Is Ethereum Currently Undervalued At $4,700? NVT Reading Suggests So

An Ethereum Foundation team has released a roadmap outlining current progress and future plans towards building comprehensive end-to-end privacy into the world's second-largest blockchain. 

The Ethereum Foundation's Privacy & Scaling Explorations team has rebranded itself to Privacy Stewards of Ethereum (PSE), changing its focus from pursuing speculative exploration of new tech to solving concrete problems and improving ecosystem outcomes. The new PSE team released a roadmap on Friday, Sept. 12, outlining its current work and future goals for privacy on Ethereum, compiled by team member Sam Richards. 

"Ethereum is on the path to becoming the settlement layer for the world, but without strong privacy, it risks becoming the backbone of global surveillance rather than global freedom," Richards' roadmap states. "If Ethereum fails to build privacy, it fails to protect the people who rely on it."

The roadmap centers around three areas of focus: private writes, making private onchain actions as cheap and seamless as public ones, private reads, enabling reading from the blockchain without revealing identity or intent, and private proving, making proof generation and verification fast, private, and accessible. 

"Specific priorities and initiatives within [these] tracks will vary in their investment timelines and deliverables, and will evolve with the ecosystem, but we expect these general focus areas to persist for the next few years," the PSE team wrote. 

Under the private writes umbrella, the team plans to continue work on PlasmaFold, an experimental Layer 2 design, to add support for privacy transfer features. The team is working on a proof of concept for the feature, and hopes to debut it by Devconnect, the Ethereum developer-focused conference that will start on Nov. 17 in Argentina. 

The team is also planning to release a "state of private voting 2025" report to summarize efforts on private voting, according to the roadmap. Finally, the team is making efforts in confidential DeFi, likely designing protocols that ensure privacy while maintaining compliance for institutional clients, and continuing work on private computation projects.

For private reads, the team is working towards privacy-preserving RPC (Remote Procedure Call) services. Typical RPC calls can leak personal information, like an IP address or which accounts a user is interested in, so PSE convened a private RPC working group to evaluate solutions. And for private proving, dubbed "prove anywhere" in the roadmap, the team is working on a number of projects, such as making it easier and cheaper to generate zero-knowledge proofs on everyday devices. 

The roadmap reflects ideas and contributions from across the Ethereum ecosystem, Richards wrote, crediting "inspiration and input from [Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin], Silviculture Society, PSE team & particularly [independent researcher Oskar Thorén]." 

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A new report from Protocol Guild has shown that Ethereum’s core developers are being paid far below industry standards.

The survey collected responses from 111 out of 190 Guild members and found that most are earning 50% to 60% less than their peers in similar roles.Compensation Gap

Median salaries for surveyed Ethereum developers came in at about $140,000, compared with offers averaging $300,000 at rival projects. The report also detailed pay by area of focus, with average salaries at $130,000 for client developers, $215,000 for researchers, and $130,000 for coordination roles.

Additionally, these contributorssaidthat they don’t get any equity or token exposure from their employers. The general allocation was $0, with only 37% of respondents receiving anything. On the other hand, final-stage offers made to their peers at rival organizations in the past year included a median equity or token share of 6.5%. This ranges from cofounder-level allocations of 10% to 30% to early employee grants of 0.1% to 3%.

The gap has created pressure; almost 40% of respondents have received outside job offers in the past year. In total, 108 were disclosed across 42 individuals, with the average package reaching $359,000. Some developers said they had been offered as much as $700,000 to move elsewhere.Closing the Pay Disparity

Established in 2022, Protocol Guild has become a lifeline for such developers. Backed by the “1% Pledge” from projects including EigenLayer, Ether.fi, Taiko, and Puffer, the group has distributed over $33 million since launch. VanEck also pledged 10% of profits from its spot Ether ETF to the initiative in 2023.

Over the last 12 months, the average Guild member received $66,000 through this funding, while the median distribution was $74,285. That support represented nearly one-third of total annual compensation for many employees, with the mean pay rising from $140,000 to $207,121.

Survey responses show how important this extra support has been, with 59% of participants rating Guild funding as “very” or “extremely important” to their ability to keep working on Ethereum.

The network has secured nearly $1 trillion in value, serves millions of users, and powers thousands of applications reliant on key upgrades. Protocol Guild warned that inadequate compensation puts Ethereum at risk by undermining developer retention,slowingprogress on the roadmap, and threatening long-term neutrality.

The group also emphasized that aligning pay with market rates is important to keep talent in place and ensure the ecosystem’s future growth.

David Lawrence Ramsey III, an American radio personality (The Ramsey Show), financial commentator and the founder of Ramsey Solutions, has slammed cryptocurrency, saying that it may be more legitimate in the future but not now.

He also admitted that crypto is a currency, but a digital one, speaking not of Bitcoin or Ethereum but crypto in general. However, his take on crypto is rather mixed as he puts gambling, commodities, crypto and fiat currencies in the same pot when talking about it.

"Crypto is commodity and currency"

In a video excerpt published by the @DiscoverCrypto_ X account, David Ramsey is speaking during a recent Ramsey Show and is answering questions from the co-host about his take on crypto.

His take on cryptocurrency in general seems rather mixed, since while he believes it to be a digital currency, he still refers to it as a gambling tool and a fetish.

While answering questions by his co-host, Ramsey said that he does not believe crypto to be a proven investment, since he considers it a commodity, like gold or oil. He pointed out that he does not buy oil rigs either. Ramsey said, "It’s not gonna be a proven investment, because it’s a commodity. Commodities are never a proven investment."

"Dumber than crap"

He said he does not do much gambling when asked about buying crypto. He then stated that crypto is a currency and he prefers not to invest in that, like he does not invest in the Japanese yen or the Deutsche Mark (now Germany and the whole EU uses the euro). According to Ramsey, fiat currencies have a long track record, but crypto is also a digital currency with a short track record. In the future, he admitted, crypto may become more legitimate when it gets a longer track record.

But so far, “it is just all the cool kids doing stupid stuff.” He likened investing in crypto to investing in emus — fancy Australian birds — rather than in cattle, which in the past was considered a great investment. Also, people want to look cool, so they are losing money on it, Ramsey stated, calling crypto a fetish.

He concluded his anti-crypto tirade by saying that crypto is “dumber than crap.”

Dogecoin’s recent move has put traders on edge and split opinion across markets. Prices leapt this week as news and big trade flows pushed the token higher, creating a fresh round of buy-or-hold debates on trading desks and crypto chat rooms.

ETF Launch Faces New Delay

Based on reports, the eagerly watched US DOGE ETF has been pushed back again, with the earliest new listing window now sliding toward September 18.

That postponement briefly dented hopes of immediate ETF access, but it did not stop demand from rising. Some market participants treated the delay as a pause, while others used it to enter positions ahead of any eventual listing.

Price Rally Accelerates Momentum

Meanwhile, Dogecoin price is up 15% in the last 24 hours, and 38% in the last week. Traders moved the token above recent swing levels, with on-screen quotes clustered in the mid-$0.20s to $0.30s.