bloomberg News stated that dozens of former Consensys employees have filed a lawsuit against Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, accusing him of manipulating early employee stock rewards, shuffling assets such as the encrypted wallet provider MetaMask, and rendering Consensys AG stocks held by employees worthless. Lubin distributed 30% of the shares in the holding company to employees, with the former employees who filed the lawsuit holding approximately 9% of the shares. It is reported that in 2020, Lubin arranged for these assets (including encrypted tools developed by some of the software engineers and product designers who filed the lawsuit) to be transferred to a new US company, which made some of the shares held by employees almost worthless. The lawsuit was filed in the New York State court on Thursday, with employees seeking compensation for damages.

According to L2BEAT data on October 19th, the TVL of ConsenSys' Layer2 network Linea has reached 70.65 million US dollars, with a 7-day increase of 8.25%.

Consensys announced the acquisition of Special Mechanism Group (SMG), a renowned design firm focused on blockchain microstructure research. SMG will become a division of Consensys and continue to operate under the name SMG, providing the most advanced mechanism design for Web3 users, builders, and enterprises.