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U.S. Bitcoin ETFs recorded provisional net inflows of $82.9 million for Sep. 28–Oct. 2, while Ethereum ETFs posted $118 million in net outflows, according to Farside Investors. Bitcoin’s reported weekly intake fell sharply from $2.39 billion in the preceding week.

Summary

Bitcoin ETFs added $82.9 million, with Friday’s BlackRock IBIT entry still pending. Ethereum ETFs lost $118 million after attracting $689.8 million in the previous week. Solana ETFs recorded $800,000 in net inflows, down from $188.1 million a week earlier. Hyperliquid ETFs added $3.4 million, while Zcash’s tracked fund lost $77.6 million. Farside Investors’ data showed Bitcoin ETFs recording inflows on four of the five trading days. Wednesday’s withdrawals reduced the weekly total, while Thursday’s intake was the largest positive session of the period.

Friday’s figures remained incomplete when checked on Oct. 3. Farside showed blank entries for BlackRock’s IBIT, ETHA and ETHB, so the Bitcoin and Ethereum weekly totals remain provisional.

Bitcoin ETF inflows fall from $2.39 billion Bitcoin funds opened the week with $31 million in net inflows on Monday, followed by $66.2 million on Tuesday. Wednesday brought $148.7 million in withdrawals before investors added $102.7 million on Thursday and a reported $31.7 million on Friday.

BlackRock’s IBIT recorded $292 million in net inflows across Monday through Thursday. Its largest intake was $195.6 million on Oct. 1, following $9.5 million in withdrawals a day earlier.

Fidelity’s FBTC posted $167.9 million in weekly net outflows, despite receiving $29.3 million on Friday. Bitwise’s BITB lost $38.6 million, while Grayscale’s GBTC recorded $54.6 million in withdrawals.

ARKB added $25.5 million over the week, and Grayscale’s BTC fund attracted $24.9 million. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT recorded $9.4 million in inflows.

The preceding week, Sep. 21–25, delivered five consecutive positive sessions, including $999 million on Monday and $714.7 million on Tuesday.

Ethereum ETFs reverse the previous week’s inflows Ethereum funds began Monday with $17.1 million in net inflows before recording withdrawals during each subsequent session, according to Farside’s Ethereum figures.

Tuesday’s outflow was $2.8 million. Withdrawals then reached $59.6 million on Wednesday and $55.4 million on Thursday, followed by a provisional $17.3 million on Friday.

Fidelity’s FETH accounted for $74.1 million in weekly net outflows. Its largest withdrawal was $26.6 million on Wednesday, followed by $23.5 million on Thursday.

Grayscale’s ETHE lost $27.9 million, while its ETH fund recorded $11.2 million in net withdrawals. VanEck’s ETHV and Franklin’s EZET lost $6.9 million and $6.1 million, respectively.

BlackRock’s ETHA recorded $6.5 million in net inflows through Thursday, while ETHB showed zero flows over those four sessions. Both Friday entries remained blank.

The reversal followed $689.8 million in Ethereum ETF inflows during Sep. 21–25, when every session finished positive. Monday’s $270 million intake led that earlier week.

Solana ETF inflows shrink to $800,000 Solana ETFs finished the week with $800,000 in net inflows, according to Farside’s table, compared with $188.1 million in the preceding week.

Monday and Tuesday brought inflows of $7.7 million and $5.4 million. Funds then lost $12.5 million on Wednesday and $1.1 million on Thursday before adding $1.3 million on Friday.

Bitwise’s BSOL recorded $1.3 million in weekly net inflows. Grayscale’s GSOL added $5.4 million, while FSOL attracted $2.8 million.

VSOL posted $6.8 million in withdrawals, and MSOL lost $1.9 million. TSOL and SOEZ recorded zero flows throughout the week.

BSOL’s $9.7 million Monday intake was its largest positive session, while its $8.9 million Wednesday withdrawal was its biggest outflow.

Hyperliquid gains $3.4 million as Zcash loses $77.6 million Hyperliquid ETFs recorded $3.4 million in net inflows, Farside reported. Monday and Tuesday showed zero flows, followed by a $5 million Wednesday withdrawal and inflows of $5 million on Thursday and $3.4 million on Friday.

HYPG attracted $8.4 million over the week, offsetting $5 million in withdrawals from BHYP. THYP recorded zero flows. The group had received $9.3 million during Sep. 21–25.

Farside’s Zcash data showed $77.6 million in withdrawals from ZCSH, reversing the previous week’s $35.2 million intake.

The fund lost $8.1 million on Monday, recorded zero flows on Tuesday, and posted $30.2 million in withdrawals on Wednesday. Further outflows reached $12.4 million on Thursday and $26.9 million on Friday.

Fraudsters drained more than 766 ETH—valued by the community at roughly $2 million—by launching a counterfeit Ethereum Layer 2 that posed as GIWA before the real network ever went live. GIWA is an OP Stack project from Dunamu, the operator of South Korea’s Upbit exchange.

Official accounts have been clear that mainnet is still unfinished and that only Sepolia testnet infrastructure exists.

Scammers filled that vacuum with a look-alike chain that reused chain ID 9134, published unofficial RPC endpoints, and offered a bridge that accepted real ETH from Ethereum.

The fake network was not a simple phishing site.

It included OP Stack-style components, among them a bridge and a batcher that posted batches back to Ethereum, so wallets and explorers treated it as a functioning L2.

https://t.co/u5MCU96ilE

— DYORSWAP (@DYORSWAPDEX) September 27, 2026

DYORSWAP, a multi-chain DEX, listed the impostor as GIWA mainnet after the matching chain ID passed an initial check.

Once the listing went live, users treated the bridge as official infrastructure and began depositing.

DYORSWAP later published on-chain reconstruction.

The fraudulent bridge at 0xbA9938C0b96A70E6479661B915e7E481fE435ab2 was deployed from 0x119e68B59C44291F76324c76377B776D0b4Dd38c at 02:10:59 UTC+8 on 27 September 2026.

About 8.5 hours earlier the deployer received a small ETH transfer from an address linked to ChangeHero.

Shortly after the bridge went live, several small test deposits arrived in the same second from wallets that looked like internal probes.

In total, 1,335 addresses sent about 767.65 ETH across the bridge.

Attackers then withdrew about 766.25 ETH.

The DEX has said this was not a vulnerability in its own contracts.

It and its users were both caught by an impersonation of an unreleased chain.

The platform preserved chat logs, RPC data, bridge addresses, and transaction records, contacted security researchers including SlowMist, and began paying victims from its treasury.

More than 200 ETH has already been distributed.

Addresses that bridged under 5 ETH were offered 40 percent reimbursement; larger deposits are being reviewed separately because some may be tied to the operators.

GIWA’s official account warned the same day that mainnet is not running and that any claimed mainnet RPC is false.

The incident shows how little is required to manufacture a believable L2: a reserved chain ID, public OP Stack tooling, and a listing that other traders treat as confirmation. Until a project publishes official endpoints and contracts, a DEX listing is not proof that a chain is real.

The co-authors of EIP-8363, a proposal to burn a rising share of Ethereum validator rewards as more Ethereum (ETH) is staked, have withdrawn it from consideration for the network's Hegota upgrade. 

"Withdrawing EIP-8363 from consideration for Hegotá," co-author Jérôme de Tychey, president of Ethereum France, wrote in an X post on Thursday morning.

De Tychey said several industry participants, as well as core protocol and client contributors, argued during Hegotá's Consideration for Inclusion (CFI) process that "a fork scoping exercise was not the right venue to settle an issuance policy change."

"We agree and we'd rather acknowledge this now than carry on towards Hegotà in this context," he wrote, noting that the proposal had become "one of the most commented-on EIPs in the history of the Ethereum-Magicians forum." 

The authors committed to a separate process for determining questions of Ethereum's issuance policy. De Tychey thanked liquid staking protocol Lido for offering to help steer it.

A separate, dedicated process De Tychey grouped the objections raised since August into five categories: security, industry impact, the design of the burn curve, the makeup of the validator set and the effect on solo stakers.

To determine how to proceed with tackling the issues, de Tychey attached a timeline for what he called a "multi-node process." It starts with an issuance forum at Devcon in November, following a first roundtable at EthCC 2026.

Workshops would follow after Devcon and in February and March, with a tentative forum at a Columbia University cryptoeconomics workshop in January.

The schedule ends with a forum at EthCC in April, where the authors aim to engage core developers and reach CFI or Scheduled for Inclusion (SFI) status for a proposal.

De Tychey said the authors stand by the proposal's motivation. He quoted the EIP's view that a very high staking ratio threatens "Ethereum's security, neutrality and resistance to capture" as well as "ETH's role as money."

The proposal Researchers including the Ethereum Foundation's Justin Drake, Pintail, de Tychey, dapplion, pa7x1 and Ladislaus von Daniels proposed the "Tapered Issuance Burn" on Aug. 4, days before Hegota's deadline for non-headliner EIPs.

Under the EIP, the share of rewards burned would climb with the total level of staked ETH and would reach 100% at about 60.25 million ETH, or roughly half of the supply. The change would phase in over about 18 months.

About 34% of ETH supply was staked in mid-August, The Block reported at the time. At that level, annual consensus yield would fall from about 2.6% to 1.2% under the proposal.

Industry reaction SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom formally opposed the proposal in August, saying it would "undermine DeFi." Aave founder Stani Kulechov called it "hurtful for Ethereum" at the time.

On Thursday, Kulechov quote-posted de Tychey's announcement of the withdrawal, saying "Great move."

Developers are still scoping Hegota, an upcoming Ethereum hard fork, which will follow the next update, Glamsterdam. On Sunday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined his vision for the future of Ethereum in a blog post, and said Hegota "is likely to be Ethereum's last 'normal' fork, with features and technology that would be recognizable to someone in 2015."

"Everything after that involves recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and making it all quantum-safe," Buterin wrote. 

The Ethereum Foundation and the Open Anonymity Project have launched zkAPI, a system on Ethereum mainnet that lets people pay for API access without leaving a trail back to who they are.

The launch went live on October 1, 2026. The setup centers on a smart contract vault deployed on Ethereum mainnet.

Users deposit ETH or USDC into that vault. Those deposits become credits, and the vault contract holds them as USDC credits.

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When a user wants to call an API, such as an AI model, they generate a cryptographic proof authorizing the payment. The service gets paid, and the user gets their response. The authorization is designed to be unlinkable to any specific deposit or identity.

Under the hood, zkAPI relies on three cryptographic building blocks:

Groth16 proofs: a type of zero-knowledge proof that lets someone prove a statement is true without revealing the underlying data. Baby-JubJub commitments: a way of locking in a value, like a deposit, so it can be referenced later without being exposed. A 32-level Merkle tree: a data structure that bundles many commitments into a single fingerprint, which a user can prove membership in without pointing to their specific entry. User funds sit in contracts controlled on Ethereum itself, not on a company server. That means users can withdraw their funds independently, without relying on any server to cooperate.

The proposal traces back to a February 11, 2026 research post by Vitalik Buterin and Davide Crapis. That puts the timeline from idea to mainnet deployment at under eight months.

The Open Anonymity Project, the Ethereum Foundation’s partner on the launch, had secured over $100,000 in grants from the Ethereum Foundation and the Human Rights Foundation as of May 2026.

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

Two of DeFi’s better-known liquidity hubs are becoming one. Aerodrome Finance and Velodrome Finance are merging into a single platform called Aero, and the pitch is all about reach.

According to the announcement, Aero will grow its addressable market from $7 billion to over $63 billion in total value locked. It will also serve chains that together handle $135 billion in monthly trading volume.

What the merger actually involves The consolidation was announced in mid-November 2025. The integration is set to go live in October 2026.

The end product is meant to be simple on the surface. Users get one token and one interface instead of two of each.

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Under the hood, Aero merges the existing ve(3,3)-style tokenomics that both Aerodrome and Velodrome run on. Holders lock up tokens for a period of time, receive voting power in return, and use that power to steer where new token rewards flow. Combining two of these systems into one means a single set of voters directing incentives across a much bigger map.

The unified protocol is planned to operate across chains including Base, Optimism, and Ethereum mainnet.

What happens to VELO holders For anyone holding VELO, the key question is the swap. VELO holders are expected to convert into AERO at a defined ratio, with one proposed ratio set at 0.55:1. Put simply, under that proposal each VELO would become 0.55 AERO. The word doing the heavy lifting there is “proposed,” so holders should treat the figure as a draft rather than a signed contract.

Why fragmentation is the real target The stated goal of the merger is to cut down on the inefficiencies created by fragmentation in Layer-2 ecosystems. Layer-2 networks are separate chains built on top of Ethereum to make transactions cheaper and faster. The catch is that each one tends to develop its own pool of liquidity. Money sitting on one chain does not automatically help a trader on another.

Aero is positioning itself as a single liquidity layer for Ethereum-aligned chains instead of a scattered collection of smaller pools.

What this means for traders and the DEX landscape For liquidity providers, the draw is scale. A protocol that can tap into chains carrying $135 billion in monthly volume offers far more fee-generating opportunities than one confined to a narrower footprint.

That assumption matters. Serving chains with $135 billion in monthly trading volume is not the same as processing $135 billion in monthly trading volume. The figure describes the size of the pond, not the size of the catch.

The same logic applies to the $63 billion number. It reflects the total value locked across the markets Aero intends to serve, not deposits Aero already holds.

For AERO and VELO holders, the practical items to watch are clear. Keep an eye on whether the conversion ratio is finalized as proposed, how the merged ve(3,3) voting system is structured, and how quickly liquidity actually shows up on new chains once Aero goes live in October 2026.

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

Ethereum delivered an estimated 60% surge in the third quarter, data from PrimeXBT revealed, placing Q3 among the network’s best quarterly performances to date.

Strong institutional interest supports price actionInstitutional appetite for Ethereum has remained steady through the end of September. Over the last five trading days through September 29, US spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw $287.5 million in net inflows. Total tracked institutional funds currently hold around 5.91 million ETH, translating to $24.17 billion at current values.

On September 25 alone, spot ETH ETFs drew in approximately $87 million in net inflows, marking a continuation of strong institutional demand after the asset experienced significant outflows earlier in the month.

ETH ETF flows remain strong, with net inflows totaling $287.5 million over a single week and a daily intake of $87 million on September 25, highlighting ongoing institutional attention even as broader investor appetite fluctuates.

Coinpaper, a cryptocurrency news and analysis platform, has pointed to a pattern of Ethereum outperforming Bitcoin recently, correlating this trend with ongoing positive ETF flows.

Mini dictionary: Coinpaper, a digital media outlet, delivers news and specialized analytical content focused exclusively on the cryptocurrency sector.

Key resistance remains at $2,800Despite its impressive quarterly rally, Ethereum has repeatedly failed to maintain momentum above the $2,800 mark. Recent price action saw ETH briefly rise above $2,800 only to fall back below, reinforcing the significance of this level as immediate short-term resistance.

Coinpaper has documented several instances where ETH’s ascent was halted at or near $2,800. Analysts now consider a clear and sustained move above that threshold as necessary for further gains toward $3,000 and potentially $3,050 in the near term.

ScenarioSupport LevelResistance/TargetBullish$2,650$2,800 then $3,000-$3,050Neutral$2,600$2,800BearishBelow $2,600No clear resistance, risk of further downsideQuarter ahead: Market scenarios for ETHAnalysts describe the outlook for Ethereum in the fourth quarter as “relatively straightforward.” A bullish scenario could unfold if ETH can break and retain levels above $2,800, potentially driving prices quickly toward $3,000 or higher.

A neutral outlook would see Ethereum consolidating between approximately $2,600 and $2,800, following the sharp appreciation in Q3. This would suggest the market is pausing for direction after substantial recent gains.

On the downside, sentiment may turn more negative if Ethereum falls below the $2,600 area, particularly if larger risk markets also show signs of weakness.

If ETH fails to hold above $2,600, the bearish case strengthens, especially amid wider risk-off movements, whereas a firm close above $2,800 could open the way to new quarterly highs.

Open Standard’s dollar stablecoin launched Wednesday on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, issued by Stripe’s Bridge, with Coinbase access starting Oct. 1.

Open USD stablecoin live, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard open access

Posted September 30, 2026 at 12:49 pm ET.

Open USD (OUSD), the dollar stablecoin backed by Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, went live on Wednesday, its operator Open Standard announced on X.

Businesses can start building with OUSD through Mastercard, Stripe and the Visa Stablecoin Platform now, with Coinbase access beginning Oct. 1. Each of the four integration paths lets businesses mint and burn the token at a 1:1 rate against the dollar at no cost, Open Standard said. The token runs natively on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, and will first be available to trade on Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap.

OUSD is issued by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm Stripe owns, with reserves held at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY. Bridge will publish reserve attestations monthly.

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What Stripe Is Offering Stripe said OUSD will be available alongside the stablecoins it already supports. Developers can use it across Stripe’s stablecoin products, including Bridge orchestration, Privy embedded wallets and stablecoin cards through Stripe Issuing, and businesses can hold OUSD balances in Stripe Treasury and send them to crypto wallets in more than 100 countries.

Stripe pitched the token at high-volume cross-border businesses such as remittance and payroll companies, arguing that the variable fees to convert other stablecoins in and out of dollars make them expensive to use. Open Standard instead charges a small transaction fee. Ramp, an Open Standard partner, uses Stripe to run stablecoin accounts that will let its customers hold OUSD and earn rewards.

“OUSD offers businesses better economics than any other stablecoin,” Privy co-founder Henri Stern said in Stripe’s announcement.

Equity for Partners Open Standard unveiled the project in June with more than 140 partners. It now counts more than 200, and says partners earn rewards in proportion to the supply and activity they drive, along with a chance to earn equity in the company.

“The overwhelming majority of our cap table is going to be distributed back to founders and non-founders based on how they help grow the network,” CEO Zach Abrams said in an interview with CoinDesk. The five founders are also putting up more than $1 billion to seed OUSD’s supply at launch, Open Standard said on Sept. 24.

Abrams co-founded Bridge, which Stripe bought in a $1.1 billion deal announced in 2024.

Related Listen: Stripe Bid $53B for PayPal: Who Actually Wins Stablecoin Payments?

AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.

US spot Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $2.81 million in net outflows on September 29. The move ended a 7-day inflow streak that had brought roughly $850.8 million into the products.

Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs moved in the opposite direction on the same day. They took in $66.19 million, extending their own inflow run to 9 straight sessions.

How the Ethereum ETF Streak Lost Steam Before It BrokeThe streak began on September 18, according to SoSoValue data. It followed 3 sessions of outflows between September 15 and 17, which pulled about $404.8 million from the funds.

BeInCrypto reported that those outflows coincided with the Clarity Act stalling in the Senate. The largest day of the run came on September 21, when the funds drew $269.98 million. 

Daily totals then eased across most of the following sessions and slipped to $17.1 million by September 28.

Ethereum ETF inflow streak ends with outflow. Source SoSoValueWeekly figures show how strong the run was at its height. The funds added $689.88 million in the week ending September 25, their biggest week since late August.

On September 29, BlackRock’s ETHA recorded the largest outflow at $8.94 million. Meanwhile, Grayscale’s Ethereum Mini Trust took in $12.83 million, which kept the net loss small.

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Ethereum Price Slipped While the Money Kept Coming InEthereum’s price fell during the same week the funds were attracting capital. ETH traded at $2,673.54 at press time, down 3.32% over 7 days, according to BeInCrypto Markets data. The token gained 0.41% over the past 24 hours.

Ethereum (ETH) Price Performance. BeInCrypto MarketsBitcoin showed the same split between price and flows. BTC dropped 3.78% over the week to $83,359, although its ETFs gathered roughly $3.08 billion during their 9-session streak.

Ethereum ETFs still hold $17.79 billion in net assets, equal to 5.45% of Ethereum’s market capitalization. They have also attracted $979.69 million in net inflows over the past 30 days.

The funds have opened this week with $14.29 million in net inflows, a fraction of the previous week’s pace. Flow data from the coming sessions will show whether ETHA’s exit stays isolated or spreads to other issuers.

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Aztec Labs has relaunched zk.money, a self-custodial wallet for private crypto payments, three years after discontinuing the original product.

The new version runs on Aztec Network, the company's privacy-focused Ethereum Layer 2. Unlike a standard Ethereum wallet, zk.money does not publish users' balances, payment amounts or counterparties on a public ledger, Aztec said Tuesday.

The return comes as privacy has become a larger focus for Ethereum. Its public roadmap calls for making privacy a "first-class property" of the network, while Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has highlighted the risks of making people's financial activity publicly traceable.

"Onchain transactions between two individuals shouldn't mean publishing your financial history to the world," Aztec Labs CEO Joe Andrews said in a statement. "zk.money is a self-custodial crypto wallet where your financial history stays yours."

Why zk.money is returning The original zk.money launched in 2021 and was discontinued in 2023 as Aztec Labs shifted its focus to building Aztec Network. Aztec said the wallet reached more than 75,000 unique wallets and processed over $100 million in volume.

Andrews told The Block that demand was not the reason for shutting it down. The earlier system was difficult to expand and could not scale globally, he said.

"We sunset in 2023, not because private payments were a failed thesis, but because they needed infrastructure that did not yet exist," Andrews said. "The system back then was very hard to add features and did not scale globally."

Aztec spent the following three years building Aztec Network, a decentralized Layer 2 designed to support private applications on Ethereum, he added. The network is now overseen by the nonprofit Aztec Foundation, while Aztec Labs develops products on top of it.

"Now that the network is live and stewarded via the non-profit Aztec Foundation, our team at Aztec Labs is back shipping open-source privacy products on top of it," Andrews said. He added that the new infrastructure gives developers more room to add features using Noir, Aztec's programming language for zero-knowledge applications.

How the wallet works Users can claim a simple handle such as bob.zk.money instead of using a long wallet address, Aztec said. They can send or request payments by sharing a link.

The handles use Ethereum Name Service technology and can work with apps that support ENS. Users can also choose who can interact with their handles.

Users can send funds from Ethereum-based exchanges directly to a zk.money handle. Aztec also plans to connect the wallet with DeFi protocols on Ethereum. The company said it is working with potential partners, with integrations expected in Q4, but declined to name them ahead of future announcements.

Since the wallet is non-custodial, Aztec Labs said it cannot spend, move or freeze users' funds.

Users can access zk.money through the web or run it locally. A mobile app is also planned for Q4, though Aztec said there is no set launch date yet.

The relaunch comes after two older Aztec smart contracts were exploited in June. Aztec said the contracts were linked to separate products that had been shut down years earlier and were not part of the current Aztec Network. The new zk.money runs on the newer network and was not affected, the company said.

Aztec has raised $125 million to date, including a $100 million Series B backed by a16z crypto and Paradigm in 2022.

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Ethereum is attracting stronger buying interest from several corners of the market, though a major resistance level remains in focus.

September 2026 is turning out to be entirely different for Ethereum, as it appears to have bucked the “September Curse.” Since the start of the month, ETH is up by more than 9%.

Fresh data also revealed that the asset may be approaching a major resistance zone before a potential bullish move.

Real Test According to the latest findings by Ali Martinez, whale activity has risen sharply across the Ethereum network. Transactions worth more than $1 million jumped nearly 500% in the past week. The number of such transactions increased from 1,202 to 7,113. Martinez also found that large holders accumulated more than 320,000 ETH. At current prices, this stash is worth around $864 million.

However, Ethereum still faces a major wall between $2,722 and $2,822. More than 13.3 million ETH were previously traded in this range, which makes it a significant hurdle. Martinez said several failed breakout attempts could occur. If the leading altcoin breaks above this zone decisively, the next resistance levels are near $2,970 and $3,366. According to the analysis, rising whale demand remains a major market signal.

At the same time, another important trend is developing on the supply side. CryptoPotato recently reported that Ethereum’s available supply on crypto exchanges has dropped to a record low. Only 3.49% of ETH is held on tracked platforms, while another 1.16% of the supply has left exchanges since June 1.

The decline is linked partly to growing activity in staking and DeFi. Around 35% of ETH is estimated to be staked, while roughly $53 billion is locked in DeFi. Long-term holders and large treasury firms are also keeping more tokens off exchanges. This could limit readily available supply if demand increases.

Separately, Ethereum is also seeing an aggressive bet from a trader with an unusual track record. A mysterious trader has taken a $99 million long position on the crypto asset using 25x leverage. The position was opened when ETH traded near $2,660, with liquidation set at $2,552 unless more collateral is added.

You may also like: Institutions Watched Bitcoin Fall 50%: Yet None of 15 Bitwise Surveyed Investors Cut Exposure Ethereum Is Disappearing From Exchanges Fast: Here’s Where All the ETH Is Going Ethereum Investors Are Pulling ETH Off Binance at a Pace Not Seen in 3 Years The trader has reportedly made 3,156 trades with a 100% win rate and earned $5.5 million in profits last week alone.

Institutional Appetite On the institutional side of things, US-based spot ETH ETFs recorded another week of positive inflows, as nearly $690 million entered across five trading days. Monday saw the strongest inflow at almost $270 million.

On Tuesday, these investment products attracted $162 million, while Wednesday brought another $104.6 million, followed by $66 million on Thursday. Flows picked up slightly on Friday, with almost $87 million recorded.

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Summary

Ether.fi will sever its last structural tie to EigenLayer this quarter, leaving under 1% of assets restaked, and CEO Mike Silagadze says the exit came down to risk with no meaningful yield left in restaking.Restaking secures $10 billion but generated just $99,977 in fees over a week, while plain liquid staking earns roughly 53 times more per dollar secured.The five largest remaining liquid restaking tokens made $953,350 in combined gross profit last quarter, down from $2.18 million three quarters earlier.By the end of this quarter, ether.fi will have cut the last structural link between its staking tokens and restaking protocol EigenLayer. Protocol documentation put under 1% of assets still restaked as of August with EigenPod withdrawal credentials due to be removed by the end of the year.

When ether.fi launched in 2024, deposits were restaked on EigenLayer automatically. In August the company stripped restaking out of weETH, the version of its token that circulates and is accepted as collateral across DeFi, leaving it as a plain liquid staking token. Anyone who still wants restaking has to opt into a separate token built on Symbiotic, a rival platform.

Mike Silagadze, ether.fi's chief executive, said the decision came down to risk. "There were no meaningful yield opportunities in restaking and there was some perceived risk from stakers, so we decided it made sense to exit," he told CoinDesk.

What restaking was meant to beStaking means locking up ETH to help secure Ethereum, in return for a yield. Restaking was the idea that the same locked ETH could do a second job: EigenLayer would rent that security out to other services, such as oracles and data availability layers, which would pay for the protection. Depositors would earn twice on one pot of money. Liquid restaking tokens sat on top of that, giving depositors a tradable receipt that they could sell or use as collateral elsewhere rather than locking their ETH away and waiting. weETH was the largest of them.

EigenLayer held $19.7 billion at its peak and liquid restaking tokens grew more than 1,000% in the first six weeks of 2024. But the services buying security never paid enough to cover both the base staking yield and a premium on top, so the second yield restaking promised never materialized.

On Sept. 8, DefiLlama's restaking category held $10.02 billion and generated $99,977 in fees over the prior week. The liquid staking category, on $51.87 billion, generated $27.35 million. Per dollar secured, ordinary staking earns roughly 53 times more.

Restaking earns almost nothing (CoinDesk/Oliver Knight)Two developments then removed what was left of the incentive to restake. Points programs subsidizing deposits wound down through 2025, and slashing went live in April 2025. Slashing is the penalty that confiscates part of an operator's staked ETH when it misbehaves, by going offline or signing conflicting messages, for example. So restaking suddenly carried a real, priced downside where before the risk had been theoretical. There was no extra yield to compensate.

Set ether.fi aside and the rest of the sector is small. Renzo, Kelp, Swell, Puffer Finance and Bedrock, the five largest remaining liquid restaking tokens, made $953,350 in combined gross profit in the second quarter of 2026. Three quarters earlier the same five made $2.18 million. Puffer, which raised $23 million, recorded $21,590 for the quarter. Swell recorded $22,370.

The income statements also show which part of these businesses was ever profitable, and it was not the restaking. On Kelp's books, EIGEN token rewards appear at $460,600 in gross revenue and $460,600 in cost of revenue: they arrive and pass straight to depositors, leaving nothing with the protocol. Puffer and Swell book staking rewards the same way. Whatever profit these companies made came from the orinary staking fees charged underneath the restaking layer.

The hackOn April 18, an attacker exploited Kelp's cross-chain bridge, the system that moves its token between blockchains, and created 116,500 rsETH in 46 minutes, worth about $293 million, with no ETH backing it. The attacker deposited the tokens into Aave as collateral and borrowed real ether against them. Around $6 billion left Aave in the days that followed, with potential bad debt of $123 million to $230 million. In May, Aave rewrote its collateral listing standards to assess cybersecurity and technical architecture alongside price volatility.

Silagadze objects to reading the incident as a failure of leverage. "The cause of the Kelp hack was poor security practices with respect to cross-chain, not related to leverage," he said. "The ether.fi Aave market has very conservative parameters and we have a strong commitment to security."

He is right that EigenLayer itself did not fail. Nothing was slashed, no restaking mechanism broke, and the weak point was a bridge. But that is exactly what made the hack so damaging for liquid restaking tokens. The money was lost in the wrapper, the tradeable receipt sitting on top of the restaking, rather than in the restaking itself. By April, anyone holding one of these tokens was accepting an extra piece of software that could be attacked, and getting no extra yield in return. The wrapper had stopped paying for itself.

Where the money wentThe capital leaving restaking did not leave crypto lending, it moved from ETH into dollars.

In 2024 the pattern was: stake ETH, restake it, wrap it in a liquid restaking token, borrow against that and buy more, stacking exposure to a single asset. By 2026 the same behavior runs through curated vaults. A curated vault is a lending pool where an outside firm, known as a curator, rather than the lending protocol itself, decides which assets the pool accepts and on what terms, in exchange for a share of the fees. Morpho, the largest venue for this, holds around $5.8 billion.

As in restaking, the token a depositor holds is a receipt whose risks are set by someone else and accepted as collateral by a third party.

Curated vaults have already produced their own version of the Kelp collapse. On Nov. 4, 2025, Stream Finance disclosed roughly $93 million of losses and froze withdrawals. Its xUSD token, a yield-bearing dollar token meant to hold its value at $1, fell 77% in a day. Curators had built vaults on Morpho where depositors supplied real stablecoins against xUSD, and the borrowed stablecoins were used to buy more xUSD, inflating the token far beyond what actually backed it. Those markets valued xUSD at a fixed $1 rather than its market price, so when the real price fell, the automatic liquidations that should have closed the loans never triggered. Researchers later mapped roughly $285 million of debt exposure across lending platforms. A second dollar token, 65% backed by loans to Stream, fell about 98% and was wound down.

The exit from restaking left ether.fi with the question every liquid restaking protocol now faces: What is the business, once the thing it was built on stops paying? Its answer was to stop being a staking company.

Ether.fi’s second actEther.fi now runs a card that lets users spend against their crypto without selling it, a borrowing market on Ethereum layer-2 network Optimism and a set of vaults, and describes itself as a crypto neobank. In August it added tokenized stocks, metals and fiat rails. Silagadze puts the neobanking market at roughly $300 billion in annual revenue, about 300 times DeFi's.

The card took its share of monthly revenue from 17% in January to 46% in July. "Neobank revenue has fully replaced the revenue lost from restaking and lower ETH price," Silagadze said. "We are on track to increase revenue overall run rate this year by about 38%, while staking and restaking revenue has declined by 70%. Diversification of our revenue has been a huge success."

DefiLlama's figures show a different trend over roughly the same period, with ether.fi's gross profit falling 47% from $18.71 million in the third quarter of 2025 to $9.99 million in the second quarter of 2026. Both can be true, since gross revenue is not gross profit and a forward run rate is not a trailing quarter, but ether.fi has not published the basis for the 38%.

ether.fi's gross profit by source in Q2 2026 (CoinDesk/Oliver Knight)Card fees produced $3.14 million of gross profit in the second quarter. EigenLayer restaking produced $2.87 million, ahead of core ETH staking and ahead of vault fees, borrowing and management fees combined. On DefiLlama's accounting, restaking was ether.fi's second most profitable line at the point it decided to leave.

Silagadze disputes one input into DefiLlama’s figures. Cashback, the rewards paid to card users, appears in DefiLlama's figures at $5.83 million in both revenue and cost of revenue, which means it adds nothing to profit "That was back when third-party partners were paying the cashback rewards," he said. "That's no longer the case, so current revenue reporting doesn't include cashback subsidy grants." DefiLlama's adapter still books it on both sides through the most recent quarter.

He also says users were told about changes as ether.fi made them. Moving the cash vaults onto Aave replaced a custom-built debt manager and reduced risk, he said: "Users were notified multiple times and opted in to this change."

The technology was never the problemNone of this is to say the technology failed. EigenDA, EigenLayer's data availability service, runs on mainnet at 100 MB/s and remains the largest service by value secured. Symbiotic, where ether.fi moved its own restaking, has integrated more than 50 networks.

The question was never whether restaking works. It was whether it generates enough revenue to justify building a business on it, and for the protocols that made restaking their entire product, the answer has been no.

EigenLayer has also stopped selling restaking as the product. Rebranded as EigenCloud, it now markets verifiable computing, which lets applications prove that work done off-chain was carried out correctly, with restaked collateral as the layer underneath rather than the thing on sale. Its holdings stand at $5.10 billion, down from $22.06 billion in August 2025.

What the sector has not settled is whether a market that shrank roughly 75% while continuing to secure everything it secured before has failed, or whether it was simply four times larger than the work required. Silagadze did not wait to find out. He moved ether.fi out of restaking while the argument was still running.

12345678910The Definitive Stablecoin Landscape Series: Asia Pacific

The Definitive Stablecoin Landscape Series: Asia Pacific

As stablecoins move into regulated finance, APAC is becoming a key proving ground. This report maps the region’s rules, use cases, and RLUSD’s role.

Sep 15, 2026

As stablecoins move into regulated finance, APAC is becoming a key proving ground. This report maps the region’s rules, use cases, and RLUSD’s role.

Why it matters:

As stablecoins move into regulated finance, APAC is becoming a key proving ground. This report maps the region’s rules, use cases, and RLUSD’s role.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says the network's next hard fork, Hegota, is likely to be the last upgrade that looks like the ones that came before it. In an essay published on Sunday, Buterin wrote that Hegota, "the fork planned for next year," is "likely to be Ethereum's last 'normal' fork, with features and technology that would be recognizable to someone in 2015." Everything after it, he wrote, "involves recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and making it all quantum-safe."

Buterin describes the destination as a "cryptographic world computer", an architecture that combines a blockchain with cryptographic privacy and verification and decentralised off-chain components. The goal, he wrote, is "much more cheap, scalable and private high-security computation" than earlier technology could deliver.

The cryptographic world computer:https://t.co/ueayODeUPo

My attempt to express in somewhat concise terms the true meaning of basically everything planned to happen to Ethereum starting from the fork after Hegota. It's really not just a blockchain anymore. It's a hybrid…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 27, 2026 The essay compares Ethereum's design in 2015 with where Buterin expects it to be in 2030. The biggest change is in how nodes check the chain. Today a node downloads each block and re-executes it; in the future design it samples data through PeerDAS and verifies a SNARK proof that the block was executed correctly. That would let light clients verify both data availability and computation directly, instead of trusting full nodes.

Consensus would move to a proof-of-stake design with "few-slot finality", with slots of around four to eight seconds and finality in roughly eight to 32 seconds, against the roughly 17-second blocks and 200-second confirmation window of Ethereum's 2015 design. Block construction would shift from a single proposer to a multi-party process, with FOCIL (fork-choice enforced inclusion lists) providing what Buterin calls "guaranteed real-time transaction inclusion" as a defence against censorship. Transactions would pass through a mempool with strong privacy properties, and zero-knowledge proofs combined with private account abstraction would extend privacy to accounts as well as individual transactions.

Buterin argues this changes the role decentralisation plays. Running computation across many independent nodes has usually been treated as a cost paid for security, and he writes that it is "shifting from being purely a burden incurred in the name of safety and robustness to at least sometimes being a strength even from a performance perspective." He adds that a network like the post-Lean-upgrade Ethereum is called a blockchain "to a large extent for historical reasons."

The essay did not commit to specific dates. Much of what it describes, including real-time proving of Ethereum blocks and quantum-safe signature schemes, is still in research or early implementation, and each component will have to go through Ethereum's core developer process.

TLDR: PeerDAS, live since Fusaka in December 2025, lets nodes sample blob data instead of downloading every blob. Hegotá, expected in 2027, could be Ethereum’s last broadly familiar fork before deeper cryptographic redesign. EIP-7805 adds validator-backed inclusion lists to curb censorship by individual block builders in Hegotá. Ethereum targets 2029 for core post-quantum infrastructure, alongside Lean Consensus and recursive STARKs. Vitalik Buterin has outlined a long-term architecture for Ethereum that could make the network increasingly difficult to describe as a conventional blockchain. The model combines decentralized consensus, zero-knowledge proofs, distributed computation, privacy systems and post-quantum cryptography.

In a September 27 post titled “The cryptographic world computer,” Buterin said the network now blends Bitcoin-era blockchain principles with newer cryptographic research. His framework describes a system where verification relies less on every node repeating every computation and more on proofs, sampling and specialized distributed infrastructure.

The cryptographic world computer:https://t.co/ueayODeUPo

My attempt to express in somewhat concise terms the true meaning of basically everything planned to happen to Ethereum starting from the fork after Hegota. It's really not just a blockchain anymore. It's a hybrid…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 27, 2026

That shift is already visible in several parts of the roadmap. Data availability, block construction and consensus are moving toward designs that reduce duplication while preserving verifiability across the network.

Ethereum’s World Computer Shift Rewrites Blockchain Verification Traditional blockchains require many nodes to download data and independently re-execute transactions. Buterin described an architecture that increasingly replaces that model with data sampling and cryptographic proof verification.

Consensus has also moved from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, while a more optimized Lean Consensus design remains under development. At the same time, block construction could become more distributed instead of depending heavily on one miner or builder.

PeerDAS provides an early example of that direction. Introduced through the December 2025 Fusaka upgrade, it lets nodes verify blob availability by sampling data rather than downloading every blob.

That reduces bandwidth requirements while supporting higher Layer 2 capacity. As a result, more computation can move outside the base layer without removing Ethereum’s ability to verify results cryptographically.

The next major milestone is Hegotá, currently expected in 2027. Buterin described it as potentially the last upgrade that would remain broadly familiar to developers from earlier network eras.

Hegotá and Lean Ethereum Push Toward Quantum-Safe Design FOCIL, formally EIP-7805, is scheduled for Hegotá. It introduces validator-backed inclusion lists intended to limit the ability of individual block builders to censor valid transactions.

However, the upgrade’s broader scope remains under development, so additional features and timing could still change. Beyond Hegotá, research increasingly centers on recursive STARKs, formal verification and advanced state management.

EIP-8288 offers one example. The draft proposal would aggregate quantum-resistant signatures and STARK proofs in the mempool before producing one recursive proof for block verification.

Lean Ethereum extends that direction with redesigned consensus, hash-based post-quantum signatures, formal verification and finality targeted in seconds. Separately, the Ethereum Foundation is targeting about 2029 for core post-quantum infrastructure.

Taken together, Buterin’s framework describes a network where decentralized offchain systems handle larger workloads while cryptographic proofs preserve security guarantees. He calls that architecture a “cryptographic world computer.”

Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter recently reported that development on the Glamsterdam upgrade and EIP-7928, which introduces Block-Level Access Lists, is nearing completion. Wahrstätter expressed confidence regarding the progress, highlighting advancements as the project approaches a key milestone.

The first public test for Glamsterdam is on the horizon, following ongoing devnet testing. Developers have scheduled the Sepolia testnet fork for October 6, 2026, with the mainnet launch planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. An exact mainnet date is yet to be confirmed.

Wahrstätter described Glamsterdam as one of Ethereum’s most significant forks to date, attributing the extended development timeline to its ambitious scope. He believes the end result will justify the effort invested by the team and community.

The upgrade is designed to advance Ethereum’s scaling capabilities and introduce a new era for the network. Its primary goals include implementing parallelization to accelerate transaction processing, increasing overall capacity, and enhancing sustainability by curbing database bloat.

Key features and technical objectivesA notable highlight of Glamsterdam is the introduction of ePBS, a revamped block validation pipeline that reduces trust assumptions within the network. Additionally, Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) aim to bring parallelization benefits, laying the groundwork for a more scalable and efficient protocol.

Looking at recent technical trends related to market timing and investor choices, the meme token market demonstrates how quickly substantial capital can appear. An example from Fomo App showed a $99 investment in “Niu Lai” growing to approximately $370,000, underscoring the importance of monitoring not only prices but also key moments and asset selections. Fomo App integrates token discovery and trading, featuring social functionality such as investor rankings and trade notifications, allowing users to actively track the evolving meme token landscape.

Vitalik Buterin outlines post-Hegota visionEthereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin recently offered his perspective on the evolution of the network after its upcoming Hegota hard fork. In his view, Hegota may be Ethereum’s last “ordinary” upgrade, recognizable to developers and users familiar with the network’s earlier architecture.

Buterin referred to “Strawman,” Ethereum’s long-term roadmap, which suggests that upgrades following Hegota will move far beyond the technology of 2015. These future phases are expected to incorporate recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, and advanced consensus mechanisms to enhance quantum resistance.

Buterin outlined that after Hegota, Ethereum’s focus will shift to integrating advanced cryptographic and computational techniques. He described the network as a hybrid architecture, no longer just a blockchain, but a combination of modern cryptography and decentralized infrastructure to enable more advanced functionalities.

He also credited the PeerDAS solution as the beginning of Ethereum’s transformation, marking the start of moving from a traditional blockchain structure to a multifaceted, more powerful system. According to Buterin, the upgrades to follow will push Ethereum toward becoming a “cryptographic world computer.”

He emphasized that these innovations aim to deliver cheaper, more scalable, and more private high-security computation, surpassing the capabilities of earlier blockchain systems.

As Ethereum approaches these network milestones, stakeholders continue to monitor both technical developments and the timeline for implementation ahead of the mainnet launch.

ARK Invest and Securitize announced the launch of the ARK Venture Fund’s tokenized share class, ARKVX, on September 24. This initiative will see shares of the fund issued and managed through Securitize’s regulated tokenization platform, bringing its exposure to blockchain through Ethereum.

The ARK Venture Fund is managed by ARK Invest, an asset manager known for focusing on disruptive innovation and technology investments. With the new tokenized share class, investors do not hold tokens representing direct equity in SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, or other portfolio companies. Instead, ARKVX represents a fractional interest in the regulated fund itself, which in turn holds stakes in these private and public technology firms.

Current portfolio data from ARK Invest show SpaceX makes up 7.54% of the fund, OpenAI accounts for 5.26%, and Anthropic stands at 3.86%. Other notable companies in the fund include Stripe, Crusoe, and Figure AI among a mix of private and listed technology ventures.

The new structure allows investors to buy tokenized interests in a regulated fund with exposure to high-growth technology companies, but not in the underlying companies themselves.

Eligible investors must participate through Securitize’s official platform, which provides the technical and regulatory infrastructure to facilitate compliant onchain issuance and transfers.

Mini dictionary: Securitize is a US-based digital asset securities firm specializing in the compliant issuance and management of tokenized securities, providing regulated infrastructure for onchain asset management.

Ethereum as the Settlement LayerSecuritize has stated that the ARKVX share class will settle and transfer on Ethereum’s blockchain, taking advantage of its smart contract capabilities for record keeping and transaction validation. However, the fundamental structure and investment framework of the ARK Venture Fund remain unchanged. As a closed-end interval fund, it continues to be actively managed, focusing on disruptive private and public market investments.

Interval funds are a specific category of investment vehicles that offer periodic repurchase opportunities, rather than continuous secondary market trading. This means holders of ARKVX retain exposure to technological growth but must participate in scheduled liquidity windows, as opposed to instant tradability sometimes associated with blockchain-based assets.

Fund AttributeTraditional StructureTokenized ARKVXOwnership RecordOffchain (Registrar)Onchain (Ethereum)LiquidityPeriodic RepurchasePeriodic RepurchaseUnderlying AssetsPrivate & Public Tech CompaniesPrivate & Public Tech CompaniesInvestor AccessTraditional PlatformSecuritize PlatformThe tokenization adds a new digital rail but does not affect the fund’s core liquidity or access to underlying company equity. ARK Invest emphasized that while trading onchain can sound more liquid, the interval fund format means liquidity remains governed by official repurchase periods.

Moving tokenized funds onchain updates ownership and settlement processes, but it leaves the fundamental investment and redemption structures intact.

Growth in Tokenized Real-World AssetsARK Invest has advocated for the continued growth of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) within traditional finance. The firm believes tokenization could expand market access and potentially unlock a multi-trillion-dollar segment for investors seeking exposure to disruptive technology.

This launch aligns with a broader industry shift as funds and securities increasingly leverage blockchain for efficiency, transparency, and broader investor reach.

With the activation of EIP-4444 on July 8, 2025, Ethereum execution clients can now prune pre-Merge historical data, slashing storage requirements by 300 to 500 GB and enabling new nodes to sync in under half a day.

The result: operators can run a fully functional node on a 2 TB disk with aggressive settings keeping total storage under 0.5 TB.

What EIP-4444 actually changes EIP-4444 introduces what’s called “partial history expiry.” Instead of requiring every node to store the complete history of the Ethereum blockchain, nodes can now drop older data after a defined retention period. The initial design specified roughly 33,000 epochs, but this was revised to approximately 82,000 epochs, or about one year of history.

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Nodes validate the current chain head using weak subjectivity checkpoints. The consensus layer can sync in minutes through checkpoint sync, while the execution layer benefits from not needing to download and verify a decade of transaction receipts. Historical data retrieval mechanisms remain available as an optional feature for operators who need archival access.

All five major Ethereum execution clients have shipped support. Geth v1.16.0, Nethermind 1.32.2, Besu 25.7.0, Erigon v3.0.12, and Reth v1.5.0 each include the necessary flags and configurations.

Why storage was becoming a problem Prior to EIP-4444, a full node needed more than 400 GB of disk space, and that number was only going in one direction. Every new block, every smart contract interaction, every token transfer added to the pile.

There’s an important distinction worth noting. This change affects full nodes and validators, not archive nodes. Archive nodes, which serve historical queries for block explorers and analytics platforms, will continue storing everything.

The accessibility equation A sub-half-day sync on under 0.5 TB of storage means a relatively modest consumer-grade machine with a decent SSD can participate in Ethereum’s network, compared to the multi-day sync processes and terabyte-plus storage demands that previously greeted new node operators.

EIP-4444 sits within the “Purge” phase of Ethereum’s roadmap, which Vitalik Buterin has described as focused on reducing protocol complexity and node requirements.

The remaining question is how the network handles the transition period as nodes begin pruning at different rates and historical data becomes distributed rather than universally replicated. The Portal Network and other peer-to-peer data availability solutions are designed to fill this gap, ensuring that historical queries can still be resolved even when most nodes have moved on.

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

In brief Magic Eden warned that NFTs listed on its now-closed EVM marketplace between roughly February and October 2024 could be exposed to an exploit in Limit Break's Payment Processor V2. Yuga Labs' 0xQuit said a whitehat operation rescued 23,155 NFTs worth more than $5.7 million, but 660 WETH couldn't be recovered. Users should revoke the contract's approvals on Ethereum, Polygon and Base. Revoking won't return tokens that have already moved. Magic Eden may have left Ethereum behind, but some of its old users' NFTs were still exposed.

The marketplace warned Friday that NFTs listed on its EVM marketplace between roughly February and October 2024 could be affected by an exploit in Payment Processor V2, an NFT trading protocol built and maintained by Limit Break.

Myriad: Where does Ethereum go next? Click to make your prediction.EVM refers to Ethereum and the blockchains compatible with it. Magic Eden adopted the contract to settle trades in 2024, stopped using it that October and shut its EVM marketplace entirely in early 2026.

"No live Magic Eden listings were impacted in this exploit," the company said on X.

The problem lies in lingering approvals. When users list NFTs, they typically grant a contract permission to move them, and that permission stays active until it's revoked.

Magic Eden urged anyone who listed or traded on its EVM marketplace to revoke the V2 contract's "approved for all" permissions on Ethereum, Polygon, and Base using Revoke.cash. It noted that revoking won't return tokens that have already moved.

At 9AM EST today somebody abused a bug in Payment Processor V2 to steal 10 Meebits, 50 Otherdeeds, 10 WoW, and 235 Desperate Apewives.

It wasn't until over 12 hours later that somebody reported it to me, and upon digging in I realized that a great many NFTs were subject to the… pic.twitter.com/Vue8TUyMD2

— Quit (@0xQuit) September 25, 2026

Yuga Labs Vice President of Blockchain 0xQuit said an attacker used the bug to take 10 Meebits, 50 Otherdeeds, 10 World of Women NFTs, and 235 Desperate ApeWives. Limit Break paused Payment Processor V3, which had the same flaw, but V2 couldn't be paused. That forced a whitehat rescue, an operation in which friendly hackers move vulnerable assets to safety before attackers can.

"All in all, we rescued 23,155 NFTs worth north of $5.7M USD," 0xQuit wrote. Owners will be able to reclaim them after revoking the approvals, according to 0xQuit.

But 660 wrapped Ethereum, or WETH, exposed to a reverse version of the exploit wasn't recovered in time.

Magic Eden dropped Ethereum and Bitcoin support in February to focus on Solana and its crypto casino, Dicey. It later wound down its multichain wallet.

The episode lands at a rough time for crypto users. Just yesterday, unknown hackers swiped more than $380 million in Ethereum and other crypto assets from the Bitget exchange in what is now the biggest crypto hack of the year.

Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Key Highlights ETH maintains position around $2,680 with a 0.40% gain in the last 24 hours Major holders controlling 10K-100K ETH accumulated 260K tokens starting Saturday, reversing prior week’s selling trend Spot Ethereum ETFs in the US recorded their fourth consecutive session of positive net flows totaling $104.6 million BlackRock’s ETHA product dominated with $50.8 million in inflows on September 23 Critical support zone between $2,560-$2,600 faces retest after converting from resistance Ethereum currently sits at $2,680, marking a 0.40% increase during the previous 24-hour period. The digital asset maintains a market capitalization of approximately $328 billion.

Ethereum (ETH) Price Major Ethereum holders have shifted back into accumulation mode. According to CryptoQuant analytics, addresses containing between 10,000 and 100,000 ETH have acquired 260,000 tokens beginning Saturday.

This accumulation represents a sharp reversal from recent activity. The identical cohort of large holders had previously disposed of 140,000 ETH across a three-day period following the Senate’s stalling of the Clarity Act.

Mid-tier holders exhibited contrasting patterns. Addresses controlling 1,000 to 10,000 ETH maintained relatively stable positions before executing a modest 50,000 ETH reduction over the most recent 48-hour window.

Those managing between 100 and 1,000 ETH continued their distribution trend. This segment has collectively released approximately 140,000 ETH since the Clarity Act developments emerged.

On-exchange metrics reveal withdrawals exceeding deposits in recent sessions. This pattern indicates certain market participants are accumulating during price weakness while others secure gains.

Institutional Appetite Maintains Momentum United States-based spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds recorded their fourth consecutive session of positive net capital flows. Wednesday’s aggregate figure reached $104.6 million.

BlackRock’s ETHA product dominated institutional demand, capturing $50.8 million. This represents approximately half of the total daily inflow volume.

Fidelity’s FETH product followed closely, securing $41.3 million during the identical trading session.

Market analyst Ted, recognized on social platforms as @TedPillows, offered perspective on current market dynamics. He noted ETH is experiencing a minor pullback and anticipates a retest around $2,550 before resuming upward momentum.

Critical Price Level Under Examination Another market observer operating under the handle BATMAN highlighted the $2,560-$2,600 band as a crucial technical zone for ETH. This region previously functioned as overhead resistance and has undergone multiple support validation tests.

$ETH is heading back toward the key $2.56K–$2.60K zone. That was previous resistance and has flipped into support multiple times.

200 EMA sits around $2.46K below. Watching how Ethereum reacts as it gets there. pic.twitter.com/OlxVGqdqsB

— BATMAN ⚡ (@CryptosBatman) September 24, 2026

Should ETH successfully defend this zone during corrective price action, it would validate the transformation from resistance to support. The 200-day exponential moving average hovers nearby at approximately $2,460, providing traders with an additional reference point.

From a technical perspective, ETH currently trades above the median Bollinger Band positioned at $2,547.65. The upper band extends to $2,767.17.

The MACD indicator registers at 96.50, positioned above its signal line at 86.47. The histogram displays a positive reading of 10.02, although the separation between lines remains relatively narrow.

Coinglass metrics indicate $74.5 million in forced liquidations throughout the past 24 hours. Long position liquidations accounted for $44.4 million of that volume.

Overhead resistance markers beyond current pricing include $2,786 and $2,894, with an additional obstacle positioned at $3,177.

Regarding broader market conditions, Brent crude oil advanced nearly 3% Thursday following the collapse of US-Iran diplomatic discussions. The United States 10-year Treasury yield surpassed 5.15%, reaching its most elevated point since June 2007.

TLDR Table of Contents

Solana now controls 36% of tokenized commodities spot DEX volume, up from about 1% three weeks earlier. Robinhood Chain follows with 26%, while Canton and Ethereum hold 19% and 13%, respectively. Solana’s rise came alongside new commodity products, including tokenized silver, gold, oil, and PAXG collateral support. Despite leading trading volume, Solana holds only $26.8 million in tokenized commodities, compared with Ethereum’s $4.7 billion. Market leadership remains unstable, with Ethereum, BNB Chain, Robinhood Chain, and Solana all leading at different points since July. Solana now leads tokenized commodities trading on decentralized exchanges, according to Blockworks data. The network holds 36% of spot trading volume, up from about 1% three weeks ago. Robinhood Chain follows with 26%, while Canton holds 19% and Ethereum accounts for 13%.

Market Leadership Shifts Rapidly Ethereum controlled most daily tokenized commodity trading volume after tracking began in July 2026. Its share rarely dropped below 80% for much of that period. Avalanche recorded brief increases, but none changed the market structure for long.

The picture changed in August when BNB Chain captured more than half of daily volume on some days. Robinhood Chain then moved into first place by late August. The wider tokenization market has also added tokenized U.S. equities and commodity-backed instruments across more networks.

Solana Gains Share as Products Expand Solana’s rise followed several product launches. Dominion Market introduced tokenized silver through SILV, while GMTrade added trading contracts linked to gold, silver, and oil. Kamino also began accepting PAXG as collateral, and Raydium handles much of the related decentralized trading flow.

PAXG collateral support could keep more tokenized gold inside Solana’s ecosystem. Users can hold the asset while accessing lending markets instead of moving it to another network. This adds another use case beyond direct spot trading.

Asset Value Still Favors Ethereum Trading volume does not match the distribution of tokenized commodity assets. RWA.xyz data for September 25 shows Solana holds $26.8 million in distributed tokenized commodities, equal to 0.55% of the market. Ethereum holds about $4.7 billion, or roughly 95%.

Recent data also shows Solana’s tokenized equity trading share has risen, adding another category of blockchain asset activity. However, BNB Chain holds $87 million in tokenized commodities, while Arbitrum holds $85.8 million. Both totals remain more than three times Solana’s amount.

Robinhood Chain holds only $4.6 million in tokenized commodities, yet it handled about one-quarter of DEX volume on September 23. Elsewhere, firms have introduced direct stock-to-token conversion services as tokenized markets expand across networks.

Solana’s commodity value rose 1.09% over 30 days, while Ethereum fell 4.72% and BNB Chain dropped 7.83%. Daily trading remains small, so new listings can quickly change rankings. Ethereum still holds most of the tokenized commodity supply despite Solana’s current volume lead across decentralized venues tracked in the latest available market data on September 25.

According to Farside’s monitoring, on September 24, total net inflows into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs hit $190.7 million, broken down as follows: BlackRock’s IBIT: +$162.6 million; Fidelity’s FBTC: +$12.9 million; Morgan Stanley’s MSBT: +$10.2 million; Franklin’s EZBC: +$4.9 million; Bitwise’s BITB: +$4.1 million; WisdomTree’s BTCW: -$4 million. ARK’s ARKB, Invesco’s BTCO, Valkyrie’s BRRR, VanEck’s HODL, Grayscale’s GBTC, and other Bitcoin ETFs saw no net inflows or outflows. Total net inflows into U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs yesterday reached $66.1 million, with breakdown: BlackRock’s ETHA: +$26.8 million; Fidelity’s FETH: +$21.5 million; Grayscale’s ETH: +$17.8 million. BlackRock’s ETHB, Bitwise’s ETHW, 21Shares’ TETH, VanEck’s ETHV, Invesco’s QETH, Franklin’s EZET, Morgan Stanley’s MSSE, and Grayscale’s ETHE recorded no net inflows or outflows.

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KelpDAO sues LayerZero and its co-founders over the rsETH cross-chain bridge vulnerability.

KelpDAO has issued a statement announcing that Kelp is suing LayerZero and its co-founder Bryan Pellegrino over the rsETH LayerZero cross-chain bridge vulnerability incident earlier this year. The lawsuit alleges the vulnerability originated from LayerZero’s own technical flaws and a breach of its security infrastructure—including LayerZero’s failure to disclose inherent weaknesses and risks in its technology, and its inability to stop attackers from compromising its security infrastructure to exploit the flaw. Over the past several months, LayerZero and Pellegrino publicly blamed Kelp for the incident, but Kelp claims LayerZero had previously reviewed and approved the deployment and configuration of its LayerZero technology in writing. Kelp further stated that following the vulnerability incident, it has taken steps to protect user assets, including migrating the rsETH cross-chain bridge to a more secure cross-chain security standard. The lawsuit seeks to hold LayerZero and Bryan Pellegrino liable for the related losses.

13 minutes ago

The U.S. Secretary of Defense lists Bitcoin in his 2025 financial disclosure, with valuations ranging from approximately $16,000 to $65,000.

According to CNBC, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s newly released 2025 annual financial disclosure shows his household’s cash, retirement investments, and Bitcoin holdings are worth at least approximately $3.1 million. The Bitcoin is valued between $16,000 and $65,000, and one of his three cash accounts exceeds $1 million.

13 minutes ago

Goldman Sachs says the AI sector remains attractive, with a massive $800 billion investment underpinning Asia's hardware supply chain.

Insight Beating AI News Brief: Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific Equity Strategist Timothy Moe said AI-related stocks remain attractive despite rising government bond yields. “We are firmly in the ‘higher for longer’ camp,” he stated. He noted that hyperscale cloud computing firms are projected to invest roughly $800 billion this year, with that figure potentially reaching $1.2 trillion by 2027 – a key indicator of demand for Asia’s AI hardware supply chain. Moe added that the “extremely low” valuations in Asian markets also offer extra support for related stocks, as the region’s overall stock market currently trades at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of around 10, sitting at the lower end of its historical valuation range. He further noted that corporate earnings growth will act as a buffer against the high interest rate environment. For the rest of this year, Moe expects markets to stay “somewhat choppy” amid the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, with high energy prices and geopolitical risks amplifying market pressure. However, after this phase, he believes markets could rally by year-end, driven by corporate earnings growth and valuation recovery. (Jin10)

13 minutes ago

Bybit’s CEO: Ready to assist Bitget in any way possible at any time.

Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou posted on social media that the Bybit team is ready to provide assistance in any way possible for the recent Bitget hack incident. When Bybit was targeted by a hacker attack, Bitget extended its support to the platform. Bybit is updating its LazarusBounty bounty website to help Bitget track and determine the flow of stolen funds. BlockBeats previously reported that on February 21, 2025, Bybit suffered what was then the largest hack in cryptocurrency history, with approximately $1.46 billion to $1.5 billion worth of Ethereum stolen, an attack later attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Following the breach, Bitget quickly transferred 40,000 ETH to Bybit (valued at roughly $105 million to $106 million at the time), with the funds sourced from Bitget’s own reserves, not user assets. The support came in the form of an interest-free, uncollateralized, open-ended loan, intended to help Bybit cope with withdrawal runs and replenish liquidity.

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Bitget Wallet: User assets are not affected by the current Bitget incident; users are advised to beware of phishing posts spreading FUD.

Bitget Wallet’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Alvin Kan stated in a social media post that Bitget Wallet is a self-custody wallet, meaning users’ assets remain on-chain and are fully controlled by the users themselves. In short, Bitget Wallet users’ assets are not affected by the ongoing incident involving Bitget Exchange. The team has been conducting preventive checks and reviews of internal systems as a precaution, and no security impacts have been detected to date. Additionally, the team has observed numerous scam posts impersonating Bitget Wallet and distributing phishing links. We urge everyone to exercise extreme caution and only access updates through official channels.

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Payy Network shut down its entire payments platform on September 24 after an attacker exploited a vulnerability in its Ethereum rollup contract and walked away with roughly $1.83 million in USDC. Deposits, withdrawals, transfers, and card transactions all went dark as the team scrambled to contain the damage.

The exploit hit at 04:21 UTC, buried inside a malicious verifyRollup transaction confirmed at block 26044909.

What the attacker actually did Payy is built around a privacy-first stablecoin payments model, running on an Ethereum-based rollup. The rollup contract is effectively the bridge between what happens on Payy’s network and what gets settled on Ethereum mainnet, and that bridge is where the attacker found their opening.

By crafting a transaction that passed through the verifyRollup function, the exploiter was able to extract USDC that should have remained locked in the contract.

Blockchain investigation firm Specter Investigation traced the stolen funds through the Railgun privacy protocol, where the USDC was converted into approximately 683 ETH and then fanned out across multiple addresses.

Payy confirmed the attack publicly and said all network operations were suspended while the team works with law enforcement and cybersecurity professionals. No timeline for resuming services has been announced.

This is not Payy’s first security scare in 2026 What makes this breach harder to dismiss as a fluke is that Payy already dealt with a serious vulnerability earlier this year. In June 2026, the project disclosed a critical flaw in its zk-circuit logic, the cryptographic layer responsible for generating the zero-knowledge proofs that underpin the platform’s privacy guarantees.

That flaw had allowed for the potential creation of forged burn messages, meaning an attacker could theoretically signal that tokens had been destroyed when they hadn’t been. The team patched it in version 1.3.0 before any funds were lost.

Why rollup bridges keep ending up in the headlines Payy’s case follows a familiar pattern: a project builds a sophisticated privacy architecture, the cryptographic layer holds, but the surrounding infrastructure fails. Zero-knowledge proofs are exceptionally hard to break mathematically. The contracts that wrap around them are not always written to the same standard.

What users and investors are watching now The immediate concern for Payy users is straightforward: funds are frozen, the network is dark, and the company has not given a restart date.

Payy has not indicated whether affected users will be made whole. In past DeFi exploits, outcomes have ranged from full reimbursement funded by treasury reserves to total losses for users, depending on the protocol’s financial position and governance decisions. Payy has not yet disclosed which category this incident falls into.

Security audits, which Payy had clearly invested in given the June patch, are necessary but not sufficient. The June vulnerability was found and fixed before exploitation. The September exploit suggests either a separate attack surface was missed or the fix introduced new complexity that created new risk.

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

PeckShield Flags $4.3M in Suspicious Duelbits Outflows.

Blockchain security firm PeckShield has reported approximately $4.3 million in suspicious cryptocurrency outflows from Duelbits across Ethereum and BNB Chain, involving ETH, stablecoins, BNB, and Shiba Inu.

#PeckShieldAlert #Duelbits has seen a suspicious outflow of ~$4.3M in crypto on #Ethereum and #BNBChain, including 836 ETH($2.23M), 1.146M USDT, 209 BNB ($160.68K), 96.805K USDC, 12.398B SHIB ($70.17K), and 31.515K DAI.

The attacker has since swapped the stolen funds for 1587.87… pic.twitter.com/zJ5HUtIghQ

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) September 24, 2026

PeckShield identified the recipient as an attacker and said the funds had been converted into approximately 1,587.87 ETH, valued at around $4.2 million, alongside about 31,500 DAI. Its alert did not identify how the funds were accessed or establish whether customer balances were affected.

ETH, Stablecoins and 12.398 Billion SHIB Involved According to PeckShield, the suspicious outflows included 836 ETH worth approximately $2.23 million, 1.146 million USDT, and 209 BNB valued at $160,680.

PeckShield Flags $4.3M in Suspicious Duelbits Outflows. The firm also listed approximately 96,805 USDC, 12.398 billion SHIB worth $70,170, and 31,515 DAI.

The $4.3 million figure represents PeckShield’s aggregate estimate. The individual amounts listed account for approximately $3.74 million at the quoted valuations, assuming the stablecoins traded near $1. The alert did not explain the difference between those figures.

Ethereum records dated September 24 show several incoming transfers from a Duelbits-labeled address to a wallet beginning 0xA77e24 and ending 05aef76. These included 31,515 DAI at 09:00:35 UTC, approximately 12.4 billion SHIB at 09:00:59, 96,804.68 USDC at 09:01:23, and 593,430.32 USDT at 09:02:11. The explorer also identified Duelbits as the address’s initial funding source.

Funds Moved Through deBridge and Relay Addresses Subsequent transactions show the recipient moving assets to addresses associated with cross-chain services.

At 09:27:35 UTC, the wallet transferred 96,804.68 USDC to a deBridge-labeled address. A separate transaction at 09:31:23 moved approximately 6.4 billion SHIB to the same labeled destination. Four later SHIB transactions, ranging from 1 billion to 2 billion tokens each, brought the displayed outgoing SHIB total to approximately 12.4 billion.

The records also show six transfers of 100,000 USDT each to Relay: Router V3, followed by another transfer of 83,346.89 USDT. Together, those seven transactions amounted to 683,346.89 USDT.

Following the transactions, the Ethereum address’s recorded balance stood at approximately 1,587.876 ETH, valued by Etherscan at $4,190,468.37. Its remaining token holdings consisted of 31,515 DAI worth approximately $31,510.37, placing the combined ETH and DAI balance at roughly $4.22 million at that snapshot.

Duelbits Previously Suffered a Separate Wallet Exploit Duelbits, which operates a cryptocurrency casino and sports betting platform, previously suffered an exploit on February 13, 2024. De.Fi’s incident report recorded losses of approximately $4.64 million and identified a loss of wallet access control as the apparent cause. Assets taken in that incident were also bridged and exchanged into ETH.

That historical finding does not establish the cause of the September 24 outflows. PeckShield’s latest alert focused on the assets moved and their subsequent conversion, without specifying an attack method.

Attackers drained roughly 11.7 million XRP from thousands of D’CENT App Wallet users. The theft, worth close to $20 million, unfolded between September 15 and 20. XRPL.to published the on-chain forensic timeline.

The operation unfolded across six separate waves. It hit a combined 6,678 wallets using keys the thief already controlled.

How the Attack Actually UnfoldedSomeone manually drained eight wallets, each holding over 99,999 XRP, within an hour on September 15. An automated script then swept a total of 1,682 wallets that same day.

Five more waves followed through September 20. Each wave reused the same script, manual tool, and stolen keys.

Attackers went beyond simple transfers, too. They deleted 5,001 accounts entirely to claim their remaining reserve balances, XRPL.to reported.

Notably, 2,470 of those wallets had never been swept. That detail suggests the thief held a broader list of compromised keys than the initial drain revealed.

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Wallets swept per hour (up) and accounts deleted per hour (down). Source: xrpl.toThe stolen funds moved fast. Roughly 5.6 million XRP crossed into Ethereum through THORChain. Other funds are routed through exchanges, including Binance, as well as services like unionchain.ai and NEAR Intents.

Each sweep often reached an off-ramp within hours, limiting the window available for freezing stolen funds. About 1.3 million XRP still sat in the attacker’s own wallets as of September 21.

Why Are D’CENT Users Specifically at Risk?D’CENT confirmed abnormal transfers affecting its App Wallet on September 16. The company clarified that hardware wallets remained unaffected. It later urged users to move funds immediately, though it has not confirmed whether reimbursement will follow.

Notably, no XRP Ledger exploit caused this incident. Every sweep used valid signatures from the wallets’ own private keys. That detail means the compromise originated from how those keys were exposed, not from any flaw in the network itself.

5.6 Million XRP Moved to Ethereum Through THORChain. Source: xrpl.toXRPL.to’s analysis found the operation reused identical scripts and fee patterns across multiple waves. That pattern strongly suggests a single coordinated actor carried out every stage. Security researchers now recommend one specific step.

Anyone who used D’CENT’s App Wallet at any point should migrate funds to a new wallet immediately. The exact method behind the original key compromise still remains unconfirmed.

XRP trades near $1.49 at the time of writing. That figure marked a 6% drop over the past 24 hours, according to BeInCrypto data. The token’s market cap stood near $93.82 billion, ranking fifth among all cryptocurrencies.

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Cayman Islands, Cayman Islands, September 23rd, 2026, Chainwire

Google Cloud joins as a key infrastructure partner for Puffer UniFi, operating a gateway through Puffer Preconf to deliver sub-second execution backed by Ethereum

Puffer Finance has announced that Google Cloud has joined as a gateway operator in Puffer Preconf, a preconfirmation (preconf) service that delivers sub-second transaction preconfs for Ethereum rollups. Puffer UniFi will be the first rollup to use Google Cloud’s gateway for transaction processing and preconfirmations. 

Puffer UniFi is Puffer’s high-performance Ethereum execution stack, built to deliver real-time execution while remaining synchronously composable with Ethereum.

The integration makes Google Cloud one of the first major cloud infrastructure providers to actively operate within Ethereum’s preconf and rollup ecosystem.

Google Cloud brings enterprise-grade reliability and geographic diversity. Rollups and appchains can select either gateway individually or combine them for added resilience. Starting with Puffer UniFi, this gives rollups access to Google Cloud’s infrastructure for transaction processing and sub-second preconfirmations.

Puffer Preconf addresses a core limitation of based rollups, a new class of Ethereum rollups that use Ethereum validators for transaction sequencing instead of centralized sequencers. While based rollups inherit Ethereum’s security and decentralization, they are constrained to Ethereum’s 12-second block times. Puffer Preconf’s gateway layer provides near-instant execution preconfirmations, backed by restaked ETH and economic security. If any gateway fails to honor a preconfirmation commitment, a slashing mechanism compensates affected parties, providing credible downside protection.

With sub-second confirmations from multiple gateway providers, Puffer Preconf makes it practical for developers to build applications, AI agents, and rollups that compose across the Ethereum ecosystem with near-instant finality. Puffer UniFi will be the first rollup to put Google Cloud’s gateway infrastructure into use, combining high-performance execution with fast preconfirmations before final settlement on Ethereum. This composability is particularly relevant as agentic commerce accelerates. AI agents executing high-frequency, time-sensitive transactions onchain need the speed and finality guarantees that Puffer Preconf’s gateway layer provides.

“Preconfirmations are how Ethereum rollups deliver speed without giving up decentralization. Google Cloud joining the Gateway Registry brings geographic and operational resilience to Puffer’s infrastructure and, by extension, the broader Ethereum ecosystem. With Puffer UniFi as the first rollup to use Google Cloud’s gateway, we’re bringing that infrastructure directly into Puffer UniFi’s execution stack, giving institutions, applications, and AI agents the speed and reliability they need to operate on Ethereum in synchrony,” said Amir Forouzani, Co-Founder and CEO of Puffer Labs. 

“AI and agents are moving towards onchain payment operations. This creates demands on infrastructure that can enable speed and scalability. We’re excited to contribute to this infrastructure as a gateway operator,” said Pranav Mehrotra, APAC Technology Leader – New Frontiers, Google Cloud.

About Puffer Finance

Puffer is building the next-generation settlement layer for Agentic Commerce. Through Puffer UniFi, AI agents, institutions, and trading platforms can transact and settle instantly on Ethereum, enabling synchronous composability with Ethereum for the first time.

About Google Cloud 

Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

Kamui Finance, a firm founded in 2024 and registered in the Marshall Islands, has rolled out three institutional-grade vaults on Ethereum designed to give large allocators streamlined access to tokenized real-world assets. The vaults pull together offerings from four established RWA platforms: DigiFT, Centrifuge, Midas, and Ondo.

How the vaults work Each vault issues its own token built to the ERC-7540 standard, a relatively new specification designed for tokenized vault shares that need to handle asynchronous deposit and redemption flows. In plainer terms, ERC-7540 lets the vault accept deposit requests, process them off-chain or through compliance checks, and then settle, rather than requiring instant atomic transactions that don’t play well with real-world settlement timelines.

Kamui’s vault strategies target private credit, real estate debt, trade finance, structured credit, and US Treasuries. These are asset classes where settlement can take days, counterparty checks are mandatory, and instant on-chain redemption would be either impractical or legally impossible.

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Kamui positions itself as the operator layer sitting between the investor and those underlying assets. The firm handles sourcing, due diligence, portfolio rebalancing, daily net asset value calculations, and compliance.

The ERC-7540 compatibility also means the vault tokens can plug into other DeFi protocols.

The team and the timing Kamui’s team includes alumni from Goldman Sachs and other institutional finance backgrounds, with experience spanning on-chain product development and institutional credit markets.

What this means for institutional RWA adoption The core problem Kamui is trying to solve is operational fragmentation. Right now, an institution that wants exposure to tokenized Treasuries from Ondo, private credit from Centrifuge, and structured products from Midas would need to complete separate KYC and onboarding processes with each issuer. Each integration requires its own legal review, technical connection, and ongoing monitoring. Kamui’s vault structure collapses those multiple relationships into one.

With no disclosed figures on assets under management or target yields, the market will be watching early inflows closely.

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