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This is a general announcement. Products and services referred to here may not be available in your region. Fellow Binancians, Starting at approximately 2026-07-18 20:44 (UTC), Binance will suspend the deposits and withdrawals of token(s) on the Cardano (ADA) network to support its network upgrade and hard fork to ensure the best user experience. The network upgrade and hard fork will take place at approximately 2026-07-18 21:44 (UTC). Please note: The trading of token(s) on the aforementioned network will not be impacted.Binance will handle all technical requirements involved for all users.Deposits and withdrawals for token(s) on the aforementioned network will be reopened once the upgraded network is deemed to be stable. No further announcement will be posted.There may be discrepancies between this original content in English and any translated versions. Please refer to the original English version for the most accurate information, in case any discrepancies arise. For more information, please refer to the announcement from the project team. Thank you for your support! Binance Team 2026-07-17

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has reassured the community that a major announcement involving Midnight is still on the way.

His comments came after rumors emerged that the highly anticipated Japanese partnership he teased in June had collapsed following a partnership between Japanese financial giant SBI Group and the Solana Foundation. 

SBI-Solana Partnership Sparks Speculation  As previously reported, SBI Group partnered with the Solana Foundation as part of efforts to position Japan as a leading hub for institutional on-chain finance in Asia. Consequently, some Cardano community members questioned whether SBI was the same company Hoskinson had referenced several weeks earlier.

One community member suggested that the newly announced SBI–Solana partnership could have been the deal Hoskinson had previously hinted at, arguing that the agreement may have fallen through before SBI ultimately chose Solana.

The speculation quickly gained traction because Hoskinson had earlier revealed that Midnight was close to securing a significant partnership in Japan.

Hoskinson Separates SBI Partnership From Midnight Deal However, Hoskinson swiftly dismissed the rumors and made it clear that the SBI–Solana partnership is unrelated to Midnight.

According to the Cardano founder, the SBI collaboration had “nothing to do” with the agreement he has been discussing. He also stressed that the anticipated announcement is “still pending,” indicating that the rollout remains ongoing rather than being canceled.

Notably, his clarification reassures the Cardano community that the previously teased Japanese initiative has neither been replaced nor abandoned. 

This had nothing to do with that deal. ANN still pending

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) July 14, 2026

Initial Midnight Teaser Hoskinson’s latest remarks refer back to comments he made in June, when he revealed that Midnight secured a significant partnership with a major Japanese company.

At the time, he admitted he was surprised that Cardano had managed to attract such a prominent partner. Although he declined to identify the company, he disclosed that the initiative revolves around NIGHT liquidity in Japan.

Following his latest clarification, the Cardano community continues to await the long-promised announcement.

Why the Midnight Partnership Matters Midnight remains one of the most significant technological developments within the Cardano ecosystem. Designed as a complementary privacy-focused blockchain, it enables organizations to process sensitive financial, enterprise, and regulatory data while preserving the security and transparency of Cardano’s public ledger.

Since its launch, Midnight has already attracted several high-profile partners, including Google and Telegram-related AlphaTON Capital. Consequently, a successful partnership with a major Japanese company could further strengthen Midnight’s institutional credibility and expand its presence in one of Asia’s most important financial markets.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

Verifying a thousand signatures on a blockchain typically sounds like a recipe for a massive gas bill. On Cardano, it is becoming a routine operation.

The Cardano Foundation has highlighted how Plutus smart contracts can now verify thousands of signatures natively using BLS12-381 elliptic curve cryptography, without routing the computation through external services or sacrificing cost predictability.

What BLS12-381 actually does BLS12-381 is a specific elliptic curve used in cryptography, most famously deployed by Ethereum’s beacon chain for validator signatures. The curve has a useful property: signatures created with it can be aggregated.

In English: instead of verifying one thousand individual signatures one by one, you can compress all one thousand into a single proof and verify that instead. The math checks out, and the on-chain cost stays flat regardless of how many signers were involved.

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CIP-0133, the Cardano Improvement Proposal driving these changes, proposes extensions for efficient multi-scalar multiplication over BLS12-381. The implementation is tied to Protocol Version 11, which is scheduled for rollout by May 2026 and will introduce five new Plutus built-in functions to support these operations.

Cardano’s deterministically executed eUTXO model does a lot of the heavy lifting on the cost side. Because execution costs are calculated before a transaction is submitted, users know exactly what they will pay. Adding new cryptographic primitives does not break that predictability.

Why this matters beyond the technical specs Cardano added native support for ECDSA and Schnorr signatures in 2023, which opened the door to improved multi-signature functionality and better cross-chain interoperability. The BLS12-381 work builds on that foundation, extending the cryptographic toolkit available to developers building on Plutus.

For developers, the removal of off-chain verification requirements is significant. Off-chain computation introduces trust assumptions: you need to rely on external services to do the work honestly and report results accurately back to the chain. Bringing verification fully on-chain eliminates that dependency and the attack surface that comes with it.

Market reaction and what investors should watch The honest read on the market response so far: muted. No significant price movement in ADA followed the announcement, which fits the pattern of infrastructure upgrades that take time to translate into visible ecosystem activity.

What investors should actually watch is developer uptake after Protocol Version 11 goes live. Multi-signature custody platforms, cross-chain bridge operators, and governance-heavy DeFi protocols are the categories most likely to respond first.

The risk, from an investor standpoint, is timing. May 2026 is still a development milestone on the horizon, and protocol upgrades have historically taken longer than initial projections across the industry. CIP-0133 and Protocol Version 11 are on the roadmap, but the gap between roadmap and mainnet deployment is where uncertainty lives.

Longer term, the accumulation of cryptographic primitives in Plutus, from Schnorr and ECDSA in 2023 to BLS12-381 arriving in 2026, represents a deliberate strategy of building serious infrastructure before optimizing for headline metrics.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

The Cardano ecosystem has suffered another setback after a decentralized exchange powered by Hydra announced that it is suspending operations indefinitely due to operational constraints.

DeltaDeFi, the first Hydra Layer 2-powered DEX on Cardano, confirmed the decision in an operational update. The announcement has reignited concerns across the Cardano community, with many viewing it as the latest addition to a growing list of ecosystem projects that have either shut down or reduced operations in recent months.

DeltaDeFi Suspends Development and Maintenance In an update shared with its community, the DeltaDeFi team revealed that it had exhausted its operational runway. This left it with no choice but to pause the project effectively immediately.

As a result, the team will suspend both platform development and active maintenance until further notice. During the downtime, the developers plan to evaluate strategies that could enable the project to resume operations in the future.

Meanwhile, DeltaDeFi announced plans to return its remaining funds to users once sufficient minimum UTXO becomes available to process withdrawals. The team also advised users who do not automatically receive their funds to contact the developers through the project’s X account or Discord server for assistance.

How DeltaDeFi Advanced Cardano’s Hydra Ecosystem DeltaDeFi stands out from many decentralized exchanges by building on Hydra, Cardano’s Layer-2 scaling solution designed to increase transaction throughput while reducing settlement times.

Unlike most Cardano DEXs that rely primarily on automated market makers (AMMs), DeltaDeFi adopted an order-book-based trading model. This approach delivered a trading experience closer to traditional financial markets while preserving the benefits of decentralized infrastructure.

The platform promoted features such as sub-second transaction settlement, high-speed order execution, and improved trading efficiency through Hydra’s scaling capabilities. With the project’s suspension, Cardano loses one of its most prominent real-world demonstrations of Hydra’s decentralized finance (DeFi) potential.

It bears mentioning that Hydra recently introduced v2.2.0, focused on real-world use cases, enhanced benchmarking, and optimized snapshot latency. 

Another Challenge for Cardano Builders DeltaDeFi’s decision adds to a growing list of Cardano projects that have recently scaled back operations or exited the ecosystem altogether. Projects including JPG Store, TapTools, and contributors such as Chicken have previously cited challenges ranging from rising operational expenses and limited funding to long-term developer sustainability.

Although each project has faced its own circumstances, several common themes have emerged. These include shrinking funding opportunities, increasing operating costs, prolonged market weakness, and ongoing ecosystem governance challenges.

DeltaDeFi’s operational pause reinforces concerns that even technically innovative projects on Cardano continue to face significant sustainability hurdles despite ongoing protocol upgrades and ecosystem development. 

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

The ADA community has reacted strongly after Intersect confirmed that responsibility for delivering Cardano’s presence at TOKEN2049 Singapore will shift from EMURGO to the Cardano Foundation.

The decision has sparked a governance debate across the Cardano ecosystem, with several community members arguing that the transfer bypasses the treasury governance process approved by Delegated Representatives (DReps). 

Intersect Explains Why the Cardano Foundation Will Lead TOKEN2049 In a recent announcement, Intersect revealed that EMURGO has been focusing its resources on managing the aftermath of the SecondFi incident. Consequently, the company informed Intersect that it could no longer allocate the personnel required to organize and execute Cardano’s participation at TOKEN2049.

Following discussions among EMURGO, the Cardano Foundation, and Intersect, the three parties agreed to transfer delivery responsibility for the event to the Cardano Foundation.

As the administrator of the treasury process, Intersect emphasized that its priority is to ensure approved governance actions are successfully delivered. Therefore, it described the change in the executing entity as the most practical solution, citing the limited time before the October conference and the need to avoid uncertainty surrounding Cardano’s participation.

The controversy traces back to an earlier governance decision. Cardano’s DReps previously approved EMURGO’s standalone treasury proposal requesting 3.3 million ADA to fund an official Cardano presence at TOKEN2049 Singapore. 

Now, Intersect confirmed that the Cardano Foundation would receive the approved funds and execute the project instead.

Community Questions Governance Process Meanwhile, Intersect’s announcement immediately drew criticism from several community members, who argued that the approved proposal specifically authorized EMURGO, not the Cardano Foundation, to execute the project.

Popular DRep Chris O described the decision as a breach of Cardano’s governance framework. According to him, DReps approved a proposal that explicitly assigned execution to EMURGO. Therefore, if EMURGO could no longer fulfill its obligations, the treasury funds should have been returned rather than reassigned to another entity.

Chris also argued that the Cardano Foundation should submit its own treasury proposal if it intends to organize the event. He also criticized what he viewed as Intersect and the Foundation unilaterally changing the terms of an approved governance action without seeking another DRep vote.

Additionally, community member Dramz called for the funds to be returned entirely, expressing frustration with EMURGO’s role in the situation. 

Similarly, another community member questioned why Intersect decided on behalf of the broader Cardano ecosystem. He urged the organization to return the funds to the treasury and allow a fresh governance proposal rather than modify the existing one. 

Just one quick problem with this. The DReps didn’t vote to fund CF to do Token2049. They voted Emurgo. I think it’d’ve been proper to at least seek DReps’ opinions on the swap before it happened rather than telling us about it after the event.

— Kit Willow 𖤍 (@willow_kit) July 14, 2026

Despite the criticism, not everyone opposed the decision. Some Cardano supporters argued that maintaining an official presence at TOKEN2049 outweighs the need to restart the treasury process.

They contend that requiring a new proposal could delay preparations and potentially jeopardize Cardano’s participation in one of the cryptocurrency industry’s largest conferences. From their perspective, transferring execution to the Cardano Foundation ensures the original objective of the approved proposal is achieved despite EMURGO’s operational constraints. 

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

Large investors holding between 100,000 and 100 million Cardano (ADA) have rapidly accumulated more than 25.6 billion ADA, taking significant supply off the market at a pace not seen since early 2023. On-chain data from analytics platform Santiment revealed that these “shark” and “whale” wallets raised their holdings by 1.8% over the past four months, returning to levels observed in February 2023.

Retail capitulation marks ADA multi-year lowsDuring the same period, smaller holders—wallets holding up to 100 ADA—decreased their positions by 0.7%. This outflow from small retail wallets comes amid a prolonged price downturn, which pushed ADA to multi-year lows in 2026. The ongoing negative sentiment has led many individual investors to abandon the asset, reflecting a classic scenario in which major players acquire ADA while retail participants lose confidence.

Wallet TypeADA HoldingChange (Last 4 Months)Sharks & Whales (100,000 – 100 million ADA)25.6 billion ADA+1.8%Small Retail (up to 100 ADA)N/A-0.7%This pattern suggests that while retail holders are reducing their exposure, larger investors are capitalizing on discounted prices by buying up available supply.

Throughout the recent downturn, accumulation by large holders has intensified, as retail sentiment remains particularly negative and smaller investors scale back their positions.

Development activity and scaling efforts continueDespite the difficult price environment, project developers have maintained steady progress on Cardano’s technical roadmap. In late June, the Musashi Dojo, a testnet for the forthcoming Leios upgrade, was launched, aiming to multiply transaction throughput and improve network scalability.

In addition, upgrades and integrations are underway on other core protocols, with ongoing enhancements to the Hydra and Mithril solutions. Cardano is also integrating new data oracle services from Pyth, expanding the ecosystem’s capabilities. Project funding activity within the network remains active, further supporting development efforts.

Mini dictionary: Pyth oracles provide real-time financial data to blockchain applications, enabling smart contracts to access and utilize information from outside sources for accurate execution.

While price action remains weak, ongoing large-scale accumulation by major investors, combined with continued network development, points to a potentially stronger technical outlook for ADA in the months ahead.

Catalysts underpin Cardano’s long-term outlookThe convergence of reduced retail participation and firm accumulation by whales is creating a technical foundation that market observers suggest is among the healthiest for ADA this year. Although this dynamic does not ensure a swift price recovery, the continued absorption of supply by major holders and the pace of network upgrades could set the stage for renewed momentum.

Cardano, developed by Input Output Global and designed as a proof-of-stake blockchain network, has established an active community of both developers and investors. Despite recent setbacks, continued innovation and network scaling efforts remain in focus for long-term growth.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Intersect has released an update on the status of the van Rossem hard fork, a pivotal upgrade for the Cardano blockchain. This intra-era hard fork will implement Protocol Version 11, introducing performance enhancements to Plutus, improved ledger consistency, and heightened node security. The upgrade also includes new primitives, VRF key uniqueness, and revised rules for reference inputs.

Ratification timeline and governance processThe Cardano network is in the closing 12 hours of epoch 642, a key window for completing the governance procedures required for the hard fork’s ratification. Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform focused on scalable and secure decentralized applications and known for its staged approach to development and rigorous peer review process.

Governance actions, including the ratification of the van Rossem hard fork, are currently under way. If ratification is not achieved by the end of epoch 642, the next two scheduled dates for possible enactment are July 18 and July 23. All actions must be completed before the hard fork’s expiration deadline on July 18.

Ratification is dependent on meeting several thresholds in Cardano’s on-chain governance, including support from Delegated Representatives (DReps), stake pool operators (SPOs), and approvals by Constitutional Committee (CC) members.

On-chain voting and adoption metricsThe van Rossem hard fork has surpassed key on-chain thresholds. DReps have provided 76.81% approval, exceeding the 60% requirement, while SPOs have reached 52.76%, passing the 51% threshold. In the Constitutional Committee, four out of five required approvals are in, though a final fifth vote—or an abstain—remains necessary. The CC is a governing body responsible for overseeing protocol changes and ratifications within Cardano’s evolving decentralized governance framework.

With on-chain voting close to completion, community attention has shifted to the governance-action priority system. Under the ledger rules, a hard fork ratification takes precedence over any other active governance actions, meaning that all simultaneous proposals will be postponed until the hard fork ratification is resolved.

Ecosystem adoption continues to grow, with 93% of block production in the current epoch now operating on Protocol Version 11. Exchange readiness has also increased, reaching 84.15% of tracked liquidity, which surpasses the set requirement.

StakeholderApproval RateRequired ThresholdDReps76.81%60%SPOs52.76%51%Constitutional Committee4 of 5 approvals5 approvalsBlock production (Protocol V11)93%–Exchange readiness84.15%–Mini dictionary: Intersect is a member-based organization focused on supporting and guiding decentralized governance within the Cardano ecosystem, bringing together various community stakeholders and institutions to coordinate protocol development and upgrades.

In its latest report, Intersect confirmed that the Hard Fork Working Group has formally recommended that the van Rossem upgrade proceed to ratification.

Hard Fork Working Group members have formally recommended ratification of the van Rossem upgrade, with Intersect noting that block production and exchange readiness have both surpassed the set thresholds.

To meet the final requirements, at least one additional Constitutional Committee member must vote or abstain, bringing the tally to the necessary five approvals. Until this occurs, the pending governance actions will be delayed in accordance with Cardano’s established rules.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

An exploit drained roughly 16 million ADA, about $2.4 million, from 374 Cardano wallets in late June. What happened next is the interesting part: EMURGO, one of Cardano’s founding entities, announced a recovery path to return the assets within two weeks, while an independent forensic team including Mt. Gox veterans published competing findings. Crypto has spent fifteen years insisting stolen funds are gone forever. Cardano is running a live experiment in whether that has to be true, and every chain is watching the precedent.

Summary

A Cardano linked exploit drained about 16 million ADA from 374 wallets, with EMURGO outlining a two week plan to return affected users’ funds. Independent investigators challenged parts of the official account, putting competing forensic findings at the centre of how victims could qualify for restitution. The recovery effort is testing whether a blockchain ecosystem can compensate theft victims without reversing the ledger or compromising decentralization principles. Between June 21 and 23, an exploit connected to a protocol called SecondFi drained approximately 16 million ADA, worth about $2.4 million, from 374 addresses on Cardano. As crypto thefts go, it barely registers: the industry loses that much most weeks, and 2026’s running total makes $2.4 million a rounding error. The theft is not the story.

The story is the response. Within days, EMURGO, the commercial arm among Cardano’s founding entities, announced it had identified a recovery path for affected users and would begin returning assets within roughly two weeks, one week to build the recovery mechanism and one to test it. Simultaneously, an independent forensic team, Tibane Labs, whose personnel include investigators from the Mt. Gox case, crypto’s original catastrophic theft, published a competing analysis of what actually happened, disputing elements of the official account. And the affected community, 374 wallets whose owners did nothing wrong beyond using a protocol, became the test population for one of the most consequential questions in the industry: whether a blockchain ecosystem can make theft victims whole without breaking the properties that make it a blockchain.

That question has a fifteen-year history of being answered no, at enormous cost, and a handful of famous exceptions that each bent the rules in a different way. Ethereum rolled back its ledger once, in 2016, and the decision split the chain permanently. Exchanges have reimbursed hacks from their own treasuries. Protocols have negotiated with attackers, paying bounties for returns. But a founding entity engineering restitution for users of a third-party protocol, on a chain whose ledger will not be rolled back, through a mechanism built and tested in two weeks, is a new entry in the genre, and its outcome, success, failure, or messy middle, will be cited in every post-exploit governance fight for years. This piece covers the exploit as best the competing forensics allow, the anatomy of the recovery mechanism and the hard constraints it must respect, the restitution genre’s history and where this attempt sits in it, the moral-hazard and precedent questions that make recovery controversial even when it works, and what the two-week experiment will actually prove.

What happened, as far as the forensics agree The reconstruction begins with an unusual feature: there are two of them. The official account, from EMURGO and ecosystem responders, describes an exploit connected to SecondFi that extracted funds from user wallets across a three-day window, with 374 affected addresses and roughly 16 million ADA taken. The independent account, from Tibane Labs, a forensic team whose resume includes the Mt. Gox investigation, examines the same on-chain evidence and disputes elements of the official narrative, a disagreement whose specifics matter less, for this piece’s purposes, than its existence: three weeks after the event, the ecosystem’s official and independent investigators have not converged on a single story of what occurred.

That divergence is itself a finding about the state of crypto incident response.

On-chain data is perfectly preserved and public, which is why blockchain forensics can achieve certainties conventional financial investigation cannot; but the interpretation layer, which contract behavior was intended, which approvals were informed, where the boundary between exploit and design flaw sits, remains contested terrain where reputations, liability, and recovery eligibility all hang on the framing. The pattern is familiar from the anatomy of every major protocol disaster: the chain records what happened with perfect fidelity and no opinion, and the fight is always over what it meant. For the 374 wallet owners, the practical consequence is concrete: the recovery mechanism’s design, and who qualifies for it, depends on which reconstruction prevails, which is why competing forensics are not academic but constitutive of the restitution itself.

The scale deserves honest framing too. Sixteen million ADA is about 0.04% of circulating supply; $2.4 million is small enough that EMURGO could plausibly reimburse it from corporate resources without any mechanism at all. The choice to build a recovery process instead, engineered, tested, documented, signals that the exercise is understood by its architects as infrastructure, a template being built at low stakes for use at higher ones, which is exactly why it merits the scrutiny this piece gives it.

The mechanism: what recovery can and cannot mean Every recovery attempt on a public blockchain operates inside the same iron constraint: the ledger does not go backward. Cardano’s history will not be rewritten; the stolen ADA sits wherever the attacker moved it, validly, as far as the protocol is concerned. Whatever EMURGO’s two-week build produces, it is not an undo button, and enumerating what it can be maps the entire design space of crypto restitution.

The first family is interception: if stolen funds sit on exchanges or touch regulated venues, they can be frozen and clawed back through compliance channels, the path that has recovered the largest sums industry-wide and the reason attackers launder through mixers and cross-chain routes, the bridge-hopping playbook every major theft now follows. Its reach ends where the attacker’s operational security begins. The second is negotiation: bounty offers converting attackers into white hats retroactively, effective embarrassingly often, and dependent entirely on the attacker’s incentives.

The third is replacement: making victims whole from some treasury, corporate funds, protocol reserves, an ecosystem pool, without touching the stolen assets at all, which is restitution in the economic sense and abandons recovery in the literal one. The fourth, rarest and most Cardano-specific in this instance, is mechanism-level remediation: where the exploited system itself, a protocol’s contracts, a wallet standard, retains any authority over the affected assets or their derivatives, that authority can sometimes be repurposed to restore balances, the approach that requires exactly the one-week-build-one-week-test cadence EMURGO described.

The announced timeline suggests a combination weighted toward the third and fourth families, and the details, at this writing, remain unpublished, which is appropriate caution and also part of the test: restitution mechanisms revealed before deployment invite gaming by exactly the adversaries they respond to. What can be evaluated in advance is the constraint set any design must satisfy. It must distinguish victims from opportunists, on-chain, against forensics that are themselves disputed. It must not create authority that persists after the emergency, because a standing power to reassign user balances is a bigger vulnerability than any exploit. It must not require the base protocol to special-case the event, the line Cardano’s own decentralization principles, governed by DReps precisely to prevent unilateral intervention, will not permit crossing. And it must complete fast, because every week of delay compounds the harm and shrinks the interceptable share. Two weeks, against those constraints, is aggressive, and the aggressiveness is the announcement’s real content: EMURGO believes the mechanism exists and is discoverable on a schedule.

The victims’ fortnight: what waiting inside a recovery is like The 374 addresses deserve a section of their own, because restitution debates chronically abstract the people they are about, and this population is unusually legible. The affected wallets skew small: the $2.4 million total across 374 addresses averages under $6,500 per victim, savings-scale money for the retail holders who dominate Cardano’s famously loyal base, not fund-scale positions with legal departments and insurance. Their fortnight is a specific experience the industry has never bothered to design for: funds visibly gone, an official promise of return on a stated schedule, competing expert accounts of what even happened, and no action available except watching announcements, a limbo in which every day of official silence gets read as bad news and every community rumor moves through the victim population at chat speed.

Two features of this experience matter beyond sympathy. The first is that victim behavior during recovery windows is itself an attack surface: fake recovery portals, phishing campaigns impersonating the restitution process, and advance-fee scams targeting exactly this population appear within days of every publicized exploit, harvesting victims a second time, and the quality of official communication, clear channels, signed announcements, explicit warnings that no one will DM them, is as much a part of the mechanism’s success as its code. The second is that the fortnight sets the template for what users can expect from the ecosystem, and expectations are load-bearing: an institution-courting chain whose retail base learns that infrastructure failures get handled competently retains those users through the next incident, while a botched communication cycle converts a $2.4 million exploit into a permanent trust discount far more expensive than the theft. The recovery’s architects are, whether they framed it this way or not, running crypto’s first serious customer-service operation for a decentralized loss event, and the industry’s notes on it will be as valuable as the mechanism itself.

The genre: how crypto has answered theft before The SecondFi experiment enters a genre with a defined canon, and its position in that canon is what gives a $2.4 million incident industry-wide stakes.

The founding text is Ethereum’s 2016 DAO intervention: facing the theft of a double-digit share of all ETH, the community altered the ledger to reverse it, and the decision’s price was permanent schism, the unaltered chain persisting as Ethereum Classic and the precedent haunting every subsequent governance debate. The lesson the industry took was that base-layer intervention works exactly once, at existential scale, and costs a chain’s neutrality forever; no major network has repeated it, through losses orders of magnitude larger. The second tradition is the exchange model: centralized custodians from the Mt. Gox estate through the modern majors have run reimbursements, creditor processes, and insurance funds, restitution as a corporate liability question, effective where custody was centralized and irrelevant where it was not. The third is the protocol-treasury model: DeFi projects reimbursing exploits from token treasuries or negotiated bounties, case by case, with outcomes ranging from full restoration to governance-vote refusals that left victims holding the loss, a genre in which the liquidation-era bad-debt socializations supplied some of the bitterest chapters.

What the canon lacks, and what SecondFi supplies, is the founding-entity model on a decentralization-first chain: an ecosystem steward, not the thief’s counterparty, not the ledger’s operator, engineering restitution for a third-party protocol’s users without touching the base layer. Cardano is, in one sense, the natural venue for the attempt, its culture prizes formal process and its governance apparatus is unusually explicit, and in another sense the hardest one, because the same culture treats ledger neutrality as close to sacred, and the community debate around the recovery has featured exactly the voices, on exactly the lines, the DAO fight canonized: make victims whole versus code is law, with a decade of intervening history sharpening both sides.

The timing layer: why this experiment, this month The recovery’s context supplies half its meaning, because the experiment is running inside the most delicate month Cardano has had in years, and every audience the mechanism performs for is watching for its own reasons.

The institutional audience arrived the same week: Clearstream, Deutsche Borse’s post-trade arm with trillions in custody, added ADA to its regulated custody services on July 7, the most significant institutional on-ramp in the asset’s history, landing days into the recovery window. Institutions selecting crypto assets audit precisely the thing SecondFi tests, how an ecosystem behaves when its infrastructure fails, and the recovery’s execution is, functionally, a live due-diligence exhibit for every custody and ETF conversation the ecosystem hopes to have. The market audience is watching a fragile turn: ADA rebounded roughly 30% from multi-year lows in the same fortnight, whale wallets accumulated through the crash while on-chain usage thinned, and the recovery sits inside a sentiment window where a competence story compounds the bounce and an incompetence story validates the lows. And the governance audience is internal: Cardano’s DRep apparatus and its constitutional culture have spent two years building the machinery of collective decision-making, the Van Rossem fork is moving through exactly that machinery this month, and a founding entity executing an emergency restitution adjacent to, but not through, the formal governance process is itself a constitutional data point, read closely by everyone who cares where the ecosystem’s real authority lives.

The timing also explains the two-week aggression. A recovery that completes before the news cycle moves on is an asset; one that drags into autumn is a liability regardless of outcome, because unresolved incidents metastasize in exactly the audiences above. The schedule is the strategy, and its keeping or slipping is the first verdict the experiment will render.

Moral hazard, precedent, and the case against success The strongest objections to the recovery deserve their full weight, because they are not callousness; they are the accumulated lessons of the genre.

The moral-hazard argument runs: every successful restitution teaches users that losses get reversed, which erodes the diligence that self-custody requires, subsidizes risk-taking on unaudited protocols, and converts founding entities into implicit insurers of an ecosystem they cannot actually underwrite, a liability that compounds until an exploit arrives at a scale no one can cover, whereupon the implicit promise defaults at the worst moment. The precedent argument runs deeper: a proven capability to restore balances is a proven capability to reassign them, and every government, litigant, and pressure group learns from the proof; the neutrality that makes public chains valuable is precisely the credible inability to do favors, and each benevolent exception prices that credibility down. And the selection argument is the practical edge of both: 374 wallets got a recovery mechanism because their loss was legible, bounded, and adjacent to a founding entity’s reputation, while the ecosystem’s countless smaller victims, of rug pulls, drainers, and their own mistakes, get nothing, which converts restitution from a principle into a lottery whose winners are chosen by newsworthiness.

The answers, from the recovery’s defenders, are also serious. Users harmed by infrastructure failures they could not have evaluated are not moral-hazard cases but consumer-protection ones, and an industry courting mainstream adoption cannot tell mainstream users that their diligence should have included auditing smart contracts. Precedent cuts both ways: an ecosystem that visibly cares for its users compounds trust, the asset every chain claims to optimize, and the intervention line, no base-layer changes, no persistent authority, can be held publicly and verifiably. The honest synthesis is that both sides are describing real gradients, and the experiment’s value is precisely that it will convert the argument into evidence: a recovery that completes cleanly, inside its constraints, without scope creep, is a data point the make-whole side has never had on a decentralization-first chain, and a recovery that fails, stalls, or requires quiet rule-bending is the strongest code-is-law exhibit since the DAO.

The forensics fight: why the second opinion matters The Tibane Labs dimension deserves fuller treatment before the conclusion, because independent forensics entering a live recovery is nearly as novel as the recovery itself, and its implications outlast this incident.

Crypto incident analysis has historically been a monopoly of the responding party: the exploited protocol, the affected foundation, or the security firm they retain writes the post-mortem, and the community consumes it as fact, with no institution playing the adversarial-review role that accident investigation runs on in every mature industry. The entry of an unaffiliated team, staffed by investigators whose formative case was Mt. Gox, the theft whose decade of creditor litigation taught crypto what unresolved forensics cost, breaks the monopoly on exactly the incident where the official account carries financial consequences: eligibility for restitution flows from the accepted reconstruction, and a disputed reconstruction means disputed eligibility, appeals, and the exact procedural morass the two-week schedule cannot absorb.

The dispute’s existence, whatever its resolution, teaches two durable lessons. The first is that restitution mechanisms need an evidentiary standard before they need code: who adjudicates victimhood, against which account of events, with what appeal path, questions the traditional financial system answers with courts and regulators and that a decentralized recovery must answer with something, publicly, in advance, or improvise under fire. The second is that a market for adversarial blockchain forensics is forming, funded by exactly these disputes, and its emergence is unambiguously healthy: official accounts that expect independent review are written more carefully, mechanisms designed under scrutiny are designed better, and the industry’s post-mortem culture, long a public-relations genre, acquires the beginnings of a discipline. If the SecondFi fortnight produces nothing else, a precedent that serious incidents get second opinions would justify the episode’s place in the canon by itself.

What the two weeks will actually prove The experiment resolves into observable outcomes on a short clock, and the reading guide is worth writing in advance. Completion on schedule, with victims restored and the mechanism’s design published for audit, proves the founding-entity model viable at small scale and makes it the reference implementation every future incident invokes, on Cardano and beyond. Partial completion, some victims, disputed eligibility, timeline slippage, proves the harder truth that restitution’s binding constraint is not engineering but forensics, and elevates the Tibane-versus-official divergence from footnote to headline. Failure or quiet abandonment feeds the code-is-law canon and, less obviously, damages the specific asset that motivated the attempt: Cardano’s institutional courtship, the Clearstream custody listing landing the same week, leans on the ecosystem’s reputation for process, and a botched recovery is a process failure in the one arena institutions watch.

Beyond the fortnight, the durable questions are two. Whether the mechanism, whatever it is, gets generalized, documented, criticized, and hardened into ecosystem infrastructure, or remains a one-off that future victims cite and cannot access. And whether the precedent’s boundary holds: the recovery’s architects have implicitly drawn a line, exceptional response, no base-layer change, no standing power, and the entire value of the experiment, for Cardano and for the industry, depends on that line surviving its own success. Crypto has proven, exhaustively, that it can build systems where theft is final. The SecondFi fortnight is a test of something the industry has barely attempted: whether it can build justice on top of finality without dissolving the finality, and 374 wallets, $2.4 million, and one founding entity’s reputation are the stakes of the first controlled trial.

Beyond Cardano, the audiences with the most to learn are the ones building the systems where this question arrives at a thousand times the scale. The tokenized-asset rails now carrying equities and Treasuries onto public chains inherit, with the assets, traditional finance’s non-negotiable expectation that errors and thefts get remediated, and every institution wiring real-world value into blockchain settlement is implicitly betting that something like the SecondFi mechanism, generalized, standardized, and legally legible, will exist when it is needed. The corporate chains have answered the question by centralizing it, their operators can intervene, and everyone knows it, which is exactly the answer the decentralized ecosystems cannot give and the reason this experiment matters disproportionately: it is a test of whether the neutral chains can offer remediation without becoming the corporate ones. Regulators, meanwhile, read incidents like this in their own dialect: a shown industry capacity for orderly restitution is an argument against prescriptive consumer-protection mandates, and a shown incapacity is the argument for them, which places the fortnight’s outcome, improbably, inside the same policy conversations deciding the industry’s classification and custody rules.

The final word belongs to proportion, which has been this piece’s method throughout. Two point four million dollars is nothing; 374 wallets are a village; two weeks is a news cycle. And the question the village and the fortnight are answering, whether a system built so that no one can reverse anything can still, when it matters, make things right, is the oldest and largest open question in the industry, older than the DAO, as large as adoption itself. Small experiments that answer large questions are the best bargains in institutional history. This one cost sixteen million ADA, none of it EMURGO’s, and its findings, either way, will be cited for a decade.

For readers tracking the experiment live, the checklist is short: the mechanism’s technical publication, the first restored balances on-chain, the treatment of disputed addresses, the Tibane findings’ final form, and whether any authority created for the recovery is verifiably dismantled afterward. Five items, two weeks, one precedent, and the rare crypto story whose ending will be a matter of public record rather than public argument.

And a housekeeping note befitting a live experiment: this piece freezes a moving story at the midpoint of its two-week window, the mechanism’s details were unpublished at this writing, and the account above should be read against the recovery’s actual outcome, which, by the time most readers arrive here, will be a matter of on-chain record. That the story can be checked against the chain is, fittingly, the whole point of the system being tested.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile, and you can lose your entire investment. Incident details reflect public reporting as of July 9, 2026, and the recovery process described is ongoing; verify current status before relying on any account of it. Always do your own research.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has confirmed that the ecosystem is close to launching a political party.

He made the announcement during his latest broadcast, where he also dismissed rumors that he plans to retire or leave the Cardano ecosystem. Reaffirming his long-term commitment to the network, Hoskinson revealed that preparations for the political party are already underway. He said the initiative is expected to launch soon, allowing ADA community members to participate.

“We are working on a political party, and we’ll imminently be launching that soon, and give people an opportunity to participate,” Hoskinson remarked.  

His commentary signals that the initiative has progressed from a proposal to an active project, although Hoskinson did not provide a specific launch date.

A New Governance Structure for Cardano Hoskinson’s latest remarks build on his earlier proposal to establish a political party that would operate as a large, Delegate Representative (DRep) within Cardano’s on-chain governance system.

The idea emerged after months of governance disputes across the ecosystem. Several treasury proposals, including some associated with Hoskinson, failed to secure DRep approval. The resulting governance tensions eventually contributed to the cancellation of Cardano Summit 2026. In response, Hoskinson first suggested becoming a DRep before unveiling plans to create a political party.

In his view, the proposed organization would coordinate decision-making on ecosystem growth, treasury allocations, and long-term strategic priorities. The initiative would also give ADA holders and ecosystem participants a structured way to engage in governance by joining the organization and voting on key initiatives. 

Hoskinson Backs the Cardano PRIME Proposal Meanwhile, Hoskinson has publicly endorsed the Cardano PRIME proposal. He expressed his support by replying “LFG” after AlphaGrowth announced that on-chain community voting for PRIME had officially begun.

PRIME is a 12-month initiative led by AlphaGrowth to accelerate Cardano’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem through protocol security audits, responsible liquidity incentive programs, and market expansion. The proposal seeks 120 million ADA in treasury funding, valued at approximately $19.2 million at an assumed ADA price of $0.16. If successful, the initiative aims to increase Cardano’s total value locked (TVL) by more than $200 million.

Such growth would represent a significant expansion from Cardano’s current TVL of roughly $73 million, with stablecoins currently accounting for most of the capital locked on the network.

Hoskinson has repeatedly emphasized that expanding Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem is one of the network’s highest priorities. He has previously described 2026 as a “do-or-die” year for Cardano’s DeFi ambitions, underscoring the need to attract more liquidity, users, and decentralized applications to the blockchain.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

EMURGO, one of Cardano's three founding entities and the developer of the SecondFi wallet, has formally stepped down from its seat in the Pentad governance coalition. The move, announced on July 8, 2026, comes directly in the wake of a major security breach that drained around 16 million $ADA from hundreds of wallets.

What Happened at SecondFi SecondFi is the rebranded successor to Yoroi, which EMURGO has described as Cardano's largest wallet provider. The service was hit by four distinct wallet-draining events discovered on June 22, compromising 374 addresses and roughly 16 million ADA, worth about $2.4 million at the time, according to EMURGO's own June 25 incident report. The breach resulted from a vulnerability in SecondFi's wallet generation software that allowed attackers to reconstruct private keys using publicly available blockchain data, affecting individual wallet addresses rather than the Cardano network itself.

The team said it separately secured about 129 million ADA through emergency containment. EMURGO has said compromised wallets should be treated as permanently exposed at the address and private-key level, and that it has engaged multiple independent firms to review the incident and code, while submitting a patch closing the identified vulnerability.

EMURGO said SecondFi will not return to normal operations after the incident, even after audits finish. Short-term priorities include asset safeguarding, a recovery fund, wallet status checks, and safe migration routes for users who need to move away from SecondFi. Users have also been warned to follow only official channels, as scammers have been targeting affected users through false support links.

Why EMURGO Left the Pentad EMURGO said it is stepping down from its role in the blockchain's Pentad governance group to focus its attention on recovering user funds following the exploit. The Pentad, comprising Input Output, EMURGO, the Cardano Foundation, Intersect, and the Midnight Foundation, is a coalition that works as a coordinated, treasury-supported process focused on network-wide infrastructure needs, emphasizing unified decision-making while maintaining ecosystem representation.

EMURGO said stepping aside reflects the accountability it owes as a Cardano founding entity. The move makes EMURGO the first of Pentad's five members to exit the group. The reaction within the Cardano community has not been uniformly sympathetic, with criticism surfacing quickly in replies to EMURGO's announcement, with users questioning the organization's handling of the exploit and, more pointedly, its continued association with Pentad's treasury resources. Pentad's 70 million ADA treasury allocation, approved in January, sits at the center of that scrutiny, with some community members questioning whether EMURGO should retain any portion of those funds given the security failure.

Cardano's ADA plunged roughly 5% after EMURGO announced its exit from the Pentad governance body. EMURGO has said it will publish a full account of the incident once security reviews are complete, and that its remaining focus on SecondFi will be limited entirely to helping affected users recover their assets.

Sources
The Defiant: EMURGO Says Hacked Cardano Wallet SecondFi Won't Reopen
The Block: Cardano Founding Entity EMURGO Steps Down from Pentad Governance Role
Crypto.news: SecondFi Won't Reopen After Cardano Wallet Breach

Hoskinson: Leios Puts Cardano on Par With XRP LedgerCardano founder Charles Hoskinson has made a bold claim about the network's next major protocol upgrade. Speaking in an interview with David Gokhshtein on The Breakdown podcast, Hoskinson said the Ouroboros Leios upgrade will increase Cardano's internal throughput by up to 60 times its current capacity. He argued the improvement would put Cardano on equal footing with the $XRP Ledger in terms of raw performance.

"Leios will be a 60x in terms of throughput inside the system, so we're good, we're as performant as XRP, and we still kept our principles," Hoskinson said.

The comparison carries real weight. The XRP Ledger is capable of processing up to 1,500 transactions per second with settlement times of 3 to 5 seconds, a benchmark that has made it a preferred network for payments and cross-border transfers. Cardano's current throughput sits well below that level, a gap that has drawn persistent criticism from developers and investors.

The Ouroboros Leios protocol introduces parallel transaction processing, aiming to reach speeds above 1,000 TPS while preserving decentralization and security. Hoskinson stressed that the gains come without the usual trade-offs associated with the blockchain trilemma, where scaling improvements often come at the cost of security or decentralization.

Testnet Live, Mainnet Targeted for Year-EndA public testnet called Musashi Dojo launched on June 23, 2026, marking the protocol's first operation in a live network environment. Mainnet deployment is scheduled before the end of 2026.

Hoskinson also said higher performance could attract more users, increase transaction activity, and lift DeFi TVL on the network. The comments follow an earlier warning from Hoskinson that Cardano's ecosystem could suffer if key governance votes fail to approve critical upgrades. He noted that the DeFi TVL on Cardano could collapse if governance members do not vote to approve the upgrades, remarks that came after notable Cardano ecosystem projects TapTools and JPG Store shut down.

The upgrade carries execution risk. Deployment on a live, decentralised mainnet introduces technical hurdles that a testnet environment does not fully replicate, and any delays could weigh on developer and market confidence heading into 2027.

Sources
BeInCrypto: Charles Hoskinson Bets Cardano Will Rival XRP Ledger's Speed After the Leios Upgrade
CryptoNews: Hoskinson Says Cardano Will Be as Performant as XRP With Leios Upgrade
CoinMarketCap: Latest Cardano (ADA) News and Updates

Cardano has reached one of the final technical checkpoints before the Chang hard fork, with node version 9.0.0 now released by IntersectMBO.

For more details, visit the official GitHub platform.

TL;DR Cardano node 9.0.0 has been released on GitHub.The upgrade is tied to the final preparation stage for the Chang hard fork.Chang is expected to move Cardano closer to on-chain governance. For ADA holders, this is not just a routine software update. Node releases are how Cardano’s governance roadmap becomes operational. The Chang hard fork has long been framed as the step that brings more formal decentralized governance into the network’s live structure.

Why Node 9.0.0 Matters Blockchains do not upgrade because a roadmap says they should. They upgrade when node operators, stake pool operators, exchanges, and infrastructure providers actually move to compatible software. That is why a major node release is worth watching.

Node 9.0.0 supports the technical path toward bootstrap governance thresholds. In plain English, it helps prepare the network for the governance machinery that Chang is supposed to activate. The more operators adopt the release, the closer the network gets to the conditions needed for the hard fork.

Governance Becomes The Test Cardano has always leaned heavily into research, process, and formal governance. Critics argue that this can make the ecosystem slow. Supporters argue that it is exactly what gives the chain durability. Chang will test that thesis in public.

The market response may still depend on broader ADA sentiment, but the development signal is straightforward: Cardano’s next major governance upgrade is moving from planning into execution.

This report is based on the Cardano node 9.0.0 release on GitHub.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

@Cardano's RealFi Phase 1 testnet goes live on July 6, opening the first public testing window for what founder @IOHK_Charles has called the largest upgrade in the network's history. The project aims to bridge decentralized finance with the real-world economy by putting idle on-chain liquidity to work in lending and credit markets. Hoskinson says RealFi is moving from the concept stage to actual implementation, with mainnet deployment expected to follow the testnet shortly after.

What RealFi Is Trying to Solve The core argument behind the initiative is direct: stablecoins have scaled as money but not as capital, leaving hundreds of billions of dollars sitting idle with no utility and no impact on the real economy. RealFi is @realfi_co's answer to that problem, with the testnet designed to let users stress-test the protocol's core features before a mainnet rollout. During Phase 1, participants can explore the platform, use its core features, and share feedback that will directly shape the protocol, framing the process as collaborative infrastructure-building in public.

Founder Charles Hoskinson called it "the largest upgrade" in the project's history, with the ambition of transforming hundreds of billions in idle stablecoins into productive capital for real-world economic impact. The broader RealFi vision extends beyond DeFi-native users. The milestone represents a significant step toward Cardano's long-standing mission of bringing financial services to unbanked populations while connecting blockchain liquidity with real-world economic activity.

A Busier Technical Calendar for $ADA The RealFi testnet is not the only upgrade on Cardano's near-term roadmap. Concurrently, the Protocol Version 11 (van Rossem) hard fork, for which major exchanges including Binance and Coinbase are already prepared, promises cheaper smart contracts and ZK-ready cryptography. Hoskinson has reiterated that Cardano's long-term fundamentals remain intact, pointing to continued progress across RealFi, the Midnight privacy chain, and Bitcoin DeFi as evidence that the ecosystem is expanding despite temporary setbacks.

For now, attention is on July 6. The Phase 1 testnet is open to the public, with @realfi_co inviting users to test core features and shape the protocol ahead of a mainnet launch that Hoskinson says is not far behind.

Sources:
The Crypto Basic: Hoskinson Says Largest Upgrade in Cardano History Is Imminent
CryptoPotato: Why Is Cardano (ADA) Up 15% in a Week?
DigitalToday: Cardano Nears Biggest Upgrade, Hoskinson Says ADA Fundamentals Solid

Cardano’s [ADA] treasury has become a central mechanism in developing the ADA ecosystem and funding long-term development. As governance expands in the Voltaire era, there is a need to evaluate if current spending limits are adequate. Therefore, Cardano has proposed to increase the Net Change Limit (NCL).

If the NCL increases from 350 million ADA to 500 million ADA, this represents a 43% increase in the treasury’s ability to fund infrastructure, DeFi, and the ecosystem projects.

Source: X The treasury currently contains approximately 1.47 billion ADA, with only approximately 68 million ADA withdrawn to date. This indicates that funding capability consistently exceeds usage.

While these numbers provide insight into the potential size of the treasury, they also highlight the importance of governance. Currently, DRep voting represents over 5 billion ADA. However, proposal ratification is averaging around 56%.

Looking ahead, stronger oversight and efficient capital deployment will determine whether the higher limit accelerates growth or reduces fiscal discipline.

On-chain activity begins to validate the outlook Whether that additional treasury flexibility translates into long-term growth now depends on how the broader Cardano ecosystem responds. Since the 23rd of June bottom, the network has added 14,783 non-empty wallets, reversing the previous slowdown in holder growth.

This represents a reversal of the earlier slowing rate of addition of new holders. Notably, ADA simultaneously recovered to about $0.20, rebounding 35% from its late‑June low. Such a recovery supports the idea that there is increasing participation and less speculation at this time.

Source: Santiment Notably, the continued increase in the number of wallets indicates users are continuing to enter or rebuild their positions even during the current volatile market conditions. This change occurred while the overall ecosystem was experiencing an unusually high level of uncertainty over several weeks.

Sustained growth in the number of holders, combined with a definitive recapture of $0.20, will further support the notion that recent capitulation has shifted to a larger-scale accumulation phase.

Taken together, Cardano requires efficient treasury execution and growing network participation to sustain its emerging recovery.

Final Summary Cardano could strengthen ecosystem growth if higher treasury funding is matched by disciplined governance and efficient capital allocation. ADA wallet growth and a price recovery toward $0.20 suggest confidence is gradually returning across the network.

Germany’s savings and cooperative banks are rolling out crypto trading to retail clients, wiring Bitcoin (BTC) into the apps of institutions that hold roughly 80 million customer relationships in a country of 84 million people.

The Sparkassen serve about 50 million customers, per DSGV data, and the cooperative banks another 30 million, per BVR figures. Both groups dismissed the asset class as too risky just four years ago.

German Banks That Rejected Crypto Trading Now Court MillionsAccording to Bloomberg, both groups are building in-house services rather than steering clients to outside exchanges. DZ Bank’s meinKrypto platform already runs inside the VR Banking App, offering BTC, Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Cardano (ADA).

BaFin licensed meinKrypto under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework in late December 2025, per DZ Bank’s announcement. Boerse Stuttgart Digital handles custody, keeping the whole chain under German supervision.

DekaBank is building the equivalent product for the roughly 340 savings banks, with a phased launch later this year. Each of the almost 650 cooperative banks and every Sparkasse opts in individually. DZ Bank product specialist Markus Bärenfänger expects hundreds to join.

Germany’s Local Banks Bring Crypto Trading to Millions in Major Mainstream Adoption PushThe reversal is stark. The savings banks considered crypto trading in 2021, then shelved it over incalculable risks. MiCA has since opened the door for Germany’s largest financial institutions.

Trust Advantage Collides With Total Loss WarningsThe trust math explains the bet. Germans trust their primary bank twice as much as specialized crypto platforms, 38% to 19%, per a Boerse Stuttgart Digital survey. However, only about a quarter have invested in crypto, in line with broader European adoption figures.

That trust is precisely what worries critics. Co-Pierre Georg, professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, argues that traditional bank customers may not grasp the risks.

“It is concerning that the floodgates to the cryptocurrency market are now being opened by savings and cooperative banks,” Co-Pierre Georg, professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, via Bloomberg.

Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens 

Even the savings banks’ own lobby group, DSGV, calls crypto a highly speculative investment carrying the risk of total loss. It frames the service as suitable for self-directed investors only.

Timing sharpens the debate. Bitcoin trades near $62,483 after falling roughly 50% from its October 2025 record of $126,080.

Bitcoin Price Performance. Source: BeInCryptoThe German lenders also join a wider European shift. UBS opened crypto trading for private clients in January.

For local banks, the payoff may be relevance rather than revenue. Westerwald Bank chief Ralf Kölbach warns that lenders skipping crypto lose younger, tech-savvy customers.

The bigger test is whether bank-branded credibility can survive the market’s next deep drawdown.

According to recent ecosystem data, the layer-1 blockchain is approaching full readiness for the V11 hard fork, which has been officially dubbed "van Rossem." 

Major cryptocurrency exchanges, including industry giants Binance and Coinbase, have already signaled their operational readiness. 

The much-anticipated upgrade is essentially ready to go, but it still needs to receive the final sign-off from the Constitutional Committee (CC). 

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The "van Rossem" hard fork?The upgrade has been named after the late Max van Rossem, and it is meant to honor his substantial contributions to building the Cardano community and developing its governance structure. 

Technically, V11 is categorized as an "intra-era" hard fork. This means developers can introduce new features and optimize the protocol without moving to a new blockchain era (this makes it possible to minimize protocol disruptions). 

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According to Cardano ecosystem contributors, the hard fork will introduce cheaper smart contracts, ZK-ready cryptography, as well as some new built-in functions. 

The van Rossem hard fork is supposed to act as a bridge to Cardano's next  Dijkstra era.

Full readiness The van Rossem hard fork requires the decentralized approval of multiple independent actors.

The network has already successfully executed the hard fork on its Preview and Preprod testnets to make sure that it is stable enough for a grand launch. 

Currently, on-chain metrics show overwhelming support and operational readiness. 

Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) have rapidly upgraded their infrastructure. Currently, 88% of all blocks minted in the past seven days were produced using the V11 node software.

Binance and Coinbase, the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, have thrown their support behind the fork. 

The required voting thresholds from both Delegated Representatives (DReps) and SPOs have been reached. 

Charles Hoskinson has pushed back against criticism surrounding Cardano’s absence from the Open USD (OUSD) stablecoin consortium.

During a recent exchange on X, Hoskinson argued that ecosystem participants cannot criticize Cardano’s lack of involvement in major commercial initiatives while simultaneously voting against proposals specifically designed to create those opportunities.

Hoskinson’s remarks came in response to criticism from prominent Cardano DRep YODA. The DRep questioned why major Cardano-related organizations, including EMURGO, Cardano Foundation, and Input Output Global (IOG), were absent from the newly formed Open USD Consortium.

Notably, the consortium includes more than 140 institutional partners, among them Ripple, Mastercard, OKX, MoonPay, and Visa.

Hoskinson Calls for Governance Accountability In response, Hoskinson stressed that governance participants must accept responsibility for the consequences of their voting decisions. According to him, the development teams invested hundreds of hours designing proposals intended to accelerate Cardano’s commercialization efforts. However, once those proposals entered the governance process, DReps voted them down.

“We put hundreds of hours, carefully proposing direct routes to commercialize Cardano. We brought it to a vote. You voted against it,” the Carano founder noted. 

Hoskinson added that he does not care about the reasons behind those decisions because DReps ultimately own the outcome of their votes.

“I don’t care about your reasons. You own the vote,” he remarked. 

Commercial Partnerships Require More Than Membership: Hoskinson  Meanwhile, Hoskinson argued that joining initiatives such as the Open USD Consortium is relatively straightforward. The more difficult challenge, he said, involves deploying capital and building the financial infrastructure necessary to support those partnerships.

As part of that effort, he pointed to his proposal for a managed sovereign wealth fund capable of providing liquidity, minting stablecoins, and financing ecosystem growth initiatives. Hoskinson also highlighted several projects that he believes form the commercial backbone of the Cardano ecosystem, including RealFi, Midnight, Blockfrost, and Pogan.

According to him, these initiatives provide the infrastructure upon which larger commercial integrations can be built. 

Governance Tensions Continue Across the Ecosystem The latest dispute further highlights the governance tensions that have dominated much of the year within the Cardano ecosystem.

The disagreements contributed to the cancellation of several IOG funding proposals, including research and development funding for Blockfrost and the Cardano Summit 2026.

Amid the ongoing debate, Hoskinson recently advocated for governance reforms. His proposals include moving Cardano governance discussions to a moderated Discord server, becoming a DRep himself to participate directly in voting and improve accountability, and revising the ecosystem’s constitution. 

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

The stablecoin market on the Cardano network recorded a double-digit increase over the past week, pushing its valuation above the $60 million mark.

According to data from DeFiLlama, Cardano’s stablecoin market cap climbed to $60.39 million, representing a 14.67% increase over the past seven days. The rise marks one of the strongest short-term expansions in the network’s stablecoin sector in recent months and signals increasing participation in Cardano’s decentralized finance ecosystem. 

Cardano Stablecoin Market Cap Soars USDCx Fuels Cardano Stablecoin Valuation  The surge came only days after an unidentified user bridged more than $10 million worth of USDCx onto the Cardano blockchain. Several ecosystem participants highlighted the transaction, including Cardano DeFi aggregator DEX Hunter.

Meanwhile, additional USDCx tokens have continued to enter circulation on Cardano. Data shared by SNEK co-founder Rami indicates that roughly $4.5 million worth of USDCx was minted on the network within two days, further strengthening stablecoin liquidity. As a result, the fresh capital inflow has deepened liquidity across the ecosystem.

USDCx, the Circle-backed stablecoin introduced to Cardano earlier this year, has quickly established itself as the dominant stable asset on the network.

Currently, USDCx commands a market share of 59.38%, accounting for $35.85 million of Cardano’s total $60.39 million stablecoin market cap. The rapid growth highlights increasing adoption of the asset as users seek seamless access to cross-chain liquidity within the ecosystem.

Stablecoin Growth Supports Total Value Locked The rise in stablecoin liquidity also lifted Cardano’s total value locked (TVL), which climbed to approximately $82 million earlier this week before retreating to around $75 million following the latest decline in ADA’s price.

Despite the pullback, analysts believe the recent increase in stablecoin reserves provides a stronger foundation for future DeFi expansion on the network. Cardano research analyst Dr. Cuadrado believes the recent influx of stablecoin liquidity marks the beginning of a major growth phase for the ecosystem.

According to him, the most explosive stage of the current bull market could begin once Cardano’s stablecoin market cap surpasses its total value locked. He argued that such a development would signal the presence of excess liquidity waiting to be deployed across decentralized applications.

In his view, higher stablecoin reserves would lead to deeper liquidity pools, increased borrowing and lending activity, larger trading volumes, and more attractive yield opportunities across the network.

ADA Remains Under Pressure Despite Improving Fundamentals Meanwhile, ADA continues to face bearish pressure despite the improvement in on-chain metrics. The asset has gradually slipped down the global cryptocurrency rankings and currently stands as the world’s 18th-largest crypto by market cap.

At press time, ADA had a market valuation of $5.53 billion and traded at $0.1519 per token, representing a 35.43% decrease over the past month.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

Cardano’s network has continued to see notably low transaction fees in recent months, alongside progress in decentralization metrics and declining user costs. Data from the platform highlights that despite ADA’s weak price action, Cardano is maintaining technical resilience on the blockchain side.

Transaction fees remain lowAccording to Chainspect data shared by analyst MB, Cardano’s transaction fees have largely fluctuated within a narrow range of $0.07 to $0.09 over the past three months. While transaction costs have surged rapidly during busy periods on many blockchains, Cardano has managed to keep operating costs low despite ongoing transfers and staking activity.

During periods of increased network use, fees briefly approached $0.09, a spike attributed primarily to DeFi and NFT transactions. However, this rise proved temporary; by June 20, transaction costs had slumped to $0.05143. This marks a roughly 35% drop from the previous average of $0.08.

Despite higher on-chain activity, Cardano managed to keep transaction costs low, with fees falling to $0.05143 on June 20.

ADA price outlook remains cautiousAlthough the network’s technical performance appears stable, ADA’s market structure remains fragile. Analyst Ali Charts noted that following a recent attack on Cardano wallets—resulting in the theft of 129 million ADA, worth around $20 million—the daily chart has shown a TD Sequential buy signal.

However, doubts persist about the sustainability of any price rebounds. Analysts highlight a key resistance zone between $0.160 and $0.176. The formation of lower highs and lower lows in ADA’s price structure continues to weigh on sentiment. At the time of reporting, ADA is trading above $0.144, currently near $0.1503.

Mini glossary: TD Sequential is a technical analysis indicator that helps identify possible turning points in price action, while resistance refers to a price region where selling pressure may stall a rally.

Decentralization and institutional interest in focusCardano is showing signs of not only stable fees but also a strengthening network structure. Chainspect data reveals the network’s Nakamoto coefficient has climbed to 28—a figure measuring the minimum number of independent entities required to compromise a blockchain’s control. With this metric, Cardano has surpassed Avalanche to claim third place for decentralization.

In practical terms, this means 28 independent actors would need to act in concert to undermine Cardano’s network. Developed in 2017 under the leadership of Charles Hoskinson, Cardano is known for its research-driven approach to blockchain innovation.

Institutional activity around Cardano is picking up as well. Market analyst Cheeky Crypto reported that asset manager Bitwise is planning to launch an ETF comprising 10 cryptocurrencies, including ADA. Bitwise is a leading developer of crypto-focused investment products, and such a launch could boost institutional interest in Cardano.

Cheeky Crypto stated that Bitwise’s plan for an ETF including ADA could be a catalyst for increased institutional engagement with Cardano.

In the coming period, traders will be watching to see if ADA can establish a foothold above the $0.160–$0.176 resistance range. Network activity, deepening decentralization, and Bitwise’s ETF initiative are expected to be key factors shaping price trends moving forward.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

The Cardano Foundation is telling Stake Pool Operators they need to actually show up and vote. Not just let the system auto-abstain on their behalf, but deliberately choose Yes, No, or Abstain on governance actions, even if abstaining is what they planned to do anyway.

It might sound like a distinction without a difference. It’s not. An explicit abstain vote signals that an SPO reviewed the proposal and made a conscious decision. Auto-abstain means they didn’t bother looking. In a governance system built on transparency and accountability, the gap between those two is enormous.

Why manual votes matter in Voltaire-era governance Cardano’s governance structure, part of its Voltaire era, splits decision-making power across three groups: Stake Pool Operators, Delegated Representatives (DReps), and the Constitutional Committee (CC). Most governance actions require at least two of these three groups to approve them, with SPO votes often needing a minimum of 51% approval for certain action types.

The Foundation itself has committed to voting on all governance actions and publishing public rationales for each decision. To help SPOs and other participants navigate what can be a confusing process, the Foundation released 14 flowcharts in July 2025. These tools break down the various governance action types and clarify the responsibilities of each voting group.

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The push for active voting also ties into the Foundation’s broader strategy of reducing its own outsized influence. In early 2026, the Foundation adjusted its delegation strategies by cutting back on passive holdings, a move designed to encourage others to step into more active governance roles.

The treasury vote that proved governance is real A treasury withdrawal proposal requesting approximately 7.8 million ADA, roughly $2 million, to fund the Cardano Summit 2026 went to a community vote. It needed 66.67% DRep support to pass. It got 65.21%. The proposal failed by less than 1.5 percentage points, and the Summit, which had been scheduled for early June 2026, was cancelled as a result.

The Foundation’s role in that vote is worth noting. Rather than casting its own vote, it abstained specifically to avoid exerting undue influence on the outcome.

The failed vote also illustrates why the Foundation is now pushing SPOs to participate actively. Every abstention, whether deliberate or by default, affects the math. When governance actions live or die by fractions of a percentage point, passive non-participation isn’t neutral. It’s consequential.

The bigger picture: decentralization gets uncomfortable The three-body governance model, with SPOs, DReps, and the CC each holding distinct roles, is designed to prevent any single faction from dominating. Cardano’s high approval thresholds, requiring a two-thirds supermajority for treasury actions, create a natural check against unrestrained spending.

The Foundation’s insistence on public rationales for every vote adds another layer of accountability. When voters have to explain their reasoning on-chain, it becomes much harder to engage in performative governance or vote trading without scrutiny.

Notably, ADA’s price showed no significant immediate reaction to the failed treasury vote. Governance participation rates and voting patterns are becoming metrics worth tracking for anyone evaluating Cardano’s fundamental health, not just its token price.

The Foundation’s call for SPOs to vote explicitly rather than auto-abstain is, at its core, a recognition that decentralized governance only works if people actually govern.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Cardano wallet SecondFi has identified a recovery path for users affected by Tuesday's exploit and expects to begin returning assets in about two weeks, following testing and security reviews.

According to a Saturday statement by Phillip Pon, CEO of SecondFi developer Emurgo, the company completed forensic investigations and established a recovery pathway for affected users. Pon said the coming week would be spent building the solution, followed by another week of testing before assets begin to be returned.

Pon urged users to refrain from migrating assets or taking actions outside official guidance, saying the recovery process was designed around existing wallet states and that independent action could complicate the secure return of funds.

SecondFi developer Emurgo shared an update on the wallet's recovery efforts. Source: Emurgo

SecondFi disclosed a security breach on Tuesday that affected approximately 16 million ADA, worth about $2.4 million at the time, across 374 addresses. SecondFi previously said it traced the incident to an address-level issue in its Cardano web wallet generation software that exposed users' private keys.

The company also said it secured roughly 129 million ADA through emergency measures and transferred the funds to an independent third-party custodian, where they will remain until the verification and recovery process is complete.

SecondFi has not yet published a comprehensive post-mortem detailing the vulnerability or how the exploit was carried out.

SecondFi warns of recovery-related scamsIn a separate update on Saturday, SecondFi warned that malicious actors are circulating fraudulent messages impersonating the wallet while its recovery effort remains underway. 

The company said no recovery actions requiring user participation have begun and that it will never ask users for private keys, seed phrases, wallet credentials or direct wallet access.

SecondFi said any messages instructing users to submit wallet information, migrate assets or take immediate action outside its verified communication channels should be treated as fraudulent. 

It added that users requiring assistance should submit a ticket through its official support portal while the recovery process continues.

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Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

A Smart Contract Approach to Wallet RecoveryCardano founder Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) is experimenting with a smart contract designed to help users recover funds from wallets compromised in the recent SecondFi exploit. According to Hoskinson, the contract would use a zero-knowledge proof to verify that a claimant possesses the 24-word seed phrase associated with an affected wallet, without requiring that phrase to be exposed on-chain. If verified, the contract would vend $ADA and Cardano native tokens from a dedicated recovery pool to the confirmed owner. Hoskinson said he plans to coordinate with the Midnight team and key developers on the findings before any wider rollout.

The Midnight network, Cardano's privacy-focused sidechain, is a natural fit for this kind of work. Hoskinson has previously described Midnight as deeply connected to zero-knowledge systems , and the project's cryptographic tooling makes it a practical base for building proof-based recovery mechanisms.

The SecondFi Exploit: What Happened SecondFi, the Cardano wallet formerly known as Yoroi, confirmed a major exploit that drained roughly 16 million $ADA, worth approximately $2.4 million, from 374 user wallets across three separate attacks. SecondFi's team traced the breach to a vulnerability in its proprietary wallet generation software, which gave attackers access to funds across multiple user wallets. Critically, Cardano's base protocol was not the entry point.

The team rescued a further 129 million $ADA before attackers could reach it, routing funds to a third-party custodian, but blockchain security firm SlowMist estimates total losses could still exceed $20 million pending an independent audit. Users cannot protect themselves by simply moving their seed phrase to another wallet. The vulnerability activates at the address level when a transaction is signed, and affected users must submit claims directly to SecondFi.

SecondFi was built on the foundations of Yoroi, a wallet created by EMURGO, one of the three founding entities behind Cardano. That history makes the breach sting harder for the community. The team says it is working with IOG, Cardano Foundation, IntersectMBO, and SundaeSwap to limit damage across the wider ecosystem.

Hoskinson's proposed recovery mechanism remains experimental, and no timeline has been confirmed. Its viability will depend on the technical findings from his coordination with the Midnight team and core developers. For now, affected users have been advised to wait for official guidance from SecondFi before taking any independent action.

Sources:
CoinDesk: SecondFi loses $2.4 million in Cardano wallet exploit, up to $20 million at risk
CryptoNewsZ: SecondFi fixes Cardano wallet flaw that led to 16M ADA theft
CoinGabbar: SecondFi Cardano Wallet Exploit: User Impact and Recovery Plan

Charles Hoskinson reassures the ADA community following the security incident involving SecondFi, emphasizing that the breach did not compromise the Cardano blockchain itself.

His comments came as concerns spread throughout the Cardano ecosystem after reports revealed that attackers exploited vulnerabilities connected to SecondFi wallets, resulting in significant losses for affected users.

Hoskinson: Cardano Core Infrastructure Remains Secure According to Hoskinson, there is no evidence that the incident affected any component of Cardano’s underlying technology stack. He stressed that the network’s protocol, cryptographic foundations, node infrastructure, and open-source wallet implementations continue to function as intended. 

Consequently, he classified the incident as an application-level security failure rather than a failure of the blockchain itself. His commentary sought to calm fears that the breach could threaten ordinary ADA holders who do not use SecondFi. 

Update https://t.co/23F2M0YrUp

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) June 24, 2026

“Cardano Was Not Hacked” Further, he rejected claims that the blockchain itself was compromised, stressing that “Cardano was not hacked.” According to him, describing the incident as a “Cardano hack” creates the false impression that the blockchain’s core infrastructure failed.

Interestingly, he compared the situation to a vulnerable third-party application running on an operating system. Using an analogy involving Microsoft and its Windows platform, Hoskinson argued that users do not blame Windows whenever an external application contains bugs or security flaws.

Similarly, he maintained that vulnerabilities in an individual wallet or financial application should not be interpreted as weaknesses in Cardano’s protocol. He also reiterated that users’ funds across the broader Cardano ecosystem remain secure.

SecondFi Confirms Attack Originated at Address and Signing Layer Hoskinson’s reassurance followed reports of a large-scale exploit suffered by SecondFi (formerly Yoroi Wallet), a neo-finance application owned by EMURGO, one of Cardano’s founding entities.

Following the incident, SecondFi disclosed that the breach occurred at the address and transaction-signing level, allowing malicious actors to initiate unauthorized transactions.

According to the company, four separate wallet-draining incidents occurred earlier this week. Three of those attacks were linked to external threat actors and resulted in the theft of approximately 16 million ADA from 374 wallets.

Meanwhile, the company revealed that it secured an additional 129 million ADA by transferring the assets to a third-party custodian as an emergency precaution.

SecondFi Deploys Patch and Begins Recovery Process In response to the incident, SecondFi announced that it has already deployed a security patch and engaged an external auditor to verify customer holdings. The company also confirmed that it is developing a claims process for affected users to facilitate compensation and recovery efforts.

Notably, SecondFi warned users not to restore their recovery phrases into other wallets. It added that doing so could disrupt or complicate the claims process for affected funds.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

2026.06.14 10:47:19

On June 14, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings show the regulator has formally approved a rule change proposed by NYSE Arca that enables the listing and trading of the T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF. An actively managed cryptocurrency ETF, the fund will invest in a basket of digital assets meeting SEC-defined "eligible asset" criteria. While it uses a cryptocurrency index as its benchmark, it will not track that index passively. The filing notes the fund is projected to hold roughly 5 to 15 distinct cryptocurrencies, including major tokens like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), XRP, Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX), Litecoin (LTC), Polkadot (DOT), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Chainlink (LINK). The SEC filing also reveals the fund may hold stablecoins—primarily USDC—as "tokenized cash" during normal operations to cover expenses and rebalance assets, though these will not count toward its core investment portfolio. The approval notice stresses the product must adhere to NYSE Arca’s rules around anti-manipulation, disclosure, liquidity, and risk management. It also requires the fund to have information barriers (often called "firewalls") and position transparency mechanisms in place to uphold market fairness and prevent insider trading. Analysts say this ETF’s approval further expands cryptocurrency’s footprint within the traditional financial sector, marking the arrival of actively managed multi-crypto ETFs as tradable products under mainstream regulatory oversight.

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Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin is now available in the Cardano ecosystem through an integration by the cross-chain bridge Wanchain. This development comes amid the Cardano ecosystem’s plans to integrate more stablecoins on the network, while Ripple is also eyeing expansion of its stablecoin beyond the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and Ethereum.

Ripple’s RLUSD Now Available On The Cardano Network In an X post, Wanchain revealed that its cross-chain bridge now supports the RLUSD stablecoin. With the integration, users will be able to bridge the stablecoin directly from the XRPL network to the Cardano network. Furthermore, they can bridge the stablecoin from Ethereum to Cardano.

Additionally, users can bridge Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin on XRPL or Ethereum to Wanchain and then route it from the bridge to the Cardano network. The bridge also enables bridging from the XRPL to the top Layer-1 network, Ethereum.

It is worth noting that RLUSD is currently issued natively only on the XRPL and Ethereum networks. However, Ripple announced plans last year to expand the stablecoin to Ethereum layer-2 networks, including Base, Optimism, Unichain, and Ink. The firm also noted that testing on these chains will begin in partnership with Wormhole.

RLUSD currently ranks as the 8th largest stablecoin, with a market cap of $1.5 billion. Most of the stablecoin’s supply currently sits on the Ethereum network, while 382 million tokens are in circulation on the XRP Ledger.

Boost For Cardano’s Ecosystem Ripple’s RLUSD becomes the second tier-1 stablecoin available to Cardano users, following USDC’s launch on the network earlier this year. It is worth noting that Cardano’s stablecoin market cap has climbed to $50 million following the launch of USDC.

The network’s DeFi TVL had also climbed when USDC launched on the network and could rise again, with network users now able to access RLUSD through the cross-chain bridge. Interestingly, Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, has long teased plans to integrate RLUSD natively into the network, though that has yet to happen.

Meanwhile, amid RLUSD gaining access to the Cardano ecosystem, Cardano stakeholder Input Output has put nine proposals forward in a bid to scale the network. Notably, none of them focuses on stablecoin integrations, with the highlight being the Leios upgrade, which developers aim to use to scale the network to 27 million monthly transactions by 2030.