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Zcash holders overwhelmingly back faster transactions and bitcoin-style halvings. (Shutterstock)Summary

Nearly 2.4 million ZEC, or about two-thirds of eligible tokens, participated in a privacy-preserving vote on Zcash’s next major network upgrade, NU7.Participating holders overwhelmingly backed cutting block times to 25 seconds, preserving Zcash’s bitcoin-style halving schedule and launching NU7 as soon as possible.Voters also supported delaying the reissuance of fees collected through the Network Sustainability Mechanism until February 2031 and disabling transactions tied to the obsolete Sprout privacy system.Holders of privacy token zcash (ZEC) voted overwhelmingly in favor of faster transactions and preserving the network's bitcoin-style halving schedule in a governance vote that drew roughly two-thirds of the ZEC eligible to participate.

Nearly 2.4 million ZEC voted on the initiative, dubbed NU7, out of roughly 3.6 million ZEC eligible at the snapshot. The results are weighted by ZEC rather than the number of individual people voting, with one eligible ZEC representing one vote.

How the voting workedOrganizers had set 1 million ZEC as the minimum turnout needed to treat the result as representative of coin holders.

Some 99.9% of the 2.4 million ZEC that participated in voting backed cutting the time between blocks to 25 seconds from 75 seconds. Blocks are batches of transactions added to the network, so shorter block times generally mean users see payments confirmed faster.

Another 98.9% voted to keep Zcash’s bitcoin-style halvings. Miners, the computers that help secure the network, are paid partly in newly created ZEC. A halving cuts that new-coin reward in half at fixed intervals. The alternative would have replaced Zcash’s large, scheduled reward cuts with a smoother issuance curve, gradually reducing the amount of new ZEC created over time.

The voting system itself is as unusual as the result.

Only ZEC held in Ironwood, Zcash’s newest private transaction pool, could vote. “Shielded” means the blockchain can verify that the coins exist and are spent correctly without publicly showing the wallet balance or transaction details.

That privacy carried over into the vote.

In a normal token vote, a wallet casting 500,000 votes can effectively announce to the world that it controls 500,000 tokens and which side it backed. Zcash’s system lets that economic weight count without publishing the holder’s balance or identity alongside the choice.

Ballots were encrypted and split into 16 separate pieces before being counted. Validators could add up the final result without reconstructing which holder cast which vote or how much ZEC that person controlled.

In other words, holders could use their actual economic stake to vote on Zcash's monetary policy and technical roadmap while keeping the size of that stake hidden.

Read More: Zcash seals $1.7 billion shielded pool as Ironwood upgrade activates

That is a major jump from Zcash's earlier coin holder polling. February's NU7 sentiment poll drew participation equal to just 7.25% of circulating ZEC and exposed sharp disagreements between coin holders and Zcash's Community Advisory Panel, or ZCAP.

The latest system was introduced this summer to replace the previous token-holder voting process and give shielded balances much stronger privacy guarantees.

Holders also voted 96.6% to wait until February 2031 before beginning to reissue ZEC collected through the Network Sustainability Mechanism, or NSM.

How this helps ZcashThe planned system removes funds from circulation, including at least 60% of transaction fees, and eventually recycles the ZEC through future block rewards. The mechanism does not change Zcash's maximum supply.

The result keeps the existing halving schedule intact while allowing those recycled fees to accumulate for several years before returning to miners.

Meanwhile, holders also showed little appetite for delaying the broader upgrade. About 99.3% voted to ship NU7 as soon as possible, dropping any feature not implemented by a Sept. 30 readiness deadline rather than waiting for every approved component to be finished.

Read More: Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

The 25-second block proposal also fits into a wider effort to make private ZEC payments much faster.

CoinDesk reported in August that new Zcash software cut proof-generation times on mobile devices from more than three seconds to under 200 milliseconds in some tests, while separate work around Zakura and Project Tachyon targets much higher private-transaction throughput.

The vote gives developers a much clearer map for NU7 after months of disagreement over its scope. It does not itself change the network, however, with the selected features still needing to be implemented, tested and included in the eventual upgrade.

Nearly 2.4 million ZEC nevertheless weighed in on those decisions. At the same time, the individual balances behind the votes remained hidden, turning one of crypto's oldest privacy systems into the machinery for deciding what the network builds next.

12345678910The Definitive Stablecoin Landscape Series: Asia Pacific

The Definitive Stablecoin Landscape Series: Asia Pacific

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

16 hours ago

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

Why it matters:

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

The Layer 1 charges gas in USDC and runs proof-of-authority across a permissioned set of 11 institutions plus Circle. More than 100 applications are live at launch, with Aave, Morpho and Uniswap anchoring DeFi. Circle minted 10 billion ARC tokens this week without committing to a public launch.

Circle opened the public mainnet of Arc on Wednesday, a Layer 1 blockchain where transaction fees are paid in USDC and blocks are produced by a fixed set of regulated financial institutions rather than an open validator market.

The chain puts block production in the hands of the firms that clear securities and run card rails. BlackRock, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa and Worldpay make up the founding validator cohort alongside Circle, which named them on Aug. 5. Global Payments completed its $24.25 billion acquisition of Worldpay in January.

Circle counts more than 100 applications and more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders live on day one. Its testnet, which opened in October 2025, processed more than 700 million transactions, and the developer program has more than 75,000 Arc House members.

"Arc is the single most significant launch in Circle's history since USDC itself, and it is the embodiment of the premise we have operated on for thirteen years: money should work the way the internet works," Jeremy Allaire, Circle's co-founder, chairman and chief executive, said in the announcement.

Gas In DollarsFees on Arc are denominated in USDC with 18 decimals, and the network has no volatile gas token. Arc's fee documentation sets a base fee target of about $0.01 per transaction and caps the base fee at 20,000 Gwei, using EIP-1559 with exponentially weighted moving-average smoothing so traffic spikes move fees less than they do on Ethereum. Arc's landing page put the average weekly transaction cost at $0.045.

Consensus is proof-of-authority over the permissioned set, running Tendermint BFT through Circle's Malachite implementation. Arc's system overview states deterministic finality in under one second with no reorganization risk, and benchmarks finality below 350 milliseconds and throughput above 3,000 transactions per second with 20 validators. Blocks target 30 million gas at a half-second block time. The chain is fully EVM-compatible, so existing Solidity contracts and tooling work at launch.

Validation is restricted but usage is not. Arc's deployment documentation says developers "can deploy contracts and send transactions without approval," while "a fixed group of known, vetted institutions produce and validate blocks." That page puts the validator count at approximately 20 SOC 2-certified operators across multiple regions. Circle's release names 11 institutions and itself, and says the cohort comes online in phases.

Aave And Morpho Anchor CreditAave and Morpho supply Arc's lending markets at launch. Aave is deploying a V4 market on the chain, and Bitwise, Cumberland, Dialectic, Galaxy, Gauntlet, Keyrock and Steakhouse Financial are supporting it through curated vault strategies, risk oversight and USDC and EURC supply.

"We're doubling down on the Circle ecosystem with a new Aave V4 market on Arc, bringing DeFi's most trusted credit infrastructure to a network purpose-built to bring real-world finance onchain," said Stani Kulechov, founder and chief executive of Aave Labs.

"Arc brings together the speed, stablecoin-native infrastructure, and institutional participation needed to expand onchain credit to a much broader market," said Merlin Egalite, co-founder of Morpho.

Trading runs through Aero Lite, fomo and Uniswap. The wider trading list runs to 1inch, Bankr, Dinari, Doppler, edgeX, Extended, Hibachi, LI.FI, o1.exchange, pools.trade, Pump.fun and Robinhood. Pools, the Uniswap Labs launchpad, said on Monday it had partnered with Arc as a day-one launchpad, and appears on Circle's list as pools.trade.

Binance, Bitso, Bitvavo, Bybit, Gate, Kraken, KuCoin, MEXC, OKX, OSL, Upbit and Wenia provide exchange access. Anchorage, BitGo, Ceffu, Copper, Fireblocks and Zodia Custody provide custody. BNY, BTG Pactual, HSBC, Lead Bank, Societe Generale, Standard Chartered and State Street are the banks Circle names.

The Token Circle MintedCircle completed a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens in the United States this week, and says it is the first publicly traded company to mint a network token for a new Layer 1. Network fees stay payable in USDC. The company describes the mint as a technical milestone rather than a commitment to launch ARC publicly, and says the network is exploring a shift from proof-of-authority to proof-of-stake in 2027.

Allaire first said Circle was studying a token on the company's fourth-quarter earnings call in February, and gave no launch timeline then. The supply figure and the consensus transition were both set out in the ARC whitepaper Circle published in May. That document allocates 60% of the 10 billion tokens to ecosystem uses including token sales, developer grants and network growth programs, 25% to Circle, and 15% to a long-term reserve. It sets early-phase inflation at roughly 2% to 3% a year on a decaying schedule, and gives holders votes on fees, inflation and burn logic while Circle retains control of protocol development, compliance and validator membership.

Circle has already sold ARC. The company raised $222 million in a presale at a $3 billion fully diluted valuation in May, with a16z crypto putting in $75 million. BlackRock, Apollo Funds, ICE, ARK Invest, SBI Group, Janus Henderson Investors, Standard Chartered Ventures, General Catalyst, IDG Capital, Haun Ventures, Bullish and Marshall Wace also bought. Several of those buyers are now founding validators or named partners. Circle has not disclosed what share of supply the presale covered or its vesting terms.

Agents As Economic ActorsCircle is positioning Arc as the settlement layer for AI agents. It says USDC accounts for 98.8% of agent-driven transaction volume and that most agent-to-agent payments settling over the x402 standard have settled in USDC since Circle Agent Stack launched in May. Circle has not published the methodology behind the 98.8% figure.

Agent Stack provides policy-controlled Agent Wallets, Nanopayments through Circle Gateway, and what Circle calls an emerging Agent Marketplace. The Defiant reported when Circle launched Nanopayments across 11 blockchains, which move USDC in amounts as small as $0.000001. Arc Portal lets users fund agent wallets and set spend limits. A component Circle calls AgentVM, which would let agents process sensitive data while Arc records a verifiable log of results, is still in design.

Two developer tools ship with mainnet. Arc Studio is an onchain coding agent that generates contracts, application logic and deployment-ready code. Arc App Kits is an SDK covering payments, swaps, onramps and yield, with yield routed through Morpho.

Twenty-Two Currencies On StableFXCircle StableFX handles cross-currency settlement on Arc. Circle lists 22 stablecoins as active or onboarding, including USDC, EURC, Brazil's BRLA, Japan's JPYC, Mexico's MXNB and wrapped versions of the Argentine peso, Chilean peso, Colombian peso and Peruvian sol. Circle Payments Network is integrated natively into the chain.

Tradeable assets at launch include Circle's USYC money market fund, BlackRock's BUIDL treasury fund tokenized by Securitize, private credit funds and cirBTC, Circle's wrapped bitcoin. Bitwise, Dinari, Janus Henderson, New York Life Investment Management with Centrifuge, Maple, Matrixdock, ProShares and xStocks by Payward are bringing tokenized products to the chain.

Circle says opt-in privacy, using confidential transactions and balances with view keys, is in development for network-wide release rather than live today. Post-quantum signatures are supported now.

CRCL Falls 11% Into LaunchCircle stock closed at $86.30 on Tuesday, down 11.41% on the day, for a market value of $21.91 billion, Stock Analysis data shows. The shares have traded between $49.90 and $159.47 over the past year. Crypto equities fell on Tuesday after the Senate voted 49-50 against taking up the CLARITY Act, short of the 60 votes cloture needed. Republicans had posted what they called the bill's final text the day before.

USDC had a market value of $73.73 billion on $19.9 billion of 24-hour volume, per CoinGecko. Circle's release puts circulation above $74 billion.

Arc's permissioned design has drawn objections since Circle first described the chain. In the open-versus-permissioned debate The Defiant covered on Aug. 12, Adam Cochran, a partner at Cinneamhain Ventures, said "this isn't an L1 and it's offensive to call it such," arguing that "there are never economic incentives to be a faithful validator, and that's why they have to make it a private consortium." Mitchell DiRaimondo, founder of Steelwave Digital, said the design "isn't DeFi, and that's the point." He added: "Bold? Yes. Terrible? Only if you confuse it with DeFi infrastructure."

Circle is streaming a launch event at 2 p.m. ET and has opened Arc Portal to new users.

Market data as of the Sept. 15 U.S. close and 21:00 UTC on Sept. 15.

Analysis

Two unauthenticated Critical CVEs in the same PAM platform, same disclosure day. Four Critical CVEs in two weeks. The infrastructure designed to protect identity becomes the attack surface.

The vault that holds everyone’s keys has its own lock broken Delinea Secret Server, a privileged access management platform designed to secure the enterprise’s most sensitive credentials, has become a high-value attack surface. On September 15, 2026, the company disclosed two unauthenticated Critical vulnerabilities. CVE-2026-15638 and CVE-2026-15640 were both fixed in release 12.2.000007, which arrived on August 28.

The padding oracle CVE-2026-15638 is a cryptographic padding oracle with a CVSS v4.0 score of 9.1. It affects versions 10.5.1 through 12.1.3. An unauthenticated attacker with network access can leverage the oracle to decrypt or encrypt data using the server’s cryptographic keys. The keys themselves are not exposed, but the ability to manipulate encrypted data within a vault that manages SSH keys, API tokens, database credentials, and service account passwords effectively undermines the confidentiality of the entire credential store.

The release notes for 12.2.000007 confirm the fix under bug 743353: “Cryptographic Weakness in Pre-Authentication Sign-In Features.” The vulnerability is categorized as CWE-327 – Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm.

The SAML bypass CVE-2026-15640 presents a more direct path to total compromise. This SAML authentication bypass, rated at 9.5 on the CVSS v4.0 scale, stems from assertion signature wrapping – CWE-290, Authentication Bypass by Spoofing. It affects versions 10.5.0 through 12.1.3. An unauthenticated attacker can impersonate any user, including administrators. By bypassing the authentication layer, an attacker gains the same level of access as a legitimate privileged user, rendering the platform’s security controls moot.

The release notes confirm this fix under bug 743573: “SAML Authentication Bypass Through Assertion Signature Wrapping.” Two Critical CVEs, both unauthenticated, both in the same PAM platform, both disclosed the same day.

Four Critical CVEs in two weeks These two disclosures are not isolated. They are part of a broader cluster. In the two weeks surrounding these disclosures, Secret Server accumulated four Critical CVEs. In addition to the padding oracle and SAML bypass, the platform suffered from CVE-2026-15639, a reflected cross-site scripting vulnerability rated 9.3 (fixed in 12.0.20), and CVE-2026-19117, a FIDO2 credential registration bypass rated 9.8 (disclosed September 2, fixed in 12.2.7). That last one allowed an attacker to register an attacker-controlled FIDO2 credential against a target account and authenticate as that user. All four vulnerabilities are on-premises only.

Four Critical CVEs in two weeks in a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Privileged Access Management is a signal worth pausing on.

The structural argument When a PAM platform suffers unauthenticated bypasses, the entire security model it was deployed to enforce collapses. Secret Server manages SSH keys, API tokens, database credentials, and service account passwords – the credentials that, if compromised, give an attacker access to everything else. Centralized credential management creates a single point of failure. When that single point is the target, the blast radius is the entire enterprise.

Delinea, formed from the 2021 merger of Thycotic and Centrify, is a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for PAM. Its customer base includes major enterprises: BankUnited, HubSpot, Honda, ESPN, BP, and Cisco. The global PAM market is estimated at approximately $4.51 billion in 2026, projected to reach $30.69 billion by 2034. As the market grows, the incentive for attackers to target these platforms grows with it.

Connections to prior coverage The Delinea situation confirms a recurring structural pattern documented across prior T/I/S coverage. When the SonicWall SMA1000 leaked TOTP MFA seeds, when the Cisco FMC management plane produced three CISA KEV entries in 2026, when ShieldCrash turned Microsoft Defender’s own scanning engine into a SYSTEM-level file-read vector, and when OpenAI agents exploited identity infrastructure limitations to weaponize public websites – in each case, the infrastructure designed to protect identity or enforce security boundaries became the primary attack surface. Secret Server extends that pattern from network infrastructure and endpoint protection to the vault itself.

What to watch Organizations running Secret Server on-premises must verify their patch status immediately. Versions 10.5.0 through 12.1.3 are affected by at least three of the four Critical CVEs. The fix is version 12.2.7 or later. Beyond patching, security teams should audit logs for anomalous authentication activity, SAML assertion patterns, and unauthorized vault access – the window between the August 28 release and the September 15 advisory disclosure may have provided an opportunity for exploitation by actors who reverse-engineered the fix.

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Injective, a blockchain network focused on finance and interoperability, will hold an official side event during Korea Blockchain Week 2026 in Seoul on September 29. The invitation-only gathering aims to foster dialogue among policymakers, finance professionals, and leading Web3 companies about tokenization and stablecoin adoption.

Seoul event to spotlight tokenization and stablecoinsScheduled from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. KST, the event features keynote speeches, a dedicated panel on tokenization and stablecoins, and networking opportunities for approved participants. The guest list includes major organizations such as LG CNS, SMBC Nikko Securities, Coinbase, and BDACS.

Industry stakeholders in South Korea have increasingly turned their attention toward digital asset regulation and security token offering frameworks. This event is designed to connect leading Korean companies with international blockchain projects, aiming to bridge local and global developments in tokenized finance.

Bringing together Korea’s domestic financial institutions with major blockchain players from across Asia and the United States, the event will explore how tokenization and stablecoin innovation can transform regulated finance and cross-border commerce.

Institutional partnerships strengthen Injective’s presence in KoreaInjective has expanded its footprint in Korea’s emerging digital asset sector. In July, POSCO International and LG CNS, two prominent Korean corporations, selected Injective for a live pilot using tokenized trade receivables to streamline receivables management. The upcoming Seoul event will build on this partnership, aligning tokenization efforts with broader market initiatives.

In September, Injective debuted Mint, a platform that allows institutions to issue and oversee tokenized assets on-chain while meeting compliance requirements. Mint lets users define new digital assets, establish user permissions, and transfer assets to the blockchain without custom development. Through these developments, Injective aims to support an institutional infrastructure for tokenized finance.

Mini dictionary: LG CNS is a leading IT services provider in South Korea, known for its work in digital transformation and blockchain integration across various industries.

Stablecoins, cross-network standards, and INJ token performanceStablecoins are set to be a central topic at the Seoul event. In September, Injective announced that its native USDC stablecoin became the default standard for Cosmos and dYdX networks, aiming to reduce fragmentation by creating a unified issuance channel for participating blockchain ecosystems.

For institutional finance, stablecoins are essential for providing liquidity in settlement, payments, and treasury operations. Injective has highlighted that its USDC infrastructure supports applications built on both EVM and Wasm architectures, enabling compatibility with different blockchain environments. This positions stablecoin settlement as a core part of Injective’s institutional offering along with tokenized asset infrastructure.

At last report, INJ, the native token of Injective, was trading near $5.52, with a market capitalization just above $552 million and a daily trading volume topping $102 million. Data showed INJ had climbed approximately 35% in the past 30 days, signaling renewed investor interest.

MetricCurrent (Sept)All-Time High (March 2024)ChangeINJ Price$5.52$52.75-89.46%Market Cap$552.03 million——Trading Volume (24h)$102.24 million——Despite the recent uptrend, INJ remains about 89% below its March 2024 high of $52.75. This suggests the token’s market recovery is still incomplete following earlier corrections.

The Seoul event may bolster institutional adoption for Injective, but sustainable network growth will depend more on active partnerships and measurable use cases than event attendance alone.

Key figures in the cryptocurrency sector have opposed the growing narrative that Robinhood Chain is faltering after a recent dip in its network fee revenue, arguing that this trend is the result of a strategic reduction in transaction fees rather than a decline in user demand.

Fee cuts drive falling revenues but stable trading volumesRobinhood, a financial services company known for its mobile-based trading platform, recently raised the gas limit on its blockchain network and lowered user fees. As a consequence, on-chain revenue dropped significantly.

Despite the decrease in revenue, daily decentralized finance (DeFi) trading volumes have remained robust. Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly, shared supporting data on X, posting a chart where Robinhood Chain’s revenues declined even as decentralized exchange (DEX) trading activity persisted at strong levels.

Qureshi reported that Robinhood Chain is maintaining its position as “solidly #2 behind Solana” in terms of volume, and noted that many commentators mistakenly interpret lower network revenues as a failure.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams echoed this perspective, highlighting that most DEX activity on the chain flows through Uniswap, accounting for 95% of all trades. He commented that declaring the chain “dead” based solely on fee charts overlooks the network’s expanded capacity and steady demand.

Adams observed that the uptick in capacity was intended to meet surging demand for blockspace on the chain, supporting continued strong activity despite lower fee revenue.

According to DefiLlama, Robinhood Chain posted $403,000 in protocol revenue and about $448,600 in user fees over a recent 24-hour period, compared to $1.81 billion in DEX trading volume during the same period. Over the past week, its DEX volume exceeded $12.77 billion, a weekly increase of nearly 23%.

Debate over profitability and business modelAnatoly Yakovenko, cofounder of Solana Labs—a blockchain development company—offered a skeptical view, arguing that aggressively lowering fees renders the blockchain a low-margin pursuit for Robinhood and could expose it to stronger competition from other consumer-facing applications such as Fomo and Phantom. Yakovenko suggested this approach may risk the company’s brand in favor of thin margins at the infrastructure level.

He noted that by lowering transaction costs, Robinhood may be giving an advantage to rival interfaces, which can now access the chain at equally competitive rates and attract users away from Robinhood’s own frontend services.

The core disagreement remains whether prioritizing network activity over protocol profitability is sustainable for Robinhood Chain in the long term.

On-chain data shows growth in assets and usersSince its launch on July 1, Robinhood Chain’s total value locked (TVL) has surpassed $937 million, approaching the $1 billion mark. The market capitalization of stablecoins circulating on the network is now above $1 billion, reflecting a 12% increase week over week and a 72% rise over the past month.

USDG, a stablecoin on the chain, makes up more than 68% of the total stablecoin value, followed by Ethena’s USDe stablecoin.

Mini dictionary: TVL (Total Value Locked), a key metric in DeFi that tracks the aggregate value of assets held within a blockchain protocol’s smart contracts, often used to gauge overall adoption and liquidity.

Uniswap and Arbitrum’s role on Robinhood ChainUniswap charges a trading fee of 0.465% for transactions on Robinhood Chain, more than double the 0.214% rate on other networks. This higher fee tier stems from the presence of tokenized stocks, which are traded at premium fee levels. These fees contribute to Uniswap’s buy-and-burn mechanism that supports the value of its UNI token.

Robinhood Chain, built on Arbitrum technology, has a revenue-sharing agreement with Arbitrum. Under this arrangement, 10% of Robinhood Chain’s net protocol revenue is returned—8% to the Arbitrum DAO treasury and 2% to a developer fund.

Arbitrum is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum, focusing on faster and cheaper transactions by bundling many transactions together and settling them on the Ethereum mainnet.

On September 15, Standard Chartered initiated coverage of ARB, Arbitrum’s native token. The bank forecasted that ARB could reach $10 by 2030, nearly 70 times higher than its current price of approximately $0.147. Standard Chartered referenced Robinhood Chain’s protocol revenues as a key contributor to Arbitrum’s projected growth.

Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, noted that Robinhood Chain’s launch could help solidify Arbitrum’s position as a leading network for bringing traditional finance assets on-chain. Kendrick estimated that Arbitrum’s revenue run rate is now $5 million per month, up more than five times compared to its levels before July.

MetricRobinhood ChainSolanaArbitrumDEX Volume (24h)$1.81 billionHigherN/ATVL$937 millionN/AN/AUniswap Fee Rate0.465%N/A0.214%Arbitrum Revenue Share10% to Arbitrum (8% DAO, 2% Dev)N/AN/A

BitMart has launched a dedicated user engagement portal for questions about withdrawals and its future plans, giving customers a formal channel to submit concerns as financial adviser Alvarez & Marsal reviews the exchange’s position.

Summary

BitMart has launched a user portal for withdrawal enquiries, general feedback and potential restructuring proposals. Submissions will be reviewed by BitMart, Alvarez & Marsal and the exchange’s legal advisers as part of an ongoing assessment. The portal will not process individual withdrawals, and submitting a ticket will not change the status of an account or assets. BitMart plans to appoint an independent third party to oversee operations and the safekeeping of assets during the review. According to BitMart’s official announcement, the portal will collect questions, concerns and feedback covering withdrawal arrangements, the exchange’s action plan and its future direction. Submissions will be considered as part of an assessment being conducted by BitMart, Alvarez & Marsal and the company’s legal advisers.

The portal comes one week after BitMart appointed Alvarez & Marsal as its financial adviser on Sept. 9. As crypto.news previously reported, A&M was brought in to assess the exchange’s finances, stakeholder claims and withdrawal arrangements after trading had been suspended.

BitMart said at the time that a dedicated user feedback portal would be published within five business days. The company expected to provide details of its action plan and consultation process within three weeks of the Sept. 9 announcement.

BitMart portal accepts withdrawal and restructuring enquiries Users accessing the portal must select “User Engagement Portal” as the issue type. Submissions made under other categories will be processed as regular customer support tickets and will not form part of the assessment process, BitMart said.

Customers are asked to provide an email address, with existing users encouraged to use the address registered to their BitMart account. A BitMart ID can be provided but is optional.

The portal separates submissions into four categories: withdrawal-related enquiries, general feedback, potential investor or restructuring proposals, and other enquiries. Users can provide a subject, description, relevant dates or transaction references and supporting files.

Submitting the form does not immediately complete the process. BitMart said users will receive a verification message from [email protected] and must click the link in that email before the submission is formally filed. A confirmation containing a ticket number is then sent once verification is complete.

The exchange asked users to submit only one ticket for each issue, saying duplicate tickets would not speed up the review. While every verified submission will be recorded and reviewed, BitMart warned that the volume of correspondence could prevent individual responses to every user.

Portal will not process individual BitMart withdrawals BitMart stressed that the portal does not function as an individual withdrawal processing system. Filing a ticket will not change the status of a user’s account or assets.

Withdrawal access has remained one of the main issues surrounding the exchange since it began winding down its trading operations in July.

BitMart announced its phased shutdown on July 26 after reviewing its operating conditions, market environment and future strategy. The company stopped new registrations, crypto and fiat deposits and new spot orders, while futures accounts moved into reduce-only mode.

Trading services ended on Aug. 26 under the timetable announced by the exchange. BitMart originally planned to terminate its wider trading platform operations on Jan. 31, 2027, while retaining limited account access for users to view records and submit withdrawals.

Questions about customer access to funds had surfaced before trading ended. On Aug. 17, a group of users and employees called for reserve disclosures and demanded information about assets, liabilities, wallets and reserves available to meet withdrawals.

The group asked BitMart to publish a repayment plan and allow independent third-party scrutiny of its financial position. Its statement said a large number of customers were unable to withdraw assets, while some employees had not received salary or compensation owed to them.

BitMart had previously maintained that withdrawals remained available during its wind-down, though requests could be subject to identity checks, sanctions screening, source-of-funds reviews and wallet ownership verification.

BitMart has been considering a phased restart The exchange’s plans changed in August when it began considering restructuring options instead of proceeding solely with the original shutdown.

On Aug. 21, BitMart said it was evaluating creditor distributions alongside the possible phased restart of selected operations. White & Case was appointed as restructuring counsel to help assess the available options.

The proposal did not amount to an approved restart. BitMart said any resumption would remain subject to legal, financial, operational and regulatory reviews, while the announcement did not specify creditor eligibility, payout percentages or the amount of assets available for distributions.

No public bankruptcy petition or court-supervised restructuring process had been identified when the plan was announced.

The new portal now provides a specific category for potential investors or restructuring proposals, allowing such submissions to enter the assessment being conducted with the exchange’s advisers.

A&M’s appointment on Sept. 9 added another external adviser to that process. BitMart said the firm would assist in reviewing its current operations and asset position before related financial information was released.

At the time of the appointment, the exchange had not published an audited asset balance, creditor recovery rate or timetable for restricted withdrawals.

Independent third party remains part of BitMart plan BitMart said information submitted through the portal will be accessible to the company and its advisers for the ongoing assessment and retained under its data retention policy.

The exchange warned customers about impersonation attempts during the process. It said the official portal published through its own channels is the only feedback portal and that verification and confirmation emails will come from [email protected].

Users were told to disregard other links or contacts claiming to offer feedback, claims processing or asset recovery services on BitMart’s behalf. The company said it will never request passwords, two-factor authentication codes, private keys or seed phrases.

Similar warnings were issued when the exchange announced its shutdown in July, when BitMart told customers that it would not charge an expedited withdrawal fee or request account credentials and private wallet information.

The company plans to release further updates on its action plan and the financial assessment while working toward the appointment of an independent third party to oversee operations and the safekeeping of assets during the process.

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded their largest day of outflows since late June after a major crypto bill stalled in the Senate.

The 13 US-listed funds saw a net $450.4 million outflow on Tuesday, after attracting $159.9 million on Monday, according to data from Farside. It marks the largest outflow since June 24, when Bitcoin ETFs lost $469 million as a tech stock sell-off pressured risk assets.

Data shows Fidelity’s FBTC saw the biggest outflows, shedding $214.8 million, followed by $161.7 million from the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust, $44.1 million from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), $17.4 million from ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and $12.4 million from Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB).

Bitcoin is trading at $75,700, down 2.5% over the last 24 hours at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.

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.

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Ripple’s developer arm RippleX has declared the XRP Ledger’s Batch amendment ready for activation, publishing a technical review on Monday that explains how the feature was rebuilt after a critical security flaw was found in the original version. The corrected Batch V1.1 ships in xrpld v3.3.0 and will let multiple transactions from different accounts settle atomically in a single ledger close — a capability RippleX frames as foundational for atomic swaps and multi-party coordination on the network.

Why the Original Batch Was Pulled The original Batch amendment, XLS-56, was set aside after security researchers and Cantina AI flagged a critical flaw in its signature-validation routine on Feb. 19, 2026. The checkBatchSign function, which confirms each inner-transaction account has authorized a batch, contained an early-return bug: when it hit a signer whose account did not yet exist on the ledger, it returned success and skipped validation of every remaining signer. RippleX said the flaw could have let an attacker execute transactions on behalf of victim accounts without their private keys. Because the amendment was still in its voting phase and had not activated on mainnet, no funds were at risk.

How Batch V1.1 Was Hardened Batch V1.1 is a replacement amendment that eliminates the early-return bug. RippleX said the root-cause fix was merged through pull request #6446 and reviewed by four senior engineers, with additional assurance from a Sherlock Batch Attackathon contest, a Halborn re-assessment and a Common Prefix audit. An AI-assisted static analysis pipeline that includes a Cantina scan has been folded into the release process, alongside regression testing on devnet and testnet. The amendment ships in the xrpld v3.3.0 release, which bundles it with five other proposals.

Atomic Transactions and What Comes Next Batch is designed to let several XRPL transactions execute as a single all-or-nothing unit, so a batch either fully succeeds or fully reverts — a design aimed at atomic swaps and coordinated settlements. Like every XRP Ledger amendment, Batch V1.1 must hold an 80 percent validator majority for 14 consecutive days before it activates, according to the network’s amendment tracker, so it remains in its voting phase for now. The ledger has drawn wider attention this month: the Bank for International Settlements recently tested the network to anchor official statistics on-chain, while XRP has pushed deeper into traditional finance as ETF demand and derivatives access expand.

AUTHOR

Blockchain analyst specializing in the regulatory impact of government policies on the crypto industry. Known for his thorough research and clear, engaging writing, Emmanuel provides insightful analysis on the latest trends, market shifts, and emerging crypto innovations. His work aims to educate and inform both novice and experienced readers, offering expert perspectives on the fast-evolving world of digital assets. With a passion for staying ahead of the curve, Ogwu is a trusted voice in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.

The CLARITY Act failed to advance in the US Senate on Tuesday, September 15, dealing a major setback to the crypto industry’s biggest regulatory push in years.

Senators voted 49-50 on a procedural motion to move forward with the bill. It needed 60 votes. The vote was on whether the Senate should begin considering the legislation, rather than final passage.

So why did it fail?

1. Democrats Wanted Trump to Sell Large Crypto Holdings
This became the biggest disagreement in the final hours.

Republicans made a major concession before the vote. Their final bill required senior officials with a “significant financial interest” in certain crypto companies to either sell that interest or place it in a qualified blind trust.

Democrats wanted to go further.

Their final counteroffer would have required officials with a “very large interest” in a crypto company to sell it, removing the blind-trust option for those holdings. Democratic negotiator Angela Alsobrooks said divestment was the major unresolved issue before the vote.

The difference is simple. Under the Republican proposal, an official could remain financially invested through a blind trust. Democrats wanted very large interests sold completely.

Crypto billionaires have spent nearly $300M on the midterm elections.

Meanwhile, Trump and his family have pocketed more than $1.4B from crypto deals.

Now the crypto industry wants Congress to do its bidding by passing the corrupt CLARITY Act.

The Senate must say NO.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 15, 2026

2. Democrats Wanted the Rules to Cover Trump’s Children
The Republican bill covered senior elected officials, federal judges and their spouses. Democrats wanted the ethics restrictions expanded further, including to children of covered officials. 

That was particularly relevant because Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump have links to World Liberty Financial.

The Democratic counteroffer also sought tighter restrictions around paid crypto promotions.

Republicans rejected those additional changes on Tuesday morning. Sen. Cynthia Lummis’ office argued Democrats were repeating demands Republicans had already considered during months of negotiations.

Today, I voted no on the Clarity Act, legislation meant to regulate cryptocurrency in America.

The ethics provisions in this bill are simply too thin. President Trump, his children, and his Cabinet are making billions of dollars in the crypto space, in part from bilking everyday…

— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) September 15, 2026

3. Democrats Still Had Concerns About Who Would Enforce the Rules
Republicans had already moved considerably on enforcement.

Earlier versions gave the US attorney general the main enforcement role. Democrats argued that created an obvious problem: a Justice Department controlled by the president could be responsible for enforcing ethics rules against that same president.

The final Republican bill gave state attorneys general a role in enforcement, one of the concessions President Trump accepted before the vote.

Democrats still argued that the mechanism left too much authority inside the federal administration and could make enforcement difficult in practice.

Hot take: Trump coin, World Liberty, USD1, and Melania coin are why CLARITY failed.

An unprecedented $1.3 billion pocketed. More than all past U.S. presidents made during their terms combined.

— Dennis Porter (@Dennis_Porter_) September 15, 2026

4. Banks and Crypto Companies Were Still Fighting Over Stablecoin Rewards
Ethics was the final major obstacle, but another fight remained unresolved.

Banks have warned that stablecoins paying rewards could pull deposits out of traditional banks. That could particularly hurt smaller community banks that rely on deposits to fund loans.

The final CLARITY draft gave the Treasury secretary temporary authority to restrict stablecoin rewards if they caused damaging deposit outflows.

Some lawmakers still wanted stronger protection for banks. Sen. Josh Hawley, one of the Republicans who opposed advancing the bill, raised concerns about community banks.

The CLARITY Act didn't advance in the Senate today, which was a disappointment. While it's possible bi-partisan conversations continue and it lives to fight another day, we can't wait on Congress anymore.

The SEC and CFTC have the tools they need to create clear rules under…

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) September 15, 2026

5. Illicit Finance and DeFi Rules Were Still an Issue
Democrats also wanted stronger protections around money laundering, national security and illicit finance.

The latest Republican draft made changes to DeFi regulation and anti-money laundering requirements. However, lawmakers including Elizabeth Warren argued that more work was still needed.

These issues contributed to the wider disagreement, although divestment and presidential ethics were the clearest final sticking points.

Crypto Prices Fell Before the Vote Was Even Over
The reaction has been clearly negative, especially in assets most exposed to U.S. crypto regulation. Bitcoin fell more than 5% during Tuesday’s sell-off, while Coinbase and Circle shares fell as much as 10%. Ethereum dropped more than 6%, while XRP lost roughly 12% at one point.

Part of the decline began before the Senate vote.

Markets could see negotiations breaking down during the morning. That meant traders were already reducing risk before senators officially voted.

CLARITY was also only one source of pressure.

US Treasury yields climbed above 5%, oil prices surged above $100 and markets were preparing for a Federal Reserve interest-rate decision on September 16. Higher interest rates generally make risk assets such as crypto less attractive.

Will Crypto Prices Keep Falling?
Further losses are possible, although CLARITY alone may have already caused most of its immediate damage.

Dennis Porter, co-founder of Satoshi Action Fund, made this argument to BeInCrypto more than a month before the vote.

“I think failure is priced in right now,” Porter told BeInCrypto.

At the time, Polymarket gave CLARITY only around a 16% chance of becoming law in 2026. Porter argued that a failed vote could therefore have less impact on crypto prices than many investors expected.

He also said clear rules could encourage larger institutions to make longer-term crypto investments. He expected that benefit to appear gradually rather than produce an immediate Bitcoin rally.

So far, that argument has partly held up.

Bitcoin suffered a meaningful decline after negotiations collapsed, but there has been no CLARITY-driven market crash on the scale that might occur after a completely unexpected regulatory shock.

Assets more directly exposed to US crypto regulation were hit harder. XRP fell much more sharply than Bitcoin, while Coinbase suffered a double-digit decline.

The next major market driver is now likely to be the Federal Reserve.

If rates rise and the Fed signals further tightening, crypto could face more pressure. A softer message could instead help risk assets recover.

What Happens to the CLARITY Act Now?
The bill is stalled, but there is still a route to revive it.

September 15: The Senate failed to invoke cloture, with the vote ending 49-50.
Before October 5: Senators could reopen negotiations and attempt another procedural vote if Republicans and Democrats reach a new compromise.
October 5-November 6: The Senate is scheduled for a state work period covering the November 3 midterm elections.
After November 6: Congress could try again during the post-election session.
December 18: The Senate’s current schedule lists this as its target adjournment date.
January 2027: If Congress does not pass the legislation before the current Congress ends, lawmakers would have to introduce legislation again in the next Congress.

There is one important procedural detail.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis switched his vote to “no” at the end of Tuesday’s vote, preserving a route to seek reconsideration later. That means another attempt remains possible if negotiators can find enough votes.

For now, the biggest question is whether Republicans and Democrats are willing to reopen the ethics negotiations.

Without a compromise on divestment and enforcement, CLARITY still does not have the 60 Senate votes it needs to move forward.

Disclaimer

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Kaspa's Toccata hard fork went live on mainnet on June 30, 2026, marking a significant step in the network's push toward base-layer programmability.

What Toccata Actually Changes Under Toccata, , effectively letting a native Kaspa UTXO hold and enforce application state across transactions.

Core developer @michaelsuttonil described Toccata as a step toward "synchronously composable verifiable programs," framing it as the infrastructure layer that precedes a more ambitious programmability model.

vProgs: The Next Stage Toccata is explicitly a precursor to vProgs, short for verifiable programs. The model would allow application logic to run off-chain, with a zero-knowledge proof posted to base-layer nodes for verification, keeping L1 lean while enabling more complex computation.

The next major protocol upgrade on Kaspa's roadmap after vProgs is DAGKnight, targeting adaptive consensus and higher throughput.

Sources:
Kaspa Official Docs: Toccata Dev Guide
Michael Sutton: Kaspa Covenants++ Toccata Hard-Fork Outlook (Medium)
KaspaHub: Kaspa Toccata Hard Fork Overview

LayerZero Labs dropped a significant ecosystem update on September 15, 2026, and the changes are substantial enough to affect every participant in the LayerZero and Stargate ecosystems. Token holders, developers, and bridge users all have deadlines to track now.

The most consequential item: STG token holders have until December 15, 2026 to convert their tokens to ZRO. After that date, the conversion window closes permanently.

What’s actually changing, and when The fixed conversion rate sits at 1 STG = 0.08634 ZRO, a figure locked in during the acquisition terms agreed upon in 2025. That math won’t change before the deadline, but access to it will.

On the transaction side, Stargate is moving to an exclusively Taxi-based model starting October 1, 2026. Currently, Stargate offers different transaction modes with different speed and cost trade-offs. Taxi is the faster option, prioritizing speed over batching efficiency. After October 1, it becomes the only option.

The practical implication is straightforward: users who’ve built workflows or integrations around other transaction modes will need to update them before the October deadline, which arrives well before the December token conversion cutoff.

LayerZero is also trimming its testnet footprint. By the end of October 2026, supported testnets will be reduced to approximately ten prioritized networks. Developers building or testing on less-trafficked testnets should verify whether their environment makes the cut.

Bug bounties get restructured The bug bounty programs are also seeing a meaningful overhaul. The V1 bug bounty program ends on December 15, 2026, timed to coincide with the deprecation of the V1 Relayer. When the infrastructure goes offline, so does the bounty tied to it.

The V2 program is expanding significantly. LayerZero is scaling the V2 bug bounty to $3.5 million, and it will absorb the legacy Stargate program under that umbrella. Security researchers currently participating under the older Stargate bounty will want to familiarize themselves with the V2 structure to ensure continued eligibility.

Reading the strategy behind the deadlines Taken together, these changes describe a protocol in active consolidation mode. LayerZero is pruning the components of its ecosystem that reflect earlier-stage development: V1 infrastructure, underutilized testnets, legacy transaction modes, and the STG token’s independent existence as a separate asset.

The STG-to-ZRO conversion has been available since the 2025 acquisition, but a meaningful portion of STG supply likely remains unconverted. Hard deadlines are effective at prompting action in a way that open-ended availability simply isn’t. Expect conversion volume to pick up materially as December 15 approaches.

The shift to exclusive Taxi transactions on Stargate reflects a different kind of consolidation. Offering multiple transaction modes creates user experience complexity and requires maintaining parallel infrastructure. Standardizing on Taxi simplifies the product surface for users and likely reduces operational overhead for the team.

For developers, the testnet reduction is the change most likely to require immediate attention. Testnet deprecations tend to be quieter than mainnet changes but can be disruptive to teams running continuous integration against a network that’s suddenly unsupported. LayerZero’s move to roughly ten prioritized testnets suggests a philosophy of depth over breadth, supporting fewer environments more robustly rather than spreading resources across a long tail of low-activity chains.

STG holders who have been waiting for a convenient moment to convert now have a firm reason to stop waiting. The December 15 deadline is roughly three months out from the September 15 announcement, which is enough runway to act without urgency, but not enough to forget about it entirely.

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

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Quick Take 1. HYPE trades at $78.99, down 6.13% over the week, roughly 5.4% below the record $83.50 it set on August 25 and back under the round number.

2. The token released 14,175,778 HYPE on August 29, its largest monthly unlock, with 46.6% going to insiders and early investors rather than to a treasury.

3. It is the weakest weekly performer among the large caps on this tape, against Zcash at plus 1.13% and XRP at plus 0.41%.

Hyperliquid has given back its August advance. HYPE trades at $78.99, down 0.77% on the day and 6.13% on the week, making it the softest of the large caps on a session where the broader market was mixed and 27 of the QC 100 constituents advanced.

Live price data via CoinGecko. Total crypto market capitalization sits at $2.62 trillion with Bitcoin at $76,863.90, itself down 1.87% on the week.

What did this site say before the unlock? That this release was structurally different from the one three weeks earlier, and that August’s soft landing was not a template.

On August 28 we covered the upcoming release of 14,175,778 HYPE, worth roughly $1.2 billion, and focused on the recipient split rather than the headline size: 46.6% to insiders and early investors, 46.3% to the community, 7% to the Hyper Foundation.

The comparison mattered because we had covered the previous unlock differently. On August 7, after a release the market had feared as a $620 million event, we reported that the committed claim came to about $22.65 million and wrote that the shadow had been bigger than the monster. The caveat attached to that piece was explicit: soft landings are a pattern, not a promise.

We also published the historical base rate rather than a prediction: HYPE fell 14.1% after May’s release, gained 1% in June, and declined 7% in July. Three of four produced declines, none produced a collapse. The current 6.13% weekly decline sits inside that range.

Did the unlock cause this? Not provably, and saying otherwise would be reading a cause into a correlation.

Two boundaries belong on any claim here. Bitcoin is down 1.87% on the week itself, so part of HYPE’s decline is market beta rather than token-specific supply. And an unlock releases tokens rather than selling them; whether recipients distributed is visible on-chain through exchange inflows, which is the evidence that would settle the question and which this article does not have.

What can be said is narrower and still useful. The recipient split pointed toward more selling pressure than August’s release, the token has since underperformed both the market and its own sector, and the outcome is consistent with the framework rather than contradicting it. That is different from proof.

A token unlock is the scheduled release of previously locked tokens into circulation, and its price impact depends more on who receives them than on how many are released.

What happened to the catalysts? They have not gone away, and neither has produced anything concrete.

The rally into August’s record rested on two items. President Trump said the CFTC was working toward a compliant US pathway for Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures, and the protocol activated AQAv2, which directs USDC reserve yield into HYPE buybacks with a first payout scheduled for October.

The regulatory item remains a stated intention with no published timeline, and any formal action would appear on the CFTC’s own site before it appears anywhere else. The buyback has not made its first payout, so its projected figures remain forecasts rather than facts. October is when that number becomes checkable.

What is HYPE’s valuation now? Roughly 39 times annualized revenue at current prices, down from about 41 times at the record but still far above where this site first measured it.

On August 7, with HYPE at $55.83 and a market capitalization near $12.3 billion, we calculated roughly 24 times annualized protocol revenue using a daily revenue base of about $1.39 million. At $78.99 the capitalization is near $20 billion, which on the same revenue base implies approximately 39 times.

The boundary is unchanged from when we first published it: a multiple built on a single day’s revenue is a snapshot, and AQAv2’s contribution is projected rather than realized. Protocol fee data updates daily on DefiLlama for anyone wanting to recompute it.

What levels matter now? $80 above as the round number just lost, and the $74 to $76 zone below that buyers defended through the August advance.

Reclaiming $80 quickly would mark this as a routine post-unlock pullback inside an uptrend. Losing $74 would suggest the distribution is ongoing rather than finished, and would put the token’s entire August gain in question. The October AQAv2 payout is the next scheduled event capable of changing the picture.

Bottom line HYPE trades at $78.99, down 6.13% on the week, two weeks after an unlock this site flagged as structurally different because 46.6% went to insiders rather than to a treasury, and the decline sits within the range of its previous post-unlock moves.

The August piece said the soft landing was a pattern rather than a promise, and this release tested that caveat. The framework held, which is a smaller claim than a prediction and a more honest one: unlock size tells you almost nothing, the recipient split tells you which way to lean, and the on-chain flow tells you whether you were right.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Crypto assets are extremely volatile and you can lose your entire stake. Always do your own research.

San Francisco-based company Ripple has taken part in a $10 million funding extension for stablecoin-focused payments platform Velocity. 

The funding round, which has now been expanded to an impressive $48 million, has allowed the London-based company to reach a valuation of $200 million. 

It is worth noting that the company behind the XRP cryptocurrency was already an investor in Velocity before the latest expansion took place. 

HOT Stories

The aforementioned round was also backed by such investors as Activant Capital, Capital One Ventures, QED Investors, Coinbase Ventures, and Wintermute Ventures. 

Velocity is working on increasing the efficiency of payment settlements by connecting traditional financial infrastructure with stablecoin rails. 

With the help of the company's platform, stablecoins can serve as an always-on layer for settlements. 

The startup, which was founded in 2025, specifically targets merchants, financial institutions, fintech companies, and payment providers. 

Visa push Earlier this month, Velocity and MVB Financial announced that MVB would participate in a Visa Direct pilot. 

Velocity's tech makes it possible to plug stablecoin-based liquidity directly into MVB's infrastructure. 

Ripple's stablecoin involvement 

Ripple became a major player within the stablecoin sector after issuing its own RLUSD stablecoin. 

According to data provided by CoinGecko, Ripple's RLUSD currently has a market cap of roughly $2.4 billion, which makes it the 42nd biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

In August 2025, Ripple agreed to acquire stablecoin payments company Rail for $200 million. 

TheDAO Security Fund is back with a second round of ETHSecurity Initiatives. Round Two is live and accepting community proposals for onchain security projects, with funding decisions expected by mid-November 2026 and the submission window staying open through late January 2027.

The headline numbers tell the story of ambition: a $600K grant earmarked for a formally verified Vyper compiler and a $300K allocation for a decentralized privacy-preserving detection system built by Auditware. Up to 100 proposals could receive community input and funding this cycle.

From broad strokes to precision cuts Round One distributed over $1.6 million across 135 projects, fueled by 13,805 individual donations from 3,934 donors.

Two proposals already illustrate the shift. The $600K Vyper Foundation grant would fund a formally verified compiler for Vyper, the smart contract language that underpins major protocols including Curve, Yearn, and Lido. Formal verification is the process of mathematically proving that code does what it claims to do.

The second marquee proposal, a $300K grant for Auditware, targets a decentralized endpoint detection and response system with privacy-preserving features.

The 200-person filter One of the more interesting structural changes in Round Two is the role of ETHSecurity Badge holders. These are 200 verified security experts selected through a specific rubric and assisted by AI-driven processes to evaluate and influence which proposals get funded.

The fund’s curators include Vitalik Buterin and Taylor Monahan.

Where the money comes from The fund was established using approximately 69,420 unclaimed ETH from the 2016 DAO hack recovery. Those tokens were repurposed into a staking endowment that now generates an estimated $8 million annually in yield, creating a self-sustaining funding mechanism for Ethereum security work.

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

The use of Tether’s stablecoin, USDT, has come under scrutiny in connection with a failed oil trade between Poland’s largest energy company and Venezuela, resulting in a $230 million loss for the Polish firm in late 2023. The deal involved Orlen Trading Switzerland (OTS), a subsidiary of state-run energy giant Orlen, in its efforts to acquire 6 million barrels of crude oil from Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.

PDVSA turns to stablecoins to circumvent sanctionsAs US financial sanctions made dollar transactions increasingly difficult for PDVSA, the Caracas-based company began requesting that buyers make partial payments using USDT. Tether’s USDT is the most widely used stablecoin worldwide, designed to maintain parity with the US dollar and offer a digital alternative for cross-border transactions.

Orlen agreed to these terms, advancing $230 million largely in USDT in November 2023 through an intermediated transaction structure. The payment was sent to Hannon International Middle East, a Dubai-based trading firm engaged at Orlen’s request. Hannon’s role was to obtain the necessary USDT and facilitate the oil purchase from PDVSA.

Mini dictionary: Orlen is Poland’s dominant, state-owned oil and energy conglomerate, involved in refining, petrochemical production, and fuel distribution across Europe.

Despite the advance payment, most of the funds vanished as they passed through multiple crypto brokers and intermediaries in Dubai and Venezuela. According to David McCoy, managing partner at ADG Legal Abu Dhabi and Hannon’s legal representative, “Hannon became involved in the transaction at Orlen’s request and was not responsible for the transaction’s failure.”

Hannon, engaged by Orlen to facilitate the transaction, maintains it only executed the client’s instructions and denies responsibility for the lost funds or the contract’s breakdown.

Hannon initially obtained $80 million in USDT after sending $230 million to a Dubai financial services company, reportedly paying a $400,000 commission. It later transferred an additional $135 million to Dubai-based Horizon Global but claimed to receive only $85 million in USDT, with Horizon contesting these accusations.

RecipientAmount SentUSDT ReceivedDifferenceDubai Financial Services Company$80 million$80 million$0Horizon Global$135 million$85 million$50 millionGold Mar Int. Trading$30 million$21 million (recovered)$9 millionHannon also sent $30 million to Gold Mar International Trading for USDT conversion, but later recovered only $21 million in February 2024. In January 2024, two USB sticks holding USDT worth $60 million and $50 million were delivered by Hannon employees to a broker in Caracas. A second broker reportedly received access to $11 million in USDT the following month.

Despite these efforts, Orlen’s ship was only loaded with about 500,000 barrels of fuel oil, valued at $28.8 million, on March 8. The contract was officially terminated by Orlen Trading Services on March 28, having received only a fraction of the oil it had paid for.

Polish authorities launch investigationOn January 2025, the Warsaw Regional Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into the oil contract, assessing the total damages for Orlen Trading Services at 1.5 billion Polish zloty (around $378 million). McCoy, representing Hannon, stated his client is not involved in the Polish investigation and declined further comment.

The failed contract has drawn further attention to the risks of using cryptocurrency as a workaround in high-value, cross-border trade, especially in regions affected by international sanctions.

Table of contents

Quick Take 1. UNI trades at $6.5565, up 4.03% on the day, roughly 91% above the $3.43 level at which this site argued in August that the market had not priced Uniswap’s live fee switch.

2. Founder Hayden Adams said on September 9 that the seven-day annualized UNI burn rate crossed $250 million, up from about $200 million days earlier, with a separate reading near $263 million.

3. The driver is Robinhood Chain volume, including a record $1.3 billion single-day DEX session that Uniswap captured most of, which converts directly into fees and therefore into burns.

Uniswap has roughly doubled in a month while the broader market went nowhere. UNI trades at $6.5565, up 4.03% on the day, on a session where 71 of the QC 100 constituents declined and Bitcoin sits 1.87% lower on the week at $76,863.90.

Live price data via CoinGecko.

What did this site say about Uniswap in August? That the fee switch was already live, the burn had already happened, and the token was priced as though neither had occurred.

On August 12, with UNI at $3.43, we published an article closing out a question we had been tracking since July: does the toll ever reach the people who own the booth? The answer was that it already did. The UNIfication proposal passed governance in December 2025 by 125.3 million UNI to 742, with the full record on Uniswap’s governance portal, activating protocol fees on v2 and major v3 pools, funding a buy-and-burn mechanism, and executing a one-time burn of 100 million UNI, about 16% of total supply.

The token had gone nowhere. We wrote that this was “either the market being slow or the market being right that cash flows do not matter here,” said plainly that we leaned toward slow, and added that we would rather say so than pretend the previous eight months of price action supported us.

The market has since moved 91%.

Why is UNI rising now? Because the burn stopped being a mechanism and became a number large enough to matter.

Hayden Adams, Uniswap’s founder, said on September 9 that the protocol’s seven-day annualized UNI burn rate had crossed $250 million a year, up from roughly $200 million days earlier. A separate reading put it near $263 million on September 8.

A seven-day annualized burn rate takes the tokens destroyed over the past week and scales that pace to a full year, so it moves with trading activity rather than describing a fixed annual total. It is a run-rate estimate, not guaranteed revenue and not a cash distribution to holders. The burn transactions themselves are verifiable on Etherscan. That distinction matters and most coverage skips it.

Protocol fee and revenue tables update daily on DefiLlama, which is where the run-rate can be checked independently. The underlying driver is volume from a specific source. Robinhood Chain recorded a single-day decentralized exchange session above $1.3 billion, with Uniswap capturing the bulk of it, and Robinhood’s weekly DEX volume has reached a record $10.47 billion. Tokenized stocks and memecoin trading account for most of that activity. Every swap generates fees, and with the fee switch live, a share of those fees funds burns.

How big is the burn relative to the token? Between roughly 2.8% and 6% of supply or market value per year depending on which run-rate you use, which is an order of magnitude above most comparable mechanisms.

One estimate put UNIfication buybacks at around $90 million annually, about 2.8% of supply. Adams’s more recent figure of $250 million or more implies substantially higher. For context from this site’s own running record, Chainlink’s protocol-funded reserve buys roughly 1.2% of its market capitalization per year, and we described that as a real but modest floor mechanism rather than a repricing force. Uniswap’s current pace is several times that.

The boundary belongs immediately after the number. A seven-day rate captured during record volume is the best case, not the base case. If Robinhood Chain’s activity proves to be short-lived interest in a few tokenized stocks and memecoins, the burn falls with it, and UNI returns to being valued on narrative.

What are the risks? Concentration, momentum, and the run-rate itself.

The burn depends heavily on one venue’s volume. A mechanism funded by Robinhood Chain activity inherits Robinhood Chain’s fortunes, and the $1.3 billion day that triggered this repricing was a record rather than a routine session.

Momentum readings have also been stretched through the advance, with daily RSI recorded near 77 at the start of September, deep in overbought territory. A token that has risen 91% in a month has priced a great deal of good news.

What levels matter now? $5.84 below as the level analysts identify as the line holding the structure, and $7 above as the next round-number test.

UNI reached roughly $7.06 on September 5 before easing. Analysts have framed $8 as reachable if buyers clear $6.50 and $7, with a loss of $5.84 raising the risk of a pullback toward the $4.62 and $4.11 moving-average zones. Those targets are conditional on volume persisting rather than derived from the chart alone.

This site’s original marker holds too: $3.00 was the line separating a recovery story from a failed bounce, and it now sits far beneath the price.

Bottom line UNI has risen roughly 91% since August 12, when this site argued its live fee switch and 100 million token burn were unpriced, and the annualized burn rate has since crossed $250 million according to founder Hayden Adams.

The thesis was that crypto would eventually pay for cash flows. It did, though it took a record volume day on a Robinhood-built chain to force the issue rather than the mechanism alone. The open question now is the one the run-rate hides: whether the volume funding these burns is a new baseline or a single extraordinary week being annualized into a story.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Crypto assets are extremely volatile and you can lose your entire stake. Always do your own research.

The University of Michigan has launched "Wolverine Rewards," a blockchain-powered fan loyalty platform built in partnership with @uptop_xyz on the $AVAX network, giving the university's sprawling athletics community a single digital identity to earn and redeem rewards across its programs.

A Single Identity Across 29 SportsThe platform gives fans, students, and alumni one unified digital identifier that tracks engagement in real time across all 29 of Michigan's sports programs as well as affiliated retailers. Points can be redeemed instantly for tickets, apparel, and more, replacing what the university described as an outdated, fragmented process with a fast, consolidated data layer that recognises fan loyalty wherever it happens.

Uptop is a white-label fan loyalty platform built on Avalanche, enabling sports teams and entertainment brands to directly engage with their fans through personalised experiences, targeted rewards, and seamless transactions. For Michigan, that infrastructure now sits beneath one of the largest collegiate athletics operations in the United States.

A Growing Playbook in College and Pro SportsThe Wolverine Rewards launch is part of a broader push by Uptop and Avalanche into organised sports. In October 2024, the Cleveland Cavaliers launched Cavs Rewards, giving fans a chance to connect with the team by turning everyday purchases into experiences, memorabilia, and collectibles, with Uptop leveraging the Avalanche blockchain to deliver a secure and scalable programme.

The model has since spread across both professional and collegiate sport. Baylor Athletics launched a fan rewards platform with Uptop on Avalanche, where fans connect with their favourite teams, earn at participating Baylor sponsors, and use points for tickets, merchandise, and access. The University of Nevada, Reno, also launched Wolf Pack Rewards with Uptop, built on Avalanche.

Uptop also plans to launch a permissioned Layer 1 blockchain, the Uptop Network, on Avalanche to manage loyalty point ledgers and offer greater interoperability. That infrastructure ambition signals the company is positioning itself as a durable layer beneath collegiate and professional sport, rather than a single-team solution.

By using Avalanche to create a scalable, open-loop rewards ecosystem, rewards are owned by fans and are redeemable, tradable, and saved for long-term value. The shift from passive consumer to active participant is designed to create stronger loyalty and more meaningful engagement, while giving teams measurable commercial data in return.

For Michigan, the move reflects a wider trend of major athletic departments adopting blockchain infrastructure not as a novelty, but as a practical tool for fan data and commercial revenue.

Sources:
Avalanche: Uptop Leverages Avalanche to Transform Fan Loyalty
Avalanche: The Future of Fan Engagement (Cavs Rewards Case Study)

Kamino, the lending and liquidity protocol built on Solana, has named Michael Weisz as its new CEO. Weisz co-founded Yieldstreet, an alternative investment platform that deployed over $6 billion across various asset classes and raised more than $250 million in venture and private equity funding.

The appointment, effective September 15, is designed to accelerate Kamino’s institutional growth and its expansion into the US market.

From alternative investments to on-chain lending Weisz spent over two decades in fintech before stepping into the Kamino role. At Yieldstreet, he built a platform that gave retail and institutional investors access to asset classes like real estate, marine finance, and art lending, all traditionally locked behind high minimums and private bank relationships.

The protocol operates as a peer-to-pool lending market on Solana with automated liquidity vaults, supporting leveraged strategies and, increasingly, real-world asset integrations.

Kamino’s numbers tell the story The protocol generated $1.84 million in revenue during Q2 2026. Deposits hit $2.29 billion by the end of the quarter, driven by rapid scaling in several newer markets. The Ethena market alone secured over $500 million in deposits. Kamino’s PRIME segment, which is backed by home equity loans, surpassed $600 million in market size.

Kamino has maintained zero bad debt since inception.

Recent launches include isolated markets, fixed-rate products, and institutional yield vaults. In August 2026, Kamino rolled out a Commodity Yield vault with $25 million in initial USDC capacity, designed to finance real-world commodity trade.

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

The Solana Foundation has rolled out Frontier Traders, a network-level rewards program that aggregates trading activity across 16 founding venues and dishes out VIP perks to high-volume participants.

The program targets institutional and professional traders, including market makers and hedge funds, offering cross-venue rebates, priority RPC infrastructure access, dedicated account management, and community events.

How the tiers work Frontier Traders operates on a volume-based VIP system. Entry-level tiers require a minimum of $10 million in 30-day trading volume. The tiers scale up from there, with the highest thresholds reaching $5B or more in monthly volume. Rebates range from 0.001% to 0.005% depending on tier placement. On $5B of trades, even a 0.005% rebate translates to $250K back in a trader’s pocket.

The 16 founding venues collectively account for over 90% of Solana’s spot and perpetual trading volume. Instead of locking traders into a single platform to earn rewards, Frontier lets them spread activity across the ecosystem and still qualify for benefits.

Over 2,000 traders enrolled in the program shortly after its rollout. Flint Trade joined as an official venue on September 1, 2026, making its trading volume eligible for VIP incentives.

Why Solana is building this now By bundling priority RPC access into the rewards structure, the program gives high-volume traders faster and more reliable connections to the network. One notable promotional campaign was a $25K prize pool contest linked to a SpaceX trading event in June.

What this means for the Solana ecosystem For the 16 founding venues, the program functions as a shared customer acquisition tool subsidized by the Solana Foundation. Smaller DEXs that might struggle to offer competitive maker rebates on their own can now point to Frontier as an added incentive for traders to route orders their way.

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

@BitgetWallet has deployed a suite of tokenized stock tokens, known as rTokens, on the @Arbitrum One network through @RealityFi_xyz. The initial rollout includes $rAAPL, $rSPCX, and $rGOOGL, bringing on-chain representations of some of the most widely tracked U.S. equities directly into Arbitrum's DeFi ecosystem.

What Are rTokens and How Do They Work? rTokens are issued by Reality, a regulated tokenized asset platform backed by Bitget.

Arbitrum as the RWA Settlement Layer The deployment on Arbitrum One is designed to unlock composability across a broad network of DeFi protocols. The integration enables direct liquidity routing through @Uniswap, @SushiSwap, and @Pendle_fi, giving rToken holders access to on-chain trading venues without leaving the Arbitrum ecosystem.

The total value of rTokens deployed on the Arbitrum network now stands at approximately $159 million, reinforcing its position as a leading settlement layer for real-world asset (RWA) products.

The broader context supports the timing of this move.

Sources:
TechBullion: Bitget Wallet Integrates Reality to Bring 1,700+ Tokenized Stocks to 100 Million Users
CoinMarketCap: Bitget Launches Reality Platform to Tokenize US Stocks and ETFs
CoinGecko: RWA Report 2026

Tokyo, Japan, September 15th, 2026, Chainwire

Astar Fi, the onchain personal finance manager incubated by Astar Foundation, today opened its public beta. Portfolio trackers show self-directed holders what they own and stop there. Astar Fi pairs that view with a curated, risk-rated set of opportunities they can do with it: vaults built on Morpho, Aave and Midas, and tokenized assets from issuers including BlackRock, Apollo, Fidelity and Ondo, all published at contract level. This new product is self-custodial, meaning users’ assets remain in their own wallets rather than being held by Astar Fi.

The platform, which has been available on an invite-only basis since Aug. 17, is designed around the gap between seeing onchain assets and being able to act on them. Rather than stopping at portfolio visibility, Astar Fi combines net-worth tracking with a curated set of earning and investing opportunities that users can review from a single interface.

Astar Fi is organized around three core functions. Its Save experience provides a net-worth dashboard covering balances, allocations, trends, inflows and outflows, holdings, and transaction history. Earn provides access to selected DeFi vaults built on Aave, Midas, and Morpho, with risk tiers, Astar Fi ratings, fee disclosures, named oracles, written risk information, and published contract addresses. Invest brings together crypto assets on Ethereum and Base and tokenized investment products on Ethereum, including tokenized stocks and ETFs via Ondo, gold via Paxos, and silver via Matrixdock. Astar Fi is multichain by design, with network coverage expanding over time. Astar Fi does not issue or mint these assets.

The opportunity set available through the product currently includes 225 crypto assets, 436 tokenized stock and ETF records, 140 Morpho vaults, 31 Aave markets, and 16 Midas products. Issuers represented in the product include BlackRock through BUIDL, Apollo through ACRED, Fidelity through FDIT, and Ondo through OUSG and USDY. Astar Fi also surfaces curated vaults by firms including Hyperithm, Gauntlet, Steakhouse, Wintermute, and Galaxy. Each Earn vault is presented with an Astar Fi risk assessment, key risks, applicable fees, its oracle, and the relevant contract address, allowing users to inspect the underlying information before taking action.

“A well-balanced onchain portfolio now holds DeFi positions, tokenized assets, and other digital currencies side by side, and is still managed across different apps. The tools have not caught up with what people are actually holding. That gap is why Astar incubated Astar Fi.”  – Maarten Henskens, Head of Astar Foundation

Access begins with social login, followed by wallet connection. Astar Fi does not charge users a subscription fee or trading fee during the public beta. The product is aimed at crypto-fluent, self-directed holders who manage meaningful onchain assets but may not want to navigate multiple DeFi applications, dashboards, and interfaces to manage them.

With public access now live, Astar Fi is built around a deliberately smaller set than an open marketplace: assets and vaults are selected and rated by Astar Fi, and a rating can be lowered or deposits paused if conditions change. The public beta is available globally, with an initial focus on users in Japan. 

More information about the platform and its underlying product documentation is available at astarfi.com and astarfi.gitbook.io/documentation.

About Astar Fi

Astar Fi is an onchain personal finance manager. It brings a holder’s onchain net worth into a single view and gives them curated, risk-rated ways to earn and invest on it, with assets remaining in the user’s own wallet throughout. Astar Fi is incubated by Astar Collective. More at astarfi.com.

Key Points Six founder wallets transferred WLFI tokens into a vesting smart contract on May 19, establishing the first definitive unlock schedule. President Trump’s position of approximately 14.175 billion WLFI tokens (valued at roughly $800M) corresponds to one of the wallets participating in the contract. Terms include mandatory 10% token destruction, two-year lockup period, and three-year gradual release — making May 2028 the soonest possible date for any sales. Approximately 11,537 wallet addresses voted to approve the governance measure around May 6; enrollment in the program was optional. The vesting smart contract now controls the largest single WLFI position, accounting for nearly 50% of circulating tokens. President Trump’s substantial World Liberty Financial token position, valued at approximately $800 million, now operates under a structured release schedule after on-chain verification showed the tokens were deposited into a vesting smart contract this month.

LATEST: ⚡ A WLFI position matching Trump’s disclosed holdings, worth roughly $800M, has been moved into a vesting contract that burned 10% of the tokens and blocks sales until May 2028. pic.twitter.com/bkbjuOFhAl

— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) September 14, 2026

On-chain transaction data reveals that six wallets containing World Liberty Financial founder allocations transferred a combined 30 billion WLFI tokens into a newly deployed vesting contract on May 19. Protocol rules mandated that each participating wallet destroy 10% of its holdings upon entering the agreement.

The most significant wallet contributed 15.75 billion WLFI tokens and maintained 14.175 billion following the mandatory burn. This quantity aligns precisely with the founder allocation that has been publicly attributed to President Donald Trump’s ownership interest in World Liberty Financial.

These tokens remain completely illiquid under the current structure. The implemented schedule includes a two-year cliff provision, establishing May 2028 as the earliest possible date for any token liquidation, with subsequent releases distributed linearly over an additional three-year timeframe.

The vesting contract has become the dominant WLFI holder, controlling 4.61 billion tokens — representing approximately half of the entire token supply. The mandatory burn mechanism reduced total WLFI supply from 100 billion to 96.7 billion tokens.

Governance Process Behind the Vesting Structure The vesting framework received approval through a community governance vote conducted around May 6, with participation from 11,537 wallet addresses supporting the measure. Founder token holders received the opportunity to exchange their unlimited lockup terms for the new time-based vesting arrangement. Founders who declined to participate continue to hold tokens under indefinite lock conditions.

David Wachsman, serving as a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, verified the transaction activity. “The community voted in support of a founder burn. Co-founders moved their tokens into a smart contract that would effectuate the burn,” he explained, noting that co-founders accepted “the strictest conditions and the longest vesting schedule of all token holders.”

World Liberty Financial representatives emphasized that these token transfers were unrelated to any prospective exchange listings or intentions to liquidate holdings.

Regulatory Context and the Clarity Act The token movements have attracted scrutiny due to concurrent Congressional deliberations on the Clarity Act, proposed legislation that would mandate senior government officials holding significant cryptocurrency positions to either divest or transfer assets into qualified blind trusts. President Trump has reportedly indicated acceptance of this requirement.

Nevertheless, the wallet transfers into the vesting contract occurred several months prior to the most recent Clarity Act draft being finalized, and World Liberty Financial had already published the vesting mechanism’s specifications before wallets actually entered the schedule.

President Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure documents indicate his cryptocurrency-related earnings included approximately $515 million derived from WLFI token transactions executed by World Liberty Financial with external investors.

The Clarity Act has not yet been enacted into law and must secure 60 affirmative Senate votes to proceed.

World Libery Financial (WLFI) Price WLFI is presently valued at $0.0569, reflecting a 1.72% decline during the current trading session.

Stack BTC, a publicly listed company whose entire reason for existing is accumulating Bitcoin, wants to buy a gold dealer for up to £12 million (roughly $16 million). The plan: use the gold business’s cash flow to buy more Bitcoin. The lemonade stand does £52.1 million in annual revenue.

The target is Direct Bullion, a London-based precious metals dealer that posted £2.15 million in post-tax profit for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2026. Stack BTC announced the proposed acquisition on September 15, positioning it as the centerpiece of what the company calls its “dual-engine” business model.

How the deal breaks down The acquisition structure has three layers. First, £3 million in cash drawn from Stack’s existing reserves. Second, approximately £4 million in newly issued shares, priced at a minimum of 6p each and locked up for four years. Third, an earn-out component worth up to £5 million, contingent on Direct Bullion hitting specific EBITDA targets.

That earn-out is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Nearly 42% of the deal’s maximum value depends on performance benchmarks being met, which gives Stack some downside protection if the gold dealer’s numbers soften after the acquisition closes.

This qualifies as a related-party reverse takeover because Paul Withers, a Stack director and chief strategist, controls Direct Bullion. That classification triggers additional due diligence requirements and regulatory approvals before the deal can close.

The strategy behind gold-to-Bitcoin arbitrage By April 2026, the company had accumulated 68.19 BTC in its treasury. Direct Bullion’s financials suggest the acquisition could meaningfully accelerate that accumulation. A business generating north of £50 million in annual revenue and clearing over £2 million in profit gives Stack a legitimate cash engine.

The Farage factor Stack BTC’s investor roster includes Nigel Farage, the former Brexit Party leader and Reform UK figurehead, who holds approximately 6.3% of the company following an investment in March 2026.

What this means for BTC treasury firms Bitcoin treasury companies have traditionally relied on two funding mechanisms: issuing equity or taking on convertible debt. Stack’s approach—acquiring a profitable operating business to generate organic cash flow for Bitcoin purchases—represents a third path.

The related-party nature of this deal adds complexity. Shareholders will need to evaluate whether the £12 million price tag fairly reflects Direct Bullion’s value, or whether the insider dynamic has inflated the terms. The four-year lockup on the equity component is a structural feature of the deal terms.

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

A Bitcoin-Free Blueprint for AdvisorsGrayscale has launched a suite of model portfolios aimed at financial advisors, and its Digital Assets Next Gen strategy gives $XRP a 26.11% allocation, placing it as the second-largest holding in the fund. Ether (ETH) takes the top slot at 42.34% and Solana (SOL) follows at 21.09%. Combined, those three assets account for nearly 89% of the portfolio.

Notably, the model excludes Bitcoin entirely and spans seven crypto funds. A model portfolio is essentially a published recipe: Grayscale selects the assets and the weights, and an advisor copies that mix into client accounts using the firm's exchange-traded funds. The structure is designed to lower the barrier for traditional wealth managers looking to add digital assets to client holdings without building allocations from scratch. Beyond the top three, the remaining weight is spread across Hyperliquid, Chainlink, Avalanche, and Sui.

Context and CaveatsGrayscale's Global Head of Distribution, Laurie Katz, framed the launch around convenience, noting that advisors are increasingly looking for ways to bring digital assets into client portfolios without having to build and maintain allocations asset by asset.

Grayscale charges no separate fee for the models, and the underlying funds carry an average expense ratio of 0.23%. That said, the track record is thin. The model shows a 30.69% net gain since July 27, but that figure reflects just five weeks of history built on one strong August, with the rest of the return table empty.

Six of the model's seven underlying funds currently trade below where they launched. The Grayscale XRP Trust ETF (GXRP), a key vehicle for the XRP slice, sits 38.51% below its launch price. Advisors will need to weigh those figures carefully when presenting the strategy to clients.

The Next Gen portfolio represents a clear signal of where Grayscale sees demand growing: altcoin-heavy, advisor-facing products that sit alongside, rather than inside, more established Bitcoin-focused vehicles.

Sources:
BeInCrypto: Grayscale Just Made XRP 26% of Its New Portfolio for Advisors
GlobeNewswire: Grayscale Investments Launches Grayscale Model Portfolios

Following today’s Ripple news, XRP Ledger’s Batch V1.1 amendment has secured backing from 27 of the network’s 35 trusted validators, or arounf 77%. That leaves the upgrade one validator vote short of the 80% threshold XRPL requires to begin a 14-day activation countdown.

Batch V1.1 would let users bundle as many as eight linked transactions into a single atomic transaction operation, a change relevant to anyone tracking XRPL payment activity.

This is not simply a vote count creeping toward a number. Clearing 28 votes would only start the countdown clock, not switch the feature on. Support has to stay above 80% for the full two weeks, and validators can change their votes during that window, so the current tally is a trigger point rather than a confirmed outcome.

DISCOVER: Meme coin supercycle: Top performers this week

XRPL Upgrade News: What The Validator Vote Actually Unlocks The mechanism functions as follows: once 80% of the 35 trusted validators back Batch V1.1, the amendment enters its 14-day majority period. If support holds, the change activates; if it drops below the threshold before the window closes, the countdown resets. The amendment has not yet gone live on the main network, though it shipped in xrpld 3.3.0 and is currently up for validator vote.

In practice, Batch V1.1 would allow up to eight transactions to execute as one bundle: either all succeed, or all fail. A token swap between two parties could ensure both transfers are completed together rather than leaving one side exposed. Wallets and marketplaces could similarly pair a customer payment with a platform fee in a single operation, a detail that’s been picking up attention across ripple news coverage in recent weeks.

RippleX has said commercial projects built around Batch are already under contract or in development, though it has not named the companies involved.

The Batch V1.1 amendment shipped in xrpld 3.3.0 and is now up for voting.

After the v1.0 signature bug was caught in February (pre-Mainnet, no funds at risk), we rebuilt it: root-cause fix, 4 senior reviewers, a Sherlock attackathon, and audits from Halborn and Common Prefix. We…

— Mayukha Vadari (@msvadari) September 14, 2026

Ripple News: The Security Rewrite Behind Batch V1.1 Based on today’s Ripple news, the current version replaces an earlier Batch proposal that never reached Mainnet after researchers found a flaw that could, under certain conditions, let an attacker include another account’s transactions without approval. Because that version was withdrawn before activation, no funds were ever at risk, according to the XRPL vulnerability disclosure report. Developers replaced it in the Aug. 6 release of XRP Ledger’s 3.3.0 software.

RippleX detailed the follow-up review in a technical write-up published on dev.to, describing checks from four senior engineers, audits from Halborn and Common Prefix, a public Sherlock security contest, and automated testing.

That process turned up 11 additional issues involving signatures, authorization checks, and bugs capable of crashing servers, one of which Common Prefix rated critical because it could have let an attacker reuse a signed permission to execute more transactions than intended.

Industry Implication: Payments Infrastructure Still Waiting On A Vote If Batch V1.1 clears the threshold and holds for 14 days, it would give XRPL a native tool for coordinating multi-step payment flows without relying on smart-contract logic. This is relevant to settlement use cases like agentic transaction rails and stablecoin activity tied to RLUSD settlement volume.

RippleX’s claim of contracted commercial projects remains unverified against named counterparties, and broader forecasts about Batch reshaping XRPL’s competitive position against smart-contract chains are research-only at this stage. For now, the concrete fact is narrower: one validator, one vote, and a 14-day clock that has not yet started.

Market Intelligence: Crypto Analyst Predicts Best New Crypto to Hodl

Disclaimer: Coinspeaker is committed to providing unbiased and transparent reporting. This article aims to deliver accurate and timely information but should not be taken as financial or investment advice. Since market conditions can change rapidly, we encourage you to verify information on your own and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content.

Web3 News, XRP News

Daniel Frances is a technical writer and Web3 educator specializing in macroeconomics and DeFi mechanics. A crypto native since 2017, Daniel leverages his background in on-chain analytics to author evidence-based reports and deep-dive guides. He holds certifications from The Blockchain Council, and is dedicated to providing "information gain" that cuts through market hype to find real-world blockchain utility.