Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Since its inception in 2018, The Graph has successfully established itself as the industry’s leading protocol for blockchain data infrastructure - the critical layer that makes the world's onchain data accessible. It was built on a core belief: data should be open and permissionless. That belief is not incidental to The Graph. It is the reason The Graph exists.

Throughout that time, The Graph Foundation's mandate has been to steward the health and growth of that protocol and ecosystem to ensure that belief is made real in the world. The Foundation’s mandate spanned strategic treasury management, facilitating alignment, and accountability among contributors. The Foundation team worked as the credibly-neutral steward in an ecosystem deliberately structudred so that participants pursuing their own interests, within the right incentive framework, would ultimately produce value for users.

Earlier this year, the Foundation published the Technical Roadmap - the first installment in a two-part series detailing the protocol's future. This second post concludes that series by pairing the technical vision with the official announcement of The Graph Foundation’s new operating mandate.

The Roadmap Set the StageIf you read the Technical Roadmap, you already have more context than you might realize. That post wasn't just a technical vision. It also described a more expansive view of The Graph - a vision characterized by new data services, changes to issuance, and an economic model rebuilt to reward and incentivize real network participation. Early signals of many operational and ecosystem changes to come.

For quick context, the technical roadmap shared the Foundation’s belief that The Graph needs to look beyond Subgraphs - to data services that span real-time data streaming, token analytics, institutional-grade infrastructure, and AI-native access - alongside other important changes to how issuance, incentives, and resources get allocated to support this expansive view.

As an industry pioneer, The Graph defined decentralized data indexing and established Subgraphs as the standard for onchain data - a milestone built by some of the most dedicated contributors in web3. However, that very breakthrough transformed indexing into a fiercely contested landscape. Today, market maturity, rapidly shifting user demands, and aggressive competition require an equally decisive evolution in how the protocol operates.

What brought The Graph to the forefront initially must now drive its future: an uncompromising focus on speed, execution velocity, innovation, and creating value for users. Delivering on that standard also necessitates a fundamental shift in how the Foundation operates. The Foundation must evolve its mandate from passive underwriter supporting external development to directly building, maintaining, and scaling The Graph Network and protocol.

From Coordinator to OperatorWhen the Foundation’s mandate was originally written, stewardship meant something specific: managing the treasury responsibly, funding independent contributors, and remaining credibly neutral across the ecosystem. This was the standard playbook across web3 foundations, and it made sense during The Graph’s formative years - when the priority was establishing indexing standards, attracting contributors through grants, and coordinating independent development teams. Today, industry maturation and shifting market dynamics mean that that original approach is no longer sustainable.

The multi-core-developer model relied on large, long-term grants to independent teams tasked with building novel web3 solutions. While this approach may have scaled the protocol initially, it no longer delivers the competitive edge required in today’s market.

A pivot is required. The Foundation must place greater emphasis on the strategic allocation of capital alongside a decisive directive to build The Graph, support network participants, and serve users. This necessitates an evolved mandate: stepping into the protocol directly as an operator, maintainer, and developer. Rather than coordinating and underwriting third-party roadmaps from a distance, the Foundation must take direct responsibility for executing The Graph’s long-term vision.

Executing this pivot requires organizational evolution, in-house technical capabilities, and dedicated resourcing. An active governance proposal from the Foundation seeks to redirect 20% of protocol issuance to support these expanded responsibilities - a common funding mechanism in other protocol ecosystems. In parallel, the Foundation is actively restructuring internally to onboard a dedicated team capable of operating and maintaining the protocol directly, reducing reliance on external dependencies.

The rationale is clear: evolving market dynamics and coordination bottlenecks require a decisive departure from the past paradigm. It is time to transition the Foundation from passive coordinator to an active catalyst for growth.

A Catalyst for GrowthStepping into an operator role brings greater velocity, tighter execution, and a clear path toward expanding The Graph's reach. It’s a much simpler model. To unlock this next phase of growth, several core priorities will define the Foundation’s new mandate:

Operational Continuity. Continuity for the protocol, the network, and the users who depend on them comes first. The Foundation is actively building internal technical capacity to run and maintain core infrastructure directly, rather than relying exclusively on funding external teams. This shift represents a decisive transition from coordinating third-parties to taking direct ownership of protocol operations.

Product Acceleration. Users will experience this operational shift most directly through a unified product interface. As The Graph expands beyond Subgraphs into modular data services, Subgraph Studio is evolving into a single platform to publish, discover, and consume data products, including Subgraphs, real-time streams, token analytics, and RPC endpoints. Crucially, the Foundation will prioritize an end-to-end decentralized Studio architecture, ensuring every query routes directly through the network and Indexers. Other user benefits will include integration of native Substreams, expanding consumption pathways from GraphQL and SQL to direct database delivery, and engineering next-generation indexing stacks to deliver high-performance data infrastructure under one cohesive, network-backed developer experience.

Enabling Data Service Providers. The Graph's expanding architecture - from Horizon and other initiatives - opens the door to a new class of network participant: teams that build and operate specialized data services on shared infrastructure. While several long-standing core developers are already migrating to this model, the Foundation is simultaneously leading the recruiting and onboarding of new ecosystem partners to accelerate this provider pipeline. This is also a deliberate change in how The Graph grows. Alongside serving developers directly, the Foundation is investing in a partner-led motion - targeting companies that build their products and businesses on top of the network and bring their own customers with them. Gateway Operators and data service providers can make The Graph their backend, reach markets the Foundation would never reach alone, and route that demand to the network's Indexers - teams that once ran parallel infrastructure become partners with a stake in the network's success. Every business that grows this way grows the network with it.

Chain Coverage and Integration. Capturing the value created across the ecosystem is an essential priority. Today, revenue generated from chain integrations is largely captured outside the protocol. However, protocol value capture must scale in tandem with network expansion. Consequently, the Foundation will take direct ownership of the Chain Integration Process - thereby aligning revenue capture directly with the protocol while prioritizing chains with proven developer demand and durable network value.

Vertical Priorities. The developer community remains the core of The Graph. As the industry matures, the Foundation will reinforce its commitment to developers while expanding the addressable user base and supported use cases. Moving forward, the Foundation will direct capital investment, product development, and ecosystem resources across three primary verticals:

DeFi: While Subgraphs remain a core pillar of The Graph’s product suite, scaling Substreams adoption is a primary focus for capturing new market share. Significant enhancements in latency and expanded chain coverage make Substreams an essential data layer for high-throughput DeFi applications. Built directly on this foundation, a Token API product is intended to provide standardized, pre-indexed token metrics, while Tycho will deliver real-time streaming access to decentralized exchange liquidity. Expanding usage across these offerings routes sustained query demand into the upcoming Substreams data service.Institutional and Enterprise: Substreams will replace fragile RPC polling with high-throughput, parallelized data streaming delivered directly into proprietary enterprise systems. Deterministic and reproducible by design, Substreams is engineered so that identical inputs produce identical outputs - providing compliance, forensics, and custody teams with verifiable, reproducible data across chains for scalable risk management and regulatory reporting. In parallel, the Foundation is positioning the network for the rise of institutional onchain privacy. As asset managers and banking institutions deploy confidential applications on public chains, confidentiality must be paired with verifiability. The Graph is uniquely suited to serve as the neutral, immutable query and verification layer that enables regulators, auditors, and counterparties to validate disclosures against ground-truth data, extending core protocol utility into enterprise infrastructure.AI and Agentic Applications: The Graph is positioned as the foundational data layer for onchain intelligence. The ecosystem is deploying an advanced suite of AI-native capabilities: Subgraph Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) interfaces for natural language querying, agentic SKILL modules to accelerate developer velocity, and x402 primitives to facilitate autonomous, pay-per-query settlement for AI agents. Beyond data ingestion, the Foundation is expanding into agent state management. As autonomous agents act on behalf of users, they generate critical contextual memory, preferences, and interaction histories - assets currently siloed across proprietary centralized providers. Applying decentralized protocol principles, the Foundation is preparing the launch of its inaugural agentic product that will provide end-to-end encrypted, user-owned, and fully portable memory across heterogeneous models and agents. Served directly via The Graph Network without vendor lock-in, this architecture leverages existing network primitives to minimize operational overhead while scaling efficiently alongside adoption. Additional details about the Foundation's inaugural AI agentic product will be shared in upcoming releases.Network Economics and Ecosystem Health. The Foundation is also taking a more hands-on role in the sustainability and performance of the Indexer ecosystem, reviewing issuance, payments, and incentives directly. Three efforts anchor that work:

The Rewards Eligibility Oracle moves indexing rewards from proof-of-presence toward proof-of-work. It ties reward eligibility to real quality of service, so Indexers earn for the value they actually deliver rather than for merely holding an allocation. Eliminating reward waste on idle allocations significantly optimizes the efficiency of the issuance pool, which helps balance broader shifts in protocol resource allocation.Direct Indexer Payments let consumers and Gateway Operators pay Indexers directly to serve specific subgraphs at an agreed level of service. This gives developers a way to increase confidence the data they need gets indexed, and gives Indexers a clear, verifiable pay-for-work relationship as the network scales.The GRT Liquid Staking Initiative turns staked GRT into stGRT, a liquid token built with Avantgarde Finance on Enzyme tooling and managed by The Graph Foundation. Liquid Staking is intended to provide greater flexibility while allowing participants to maintain staking exposure, and makes participation far simpler for holders and institutions while deepening the stake that secures the network. More details will be forthcoming in the following weeks.Community and Communication. With direct ownership of core development, the Foundation can finally communicate the way the community has asked for: a faster cadence of updates, clearer accountability for what ships and when, and more direct channels for dialogue - with this publication as an immediate step in that direction.

The Road AheadThe road ahead will bring complex challenges. Geopolitical, macroeconomic, and regulatory forces continue to shape the industry in unpredictable ways. However, the Foundation enters this new phase with grounded optimism - driven not by hype, but by operational clarity and a defined sense of responsibility.

The Graph was founded on the principle that the world's blockchain data is a public good, and that open protocols offer superior reliability and permanence compared to centralized alternatives. That conviction is the through-line from The Graph's origins to this moment. The Graph represents some of the most vital infrastructure ever created in this industry, and The Graph Foundation is dedicated to demonstrating that through strong execution, supported by a vibrant ecosystem of committed chains, contributors, builders, and community members who share this vision. We believe The Graph’s best days are yet to come!

In the coming months, we'll follow up with more updates on what this next chapter means in practice - specific deliverables, timelines, and how the pieces described here fit together.

To learn more about how this evolution impacts protocol governance, resource allocation, and core development, review the FAQs below.

Frequently Asked QuestionsHow will the issuance allocation be used and governed?

Leveraging protocol issuance to fund core development is an established practice across the industry. These resources are committed strictly to building The Graph and to maintaining infrastructure continuity for users. The Foundation and its budget remain accountable to The Graph Council, which will retain oversight.

Is The Graph abandoning decentralization?

No. The protocol is strategically prioritizing decentralization where it delivers maximum impact and security: at the network, Indexer, and Gateway layers. A truly decentralized data market relies on a permissionless, distributed infrastructure of independent node operators, which remains core to The Graph. Concurrently, core development and resource allocation require focused operational leadership. Adopting an active operator posture enables the Foundation to provide strategic continuity and rapid technical execution without compromising the decentralized architecture of the network itself.

What happens to the former core development teams?

Former core development teams remain vital pillars of the ecosystem, and the Foundation desires to maintain deep, collaborative relationships with the contributors who established The Graph. Ongoing collaboration will continue across chain integrations, dedicated data services, and targeted product development. What is shifting is the funding framework and operational leadership. The new Foundation mandate replaces broad, open-ended operational grants with directed resource allocation that aligns ecosystem funding with the protocol's strategic priorities.

Is the Rewards Eligibility Oracle punitive? Will it push out small Indexers?

The Rewards Eligibility Oracle (REO) is aimed at directing rewards toward active service provision, not at punishing small Indexers. REO’s purpose is to support Indexers who actively contribute value to the protocol, rather than those staking without providing service. Size is not the criterion; contribution is. Rewards that would otherwise flow to Indexers delivering no value are reclaimed and can be redirected toward Indexers and other participants who do provide value, in both the near and long term.

One downstream effect is worth flagging for Delegators. Stake delegated to an Indexer that is no longer eligible for rewards will not earn indexing rewards either. Delegators in that position are encouraged to review where their stake sits and move it to an Indexer that actively participates in and contributes value to the network. Alternatively, The Graph will be announcing a new Liquid Staking program in the coming days to ease Delegator migration.

Does Foundation-run liquid staking centralize delegation?

This initiative does pool delegations and that is deliberate. Pooling lets the Foundation direct stake toward Indexers who deliver real value to the protocol. Historically, delegation has often followed the Indexers with the strongest marketing or the best placement on external staking and educational platforms, rather than those contributing the most value. The Foundation has the most complete view of where support is needed across the network, and this tool lets it back chain integrations, subgraph and data-service coverage, and both established and emerging contributors as the ecosystem grows.

How can the Foundation reinterpret the mandate?

Reinterpreting the mandate was not a unilateral move. The Foundation was encouraged to rethink the mandate by the Council and by other core teams in the ecosystem, who shared a dissatisfaction with how the original mandate was working. The previous mandate did not deliver the growth and success the protocol needs for its longevity. Reinterpreting how the Foundation participates has been more than a year of work, and we have concluded it is the best path to the protocol's long-term health and growth.

About The GraphThe Graph is a suite of blockchain data infrastructure products that extract, process, and deliver scalable blockchain data solutions across 60+ networks. The Graph enables application developers, data analysts, AI agents, and enterprise teams that need structured, real-time access to blockchain data. Products include Subgraphs, Firehose, Substreams, and Amp. As of early 2026, The Graph has served over 1.27 trillion queries to more than 75,000 projects, powered by a network of independent Indexers around the world.

Follow The Graph on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Reddit. Join the community on The Graph’s Telegram, join technical discussions on The Graph’s Discord.

Injective Institutional Services is now registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a transfer agent.

The registration is officially effective, marking a major milestone in Injective's work to bring regulated financial and tokenized markets onchain. Injective Institutional Services can now operate within the federal transfer agent framework, supporting a core function of securities markets: maintaining ownership records and processing changes to them.

This moves Injective beyond providing the technology to tokenize assets. Injective becomes one of the few American crypto organizations to hold a registered transfer agent function, which lets us accelerate institutional adoption across tokenization and beyond. The broader Injective ecosystem now combines purpose-built blockchain infrastructure, compliance-ready issuance through our latest RWA product: Injective Mint, and an affiliated registered entity designed to support the official records behind securities ownership and transfers.

What a Registered Transfer Agent DoesA transfer agent maintains the authoritative record of who owns a security. It records changes in ownership, helps reconcile securities issued with securities outstanding, and supports functions that determine who is entitled to distributions, voting rights, and transfers.
This record is foundational to every securities market. Yet in most tokenization models, the token and the official ownership record remain separate. A security may move onchain while its authoritative register is maintained in an offchain system, leaving multiple records to be reconciled after a transaction.

Blockchain infrastructure can change that model. The SEC staff has stated that a registered transfer agent may use distributed ledger technology as its official master securityholder file, or as a component of it, provided the transfer agent meets all applicable federal securities law requirements.

That creates a path for the ownership record to update alongside settlement. Instead of serving only as a digital representation of a separate database entry, the onchain asset can become part of the authoritative recordkeeping system.

The Missing Regulated Layer for Tokenized SecuritiesTokenization is often treated as an issuance problem. In practice, creating a token is only the beginning.

Regulated assets also require controls over who can hold and transfer them, how issuance and redemption are administered, how records remain accurate, and how compliance requirements are applied throughout the asset's lifecycle.

The effective registration of Injective Institutional Services adds a critical regulated capability to Injective's tokenization stack. It creates a framework for supporting securities ownership and transfer records while using infrastructure designed for sub-second settlement, transparent verification, and programmable financial applications.

This places Injective among a small group of blockchain-native ecosystems bringing both the technology and regulated market functions required for institutional tokenization into one broader stack.

Injective Mint and the Transfer Agent FunctionInjective Mint is the issuance and management platform built to make compliance-ready tokenization accessible without custom contracts or command-line tools.

Through one interface, issuers can create an asset, set holder and jurisdictional restrictions, assign administrative roles, separate minting and redemption permissions, freeze restricted addresses, and pause transfers when required. These controls are enforced through Injective's native RWA module.

Injective Mint and Injective Institutional Services address two connected parts of the same market:

Injective Mint enables institutions to create and manage assets with configurable, protocol-level controls. Injective Institutional Services provides an affiliated registered transfer agent capability to support official securities ownership and transfer records.

Together, they establish a more complete foundation for assets that can be issued, administered, recorded, and settled onchain. The structure does not make every asset issued through Injective Mint a security or automatically satisfy every regulatory requirement. It gives issuers and institutions infrastructure that can be configured around the legal and operational requirements applicable to each asset.

Built on a Tokenization Record That Is Already LiveThe registration does not start Injective's tokenization work. It completes a layer that has been building for years.
Institutions have been issuing real assets on Injective since 2025. This includes Nomura's Laser Digital tokenized the Laser Carry Fund on Injective through Libre, alongside BlackRock money market products and the Hamilton Lane SCOPE Senior Credit Fund. Those funds launched with onchain utility that tokenized funds rarely receive, including secondary trading, collateralized lending, and portfolio margining.

Markets for digital asset treasuries, equities and Pre-IPO companies such as SpaceX and OpenAI, have also launched on Injective.

In July, Injective extended into enterprise trade finance. POSCO International, South Korea's largest trading company, and LG CNS, the technology arm of LG Group, selected Injective for an exclusive live pilot that issues, transfers, administers, and settles trade receivables generated by real international commerce. 

Institutional funds. Public equities. Private company shares. Enterprise receivables. Four different asset classes, one network, all live. The transfer agent registration now sits underneath them as the regulated recordkeeping layer that American markets require.

Building Regulated Pathways Across the United States and EuropeThe registration also advances a broader regulatory strategy spanning major global markets.

In Europe, the Injective Foundation has completed the notification and publication process for the INJ MiCA white paper. The document is listed in the European Securities and Markets Authority's Interim MiCA Register, with Denmark as the home Member State and coverage across the European Union and European Economic Area.

The two developments serve different purposes. The MiCA white paper provides standardized disclosures for European markets evaluating INJ for potential admission to trading. The U.S. transfer agent registration applies to a regulated market function supporting securities recordkeeping and transfers. Together, they demonstrate a consistent approach: building onchain financial infrastructure alongside the regulatory foundations institutions need to utilize.

A Complete Foundation for Onchain Capital MarketsThe next stage of tokenization will not be defined by how many assets can be minted. Rather, it will be defined by whether those assets can operate as part of real financial markets.

That requires issuance, compliance controls, authoritative ownership records, settlement, and utility to work together. Injective is bringing those components into one ecosystem:

Compliance-ready asset creation and administration through Injective Mint Protocol-level permissions that enforce transfer rules onchain. A registered transfer agent capability through Injective Institutional Services sub-second settlement and financial modules built for trading, lending, derivatives, and other forms of onchain utilityNo other blockchain-native organization in the United States has assembled this combination. American infrastructure, American regulatory registration, and a live tokenization record spanning institutional funds, public equities, private markets, and enterprise trade finance. Injective is made in America and now carries the regulated market function that American securities markets are built on.

The effective registration of Injective Institutional Services is an important step toward that future. It turns the transfer agent initiative from a filing into a regulated capability and brings Injective closer to an end-to-end foundation for securities issued, managed, and recorded onchain.

About InjectiveInjective is the first blockchain purpose-built for finance, enabling users, institutions, and AI agents to trade, tokenize, and transact at scale. Proudly made in America, Injective provides foundational blockchain infrastructure for global markets, with embedded financial primitives spanning stablecoins, real-world assets, payments, and programmable perpetuals through a unified onchain engine. Injective is used by Fortune 500 companies, banks, fintechs, and governments to power an open economy where any asset can be accessed anytime, from anywhere. Builders can deploy across multiple virtual machines like WASM and EVM, connect to native financial modules, and launch markets with deep liquidity from day one. INJ is the native token powering the rapidly growing Injective ecosystem and the new internet economy. 

Website | Telegram | Discord | Blog | Twitter | Youtube | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit | Instagram | Orbit Newsletter

Staked supply nearly doubles since FIP.16 announcementFlare Network's total staked supply has hit 20 billion $FLR, according to @FlareNetworks Chief Product Officer Filip Koprivec (@j00sko). That figure has climbed from roughly 11 billion since FIP.16 was first announced in March, putting staked tokens at around 23% of the 86.9 billion $FLR currently in circulation.

The milestone reflects a sharp shift in holder behaviour following the network's most significant tokenomics reform to date. FIP.16, titled "Restructure FLR Tokenomics for Long-Term Network Sustainability," was approved by governance with voting concluding on April 24, 2026. Rollout is phased, with some parameters taking effect shortly after the vote while others require a network hard fork and coordinated releases.

Validator staking rewarded five times more than delegation The Flare Network implemented the FIP.16 protocol update starting with the July 20 reward epoch. The key change reweights payouts, making $FLR staking on the P-Chain worth five times the rewards of C-Chain delegation. This is a fundamental reset designed to incentivise users to lock tokens for network security rather than delegate for liquidity, and it directly targets tokenomics by aiming to reduce liquid supply and structural sell pressure from delegation rewards.

Beyond the staking reweight, FIP.16 introduced broader economic changes. The upgrade cut annual inflation from 5% to 3% and increased the base gas fee 20 times to accelerate the burn rate, directly linking $FLR's value to network usage. FIP.16 also introduces MEV capture and routes a broader set of network revenues through FIRE.

$FLR is trading around $0.0062, up approximately 5% on the day. By making staking more lucrative, the protocol encourages stronger network security and long-term holder alignment.

Sources:
Flare Developer Hub: FLR Token and FIP.16 Overview
Flare Network: From Activity to Value Accrual
Flare Network: Beyond FlareDrops

Sei has begun rolling out its Eidos storage upgrade, rebuilding how the layer-1 network stores and verifies on-chain data as its Giga roadmap targets throughput of 200,000 transactions per second.

Summary

Sei has begun the phased rollout of Eidos through its v6.6 mainnet upgrade. Eidos is rebuilding the network’s storage architecture as Giga targets 200,000 TPS. EVM state is being separated into a dedicated database, while FlatKV and LtHash are planned for later stages. The migration is designed to run while Sei remains online, with existing and new storage systems operating alongside each other. Sei said in an Aug. 12 technical update that Eidos is designed to remove storage constraints that could prevent the network’s execution layer from operating at the speeds planned under Giga. The upgrade is the storage component of a three-part architecture overhaul that also includes Autobahn for consensus and Ares for transaction execution.

The first Eidos components have already reached mainnet through Sei v6.6, though the full storage system is being introduced in stages. EVM state has started moving into a dedicated database, while FlatKV, LtHash, new receipt storage and off-node archival systems are scheduled for subsequent releases.

Sei Eidos upgrade changes how state is stored At the center of Eidos is a change to the way Sei plans to maintain and verify Ethereum Virtual Machine state.

Sei said traditional Merkle trees require nodes to recalculate multiple hashes when a value changes because each update alters the chain of hashes leading to the tree’s root. As the amount of stored data increases, individual state changes can therefore require additional database work.

Eidos is set to replace that structure for EVM state with FlatKV, a flat key-value storage system where an individual state change requires a single write. Verification will be handled using LtHash, or lattice hashing, which maintains a running fingerprint of the state.

Under the design described by Sei, LtHash can update that fingerprint in constant time when state changes. Instead of recalculating a path of hashes through a Merkle tree, a node removes the contribution of the old value and adds the new one, leaving the amount of work per update unchanged as the state expands.

The technical change is tied directly to the performance targets outlined for Giga. As crypto.news reported in May 2025, Sei Labs released its Giga whitepaper with a design targeting 200,000 transactions per second, 5 gigagas of throughput and finality below 400 milliseconds.

At that throughput, Sei said the network would also have to write hundreds of thousands of database entries every second. Faster transaction execution would therefore provide limited benefit if the storage layer could not process state changes and transaction history at a comparable rate.

EVM data is moving into a separate database Another part of Eidos separates EVM state from other data handled by Sei nodes.

Before the change, Sei said EVM state shared a database with other information on the chain. The new architecture gives EVM state its own dedicated store, preventing historical queries from competing directly with live transaction processing and reducing database work imposed on non-EVM modules.

The split started reaching mainnet in the v6.6 release during August. Sei also introduced a rebuilt pruning path for removing data that nodes no longer need to keep in active storage.

According to the network, the pruning changes reduced one cleanup process from between eight and 18 minutes to roughly five minutes during testing and operation. Nodes that could previously fall hundreds of blocks behind the chain tip remained within about 60 blocks after the change, Sei said.

Blocks and transaction receipts are also being assigned a separate storage engine called LittDB. Sei described blocks and receipts as data that is written once, repeatedly read, and eventually archived, making their storage requirements different from frequently updated account and contract state.

Internal benchmarks cited by Sei put LittDB write throughput above one gigabyte per second while handling about 55,000 point reads per second. A new receipt store sustained more than 150,000 writes per second during multi-hour benchmark tests that included garbage collection. Sei cautioned that the figure measures the storage engine and should not be treated as blockchain transaction throughput.

Older history will move away from active nodes Eidos also changes how much historical information individual nodes are expected to keep locally.

Sei said frequently accessed state and recent chain history will remain on fast local storage, while older historical records will move to archival systems built for capacity. Explorers, indexers and users auditing historical transactions will still be able to retrieve the archived information, according to the network.

Reducing the amount of old data kept on active nodes is intended to prevent historical queries from consuming resources needed for current transactions. Sei said rising storage requirements can otherwise force operators to use faster and more expensive hardware as network throughput increases.

The infrastructure work follows earlier efforts to increase access to Sei’s EVM ecosystem. MetaMask added native Sei support in August 2025, allowing users to access Sei-based applications, swap assets and bridge tokens directly through the wallet. At the time, Sei was processing more than 4.2 million daily transactions and had more than 11 million monthly active users, according to figures cited in the report.

A separate distribution agreement announced in December 2025 called for Xiaomi to pre-install a Sei wallet on new smartphones sold outside mainland China and the United States. The companies also planned support for stablecoin payments using assets such as USDC, with initial payment deployments planned for Hong Kong and the European Union.

Eidos migration runs while Sei remains online For node operators, Sei is carrying out the storage migration without stopping the blockchain.

The network said existing and replacement storage systems will operate alongside one another while data moves in batches from block to block. The rollout is controlled through governance and has been designed with a rollback process if problems emerge.

Ahead of deployment, shadow nodes replayed mainnet traffic against the new storage systems while integrity hashes were continuously checked, according to Sei. Testing showed block times remained largely unchanged while migration processes operated in the background.

Eidos is the third storage rebuild undertaken by Sei. The network previously replaced its original Cosmos storage architecture with SeiDB, followed by the state-store separation now being introduced on mainnet. FlatKV, LittDB and the off-node archival system will form the next stage as they arrive through later releases.

Users and application developers do not need to take action during the migration, according to Sei, with balances, smart contracts, historical records and existing RPC endpoints remaining available. Node operators have been given a migration guide covering configuration flags and the documented rollback process for the new storage system.

CANADA - 2025/09/28: In this photo illustration, the Hyperliquid (Hyper Liquid) logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

"Supply cliffs get packaged as sentiment, but the actual selling is largely mechanical," said Dat Ngo, a certified public accountant at Vetted Prop Firms, in written comments. "In the typical construction the recipient has tax liability upon vesting (which is day + current day price), regardless of selling. That means a chunk will immediately get sold off just to pay a tax bill."

"HyperLabs unlocked another 433,025 $HYPE($23.46M) and has been gradually depositing the tokens into exchanges, including Flowdesk and OKX, likely to sell," the onchain research account @lookonchain posted on August 8.

"Around 433,000 $HYPE unlocked over the weekend. Great projects don't magically ignore supply and demand," the trader @MrStakamoto posted two days later. HYPE trades 22.7% below its June 16 record. The trackers project another 9.92 million for September 6, some $589 million at Monday's $59.39 and nine days before the Federal Reserve's September 15-16 meeting.

"Remove all discretionary supply, cut the 38% incentive and burn unclaimed airdrop tokens. Unscheduled vesting is arguably worse than fixed as you can't forecast it out," the trader @0xpostrich posted on August 13, under the heading "Hyperliquid float problem." The Hyper Foundation announces a claim amount around the 6th of each month, and it has landed far under the schedule's 9.92 million every time, at 173,217 HYPE in March.

"$HYPE buys back 1 of every 7 tokens on its unlock schedule," the token-unlock data service Tokenomist posted on August 14. "The vesting schedule unlocks 9.92M $HYPE a month to Core Contributors, 81.8M over nine months. The Assistance Fund bought back 11.9M of that on-chain, 14%, a 7:1 ratio in token counts." DefiLlama puts Hyperliquid's 30-day trading fees at $41.7 million, and the HYPE the fund buys is burned. Total supply is down to 955.3 million against a 1 billion cap.

'The Danger Is Margin'"Margin is what makes an already publicized calendar event a difficult event to navigate," said Ashley Akin, a certified public accountant at the broker TMGM, in written comments. "$581M to unlock is digestible by the market if it is not over-leveraged; the danger is margin placed on top." With two events stacked days apart, she said, "it seems reasonable to pare back size prior to the date, rather than trade through it."

That margin sits on the largest onchain perpetual futures venue, which challengers have attacked for two years.

"We're interested in Morpho markets, Aave markets. We're interested in like Hyperliquid perps," MacBrennan Peet, founder and chief executive of Project 0, said on the On The Margin podcast of the venues his DeFi prime brokerage cross-margins for clients. When one of them, Drift, was exploited, "as with any like traditional market prime broker, we isolated risk, we contained risk in that event to Drift specific lenders," he said.

"The only restriction being that, you know, you can't trade through some news events like nonfarm payrolls was this morning," James Sixsmith, founder and chief executive of Take Profit Trader, said on the On The Margin podcast. That rule is the one difference between his firm's simulated accounts and its live ones. Onchain perps carry no equivalent, including the trading Telegram put in front of a billion users.

"Liquidations down 71%. Volume down 50%. BTC unchanged. This isn't consolidation, it's abstention," the macro account @Richmanvn posted Sunday. "Everyone is flat into Wednesday's FOMC minutes." The minutes cover the July 28-29 meeting, where three officials dissented in favor of a hike from the 3.50% to 3.75% range. Jackson Hole follows August 27-29.

"That is leverage bleeding out slowly. I do not see $BTC sustaining above $65K before the September FOMC while open interest keeps unwinding," the market commentary account @CryptoChannel24 posted on August 15, as open interest and prices fell together.

Bitcoin sits at $63,840, 49% below its October 2025 record and 1.2% lower on the week, and prediction market bettors dumped their rate cut hopes in the spring.

"Seeing an event on the calendar doesn't help steady nerves; all it really does is increase the time we have available to craft a narrative for why this time it's different," said Sira Masetti, founder of consultancy Bias for Growth, in written comments.

Sweden-listed H100 Group has reported a pre-tax loss of 98 million Swedish kronor ($10.3 million) for the second quarter as the decline in Bitcoin’s price weighed on the company’s treasury holdings.

Summary

H100 Group reported a SEK 98 million ($10.3 million) pre-tax loss for the second quarter. Nearly all of the Q2 loss came from a non-cash write-down tied to Bitcoin’s price decline, according to the company. H100’s first-half pre-tax loss reached SEK 253 million, while operating income rose to SEK 6.1 million. The company now holds 3,506 BTC after acquiring two Norwegian Bitcoin treasury firms. H100 ranks as Europe’s second-largest listed Bitcoin treasury company by holdings. H100 Group said in its interim report published Wednesday that its pre-tax loss reached SEK 253 million for the first six months of 2026, while operating income remained small compared with the losses recorded during the period.

The health-tech and Bitcoin treasury company reported SEK 3 million in operating income for the second quarter, unchanged from the same period in 2025. For the first half, operating income increased to SEK 6.1 million from SEK 5.8 million a year earlier.

In a separate X post on Wednesday, H100 attributed nearly all of its second-quarter loss to a non-cash write-down tied to Bitcoin’s (BTC) decline during the reporting period. The accounting charge reduced reported earnings without representing an equivalent cash outflow from the business.

Bitcoin traded through a difficult second quarter, putting companies holding large amounts of the cryptocurrency on their balance sheets under pressure as lower market prices affected the value of their treasury assets.

Bitcoin write-down drives H100 Group’s Q2 loss For H100, the impact has become more significant as Bitcoin has taken a much larger role on its balance sheet over the past year.

The company started its treasury strategy with only 4.39 BTC in May 2025. Its shares jumped nearly 40% after the first purchase, which was worth about $490,000 at the time, as crypto.news previously reported.

H100 continued raising capital for additional purchases during the following months. By July 2025, the company had secured more than $54 million through share and convertible debenture issues, including a directed share issue of about SEK 173 million and a convertible debenture issue of SEK 342.3 million.

Blockstream CEO Adam Back was among the investors backing the strategy. Earlier financing included a SEK 150 million convertible loan guarantee from Back, following SEK 21 million in zero-interest convertible loans involving Back and other investors.

Those fundraising rounds helped H100 increase its Bitcoin holdings from a single-digit position into hundreds of coins during 2025. By late August that year, its treasury had reached 957 BTC after the company acquired another 46 BTC, according to earlier H100 coverage.

The company later increased its holdings to 1,051 BTC before turning to acquisitions as another way of expanding its treasury.

H100 has expanded its Bitcoin holdings through acquisitions A major part of that expansion came from Norway.

H100 disclosed in March that it planned to acquire Norwegian Bitcoin companies through an all-share transaction that could take its holdings to roughly 3,500 BTC. At the time, the company held 1,051 BTC, while the acquisition targets collectively controlled about 2,450 BTC.

Under the proposed structure, H100 would issue shares to the sellers instead of paying cash, allowing the acquired Bitcoin holdings to move under the listed Swedish company.

The Norwegian acquisition plan initially involved Moonshot AS and Never Say Die AS and was subject to due diligence, corporate approvals, and stock exchange requirements. H100 later completed the transaction in August, acquiring the Norwegian businesses and their cryptocurrency holdings.

The completed deal added roughly 2,455 BTC and increased H100’s total position to 3,506 BTC. The company funded the transaction by issuing about 790.5 million new shares at SEK 1.86 per share rather than using cash.

H100 said the structure left satoshis per basic share unchanged while increasing satoshis per fully diluted share by about 5%. The transaction also substantially increased the company’s outstanding share count.

Before the Norwegian deal, H100 had also completed its acquisition of Switzerland-based Future Holdings AG in February, establishing an operating presence in Switzerland as part of its treasury business.

H100 becomes Europe’s second-largest Bitcoin treasury company With 3,506 BTC following the Norwegian transaction, H100 has become Europe’s second-largest listed Bitcoin treasury company by holdings, according to BitcoinTreasuries data cited in the source report.

At a value of roughly $226 million, its position sits just behind Germany’s Bitcoin Group, which holds about 3,605 BTC.

The ranking represents a major change from H100’s position when it began buying Bitcoin in 2025. After holding 370 BTC in July of that year, the company was ranked 49th among publicly traded Bitcoin treasury companies worldwide.

H100’s expansion has also come while other treasury companies have faced pressure from weaker cryptocurrency prices. A June report found that several listed digital asset treasury companies were carrying large unrealized losses as Bitcoin, Ether and Solana prices declined, with the treasury sector facing pressure from lower asset valuations.

Bitcoin treasury companies can be particularly exposed to such moves because changes in cryptocurrency prices feed directly into the market value of the assets held on their balance sheets. The accounting treatment and resulting earnings impact depend on the reporting rules applied by each company.

For H100, Wednesday’s figures show how that exposure has affected reported earnings even as the company continued building its Bitcoin position through corporate transactions.

Q2 2026 is out.

The reported loss before tax was −98.2 MSEK. Almost all of it is non-cash, principally a write-down of our bitcoin. What the business actually consumed was −5.1 MSEK in the quarter and −12.7 MSEK for the half year, and we ended June with 18.1 MSEK in cash.…

— H100 (@H100Group) August 19, 2026 H100 shares remain down in 2026 H100’s treasury expansion has not prevented its listed shares from remaining under pressure this year.

The company’s stock fell 4.2% on Tuesday and was down about 24% since the beginning of 2026, according to StockAnalysis data cited in the source report.

The performance contrasts with the market reaction to H100’s first Bitcoin purchase in May 2025, when its shares climbed almost 40% after the company announced that it had bought 4.39 BTC.

H100 subsequently used equity and convertible debt to fund additional Bitcoin purchases before moving toward share-funded acquisitions. In July 2025, one directed share issue raised approximately SEK 14.1 million from qualified investors at SEK 9.30 per share, while a much larger financing round earlier that month brought the company roughly SEK 516 million through shares and convertible debentures.

By the time H100 announced the Norwegian transaction in March 2026, management had chosen an all-share structure that did not require cash consideration for the acquired Bitcoin holdings.

The transaction was completed in August, with H100 issuing approximately 790.5 million shares to acquire the Norwegian businesses and about 2,455 BTC, bringing the company’s total holdings to 3,506 BTC.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has reinforced the company’s commitment to connecting traditional finance with blockchain at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, presenting Ripple as a leading bridge between established financial systems and decentralized finance.

Regulatory approach and global licensesGarlinghouse pointed to Ripple’s 75 financial licenses across various jurisdictions as evidence that regulated services and crypto can successfully coexist. He dismissed the notion that the digital asset industry has an anti-regulation stance, stressing that compliance is possible and necessary for mainstream adoption.

He highlighted a U.S. court ruling clarifying that XRP is not categorized as a security, a decision that supports Ripple’s drive for clearer regulatory distinctions in the digital asset sector. Garlinghouse stated that such legal clarity strengthens the company’s strategy and provides greater confidence for institutional partners.

Garlinghouse emphasized that regulated financial services and crypto are not mutually exclusive and that Ripple’s global licensing demonstrates the possibility of compliance-focused innovation within blockchain technology.

Acquisitions and institutional expansionRipple’s acquisition strategy has gained momentum, with the firm completing $2.5 billion in acquisitions last year, and an additional $3 billion in shareholder tender offers over the past two years. Garlinghouse views these moves as a foundation for larger deals and further market consolidation during ongoing downturns.

Two standout acquisitions have expanded Ripple’s influence. Hidden Road, a prime brokerage service provider, processed $3 trillion in transactions over the past year, while GTreasury, a treasury and risk management software firm, handled approximately $13 trillion. Together, these two companies expose Ripple to about $16 trillion in annual financial activity.

Mini dictionary: GTreasury is a software platform that provides treasury management and risk solutions to corporate finance teams, while Hidden Road is a financial services provider specializing in prime brokerage for institutional clients.

AcquisitionAnnual Transactions ProcessedHidden Road$3 trillionGTreasury$13 trillionTotal Exposure$16 trillionAccording to Garlinghouse, this expansion has brought a marked shift over the past six months, with more corporate chief financial officers and treasurers seeking Ripple’s blockchain technology for their operations.

Future of institutional crypto adoptionHe expects Ripple’s revenue to more than double year over year, projecting a record-setting performance for the company. Garlinghouse attributes this growth to increasing institutional interest in applications such as payments, liquidity solutions, settlements, custody, and treasury management, rather than pure trading.

He noted that this rising interest marks a significant shift in how large organizations are exploring practical uses of crypto, increasingly prioritizing operational improvements over speculative activity.

Institutions are moving beyond trading, focusing on blockchain for payments, liquidity management, and settlement needs, strengthening the argument for integrating blockchain within the existing financial system rather than replacing banks outright.

Garlinghouse remains measured regarding agent-driven payments—transactions executed autonomously by artificial intelligence agents. He acknowledged the potential for AI-enabled services but emphasized that robust controls around authorization, fraud prevention, accountability, and spending limits must be in place before widespread adoption.

Ripple’s approach aligns with the idea of working alongside banks and traditional institutions, leveraging blockchain to enhance, not supplant, conventional financial infrastructures.

Garlinghouse projected that as the finance industry continues evolving, the convergence of traditional and decentralized finance will accelerate, positioning Ripple as a core facilitator in this transformation.

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 XRP ecosystem has recorded over $4 billion in stablecoin transfer volume amid a recent surge despite current price struggles.

XRP has continued to face market pressures, with the token down 45.47% this year. However, the weakness in price performance has not stopped activity across the XRP ecosystem from growing.

XRP Ecosystem Sees Rise in Stablecoin Volume and Holders Data on real-world asset (RWA) tokenization shows that stablecoin activity on the XRP Ledger has picked up, with transfer volume and the number of stablecoin holders both recording strong gains.

According to RWA.xyz, a leading provider of real-world asset data, 30-day stablecoin transfer volume on the XRP Ledger has increased 10% to $4.32 billion. 

XRP Ledger Stablecoin Market Activity The rise indicates stronger stablecoin activity on the network and suggests that users continue to make greater use of the XRPL ecosystem despite XRP’s poor price performance.

In addition, over the past 30 days, the number of stablecoin holders on the XRP Ledger has jumped 36.7% to 82,110. The XRP Ledger Foundation recently highlighted the figure in a post on X, citing data from the RWA Foundation.

XRP Ledger Stablecoin Market Cap Drops Despite the rise in transfer activity and holders, the total value of stablecoins on the XRP Ledger has declined slightly over the past month. The XRP Ledger stablecoin market cap fell 3.07% over the last 30 days to $954.79 million.

Still, the monthly decline looks less significant when compared with the network’s growth since January. The XRP Ledger began the year with a stablecoin market cap of $291.4 million. At $954.79 million, the current market cap represents a 227% increase this year.

Ripple’s RLUSD remains the dominant stablecoin on the XRP Ledger. It currently has an $898.8 million market cap, which gives it a 94% share of the network’s total stablecoin market cap.

RLUSD also represents 62.41% of the total distributed RWA market on the XRP Ledger. Its large share means that much of the network’s stablecoin growth currently centers on Ripple’s dollar-pegged asset. As a result, changes in RLUSD’s supply and activity can have a noticeable effect on the wider XRPL stablecoin market.

Broader RWA Market Sees Mixed Activity Meanwhile, the wider RWA market on the XRP Ledger has produced a less consistent picture over the past 30 days. While the number of holders has continued to rise, the value of some RWA assets and their transfer activity has declined.

Specifically, distributed asset value, excluding stablecoins, dropped 1.90% over the last 30 days to $485.25 million. Also, represented asset value fell 0.30% to $4.05 billion. 

The biggest drop came from RWA transfer activity. Notably, RWA transfer volume plunged 96.25% over the past 30 days to $10.14 million.

Despite the drop in RWA transfer volume, the number of RWA holders has continued to grow in recent times. For context, RWA holders on the XRP Ledger increased 27% over the past 30 days to 221.

This suggests that more participants now hold RWA assets on the XRP Ledger, but they have not generated the same level of transfer activity seen previously. Essentially, market participation is growing, but trading or movement of these assets has slowed.

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.

Cover image via U.Today Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.

TL;DR:

A heavy long-side imbalance in the futures market threatens cascading liquidations of $4.36 billion if Bitcoin drops to the $57,200 level.XRP retains its psychological support at $1.0052 (+0.42%) as whale wallets absorbed over 642 million tokens from August 1 to 18.The new SEC reform exempts eligible token projects from registration for raises up to $75 million annually, transforming US crypto fundraising rules.The cryptocurrency market is stabilizing on the morning of Aug. 19 after a difficult week, while the leading digital assets are simultaneously being squeezed into narrow ranges. Institutional capital in the U.S. has abruptly shifted back toward accumulation following the massive downturn from Aug. 10 to Aug. 14, when net outflows from crypto funds reached a record $389.7 million.

The Aug. 18 trading session ended with a powerful comeback: spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $189.31 million in a single day, while Ethereum ETFs recorded $71.47 million in net inflows. Against this backdrop, U.S. spot XRP ETFs are still showing modest volumes, with $5.81 million in net inflows yesterday, according to SoSoValue.

HOT Stories

XRP and Bitcoin price performance on a mid- (12h) and short-term (4h) time frames, Source: TradingViewTradingView price charts are currently showing complete calm and tight consolidation. Bitcoin (BTC) is pressing at $65,000 on Bitstamp's 12-hour chart, while XRP/USD is moving in sync with the market leader with a gain of 1.23%.

XRP is firmly holding its crucial psychological and technical support level at $1.0052. This stability is being driven not by retail traders but by an aggressive on-chain strategy among major players, who are buying every local dip.

You Might Also Like

Institutional whale accumulation was triggered by a powerful fundamental catalyst from Washington. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a historic proposal to simplify token registration, which has already been linked to the Senate's upcoming vote on the CLARITY Act.

XRP news: Whales buy 642 million tokens as Ripple Prime debuts bond offeringLarge XRP holders have collectively acquired more than 642 million tokens near the psychological $1 level since the beginning of August. During the first week of the month alone, wallets holding between 1 million and 10 million XRP accumulated 380 million coins, increasing their combined holdings to 8.13 billion tokens.

Buying continued in the middle of the month. Investors added another 72 million XRP to their positions on Aug. 13–14 and absorbed an additional 190 million tokens on Aug. 16–17. Against this backdrop, the number of large XRPL transactions worth more than $1 million jumped 280% on Aug. 17–18, exceeding 38 transactions per day amid an influx of active addresses.

Alongside this on-chain activity, Ripple Prime, the company's brokerage subsidiary, completed its debut private placement of $275 million in unsecured bonds due in 2031. The debt securities carry an 8.25% coupon and received a BBB investment-grade rating from KBRA, while investment bank Piper Sandler served as the lead underwriter.

You Might Also Like

Including the May agreement, Ripple's total debt financing raised over the past three months has reached $475 million through the infrastructure of Hidden Road, which the company acquired in 2025 for $1.25 billion. Ripple has also expanded its payments presence in Asia by partnering with South Korea's Jeonbuk Bank to introduce instant settlements through Ripple Payments.

In the on-chain sector, Ripple's native dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, demonstrated unusual dynamics. A recent $35.7 million token burn pushed the monthly burn rate on the XRPL to 99%. Over the past 30 days, $449.3 million worth of RLUSD was issued on the network, but immediate institutional redemptions resulted in $448.9 million worth of tokens being burned.

Unlike the XRPL's transit corridor, Ethereum is retaining liquidity. Of the $403 million issued on Ethereum, only $177.3 million was burned, leaving the total RLUSD supply of $1.757 billion divided almost equally between the two blockchains.

The intense token accumulation by whales, combined with Ripple's simultaneous effort to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, signals that major players are not currently planning speculative sales near the $1 level.

Crypto market news: SEC reform and Bitcoin liquidation risksYesterday, the New York Federal Reserve purchased short-term Treasury bills up to its full $4.243 billion allotment. The move fits into a monthly reinvestment schedule of approximately $17 billion aimed at supporting bank reserves and reducing liquidity shortages.

The monetary injection coincided with a sudden reversal in sentiment across the U.S. spot crypto fund sector. In a single trading session on Aug. 18, the funds fully offset the prolonged outflows recorded last week, when investors withdrew a record $389.7 million.

At the same time, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published two new fundraising tracks. The new rules introduce the following exemptions:

Fundraising limit: Eligible token issuers would be exempt from strict registration requirements when raising up to $75 million per year.Safe harbor: Assets would automatically lose their status as securities once developers complete the required technological milestones.Insider freedom: The mandatory token lockup period would be completely removed once all other restrictions are lifted. You Might Also Like

Against this backdrop, the U.S. Senate scheduled a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act for Sept. 15. This round does not guarantee the bill's final passage because of unresolved issues involving staking rewards and potential crypto-related conflicts of interest at the highest levels of government.

Meanwhile, the overall probability of the CLARITY Act being signed into law by the end of 2026 has dropped to 20%. Just a few months ago, markets estimated the chances of the historic legislation taking effect at more than 80%.

Despite the legal uncertainty, analysts at investment firm VanEck believe Bitcoin's prolonged correction is nearing its end. Eight of the 12 key indicators point to the market's final capitulation, while all 12 metrics have entered this zone at some point during the past three months.

Bitcoin Capitulation Check, Source: VanEck / ArtemisThe current decline has now continued for 10 months, compared with the historical duration of a bear phase of 11–13 months. VanEck analysts identify the period from September through November as the window for a transition toward full-scale accumulation.

While the spot market is consolidating, hidden risks are building in the futures market because of a critical imbalance in favor of long positions. According to the CoinGlass liquidation heat map, a sudden market decline would trigger cascading liquidations:

Bitcoin: If BTC falls to approximately $57,200, forced liquidations of long positions would exceed $4.36 billion.Ethereum: If ETH falls to approximately $1,715, forced liquidations of long positions would exceed $2.97 billion. You Might Also Like

Ethereum is facing scrutiny in derivatives markets after blockchain analytics firm Arkham identified that the wallet pension-usdt.eth is holding a significant $85 million short position on ETH. This position, opened near $1,700, is experiencing growing unrealized losses as Ethereum’s price approaches $1,900.

Massive Ethereum Short Faces Rising LossesArkham reported that pension-usdt.eth has maintained this short position for over two months, with the entry price averaging about $1,700. As ETH has gained nearly $200 since the position was opened, the wallet now sits at an unrealized loss of approximately $9.8 million. This size of trade accentuates the risk of a short squeeze, as price gains can create pressure for the trader to close positions or add collateral.

Crypto analysts emphasized that unrealized losses do not directly signal liquidation risk, as continuation depends on the remaining collateral available to the trader and the agreed-upon liquidation threshold.

Even with the current losses, liquidation is not an immediate concern if the user has sufficient margin. Consequently, the pension-usdt.eth wallet serves as a barometer for overall market leverage, rather than an isolated indicator of a coming short squeeze.

Mini dictionary: Arkham is a blockchain intelligence platform specializing in tracking and analyzing wallet activity across multiple cryptocurrency networks, frequently cited for its on-chain investigations.

ETH Tests Key Resistance at $1,900Ethereum has hovered near $1,900, facing technical resistance at this psychological threshold. Observers highlighted that on August 18, cryptocurrency news sources reported ETH trading close to $1,905, underscoring $1,900 as a crucial price level in the current rally.

As ETH prices rise, the risk profile for the large short position shifts, increasing potential losses for the holder. Should ETH reverse, the trader could potentially reduce losses; however, sustained momentum might force changes to the position. Market participants have been closely monitoring whether this trade can withstand continued strength in ETH’s trend.

MetricOriginal Short EntryCurrent ETH PriceUnrealized P/LPotential LiquidationValue$1,700$1,900-$9.8 million$2,435 (estimated)ETF Activity and Institutional DemandThe large-scale short coincides with continued institutional interest in Ethereum through U.S.-listed spot ETFs. According to KuCoin, ETH exchange-traded funds saw net inflows of $49.6 million on August 7. This flow reflects ongoing demand for regulated ETH exposure among institutional investors.

ETF activity contributes to Ethereum’s liquidity and can compete with bearish futures positions, as both factors shape price movement and market sentiment.

While ETF inflows do not guarantee upward price action or shield individual traders from losses, the competition between these inflow channels and leveraged shorts adds complexity to the overall ETH landscape. Changes in ETF flows or derivatives positioning can amplify volatility as traders adjust risk.

Monitoring for Short LiquidationOn-chain analysis from HyperInsight indicated that pension-usdt.eth faces an estimated liquidation level at around $2,435 for the short position. This suggests there remains room for further price movement before forced closure becomes likely. Any sharp rally toward this level could trigger additional buying as positions are automatically closed to limit losses.

The situation with pension-usdt.eth underscores the role of leverage in crypto markets. As Ethereum gains or corrects, wallet-specific activity should be viewed as part of a broader set of signals. Market observers continue to assess spot price action, derivatives positions, and ETF flows to gauge overall direction, rather than drawing conclusions from individual high-profile trades.

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.

TRON is pushing forward with a significant Virtual Machine upgrade that will bring its execution environment closer to Ethereum’s, with on-chain governance votes scheduled for August 25, 2026. The upgrade introduces two key capabilities: a CLZ opcode and support for secp256r1 (P-256) signature verification, both of which have been available on Ethereum and are now making their way to TRON’s infrastructure.

Node operators have until August 16, 2026, at 23:59 Singapore time, to complete their software updates to GreatVoyage-v4.8.2, codenamed Pyrrho. Miss that window, and nodes risk falling out of sync with the rest of the network.

What the upgrade actually does Two network parameters, numbered #95 and #96, are on the ballot for August 25. If TRON’s 27 active Super Representatives approve them, the new TVM features go live across the entire network.

The first notable addition is the CLZ instruction, short for “Count Leading Zeros.” It’s a low-level operation that counts how many zero bits sit at the front of a binary number. Developers use CLZ in mathematical operations, bit manipulation, and optimizing gas costs.

The second feature is a precompiled contract for secp256r1 signature verification, commonly known as P-256. This is the elliptic curve standard used by Apple’s Secure Enclave, Android’s Keystore, WebAuthn, and most hardware security modules. In practical terms, it means smart contracts on TRON will be able to natively verify signatures generated by the security chips already sitting inside billions of phones and laptops. Without native support, developers have to implement P-256 verification in Solidity, which is expensive in terms of gas. A precompile handles this at the protocol level, making it fast and cheap.

Governance mechanics and the SR vote TRON’s governance model relies on its 27 Super Representatives, who are elected by TRX holders through a continuous staking-and-voting process. These SRs are responsible for producing blocks and voting on network parameter changes. The August 25 vote follows a well-established pattern: the core development team ships code, node operators upgrade, and then SRs formally activate new features through on-chain proposals.

This two-step process, upgrade first and vote second, is deliberate. It ensures that the network has sufficient node coverage running the new software before any parameter change flips the switch. If a significant number of nodes were still running the old version when new features activated, those nodes would reject the updated blocks and fork themselves off the main chain.

The August 16 deadline gives operators roughly nine days of buffer before the vote. GreatVoyage-v4.8.2 (Pyrrho) was released in July 2026.

The Ethereum alignment strategy The P-256 precompile is particularly telling. Ethereum introduced its own version through EIP-7212. By adopting the same capability, TRON positions itself to support the same class of account abstraction and hardware-backed authentication flows that Ethereum developers are building toward.

The CLZ opcode addition reinforces this same logic. It eliminates one more edge case where a contract that compiles and runs fine on Ethereum would fail or behave differently on TRON.

What to watch after the vote Native P-256 support opens the door to passkey-authenticated wallets on TRON, a feature that could reduce onboarding friction for non-crypto-native users. Several Ethereum projects are already exploring this design space, and TRON’s adoption of the same cryptographic standard means those designs could be ported over with minimal modification.

For node operators, the immediate priority is straightforward: update to version 4.8.2 before the deadline. The TRON development team has urged proactive action, and as of the latest reports, no disruptions have been flagged during the rollout period.

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

Leverage Rebuilds Even as LINK Price LagsChainlink's ($LINK) derivatives market is quietly rebuilding leverage, even though the token remains well below its pre-crash highs. According to on-chain analytics firm Santiment, reporting on August 17, coin-denominated open interest (OI) has climbed to nearly 29 million LINK, putting it above its October 9 level for the first time since a liquidation cascade hit the market.

Dollar-denominated OI tells a more cautious story. At roughly $279 million at the time of the Santiment report, it sits at around half its pre-crash peak, reflecting that the token price itself has not recovered in step with positioning. Funding rates have remained positive throughout the OI buildup, a signal that long positions are driving the rebound rather than short sellers covering.

Broader Momentum Building Around LINKThe derivatives recovery is not happening in isolation. Chainlink price climbed 8% to $9.56 on August 15, supported by stronger activity across spot and derivatives markets, with the token up 15% over the prior week as it continued recovering from broader cryptocurrency market volatility. That move was accompanied by a 123% increase in trading volume, climbing to $1 billion, and a 16% rise in derivatives open interest to $694 million.

Santiment data also indicates that significant investors have been active, with 246 transactions surpassing $100,000 occurring in a single day, a level not seen since March. Bitwise reported $1.5 million in net inflows to its Chainlink ETF last week, pointing to growing institutional interest in the oracle network's role linking blockchain applications with real-world data.

On-chain technicals have also attracted attention. Analyst Ali Charts pointed to an MVRV golden cross that has historically preceded major LINK rallies, with the same signal appearing before a 155% rally in November 2024 and an 85% gain in July 2025.

The core tension remains: derivatives positioning is recovering faster than price. As long as dollar-denominated OI stays well below its prior peak and funding stays positive, the market is leaning long on a token that still has meaningful ground to recover. Whether that leverage is well-placed depends heavily on whether broader sentiment and spot demand can keep pace.

Sources
Blockonomi: Chainlink Open Interest Rises as Weekly Gain Reaches 10%
CoinGape: Chainlink Open Interest Surges 16%, Analyst Predicts $20
CoinGlass: Chainlink Futures and Open Interest Data

A Singapore court has frozen about S$75 million ($58 million) in Bitcoin and USD Coin after a major crypto trading platform alleged that an internal ledger error caused it to mistakenly credit thousands of BTC and Bitcoin Cash to a long-standing customer.

Summary

Singapore’s SICC froze about S$75 million in Bitcoin and USDC linked to a dispute between a major crypto platform and a long-time customer. The platform said an internal ledger error led it to mistakenly transfer 2,500 BTC and 2,500 BCH to the customer’s wallets in July 2024. The customer later moved 780 BTC off the platform and converted another 20 BTC into about 816,773 USDC. The court also ordered the customer to disclose the location of the disputed assets and their proceeds. The platform recovered the remaining 1,700 BTC and 2,500 BCH after discovering the alleged error in January 2025. The Singapore International Commercial Court said the interim proprietary injunction prevents the customer from disposing of, dealing with or reducing the value of about 780 BTC and 816,773 USDC, along with assets, profits or interest derived from them. The order was granted on March 26 after a hearing before Singapore High Court Justice Aidan Xu and SICC International Judges Anthony Meagher and David Goddard.

The dispute involves an anonymised group of companies that operates what the court described as one of the world’s largest digital asset trading platforms and a customer who had used the platform since around 2013. Court documents identified the parties only as DVA, DVB and DVC while an application for confidentiality orders remains pending.

Along with freezing the crypto, the court ordered the defendant to disclose where the disputed assets and their proceeds were being held. The judges declined, however, to give the platform group advance permission to use that disclosure to seek similar injunctions in other jurisdictions, leaving it free to apply for permission later if required.

Singapore court dispute traces back to unsupported wallets At the centre of the case are two specialised wallets that once contained 2,500 BTC and 2,500 Bitcoin Cash. According to the judgment, the wallets were designed as a self-custody product that required security credentials, including a user key held solely by the customer.

Support for the wallet product ended in April 2018, although customers could continue accessing the wallets for a period through an unsupported open-source tool. In March 2020, the entire 2,500 BTC and 2,500 BCH balance was transferred away from the specialised wallets, leaving them effectively empty.

The platform group alleged that a technical problem prevented those withdrawals from being recorded correctly on its internal ledgers. Because the ledger continued to show the assets as remaining in the specialised wallets, the companies operated for several years on the assumption that the customer was still entitled to the balances.

A relationship manager later tried to help the customer recover what the platform believed were assets trapped in the discontinued wallet product. Acting on its ledger records, the platform transferred another 2,500 BTC and 2,500 BCH into other accounts belonging to the customer in July 2024.

The claimants say those digital assets came from their own holdings inside the platform group’s omnibus wallets and were transferred solely because of the mistaken balance shown on the internal system. The customer disputes that account and has maintained that the assets transferred to him were rightfully his.

Mistaken crypto transfers have previously resulted in lengthy recovery disputes. In 2022, crypto.news reported on a Crypto.com transfer error in which the exchange mistakenly sent an Australian customer about $10.5 million instead of a $100 refund and discovered the error months later during an audit.

Customer moved 780 BTC and converted another 20 BTC to USDC After receiving the July 2024 transfers, the defendant began moving part of the crypto away from the platform.

Court records show that on July 13, 2024, the customer converted 20 BTC into about 816,773 USDC and transferred the stablecoins to an unhosted wallet. Five withdrawals between July 17 and Nov. 10 moved another 380 BTC to a separate unhosted address.

A further 200 BTC was transferred on Nov. 24, followed by another 200 BTC on Jan. 7, 2025, bringing the amount sent to a third external wallet to 400 BTC. Some 150 BTC from that wallet was later transferred elsewhere in February 2026, according to evidence submitted by the claimants.

The companies also told the court that subsequent transactions involving the 380 BTC and 816,773 USDC made their current locations difficult to determine. The defendant did not dispute making the transactions but maintained that he had been dealing with crypto that belonged to him.

By the time the platform acted, 1,700 BTC and the full 2,500 BCH transferred in July 2024 remained in the customer’s accounts. The companies froze those wallets on Jan. 29, 2025, and re-credited the remaining assets to themselves in an attempt to reverse part of the earlier transfer.

The platform group subsequently sought the return of the 780 BTC and 816,773 USDC that had already left its system, but the customer refused. The companies valued the assets at roughly S$75 million at the time of the injunction hearing.

Platform alleges unjust enrichment and constructive trust Proceedings were initially filed in the General Division of Singapore’s High Court in November 2025 before being transferred by consent to the SICC.

The claimants’ 62-page statement of claim contains four causes of action, including unjust enrichment, a proprietary claim, deceit or negligent misrepresentation, and an alleged breach of the contractual provisions governing the platform’s services. They are also seeking a declaration that the defendant holds the disputed assets on constructive trust for one of the claimant companies and must return them.

According to the claimants, the July 2024 transfers resulted from their incorrect understanding of the old wallet balances, while the customer allegedly knew about the mistake and took advantage of it.

The defendant has rejected that version of events. He told the court that he did not remember making the March 2020 transfers, although he accepted that blockchain records show the transfers occurred, and argued that the platform’s own admission of faulty internal ledger records weakened its claim that the assets transferred in 2024 belonged to the companies.

He also argued that the transferred crypto could have represented his own assets held elsewhere on the platform or assets belonging to other customers. Having maintained extensive crypto holdings and activity, the defendant said he relied on the platform to keep track of what he held and believed that the July 2024 assets belonged to him.

The customer has counterclaimed for the assets that remain frozen on the platform or compensation of equivalent value, while denying that he knew the companies had made any mistake.

Singapore courts have dealt with several high-value crypto disputes involving exchange operators over the past year. Earlier in August, Binance and RedotPay gave conflicting accounts over the status of a separate Singapore proceeding tied to claims worth nearly $473 million.

Singapore’s courts have also played a role in handling distressed crypto businesses, including proceedings involving WazirX’s Singapore-based parent Zettai, whose restructuring proposal returned to court after receiving 95.7% creditor support in August 2025.

Judges find serious ownership question to be tried For the interim stage of the case, the three-judge panel found enough evidence to establish a serious question over whether the platform companies retained a proprietary interest in some or all of the disputed assets.

The court said it was arguable that the specialised wallet balances were effectively zero before the July 2024 credits and that the platform transferred 2,500 BTC and 2,500 BCH because its internal records incorrectly showed the earlier holdings as still present.

Judges also found an arguable case that the customer knew about the platform’s mistake either when the transfers were made or, at the latest, after the platform discovered the issue and contacted him in 2025. Under that scenario, the court said an argument could be made that identifiable assets and traceable proceeds were held on constructive trust for the claimants.

On whether an injunction was necessary, the court considered the risk that the companies could win at trial but still be unable to recover the crypto if the assets were moved or dissipated.

The judges noted evidence that the defendant had used part of the disputed assets as security for a loan to cover legal costs and had not provided updated evidence about his financial position or current asset holdings. The court found sufficient doubt over his ability to satisfy a substantial judgment if the companies eventually succeeded.

At the same time, the platform group gave the court an undertaking to compensate the customer for losses caused by the injunction if it later turns out that the order should not have been granted.

The disclosure order requires the defendant to identify the whereabouts of assets covered by the injunction, including relevant crypto controlled through third parties acting under his direct or indirect instructions. The SICC left both sides free to return to court, including if the claimants later seek permission to use the disclosed information in civil proceedings outside Singapore.

Uniswap has racked up $638.5 million in stock token trading volume on Robinhood Chain over the past 90 days, effectively becoming the backbone of tokenized equity trading on the newly launched network. The decentralized exchange controls roughly 99% of all Stock Tokens liquidity on the chain.

Robinhood Chain, which went live on July 1, 2026, was built using Arbitrum technology and designed to bring traditional equities like NVIDIA, Apple, and GameStop into the world of decentralized finance.

From zero to $638.5 million in three months The chain’s growth trajectory has been steep. By late July 2026, stock token volume had already hit $250 million, meaning the platform roughly doubled its throughput in the weeks that followed. Individual tokens frequently surpass $500,000 in daily volume, with some recording millions on particularly active days.

Uniswap v4 has emerged as the dominant protocol version on the chain, accounting for approximately 73% of the Stock Tokens liquidity. The remaining share is split across other Uniswap versions.

Total value locked on Robinhood Chain is approaching the $1 billion mark. Uniswap’s total volume on the chain has already crossed multi-billion-dollar figures when factoring in all trading pairs, not just stock tokens. The $638.5 million figure represents specifically the tokenized equity segment.

Why tokenized stocks on a DEX matters Traditional US stock markets operate roughly 6.5 hours per day, five days a week. Tokenized versions eliminate that constraint entirely, enabling 24/7 trading globally.

The chain uses Chainlink for oracle services and cross-chain capabilities, providing the price feeds necessary to keep tokenized assets tethered to their real-world counterparts.

Beyond simple trading, Robinhood Chain is positioning itself as a platform where stock tokens can participate in broader DeFi activities. Lending protocols could accept tokenized NVIDIA shares as collateral, and yield strategies could be built around stock token liquidity provision.

UNI token burns and protocol economics Protocol fees generated on the chain contribute to UNI token burns, creating a direct economic link between Robinhood Chain’s trading activity and Uniswap’s native token. As volume scales, the burn mechanism could meaningfully reduce UNI’s circulating supply over time.

The 99% liquidity dominance means tighter spreads and more efficient execution for traders on the chain.

Regulatory scrutiny around tokenized securities remains intense, and the SEC’s stance on whether these instruments constitute securities under existing frameworks could reshape the entire model. Robinhood’s history with regulators includes a $70 million FINRA settlement in 2021.

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

Pendle Finance just raised the pool caps on its PT Looping incentives program to $15 million, a move that opens the door for significantly more capital to flow into one of DeFi’s more sophisticated yield strategies. The updated caps apply to two specific pools, PT-USD3 on Morpho and PT-USDG on both Aave and Morpho, during an incentive window running from August 17 to 27, 2026.

At the top end, users running leveraged looping strategies through these pools can earn up to 53.7% APY.

How PT Looping actually generates those yields Pendle’s core product revolves around splitting yield-bearing assets into two components: Principal Tokens (PTs) and Yield Tokens (YTs). PTs represent the principal value of an asset at maturity, essentially locking in a fixed yield. YTs capture the variable yield generated along the way.

PT Looping takes this a step further. Users deposit PTs as collateral on lending platforms like Aave or Morpho, borrow against them, and use the borrowed funds to purchase more PTs.

The base incentive from Pendle is an extra 2% APY, paid in PENDLE tokens, layered on top of whatever fixed yield the PT itself offers. That 2% is calculated before any leverage is applied. When a user cranks the leverage to 10x, that modest-sounding bonus compounds into roughly 20% additional yield on top of the underlying PT rate.

The 53.7% headline figure reflects the maximum effective APY achievable when combining the PT’s fixed yield, the PENDLE incentive, and aggressive leverage.

Why the cap increase matters Previous iterations of Pendle’s PT Looping incentive program started with caps as low as $500K. The jump to $15 million across these two pools represents a dramatic scaling of the program.

The two eligible pools both involve stablecoin-denominated assets. PT-USD3 is available on Morpho, while PT-USDG can be accessed on both Aave and Morpho.

Rewards for this incentive period are time-weighted and distributed after the window closes on August 27. That means users who deposit early and maintain positions throughout the full period capture a larger share of the PENDLE rewards than those who jump in at the last minute.

Pendle’s broader DeFi integration play The PT Looping program is part of Pendle’s broader strategy of embedding its yield-tokenization infrastructure into the lending layer of DeFi. By making PTs accepted collateral on protocols like Aave and Morpho, Pendle effectively turns its tokens into building blocks that other protocols can use.

For users considering participation, the key variables to monitor are the utilization rate of the $15 million cap, the borrowing costs on Aave and Morpho for the relevant assets, and the price stability of PENDLE tokens themselves. The incentive rewards are paid in PENDLE, so the dollar value of those rewards fluctuates with the token’s market price. A sharp decline in PENDLE’s value could meaningfully reduce the effective APY, even if the token-denominated yield stays constant.

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

@OndoFinance has crossed the 100,000 unique holders milestone for its tokenized securities network, with over 214,000 total individual asset balances recorded across its platform. The achievement came in less than a year since the project's inception, marking a significant moment for the on-chain US equities space.

A Platform Built for Scale Ondo's growth sits against a broader surge in tokenized equities. According to RWA.xyz data cited by Insights4VC, the value of distributed tokenized stocks nearly doubled from $951 million in March 2026 to $1.89 billion in July, underlining how quickly the sector is maturing.

Ondo sits at the center of that growth. Intellectia AI's RWA analysis places Ondo as the leading tokenization protocol with over $3.7 billion in total value locked and roughly 70% market share in tokenized equities. Its flagship product, Ondo Global Markets (OGM), crossed $1 billion in TVL in May 2026, becoming the first tokenized equities platform to reach that level. OGM offers access to more than 260 US stocks and ETFs, including SPY, QQQ, NVDA, and TSLA, across Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain.

Regulatory Momentum Adds Fuel The holder milestone arrives as Ondo moves to expand its regulatory footprint. In July 2026, Ondo launched the first implementation of the SEC's third-party custodial tokenization model, using BlackRock's IVV ETF and Micron shares as its initial securities. The structure allows token holders to receive the same governance rights as investors holding securities through traditional brokerages, with Broadridge handling proxy voting and regulatory disclosures.

Separately, Ondo's SEC-registered broker-dealer subsidiary, Oasis Pro Markets, secured FINRA authorization to offer tokenized equities, ETFs, mutual funds, and IPO securities to US retail and institutional investors, a channel that had previously been closed to the platform.

The combination of rapid user growth, a dominant market position in tokenized equities, and expanding regulatory clearance positions Ondo as a central player at the intersection of traditional finance and on-chain markets. With the broader tokenized stock sector now generating $9.22 billion in monthly on-chain transfer volume as of June 2026, the 100,000 holders mark is likely a waypoint rather than a ceiling.

Sources:
CoinDesk: Ondo Finance Debuts SEC-Aligned Tokenized Stock Model
Insights4VC: The State of Onchain Real-World Assets in Mid-2026
KuCoin: Tokenized Stocks Reach $9.22 Billion in Monthly On-Chain Volume

The tokenized fund market just had a very productive quarter. Over the past 90 days, tokenized funds added roughly $2.7 billion in market capitalization, driven primarily by two products: JPMorgan’s government money market fund and Ondo Finance’s yield-bearing note.

The growth pushes total distributed value of tokenized assets to approximately $38 billion as of mid-August 2026, according to data tracked on RWA.xyz.

The two products driving the surge JPMorgan’s JLTXX, a US registered government money market fund tokenized on Ethereum, launched on May 13, 2026, with a $100 million seed investment. Within months, its valuation ballooned to somewhere between $694 million and $809 million.

The other major contributor is USDY, Ondo Finance’s tokenized note backed by short-term Treasury securities and bank deposits. USDY reached a market value of approximately $2.1 billion by mid-August, making it one of the largest tokenized yield products in existence. Its appeal is straightforward: holders get exposure to Treasury yields while maintaining the flexibility of a digital asset that can be moved, redeemed, or used as collateral across DeFi protocols.

For context, the current leaderboard of tokenized products looks like this: USYC sits at roughly $3.0 billion, BUIDL (BlackRock’s tokenized fund) at approximately $2.7 billion, USDY at $2.1 billion, and JLTXX at around $809 million. The top four alone account for over $8.6 billion in value.

Why institutions keep showing up Stablecoin issuers have become significant buyers. Companies like Circle and Tether hold tens of billions in reserves, much of it in Treasuries and money market instruments. Tokenized versions of those same instruments let them manage reserves on-chain, reducing friction and potentially improving transparency.

Products like JLTXX and USDY have introduced features that allow instant minting and redemption using digital currencies, removing one of the biggest historical complaints about tokenized funds: that getting money in and out was clunky.

The bigger picture for tokenized assets Products like JLTXX operate within existing US securities frameworks, which means they satisfy compliance requirements that have historically kept large allocators away from anything blockchain-adjacent. The fact that a registered money market fund can exist on Ethereum without triggering regulatory alarms suggests the legal infrastructure has matured alongside the technology.

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

On August 18, blockchain analytics platform Onchain Lens reported that Multicoin Capital transferred 172,710 HYPE tokens, valued at around $10.15 million, to Coinbase Prime, raising questions about potential selling activity from one of HYPE’s most prominent institutional holders.

Market impact of the transferHYPE, backed by the Hyperliquid decentralized exchange, has recently ranked among the top 10 crypto assets by market capitalization. With a market cap of approximately $13 billion and a current trading price near $58.59, as reported by DefiLlama, large-scale token transfers have the potential to influence market sentiment significantly.

While direct sales have not been confirmed, market observers often interpret substantial inflows to major exchanges as early signs of possible liquidation. Elevated awareness of such transfers has intensified as the token’s price remains well below its earlier June peak of $76.87.

Multicoin Capital’s position in HYPEDespite the recent transfer, Multicoin Capital, a crypto investment firm known for actively supporting emerging blockchain projects, continues to be a major HYPE holder. According to Onchain Lens, the firm still holds around 2.16 million HYPE, valued at nearly $126.63 million, making the latest movement a relatively modest trim instead of a substantial exit.

Coinbase Prime, the institutional platform operated by Coinbase, provides custody, trading, and financing solutions for large-scale clients. Transfers to platforms such as Coinbase Prime are often classified as either preparation for potential sales or custody management.

Onchain Lens described this transaction as “likely to sell,” prompting caution among traders due to the high profile of the institution involved.

Mini dictionary: Multicoin Capital is a prominent digital asset investment firm specializing in tokens, blockchain projects, and supporting new Web3 infrastructure initiatives.

Exchange inflows and liquidity concernsThe market reads major token inflows to exchanges as a sign of additional supply that could exert downward price pressure. Although HYPE’s open interest sits around $11.8 billion, its liquidity remains more limited than larger cryptocurrencies, amplifying the price impact from large holders’ transactions.

After a period in which Hyperliquid’s biggest holders have made visible token movements, further actions by Multicoin Capital continue to attract market scrutiny.

MetricValueHYPE current price$58.59June peak price$76.87Current market cap$13 billionOpen interest$11.8 billionMulticoin’s remaining HYPE2.16 million ($126.63 million)Latest transfer172,710 HYPE ($10.15 million)Multicoin Capital has continued to engage with speculation about its intentions, as large transfers to exchanges may spook investors, particularly when liquidity is limited and open interest remains high.

Previous statements and ongoing debateFollowing a previous $291 million combined HYPE unstaking executed by Multicoin Capital and Paradigm in July, which led to price volatility, Multicoin Capital’s co-founder Tushar Jain stated that the unstaking aimed to enhance privacy and rotate wallets rather than initiate sales. On-chain analysts at Markets Alpha backed this by showing the tokens were moved to custody providers rather than exchanges.

The latest transfer, however, marks a shift as tokens have entered Coinbase Prime, an institutionally focused exchange platform more directly linked with trading and settlement. This difference in transaction destination has drawn additional attention to the $10.15 million movement, though there is still no evidence indicating an active sale has taken place.

Multicoin Capital previously stated that wallet movements were for privacy and operational security, not immediate selling, underscoring the ongoing debate about investor intentions during large crypto transfers.

Fundamental outlook for HYPEDespite short-term selling pressure, Hyperliquid reported revenue of $873 million on approximately $2.9 trillion in trading volume for 2025, representing nearly 59% of open interest in the decentralized derivatives market. According to Multicoin Capital’s June valuation report, nearly all protocol revenue is allocated to HYPE buybacks and subsequent burning, underlining the token’s deflationary structure.

Multicoin’s analysts estimated in their forecast that HYPE could eventually reach approximately $319 by 2028, although actual outcomes may depend on market dynamics and investor behavior in the interim.

While the recent transfer has intensified short-term speculation, Multicoin Capital’s substantial remaining stake in HYPE ensures it will remain a focal point for traders monitoring large-scale token moves.

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.

VanEck said on Aug. 18 that Bitcoin may be approaching an accumulation phase after eight of its 12 capitulation indicators remained active as of Aug. 12.

Summary

Eight of VanEck’s 12 Bitcoin capitulation signals were active on August 12, indicating late cycle stress. All 12 indicators entered capitulation territory during the three months preceding VanEck’s August research update. Long term holder supply dropped 356,534 BTC, leaving 11.84 million BTC untouched for over one year. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETPs absorbed $663 million while realized volatility declined to 27.2% over 30 days. Historical capitulation clusters lagged Bitcoin’s baseline for six months, outperforming only across one year holding periods. The asset manager’s latest report placed the current correction in its tenth month, measured from Bitcoin’s October 2025 peak. VanEck estimated that the next turning point could arrive between September and November if the current cycle follows earlier patterns.

However, the firm did not present the historical timetable as a reliable price forecast. VanEck disclosed that it has exposure to Bitcoin and warned that its forward return study uses a small number of heavily overlapping observations.

Bitcoin capitulation signals point to late cycle stress VanEck considers a signal active when its latest reading reaches an extreme historical percentile. Most indicators must fall within the bottom 15% of their recorded history, or the top 10% when a high reading represents stress.

Price drawdown uses a separate threshold. VanEck activates this signal when Bitcoin falls at least 35% from its peak. Bitcoin was down approximately 49% from its October record in the firm’s analysis, although that decline ranked only in the 35th percentile of its own history.

Applying the same percentile rule to the drawdown would reduce the total from eight active signals to seven. VanEck defended the separate threshold by arguing that institutional ownership and spot ETP demand could produce a shallower bear market than previous cycles.

The firm said it “expects a shallower trough this cycle,” but acknowledged that this remains an assumption rather than a confirmed market outcome. Earlier Bitcoin bear markets produced drawdowns ranging from 78% to 94%.

Historical returns offer no clear six month advantage VanEck’s backtest provides a cautious reading for investors expecting an immediate rebound. When between eight and 12 indicators were in capitulation territory, Bitcoin returned an average 12.8% over the following 90 days. Its baseline return for all comparable periods was 15.2%.

The same group generated an average 32% return over 180 days, below the 36.3% baseline. Outperformance appeared only across the one year horizon.

Source: VanEck VanEck warned that the one year result came from 115 observation days that overlapped heavily. Those observations represent only a small number of separate market episodes. The firm said it does not place substantial weight on that result.

The findings suggest capitulation readings may identify late cycle conditions without identifying an exact bottom. They also leave room for prolonged sideways trading before a durable recovery begins.

U.S. fund inflows absorb long term holder selling U.S. spot Bitcoin ETPs recorded approximately $663 million in net inflows during the 30 days covered by VanEck. The total represented about 10,400 BTC at prevailing prices and reversed roughly $2.4 billion of outflows during the preceding month.

Fund flows remained uneven after VanEck’s measurement period. U.S. spot funds lost about $385.2 million across the week ending Aug. 14, as crypto.news reported in its analysis of why liquidity has yet to return.

Demand then recovered. Farside data showed $297.5 million of net inflows on Aug. 17 and another $189.3 million on Aug. 18. The combined $486.8 million partly reversed the previous week’s withdrawals.

Those inflows followed earlier signs of ETF demand supporting the $64,000 area. Bitcoin traded near $64,250 on Aug. 19, above VanEck’s Aug. 11 closing reference of $63,549 but still below its 200 day moving average.

Long term holders complicate the accumulation case Coins held for longer than one year declined by 356,534 BTC over 30 days, according to VanEck’s Glassnode based figures. Holdings fell 2.9% to 11.84 million BTC, equal to 59.1% of circulating supply.

All six long term age groups contracted. Coins aged between one and two years recorded the largest reduction at approximately 156,000 BTC. Holdings older than ten years fell by only about 4,000 BTC, suggesting the oldest wallets remained comparatively inactive.

VanEck said some movements may have involved wallet security rather than sales. The firm cited concern following the Coldcard security failure, which crypto.news examined in its coverage of the $89 million wallet drain.

It nevertheless called the security explanation difficult to verify. Confirmed losses were far smaller than the total movement by aged coins. Exchange inflows separated by coin age could help determine whether holders transferred funds to trading venues or moved them between private wallets.

The period from September through November now provides the next test of VanEck’s cycle framework. A sustained increase in spot demand, stronger trading volume and stabilization in long term holdings would support the accumulation case. Continued distribution or renewed fund outflows would weaken it.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) pulled in roughly $143.57 million in net inflows in a single day, adding another data point to what has become a remarkably consistent pattern of institutional Bitcoin buying through the fund.

The purchase, facilitated through authorized participants who create new ETF shares backed by actual Bitcoin held in custody, reinforces IBIT’s position as the dominant vehicle in the US spot Bitcoin ETF landscape.

IBIT’s grip on the spot ETF market IBIT has maintained its status as the largest US spot Bitcoin ETF by assets under management since launching in early 2024.

Advertisement

The fund captured $693 million out of $853 million in total spot Bitcoin ETF inflows in August 2026. That’s roughly 81% of all money flowing into the entire product category landing in a single fund. The rest of the field, which includes offerings from Fidelity, Ark Invest, and others, is essentially competing for scraps.

Multiple inflows around the $144 million mark have been recorded throughout 2026, suggesting this isn’t a one-off event but rather a recurring rhythm of institutional allocation.

The mechanics behind these flows involve custodians like Coinbase Prime, which holds the actual Bitcoin backing the ETF shares. Every time authorized participants create new IBIT shares to meet demand, real Bitcoin gets purchased and deposited into custody.

Why BlackRock keeps winning the ETF race BlackRock’s dominance in this space isn’t accidental. The firm manages roughly $10 trillion in total assets across all its products, and that scale creates a self-reinforcing advantage. Institutional investors already have existing relationships with BlackRock. Adding a Bitcoin allocation through a familiar counterparty is a much easier internal conversation than onboarding with a crypto-native firm.

The company has also made strategic moves to lower investment thresholds, aiming to bring in smaller institutions and family offices that might have previously found the entry point too steep.

When the SEC approved these funds in January 2024, pension funds, endowments, registered investment advisors, and wealth management platforms all gained a compliant, exchange-listed way to get Bitcoin exposure without dealing with wallets, private keys, or the operational headaches of direct custody.

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

Ripple closed a $275 million senior notes offering Tuesday through its prime brokerage arm as XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) claws back above $1.

What the $275 Million Offering CoversAccording to a Ripple press release, the private placement of senior unsecured notes through Ripple Prime, its non-bank prime brokerage, attracted a diverse base of institutional investors. 

The offering received an investment grade BBB rating from KBRA and was upsized from its original target. 

Proceeds go toward working capital and general corporate purposes as client demand grows for multi-asset clearing, prime brokerage, and financing services.

Latest Private Market Opportunities

Join 400,000+ Investors

Ripple Prime President Noel Kimmel noted in the release that the strong support for the inaugural offering reflects confidence in Ripple’s long-term vision for the intersection of traditional and digital asset financial infrastructure.

Why Korea Keeps Coming Up for RippleRipple also confirmed Tuesday that Jeonbuk Bank has deployed Ripple Payments for cross-border settlement, becoming the first Korean regional bank to do so. 

As Benzinga reported earlier, this marks Ripple’s third Korean institutional partnership in 2026, following Kyobo Life Insurance on on-chain bond settlement and Kbank on wallet infrastructure and custody.

What the On-Chain Data ShowsCryptoQuant flagged on X that XRP open interest on Binance hit a two-month high, with analyst ArabxChain noting the rise in derivatives participation makes the next price move more significant in either direction.

Meanwhile, analyst ChartNerd noted on X that XRP’s monthly RSI sits at its most oversold level in 13 years. 

The three-month RSI has not yet tagged its historical bottom baseline of 48, suggesting the full reset is close but not complete.

Where XRP Stands TechnicallyXRP holds back above $1 Tuesday, after repeated tests this week. More importantly, price now presses directly into the descending trendline from the May high at $1.55, the same line that has capped every rally since. 

A daily close above $1.03 would mark the first genuine break of this downtrend.

Photo via Shutterstock

© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Table of contents

Morgan Stanley Investment Management is adding network participation to its crypto investment products rather than limiting them to passive token exposure. The asset manager has selected Galaxy as an approved validator for new Ethereum and Solana exchange-traded products that intend to stake part of their holdings.

According to Galaxy’s August 18 announcement, the Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust trades on NYSE Arca under MSSE, while the Morgan Stanley Solana Trust uses MSOL. Galaxy is one of three firms selected to support staking across the two products.

MSSE and MSOL seek to track ETH and SOL performance, respectively. Each product intends to delegate a portion of its assets to institutional validators and pass resulting staking rewards to shareholders through regular distributions.

The structure introduces operational questions that do not arise in a product that only holds tokens. Ethereum and Solana use different validator systems, client software, performance measures, and risk controls. A validator can also face downtime, operational errors, or protocol penalties, making infrastructure selection part of the product’s risk profile.

Galaxy said Morgan Stanley evaluated its capabilities on the two networks separately. The release does not specify how much of each trust’s holdings will be staked, the expected reward rate, or the allocation among the three selected providers.

Galaxy Extends Its Institutional Validator Business Galaxy reported $2.8 billion in staked assets at the end of the second quarter of 2026 across Ethereum, Solana, and other proof-of-stake networks. The company presents the mandate as an extension of its infrastructure work for asset managers rather than a new consumer staking product.

That role differs from corporate treasury staking, such as the activity behind BitMine’s expanding Ethereum validator operation. In an exchange-traded product, the infrastructure provider operates within a structure that must account for fund custody, liquidity, disclosures, and shareholder distributions.

Crypto Products Move Beyond Price Exposure The launch illustrates how institutional crypto products are becoming more operationally complex. Staking can add yield, but it also ties product performance to validator uptime, withdrawal mechanics, network rules, and the treatment of rewards.

Traditional spot funds have already made Bitcoin and Ether easier to access, with flows tracked through products covered in recent institutional ETF demand. Morgan Stanley’s new trusts go a step further by seeking to include a native network function in the investor return profile.

The products’ intended staking arrangements remain subject to their governing documents and operational execution. Galaxy’s announcement confirms its selection, but it should not be read as a guarantee of future reward levels or uninterrupted validator performance.

AUTHOR

Tokoni Uti is a Lagos-based writer with several years of experience. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Free Press and the San Diego Free press among others. She is a graduate of Bowen University.

Block is letting a third party sell the tokens it has never listed, and Cash App balances can now fund outside wallets including MetaMask and Ledger.

Original Image Credits: Tada Images / Shutterstock.com

Posted August 18, 2026 at 3:56 pm EST.

MoonPay turned on Cash App Pay as a payment method on Tuesday, letting eligible U.S. customers spend their Cash App balance at MoonPay checkout.

The effect is that Cash App money can now buy tokens Block has never listed. MoonPay’s onramp reaches ether, solana, XRP and more, and purchases can be pushed into third-party and self-custody wallets including Ledger, BitPay, Trust Wallet, MetaMask and Uniswap.

Block Rents What It Will Not List Cash App sold bitcoin and nothing else for years, then began a phased USDC rollout in late May. The partnership with MoonPay allows users to use their Cash App balances to access other cryptocurrencies without holding it on Cash App.

“While bitcoin remains at the core of our digital asset strategy, we want to give customers choice and flexibility wherever and however they choose to pay,” Morgan Kuntze, Block’s global partnerships lead, said in MoonPay’s announcement.

MoonPay has spent the year widening its U.S. payment options, adding the Discover network as its third major card network and launching an enterprise stablecoin platform aimed at banks and merchants. Cash App Pay is the consumer version of the same push, and it hands MoonPay a funded wallet with tens of millions of U.S. users attached.

Related Listen: Why the AI Business Model Is Cracking and How Crypto Could Help Fix It

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.

Stacks, the Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol, just landed its Token Transparency Framework report on Bloomberg Terminals. The filing, part of Blockworks’ standardized disclosure initiative, puts the project’s governance and financial data in front of more than 350,000 financial professionals who use Bloomberg daily.

What the Token Transparency Framework actually does Blockworks launched the Token Transparency Framework on June 18, 2025, as an open-source set of disclosure standards for onchain projects. Think of it as crypto’s attempt to build its own version of SEC filings, minus the SEC.

The framework asks participating protocols to report on several categories: quarterly financial disclosures, value accrual mechanisms, segmented revenue reports, and whether they maintain an investor relations hub.

As of August 18, 2026, the TTF page listed 111 total disclosures, with 93 of those marked as current. That translates to roughly a 9% adoption rate among tracked protocols.

Adoption has been heavily skewed toward Solana-based DeFi projects so far, which makes Stacks’ participation as a Bitcoin L2 somewhat distinctive. The protocol enables smart contracts and applications on Bitcoin’s base layer using its native token STX, occupying a different architectural niche than most of the projects already filing under TTF.

Why Bloomberg distribution matters Bloomberg Terminals remain the dominant information system in institutional finance. Portfolio managers, analysts, and traders across banks, hedge funds, and asset managers rely on them for real-time data and research. When crypto disclosures appear in that environment, they’re no longer sitting behind a protocol’s own website or a niche analytics dashboard. They’re living alongside earnings reports, bond pricing, and macroeconomic indicators.

Blockworks’ framework is essentially trying to translate crypto-native information into a format that institutional investors already know how to read. Adding Bloomberg distribution closes the last-mile problem: the data isn’t just standardized, it’s delivered to the desks where allocation decisions get made.

The broader transparency push in crypto The TTF’s 9% adoption rate among tracked protocols suggests the industry is still in early innings. The framework’s reporting categories address some of the most common institutional concerns about token investments. Value accrual mechanisms answer a fundamental question that traditional investors ask about any asset: where does the money come from, and how does it flow to token holders? Segmented revenue reports break down income sources, making it harder for projects to hide behind aggregate numbers that obscure whether actual economic activity supports the token’s valuation.

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

An independent advocacy group tied to the Hyperliquid ecosystem is making its case to Washington: let traders bet on IPO prices before companies actually go public, and do it on-chain.

The Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) and trade[XYZ] submitted a comment letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on August 18, urging the agency to build a regulatory framework around what they’re calling IPOPs, or pre-IPO perpetual contracts. These are cash-settled derivative instruments that reference anticipated public company listings, settling in USDC rather than delivering any actual shares.

What exactly are IPOPs The contracts don’t grant ownership rights, voting power, or any allocation in the actual IPO. What they do provide is a continuous, market-implied valuation for private companies that operates around the clock.

Five active IPOP markets currently operate on the Hyperliquid platform through trade[XYZ]’s HIP-3 deployment. Among the most notable are SpaceX (trading under the ticker SPCX) and Cerebras (CBRS), two companies whose pre-IPO perpetual prices have closely tracked their actual IPO opening levels.

The numbers behind the petition Hyperliquid’s pre-IPO markets have generated approximately $1.46 billion in cumulative trading volume, with open interest sitting around $106 million as of early June. The SpaceX IPOP launched on May 18 and quickly became one of the most closely watched contracts in the market.

trade[XYZ] has been the primary contributor to these volumes, operating as the interface layer between Hyperliquid’s on-chain infrastructure and the IPOP market structure. The HIP-3 deployment framework handles the listing and settlement mechanics, while the perpetual contract design eliminates the expiration dynamics that complicate traditional futures.

The regulatory chess game This isn’t HPC’s first conversation with the SEC. The group, founded in February 2026 under CEO Jake Chervinsky, met with the SEC’s Crypto Task Force on July 14 to discuss perpetual markets more broadly. The comment letter represents the next step in what appears to be a deliberate, multi-touch regulatory engagement strategy.

The letter itself isn’t just a plea for approval. HPC included specific recommendations around disclosures, listing standards, leverage limits, and safeguards against market manipulation.

One of the more politically interesting elements: the letter advocates for retail investor access. In traditional finance, pre-IPO exposure has been almost exclusively the domain of venture capital funds, institutional allocators, and high-net-worth individuals. The pitch here is that IPOPs democratize that access without requiring anyone to actually hold pre-IPO shares.

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