Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

PANews reported on January 26th that, according to SoSoValue data, the cryptocurrency market generally declined, with the GameFi sector leading the decline at 4.90% in the past 24 hours. Within the GameFi sector, The Sandbox (SAND) fell 8.85%, and Axie Infinity (AXS) fell 18.23%, but Beam (BEAM) bucked the trend, rising 19.02%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) fell 1.84%, dropping below $88,000; Ethereum (ETH) fell 2.34%, dropping below $2,900.

In other sectors, the CeFi sector fell 1.55% in the last 24 hours, with Aster (ASTER) down 6.86%; the PayFi sector fell 2.03%, with Monero (XMR) down 10.25%; the Meme sector fell 2.10%, with PIPPIN (PIPPIN) down 18.01%; the Layer 1 sector fell 2.25%, with TRON (TRX) relatively resilient, rising 0.34%; the DeFi sector fell 3.10%, with River (RIVER) surging 30.71% intraday; and the Layer 2 sector fell 4.63%, but Movement (MOVE) rose 2.38%.

AI Agents are evolving from passive assistants into active economic participants. This report is structured into six chapters, systematically examining the core infrastructure stack, the explosion of application ecosystems, and the evolving industry landscape of the Agent economy.

At the macro level, it analyzes the market outlook for Agentic Commerce and identifies key infrastructure gaps. At the protocol layer, it provides an in-depth analysis of three complementary protocols: x402, ERC-8004, and Virtuals Protocol. At the application layer, it uses OpenClaw as a case study to explore the real-world deployment path of the Agent economy. Finally, it offers a comprehensive industry assessment across multiple dimensions, including competitive landscape, payment rails, security risks, and business models.

x402 (Payment Layer), jointly launched by Coinbase and Cloudflare, embeds stablecoin micropayments directly into the HTTP protocol layer. As of the end of 2025, it has processed over 100 million transactions, with an annualized payment volume reaching $600 million.

ERC-8004 (Trust Layer), proposed by the Ethereum Foundation’s dAI team in collaboration with MetaMask, Google, and Coinbase, provides AI Agents with three core on-chain registries: identity, reputation, and verification. It went live on the Ethereum mainnet on January 29, 2026.

Virtuals Protocol (Commerce Layer) has built a full-stack Agent commercialization platform, enabling autonomous transactions between Agents via ACP. It has deployed over 18,000 Agents, with aGDP exceeding $479 million.

OpenClaw (Application Layer), developed by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, surpassed React with over 250,000 GitHub stars in just four months, becoming the fastest-growing open-source project in GitHub history. By natively embedding AI into more than 20 existing messaging platforms, it has catalyzed the crypto community to organically build on-chain economic infrastructure on top of it—making it a key case study for observing real interactions between Agents and on-chain protocols.

Chapter 1: Macro Background 1.1 Market Size Forecast The Agentic Payment sector is in a phase of rapid expansion, with multiple institutions offering optimistic projections for its market size:

1.2  Infrastructure Gaps Existing infrastructure is fundamentally hostile to the Agent economy: OAuth requires human interaction, credit card forms rely on manual input, and data silos prevent autonomous access. While Agents have already achieved autonomy at the “capability layer” (thinking and acting independently), they remain constrained at the “economic layer,” locked into infrastructure designed for humans (identity, coordination, and economic activity).

Two evolutionary paths are currently emerging:

Centralized, compliance-driven path: Communication via A2A, tool integration via MCP, and payments via AP2/ACP (led by OpenAI and Stripe, purely Web2) Decentralized, permissionless path: x402 + ERC-8004 / 8183 + ACP (Agent coordination framework) 1.3 Key Timeline Note: As of March 2026, the average daily transaction volume has significantly declined from its December peak, with infrastructure-related transactions experiencing the largest drop (>80%).

Chapter 2: x402 Protocol – Agent Payment Layer x402 is an open-source payment protocol that revives the HTTP 402 status code, allowing any HTTP request to natively carry stablecoin payments. This enables AI Agents to perform instant pay-per-use transactions.

It is important not to think of x402 as just another payment protocol. It represents a redesign of the fundamental unit of economic activity: moving from “register → review → authorize → use” to “pay → use.” In essence, x402 = “Swift for agents.”

The current API economy operates under an implicit assumption: a human is involved in the middle. The process to obtain an API key—register → enter email → approval → copy key → paste into code—assumes human participation at every step. This workflow fails in an Agent economy because AI Agents cannot register themselves, fill forms, or manage keys.

x402 addresses this by leveraging the HTTP 402 status code to enable native stablecoin payments. When an Agent receives a 402 response, it directly pays on-chain (e.g., in USDC) and receives a proof-of-payment, enabling seamless pay-per-use interactions.

2.1 Protocol Overview and Workflow Core Roles Five-Step Transaction Workflow Request Resource: The client sends a standard HTTP request to the resource server (e.g., GET /api/weather). Return Quote: The server responds with an HTTP 402 status code, including structured payment instructions in the response headers (currency, amount, wallet address, network). Sign Payment: The client constructs and signs a payment authorization using its wallet private key, placing the signed payload in the X-PAYMENT request header and resending the request. Verify & Settle: The server forwards the payment information to a Facilitator for verification. Once confirmed, the Facilitator executes the stablecoin transfer on-chain. Deliver Resource: Upon confirmation, the server returns the requested data/content/computation result to the client. The entire process—from initiating the request to receiving the resource—takes approximately 2 seconds.

Comparison with Traditional Payment Methods Key Features: No account registration, no API key, no subscription, and no human intervention required. Payments are as natural as sending an HTTP request—this is why x402 is called the “Internet-native payment layer.”

2.2  Key Metrics Data Quality Note: According to Artemis analysis, the ratio of Real to Gamed transactions in x402 is close to 1:1 (e.g., on 2026.01.11, Real: 520K vs. Gamed: 518K). The true organic scale should be interpreted with a discount.

Distribution by Blockchain Classification by Use Case (On-Chain Snapshot as of 2026.01.11) 2.3 Top Project Usage Rankings (as of March 2026) Data Source: Dune Analytics – x402 Transactions per Project dashboard

2.4 Core Upgrades in V2 Wallet Identity + Reusable Sessions
In V1, every API call required a full on-chain transaction. V2 introduces the Sign-In-With-X (SIWx) mechanism: once an Agent verifies its wallet identity, subsequent calls can reuse the session without on-chain confirmation each time. Essentially, this upgrades pay-per-call to a subscription model, addressing performance bottlenecks in high-frequency scenarios.

Multi-Chain Unification + Traditional Payment Compatibility
V2 standardizes the identification of networks and assets, creating a unified payment format (x402) that works across chains and traditional payment rails. Base, Solana, other L2s, as well as ACH, SEPA, and card networks, are all integrated into the same payment model. This is the most critical upgrade—x402 evolves from a “crypto-only payment protocol” into a neutral payment layer bridging crypto and traditional finance.

Service Auto-Discovery
V2 introduces a Discovery extension, allowing x402 services to expose structured metadata for automatic crawling and indexing by Facilitators. AI Agents can automatically discover services, understand pricing, and initiate payments. This is especially crucial for the Agent economy—Agents no longer need prior knowledge of a service provider’s payment interface and can autonomously discover and pay for services at runtime.

Modular SDK
With a plugin-based architecture, new chains are added as independent packages, reducing integration costs. Cloudflare has proposed a deferred payment scheme, including Circle’s Gateway solution, which is still under development.

2.5 Ecosystem Participants Foundation and Protocol Layer

2.6 Agent Payment Stack Landscape Detailed Protocol Comparison

Key Insight: It’s not about who replaces whom, but how they are combined. Google has partnered with Coinbase to release the A2A x402 extension, while AP2 natively integrates x402 as a crypto payment rail. The real competitive risk lies in standards fragmentation.

2.7  Key Risk Signals Average daily transaction volume dropped from approximately 731K in Dec 2025 to around 57K in Mar 2026 (-92%). The real transaction volume is roughly $14K/day (per Artemis, during the December peak of $250K/day, 95% was Gamed). Ecosystem market capitalization stands at $7 billion (LINK $6B + Virtuals $0.6B), showing a significant divergence between valuation and actual usage. Infrastructure-related projects experienced the largest declines in usage: x402secure.com (-80%+), AgentLISA (nearly zero), pay.codenut.ai (significantly contracted). Three-Layer Cause Analysis Layer 1: Disappearance of Catalysts
The transaction surge from October to December 2025 was driven by three factors: the meme token craze, multiple project TGEs (Token Generation Events) expectations, and Facilitators competing to boost their Dune rankings.

Layer 2: Fundamental Supply-Demand Mismatch
x402 solves the problem of “AI Agents autonomously paying to call APIs,” yet the vast majority of AI Agents still access services via API keys and subscription models. Truly autonomous Agents with economic decision-making capabilities are nearly nonexistent in the industry, and very few API providers are willing to accept USDC pay-per-use. In short, the road is built, but the cars haven’t been made yet.

Layer 3: Overall Cooling of the Crypto Market

Positive Signal: Stripe’s integration with x402 is a significant development. Stripe co-founder John Collison predicts that the “tsunami of agentic commerce” will arrive in the coming months and years. By simultaneously deploying ACP (Web2 credit card rail) and x402 (Web3 stablecoin rail), Stripe acts as a hedge across both pathways.

x402 has given rise to a batch of new middleware projects that essentially help Agents more easily and autonomously access various services—from AI inference to Web2 APIs—under the “pay-as-authorization” paradigm. A programmable, permissionless, 24/7 crypto payment rail is the natural choice for autonomous Agents. However, this only matters if Agents truly require permissionless operation. If Agents always operate under human authorization (Phase 2: controlled agents), traditional payment rails combined with virtual cards are sufficient. Only when Agents begin conducting economic activity independently of humans (Phase 3: autonomous economy) does permissionless capability become a necessity.

Additionally, credit cards have a chargeback mechanism, allowing consumers to dispute transactions and recover funds—a consumer protection system developed over decades. On-chain payments, however, are final settlement: once paid, the funds are gone with no chargeback. This means that if an Agent misbehaves (e.g., via prompt injection attacks), users can call the bank to recover funds under a credit card system, but with x402, the money is already on-chain and irretrievable. This represents x402’s real disadvantage compared to traditional payments.

Many frictions caused by humans acting as “human middleware” moving between systems are actually trust-establishing mechanisms: fraud prevention, access control, accountability, dispute resolution, and audit documentation. These frictions sustain the operation of commercial systems.

Potential solutions may include:

On-chain escrow mechanisms: funds are locked in smart contracts and only released after service delivery confirmation. Insurance protocols: providing coverage for Agent transactions. ERC-8004 reputation systems: reducing the likelihood of transactions with untrusted parties. However, all of these approaches are currently immature.

2.8 VC Investment Perspective Promising Investment Directions

API Service Providers with Real Payment Demand (Sellers): Data analytics, web scraping, oracles, security audits, pay-per-inference, compliance/KYC, etc. Evaluation criterion: They can already make money under traditional models; x402 serves only as an additional distribution channel. Dispute Resolution and Payment Guarantee Layers (Gateways): On-chain payments cannot be rolled back or chargebacked, so high-value transactions require dispute resolution mechanisms. Representative projects: Circle Gateway – non-custodial pre-deposit + off-chain batch settlement Kamiyo – Agent reputation, fund custody, oracle-based judgment, ZKP arbitration Dashboard / FinOps Tools: Help enterprises manage multiple Agent expenditures (how much is spent, on what, value assessment, cost-saving strategies). Analogous to cloud computing tools like CloudHealth / Cloudability, with acquisition potential in the $300–500 million range by large tech companies. Chapter 3: ERC-8004 – Agent Trust Layer ERC-8004 is a set of on-chain coordination standards that establish a trustless discovery and interaction framework among Agents via three registries: Identity, Reputation, and Validation.

3.1 Standard Overview and Core Distinctions In traditional interactions, Agent-to-Agent engagement often requires pre-established trust or relies on third-party institutions, restricting interactions within the same ecosystem. In an open environment, the key challenge is: how can Agents discover partners, review historical performance, and verify reliability?

Important Distinction: ERC-8004 is not a token. While it uses ERC-721 NFTs internally to represent Agent identities, the standard itself is about coordination and trust, carries no economic value, and is non-transferable.

3.2 Three Registries Identity Registry
Built on ERC-721 + URIStorage, each Agent receives an NFT identity linked to an agentURI pointing to a registration file (JSON) containing name, description, service endpoints (A2A/MCP/Web), x402 support status, etc. The URL can be stored on:

IPFS – decentralized and censorship-resistant HTTPS server – simple but centralized On-chain encoding – fully decentralized but expensive Reputation Registry
Provides standard interfaces to publish and retrieve feedback signals, supporting both on-chain scoring and off-chain algorithms. It can attach x402 proofOfPayment as an economic endorsement trust signal. Agents rate each other, but to prevent score manipulation, ERC-8183 assists in proving real job interactions between Agents.

Validation Registry
Introduces TEE (Trusted Execution Environment), PoS staking mechanisms, and ZK (Zero-Knowledge Proofs) to verify and authenticate Agent task outputs:

TEE: Verifies that tasks are executed in a secure black-box environment, with code and data unobserved or tampered with externally. PoS: Validators stake assets to participate in tasks; malicious behavior results in slashed stakes. ZK: Verifies the correctness of an Agent’s reasoning process without revealing internal weights. 3.3 Development Milestones Supporters: ENS, EigenLayer, The Graph, Taiko. Approximately 1,000–2,000 developers have joined.

However, the current limitations of ERC-8004 are acknowledged even by its creator, Crapis: “8004 is essentially a set of registries.” It provides Agents with an identity and a rating mechanism, but it cannot guarantee that an Agent’s behavior is trustworthy. True verification requires:

Behavior audit: What has the Agent actually done in the past? Execution environment proof: Evidence that tasks ran in a TEE. Intent verification: Did the Agent actually do what it claimed it would do? The TEE component of the Validation Registry is still under community discussion and far from mature.

In other words, 8004 is necessary but not sufficient. It solves the question “Who is this Agent?” but not “Can this Agent be trusted?” The latter requires a combination of 8004 + TEE + behavior audit, which no one has fully implemented yet.

There is also an underestimated direction: in the human economy, credit systems are built on balance sheets and credit history—how much you have, how reliably you’ve repaid loans. Agents lack these, but they do have behavioral data: how many tasks they’ve completed, success rates, average response times, complaints received, etc. If this behavioral data can become a financial primitive, then the ERC-8004 reputation system is no longer just positive or negative reviews, but a credit score in the Agent world.

A high-reputation Agent could gain:

Higher credit limits (pre-authorization of more funds) Lower transaction costs (lower risk) Priority task allocation (employers choose high-reputation Agents first) ERC-8004’s Identity and Reputation registries are only the foundational data layer. Value creation lies in who can build Agent credit assessment and financial services on top of this data layer—Agent lending, Agent insurance, Agent credit lines—essentially forming the entire financial services stack.

3.4 Relationship with Other Protocols 3.5 ERC-8183: Ethereum Standardization of ACP ERC-8183 is the Ethereum open-standard version of the internal ACP protocol used by Virtuals (released on March 10, 2026, currently in Draft stage).

The core primitive is the Job—an on-chain state machine (Open → Funded → Submitted → Completed/Rejected/Expired) where funds are held in a programmable escrow and independently adjudicated by an Evaluator. Once delivery quality is confirmed, the payment is automatically settled. The protocol supports Hooks extensions for features like reputation thresholds, bidding, milestone payments, etc.

Key Design: Each completed Job automatically generates an interaction record that feeds into ERC-8004’s Reputation Registry—analogous to a “Yelp review that requires a completed transaction and includes a third-party adjudicator.” This is the connection point where ERC-8183 and ERC-8004 form a symbiotic loop.

Chapter 4: Virtuals Protocol – Agent Commerce Layer 4.1 Project Overview Virtuals Protocol is a decentralized, full-stack AI Agent infrastructure that allows anyone to create, tokenize, co-own, and monetize autonomous AI Agents on-chain. The project was originally founded in 2021 as PathDAO (a gaming guild) and pivoted to AI Agents in early 2024. Its main deployment is on Base, with expansions to Ethereum, Solana, and Ronin.

Core Team:

Jansen Teng – Founder, former BCG consultant, BSc in Biotechnology & Business Management from Imperial College London Weekee Tiew – Imperial College Biotechnology BSc + MSc in Management from London Business School, PE/BCG background Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the team comprises approximately 38 members.

Funding History: During the PathDAO phase, a seed round raised $16M, led by DeFiance Capital and Beam.

4.2 Technical Architecture: Four Pillars Pillar 1: GAME Framework – Internal Decision-Making of a Single Agent GAME acts as the brain: it equips an Agent with goals, personality, perception abilities, and executable actions, allowing it to autonomously plan “what should I do next” and decompose tasks for internal Workers to execute. All of this happens within the boundary of a single Agent.

Architecture Core: Hierarchical Planning separates “what to think” from “how to act”:

Task Generator (High-Level Planner / HLP): Generates tasks based on the Agent’s goals and assigns Workers Workers (Low-Level Planners / LLP): Each has a specific set of executable Functions Functions: Execute API calls, on-chain transactions, data retrieval, etc. Supported Base Models: Llama 3.1 405B (default), Llama 3.3 70B, DeepSeek R1, DeepSeek V3 — designed to be model-agnostic. With the release of OpenAI/Google Agent frameworks, GAME’s differentiation is now minimal: it is the only Agent framework with native integration of the on-chain economic layer (ACP + VIRTUAL token).

Pillar 2: ACP – the “Commercial Law” Between Agents Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an on-chain standardized protocol that enables Agents to discover, hire, negotiate, escrow funds, deliver, and settle with each other without human intervention.

ACP Four-Stage State Machine:

Pillar 3: Butler – The User’s Super Gateway Butler is the consumer-facing gateway of the ACP network—essentially an Agent that orchestrates the ACP protocol, built on top of an LLM. It translates user natural language into on-chain multi-Agent collaborative workflows.

Butler has a two-layer architecture:

Surface Layer: LLM conversational interface (currently backed by Gemini 3 Pro) Underlying Layer: ACP protocol orchestrator, executing the full process: Agent discovery → quote confirmation → Escrow lock → task routing → delivery verification → fund release. Users see a chat interface, but Butler handles contract-level scheduling behind the scenes. Butler Pro Mode clearly separates planning from execution:

Planning Phase → Review Phase (users can optimize the plan) → Execution Phase (autonomously orchestrates the full workflow) Built-in capabilities include Token Swap, DCA investments, perpetual contracts, and Fund of Funds.

Pillar 4: Launch Platform – Wall Street for Agents A three-tier launch system covers the full lifecycle of Agent projects, from 0 → 1 → 100:

Titan Launch Projects:

XMAQUINA ($DEUS): A DAO holding equity in embodied intelligence companies such as Figure AI, with a $60M FDV Fabric Foundation ($ROBO): Partnering with OpenMind on the robotics economy 4.3 Agentic GDP（aGDP）Analysis aGDP (Agentic Gross Domestic Product) is a custom core ecosystem metric defined by Virtuals, measuring the total economic value generated within the ecosystem by all autonomous Agents through services, coordination, and on-chain activities.

aGDP Growth Trajectory

aGDP Quality Issues – Three Warning Signals:

Revenue Volatility Exposes Speculative Dependence:
Daily protocol revenue dropped from $1.02M in Jan 2025 to $35K by the end of Feb (-97%). Revenue mainly comes from Agent Token transaction fees (1%), rather than sustained payments for Agent services. Severe Concentration at the Top: Ethy AI: a single Agent contributed $218M aGDP (45.5% of the entire ecosystem) Top three Agents combined: $407M (84.9%)
All three are transaction-execution Agents; their aGDP largely reflects handled transaction volume rather than actual Agent service revenue. Luna, as a flagship IP Agent, has a take rate near 100% Ethy AI has a take rate of only 0.26% $3B Target Assumptions:
Scaling from $470M to $3B requires a 6.4× growth. If speculative elements dominate aGDP, this target effectively bets on Agent Token market hype rather than organic growth of the Agent economy. 4.4 Token Economics $VIRTUAL’s Fourfold Value Capture Mechanism

ACP Tax Structure:
When a user pays 100%, 90% goes to the Agent’s wallet (can be withdrawn or used to hire other Agents, compounding on-chain aGDP), and 10% goes to the Treasury (of which 1% flows into the G.A.M.E Treasury). Treasury revenue is continuously used to buy back Agent Tokens, aligning long-term incentives.

Supply Structure:

Total supply: 1 billion VIRTUAL, fixed, with no initial inflation Current status: fully unlocked and circulating Potential issuance: up to 10% per year over the next 3 years, subject to governance approval veVIRTUAL: Staking grants governance voting rights + eligibility for Agent Token airdrops 4.5 Ecosystem Data Overview Benchmark Agent Cases

4.6 Competitive Landscape and Moat Moat Hierarchy (from Strongest to Weakest):

Network Effects + Token Flywheel (Strongest):
Over 18,000 Agents and 650,000+ holders form a two-sided market. Each Agent is paired with VIRTUAL, creating a positive feedback loop. This cannot be replicated by open-source frameworks—LangChain lacks a native economic settlement layer between Agents. Standard-Setting Power (Strong):
The combination of ACP → ERC-8183 (co-released with Ethereum Foundation) + ERC-8004 + x402 competes to establish the “legal foundation” for the AI Agent economy. First-Mover Advantage + Brand (Moderate):
Leading mindshare in AI Agent + crypto space, backed by institutions like Grayscale and Fundstrat. Technical Capability (Weakest):
GAME’s hierarchical architecture offers design advantages, but it relies on third-party LLMs, lacks proprietary models, and its orchestration layer can be replaced by stronger frameworks.

Chapter 5: OpenClaw – Application Ecosystem Special Study 5.1 Project Background and Breakout In November 2025, Austrian developer Peter Steinberger published a weekend project on GitHub. By March 2026, just four months later, the project had surpassed React to become the most starred software project in GitHub history—with 250K+ stars, while React took 13 years to reach the same number.

Amid the broader trend of AI products evolving from passive tools to proactive Agents, OpenClaw introduced a key shift: AI no longer waits for users to find it, but actively helps users on platforms they already use. It resides on the user’s computer and connects to WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Signal, iMessage, Feishu, and over 20 other channels. Through the MCP protocol, it can operate email, calendar, browser, file system, and code editors.

Andrej Karpathy coined the term “Claws” for such systems: locally hosted AI Agents that run in the background, making autonomous decisions and executing tasks. The term quickly became the general way in Silicon Valley to refer to locally hosted AI Agents.

Every mainstream model release now highlights Agent capabilities because Agents act as a demand multiplier validating AI infrastructure investment: a simple chat query consumes hundreds of tokens, whereas an Agent performing multi-step reasoning with tool calls consumes tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of tokens.

Although the founder banned cryptocurrency discussions on Discord, the Crypto community spontaneously built a full set of on-chain economic infrastructure on top of OpenClaw, including token launches, identity registration, payment protocols, social networks, and reputation systems.

The breakout of OpenClaw provides, for the first time, a real, large-scale environment to observe how Agents interact with on-chain infrastructure, while also giving the Crypto community a host with an actual user base on which to anchor economic activity.

5.2 Technical Architecture Analysis Layer 1: Messaging Channels – Identity Problem OpenClaw connects to 20+ platforms. From the Agent’s internal perspective, it knows it is the same Agent, with unified memory, configuration, and SOUL.md. However, from an external perspective, how can others tell that the Agent on Telegram is the same as the one on Discord? Each platform has its own user ID system, and these systems are isolated with no visibility into cross-platform behavior. This is precisely the core problem that ERC-8004 aims to solve.

Layer 2: Gateway – Security Problem The Gateway acts as OpenClaw’s brain and scheduler: it routes user messages to the correct Agent, loads the Agent’s session history and available Skills, and defines permission boundaries before the Agent begins thinking.

Whitelist mechanism: When a message arrives at the Gateway, the system dynamically generates a tool whitelist based on the message’s channel, user ID, group ID, etc. Only tools on the whitelist are injected into the Agent’s context. The Agent cannot see or access tools outside the whitelist. This design pre-emptively enhances security, but all permission control depends on the Gateway as a single point of trust. If compromised or misconfigured, the Agent could gain unauthorized privileges.

Layer 3: Agent Core (ReAct Loop) – Predictability Problem The Agent’s operation follows the ReAct (Reasoning + Acting) loop:
Receive input → Think (LLM call) → Decide action → Call tool → Get results → Re-think → Loop

OpenClaw implements engineering optimizations such as:

High-frequency message scheduling with Steer/Collect/Followup/Interrupt strategies LLM dual-layer fault tolerance (authentication rotation + model fallback) Optional multi-level reasoning mechanism (6 levels) However, LLMs are inherently probabilistic, and outputs are non-deterministic. Agents execute actions non-deterministically in non-deterministic environments.

Context compression leads to constraint loss: Security constraints are part of the context. When context is lossy-compressed, constraints can be discarded. Prompt injection: Malicious actors embed hidden instructions into content that the Agent processes, tricking it into executing unintended commands. Both issues arise because Agent behavior boundaries are defined in natural language, which is ambiguous, manipulable, and lossy when compressed.

Example: Meta’s Superintelligence Lab alignment lead Summer Yu instructed an Agent to “suggest emails that can be deleted,” but the Agent ended up deleting hundreds of emails. Compression of the context window caused the key constraint (“suggest”) to be lost.

In such cases, what is needed is not better prompt engineering, but structural safety mechanisms:

Auditable action logs Programmable permission boundaries Economic systems that allow accountability and compensation when errors occur These are precisely the areas where smart contracts and on-chain infrastructure excel.

Layer 4: Memory System – Persistence and Portability Issues OpenClaw implements two types of memory:

Daily working memory (YYYY-MM-DD.md files) Long-term distilled memory (MEMORY.md, key preferences deduplicated and categorized) Retrieval uses a hybrid of vector search and BM25.

Session Reset: By default, sessions reset daily at 4:00 AM. Context Compression: The context window is continually compressed and summarized. When approaching the token limit, OpenClaw triggers session compression, using the LLM to summarize previous conversations into a shorter version. Memory Flush: Before compression, a Memory Flush occurs, giving the Agent a chance to write key information into long-term memory. This relies on the Agent to know what information is important, which is inherently uncertain in a non-deterministic system. Key limitations:

All memory exists on the local file system; changing computers causes memory loss. There is no shared memory mechanism when collaborating with other Agents. The Agent’s knowledge and experience are locked to the machine it runs on. Sub-Agent collaboration is limited to the same OpenClaw instance. Cross-instance or cross-organization collaboration is currently impossible. Developer feedback on GitHub: Decision records exist in chat history but aren’t persisted as artifacts, handovers are ambiguous, and knowledge transfer is incomplete.

5.3 Structural Problems in the Agent Economy Context Doesn’t Flow: The Root of All Problems

The technical analysis points to one fundamental issue: Context in today’s AI systems doesn’t move. 

Each one optimizes the agent experience within its own walled garden. 

Context immobility shows up five ways:

Spatial Lock-in: An agent’s memory and knowledge are locked to the machine it runs on. Switch devices and it’s gone.

Trust Isolation: Agent A claims “the user preferred X last week.” Agent B has no way to verify it. No shared source of truth.

No Discovery Mechanism: Want an agent skilled in DeFi? There’s no standard way to find one.

Unpriced Value: Agents learn domain expertise and user preferences—both genuinely valuable. But there’s no way to price either or trade them. Temporary by Default: Context gets compressed, summarized, or discarded when sessions reset. Nothing’s designed to persist. For context to actually flow, it needs all five simultaneously:

— Cross trust boundaries

— Economic value

— Discoverable without intermediaries

— Traceable decision history

— Responsive to user needs

No protocol delivers all five. MCP solves how models call tools. A2A solves how agents talk to each other. x402 solves how agents pay. What’s missing is how agents autonomously discover, evaluate, and use context data across untrusted environments. 

That answer doesn’t exist yet.

Coordination Paradox

An Agent only needs enough context to reason, but cross-organization coordination requires all historical context.

For example, when an Agent considers “Should I book this flight?” the current session’s compressed information is sufficient. But if it needs to coordinate with a supply chain Agent, finance Agent, and calendar Agent (possibly on different platforms and run by different organizations), questions arise: Which context is shared? How is it verified? Who owns it? Gartner predicts that by 2027, over 40% of Agentic AI projects will be canceled due to rising costs, unclear business value, or insufficient risk control. Yet 70% of developers report that the core problem is integration with existing systems. The root cause: Agents are non-deterministic executors, while enterprises require deterministic outcomes. A non-deterministic executor in an uncertain environment collaborating with uncertain partners cannot produce reliable outputs without a verifiable trust layer.

Currently, cross-platform Agent collaboration demand is minimal. Users just want an AI that helps them get work done—they don’t care if it can coordinate with other Agents. The coordination paradox is a real technical issue, but whether it becomes a large-scale business problem depends on whether Agent usage evolves from personal tools to multi-Agent collaboration networks.

Architecture Concept

Lower layer: where Agents perform reasoning. Characteristics: transient, token-bound, fast, focused on current tasks. Examples: OpenClaw, Claude Code, Cursor. Upper layer: where coordination occurs. Characteristics: persistent, verifiable, economically priced. Accumulates cross-organization knowledge, maintains provenance, operates reputation. These two layers have conflicting requirements:

Agents need simplicity; organizations need historical records. Agents need speed; auditing requires permanence. Agents operate probabilistically; enterprises require deterministic results. Most current architectures attempt to merge these layers, which is unlikely to succeed.

Proposed idea: add a modular, permissionless middleware deployable across all Agent systems.

Properties: trusted neutrality, persistence, verifiability. Provides a controlled interface between layers: Downward flow: injects relevant subgraphs from a decentralized knowledge graph before execution. Upward flow: submits operations as verifiable on-chain transactions with provenance and reputation updates after execution. The core assumption is that context flow is valuable:

If most Agent users never need cross-platform collaboration (e.g., a single OpenClaw handles everything), the middle layer has no real demand. If the middleware only provides portable context, it will likely fail.

Success is more likely if it focuses on: Verifiability of economic activity in multi-party, untrusted scenarios Transferable reputation with clear economic incentives IronClaw is an attempt toward such an abstract middle layer—separating execution environment and credential management into a verifiable secure layer—but it remains internal to the Near ecosystem, lacking cross-platform generality.

The Real Crypto Entry Point

Most of the demand in the Agent economy can actually be solved with Web2 solutions. Crypto’s irreplaceable value in the Agent economy only exists in one scenario: when you need cross-organization, cross-platform, permissionless interoperability and the participants do not have pre-established trust.

For example:

Agent A (running on OpenClaw, owned by User Alpha) needs to hire Agent B (running on Claude Code, owned by User Beta) to complete a task. They have no shared platform, no shared account system, and no prior business relationship. In this scenario, on-chain identity (ERC-8004), on-chain payment (x402), and on-chain reputation are more suitable than any centralized solution—because no single centralized platform can cover all Agent frameworks simultaneously.

However, just because an Agent can pay doesn’t mean it should pay. For instance, some F500 companies lost $400 million because Agents repeatedly paid in retry loops. Once Agents can autonomously pay, the most valuable infrastructure is the decision-making framework that tells Agents whether a payment is justified.

Currently, crypto in the Agent economy is “nice to have”, unless cross-platform economic interactions between Agents reach a sufficient scale. When enough Agents are no longer tied to a human bank account (i.e., Agents become independent economic entities rather than human tools), traditional financial rails cannot cover them. At that point, stablecoins become the best (or even the only) solution for large-scale fund transfers.

There are three potential triggers for crypto to become a “must-have”:

Agents begin large-scale hiring of other Agents For example, different vendor Agent systems in an enterprise IT environment need to interoperate—similar to today’s enterprise API integrations but far more complex. Agents begin 24/7 cross-border transactions An Agent-orchestrated workflow might call a US LLM endpoint, a European data provider, and a Southeast Asian compute cluster simultaneously. It shouldn’t require three separate payment rails. Stablecoins are global and always-on, which is a bigger advantage for Agents than humans in always-on, cross-timezone scenarios. Micro-payments reach a frequency beyond the capacity of traditional rails Currently, on-chain microtransactions (API calls, data queries, compute resources) average $0.09 per transaction, while Stripe fees alone are $0.35 + 2.5%, 4× higher than the transaction itself. If an Agent needs to call tens of thousands of APIs, traditional payment processors cannot underwrite this merchant risk, and the fee structure becomes a true bottleneck. Security Threats and the Necessity of On-Chain Infrastructure

The “Siri Paradox” is a key framework for understanding the entire Agent sector: Siri is safe because it’s neutered; OpenClaw is useful because it’s dangerous. For AI to truly take action—handling emails, booking flights, deploying code—it must have broad system permissions. Broad permissions naturally mean a larger attack surface.

A notable positive example on OpenClaw: a user asked an Agent to book a restaurant, but OpenTable had no available slots. The Agent didn’t give up; it found AI voice software, installed it, and called the restaurant to successfully book. This kind of autonomous problem-solving ability is highly desired. But the same autonomy also means that errors propagate at machine speed.

Some have called Steinberger joining OpenAI the “iPhone moment for AI Agents”. But before that, there must be a phase with security infrastructure in place. Otherwise, large-scale adoption equals large-scale losses. Chopping Block predicts “AI-generated $100M+ hacks”—if that happens, there are two paths:

Public panic causes a regression in Agent adoption (similar to Ethereum’s downturn after the 2016 DAO hack). It catalyzes a real Agent security infrastructure (similar to the boom of smart contract auditing post-DAO). We lean toward the latter, because the demand for Agents is real:

Malicious Agent detection → ERC-8004 Reputation System If each Agent has an on-chain identity and public reputation record, malicious behavior leaves an immutable record. Other Agents can check on-chain reputation before trusting. The reputation system must be mature—multi-dimensional, time-weighted, with anti-manipulation mechanisms, not just simple ratings. Malicious Skills auditing → Validation Registry If Skills’ code audits are recorded in the ERC-8004 Validation Registry, verified by independent evaluators (staked services, zkML verifiers, TEE oracles), typosquatting risks are greatly reduced. Checking the on-chain validation status before installing a Skill suffices. Credential leakage → x402 “pay-per-access” x402 eliminates API key management problems. Agents don’t need to store long-term credentials—they pay on demand for temporary access. Coupled with EIP-712 signature binding (binding service usage rights to the payment address), even if a token leaks, it cannot be used by others. Behavioral runaway → On-chain audit logs + programmable permissions Whether it’s prompt injection by an attacker or context loss during compression, the result is the Agent performing unexpected operations. Smart contracts can define Agent behavior boundaries—e.g., “single transaction ≤ X amount,” or “deletion requires multisig approval.” On-chain logs are immutable and auditable. This is far more reliable than embedding “ask for approval first” in a prompt, because prompt-level constraints can be lost during compression, whereas contract-level constraints persist. Of course, on-chain infrastructure can only mitigate consequences, not prevent attacks. Smart contracts can limit “single transaction ≤ X amount,” but what if an injected Agent continues malicious actions within the limit? For example, 10,000 malicious $0.09 transactions still total $900.

True security requires a dual approach:

Agent runtime layer (TEE/sandbox) On-chain layer (permissions/audit) Relying on the on-chain layer alone is insufficient.

Chapter 6: Industry Comprehensive Analysis

Traditional technical moats—engineering capability, team size, execution efficiency—are being commoditized by AI tools. Anyone with an idea can quickly build a product prototype using OpenClaw or Claude Code. This implies:

Small teams’ window of opportunity is shorter than ever (and large teams can catch up even faster using the same tools). First-mover advantage at the idea level is more valuable than before, because your Agent can iterate faster than any competitor. The scarcest resource is judgment about the right problems to solve, not technical capability. The Real Competition in the Track Isn’t Within Crypto

Many people compare which L1/L2 executes Agents better—Base vs Solana vs Ethereum vs Near. But the true competition is Crypto solutions vs Web2 solutions.

For example, Sapiom raised $15.75M to provide Web2-based Agent service access management. In an extreme scenario, if Sapiom’s solution is good enough—Agents can access all Web2 services through it without touching on-chain payments—then x402 has no reason to exist. If Stripe’s virtual card solution can resolve anti-automation issues through commercial agreements (convincing merchants to remove CAPTCHAs for specific virtual cards), the Phase 2 model could last longer. This is exactly the battlefield Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe are currently fighting over: controlled Agents within the authorized scope. The core is virtual cards + dedicated payment APIs, shifting the trust from “trust an uncertain AI” to “trust a parameterized payment tool controlled by the issuer.” This works best at scale for now, but as B2B agentic scenarios grow to the next level, programmability limits of authorization info and the data constraints of credit cards will become bottlenecks.

For x402 to win, its “pay-as-you-go equals authorization” model must outperform the “middle-layer Agent management” model in cost, latency, and developer experience. Currently, x402 has an edge in micro-payment scenarios (as low as $0.001 per transaction), but in complex enterprise scenarios with sophisticated permission management, Web2 solutions might still be better.

Similarly, for ERC-8004 to win, on-chain identity and reputation must be more useful than centralized identity management (e.g., ClawHub’s own verification mechanism). Adoption of 8004 is still limited; checking on-chain reputation is not as convenient as looking at a platform’s rating. Meta acquiring moltbook also reflects this—acquiring Agent identity verification and directory capabilities to control the Agent identity layer internally.

Crypto solutions cannot rely on being theoretically better. They must match or exceed Web2 solutions in developer and user experience, or they risk becoming another “great decentralization idea that nobody uses because it’s too cumbersome.”

Legacy Payment Giants Define the Adoption Timeline

The market is expected to evolve in three stages. Over the next 3–5 years, Stripe/Visa solutions will dominate the early market—they offer unmatched backward compatibility, allowing Agents to immediately transact with millions of merchants worldwide that already accept credit cards.

Stage 2 emerges as this scales: virtual cards with proprietary payment APIs, giving enterprises limited programmability and basic controls. It works for a time. But beyond five years, structural limits become unbearable: authorization systems that cannot adapt to agent-specific context, insufficient capacity to encode rich agent identity data (reputation, transaction history, credentials), microtransaction fees that kill economics at scale, and cross-border settlement that remains slow. At that point, the market naturally shifts to Crypto infrastructure.

This means Crypto solutions don’t need to beat Stripe today. Instead, they need to perfect the infrastructure over the next 3–5 years, so that when Stage 2 limitations peak, they can take over. Right now, it’s an infrastructure race, not a market-share battle.

Of course, infrastructure must be in place ahead of time, but infrastructure alone does not drive adoption—it requires an application-layer breakout to activate it. TCP/IP was invented in the 1970s, but it wasn’t widely used until the World Wide Web browser appeared in the 1990s.

Currently, we can see infrastructure gradually improving, but nobody is using it at scale yet. For example, x402 in most of 2025 was technically ready but lacked killer use cases. 

We need more applications to emerge and link these infrastructure pieces into a usable stack. The explosive adoption of OpenClaw/Moltbook is the first visible demand engine—suddenly, hundreds of thousands of Agents need payment, identity, and reputation, turning x402 and 8004 from “available” to “actively used.”

Selling Shovels Beats Panning for Gold

The entire Base Lobster ecosystem validates an old investment adage: the most reliable way to profit during a gold rush is to sell shovels.

Felix made $75,000. But Clanker, from 64,000 token deployments, earned far more in fees. ClawRouter sells LLM routing services ($0.003 per request). ClawCloud sells Agent compute power. Venice sells reasoning capacity and financializes compute via the VVV/DIEM model. The business models of these infrastructure providers are far more mature and reliable than Agents making money autonomously.

The infrastructure that all Agent categories need—identity, payments, security, coordination, compute resources—will be required regardless of which Agent framework wins (OpenClaw, IronClaw, or OpenAI’s next-generation products).

The term “Claws” coined by Karpathy captures a trend bigger than OpenClaw itself—localized, persistent, autonomous AI Agents represent an entire category. Crypto infrastructure must serve the whole Claw category. IronClaw (Near’s TEE-secured version), various enterprise-custom Agent frameworks, and OpenAI’s upcoming integrated Agents all belong to this category. OpenClaw is a pioneer, but it will not be the only player.

Product-Agent Fit Will Replace Product-Market Fit

Multiple platforms have begun banning OpenClaw user accounts, because Agents simulate browser operations to bypass anti-scraping mechanisms. The platform operators and Agent users are inherently at odds. Platforms monetize human attention, but Agent users consume data without generating advertising value.

Traditional marketing relies on the attention economy—beautiful images, video ads, limited-time buttons—targeting human impulse. Agents, however, are perfectly rational decision-makers, caring only about whether API returns are clear and parameters are complete. They compare product specs, historical prices, delivery times, user reviews, even carbon footprint. There is no mindshare to capture.

Future moats won’t be built on brand (Agents don’t care about brands), nor on UX (Agents don’t use interfaces), but on data structuring, API stability, MCP compatibility, and on-chain verifiable service quality records.

Internet business models may shift toward pay-per-scrape: Agents as service consumers no longer rely on ad-supported free models but pay directly for data retrieval. Each data query, API call, or service usage requires a small payment and ensures compliant access for the Agent. This is exactly the problem x402 solves—directly paying for data access while supporting microtransactions. Early forms are already emerging: Lord of a Few launched over 80 x402 paid endpoints in one week, each costing $0.50 to build and charging a few cents to tens of cents per call.

Moreover, when both buyers and sellers are Agents, how is the profit pool redistributed?

Conclusion We are in a rare window of opportunity: the infrastructure is in place, but killer applications have yet to emerge. History has repeatedly shown that true transformation does not announce itself in advance—it only strikes unexpectedly, at a moment when everyone suddenly realizes that the old world is over.

References

[1] McKinsey & Company, “The Agentic Commerce Opportunity,” 2025.

[2] Morgan Stanley Research, “AI Agentic Shoppers: The Next Frontier of E-Commerce,” 2025.

[3] Edgar Dunn & Company, “Agentic Commerce: The Future of AI-Driven Retail,” 2025.

[4] Dune Analytics — x402 Transactions per Project Dashboard

[5] Artemis Analytics

[6] x402 White Pape

[7] EIP-8004

[8] ERC-8183 — ETH Foundation dAI Team, March 2026

[9] Virtuals Protocol Documentation

[10] SecurityScorecard — OpenClaw Exposure Report, 2026.03

[11] The Block, Phemex, Allium Labs — Various x402 Data Reports

[12] MarketsandMarkets, “Agentic AI in Retail and eCommerce Market Report,” 2025.

PANews reported on June 13th that HackQuest announced the winners of the 0G Labs Asia-Pacific Hackathon. This hackathon attracted 1145 participants worldwide, with 293 projects submitted. Winning projects primarily focused on areas such as AI Agent infrastructure, memory layers, and identity and verifiable computing. The top three winners were Ghast AI, NeoSoul, and anima. In addition, awards for excellence and community recognition were presented. The winners of the Excellence Award were: Alsphere, Hash PayLink, Beam, Stealth Pay, Herald Protocol, Aegis Vault, YieldBoost AI Protocol, MemoriaDA, Coal, and Rey.

Privacy in DeFi has always been something of an oxymoron. You can be pseudonymous, sure, but every swap, stake, and transfer is readable on-chain by anyone with a block explorer and five minutes to kill. Starknet is betting that its zero-knowledge architecture can change that equation without triggering compliance nightmares.

The Ethereum Layer 2 network, built by StarkWare, has rolled out the “Shieldnet” branding to describe its growing suite of privacy features. These include shielded balances, private transfers, and the ability to interact anonymously with DeFi applications. All of it runs on Starknet’s ZK-native infrastructure, which means the cryptographic proofs that secure the rollup double as the engine powering user privacy.

From STRK20 to strkBTC: the privacy stack takes shape The foundation was the STRK20 framework, which went live on March 10, 2026. That upgrade introduced the core privacy primitives: shielded token balances and the plumbing needed for confidential transactions.

A follow-up called the Shinobi upgrade landed on April 21, 2026, further refining the architecture. Then came strkBTC on May 12, 2026, the first STRK20-compatible asset. It’s a wrapped Bitcoin token on Starknet that gives holders the option to shield their transactions while still plugging into DeFi protocols like any other token.

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Users can choose whether to keep their BTC holdings visible or shielded. The design also includes viewing keys, which let holders selectively reveal transaction data for audits, tax reporting, or regulatory purposes.

Starknet’s official channels began promoting the Shieldnet branding around May 23, 2026, packaging these features into a coherent narrative for users and institutions alike. There is no separate Shieldnet token. The existing STRK token remains the ecosystem’s native asset.

What users actually get Starknet users can now interact with dApps, including Ekubo swaps and staking protocols, without broadcasting every detail of their financial activity to the world.

This selective disclosure model is what Starknet is positioning as “compliance-ready privacy.” A hedge fund can keep its trading positions private from competitors while still providing auditors with the keys they need.

The numbers behind the narrative As of late May 2026, the network reported total value locked of $655 million and roughly 47,000 daily active users.

The STRK token has seen notable market activity around privacy-related announcements. Each privacy upgrade, from STRK20 to strkBTC to the Shieldnet branding itself, has generated market attention.

What this means for investors The institutional angle is worth watching closely. Traditional finance players have repeatedly cited on-chain transparency as a barrier to DeFi adoption. If Starknet’s privacy tools prove robust and regulators don’t object, the $655 million TVL figure could look like an early inning.

The US Treasury’s actions against Tornado Cash demonstrated that even non-custodial privacy technology can attract enforcement attention. Starknet’s viewing key model is a more measured approach, but it hasn’t been tested against actual regulatory scrutiny.

The absence of a separate Shieldnet token is a positive signal for existing STRK holders. It means the privacy narrative accrues to the existing token rather than fragmenting value across a new asset. For traders tracking the STRK ecosystem, the next catalyst to watch is whether additional assets beyond strkBTC adopt the STRK20 shielding standard, and whether any major DeFi protocol integrates Shieldnet’s privacy features as a default rather than an opt-in.

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

Robinhood launches trading of three new tokens: BAT, FLR, and STRK.

PANews reported on June 4 that Robinhood has added support for trading three new tokens: Basic Attention Token (BAT), Flare (FLR), and Starknet (STRK), covering users in compliant regions including New York State.

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US Three Major Indexes Mixed, HOOD Down Over 6.11%

PANews Newsflash2 hours ago

Quantum Resistance Was Crypto’s Hottest Sector During the May Selloff

PANews reported on June 9th that, according to The Block, Starknet has launched the zero-knowledge privacy framework STRK20, providing balance masking and private transfer capabilities for any ERC20 asset on the network, and has already been implemented on strkBTC. This framework allows developers to introduce privacy features for scenarios such as transfers, exchanges, lending, staking, payments, and donations without needing to build a separate privacy system. STRK20 uses an embedded "masking" mode in the asset path, rather than a traditional mixer structure, and introduces a viewing key mechanism to selectively disclose specific wallet information only upon receiving a legally valid request, thus balancing privacy protection and compliance requirements. Starknet CEO Eli Ben-Sasson believes that such ZK privacy solutions have the potential to make regulatory investigations more precise and reduce the collateral impact on a large number of wallets.

Starknet has launched STRK20, a zero-knowledge privacy framework that gives ERC-20 assets shielded balances and private transfers, according to information shared with The Block. 

Summary

STRK20 gives ERC-20 assets shielded balances and private transfers without requiring separate privacy infrastructure stacks. Viewing keys allow targeted disclosure for valid legal requests while protecting other users’ transaction histories. strkBTC provides the framework’s first live use case, adding optional privacy to Bitcoin activity. Developers can add confidential flows without building a separate privacy system for each token.

The framework supports transfers, swaps, lending, staking, payments and donations through compatible wallets and applications. Viewing keys can also provide limited transaction records when authorities present a valid legal request.

STRK20 brings private balances to Starknet tokens STRK20 lets users move assets between public and shielded states while keeping the same underlying ERC-20 token. A zero-knowledge proof confirms that each private action follows network rules without exposing a balance or full transaction history.

The system uses Starknet’s native proof infrastructure and Cairo-based contracts. Users place assets into a shared privacy pool, transact inside it and withdraw when needed. Starknet says this avoids creating isolated private tokens or splitting liquidity across separate markets.

Meanwhile, each participant registers an encrypted viewing key. An independent auditing party can use it to reconstruct one user’s activity after receiving a valid legal or regulatory request. Other accounts in the pool remain hidden.

“This is practical privacy in the truest sense,” Starknet Foundation growth vice president Damian Chen said. He described the design as a way to preserve public confidentiality while retaining a route for required disclosure.

Starknet said STRK20 differs from a mixer because privacy remains part of the asset’s normal movement. Mixers usually send tokens through a separate service to obscure transaction history. STRK20 instead adds shielding to supported wallet and application flows.

strkBTC becomes the first major STRK20 use case strkBTC became the first asset built on STRK20. The Bitcoin-backed ERC-20 token offers public and shielded modes, allowing users to hide selected balances and transfers before returning assets to a transparent state.

The rollout supports shielding through Ready X and Xverse wallets. Starknet is also expanding private swaps through avnu and Ekubo, while lending through Vesu and staking through Endur form part of the wider plan.

Some parts of these DeFi transactions may remain visible. Starknet notes that amounts routed through public liquidity can appear onchain even when the direct link to a user’s wallet is hidden. Privacy also strengthens as more users enter the shared pool.

Starknet expands a privacy plan announced in March As previously reported by crypto.news, Starknet introduced STRK20 in March for confidential ERC-20 balances and selective disclosure. Its v0.14.2 mainnet upgrade later added native proof verification for encrypted balances and private transactions.

StarkWare chief executive Eli Ben-Sasson said zero-knowledge systems could allow future investigations to request narrower information. The approach has not yet faced broad regulatory testing, and institutions will still need to assess its legal, security and operational controls before adoption.

Starknet launched STRK20 on Tuesday, a note-based privacy framework that lets users shield ERC-20 token balances and conduct private transfers and swaps on the Ethereum layer-2 network, with an encrypted viewing-key path for compliance.

Starknet rolled out STRK20, a note-based privacy layer for ERC-20 tokens, on Tuesday, allowing users to shield balances and conduct private transfers and swaps on the Ethereum layer-2 network.

The launch is the first phase of STRK20, a framework Starknet has been building since its v0.14.2 protocol upgrade in April, which introduced native in-protocol proof verification.

How STRK20 WorksSTRK20 operates as a note-based privacy pool rather than a mixer. When a user shields an ERC-20 token, it is deposited into the pool and represented as an encrypted note. Private transfers spend existing notes and generate new ones. Each transfer is validated by a zero-knowledge proof confirming that the notes spent exist, belong to the spender, have not been double-spent, and that input and output amounts balance.

Starknet verifies the proof on-chain before updating pool state. Public observers can see encrypted notes and required protocol metadata, but cannot see the sender, receiver, amounts, or which balances were used, according to Starknet's announcement.

Compliance Path Built InSTRK20 includes an encrypted viewing-key framework designed to address regulatory requirements. A third-party audit firm holds a viewing key that can be used to trace specific transaction history in response to a valid legal or regulatory request, without exposing uninvolved users.

The design mirrors the compliance disclosures built into protocols such as Aztec and Aleo: private by default, accountable when required.

The Competitive LandscapeStarknet's launch arrives as on-chain transaction privacy is under scrutiny. Zcash's Orchard shielded pool suffered a counterfeiting flaw disclosed last month that caused ZEC to lose more than half its value. A formal Ironwood upgrade to restore supply verification and add formal proof verification is now targeting a late-July mainnet date.

Aztec Network shipped Nyx v2 with private accounts governed by Ethereum keys earlier this year, and Sui launched a confidential-transfers feature in public beta this week. For the first time, three distinct L1/L2 networks are offering transaction-level privacy simultaneously.

STRK20 differs from those approaches in one respect: it targets existing ERC-20 assets rather than requiring users to move to a separate privacy-native asset. Any ERC-20 on Starknet can be shielded through the same pool without fragmenting liquidity.

What Is Not Yet AvailableThe current launch covers wallet-level shielding, private swaps, and private transfers. Broader DeFi integration, including private lending and borrowing, is not yet live. Starknet plans to open-source the wallet API and release an SDK for builders to integrate STRK20 into their own products in the next phase.

Cross-chain capabilities, which would allow users on Ethereum and Solana to access Starknet's privacy pool without bridging manually, are also planned but not yet available. No adoption metrics, wallet counts, or shielded volume figures were disclosed at launch.

The Starknet Foundation is betting that privacy and compliance can coexist on the same blockchain. Its new incubator program, called Proof of Privacy, is now accepting applications from teams building on STRK20, the privacy framework that quietly went live in early June.

Think of it as a startup accelerator, but instead of pitching the next food delivery app, teams are competing to build the most useful privacy tools in decentralized finance. The first cohort will receive eight weeks of mentorship and milestone-based support.

What STRK20 actually does The framework, which launched around June 9-10, introduces zero-knowledge privacy features for ERC-20 tokens. It lets users shield their balances and make private transfers without moving assets to a separate, purpose-built privacy chain.

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The technical architecture relies on client-side zero-knowledge proofs built with StarkWare’s Stwo prover and Cairo programming language. These proofs conceal the sender, receiver, and amount of a transaction from public observers.

STRK20 includes optional viewing keys that allow lawful disclosure. So a user can prove the legitimacy of their transactions to an auditor without exposing those details to everyone else on the network.

“This is practical privacy in the truest sense,” said Damian Chen, VP of Growth at the Starknet Foundation.

The framework is also designed to integrate with existing wallets and DeFi applications. An open-source SDK accompanies the release, enabling developers to build private swaps and other confidential financial primitives on top of the standard.

Why an incubator, and why now The Starknet Foundation is targeting teams that want to apply STRK20’s capabilities to real-world use cases like payroll, lending, and identity verification.

The eight-week program structure suggests the Foundation is looking for teams that already have a working concept rather than purely theoretical proposals. Milestone-based support implies that funding and resources are tied to demonstrable progress, not just promising pitch decks.

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

Starkscan just dropped a revamped block explorer and data API for Starknet, and the most interesting part isn’t the explorer itself. It’s who the platform is building for: not just human developers, but AI agents too.

The new offering bundles REST endpoints, a TypeScript SDK, a command line interface, and machine-readable documentation under a single API key. One key unlocks pretty much every way you’d want to query Starknet data, whether you’re a developer debugging a contract or an AI system autonomously pulling transaction histories.

What Starkscan actually built At its core, Starkscan provides decoded data for blocks, transactions, contracts, and tokens across Starknet’s mainnet. The network’s block height now exceeds 10.8 million.

The free-tier API key grants access to the full stack of tools: REST, SDK, CLI, and hosted MCP interfaces.

The machine-readable documentation is specifically designed for what Starkscan calls “agent-native querying,” building an on-ramp for AI systems to interact with Starknet programmatically.

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Starknet’s broader momentum Starknet, the ZK-rollup Layer 2 network developed by StarkWare, has been on a feature shipping spree.

The network introduced strkBTC on May 12, 2026, a Bitcoin bridging solution that uses zero-knowledge technology to bring shielded Bitcoin assets onto Starknet.

Around June 11, 2026, Starknet rolled out STRK20 privacy updates, extending the network’s confidential transaction capabilities.

A v0.14.3 upgrade is also in the pipeline, targeting performance improvements and user experience refinements across the network.

STRK, Starknet’s native token, functions as both a staking asset and the medium for transaction operations within the ecosystem.

What this means for investors Starknet is simultaneously expanding its asset base with strkBTC, enhancing privacy with STRK20, improving performance with upcoming upgrades, and now getting better developer tooling through Starkscan.

For STRK holders, more developer tools means more developers, more applications, and more transactions consuming STRK as gas.

Investors should track whether Starknet’s recent feature launches, particularly strkBTC and the privacy updates, drive sustained transaction volume growth or merely generate a brief spike of activity.

If Starkscan’s API becomes the default data layer for AI agents interacting with Starknet, it creates a sticky relationship that benefits both the explorer and the broader ecosystem. Watch for developer adoption metrics and API usage data in the coming months to gauge whether Starkscan’s bet on agent-native infrastructure is paying off.

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

Starknet just made private DeFi about as easy as toggling on dark mode. The Ethereum layer 2 network has published a walkthrough for accessing its privacy features through compatible wallets, turning what used to be a multi-step cryptographic headache into something approaching a one-click experience.

The guide centers on Starknet’s STRK20 privacy framework, which went live around June 9. It allows users to shield ERC-20 assets directly from wallets like Xverse and Ready, then interact with DeFi protocols, including swaps, lending, and staking, without broadcasting every detail of their financial life to the entire blockchain.

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How the shielding actually works Starknet’s approach lets users convert standard tokens into shielded versions through their wallet interface. The framework is designed to maintain composability with public liquidity pools, meaning private transactions can tap into existing liquidity rather than being confined to isolated ecosystems where shielded assets could only interact with other shielded assets.

Transactions using the privacy features settle in under five seconds at low costs, according to Starknet. That’s roughly the same speed as a standard Starknet transaction, meaning the privacy layer doesn’t introduce meaningful friction.

strkBTC and the Bitcoin angle Starknet launched strkBTC back in May, a shielded representation of Bitcoin on its network. strkBTC lets Bitcoin holders participate in Starknet’s DeFi ecosystem without their BTC positions being publicly visible. Both Xverse and Ready wallets support one-click shielding and unshielding of strkBTC alongside other assets, making the process uniform regardless of the underlying token.

The compliance question The STRK20 framework includes compliance features built into its architecture: viewing keys are encrypted for an integrity council, creating a mechanism that blends user privacy with regulatory requirements. This design allows transactions to be private by default yet auditable under specific conditions, occupying a middle ground that could work for compliance-conscious players.

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

Zero-knowledge scaling company StarkWare has introduced Private KYC on Starknet, enabling users to complete know-your-customer requirements without revealing their full personal information. 

The system, announced Tuesday as a demo, uses STRK20 privacy features and zero-knowledge STARK proofs to let users prove specific attributes, such as being older than 18 or holding valid credentials, without revealing their full passport details or address.

“Whether you need to prove you’re over 18, hold a valid credential or meet an eligibility rule, verification should only confirm the precise fact,” StarkWare said. Corporations should not collect the full identity behind it, “because every identity database becomes a liability the moment it exists.”

KYC compliance involves handing over personal information and trusting companies to keep it safe. The rollout comes as the US hit a record 3,322 data compromises in 2025, a 79% increase over five years, and the global average cost of a data breach is $4.4 million, according to StationX. 

StarkWare users start by scanning their passport on their phones, using the camera and NFC chip to read and confirm the document is genuine and signed by its issuing authority.

They can then encrypt identity data to their Starknet wallet, register attributes in a public onchain registry, and submit zero-knowledge proofs for selective checks. Verifiers can confirm eligibility by reading the public registry without ever seeing the actual identity data. 

“Private KYC shows that verification and privacy aren’t a trade-off,” StarkWare said. “An institution can confirm exactly what it needs without assembling another copy of someone’s identity it then has to defend.”

Contracts check the proofs, not the passports. Source: StarkWare

“Identity checks today ask for your whole document when they only need one fact,” the Starknet team said. 

The system is similar to Sam Altman’s World ID (Worldcoin), which uses zk-proofs to verify humanness via iris scans on hardware orbs. However, World ID faced backlash over centralized biometric custody, whereas StarkWare’s self-custody model aims to address that issue. 

Data breaches cost millions According to Axis Intelligence, more than 1 billion health care records have been breached, with an average cost of $7.42 million, as of 2026. In the US, 772 large health care data breaches were confirmed in 2025, the highest annual total ever recorded. 

The largest and most damaging data breach in the crypto industry occurred at hardware wallet provider Ledger, which suffered a massive database hack in 2020, resulting in the leak of more than 270,000 customer records and a wave of phishing attacks that continue to this day. 

Magazine: Japanese pension fund tips 1% in crypto, G7 urges action on NK hackers: Asia Express

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.

Rubio: US and Iran to continue technical consultations at the end of this month

Multiple foreign media outlets reported on the 24th that US Secretary of State Rubio said technical teams from the United States and Iran will hold further talks in Switzerland by the end of June. (Xinhua News Agency)

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Over the past 24 hours, total crypto market liquidations hit $606 million, with more than 130,000 traders liquidated.

According to Coinglass data, the global cryptocurrency market recorded $606 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, including $542 million in long-position liquidations and $68.22 million in short-position liquidations. A total of 135,785 traders worldwide were liquidated in the same period, with the largest single liquidation order occurring on Binance’s BTCUSDT trading pair, valued at $12.0111 million.

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Bitcoin falls below $60,000

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5 hours ago

US Treasury Secretary: AI boom may boost productivity and help curb inflation.

US Treasury Secretary Bessent told CNBC in an interview that he hopes the Federal Reserve will remain "open-minded" about the inflation pattern after the reversal of Iran-related energy price hikes. Bessent noted that the U.S. could enter an economic environment marked by high GDP growth without a corresponding rise in traditional inflation. He cited that in the 1990s, Alan Greenspan foresaw that office modernization and the internet could drive non-inflationary growth, and allowed the economy to keep expanding. Bessent believes the U.S. has a strong chance of seeing a similar scenario again. When asked whether the Fed still needs to worry about potential inflation and whether interest rate cuts are possible this year or next, Bessent declined to comment. However, he argued that it is necessary to stay open-minded about the price or inflation impacts from the Iran conflict, and monitor inflation performance after those effects subside. Bessent also said an open mind is needed, as the AI boom could boost productivity and deliver disinflationary effects, helping inflation return to the Fed’s target level. He added that he believes Kevin Warsh will choose the optimal path that meets both the Fed’s inflation and growth mandates. Bessent also noted that Warsh previously took a hawkish stance on inflation.

5 hours ago

US stocks' intraday storage sector sees broad declines, with Western Digital and Seagate Technology both falling over 4%.

According to Bitget data, during U.S. stock trading hours, the storage sector saw broad declines: Western Digital (WDC) fell 4.47%, Seagate Technology (STX) dropped 4.17%, SanDisk (SNDK) declined 2.31%, and Micron Technology (MU) edged down 0.96%. Most optical communication concept stocks rose, with Corning (GLW) leading the gains at 9.75%, followed by Ciena (CIEN) up 3.24%, Coherent (COHR) rising 2.93%, Lumentum (LITE) gaining 2.61%, and Nokia (NOK) advancing 1.82%. Additionally, Marvell Technology (MRVL) fell 2.59% and Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) declined 1.90%.

5 hours ago

During intraday trading in U.S. stocks, crypto-related concept stocks fell broadly, with MSTR dropping more than 7%.

According to Bitget market data, the three major U.S. stock indexes rose broadly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.94%, the S&P 500 increased 0.60%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.63%. Crypto-related stocks fell across the board, with declines as follows: Strategy (MSTR) down 7.33%; Circle (CRCL) down 4.35%; Bitmine (BMNR) down 3.97%; Coinbase (COIN) down 3.73%; Robinhood (HOOD) down 3.70%; Gemini (GEMI) down 3.27%; Bullish (BLSH) down 3.25%; Sharplink (SBET) down 3.19%.

5 hours ago

Wed 29 Apr 2026 ▪ 5 min read ▪ by La Rédaction C.

Summarize this article with:

Canadian DJ BLOND:ISH, a key resident at Pacha Ibiza and a rising figure in Web3 music, has just deployed the portal for her $NRG token on Solana. The concept: transform community energy into tangible access: guestlists, backstage, exclusive music through a deflationary mechanism anchored on the blockchain. The launch follows Paris Blockchain Week 2026, where $NRG powered the official closing party in the Gustave Eiffel Salon on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower in front of 300 founders and investors. A model that goes beyond the simple fan token to lay the foundations of what the team calls an “energy economy.”

In Brief The $NRG portal is live: token holders on Solana gain direct access to guestlists and backstage areas of BLOND:ISH and Abracadabra shows worldwide. Three access tiers (Explorer, Insider, Supreme) determined by the number of tokens held for at least 30 days. Each backstage access requires a burn of $NRG: circulating supply decreases with each use, creating a deflationary mechanism. The Paris Blockchain Week 2026 closing party, held on April 17 at the Gustave Eiffel Salon, showcased the model with support from OKX, PSG Labs, and Matchain. BLOND:ISH has 6.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify and 141 releases on labels such as Kompakt, Defected, and Insomniac Records. How does the $NRG portal work? The portal accessible at https://www.everythingisnrg.xyz/ serves as the entry point to the ecosystem. Its operation is based on a simple principle: holding $NRG for 30 days unlocks access to BLOND:ISH shows and those of her label Abracadabra worldwide. The more tokens held, the greater the privileges. The first tier, Explorer, starts at 13,333 $NRG and offers two guestlist spots per year. The Insider level (100,000 $NRG) adds backstage access and a 20% discount via the burn mechanism. The Supreme tier (333,333 $NRG) increases to eight guestlists and four annual backstage accesses, with a 40% discount on burn.

The burn is the cornerstone of the economic model. Unlike traditional fan tokens that simply grant voting rights or community badges, $NRG requires the permanent destruction of tokens to access premium experiences. Each backstage access permanently removes $NRG from circulation. The total supply therefore contracts as the token’s real utility is used. The portal also offers a “Fast Track” for non-holders: a one-time purchase allows access to a show without holding the token, but at a premium price that makes holding more advantageous over time.

This mechanism differs from previous attempts at artistic tokenization. BLOND:ISH had already experimented with a community token, $ISH, via the P00LS platform, with results limited to access to exclusive content. $NRG takes it a step further by introducing what the team calls an “energy tax”: any promoter, festival, or Web3 project wishing to collaborate with the artist or Abracadabra must go through the token. Demand therefore no longer comes only from fans, but from the entire professional ecosystem surrounding the brand.

$NRG at the Eiffel Tower: When music meets blockchain The official closing party of Paris Blockchain Week 2026, held on April 17 in the Gustave Eiffel Salon, embodied the project’s philosophy at scale. Around 300 founders, investors, and operators from the crypto, tech, and cultural ecosystem gathered on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower for an invitation-only event, with BLOND:ISH performing a DJ set from 10:15 PM to 11:45 PM. The event was co-produced by INDIGO Fund, the digital asset investment fund co-founded by BLOND:ISH (Vivie-Ann Bakos), Thomas Puech, and Nathanaël Cohen, alongside the American production company Rasa.

The list of sponsors illustrates the convergence between culture and digital finance. OKX, one of the largest global exchanges, PSG Labs, the Web3 arm of Paris Saint-Germain, and Matchain were among the confirmed partners. The event was livestreamed on Twitch and Pumpfun, allowing the $NRG community to attend in real time. This type of activation is not isolated: INDIGO and $NRG had already organized similar events at the W Hotel during Art Basel Week in Miami and at TOKEN2049 in Dubai, positioning each gathering as a networking hub anchored in the token.

The model driven by $NRG raises a question that the entire crypto ecosystem is watching closely: can the tokenization of cultural access move beyond the stage of a one-off event? The bullish outlook relies on network effects: the more shows multiply, the more the burn reduces supply, and the more attractive holding becomes.

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La Rédaction C.

The Cointribune editorial team unites its voices to address topics related to cryptocurrencies, investment, the metaverse, and NFTs, while striving to answer your questions as best as possible.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

Rubio: US and Iran to continue technical consultations at the end of this month

Multiple foreign media outlets reported on the 24th that US Secretary of State Rubio said technical teams from the United States and Iran will hold further talks in Switzerland by the end of June. (Xinhua News Agency)

5 hours ago

Over the past 24 hours, total crypto market liquidations hit $606 million, with more than 130,000 traders liquidated.

According to Coinglass data, the global cryptocurrency market recorded $606 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, including $542 million in long-position liquidations and $68.22 million in short-position liquidations. A total of 135,785 traders worldwide were liquidated in the same period, with the largest single liquidation order occurring on Binance’s BTCUSDT trading pair, valued at $12.0111 million.

5 hours ago

Bitcoin falls below $60,000

According to HTX market data, Bitcoin has fallen below $60,000, with a 4.3% drop in the past 24 hours.

5 hours ago

US Treasury Secretary: AI boom may boost productivity and help curb inflation.

US Treasury Secretary Bessent told CNBC in an interview that he hopes the Federal Reserve will remain "open-minded" about the inflation pattern after the reversal of Iran-related energy price hikes. Bessent noted that the U.S. could enter an economic environment marked by high GDP growth without a corresponding rise in traditional inflation. He cited that in the 1990s, Alan Greenspan foresaw that office modernization and the internet could drive non-inflationary growth, and allowed the economy to keep expanding. Bessent believes the U.S. has a strong chance of seeing a similar scenario again. When asked whether the Fed still needs to worry about potential inflation and whether interest rate cuts are possible this year or next, Bessent declined to comment. However, he argued that it is necessary to stay open-minded about the price or inflation impacts from the Iran conflict, and monitor inflation performance after those effects subside. Bessent also said an open mind is needed, as the AI boom could boost productivity and deliver disinflationary effects, helping inflation return to the Fed’s target level. He added that he believes Kevin Warsh will choose the optimal path that meets both the Fed’s inflation and growth mandates. Bessent also noted that Warsh previously took a hawkish stance on inflation.

5 hours ago

US stocks' intraday storage sector sees broad declines, with Western Digital and Seagate Technology both falling over 4%.

According to Bitget data, during U.S. stock trading hours, the storage sector saw broad declines: Western Digital (WDC) fell 4.47%, Seagate Technology (STX) dropped 4.17%, SanDisk (SNDK) declined 2.31%, and Micron Technology (MU) edged down 0.96%. Most optical communication concept stocks rose, with Corning (GLW) leading the gains at 9.75%, followed by Ciena (CIEN) up 3.24%, Coherent (COHR) rising 2.93%, Lumentum (LITE) gaining 2.61%, and Nokia (NOK) advancing 1.82%. Additionally, Marvell Technology (MRVL) fell 2.59% and Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) declined 1.90%.

5 hours ago

During intraday trading in U.S. stocks, crypto-related concept stocks fell broadly, with MSTR dropping more than 7%.

According to Bitget market data, the three major U.S. stock indexes rose broadly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.94%, the S&P 500 increased 0.60%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.63%. Crypto-related stocks fell across the board, with declines as follows: Strategy (MSTR) down 7.33%; Circle (CRCL) down 4.35%; Bitmine (BMNR) down 3.97%; Coinbase (COIN) down 3.73%; Robinhood (HOOD) down 3.70%; Gemini (GEMI) down 3.27%; Bullish (BLSH) down 3.25%; Sharplink (SBET) down 3.19%.

5 hours ago

Key Highlights Table of Contents

Key HighlightsPlatform Facilitates Digital Asset Collateral Across Multiple Trading VenuesStreamlined Collateral Deployment for Institutional Trading OperationsFinancial Sector Advances Blockchain-Based Collateral Infrastructure LMAX Group introduces Kiosk platform for institutional crypto collateral management. Platform enables digital asset deployment across foreign exchange, metals, and CFD trading. Kiosk integrates custody solutions with multi-market trading execution capabilities. Unified portal consolidates collateral management, security controls, and treasury operations. Launch aligns with institutional movement toward blockchain-based collateral infrastructure. LMAX Group has unveiled its Kiosk platform designed to facilitate institutional deployment of cryptocurrency holdings across diverse trading environments. This integrated portal merges custodial services, collateral management, and trade execution within a unified operational framework. The introduction addresses increasing institutional appetite for digital asset-backed trading solutions.

Platform Facilitates Digital Asset Collateral Across Multiple Trading Venues The LMAX Kiosk platform permits institutional participants to transfer cryptocurrency holdings directly into LMAX Custody infrastructure. These deposited digital assets can subsequently serve as collateral throughout the organization’s comprehensive trading environment. Market access encompasses foreign exchange pairs, precious metal contracts, cryptocurrency instruments, contracts for difference, and perpetual futures products.

The solution addresses operational complexity challenges faced by organizations managing cryptocurrency exposure. It consolidates deposit functionality, withdrawal processing, API authentication management, WalletConnect integration, security configurations, and treasury administration within a singular interface. Consequently, institutional clients can oversee collateral requirements without navigating multiple fragmented platforms.

According to LMAX Group, Kiosk represents an expansion of its established institutional framework. The company maintains operational presence across both conventional foreign exchange and digital asset marketplaces. Accordingly, this interface advancement furthers its strategic initiative to bridge traditional financial services with cryptocurrency market participation.

Streamlined Collateral Deployment for Institutional Trading Operations The platform introduction provides institutions with streamlined pathways for converting crypto holdings into operational trading strategies. Participants can pledge cryptocurrency assets as margin while executing transactions across diverse asset categories. This architecture potentially enhances capital efficiency for institutional balance sheet management.

David Mercer, Chief Executive Officer of LMAX Group, emphasized that optimized collateral mechanisms will underpin next-generation integrated capital markets. He highlighted that Kiosk delivers protected custody arrangements, frictionless connectivity infrastructure, and immediate collateral deployment capabilities. He further noted the product facilitates institutional incorporation of digital assets into fundamental trading systems.

LMAX has positioned Kiosk as a regulatory-compliant, institutional-caliber offering. The organization emphasizes the platform delivers access to established liquidity sources alongside secured custody arrangements. It provides participants with streamlined methods for expanding digital asset service capabilities.

Financial Sector Advances Blockchain-Based Collateral Infrastructure This platform debut coincides with broader financial industry experimentation regarding collateral frameworks connected to distributed ledger technology. Tokenized investment vehicles, cryptocurrency instruments, and regulated custody products increasingly influence market infrastructure development. Trading venues and investment managers are constructing systems enabling cross-market collateral utilization.

Franklin Templeton launched an institutional collateral initiative with Binance during the current year. That framework permits participants to pledge tokenized money market fund units as trading margin. Simultaneously, underlying assets maintain positioning within regulated custodial structures.

DTCC alongside additional prominent financial entities have similarly investigated tokenized collateral architectures. These initiatives reflect an industry-wide transition toward accelerated settlement processes and adaptable margin deployment. Through Kiosk, LMAX participates in this evolution by connecting cryptocurrency assets with foreign exchange, precious metals, derivatives, and digital asset trading environments.

Oliver Dale

Editor-in-Chief of Blockonomi and founder of Kooc Media, A UK-Based Online Media Company. Believer in Open-Source Software, Blockchain Technology & a Free and Fair Internet for all. His writing has been quoted by Nasdaq, Dow Jones, Investopedia, The New Yorker, Forbes, Techcrunch & More. Contact [email protected]

Oracle Today, we are excited to announce the expansion of our feeds’ coverage on COTI to support the launch of the COTI Privacy Portal, the simplest way for anyone to convert public tokens into private tokens on the COTI Network.

TL;DRBand is expanding its price feed coverage on the COTI Network with the addition of ADA, USDT, and gCOTI, building on the existing WBTC, ETH, COTI, and USDC feeds from our 2024 integration.COTI Privacy Portal is now live: convert public tokens to private in one click, and back again whenever you choose.The Band Unified Data Layer powers all price data powering the Portal.The Portal is non-custodial, fully on-chain, and powered by COTI's Garbled Circuits technology. Supports 7 tokens: COTI, ETH, WBTC, USDT, USDC, ADA, and gCOTI.IntroductionWhen Band integrated with COTI in late 2024, the goal was clear: bring reliable, decentralized price data to COTI's growing privacy-focused ecosystem. Today, that partnership takes a major step forward.

Today, we are excited to announce the expansion of our feeds’ coverage on COTI to support the launch of the COTI Privacy Portal, the simplest way for anyone to convert public tokens into private tokens on the COTI Network. Band is proud to be a core infrastructure partner, powering all price data that drives the portal’s functionality.

This is the partnership in action. It is a real product (not just infrastructure), live now, that any user with a MetaMask wallet can access at https://privacy.coti.io/.

What is the COTI Privacy Portal?The COTI Privacy Portal is the simplest way to take your tokens private and bring them back to the public without leaving your wallet. It gives anyone access to on-chain privacy in just one click: no technical setup, no complexity, no compromise on control. Your assets stay fully liquid and fully yours, whether they are private or public.

This opens the door to a new class of use cases, from confidential payments and private DeFi strategies to enterprise-grade privacy for supply chains and payroll, all at the fastest speed and lowest cost of any privacy protocol in the world.

The Band Unified Data Layer Powers All Price Data on the COTI Privacy PortalEvery token available in the COTI Privacy Portal, from COTI and WETH to gCOTI and WADA, has its price data served in real time by our flagship product, Band Price Feeds.

Reliable price data is foundational to any blockchain application, including the token portal. Even when balances are encrypted on-chain, accurate market pricing is needed to display values, support liquidity decisions, and enable the DeFi applications built on top of the Portal. Band's decentralized oracle infrastructure ensures this data is always available, tamper-proof, and sourced from multiple independent providers worldwide.

With the launch of the Privacy Portal, Band is expanding its feed coverage on the COTI Network to include three new price feeds: ADA, USDT, and gCOTI. This builds directly on the foundation laid in our 2024 integration, which first brought WBTC, ETH, COTI, and USDC price feeds to COTI. Together, Band now provides complete price data coverage for every asset available in the Portal.

For Developers on COTIIf you're already building on COTI using Band Price Feeds, nothing changes. The integration works exactly as before. Same proxy contracts. Same Band Standard Reference Contracts (Solidity). Same data flow.

Proxy Contract Addresses

Testnet: 0xb6256dcb23cee06eda2408e73945963606fdddd7Mainnet: 0x9503d502435f8e228b874Ba0F792301d4401b523Resources

Band Developer PortalBandChain DocumentationCOTI Developer DocumentationCOTI Privacy PortalWhat You Can BuildThe COTI Privacy Portal is the front door to a new class of Web3 applications that combine the transparency of public blockchains with the confidentiality of encrypted computation. With Band Price Feeds underpinning every token, developers can build with confidence:

Private peer-to-peer transactions: send and receive tokens with encrypted balancesConfidential payments and private payroll: businesses can process payments without exposing amounts on-chainPrivate DeFi strategies: execute trading and yield strategies without revealing positionsSupply chain settlements: settle invoices and contracts with privacyIdentity and asset protection: shield holdings from public visibility while maintaining auditabilityPrivate token transfers on COTI are among the fastest and lowest-cost of any privacy protocol, a fraction of a COTI token per transfer, making these use cases practical at scale.

Get StartedPrivacy Portal: https://privacy.coti.io/MetaMask Snap: metamask.coti.io/installCOTI Documentation: docs.coti.ioBand Documentation: docs.bandchain.orgAbout Band

Band is the data layer that trains AI engines and powers blockchain applications. By empowering DeFi, GameFi, and AI agents, it enables developers, institutions, and users to access real-time data with zero counterparty risk. With Band’s open, battle-tested data infrastructure built for blockchains and LLMs, it ensures that real-time information is always accessible, fueling everything from financial protocols to autonomous AI systems. 

More about Band: https://linktr.ee/bandprotocol

About COTI

COTI is the programmable privacy layer for Web3. Built for enterprises, builders, and agents. Powered by high-performance Garbled Circuits and enterprise-grade COTI Nightfall (ZK), COTI enables encrypted computation on any public blockchain. Fast, low-cost, and compliant privacy across DeFi, AI, and beyond.

More about COTI: coti.io

Earning yield on stablecoins just got a little less painful for Arbitrum users. The Arbitrum Portal, the Layer 2 network’s native gateway for users, now features direct deposits into Morpho-powered stablecoin vaults, turning what was once a multi-step DeFi scavenger hunt into something closer to a one-click experience.

The flagship offering is a USDC vault on Arbitrum One, currently sporting a 3.31% APY with $13.3 million in total value locked.

What Morpho actually does here Morpho is a credit network that optimizes lending across decentralized protocols, including heavy hitters like Aave and Compound. Think of it as a routing layer for your deposits: instead of you manually picking which lending pool to park your stablecoins in, Morpho’s infrastructure, called MetaMorpho, curates strategies across multiple markets to squeeze out better risk-adjusted returns.

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The vaults themselves are curated by entities like Steakhouse and Gauntlet, firms that specialize in risk analysis and parameter optimization for DeFi protocols. Gauntlet, in particular, has built its reputation on quantitative risk modeling for some of the largest lending protocols in crypto.

The Arbitrum Portal integration bundles this vault access with cross-chain swap capabilities and vault management tools. Users can deposit, monitor positions, and move assets across chains without leaving the portal interface.

The bigger picture: DeFi yield goes mainstream Morpho has been on a quiet integration spree, embedding its vault infrastructure into wallet providers and enterprise platforms. Trust Wallet and Fireblocks have both adopted Morpho’s solutions, bringing stablecoin yield access to millions of users who might never visit a DeFi dashboard directly.

When Bitget Earn launched its own yield product recently, over $50 million in USDT was deposited shortly after release, signaling genuine demand for optimized lending solutions, especially when the onboarding friction is low.

What this means for investors This product is not targeting yield farmers chasing triple-digit returns on obscure liquidity pools. It is targeting the much larger cohort of crypto holders who want their stablecoins to do something other than sit idle in a wallet.

What differentiates Morpho’s approach is the institutional-grade curation layer. Having named risk managers like Gauntlet and Steakhouse overseeing vault strategies is a meaningful distinction from platforms where yield sources are opaque or purely algorithmic.

The risk profile is worth considering, though. Even curated vaults carry smart contract risk, oracle risk, and the ever-present possibility that lending market conditions shift unfavorably. Users should understand that this is not a bank deposit with FDIC insurance. It is a DeFi product with real, if managed, risk.

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

Rubio: US and Iran to continue technical consultations at the end of this month

Multiple foreign media outlets reported on the 24th that US Secretary of State Rubio said technical teams from the United States and Iran will hold further talks in Switzerland by the end of June. (Xinhua News Agency)

5 hours ago

Over the past 24 hours, total crypto market liquidations hit $606 million, with more than 130,000 traders liquidated.

According to Coinglass data, the global cryptocurrency market recorded $606 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, including $542 million in long-position liquidations and $68.22 million in short-position liquidations. A total of 135,785 traders worldwide were liquidated in the same period, with the largest single liquidation order occurring on Binance’s BTCUSDT trading pair, valued at $12.0111 million.

5 hours ago

Bitcoin falls below $60,000

According to HTX market data, Bitcoin has fallen below $60,000, with a 4.3% drop in the past 24 hours.

5 hours ago

US Treasury Secretary: AI boom may boost productivity and help curb inflation.

US Treasury Secretary Bessent told CNBC in an interview that he hopes the Federal Reserve will remain "open-minded" about the inflation pattern after the reversal of Iran-related energy price hikes. Bessent noted that the U.S. could enter an economic environment marked by high GDP growth without a corresponding rise in traditional inflation. He cited that in the 1990s, Alan Greenspan foresaw that office modernization and the internet could drive non-inflationary growth, and allowed the economy to keep expanding. Bessent believes the U.S. has a strong chance of seeing a similar scenario again. When asked whether the Fed still needs to worry about potential inflation and whether interest rate cuts are possible this year or next, Bessent declined to comment. However, he argued that it is necessary to stay open-minded about the price or inflation impacts from the Iran conflict, and monitor inflation performance after those effects subside. Bessent also said an open mind is needed, as the AI boom could boost productivity and deliver disinflationary effects, helping inflation return to the Fed’s target level. He added that he believes Kevin Warsh will choose the optimal path that meets both the Fed’s inflation and growth mandates. Bessent also noted that Warsh previously took a hawkish stance on inflation.

5 hours ago

US stocks' intraday storage sector sees broad declines, with Western Digital and Seagate Technology both falling over 4%.

According to Bitget data, during U.S. stock trading hours, the storage sector saw broad declines: Western Digital (WDC) fell 4.47%, Seagate Technology (STX) dropped 4.17%, SanDisk (SNDK) declined 2.31%, and Micron Technology (MU) edged down 0.96%. Most optical communication concept stocks rose, with Corning (GLW) leading the gains at 9.75%, followed by Ciena (CIEN) up 3.24%, Coherent (COHR) rising 2.93%, Lumentum (LITE) gaining 2.61%, and Nokia (NOK) advancing 1.82%. Additionally, Marvell Technology (MRVL) fell 2.59% and Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) declined 1.90%.

5 hours ago

During intraday trading in U.S. stocks, crypto-related concept stocks fell broadly, with MSTR dropping more than 7%.

According to Bitget market data, the three major U.S. stock indexes rose broadly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.94%, the S&P 500 increased 0.60%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.63%. Crypto-related stocks fell across the board, with declines as follows: Strategy (MSTR) down 7.33%; Circle (CRCL) down 4.35%; Bitmine (BMNR) down 3.97%; Coinbase (COIN) down 3.73%; Robinhood (HOOD) down 3.70%; Gemini (GEMI) down 3.27%; Bullish (BLSH) down 3.25%; Sharplink (SBET) down 3.19%.

5 hours ago

App Review Summaries and Replies Are Now Live in the Solana dApp Store Publishing Portal

Ratings & Reviews is live in the Solana dApp Store publishing portal. Every rating, every review, an AI-powered weekly digest, and the ability to reply directly, all from the publishing portal. This is the most-requested feature from dApp Store publishings, and it’s available today at https://publish.solanamobile.com/ 

The Solana dApp Store now hosts over 900 apps. Your users have been rating and reviewing your dApp since the day you launched. Thousands of reviews are flowing in every week across the ecosystem. Until today, that feedback existed in a place publishers couldn’t reach from their own tools.

Now you can actually see what they’re saying — and respond to your user base.

Ratings & Reviews is live in the Solana dApp Store publishing portal. Every rating, every review, an AI-powered weekly digest, and the ability to reply directly, all from the publishing portal. This is the most-requested feature from dApp Store publishings, and it’s available today at https://publish.solanamobile.com/ 

What’s New in the Updated Publishing PortalReview AnalyticsThe publishing portal now gives a full picture of how your app is performing since its first release. Star distribution, total review count, and reply rate — all visible at a glance, plus review quality filters.

The data and filters are there to help you get more signal and less noise. If your 1-star reviews are climbing after a specific release, you’ll see it immediately. If 87% of your users are on the latest version but your rating is dropping, that tells you the update broke something. 

AI Weekly Digest

Every week, the publishing portal generates an AI-powered summary of your recent reviews. LLMs read every review from the past seven days and tell you three things: what users love, what’s broken, and what they’re asking you to build next.

The digest identifies patterns across reviews that you might not catch reading them one by one. If twelve users in the same week mention wallet connection issues — phrased twelve different ways — the digest catches that and surfaces it as a single, actionable takeaway. If a cluster of 5-star reviews all mention the same feature, you know what’s working and can double down.

It also flags review quality. Not every 5-star review is organic, and not every 1-star review is legitimate. The digest notes when high-rated reviews look like gibberish or don’t reference your product, so you can separate real user feedback from spam before making product update decisions.

Key takeaways from the digest are listed at the bottom of each summary with priority flags, so you can scan them in thirty seconds and know where to focus your next sprint.

Reply to ReviewsYou can now respond to any review directly from the publishing portal. One reply per review. When you respond, the user gets notified — which means your reply can directly engage with your user base and let them know when fixes arrive.

This matters more than it sounds. A user who leaves a 3-star review about a bug and gets a direct response saying it’s fixed in the next release is a user who updates their review. A user who feels heard is a user who stays.

Replies are public, so other users browsing your app’s reviews will see that there’s an active team behind the product. For developers and founders building trust with a new audience, that signal compounds.

Start NowIf you have an app on the Solana dApp Store, your reviews are already loaded and waiting. Log in to the publishing portal, navigate to Ratings & Reviews, and see what your users have been telling you.

publish.solanamobile.com 

New to building on Solana Mobile? Start with the developer documentation at docs.solanamobile.com or apply for Solana Mobile Builder Grants at solanamobile.com/grants to get funded, get users, and get your app in front of 100,000+ active Seeker device owners.

Happy Shipping 🫡

‍

Rubio: US and Iran to continue technical consultations at the end of this month

Multiple foreign media outlets reported on the 24th that US Secretary of State Rubio said technical teams from the United States and Iran will hold further talks in Switzerland by the end of June. (Xinhua News Agency)

5 hours ago

Over the past 24 hours, total crypto market liquidations hit $606 million, with more than 130,000 traders liquidated.

According to Coinglass data, the global cryptocurrency market recorded $606 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, including $542 million in long-position liquidations and $68.22 million in short-position liquidations. A total of 135,785 traders worldwide were liquidated in the same period, with the largest single liquidation order occurring on Binance’s BTCUSDT trading pair, valued at $12.0111 million.

5 hours ago

Bitcoin falls below $60,000

According to HTX market data, Bitcoin has fallen below $60,000, with a 4.3% drop in the past 24 hours.

5 hours ago

US Treasury Secretary: AI boom may boost productivity and help curb inflation.

US Treasury Secretary Bessent told CNBC in an interview that he hopes the Federal Reserve will remain "open-minded" about the inflation pattern after the reversal of Iran-related energy price hikes. Bessent noted that the U.S. could enter an economic environment marked by high GDP growth without a corresponding rise in traditional inflation. He cited that in the 1990s, Alan Greenspan foresaw that office modernization and the internet could drive non-inflationary growth, and allowed the economy to keep expanding. Bessent believes the U.S. has a strong chance of seeing a similar scenario again. When asked whether the Fed still needs to worry about potential inflation and whether interest rate cuts are possible this year or next, Bessent declined to comment. However, he argued that it is necessary to stay open-minded about the price or inflation impacts from the Iran conflict, and monitor inflation performance after those effects subside. Bessent also said an open mind is needed, as the AI boom could boost productivity and deliver disinflationary effects, helping inflation return to the Fed’s target level. He added that he believes Kevin Warsh will choose the optimal path that meets both the Fed’s inflation and growth mandates. Bessent also noted that Warsh previously took a hawkish stance on inflation.

5 hours ago

US stocks' intraday storage sector sees broad declines, with Western Digital and Seagate Technology both falling over 4%.

According to Bitget data, during U.S. stock trading hours, the storage sector saw broad declines: Western Digital (WDC) fell 4.47%, Seagate Technology (STX) dropped 4.17%, SanDisk (SNDK) declined 2.31%, and Micron Technology (MU) edged down 0.96%. Most optical communication concept stocks rose, with Corning (GLW) leading the gains at 9.75%, followed by Ciena (CIEN) up 3.24%, Coherent (COHR) rising 2.93%, Lumentum (LITE) gaining 2.61%, and Nokia (NOK) advancing 1.82%. Additionally, Marvell Technology (MRVL) fell 2.59% and Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) declined 1.90%.

5 hours ago

During intraday trading in U.S. stocks, crypto-related concept stocks fell broadly, with MSTR dropping more than 7%.

According to Bitget market data, the three major U.S. stock indexes rose broadly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.94%, the S&P 500 increased 0.60%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.63%. Crypto-related stocks fell across the board, with declines as follows: Strategy (MSTR) down 7.33%; Circle (CRCL) down 4.35%; Bitmine (BMNR) down 3.97%; Coinbase (COIN) down 3.73%; Robinhood (HOOD) down 3.70%; Gemini (GEMI) down 3.27%; Bullish (BLSH) down 3.25%; Sharplink (SBET) down 3.19%.

5 hours ago

Rubio: US and Iran to continue technical consultations at the end of this month

Multiple foreign media outlets reported on the 24th that US Secretary of State Rubio said technical teams from the United States and Iran will hold further talks in Switzerland by the end of June. (Xinhua News Agency)

5 hours ago

Over the past 24 hours, total crypto market liquidations hit $606 million, with more than 130,000 traders liquidated.

According to Coinglass data, the global cryptocurrency market recorded $606 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, including $542 million in long-position liquidations and $68.22 million in short-position liquidations. A total of 135,785 traders worldwide were liquidated in the same period, with the largest single liquidation order occurring on Binance’s BTCUSDT trading pair, valued at $12.0111 million.

5 hours ago

Bitcoin falls below $60,000

According to HTX market data, Bitcoin has fallen below $60,000, with a 4.3% drop in the past 24 hours.

5 hours ago

US Treasury Secretary: AI boom may boost productivity and help curb inflation.

US Treasury Secretary Bessent told CNBC in an interview that he hopes the Federal Reserve will remain "open-minded" about the inflation pattern after the reversal of Iran-related energy price hikes. Bessent noted that the U.S. could enter an economic environment marked by high GDP growth without a corresponding rise in traditional inflation. He cited that in the 1990s, Alan Greenspan foresaw that office modernization and the internet could drive non-inflationary growth, and allowed the economy to keep expanding. Bessent believes the U.S. has a strong chance of seeing a similar scenario again. When asked whether the Fed still needs to worry about potential inflation and whether interest rate cuts are possible this year or next, Bessent declined to comment. However, he argued that it is necessary to stay open-minded about the price or inflation impacts from the Iran conflict, and monitor inflation performance after those effects subside. Bessent also said an open mind is needed, as the AI boom could boost productivity and deliver disinflationary effects, helping inflation return to the Fed’s target level. He added that he believes Kevin Warsh will choose the optimal path that meets both the Fed’s inflation and growth mandates. Bessent also noted that Warsh previously took a hawkish stance on inflation.

5 hours ago

US stocks' intraday storage sector sees broad declines, with Western Digital and Seagate Technology both falling over 4%.

According to Bitget data, during U.S. stock trading hours, the storage sector saw broad declines: Western Digital (WDC) fell 4.47%, Seagate Technology (STX) dropped 4.17%, SanDisk (SNDK) declined 2.31%, and Micron Technology (MU) edged down 0.96%. Most optical communication concept stocks rose, with Corning (GLW) leading the gains at 9.75%, followed by Ciena (CIEN) up 3.24%, Coherent (COHR) rising 2.93%, Lumentum (LITE) gaining 2.61%, and Nokia (NOK) advancing 1.82%. Additionally, Marvell Technology (MRVL) fell 2.59% and Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) declined 1.90%.

5 hours ago

During intraday trading in U.S. stocks, crypto-related concept stocks fell broadly, with MSTR dropping more than 7%.

According to Bitget market data, the three major U.S. stock indexes rose broadly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.94%, the S&P 500 increased 0.60%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.63%. Crypto-related stocks fell across the board, with declines as follows: Strategy (MSTR) down 7.33%; Circle (CRCL) down 4.35%; Bitmine (BMNR) down 3.97%; Coinbase (COIN) down 3.73%; Robinhood (HOOD) down 3.70%; Gemini (GEMI) down 3.27%; Bullish (BLSH) down 3.25%; Sharplink (SBET) down 3.19%.

5 hours ago

Memecoins have lately been showing a slow yet steady price momentum. With memecoins making up a significant chunk of the cryptocurrency market, coins like Bonk. DogWithHat and Dogecoin have all adapted to a sluggish price pace, but with the growing ETF momentum, the cryptocurrency is all set to experience a bullish upheaval, which could signal a wave of fresh inflows to cater to the memecoin mania as well. Will Dogecoin, Bonk, and DogWifHat be able to score some major wins by the end of this month? Let’s find out.

Also Read: Bitcoin, Ethereum Near New All-Time Highs: Another Bull Run?

Memecoin Price Prediction: WIF, DOGE, BONK1. DogWithHat Price ForecastSource: TwitterDogWifHat has lately adopted a slow price momentum. WIF, in its earlier price rallies, has enjoyed historic highs, the ones that helped the token claim the $3 price mark and beyond. The token at present is sitting at $0.93, heavily dependent on market changes and volatility to ascend and descend accordingly. As per CoinCodex Dogwifhat data, WIF is expected to note further price downfalls this month, ending September on a bearish note. WIF may fall to a new low of $0.72 per CC’s latest data.

Source: CoinCodexBy mid-October, the token may fall further to explore the $0.69 price range.

Source: CoinCodex“According to our current Dogwifhat price prediction, the price of Dogwifhat is predicted to drop by -25.33% and reach $0.697881 by October 17, 2025. Per our technical indicators, the current sentiment is bullish, while the Fear & Greed Index is showing 53 (neutral). Dogwifhat recorded 16/30 (53%) green days with 5.72% price volatility over the last 30 days. Based on the Dogwifhat forecast, it’s now a good time to buy Dogwifhat.”

Dogecoin Price PredictionSource: ForbesDogecoin is a leading cryptocurrency meme coin, gaining steady momentum as of late. This momentum is primarily driven by the rising ETF hype and the fact that the token is in the queue to dominate the market in the form of a Dogecoin ETF. Several companies have filed for a DOGE ETF, making it a top investment contender to explore at the moment.

According to CoinCodex DOGE data, Dogecoin may hit $0.27 by September 30th, 2025.

Source: CoinCodexBy mid-October, the token is expected to fall, hitting $0.30 in the process.

Source: CoinCodex“According to our current Dogecoin price prediction, the price of Dogecoin is predicted to rise by 15.63% and reach $0.309738 by October 17, 2025. Per our technical indicators, the current sentiment is bullish, while the Fear & Greed Index is showing 52 (neutral). Dogecoin recorded 16/30 (53%) green days with 9.40% price volatility over the last 30 days. Based on the Dogecoin forecast, it’s now a good time to buy Dogecoin.”

3. BONK Price ForecastSource: Inside BitcoinsBONK is another leading memecoin that has recently joined the growing ETF race. Per Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg ETF specialist, Tuttle has recently filed for a Bonk Income Blast ETF, delivering a new wave of attention and spotlight to the meme token at the moment.

According to CoinCodex Bonk data, Bonk may surge to sit at $0.000018 by September 30.

Source: CoinCodexBy October, the token may decline further to explore $0.00001768 price range.

Source: CoinCodex“According to our current Bonk price prediction, the price of Bonk is predicted to drop by -25.04% and reach $ 0.00001768 by October 17, 2025. Per our technical indicators, the current sentiment is neutral, while the Fear & Greed Index is showing 53 (neutral). Bonk recorded 15/30 (50%) green days with 7.17% price volatility over the last 30 days. Based on the Bonk forecast, it’s now a good time to buy Bonk.

Also Read: Investors Flood ETFs: $543B in First Half of 2025 Alone

In brief Meme coins including SHIB, PEPE, PENGU, BONK, and WIF are leading crypto's recovery from Friday’s crash, pushing the total meme coin market cap to $69 billion. Friday's selloff triggered nearly $20 billion in liquidations, the largest single-day wipeout in crypto history, as Bitcoin plunged from $121,000 to $109,000 before rebounding. Analysts told Decrypt the rebound is “logical” as the assets that crash the hardest tend to bounce back quicker. Meme coins led a recovery rally Monday morning, with traders piling into high-risk assets as cooling U.S.-China tensions helping crypto markets rebound after they suffered their worst liquidation event in history.

Dogecoin (DOGE) rose 11.9% to $0.21 over the past 24 hours, while other popular meme coins posted even stronger gains, according to CoinGecko data.

Dogwifhat (WIF) surged by 18.4%,  Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) jumped 17.5%, and Pepe (PEPE) climbed 13.2%.

Bonk (BONK) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) climbed 15.3% and 9.4%, respectively, with the total meme coin market cap now standing at $68.8 billion, up 12.6% on the day.

The rebound comes after Friday's devastating selloff that saw Bitcoin (BTC) plunge from $121,000 to as low as $109,000, with nearly $20 billion in liquidations across all digital assets wiped out in a single day.

By Monday morning, BTC had climbed back to $115,227, up 2.9% on the day, while Ethereum (ETH), BNB (BNB) and Solana (SOL), surged 8.4%, 12.2% and 8.7% respectively, according to CoinGecko.

"It is a logical thing. The flash crash was a temporary glitch and was caused by the cascading liquidations, and everyone was expecting a rebound," Arjun Vijay, founder of crypto exchange Giottus, told Decrypt.

"During the rebound, the riskiest assets and those that crashed the most are expected to rebound the maximum,” he said. “So it is no surprise that people are betting on meme coins, and this is leading to a virtuous cycle."

Friday’s crypto crashThe crash was triggered by President Trump's announcement of a "massive increase" in tariffs on Chinese imports after canceling a planned meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a move he acknowledged could be "potentially painful" for Americans.

On Sunday, the spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce noted that "for a long time, the U.S. has been overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export control, taking discriminatory actions against China."

However, tensions appeared to ease over the weekend, with Trump posting on Truth Social Sunday that the U.S. "wants to help China, not hurt it.” Nevertheless, users of prediction market Myriad put just a 13.5% chance of him visiting China before the end of the year.

"For the medium to long run, this de-risk plunge is actually healthy as it flushed out toxic leverage in the market: short-term pain, long-term gain," Charmaine Tam, head of OTC sales and trading at Hex Trust, told Decrypt, noting how "altcoins suffered the most during the whipsaw last Friday,"

Tam noted how “institutional plumbing held firm” even amid the sell-off, with Bitcoin’s dominance “failing to reclaim 60.5%”—a sign, she said, that altcoins may lead as liquidity recovers.

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