Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Image credit: Powerus.

On Thursday, Powerus became a public company on Nasdaq.

By Friday, its shares were on Solana.

The sequence captures two technological shifts that initially seem unrelated.

Powerus is building autonomous drones and counter-drone systems intended to move humans farther from the physical point of danger. At the same time, tokenized equities are beginning to move investors beyond the traditional brokerage infrastructure through which public stocks have historically been held and traded.

In both cases, more of the execution layer is moving into software.

Powerus completed its merger with Nasdaq-listed Aureus Greenway Holdings on October 1. Legacy Powerus shareholders emerged with roughly 83% of the common stock and approximately 93% of the combined company’s voting power, effectively transforming the listed entity into Powerus Corporation. (Thaler)

One day later, Backpack Securities issued a tokenized representation of PUSA on Solana through Sunrise. Each token is designed to be redeemable 1:1 for an underlying Powerus share and transferable back into traditional brokerage infrastructure for eligible investors. (Solana Compass). As of 2:45pm on the day of release $PUSA has reached $9.1m in trading volume.

Powerus announced on X: “We’re now live on Solana. $PUSA is our common stock onchain, redeemable one to one for the Nasdaq-listed share.”

We’re now live on Solana.

$PUSA is our common stock onchain, redeemable one to one for the Nasdaq-listed share, trading nights, weekends and holidays.

Powerus (@powerus_usa), October 2, 2026

Powerus did not issue a cryptocurrency, and PUSA on Solana is not a corporate memecoin.

The underlying asset remains a Nasdaq-listed security.

What changed is the rail on which it can travel.

The battle-tested brain behind the machine That distinction between the physical asset and the intelligence controlling it also sits at the center of Powerus’ business.

The company isn’t positioning itself merely as another drone manufacturer. It is building autonomous aircraft, counter-drone interceptors and the command software connecting them.

Drone airframes are becoming increasingly commoditized. Motors, batteries, cameras and other components can come from a growing collection of suppliers.

The potentially more defensible layer is the intelligence deciding what those machines see, how they coordinate and what they do next.

Powerus’ xNav AI architecture is designed to combine data from radar, visual sensors and other sources into a common operating picture, identify threats and coordinate autonomous systems.

In that sense, Powerus has built the battle-tested brain behind the machine: so the person behind it never has to be in the line of fire.

The background of co-founder and president Brett Velicovich helps explain why that philosophy runs through the company.

Velicovich served as a U.S. Army Special Operations intelligence analyst from 2001 to 2010, completing six combat tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. According to Powerus’ SEC-filed biography, he worked within America’s covert drone program tracking high-value terrorist targets. He later wrote Drone Warrior, an account of his experience with military drone operations, and earned an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. (SEC)

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His relationship with drones didn’t end with the military. Velicovich subsequently applied the technology to wildlife conservation in Kenya and other humanitarian work. He was also in Ukraine within days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, where he saw firsthand how inexpensive drones and rapid battlefield iteration were changing modern warfare. He has said Powerus’ founders ultimately came together through their experience in Ukraine. (LinkedIn)

That gives Powerus an unusual founding perspective: not simply engineers asking what autonomous systems can do, but operators thinking about what someone in the field actually needs them to do.

The company’s Guardian counter-drone system, for example, is designed to intercept hostile UAVs before they reach personnel or critical infrastructure. Powerus reports an approximately 89% interception success rate per launch in manual and semi-autonomous operations, although that remains a company-reported figure rather than an independently verified government statistic.

Its subsidiary Tandem Defense has also secured a U.S. Air Force IDIQ contract for Guardian-2 with a ceiling of up to $90 million through mid-2028. The ceiling is not guaranteed revenue, but it gives Powerus a vehicle through which the government can place future orders.

Going public is intended to give the company more capacity to pursue that scale.

“Completing this transaction puts Powerus in a position to build at the scale our customers are asking for,” CEO Andrew Fox said following the merger. (Nasdaq)

For Powerus, that means more manufacturing, more autonomous systems and potentially more acquisitions.

For investors, however, what happened immediately afterward may prove just as interesting.

From a Florida golf company to Nasdaq: and Solana Powerus took an unconventional route to the public markets.

Aureus Greenway Holdings originally operated two Florida golf courses and completed its own Nasdaq IPO in February 2025. By late 2025, the small public company was evaluating strategic alternatives.

It ultimately became Powerus’ route onto Nasdaq.

The merger was announced in March, Aureus adopted the PUSA ticker ahead of closing, and on October 1 the transaction was completed and Aureus renamed itself Powerus Corporation. (Nasdaq)

The transaction also brought prominent financial backers. The merger announcement identified Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. as notable investors in the combined company through American Venture Partners, alongside other investors including drone manufacturer Unusual Machines and a $50 million strategic investment. (SEC)

But what happened on October 2 represents a different kind of capital-markets experiment.

Backpack Securities took the newly combined PUSA equity and put a tokenized version on Solana roughly a day after the merger closed.

That speed is notable.

A company can complete a major corporate transaction inside the conventional securities system on Thursday and have an onchain representation of its equity circulating through blockchain infrastructure on Friday.

The gap between going public and going onchain is beginning to disappear.

Tokenization’s democratization story Crypto has talked about democratizing finance for years.

Tokenized equities offer a more concrete version of that argument.

They do not necessarily create new assets. They change how existing ones can be distributed.

A traditional stock generally lives inside brokerage infrastructure. Moving it from one institution to another is possible, but ownership remains tied to a complex network of brokers, custodians, clearing systems and market hours.

Putting a compliant representation of that security on a blockchain begins to make the asset behave more like software.

It can exist in a wallet.

It can settle against stablecoins.

It can move through blockchain applications.

And, eventually, tokenized securities could interact with lending protocols, collateral systems and other programmable financial infrastructure.

There are still substantial limitations. Backpack Securities’ tokenized-equity service is restricted in jurisdictions including the United States, and securities law does not disappear simply because an asset moves onto a blockchain. (Solana Compass)

So tokenization has not suddenly made every U.S. equity permissionless or universally accessible.

The more important change is portability.

Nasdaq can remain where a company establishes its public equity, while networks such as Solana become additional rails on which that equity can move.

That makes PUSA interesting beyond Powerus itself.

The significance isn’t that a drone company now has a token.

It is that a conventional public company’s shares could acquire a blockchain-native distribution layer almost immediately after a transformational corporate transaction.

And that brings the two sides of the Powerus story together.

On the battlefield, Powerus is trying to transfer more sensing, coordination and execution from humans to software so operators can remain farther from danger.

In capital markets, blockchains are transferring more ownership, settlement and distribution functionality into software so financial assets can move beyond the systems in which they were originally issued.

Neither eliminates humans or institutions.

Both make the underlying infrastructure more programmable.

Powerus is building the brain behind the machine.

Blockchain is becoming another rail beneath the asset.

PUSA managed to connect those two narratives in roughly 24 hours.

The author holds a position in $pusa

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

Solana’s native cryptocurrency SOL is trading near $120, as fresh data shows record-breaking adoption of tokenized equities on the Solana blockchain. The network’s user base for tokenized-equity assets recently crossed 1.2 million individual holders, indicating a surge in both activity and on-chain participation.

Tokenized equity growth drives network adoptionSolana, a high-performance blockchain designed for decentralized applications, reported that 775,000 new tokenized-equity holders joined the network in September alone. This brought the total number of unique holders to an all-time high of 1.2 million at the end of the month.

Tokenized equities on Solana hit an all-time high of 1.2 million holders, with 775,000 joining in September alone.

The pace of adoption notably accelerated during the last weeks of September, following a period of gradual growth earlier in the year. This uptick reflects increasing interest in tokenized versions of traditional assets, providing users with a new way to engage with the Solana network beyond speculative trading.

Mini dictionary: Tokenized equity, a digital representation of traditional equity shares on a blockchain, allows users to trade, transfer, or hold fractional ownership in assets using blockchain technology. This increases accessibility and potentially streamlines settlement processes.

Broader interest in tokenized financial assets adds an important dimensional layer to SOL’s continued presence near its recent peak price levels.

SOL maintains strength above key technical levelsAs of the latest data, SOL trades at $119.93, up 1.28% in the past 24 hours and hovering close to its recent high of $123.76. On the daily chart, SOL remains well above significant support levels, including its 50-day moving average of $85.72 and its 200-day moving average at $102.94.

Date/LevelSOL Price50-day MA200-day MARecent HighKey SupportCurrent$119.93$85.72$102.94$123.76$94.85The 200-day moving average in particular provides a critical technical reference for traders monitoring downside risk, while the $94.85 zone has also emerged as a crucial support area.

Resistance is visible at the recent daily high of $123.76. A solid move above this could signal a fresh phase in Solana’s rally. Should the breakout not materialize, attention could return to established support levels around $102.94 and $94.85.

Momentum indicators remain supportive. The relative strength index (RSI) stands at 63.82, with its short-term average near 65.48, staying below the traditional 70 level associated with overbought conditions. This suggests ongoing buying interest without extreme overheating.

Market activity and investor focusOpen interest in Solana derivatives remains high at around $6.5 billion, according to CoinGlass, sustaining elevated levels through recent months. Trading volume has also been robust, frequently exceeding $9 billion on several trading days during the period reviewed.

The combination of strong market liquidity, ongoing derivatives activity, and increased adoption of tokenized equities has added new context to SOL’s recent price structure.

SOL maintains its momentum above key moving averages, as fresh adoption data brings a meaningful new catalyst to the network.

Key levels and outlook for SOL priceTraders are closely monitoring the $123.76 resistance level and $120 psychological zone as immediate reference points. A firm break above recent highs could reinforce the network’s bullish technical outlook.

To the downside, the 200-day moving average at $102.94 and the $94.85 level are viewed as important support areas. Technical analysts suggest these figures may provide guidance for near-term volatility and potential market pullbacks.

With the rise in tokenized-equity participation and SOL’s technical position above crucial indicators, the coming days are expected to test whether buyers can sustain upward momentum or if sellers will drive a correction toward lower support zones.

Low Ze Sheng has spent the past two years trading memecoins, chasing the jokes and bursts of attention that can send a token soaring before the crowd moves on.

Usually, he buys them with cryptocurrencies such as Ether or Solana. Robinhood Markets Inc. has thrown a different kind of asset into the mix: Stock Tokens, digital securities designed to track individual stocks and backed 1:1 by the corresponding shares. Because they can circulate on the same open crypto markets as memecoins, traders can pair the two in a liquidity pool and swap one directly for the other.

That means Low, a 27-year-old in Singapore, can swap a token tied to Snap Inc. or Nvidia Corp. for a memecoin — and back again. A familiar company is no longer just something to invest in; it can become part of the meme trade itself.

“It feels like I’m in the Snapchat trade since I need to have it to buy the memecoin in the liquidity pool,” Low said. “And it doesn’t feel like gambling. It’s on Robinhood which is trustable.”

Wall Street has spent years promoting tokenization as new plumbing for traditional finance. Robinhood Chain’s recent burst of speculative trading showed another use case: stock exposure is becoming the raw material for crypto speculation, making some of its riskiest bets feel more like stock investing. Robinhood casts that openness as a way to broaden access to financial markets. It also means outsiders can build new trades around public companies without those companies creating or controlling them.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron hit out against the trend last month. After learning that a token tied to AMC was trading through Robinhood without the theater chain’s involvement, he demanded that Robinhood stop. Robinhood co-founder Vlad Tenev pushed back.

Vlad Tenev — Photographer: Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg
More than five years after the meme-stock boom, retail traders are building another layer of stock speculation on a permissionless blockchain. US regulators are also beginning to make room for tokenized trading. The Securities and Exchange Commission last month granted temporary exemptions allowing certain venues to trade tokenized US stocks onchain under specified conditions. The shift comes as retail trading pushes further beyond the traditional market day: Robinhood said this week it plans to offer weekend trading in US stocks, alongside leveraged perpetual futures on some cryptocurrencies.

Read: Robinhood Debuts Weekend Trading, Perpetual Futures in US

“We tokenize stocks, and the first thing people do with it is meme it,” said Eric Conner, a longtime crypto investor. “I think that’s just a sign of the times and a sign of the future.”

Robinhood says each Stock Token is backed 1:1 by the corresponding shares held by a custodian, and each has a live onchain price feed tied to the underlying stock. But that reference price doesn’t dictate the price inside a decentralized liquidity pool, where trading depends on the tokens available and prices can diverge when liquidity gets stretched.

Under Robinhood’s existing structure, Stock Tokens aren’t shares themselves and don’t give holders voting rights in the underlying companies. A Robinhood representative declined to comment.

Daily trading volume in memecoin-stock-token pairs peaked at around $440 million in early September before falling fast, according to Dune data compiled by X user @adam_tehc. Some of the Stock Tokens that became popular pairings were tied to an exchange-traded fund tracking the S&P 500, Nvidia, SpaceX and Meta. Those tokens — which can also trade independently of the memecoins — reached a combined market value of roughly $69 million at their peak, according to RWA.xyz.

Conner is betting the trend has further to run. He bought a memecoin paired with Hims & Hers Health Inc. when its market value was about $600,000. Within roughly a week, he said, it had climbed to about $80 million.

“That obviously made me a little bit more interested in the whole thing,” Conner said.

The pairing also gave the memecoin’s holders a reason to root for Hims. Conner has since appeared on podcasts associated with the company’s investor community.

“Pretty much everyone holding one of these meme stocks is interested in the underlying stock going up, and I think that’s why the general stock communities will probably embrace this,” he said. “It’s my theory that each major stock will have a meme stock kind of winner and community behind it.”

The Hims trade exposed another ripple effect: the new markets can become detached from the stocks beneath them. During a weekend in late August, one liquidity pool came to hold an outsized share of the tokenized Hims supply as the token rose to more than four times the price of the underlying stock. Hims shares themselves barely moved when US markets reopened Monday.

Mostly, those distortions have stayed onchain. Then there was Farmmi. Shares of the tiny Nasdaq-listed mushroom seller surged as much as 321% on Sept. 2 before falling from their peak. Before the move, traders on Robinhood Chain had piled into a memecoin named after one of Farmmi’s mushrooms. It was paired with an unofficial Farmmi token that had no link to the actual shares. At its peak, the memecoin was valued at roughly 10 times the company itself.

Tanay Ved, an analyst at Talos, said Farmmi showed what can happen when “memecoin retail speculation and virality collide with 24/7 markets onchain.”

Market Plumbing
‘Permissionlessness’ trading is a crucial break with earlier retail manias. Put simply, Robinhood doesn’t have to create the memecoin, and the public company doesn’t have to participate in the market forming around its stock.

“I think it is interesting because it shows that in the on-chain environment, like things you can permissionlessly build,” said Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital. “Who knows what else we might find out with tokenized stocks one day?”

In AMC’s case, even the chief executive’s attempt to stop it became part of the speculation. After Aron took aim at the AMC token, traders rallied around a coin called A Meme Coin, or MEME, paired with tokenized AMC shares. At its peak, MEME was valued at nearly $150 million.

Traders “think it’s more bullish that the CEO doesn’t like it and he can’t stop it, at least not immediately,” said Rahul Patel, a crypto founder and longtime memecoin trader.

While retail fads come and go, blockchain-powered finance may end up changing how day traders perceive risk over the long haul.

“My friend who will not buy memecoins will at least be motivated to try this because it does look like the stock market with the boring part gone,” said Low.

Hyperliquid’s native token is no longer confined to its home chain. Through Wormhole, HYPE can now be transferred to Solana, Base, and Unichain.

How the multichain rollout works Hyperliquid is a Layer 1 blockchain designed for on-chain perpetual futures and spot trading. Its multichain push relies on Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers standard, usually shortened to NTT.

The expansion kicked off on September 3, 2025, alongside the Unichain rollout. That launch also brought bridging to Solana and Base, so all three destinations arrived in the same wave.

Unichain’s debut came with liquidity incentives attached. Those rewards targeted the USDC/HYPE and USDC/SOL trading pairs.

The stated goal is to reduce liquidity fragmentation. Hyperliquid also wants HYPE holders to enjoy lower fees and faster transactions on the chains they prefer.

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What the trading data shows Activity has followed the token to its new homes. Trading in HYPE has shown up on Jupiter, Solana’s major trading venue, and in Uniswap pools on Unichain.

On Solana, HYPE has recorded daily trading volumes in the millions. The tokenized value of the Wormhole-issued version on Solana has reached approximately $66 million.

HYPE has traded at around $90, a level the research tied to strong adoption.

HYPE has a maximum supply of 1 billion, with circulating supply in the low hundreds of millions. At launch, 310 million tokens went to early users. There was no allocation for a private sale.

Following the initial rollout, activity settled into a pattern of steady use and liquidity provisioning. No major new developments were identified in the month leading up to October 2, 2026.

Why Hyperliquid built for speed first The engine underneath all this is HyperCore, Hyperliquid’s trading layer. It can process up to 200,000 orders per second, which is the kind of throughput on-chain order books need to feel competitive.

What this means for HYPE holders and the broader DeFi map Traders and liquidity providers on Solana, Base, and Unichain can now engage with HYPE without leaving their preferred ecosystems.

Each destination brings something different. Solana offers an established trading culture, with Jupiter already showing HYPE volume. Unichain came with incentives designed to bootstrap activity from the start.

The roughly $66 million tokenized on Solana is a useful baseline for tracking whether interest grows, holds, or fades.

Cross-chain infrastructure also adds a dependency. HYPE’s reach beyond its home chain now relies on Wormhole functioning as intended.

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

More than $500 million has flowed into Morpho on Arc in just over two weeks since the network went live.

Arc is Circle’s EVM-compatible Layer-1, and Morpho was wired in as its core credit layer from day one.

The numbers behind the milestone Arc’s public mainnet launched on September 16, 2026. Morpho went live the same day, which meant lenders and borrowers could start moving capital immediately.

Launch day alone pulled in somewhere between $150 million and $220 million in initial deposits. Most of that landed in USDC and EURC markets, Circle’s dollar and euro stablecoins.

By October 2, 2026, total deposits on Morpho’s Arc deployment reached $500.27 million. Outstanding loans stood at $189.93 million on the same date.

The activity is far from evenly spread. The cirBTC/USDC market accounted for approximately 86% of lending and borrowing on the platform.

cirBTC is Circle’s Bitcoin-backed wrapped token. A cirBTC/USDC market lets someone post Bitcoin exposure as collateral and borrow dollars against it.

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That market has been running at near-full utilization. Nearly all the USDC lenders have supplied there is already borrowed.

Who is actually depositing Deposits were heavily driven by institutional lending rather than individual users chasing yield.

The vault lineup reflects that. Morpho’s curated vaults on Arc are run by names including Steakhouse Financial and Bitwise, firms that pick which markets a vault lends into and how much risk it takes.

Top vaults on Arc include ones from Galaxy and Keyrock, yielding about 0.80% net APY.

The underlying engine is Morpho Blue, which supports variable-rate lending and borrowing.

Background: Circle builds its own rails Arc is Circle’s attempt to own more of the stack that its stablecoins run on. The network emphasizes stablecoin payments, foreign exchange, and tokenized assets.

Arc’s validator set also includes backing from major institutions like BlackRock and Visa.

Morpho itself is not new to scale. Its broader network held $16.54 billion in total deposits as of early October 2026.

Against that figure, Arc’s $500.27 million is a small slice, roughly 3% of the total.

What this means With approximately 86% of activity tied to a single cirBTC/USDC market, Arc’s lending story is currently a Bitcoin-collateral story.

Near-full utilization raises practical questions. When a lending market is almost entirely borrowed, lenders looking to exit may have to wait for borrowers to repay or for new deposits to arrive.

Variable rates are the built-in fix. If borrowing pressure stays high, rates in that market should climb and attract more USDC supply.

Curators like Steakhouse Financial and Bitwise, plus vaults from Galaxy and Keyrock, point to a user base that values structure and known counterparties over headline yield. A net APY of about 0.80% on top vaults reinforces that.

The next markers to watch are straightforward. Look at whether deposits keep climbing past $500.27 million, whether loans grow beyond $189.93 million, and whether activity spreads out from the cirBTC/USDC market into EURC and other assets.

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

The XRP Ledger is set for one of its most active upgrade periods in 2026, as three significant amendments are scheduled for activation within an 18-hour window between October 8 and 9. These amendments, if endorsed by sufficient validator support, are expected to bring advanced capabilities to the XRPL protocol, enhancing features for institutional and advanced users.

Upcoming upgrades and timelinesThe planned activation sequence starts with PermissionDelegationV1_1 at approximately 21:25 UTC on October 8. This will be followed by fixBatchV1_2 at around 14:12 UTC and BatchV1_1 at 14:46 UTC on October 9. The upgrades will only be confirmed if validator participation remains above the necessary consensus threshold.

Each amendment targets a different aspect of XRPL operations. PermissionDelegationV1_1 aims to introduce more flexible account authorization systems. BatchV1_1 enables atomic groups of transactions, while fixBatchV1_2 addresses a recently discovered protocol vulnerability.

Features tailored for institutionsPermissionDelegationV1_1 is designed to allow XRPL account holders to delegate specific authority to other accounts without relinquishing control of their master keys. This structure supports institutions such as banks and stablecoin issuers, offering the ability to allocate compliance, payment, and operational functions to different accounts for improved segregation of duties.

The updated model for institutional account control nearly missed its revised activation target due to previous dips in validator support. However, with consensus restored, PermissionDelegationV1_1 could go live on October 8.

BatchV1_1, arriving less than a day later, will allow users to group up to eight transactions within a single atomic operation. This capability is particularly useful in scenarios like settlement, atomic swaps, and complex multi-party deals, where all steps must either execute together or not at all.

BatchV1_1 was initially planned for September but saw its deployment delayed when validator backing dropped below the needed threshold, pushing activation to October 9.

Emergency security updateNotably, BatchV1_1 will be launched alongside a critical security measure. XRPL developers have distributed xrpld 3.4.1 as an emergency update to address security-sensitive issues that came to light during recent protocol reviews. This fix, titled fixBatchV1_2, will go live at approximately 14:12 UTC on October 9.

Servers operating on outdated software when fixBatchV1_2 activates risk becoming amendment blocked, a status that prevents them from participating in future ledger consensus until updates are applied.

With three amendments scheduled in rapid succession—including an urgent security patch—XRPL’s October 9 window stands out as one of its most critical upgrade points in recent years.

PermissionDelegationV1_1 will provide organizations with granular authorization, making it possible to separate compliance, payments, and operations across several accounts without transferring primary control.

Mini dictionary: XRPL (XRP Ledger), is a decentralized, open-source blockchain developed by Ripple that facilitates fast and low-cost international payments and supports unique features such as multi-signing, decentralized exchange, and advanced transaction types tailored primarily for institutional and enterprise use.

AmendmentMain FeatureScheduled Activation (UTC)Target UsersPermissionDelegationV1_1Granular account authorizationOct. 8, 21:25Institutions, enterprisesfixBatchV1_2Security protocol fixOct. 9, 14:12All XRPL network participantsBatchV1_1Atomic batched transactionsOct. 9, 14:46Advanced/institutional users

Blast is shutting down its Ethereum layer 2 after concluding that the cost of operating the network exceeds the revenue it generates.

The team said Friday that it no longer sees a credible path toward making Blast economically sustainable and will begin winding down the chain.

“We launched Blast with the goal of building a self-sustaining chain for users and developers,” the team said. “Unfortunately, the economics of operating the chain no longer make sense.”

Users are being asked to withdraw all assets from Blast to Ethereum mainnet, including balances held through the Blast progressive web app.

Blast plans to reduce its withdrawal delay to 24 hours as part of the process. Withdrawals will first be temporarily suspended while the network unwinds its Lido positions, a process expected to take about one week.

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Once those assets have been withdrawn, regular withdrawals will resume with the shortened 24-hour delay.

Users will have until October 26 to withdraw through Blast’s normal interface. Assets will remain recoverable after that deadline, but holders will need to interact directly with Blast’s bridge contracts on Ethereum rather than using the standard interface.

The shutdown marks a sharp reversal for a network that attracted significant attention before its February 2024 mainnet launch.

Blast, founded by Blur creator Tieshun Roquerre, known as Pacman, introduced native yield for ether and stablecoins and attracted more than $2 billion in deposits before its mainnet was even live. The Block

Activity has fallen substantially since those early peaks. Blast currently has roughly $65 million in total value locked, while the BLAST token has a market capitalization of about $30 million and trades around 98% below its June 2024 all-time high, according to DefiLlama data. DefiLlama

Blast did not provide detailed revenue or operating-cost figures in its shutdown announcement.

The team apologized to users and developers that supported the ecosystem and said its priority is now ensuring assets can be safely moved back to Ethereum.

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

Cardano has seen a notable increase in network activity over the past week, with daily transactions up 43% to a seven-day high.

According to blockchain analytics platform Chainspect, Cardano processed 33,467 transactions on September 30, 2026, marking the network’s highest daily transaction count over the preceding seven days.

Daily transaction activity rose from 23,400 to 33,467 transactions, a 43% increase over the seven-day period. Overall, the network processed roughly 190,000 transactions during the week, spanning September 24 to 30, 2026. 

As a result, Cardano’s daily transaction activity moved above its reported 2026 average of around 25,000 transactions per day. 

Cardano Transaction Volume NIGHT Interest Coincides With Rising Cardano Activity While the exact catalyst behind the latest increase remains unclear, the surge comes amid renewed interest in NIGHT, the native token of Cardano’s privacy-focused Midnight network.

The development follows a bold assertion from Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, who suggested that NIGHT could outperform Zcash and eventually see massive growth next year. Following his commentary, NIGHT trading activity increased significantly, while its price climbed from around $0.028 to $0.040 on September 30.

Interestingly, NIGHT reached the $0.04 area on the same day Cardano’s daily transaction count hit its seven-day high. Although NIGHT has since slipped below $0.04, the token has continued to attract activity, recording 2,344 transactions within a few hours of October 2.

Cardano Transactions Continue to Climb Meanwhile, Cardano’s network activity has continued to rise beyond the September 30 peak. At the time of writing, the network had recorded 43,200 daily transactions, representing a further 29% increase over the past 24 hours.

The latest increase also comes shortly after Cardano marked its ninth anniversary. At the milestone, the network reported more than 124 million cumulative transactions, alongside nearly 2,887 stake pools and 2,075 validators.

Additionally, Cardano’s average transactions per second (TPS) over the past seven days stands at 0.35, up 10.39% during the period. Meanwhile, the network’s seven-day block time stands at approximately 20.29 seconds.

As Cardano’s transaction activity accelerates, DEX trading volume on the network has also increased significantly over the past week. During this period, weekly DEX volume surged 87.99% to $32.8 million. Meanwhile, 24-hour DEX volume stands at approximately $11 million, highlighting the continued rise in trading activity across Cardano’s decentralized exchanges.

Tether-backed fintech firm Utexo is preparing to introduce USDT stablecoin transfers on the Bitcoin network in the coming weeks, bringing the world’s largest dollar-pegged cryptocurrency back to its original blockchain after years of rapid expansion elsewhere.

Utexo receives license for Bitcoin-based USDT issuanceUtexo co-founder Viktor Ihnatiuk confirmed the company recently obtained a commercial license permitting the issuance of USDT on Bitcoin using the Tether trademark. Founded in 2025, Utexo raised $7.5 million earlier this year to build out its Bitcoin payments infrastructure.

The platform is designed to serve exchanges, wallets, and payment providers with a suite of APIs, SDKs, and cloud-based solutions, enabling seamless integration with the Bitcoin network. USDT transfers will be fully supported, with added functions such as direct BTC-USDT swaps and BTC-backed collateralized lending, eliminating the need to wrap native bitcoin.

Ihnatiuk has described Tether’s historic commitment to the Bitcoin ecosystem, stating,

Tether has always been a Bitcoin company, viewing Bitcoin as a haven of stability alongside gold. Making USDT as accessible on Bitcoin as on other networks is a major priority for Utexo.

In mid-August, Tether held approximately 100,000 BTC valued at $8.4 billion, according to data from Bitcoin Treasuries. USDT was first launched on Bitcoin via the Omni protocol in 2014, though its main usage later shifted to Ethereum and Tron. USDT now boasts a market capitalization nearing $190 billion.

Privacy and compliance driven by RGB and UTXO modelUtexo’s core infrastructure is built on the RGB protocol and utilizes Bitcoin’s UTXO (unspent transaction output) model. This approach allows for private USDT transfers by leveraging client-side validation, which keeps most transaction information off the Bitcoin public ledger. Bitcoin’s UTXO architecture anchors digital asset ownership while preserving the privacy of individual transactions.

Unlike Ethereum and Tron, which operate on an account-based model publicizing balance and transaction updates, Utexo’s system ensures cryptographic proof of ownership without exposing user data. However, while RGB assets cannot be frozen at the address level as on Ethereum, Utexo will enforce compliance by blacklisting UTXOs involved in illicit or sanctioned activity, effectively rendering those tokens unredeemable. The list will be shared with exchanges and payments partners to support compliance.

Ihnatiuk explained that once a UTXO is blacklisted, it can no longer be returned to any bridge or redemption tool, thus upholding both privacy and regulatory standards.

USDT to expand utility on Lightning NetworkFollowing its official launch on Bitcoin, Utexo intends to expand USDT support to the Lightning Network, a prominent layer-2 solution designed for rapid, low-cost Bitcoin transactions. This step could introduce USDT as a fee token on Lightning, mirroring approaches such as Circle’s Arc network, which leverages USDC for its own gas fees.

Alongside these technical enhancements, monitoring investor behavior and token launches has become critical in the digital asset sector. In the meme token space, rapid trends can create million-dollar surges in a matter of days. Fomo App recently highlighted a case where an investor parlayed a $99 trade into about $370,000 by participating early in “Niu Lai.” Tracking not just price but also investor choices and timing is increasingly important. Fomo App offers a unified platform combining token discovery, trading, social feeds, investor rankings, and trade alerts, allowing users to follow meme tokens and investor activity in real time.

U.S. prosecutors have seized nearly $84 million from bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets tied to a Montana payments firm linked to Tether.

The civil forfeiture targets Capstone, a money services business that allegedly posed as an information technology company to open accounts at major banks while moving money for crypto firms, reports Reuters.

Court filings say Capstone, registered in Montana, processed payments for two crypto companies through a bank in Dominica. Prosecutors say the firm also ran a scheme that converted fraud proceeds into crypto by posing as FBI agents.

Nearly $81 million was seized from Capstone accounts at Wells Fargo and about $2 million from an account at JPMorgan Chase. Roughly $1.2 million worth of Tether’s dollar-pegged token was taken as well, according to the July filing first reported by The Information.

Tether said it was a customer of the Dominica bank and that its assets there were limited. A spokesperson addressed Capstone’s alleged conduct.

“Tether had no knowledge of the conduct by Capstone alleged by the Department of Justice.”

The Justice Department did not allege wrongdoing by Tether or the other firms involved. Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and JPMorgan declined to comment.

A lawyer for Capstone told Reuters the firm denies wrongdoing and plans to challenge the complaint.

Tether issues USDT, a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency used to move value on crypto networks.

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Investment management firm VanEck has finally introduced staking to its BNB ETF (VBNB), months after launching the first and only spot exchange-traded fund tracking Binance Coin price. The change could bring inflows into the ETF amid potential institutional interest.

VanEck Adds Staking to BNB ETF According to the latest filing with the US SEC, VanEck has added staking as a secondary objective to its spot BNB ETF, revising the investment objectives. This follows VanEck Digital Assets’ announcement of a second custody agreement with BitGo Bank & Trust, naming Figment as the validator.

Under the staking program, the sponsor intends to stake all of the trust’s BNB except a reserve kept for redemptions. On BNB Smart Chain, exiting a committed position currently takes a seven-day unbonding period, during which the tokens earn nothing and cannot be moved.

Notably, VanEck BNB ETF (VBNB) launched in May 2026 on Nasdaq as the first U.S. spot BNB fund, holds BNB with Anchorage Digital Bank and BitGo and charges a 0.39% sponsor fee. Shares are created and redeemed in cash or in kind in baskets of 10,000.

However, the staking feature was removed from the proposal before launch after regulatory questions over whether staking rewards could affect the trust’s status. The Figment appointment supplies the validator and fee terms needed to run that activity through BitGo, the trust’s second custodian.

Will Binance Coin Price Rally? According to SoSoValue data, VanEck BNB ETF has total net assets of $1.20 million. Also, the total assets under management is near $2.70 million. Staking could trigger inflows into the ETF and upside momentum in Binance Coin. However, it will depend on the performance of the ETF in the future.

Binance Coin price is trading near $775, up nearly 15% in a month and more than 42% since the launch of the VanEck BNB ETF. The launch failed to produce a sustained rally amid broader risk-off conditions, but the latest crypto market recovery holds promise.

CoinGlass data showed buying in the derivatives market in the last few hours. At the time of writing, the total BNB futures open interest jumped more than 0.52% in the past hour and almost 0.35% over the last 4 hours. The 24-hour BNB futures open interest is up more than 1.20%. Notably, it increased by almost 0.50% on Binance, 6.60% on OKX, and 2.30% on Bybit.

To navigate the complex security and regulatory requirements of public funds, issuers depend on secure, highly audited environments offered by the top institutional crypto custody solutions.

Stellar’s tokenized real-world asset market has grown into something institutions take seriously. As of August 29, 2026, tokenized RWAs on the network totaled approximately $3.996 billion.

That is up 360% from $868.8 million at the end of 2025. The figure briefly crossed $4 billion around August 3, so the network has already visited the four-comma neighborhood once this year.

XLM, Stellar’s native asset, has been trading around $0.18 through August. The network keeps adding assets, and the token has mostly stayed put.

Who is filling the vault On Stellar, institutional issuers drove the growth. The asset mix covers US Treasuries, private and public credit, money market funds, and non-US sovereign debt.

Spiko leads the pack with approximately $1.55 billion in tokenized assets. That single issuer accounts for well over a third of the network’s RWA total.

The next tier is unusually tight:

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Realiz: $559 million

Tradable: $548 million

Franklin Templeton’s BENJI ecosystem: $546 million

Ondo: $535 million

Together, those five issuers make up the vast majority of the market. Four of them sit within about $25 million of each other.

The emerging-market debt niche Stellar’s most distinctive lane is tokenized non-US government debt. By August 20, 2026, the network held roughly $490 million in this category, which puts it ahead of every other public blockchain.

Much of that comes through Etherfuse, which brings assets like Mexican CETES and Brazilian bonds on-chain. CETES are short-term Mexican government securities.

The Stellar Development Foundation has emphasized robustness and regulatory alignment as core to its framework. The network lets institutions choose and configure privacy solutions alongside compliance controls.

Background: from $868.8 million to the DTCC Stellar closed 2025 with $868.8 million in tokenized RWAs. Eight months later, it is closing in on five times that base.

The DTCC plans to connect its tokenization service to Stellar, with DTC-custodied assets set to become available in the first half of 2027.

What this means Concentration is the risk worth watching. Five issuers account for most of the market, and Spiko alone holds approximately $1.55 billion. If one large issuer migrated assets elsewhere or wound down a product, the network’s headline number could fall quickly.

For XLM holders, the token trading near $0.18 while network RWAs climb 360% points to a disconnect between on-chain activity and market sentiment toward the asset itself. Tokenized Treasuries and money market funds do not require their holders to buy and hold large amounts of the native token.

The things to track from here are fairly concrete. Watch whether the total holds above $4 billion rather than briefly touching it. Watch whether the non-US sovereign debt lead widens beyond roughly $490 million. And watch whether the DTCC connection arrives in the first half of 2027 as planned.

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

Exodus Checkout launches with DGO in Argentina. Customers can pay subscriptions with USDC or USDT. One authorization can cover future recurring charges. Exodus pays blockchain gas on subsequent subscription charges. Exodus Movement has launched a merchant payment system that brings USDC and USDT directly into subscription billing, debuting the product with DGO in Argentina.

Exodus Checkout allows eligible DGO customers to select stablecoins during checkout and pay from a compatible crypto wallet. The initial launch covers Argentina, with additional Latin American markets planned. More importantly, the infrastructure supports both one-time purchases and recurring payments, moving Exodus beyond wallet software and deeper into merchant payment processing.

DGO Tests Stablecoins Without the Card Layer The architecture differs from the card-based stablecoin option Exodus introduced for DGO customers earlier this year.

Checkout creates a direct merchant payment flow. A business generates a payment session through the Checkout API, redirects the customer to a hosted payment page and receives confirmation through webhooks once the transaction is confirmed onchain. Merchants can choose direct settlement or a two-step process where funds are held until they are captured or refunded.

The system currently supports USDC and USDT across Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base and BNB Smart Chain, although individual merchants decide which combinations to accept.

Customers are not locked into an Exodus wallet either. Exodus lists MetaMask and Phantom among compatible options, alongside other wallets supporting the required stablecoin and network.

That makes DGO less of a wallet integration and more of a live test for Exodus’ business-facing payment infrastructure.

Recurring Billing Works Differently From a Credit Card Subscriptions expose one of the harder problems in crypto payments.

A cardholder can give a merchant credentials that support future charges. A self-custodial wallet normally requires its owner to authorize transactions individually.

Exodus Checkout bridges that gap with an onchain subscription authorization. At signup, the customer signs once and the first charge occurs in the same transaction. The authorization creates an onchain subscription that can subsequently be charged by the merchant within predefined limits.

The merchant cannot withdraw an unlimited amount. Checkout supports a per-charge cap and a budget for each billing window, with those restrictions enforced onchain.

Renewals are also not automatically initiated by the blockchain. The merchant decides when a billing cycle should be charged and submits the request through Exodus’ subscription API. Fund-moving requests require a separate merchant signing key rather than relying solely on an API credential.

That architecture more closely reproduces recurring merchant billing while preserving limits established when the wallet owner authorizes the subscription.

Who Pays Gas When DGO Renews a Subscription? The implementation answers an important practical question for customers.

A user pays the normal blockchain transaction fee when initially approving a stablecoin payment or subscription. Exodus’ customer documentation warns that the fee is paid using the native asset of the selected network.

Subsequent subscription charges work differently. When the merchant requests an authorized recurring charge, Exodus submits the onchain transaction and pays the gas.

That removes the need for a subscriber to return every month simply to approve another transaction or maintain enough ETH, SOL or another native gas token for every renewal.

Stablecoin liquidity still matters.

If the wallet does not contain enough of the authorized stablecoin, the charge can fail with an InsufficientBalance error. Checkout does not automatically cancel the subscription after repeated failures. Instead, the merchant remains responsible for deciding how failed payments affect access, retries or eventual cancellation.

That division of responsibility is important for DGO. Exodus supplies the payment rails and onchain authorization, but subscription management remains a merchant function.

Stablecoin Prices Can Still Be Set in Local Currency Checkout also separates the currency used to price a subscription from the token used to settle it.

New subscription plans can be denominated in ARS, BRL, EUR or USD. When a charge is due, Checkout can quote the corresponding amount of the settlement stablecoin and lock that rate for the transaction.

A DGO subscription therefore does not necessarily need to become a fixed-USDC product simply because the customer pays with USDC.

That distinction is especially useful for consumer businesses. Merchants can continue thinking in conventional pricing currencies while customers choose blockchain settlement at checkout.

Argentina Becomes the First Test of Merchant Adoption Latin America gives Exodus a meaningful environment in which to test the model. The company specifically points to demand for dollar stablecoins in markets exposed to currency volatility, while DGO already operates across several countries in the region.

But the Oct. 1 announcement confirms production availability only in Argentina. Expansion into Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Ecuador remains planned and is explicitly treated by Exodus as forward-looking.

The more revealing numbers will therefore come after launch: payment volume, failed versus successful renewals, the share of subscribers choosing stablecoins and whether merchants beyond DGO integrate Checkout.

Those metrics would show whether stablecoins can move from an alternative way to fund crypto cards into payment infrastructure consumers repeatedly use without having to think about the blockchain underneath.

Alex is a financial markets journalist and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, and he's spent close to ten years trying to answer one stubborn question: what's really driving this? It started in 2016, when Bitcoin refused to make sense to him - and rather than shrug, he stayed with it until it did. That patience became his method. He's less interested in what an asset is doing today than in the plumbing behind it: how liquidity flows, where risk hides, what a chart is quietly telling you that the headline isn't. That lens eventually stretched well past crypto into traditional markets, because the same forces - fear, leverage, incentives, timing - show up everywhere once you know how to look. Most coverage, in his view, insults the reader by stopping at the surface. Price up, price down, moving on. He'd rather leave someone genuinely understanding a move than merely informed that it happened. His path into markets ran through a Tourism degree at New Bulgarian University - proof, maybe, that curiosity beats credentials. With more than 200 deep analyses and over 10,000 articles behind him, he still walks away from most trading days having learned something he didn't know that morning.

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Nexo lets XRP holders use their tokens as collateral to borrow USDT or USDC at 0% interest, with no margin calls or liquidation during the fixed term.

XRP holders can now use their tokens as collateral to access stablecoin liquidity without paying interest or selling their position, under Nexo’s Zero-interest Credit product. The service supports XRP alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, with no margin calls or liquidation during the agreed loan term.

Borrow at 0% with your SOL or XRP.

Zero-interest Credit now accepts SOL and XRP as collateral, alongside BTC and ETH. Stay invested, access stablecoin liquidity, and settle at maturity with no liquidation during the term.

Explore Zero-interest Credit.https://t.co/yW01EIo7zP

— Nexo (@Nexo) October 2, 2026

Nexo expanded the product to XRP and SOL earlier this year, broadening a lending model that initially supported BTC and ETH.

The structure allows holders to keep exposure to XRP while borrowing against it, but it operates differently from a standard open-ended crypto loan.

XRP Holders Can Borrow at 30% LTV For XRP-backed Zero-interest Credit, Nexo uses a 30% loan-to-value ratio and sets the minimum threshold at 5,000 XRP.

This means the value borrowed is substantially lower than the value of the XRP pledged as collateral. The product carries 0% annual interest and zero fees, according to Nexo.

Borrowers can receive the proceeds in USDT or USDC and choose a fixed duration ranging from five days to 12 months. Individual loans can reach as high as $5 million.

Unlike Nexo’s standard Credit Line, the zero-interest product cannot normally be repaid early. Settlement takes place at the predetermined maturity date unless the position qualifies for renewal.

No Liquidation During XRP Price Swings One of the main differences is how the product handles volatility.

Traditional crypto-backed loans can liquidate collateral when its value falls and the LTV exceeds a specified threshold. Nexo says its Zero-interest Credit has no margin calls or mid-term liquidation, even if XRP falls sharply while the loan is active.

However, this does not mean the borrower is guaranteed to retain all of the XRP.

Each position is opened with a Minimum Repayment Price and Maximum Repayment Price. If XRP finishes below the minimum level at maturity, collateral is used to settle the credit at that predefined floor. If XRP rises beyond the maximum level, collateral can be sold at the upper price to repay the loan, limiting the borrower’s participation above that level.

Users who enable stablecoin repayment may settle with USDT or USDC at maturity and retain their XRP if the price remains within the specified repayment range and enough stablecoins are available in their account.

XRP Becomes Productive Collateral Without a Spot Sale The addition gives XRP holders another way to access liquidity without initially selling their tokens.

Nexo said XRP and SOL-backed loans use the same core zero-interest structure as its BTC and ETH product. When the expansion was announced, the company reported more than $170 million in total Zero-interest Credit loan volume, with a 66% borrower renewal rate.

The product therefore creates another financial use for XRP outside trading: holders can pledge the asset as collateral and receive stablecoins while maintaining exposure during the fixed term, subject to the predefined settlement boundaries.

Aave Takes Aim at MiCA's Intermediary GapAave Labs has submitted formal recommendations to the European Commission as part of its ongoing review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). The protocol is pushing for a regulatory approach that focuses on intermediaries rather than open-source financial software, a distinction it argues is essential to preserving the integrity of decentralised finance.

The submission feeds into a targeted consultation the Commission launched in May 2026 to examine whether MiCA remains fit for purpose. The review covers stablecoin rules, DeFi, staking and lending, with a Commission report to the European Parliament due by June 2027.

Aave argues that MiCA was designed for an earlier generation of the crypto market, one dominated by centralised issuers and custodians. It believes Europe now has an opportunity to modernise the framework to reflect newer financial infrastructure built on open, permissionless protocols.

Self-Custody and Euro Stablecoin CompetitivenessAmong its specific requests, Aave is calling for stronger protections for self-custody and for the preservation of lending returns under euro stablecoins. The protocol also wants euro stablecoins to be given room to compete globally, which it says will require more flexible reserve and liquidity requirements than those currently prescribed under MiCA.

The intervention comes at a busy moment for the review. The European Securities and Markets Authority published its own response on 30 September 2026, proposing targeted amendments covering DeFi, stablecoins, staking, and lending and borrowing. The European Banking Authority has separately recommended that crypto lending and DeFi access be brought further into MiCA's scope, a position that sits in direct tension with Aave's push to keep software itself outside the regulatory perimeter.

Aave's message to Brussels is straightforward: regulate the intermediaries who sit between users and protocols, not the code that powers them. Whether the Commission agrees will shape how DeFi operates across the EU for years to come.

Sources:
Coinfomania: Aave Labs Submits Response to European Commission's MiCA
ESMA: ESMA Calls for Changes to Make MiCA Clearer, Safer and Ready for Emerging Services
Skadden: Fit for Purpose? European Commission Launches Review of MiCA

Aave founder Stani Kulechov has released a statement expressing disappointment with the European Central Bank (ECB) and European Banking Authority (EBA)’s responses to the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) consultation. He noted that the two authorities not only advocate banning yields on stablecoin payments, but also propose restricting crypto asset service providers (CASPs) from granting users access to decentralized finance (DeFi) channels—including yield protocols involving stablecoins not authorized under MiCA—without clarifying a concrete implementation framework. Kulechov added that the proposals suggest limiting DeFi user access via so-called "appropriateness tests" and are considering introducing a certification system for DeFi lending protocols. He argued that if regulators decide which protocols are suitable for European users, it could lead to more closed DeFi ecosystems, eroding the open finance network’s liquidity and network effects. Stated Kulechov, excessive restrictions could increase barriers to innovation and slow the development of open, transparent, and auditable financial infrastructure. He believes stablecoins, DeFi, and tokenized securities have the potential to reduce frictions in financial services, enhance transparency, and expand users’ access to financial opportunities, calling on European regulators to place users and their interests at the core of the regulatory framework. Finally, he concluded: “DeFi will ultimately prevail.”

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Layer 2 network Blast announces it is ceasing operations, requiring users to withdraw their assets to the Ethereum mainnet by October 26.

Layer 2 network Blast announced it will cease operations, as ongoing network maintenance costs have exceeded revenue generated by the L2, with the team noting there is no viable path to achieving economic sustainability. The project is advising all users to withdraw on-chain assets and balances held in its PWA to the Ethereum mainnet, and plans to reduce withdrawal wait times to 24 hours. However, the team will first process the exit of Lido assets held by Blast, a process expected to take approximately one week, during which withdrawal functionality will be temporarily unavailable. Users can complete withdrawals via Blast’s regular interface by October 26. After the deadline, assets can still be retrieved but will require direct interaction with the Blast Bridge contract on Ethereum L1; the team will publish specific operation instructions ahead of the cutoff date.

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The founder of Pons announced the official launch of its V3 mode, granting creators full autonomy to decide whether to adopt the Bonding Curve.

Pons founder Ozzy announced in a post that the platform has officially entered its V3 phase. Ozzy stated that V3 is primarily targeted at newly launched tokens, while V1 and V2 contracts will remain unchanged, so existing tokens require no adjustments. When asked whether V3 tokens will continue to use Bonding Curves, Ozzy responded that this choice will be left to token creators. In response to user feedback on issues such as insufficient visibility of Bonding Curves, Pons will hand over the relevant decision-making power to deployers. Ozzy also noted that V3 will bring more revenue, reduce "vampire" activities, improve trader mechanisms, minimize extractive practices, and emphasized that the community is its top priority.

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Maji has notched 10 consecutive wins in PUMP swing trading over the past five days, generating approximately $1.34 million in profit.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, trader Ma Ji has secured 10 consecutive wins in PUMP swing trades over the past 5 days, totaling approximately $1.34 million in profit. His current long positions include 33,950 ETH (valued at around $92.56 million), 409 BTC (worth ~$35.22 million), and 180,000 HYPE (valued at ~$16.16 million).

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Machi Wins 10 Consecutive $PUMP Trades, Profits $1.34M in 5 Days

Machi(@machibigbrother) has been doing well on $PUMP recently. He has won 10 $PUMP trades in a row over the past 5 days, making a total profit of $1.34M. Current long positions: 33,950 $ETH ($92.56M) 409 $BTC ($35.22M) 180,000 $HYPE ($16.16M)

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ENS official address sells another 1,097 ETH, worth approximately $3 million.

According to Lookonchain's monitoring, the ENS official address (ens.eth) sold 1,097 ETH again four hours ago, at an average price of roughly $2,743 per ETH, for a total value of approximately $3 million.

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Bitcoin falls below $86,000, with its intraday gain narrowing to 1.31%

According to HTX market data, Bitcoin has fallen below $86,000, currently trading at $85,990.62, with its intraday gain narrowing to 1.31%.

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Uniswap (UNI) price is up slightly by 0.65% today, October 2, to trade at $9.11 at the time of writing. The slight gains mirror the recovery across the broader crypto market as Bitcoin (BTC) reclaims $86,000.

Uniswap gains also come as SMBC Nikko Securities partners with multiple crypto firms, including Uniswap Labs, to create a DeFi Gateway that targets the Japanese market.

SMBC to Launch a DeFi Gateway With Uniswap Labs SMBC Nikko Securities ranks as the third-largest brokerage firm in Japan, and it has now signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Uniswap Labs, Base, and Nyx Foundation to offer access to DeFi services.

The initiative will use Uniswap v4 Hooks to create a liquidity pool framework that is compliant with anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) laws.

The firms plan to launch the DeFi platform by mid-2027, with each progress made towards launch set to be shared with various regulatory bodies in Japan.

The launch comes barely four months after Standard Chartered forecast that the liquidity pools on Uniswap could have 37 times more assets by 2030. As CoinGape reported, the bank forecasts that UNI price could surge 40 times in the next four years.

Open Interest Remains Elevated After 53% Rally Data from CoinGlass shows that Uniswap’s open interest increased from $491 million in mid-September to more than $900 million by the end of September.

While the OI has dropped slightly from the September high of $971 million, it remained elevated at $915 million at the time of writing.

UNI Open Interest (Source: CoinGlass) The high open interest suggests that the traders who opened futures positions on UNI price in September as the price soared have yet to close their positions.

The weighted funding rate also remains positive, suggesting that long-buyers are paying more to keep their positions open as doubts grow that the Fed will hike interest rates during the October Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

Still, the long/short reading in Binance has dropped from 1.86 on September 25 to 1.57 at the time of writing, suggesting that some long traders are closing their positions.

UNI Price Rally Loses Steam but 20D EMA Support Holds The Uniswap gains that occurred in September are cooling down, with UNI price now consolidating within a symmetrical triangle pattern.

The ADX reading above 50 suggests that Uniswap remains in an uptrend. However, the ADX line that is tipping south signals a bearish future Uniswap outlook because it shows that the uptrend is becoming weak.

If UNI closes below the support at the lower trendline of the symmetrical triangle, the price could drop to test the support at the 20-day EMA of $8.48.

UNI/USDT 1D Chart (Source: TradingView) However, if the uptrend resumes and UNI closes above the resistance at the 78.7% Fib of $9.26, it could kickstart another bullish leg towards $10.

Affected users get one DFX per USDT lost, redeemable for about a cent at launch from a pool that grows with the rebuilt exchange’s daily revenue.

Drift opens claims for $290M hack victims

Posted October 2, 2026 at 5:41 am ET.

The Drift Foundation opened claims and redemptions on Thursday for DFX, a Solana token issued to users of the perpetuals exchange who lost funds in its April 1 exploit. Every USDT of verified loss entitles a wallet to one DFX.

Cashing in today returns about 0.0104 USDT per token, according to Drift, or roughly a cent for each dollar lost. That rate is the balance of a Recovery Pool, about 3.1 million USDT at launch, divided by the DFX outstanding, and it rises as new money lands in the pool.

Supply is fixed at about 299.5 million DFX. In a Sept. 30 update, the foundation put the amount taken from users at over $290 million and said forensic firm Mandiant had identified the attacker as a North Korean group.

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How the Pool Fills The main recurring source is the rebuilt exchange, which rebranded as Velocity in July. At midnight UTC each day, Velocity sends part of its net protocol revenue to the pool, and the share climbs as revenue grows: 60% up to 30,000 USDT, 70% for the next 70,000 USDT, and 90% of each USDT beyond 100,000. The deposits stop once the pool has collected the full verified loss total.

Drift also listed commitments of up to 127.5 million USDT from Tether and up to 20 million USDT from strategic partners, part of the support package it lined up in April. Any recovered stolen funds also go to the pool, and the foundation said about $9.2 million has been frozen so far.

As of Friday morning, Drift’s recovery dashboard showed the pool’s balance came almost entirely from a one-time deposit of the protocol’s remaining assets.

Claim, Sell or Hold Users have to claim from the same wallet that owned their Drift account on the day of the April 1 exploit. After that, DFX can be redeemed from any wallet, traded on venues such as Raydium, or held. Each redemption burns the tokens and pays USDT in a single, final transaction.

In Drift’s example, if 10% of supply is redeemed, each remaining token gets about 11% more of every future deposit. Claims close at midnight UTC on Jan. 1, 2028, and unclaimed DFX will be burned.

“These figures illustrate the mechanics. They are not a projection or a promise,” Drift wrote.

Related Listen: Why Any DeFi Protocol ‘Lives and Dies by Its Oracle’ and How to Strengthen Them

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.

Forward Industries has increased its SOL and SOL-equivalent holdings by 948,601 tokens during fiscal Q4, taking its total to 8.501 million as of Sept. 30, 2026.

Summary

Forward Industries added nearly 949,000 SOL, lifting total holdings to 8.501 million during fiscal Q4. The company valued its SOL treasury at $1.004 billion using a September 30 price reference. SOL per fully diluted share rose 10.4% quarter-over-quarter to 0.0806, according to Forward Industries’ update. Forward closed a $25 million stock offering in September, with proceeds intended partly for SOL. Solana traded near $122 on October 2, up roughly 4% over the previous 24 hours. Forward Industries said the 13% quarterly increase came from a combination of SOL purchases and staking, with the newly added tokens carrying an average cost of $83. Its holdings rose from 7.553 million at the end of June to 8.501 million at the end of September.

The company said the position represented roughly 1.4% of Solana’s circulating supply. Its definition of SOL holdings includes native SOL, fwdSOL and pledged SOL while excluding borrowed tokens. Forward’s treasury dashboard continues to show 8,501,298 SOL and equivalents as of Sept. 30.

Forward Industries’ SOL holdings reached 8.5 million At a reference price of $118.06 per SOL on Sept. 30, Forward placed the fair value of its SOL treasury at $1.0037 billion. Other digital assets carried a reported fair value of $26.9 million, while cash stood at $7.3 million. The company calculated total net asset value at approximately $870.4 million after accounting for $167.5 million in institutional debt.

SOL per fully diluted share climbed from 0.0730 at June 30 to 0.0806 three months later, an increase of 10.4%. Over the full fiscal year, the measure rose 33% from 0.0604 on Sept. 30, 2025. Forward uses the metric to divide its SOL and SOL-equivalent holdings by its fully diluted share count.

Fully diluted shares increased from 103.53 million to 105.54 million during the quarter. Common shares outstanding rose from 73.85 million to 76.29 million. Forward acknowledged that part of its SOL buying was funded through FWDI share sales and described the issuance as accretive because SOL per fully diluted share still increased.

Chief Investment Officer Ryan Navi called the period a “standout quarter” and pointed to what the company described as record SOL additions. His statement that the company was “building the Berkshire Hathaway of Solana” represents management’s description of its strategy, not an independent assessment of the business.

September stock sale provided more cash for SOL purchases Just before the fiscal year ended, Forward raised another $25 million through a registered direct stock offering. A Sept. 22 securities purchase agreement covered 3.125 million common shares priced at $8 each, and the transaction closed on Sept. 24.

In its SEC filing, Forward said it planned to use the net proceeds for Solana purchases, working capital and general corporate purposes. A company release issued after the closing said the proceeds were intended primarily for additional SOL. The disclosures did not break out how much of that financing had been deployed into SOL by Sept. 30.

Institutional debt increased during fiscal Q4 from $105 million to $167.5 million, according to the Oct. 1 update. Forward’s earlier SEC disclosures show that it has used borrowing arrangements with Galaxy Digital as part of its treasury strategy, alongside staking, lending, DeFi activity and equity financing.

As crypto.news reported in July, Forward had already added more than 500,000 SOL during fiscal Q3, taking its holdings to 7.55 million by June 30. The latest 948,601-token increase means Q4 produced a larger addition than the previous quarter.

Forward began its Solana treasury strategy in September 2025 after raising $1.65 billion through a private placement backed by Galaxy Digital, Jump Crypto and Multicoin Capital. In earlier crypto.news coverage, the company reported acquiring 6.822 million SOL during its first week of the strategy at an average purchase price of $232.

Solana price holds near $122 after September recovery CoinGecko data on Oct. 2 showed Solana trading near $122, up roughly 4% over 24 hours and around 3% over the previous seven days. The token carried a circulating supply of approximately 590 million SOL and a market capitalization near $72 billion at the time of the reading.

Historical CoinGecko data placed SOL at $118.04 on Sept. 30, close to the $118.06 reference Forward used for its quarter-end treasury valuation. SOL had traded below $100 in mid-September before moving above that level later in the month.

A daily SOL/USDT TradingView chart showed the token consolidating around the $120 to $123 area following its rebound from the June lows. The RSI reading of 66.40 remained below the 70 level normally associated with an overbought reading, while sitting slightly above its RSI moving average of 65.66.

Solana (sol) price chart, source: TradingView The same chart placed the MACD line near 5.50 and its signal line around 5.60, leaving the histogram slightly negative at approximately -0.10. Both lines remained above zero, though the small negative histogram showed shorter-term momentum had slowed compared with the preceding advance.

No verified market data establishes that Forward’s latest treasury purchases caused SOL’s Oct. 2 price gain. CoinGecko’s figures show the price movement, while Forward’s disclosure gives the size and timing of its quarterly accumulation as separate data points.

Forward is putting capital into other Solana projects Forward’s Solana exposure extends beyond its treasury tokens. During Q4, the company reported that the market capitalization of ONyc, issued by tokenized reinsurance platform OnRe, increased from roughly $203.4 million at the end of June to $286.2 million at Sept. 30. Forward cited RWA.xyz for the figures.

Forward invested in OnRe earlier in 2026 and committed to purchase as much as $25 million of ONyc, subject to the investment terms. As crypto.news reported in May, Forward and RockawayX participated in OnRe’s $5 million funding round, while Forward planned a separate investment into the Solana-based token.

The company said Solana’s tokenized real-world asset market, excluding stablecoins, increased from more than $3.3 billion at the end of June to approximately $4.3 billion by Sept. 30. Its Oct. 1 release attributed that market figure to RWA.xyz.

Forward’s quarter-end treasury numbers remain preliminary and unaudited. The company said its net asset value, digital-asset values, debt figures and capitalization data remain subject to completion of its annual audit for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2026.

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

Bitget’s attacker has moved much of the exchange’s $387.5 million theft toward Bitcoin through cross-chain services, while only around $840,000 had been publicly frozen five days after the Sept. 24 breach.

Summary

Bitget says attackers moved $387.5 million from hot and warm wallets across blockchains in September. BlockSec estimates attackers still controlled roughly $342 million five days after the Bitget theft began. Tether, Circle and NEAR Intents froze roughly $840,000, equal to only 0.2% of stolen funds. THORChain handled about $269 million in pass-through value, while Bitcoin became the main consolidation asset. North Korea remains suspected, but BlockSec says current onchain evidence does not establish attacker identity. BlockSec reported that the stolen funds followed three main paths: quickly converting assets that issuers could freeze, consolidating value from several chains into Bitcoin and gradually sending BTC into CoinJoin transactions.

The security firm based its analysis on addresses published through Bitget’s tracking dashboard and a Sept. 29 snapshot, meaning the balances and laundering totals can continue changing as funds move.

How did the Bitget hacker move the stolen money? Bitget said the breach began at 18:31 UTC on Sept. 24 with unauthorized transfers from portions of its hot and warm wallet infrastructure.

BlockSec found that the first transactions involved tiny test transfers of 0.84 ETH and 93 TRX. Larger withdrawals started at 18:58 UTC, while Bitget’s reconciliation system detected a discrepancy seven minutes later and blocked ordinary customer withdrawals.

The attackers were not relying on the normal customer withdrawal process, according to Bitget. The exchange said a vulnerability in a third-party security product gave the attackers high-level internal credentials, which were then used to submit forged withdrawal commands directly into its wallet system.

Private keys were not compromised, Bitget said, while its cold wallets remained unaffected. Independent investigations by Mandiant and SlowMist later confirmed that compromised third-party security software enabled unauthorized access to the exchange’s wallet environment.

The loss was initially estimated at $351.6 million before Bitget expanded the figure to roughly $387.5 million after accounting for Zcash and Tron transfers. BlockSec counted 13 stolen assets across 12 chains, with XRP representing the largest single-chain loss.

Assets that could be frozen were moved first. BlockSec found roughly $75.48 million in USDT, USDC and USDT0, plus 3,000 XAUt tokens, were converted into ETH or AVAX within 41 minutes of their theft.

Uniswap, UniswapX, 1inch and MetaMask’s built-in swap service appeared among the routes used. BlockSec said all those conversions were completed before Bitget CEO Gracy Chen publicly disclosed the breach.

Why has only $840K of Bitget’s $387M been frozen? Once the assets had been converted, the attacker began moving value between chains and toward Bitcoin.

BlockSec estimated that around $269 million in pass-through value moved through THORChain across 7,804 transactions by its Sept. 29 snapshot. Chainflip handled roughly $37.27 million, while USDT0/LayerZero, Circle’s CCTP, Across and Stargate appeared in other routes.

Those figures cannot be added together as separate stolen amounts. BlockSec cautioned that the same funds can move through more than one protocol while traveling between chains.

Nearly five days into the laundering process, BlockSec estimated attacker-controlled wallets still held approximately $342 million, equal to 88.3% of the original stolen amount. Bitcoin accounted for around 83.7% of that balance, or roughly 3,386 BTC.

Publicly visible freezes were much smaller.

Tether and Circle had immobilized around $340,000 in stablecoins. Much of that money became vulnerable to freezing because it remained at addresses long enough for the issuers to respond.

NEAR Intents separately said its SHIELD risk system caught attempts to route more than $50 million through the service. BlockSec’s review of the disclosure found roughly $503,000 was stopped during execution, while around $166,000 passed through.

The NEAR Intents figures carry an estimated error margin of up to 10%, according to the service’s own disclosure.

Earlier coverage of NEAR Intents blocking Bitget-linked transfers found that some funds were left in pending transactions after being flagged during the swap process.

Combined, the Tether, Circle and NEAR Intents actions put publicly visible frozen funds near $840,000, just 0.2% of the amount stolen.

Why did so much Bitget crypto move through THORChain? THORChain became the largest cross-chain route identified by BlockSec, drawing criticism from Bitget as stolen ETH continued to be converted into BTC.

Chen publicly asked THORChain to reject known attacker addresses, arguing that “decentralization is a design principle, not a shield” for stolen funds.

THORChain rejected the request and said its emergency halt functions are designed to protect the protocol as a whole, not selectively censor individual transactions.

The network said an emergency halt “is not a selective freeze” of a specific transaction or user.

A Bitget-linked wallet later swapped about $6.3 million of ETH into Bitcoin through THORChain, completing 27 swaps that produced approximately 75.2 BTC.

Other stolen funds reached Bitcoin mixers. BlockSec counted about $3.94 million entering CoinJoin transactions by Sept. 29.

One Sept. 27 CoinJoin transaction contained 356 inputs and 401 outputs. Four inputs, each containing 2.5 BTC, came from addresses Bitget’s tracker identified as belonging to the attacker.

Separate tracking of Bitget funds entering Wasabi CoinJoin previously found a route starting on Tron, passing through Ethereum and THORChain, then reaching Bitcoin before mixing.

Did North Korea carry out the Bitget hack? North Korean involvement remains an assessment, not a confirmed attribution by law enforcement.

Chen has said IP behavior and onchain patterns were “consistent with techniques used by DPRK-linked hacker groups.” Bitget said some IP addresses matched VPN infrastructure previously associated with a North Korean group, but the technical evidence behind that comparison has not been made public.

BlockSec found other possible links, including overlap with laundering methods used in attacks attributed to TraderTraitor and the use of THORChain to convert assets into Bitcoin.

Researcher ZachXBT identified several Chinese-speaking underground money launderers that he said were handling funds for the attacker. One had reportedly appeared in laundering activity connected with an earlier exploit.

Arkham separately pointed to the use of a peel-chain technique frequently associated with North Korean-linked operations.

BlockSec cautioned against treating those similarities as proof of attacker identity. Money-laundering services can work for different clients, while protocols such as THORChain and CoinJoin are available to unrelated users.

The security firm said the evidence points more directly to possible reuse of laundering groups than proof that the same hackers carried out earlier North Korean-linked attacks.

The comparison has centered partly on the 2025 Bybit theft. U.S. authorities formally attributed that $1.5 billion attack to North Korea’s TraderTraitor operation, while THORChain was heavily used to move the stolen Bybit funds.

No law-enforcement agency has publicly attributed the Bitget breach to North Korea as of the latest verified updates.

What happens next for Bitget and the stolen funds? Bitget continues to trace wallets and is offering a bounty for recoveries. The exchange offers qualifying participants 5% of funds they directly help freeze and another 5% for funds successfully recovered.

The Bitget recovery bounty was launched while Mandiant, SlowMist, exchanges and blockchain investigators continued tracking attacker addresses.

Bitget has already restored Bitcoin, Ether and USDT withdrawals in phases. Its published schedule places other tokens, fiat withdrawals and P2P services at 08:00 UTC on Oct. 2, although the exchange’s official incident page had not yet posted a separate confirmation of that final reopening when checked.

Bitget says the exploited vulnerability has been fixed and user balances remain unaffected. Its forensic investigation, law-enforcement work, fund tracing and recovery effort remain open, while the exchange says further material findings will be published through its official security updates.

Quant Network, a leading enterprise blockchain company and the developer of the Overledger platform, has introduced its QNT token on the Solana blockchain. This launch marks a significant cross-chain expansion, positioning QNT within one of the most active layer-1 ecosystems in the crypto space.

QNT debuts on Solana through Sunrise and RaydiumThe integration is powered by Sunrise, an interoperability provider focused on facilitating asset transfers between blockchains. As part of the launch, QNT can now be traded on Solana’s leading decentralized exchange, Raydium, giving users access to high-speed trading and low fees offered by the Solana network. The move extends QNT beyond its original Ethereum ERC-20 deployment, where liquidity has so far been concentrated among centralized pools.

Raydium is known as an automated market maker and liquidity provider within the Solana ecosystem, allowing tokens to be traded with minimal slippage and near-instant settlement.

Mini dictionary: Raydium is a decentralized exchange on Solana, offering automated liquidity for token trading with a focus on speed and efficiency compared to traditional blockchain DEXs.

In a post on X, Sunrise confirmed the availability of QNT for spot trading on Raydium, highlighting the ease with which holders can now access the Solana ecosystem. Solana’s high-throughput design and low transaction costs make it attractive for both token holders and developers interested in experimenting with multi-chain strategies.

Institutional momentum and the role of The Clearing HouseQuant’s expansion onto Solana comes at a time when the company has gained traction in traditional finance circles. On September 24, 2026, The Clearing House, a central operator of US payment infrastructure including CHIPS and RTP, entered into a partnership with Quant to explore the use of tokenized commercial bank money via their On-Chain Money Initiative.

The Clearing House is responsible for facilitating payment systems that process trillions of dollars annually, making its alliances crucial for the ongoing convergence between traditional finance and digital assets. This collaboration aims to develop regulatory-compliant settlement methods for tokenized bank deposits in the US.

Although the On-Chain Money Initiative is unrelated to Solana specifically, Quant’s dual effort in institutional and public blockchain integration illustrates the company’s two-pronged approach. Details about participating banks, the value of contracts involved, and the potential impact on QNT demand remain undisclosed. The initiative is scheduled to conclude by 2027, with further updates expected as development progresses.

Trading opportunities and ecosystem impactIn late September, Solana DEX volumes reached over $2 billion per day, according to DeFiLlama, making it a prime venue for active trading. The launch opens doors for QNT holders to new trading routes, especially between Ethereum and Solana, potentially presenting arbitrage opportunities for traders and multichain flexibility for institutions managing regulated digital assets custody.

For Solana, the addition of QNT as an enterprise-linked asset introduces a novel dimension to its network, which has been widely associated with retail activity and memecoin interest. It highlights an industry trend towards integrating regulated institutions with permissionless blockchain technology.

“Bridge exploits cost the crypto industry more than $2.8 billion last cycle, underlining the importance of robust security and interoperability as more assets cross between networks,” Sunrise stated.

With QNT opening above $400 before retreating to $250 in late September, price action around the launch reflected heightened attention and a surge in market activity. Strategic focus now shifts to how Raydium’s liquidity, bulk orders via Jupiter, and ongoing collaborations such as Exinity’s with Binance will influence the Solana-based QNT market.

As the technical framework for the institutional side emerges over the coming months, developers and investors alike are watching how QNT’s growing multi-chain strategy might shape its relevance within the broader industry.

According to an announcement from Bithumb, the South Korean crypto exchange will launch a new Talus (US) South Korean won (KRW) trading market, with support limited to the Sui network; deposits on other networks are not currently supported. The announcement notes that Talus (US) deposits and withdrawals will open within two hours of the announcement’s release, with trading set to commence at 15:00 KST on October 2. The benchmark price is 37.85 KRW, and deposits require 20 confirmations. After the new trading pair goes live, buy orders will be restricted for the first five minutes.

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Key Highlights SOL currently hovers around $121, experiencing a 4% decline over 24 hours following resistance tests at the $120 level. Alpenglow network upgrade has launched on testnet, targeting transaction finality below 100 milliseconds. September marked a nine-month peak for Solana application revenue, reaching $180 million. Spot Solana ETFs in the United States attracted $271 million during September, marking the strongest 10-month performance. Technical analysts anticipate potential consolidation around $110-$112 before continuation toward $150 levels. As of October 2, Solana is changing hands at approximately $121.63, reflecting a nearly 4% decline over the previous 24-hour period. This retraction occurred after SOL tested the $120 threshold, a key resistance point that previously served as a technical milestone. Current trading activity registers $3.7 billion in volume, representing roughly 5.6% of the token’s circulating supply valuation.

Solana (SOL) Price The downward movement arrives in the wake of U.S. inflation figures that came in below market expectations. Nevertheless, bearish momentum has persisted throughout the cryptocurrency sector during this period.

Market focus has shifted significantly toward the Alpenglow network enhancement. This technical upgrade is currently operational across Solana’s testing and development environments, allowing engineers to evaluate its practical implementation and performance metrics.

Alpenglow’s Technical Impact on Solana Network The Alpenglow enhancement aims to reduce transaction finality from approximately 12 seconds down to sub-100 millisecond timeframes. Initial testing environment data indicates the upgrade may exceed these performance benchmarks.

Should mainnet deployment prove successful, Solana would establish significant throughput superiority compared to Ethereum and BNB Chain. The network would simultaneously offer lower transaction costs than EVM-compatible chains while preserving a more decentralized validator distribution than BNB.

Parallel to technical developments, Solana’s decentralized application ecosystem continues expanding. September’s application revenue totaled $180 million, representing the strongest monthly performance since January and securing Solana’s 32% market share of cross-chain blockchain revenue.

On a single day—September 11—the platform produced approximately $8 million from decentralized application activity. Throughout that same week, decentralized exchange volume reached $16.59 billion, contributing to Solana’s all-time DEX volume surpassing the $3 trillion milestone.

Institutional Investment Flows and Technical Support Zones Investment vehicle adoption has introduced an additional bullish narrative. Spot Solana exchange-traded funds in the United States accumulated $188.2 million in net purchases during the week concluding September 25, representing the second-largest weekly intake since product launches.

Market analyst Ash Crypto drew attention to this pattern explicitly. “$SOL is up +70% in the last 60 days. And the institutional demand is getting harder to ignore. Spot SOL ETFs bought approximately $271M worth of SOL in September — the largest monthly inflow in 10 months,” the analyst noted, suggesting that price action combined with institutional accumulation may drive SOL’s next upward leg.

One particularly strong session on September 26 delivered $86.6 million in single-day inflows, establishing a record for these investment products. Solana’s decentralized finance infrastructure has expanded in tandem, with total value locked exceeding $6.5 billion.

From a technical perspective, SOL achieved a local peak around $126 before entering a series of descending highs. Data from CoinMarketCap positioned the asset near $116.9 on October 1, following settlement prices of $122 on September 27 and $118 on September 28.

Traders are monitoring whether SOL maintains its present support structure. A retracement toward the $110-$112 zone is viewed as a probable consolidation phase preceding any sustained advance toward the $150 objective, which correlates with expectations surrounding Alpenglow’s mainnet activation.

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The team behind Core Lightning, an open-source node software for the Bitcoin Lightning Network, has urged operators running older versions to upgrade immediately after receiving reports of attackers targeting unpatched nodes.

“Urgent security update: If you’re running version 26.06.7 or earlier, please upgrade to the latest release as soon as possible,” the team said on Friday.

Core Lightning did not specify which vulnerabilities attackers were targeting or the potential impact. Cointelegraph reached out to Core Lightning for comment.

Source: Blockstream

On Sept. 16, Core Lightning said it was investigating reports of a potential issue affecting experimental features in Core Lightning that could impact user funds. It then released version 26.06.8 around six days later.

The Sept. 22 update delivered bug fixes alongside patches for “vulnerabilities responsibly reported by a number of sources.” The release notes credit the Bitcoin Red Team and 12 other named individuals and groups, along with anonymous reporters.

Some of the fixes addressed flaws that could crash senders’ nodes, requests that could exhaust memory in its REST interface and a channel-closing bug that could cause users to lose funds to a penalty, according to the changelog.

However, the release deliberately withheld some tests to make it harder for attackers to reverse-engineer and exploit vulnerabilities while operators upgraded.

In August, Core Lightning said it was working on a coordinated fix after assessing a high volume of AI-generated Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) reports over recent weeks.

Two days later, it released 26.06.7 to address the confirmed vulnerabilities.

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