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Kalshi has added perpetual futures contracts for Zcash ($ZEC), NEAR Protocol ($NEAR), Dogecoin ($DOGE), and Shiba Inu ($SHIB) to its platform, the latest step in a rapid expansion of the prediction market operator's regulated derivatives business.

Four New Contracts, 13 Crypto Assets Total The additions bring the total number of supported crypto assets to 13, alongside Bitcoin and other altcoins. Zcash perpetuals are offered with up to 2x leverage, while NEAR contracts allow leverage of up to 2.6x. Shiba Inu's perpetual contract, listed under the ticker KSHIB, also carries a maximum leverage ratio of 2x.

The contracts trade under Kalshi's American Perpetuals label, a product line that never expires and instead settles through periodic funding payments between traders. The contracts are available through a structure approved by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and do not carry expiration dates.

Kalshi opened its perpetuals push in late May with Bitcoin, the first such contract ever cleared for trading on a U.S. venue. Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and Hyperliquid followed through June under the same regulated framework. Kalshi is the first company in U.S. history to offer regulated perpetual futures to American traders.

Some Contracts Still Awaiting CFTC Sign-Off Kalshi has already secured approval for most of its filed products, though contracts linked to Stellar, Polkadot, and Hedera remain under review by the CFTC. Because such products may vary significantly depending on the assets they reference, the Commission took the view that a voluntary, case-by-case review process under Regulation 40.3 is the appropriate route for listing perpetual contracts, rather than self-certification.

The approvals came despite CME Group's lawsuit against the U.S. CFTC and its chairman, alleging that these contracts are swaps. The SEC and CFTC are also requesting public comments to clarify and harmonize definitions of derivatives products, especially swaps.

Last year, crypto exchanges processed $86 trillion in perpetual futures volume, according to data from CoinGecko. The bulk of that activity has historically taken place on offshore platforms, making Kalshi's regulated onshore offering a notable structural shift for U.S. traders.

Sources:
crypto.news: Kalshi launches Zcash and SHIB perps as lawsuit heats up
CFTC: Order for Approval of Kalshi BTCPERP Contract
CoinDesk: U.S. CFTC opens crypto perp door with approval of first regulated firm

PeckShield, a blockchain security company, has warned that Gnosis's official X account has been compromised. Until the issue is fixed, users are strongly advised not to interact with any posts, links, reward campaigns, voting announcements, or wallet connection requests coming from the account. 

According to the malicious post that is currently up on the Gnosis account, Gnosis users can take part in a rewards vote and receive an early bonus if they vote within the first 24 hours. This is a classic phishing technique meant to instill a sense of urgency and coerce users into clicking on phony links before confirming their legitimacy. 

One of the most common attack methods in the cryptocurrency sector is still compromised social media accounts. Hackers frequently use reputable project accounts to advertise phony staking opportunities, token claims, governance votes, and airdrops. Funds can be depleted in a matter of seconds after victims connect their wallets and sign malicious transactions. 

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Do not interact with the compromised account if you use Gnosis. Never sign transactions, connect your wallet, click links, or divulge personal information. If users have already interacted with the phishing website, they should revoke wallet approvals right away and, if necessary, transfer assets to a secure wallet.

Key Facts CertiK announced on 25 June 2026 that it has joined the XDC Network as an institutional masternode validator. Under an agreement between the two organisations, CertiK will deploy and operate validator nodes via its enterprise node solution, CertiK SkyNode. The deployment uses a multi-region sentry node architecture with redundant failover, 24/7 vulnerability scanning, automated threat mitigation and node-level penetration testing. XDC Network’s hybrid architecture combines public transparency with private subnetwork capabilities, targeting institutional settlement, trade finance and RWA tokenisation. Quoted are Atul Khekade, Co-founder of XDC Network, and Ronghui Gu, Co-Founder and CEO of CertiK; other XDC institutional validators include Deutsche Telekom, SBI Holdings, Animoca Brands and HashKey Cloud. CertiK has joined the XDC Network as an institutional masternode validator, the Web3 security firm announced on 25 June 2026. Under an agreement between the two organisations, CertiK will deploy and operate validator nodes through its enterprise node solution, CertiK SkyNode — embedding security controls directly into the infrastructure layer that underpins XDC’s push into enterprise blockchain, trade finance and real-world asset tokenisation.

What CertiK brings as a validator As an institutional masternode validator, CertiK leverages its SkyNode infrastructure to run continuous, proactive defences rather than passive node operation. That includes 24/7 vulnerability scanning, automated threat mitigation and node-level penetration testing — applying the auditing and security discipline CertiK is known for to the validator role itself.

The operational architecture is built for institutional uptime requirements. CertiK is deploying a multi-region sentry node setup with redundant failover protection, engineered to maintain uninterrupted consensus continuity and high availability during peak network congestion. SkyNode already operates validator or full nodes across more than 11 chains, with the nodes it hosts securing over US$1.2 billion in staked tokens — a track record CertiK now extends to XDC.

Why XDC’s architecture fits the use case XDC Network is an enterprise-grade, EVM-compatible Layer 1 designed specifically for trade finance and the tokenisation of real-world assets. Its hybrid architecture combines public-chain transparency with private subnetwork capabilities, allowing institutions to settle and tokenise assets with the auditability of a public ledger but the confidentiality controls that regulated finance requires.

By participating as a validator, CertiK embeds security directly into that infrastructure layer, mitigating operational and network-related risks. The fit is logical: trade finance and RWA settlement demand rigorous risk management and operational resilience, and CertiK’s core competency is precisely the security assurance that institutional counterparties scrutinise before committing to a network.

Executive comments Atul Khekade, Co-founder of XDC Network, framed CertiK’s participation as a credibility signal to institutions weighing long-term infrastructure decisions. “CertiK is one of the most recognized names in blockchain security, and having them validate our network is a meaningful signal to institutions,” he said. “This is not just a technical partnership. It is a statement about the standard of infrastructure we are building for enterprise finance. The institutions moving into trade finance and asset settlement are making long-term infrastructure decisions, and we want XDC Network to be the answer they keep coming back to.”

Ronghui Gu, Co-Founder and CEO of CertiK, positioned the move around the convergence of traditional and digital finance. “CertiK is honored to join the XDC Network as an Institutional Masternode Validator,” he said. “Traditional trade finance and RWA tokenization require rigorous risk management, strong security foundations, and operational resilience. Through this collaboration, we are bringing our security and infrastructure expertise to help strengthen the network and support the trusted infrastructure needed for institutional adoption.”

Validator identity as the new benchmark The partnership reflects a shift in how enterprise blockchain adoption is being measured in 2026. Where earlier cycles tracked wallet growth, transaction counts and pilot announcements, the emerging benchmark is validator identity — who actually operates the networks that institutions may rely on for settlement and tokenisation. Financial institutions and regulators increasingly assess governance standards, operator accountability and jurisdictional alignment alongside raw technical performance.

XDC has leaned into that model deliberately, prioritising recognised operators with institutional standing over a large anonymous validator base. Beyond CertiK, its institutional validators include regulated financial institutions, global telecoms and Web3 leaders such as Animoca Brands, BCW Group, Blueprint, Clearpool, Credora, Deutsche Telekom, HashKeyCloud, Hivemind Digital Group, InvestaX, IXS, RedStone, Republic Crypto, SBI Holdings, StakeFi and UOB Venture Management. CertiK’s addition strengthens that roster with a security specialist — arguably the most directly relevant discipline for a network targeting regulated finance.

Context: CertiK’s infrastructure expansion The XDC role continues CertiK’s expansion from audit-led security toward operational blockchain infrastructure. The company has been building out node and validator services through SkyNode while extending into AI-focused security, including its recent Skill Scanner for AI agents and ongoing regulatory research such as its Skynet stablecoin threat reports. The throughline is a move from assessing security after the fact toward operating secure infrastructure directly.

For both parties, the logic is complementary: XDC gains a security-specialist validator that reinforces its institutional positioning, and CertiK extends its node business onto a network purpose-built for the regulated trade finance and RWA use cases where its security expertise carries the most weight.

FAQ What does CertiK joining XDC Network as a validator involve?
CertiK has joined XDC Network as an institutional masternode validator, deploying and operating validator nodes through its enterprise CertiK SkyNode solution. The setup runs continuous vulnerability scanning, automated threat mitigation and node-level penetration testing, using a multi-region sentry node architecture with redundant failover to maintain consensus continuity and high availability.

Why is XDC Network focused on institutional validators?
XDC Network targets trade finance, institutional settlement and real-world asset tokenisation, use cases that require governance standards and operator accountability closer to traditional financial markets than open retail networks. By prioritising recognised institutional validators — including Deutsche Telekom, SBI Holdings and now CertiK — rather than an anonymous validator base, XDC aims to give banks, enterprises and regulators confidence in the network’s operational integrity.

What is CertiK SkyNode?
SkyNode is CertiK’s enterprise blockchain node and validator service. It operates validator or full nodes across more than 11 chains, applying CertiK’s auditing and penetration-testing expertise to validator operations through security hardening, continuous monitoring, encryption, key management and geographic redundancy.

CertiK’s addition to XDC’s validator set is a small but telling marker of where institutional blockchain competition is heading: not toward the networks with the most transactions, but toward those whose operators can satisfy the governance, security and resilience standards that regulated finance demands. As validator identity becomes a primary signal of institutional readiness, partnerships pairing security specialists with enterprise-focused chains are likely to become a defining feature of the next adoption cycle. This article is informational and does not constitute investment advice.

A Central African nation with a GDP of roughly $12 billion just signed a deal to manage environmental assets potentially worth eight times that figure. The Republic of Chad inked a Memorandum of Understanding with Luxembourg-based Xange.com on June 25, designating the Aptos blockchain as the verification backbone for what could become a $100 billion-plus pipeline of sovereign climate credits.

What the deal actually involves The partnership centers on Xange’s two core products. The first is its digital Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification system, known as dMRV. The second is its Unified Environmental Market Infrastructure Solutions platform, or UEMIS. Together, they’re designed to track, verify, and manage environmental assets at the sovereign level.

The technical mechanism here involves something called Immutable Metadata Digital Certifications, or IMDCs. These are cryptographically verifiable records hosted on the Aptos blockchain, designed to ensure that mitigation data remains auditable and resistant to manipulation.

Aptos was chosen as the verification layer for a straightforward reason: throughput. The blockchain is built for high-speed transaction processing, which matters when you’re trying to manage potentially millions of individual environmental data points across a country spanning over 1.2 million square kilometers.

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The Decibel Foundation rounds out the partnership by providing on-chain market infrastructure. An earlier collaboration announced on May 6 between Xange, Aptos Labs, and Decibel established the IMDC standard itself, making this Chad MoU the first major sovereign deployment of that framework.

The $100 billion number, in context The projected pipeline of Internationally Transferable Mitigation Outcomes, or ITMOs, is valued at over $100 billion. ITMOs are essentially the currency of Article 6.2. When Country A reduces emissions beyond its own targets, it can sell those surplus reductions to Country B, which can then count them toward its own Paris Agreement commitments.

For perspective, the global voluntary carbon market was valued at roughly $2 billion in recent years. The compliance market is much larger, but sovereign ITMO trading under Article 6.2 is still in its infancy. A $100 billion pipeline is aspirational. It represents the theoretical ceiling, not a guaranteed outcome.

What this means for investors For the Aptos ecosystem specifically, this partnership adds a layer of real-world utility narrative. Being selected as the verification infrastructure for sovereign-level climate assets is a fundamentally different value proposition than hosting another DeFi protocol or NFT marketplace.

This project is still in its initial phases, focused on deploying infrastructure rather than issuing or trading assets. There’s no immediate revenue generation here. No tokens are being minted against Chad’s forests tomorrow.

Several blockchain projects have positioned themselves in the environmental asset space, including Toucan Protocol on Polygon and KlimaDAO. But sovereign-level partnerships are rare. Most blockchain climate projects operate at the project level, verifying individual reforestation plots or clean energy installations.

Sovereign partnerships carry political risk that project-level deals don’t. Chad ranks among the world’s most fragile states by multiple governance indices. A Memorandum of Understanding is not a binding contract, and the path from MoU to functioning infrastructure to actual ITMO trading is long and uncertain.

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

According to a Business Insider report citing sources familiar with the matter, Tools For Humanity, the developer of Worldcoin, launched two separate investigations last year, both led by external law firms, targeting alleged improper use of funds by executives and suspected violations in its Thailand operations respectively. Relevant executives are accused of approving payments of millions of US dollars to a foreign firm. The funds were not used for normal business purchases or service fees, but to artificially inflate the market price of its cryptocurrency Worldcoin. In addition, Tools For Humanity's Thai partner turned out to be a suspect in an internationally wanted "pig butchering" scam. Meanwhile, regulators in multiple countries around the world have raised serious questions about Tools For Humanity's iris scanning and data collection practices.

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Jiang Zhuoer: Expects Strategy to reduce its coin purchases, with almost no risk of default.

Jiang Zhuoer, founder of Leibit Mining Pool (B.TOP), commented on STRC hitting an all-time low tonight, noting that Strategy’s preferred stock STRC has significantly de-pegged, reflecting U.S. stock market investors’ panic over Bitcoin (BTC). He stated, “Strategy’s BTC purchases are expected to drop sharply or even halt entirely in the coming months, with funds reserved to pay STRC dividends. I also emphasize again not to expect a major blowup from MSTR at the bear market bottom. STRC is preferred stock, not a bond—only dividends need to be paid, and principal does not require repayment. MSTR’s debt ratio is only 10%, so unless the BTC bear market lasts a decade, MSTR faces no risk of a blowup.”

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Arkham: Strategy is not legally required to prioritize paying STRC dividends, so there is no risk of mandatory liquidation.

After the U.S. stock market opened tonight, STRC briefly dropped to $73 and is now trading at $76.2, 25% below its $100 par value. In response to market fears that it could be the "next LUNA", Arkham’s analysis states that STRC is a perpetual preferred stock with an 11.5% dividend yield, requiring annual dividend payments of approximately $1.2 billion. Strategy holds $1.4 billion in reserves, but is not legally obligated to prioritize dividend payments. However, Arkham also points out that the stock price decline reflects market concerns about Saylor’s ability to sustain dividend payments and raise capital. This will not directly bring down the company, but may negatively impact investor confidence and financing in the long run.

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Ethereum has potential liquidations worth $114 million at the $1,472 price level.

According to YuEmber monitoring, several on-chain ETH lending whales are facing liquidations amid the current downtrend. Details are as follows: First liquidation tier: liquidation price of $1,472, liquidation scale of 72,700 ETH (valued at $114 million); Second liquidation tier: liquidation price of $1,355, corresponding to 167,600 ETH (valued at $263 million) held by dip-buying whales at the start of the month; Third liquidation tier: liquidation price of $1,160, corresponding to 120,000 ETH long positions of Hyperliquid’s largest long.

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Iran proposes charging neighboring Gulf countries fees for the use of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has proposed charging neighboring Gulf countries a service fee for the use of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran estimates this would generate $40 billion in annual revenue for the countries involved. Iran hopes to share and reach an agreement on revenue from the strait with other nations, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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Ondo announces the official launch of 24/7 instant minting and redemption services for U.S. tokenized stocks and ETFs. Previously, the platform only offered minting and redemption windows 24 hours a day, five days a week (24/5). Following this upgrade, eligible users can mint or redeem supported tokenized assets at current market prices at any time, including weekends and U.S. public holidays. The first batch of assets supporting 24/7 instant minting and redemption includes six tokenized stocks: SPYon, QQQon, CRCLon, NVDAon, TSLAon, and GOOGLon. These assets are now live on Ethereum and BNB Chain, with Solana support set to launch soon.

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Ripple has officially launched its USD-backed stablecoin RLUSD in Japan, marking a major milestone in the company’s expansion across Asia. Following approval from Japan’s Financial Services Agency (JFSA), RLUSD is now available to both institutional and retail users through SBI VC Trade’s VCTRADE platform. 

The launch delivers on the strategic partnership announced by Ripple and SBI Group in August 2025 and brings regulated USD stablecoin access to one of the world’s most advanced digital asset markets.

Ripple and SBI Expand Their Long-Term PartnershipRipple and SBI have been working together since 2016 to expand blockchain use across Japan and Asia-Pacific. With RLUSD now live, they plan to use it for cross-border payments, tokenization, and collateral management. 

Ripple says Japan’s clear regulations make it a key market for stablecoins, while SBI called the launch a major step toward the future of on-chain finance. 

Konnichiwa 🇯🇵 @Ripple and @sbigroup have officially launched Ripple USD (RLUSD) in Japan!

Following JFSA approval, RLUSD is now live for institutional and retail users on SBI VC Trade’s platform. This builds directly on our long-standing partnership and brings trusted,… https://t.co/Fe20yKQEMJ

— Reece Merrick (@reece_merrick) June 25, 2026 According to Reece Merrick, Managing Director, Middle East & Africa, Ripple, “following JFSA approval, RLUSD is now live for institutional and retail users on SBI VC Trade’s platform. This builds directly on our long-standing partnership and brings trusted, regulated USD stablecoin access to one of the most innovative markets.”

A Fully Regulated USD StablecoinRLUSD has been approved in Japan as a Type 4 Electronic Payment Instrument.It is fully backed 1:1 by U.S. dollar deposits, Treasuries, and cash equivalents.Reserves are verified through monthly third-party attestations.SBI VC Trade will offer free RLUSD deposits and withdrawals.RLUSD is the second USD stablecoin on the platform after USD Coin.Since launching in late 2024, RLUSD has grown to a market cap of about $1.7 billion.RLUSD on XRPL Is Closing In on EthereumMeanwhile, the community is getting more interested in RLUSD’s supply distribution across blockchains.

According to XRP community members Vet and Bill Morgan, RLUSD circulating on the XRP Ledger is now close to overtaking Ethereum, with roughly $792 million on XRPL compared with about $793 million on Ethereum.

Analysts see Ripple is gradually shifting growth toward XRPL, which better aligns with the stablecoin’s core strengths of fast payments and efficient value transfers. Recent customer redemptions on Ethereum have also reduced supply there.

With Japan now onboard, Ripple is continuing to position RLUSD as a key piece of regulated global financial infrastructure.

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Chainlink is embedding itself into the plumbing of international banking. The oracle network announced its participation in Project Pangea, a cross-border settlement initiative involving 47 banks across Europe and South Korea that collectively manage over $10 trillion in assets.

The goal is straightforward but ambitious: replace the current two-day settlement window for EUR-KRW foreign exchange transactions with near real-time, same-day finality.

How Project Pangea actually works The initiative, built in collaboration with Qivalis and UniKA, brings together 37 European banks and over 10 South Korean banks on a dedicated Pangea Layer 1 blockchain network. The mechanism at the core is something called atomic payment-versus-payment, or PvP, which ensures both sides of a currency exchange settle simultaneously or not at all.

The currencies themselves are represented as euro-pegged and Korean won-pegged stablecoins, regulated digital versions of the fiat currencies that can move on blockchain rails. This matters because the Europe-South Korea trade corridor processes over $150 billion in annual volume.

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Project Pangea integrates with Swift messaging and complies with ISO 20022 standards, the global standard for electronic data interchange between financial institutions. Banks can plug in without a painful migration.

The project’s partners are targeting compliant live transactions within 12 months.

Why this corridor, why now Asia as a whole accounts for 60% of global stablecoin payments, making the region the natural proving ground for regulated digital currency infrastructure.

The current T+2 settlement cycle creates counterparty risk, ties up capital, and introduces the possibility that one side of a trade defaults before settlement completes. Moving to T+0 eliminates most of that risk. Capital that was previously locked up as collateral during the settlement window gets freed immediately.

Chainlink’s institutional footprint includes prior work with Swift on cross-chain interoperability and various tokenization pilots with major banks. In January 2026, Chainlink also partnered with the Global Alliance for KRW Stablecoins in South Korea. Qivalis itself expanded from an original group of 12 European banks to 37 by May 2026, all working toward the creation of regulated euro-pegged stablecoins.

What this means for investors Project Pangea is designed around compliance from day one, using regulated stablecoins and existing banking standards. The involvement of 47 banks managing over $10 trillion in assets gives the project a scale targeting a real trade corridor of over $150 billion in annual volume with a 12-month timeline for live transactions.

The risk is execution. A 12-month timeline is aggressive given the regulatory complexity of operating across European and South Korean jurisdictions simultaneously. The difference here may be the economic incentive: $150 billion in annual trade volume creates significant motivation to ship.

Investors should watch for two signals over the coming year. First, whether any of the participating banks publicly confirm their involvement and commit resources beyond the initial announcement. Second, whether regulators in both jurisdictions provide the clarity needed for euro and KRW stablecoins to function within existing compliance frameworks.

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

The ICON Network will be permanently shut down on December 31, 2026, with ICX holders given until that date to migrate at a 1:1 ratio into SODA on SODAX, after which the legacy chain will exist only as a read only archive.

Summary

ICON will cease operations and go offline on December 31, 2026, after an economic shutdown phase The final deadline to swap ICX for SODA is December 31, 2026, with one way migration from September 30 Liquidity and incentives have already moved to SODAX, and Kraken has added SODA to its listing roadmap In a series of blog posts, the ICON Foundation outlined a phased wind down of the ICON Layer 1 that ends with a full shutdown of the network at the close of 2026 and a transition of the ecosystem to the SODAX stack, where SODA becomes the primary token.

An earlier update confirmed that as of March 26, 2026, the ICON Network has entered “economic shutdown,” with all ICX emissions and staking rewards halted and the chain kept alive only to support migration to SODA on the Sonic network.

The latest roadmap sets December 31, 2026 as the final date: after that point, the ICON blockchain will be switched to a read only archive for historical transaction queries, and no further ICX to SODA conversions will be possible.

Until then, ICX holders can migrate via the official dashboard at sodax.com/migrate at a fixed 1:1 ratio, with the Foundation stressing in February and March posts that “the ICON blockchain will remain live” specifically so users retain full access to their balances during the wind down.

However, starting September 30, 2026, the migration path will become one way: the Foundation says that two way swaps between ICX and SODA will be disabled, and only ICX to SODA conversions will be supported as value is consolidated into the new token with a fixed max supply of 1.5 billion.

Economically, everything has already shifted.

Why is ICON shutting down and what is the SODAX migration plan? Binance Square posts and the Foundation’s own schedule note that SODAX Stake launched on March 16, 2026 and SODAX Pool on March 31, with protocol fee backed rewards beginning for SODAX Pool on April 2 and for SODAX Stake on April 8, creating strong incentives for ICX holders to migrate and stake.

A separate TradingView alert and SODAX’s X account confirm that centralized exchange support is also lining up: Kraken has placed SODAX on its listing roadmap, and exchanges such as Kraken and Coinone have announced they will support ICX to SODA migration for custodial balances, reducing friction for users who keep assets off chain.

What happens to ICON users and liquidity after the shutdown date? Once the ICON Network is turned off at year end 2026, it will exist only as a static ledger.

The Foundation says a read only archive will be made available so that users, auditors and explorers can still query historical transactions, but live block production and state changes will stop, and any ICX left un migrated will be effectively stranded on an inert chain.

That mirrors other recent shutdowns in the sector, such as Zero Network and Bit.com, which have set hard withdrawal or migration cutoffs and warned users that assets left behind could become permanently unrecoverable once infrastructure is decommissioned.

In ICON’s case, the team emphasizes that it has deliberately staged the process over many months: economic activity and rewards stopped in March, two way migration continues in the interim, one way ICX to SODA swaps begin at the end of September, and the absolute final migration deadline is December 31.

By that point, the intention is that all meaningful liquidity, DeFi activity and governance has moved to the SODAX protocol, where SODA and its derivative xSODA govern a fee funded staking and pooling model on Sonic rather than the inflationary, emission driven economics that powered the original ICON L1.

For ICX holders, the message from both the Foundation and ecosystem validators is blunt: the network’s economic lifecycle is over, rewards are gone, and the only rational path forward is to migrate to SODA, stake or pool in the new environment, and stop treating ICON as an active settlement layer well before the December 31, 2026 shutdown switch is flipped.

@Algorand has given the clearest timeline yet for its shift to quantum-resistant infrastructure, laying out a staged roadmap that runs from mid-2026 through to the protocol's consensus layer.

What the roadmap covers The Algorand Foundation plans to introduce post-quantum accounts, multisignature wallets, and staking support starting in 2026, before expanding protections to core protocol components. According to the Foundation's published roadmap, native post-quantum accounts are targeted for the Q3 2026 protocol release, with quantum-safe multisig and Falcon-512 support due by year-end. The consensus layer upgrade is slated to follow in a later phase.

The Foundation said its roadmap builds on work it began in 2022, with the goal of achieving broad quantum resilience by the end of 2027. It expects to reach that milestone before NIST retires certain legacy cryptographic standards, and three years ahead of a timeline set by the U.S. National Security Agency for national security systems.

Securing the consensus layer is the hardest step, as it requires research into a post-quantum replacement for the Verifiable Random Function at the heart of Algorand's Pure Proof-of-Stake protocol. The Foundation has been open about this gap, framing it as a multi-year research and engineering challenge rather than a near-term fix.

Google's endorsement and what Algorand has already shipped In March 2026, Google Quantum AI published a whitepaper showing that future quantum computers may break elliptic curve cryptography with fewer resources than previously thought, and cited Algorand among blockchains that have deployed post-quantum cryptography in practice. The paper established that the threshold for breaking blockchain signatures is roughly 20 times lower than prior estimates, adding urgency to migration timelines across the industry. It described Algorand as "an example of real-world deployment of PQC on an otherwise quantum-vulnerable blockchain."

Algorand chose Falcon, a lattice-based scheme, because it guarantees post-quantum security while remaining aligned with the network's design principles around performance and decentralization. Algorand executed its first PQC-secured transaction in 2025. It has since deployed post-quantum Falcon digital signatures for smart transactions and state proofs, which are cryptographic attestations of blockchain state used for cross-chain integrations. Algorand notes that migrating live blockchain infrastructure to post-quantum cryptography will take years and must begin well before "Q-Day."

Sources
Algorand Foundation: Post-Quantum Technology Overview
Algorand Foundation: Google Quantum AI Whitepaper Cites Algorand
CoinDesk: Algorand Unveils Roadmap for Post-Quantum Security by End-2027

Two prominent crypto projects have been exploited and many more could be at risk after two-factor authentication (2FA) was disabled, at the front-end, for projects using Google Domains amid a migration to Squarespace.

Posted July 11, 2024 at 2:27 pm EST.

The recent hacks of Compound Finance and Celer Network’s front-end domains on Wednesday revealed at least an additional 124 domains are at risk of exploitation by virtue of their registration with website-building company Squarespace, according to security experts. 

Compound Finance, one of the largest decentralized protocols with a total locked value of nearly $2.2 billion, is hosting a phishing site, said Michael Lewellen, head of solutions architecture at blockchain security firm OpenZepplin, on X. He warned users not to interact with the website until further notice.

Another attacker, perhaps the same one or group, also attempted to take over the front-end domains of Celer Network. The team said on X that the takeover was intercepted and that their “investigation indicates that the attack vector likely involved third parties beyond our control.” 

In a conversation with Unchained, the founder of blockchain network Glue and prominent white-hat hacker who goes by Ogle indicated that Compound Finance and Celer Network’s use of Squarespace to host their front-end websites is what allowed these exploits to occur. 

“Right now, [Compound Finance is] exploited to the point that links are changed and so people can be phished,” he added. Phishing is a type of scam where exploiters use deception to make people reveal sensitive information or install malicious software. 

Please avoid interacting with the compound[.]finance website until further notice.

It is part of the widespread domain compromise occurring right now. By visiting the site, or clicking any associated links, you will be putting yourself at risk. We and others are diligently…

— Compound Labs (@compoundfinance) July 11, 2024

The at-risk websites initially used Google Domains, but Squarespace acquired the Google Domains business, completing its acquisition of assets in September 2023. 

The recent exploits were “almost certainly” from the migration of Google Domains to Squarespace, said Ogle. “What I’ve learned is that during that migration 2FA [short for two-factor authentication] was disabled.” 

Compound Finance and Celer Network “probably did have 2FA enabled on Google, but then once it got switched over, not the case anymore,” he added.

“Google sold their domain business to Squarespace a few months ago and the forced migration of domains to Squarespace removed 2FA causing all these domains to be vulnerable and several have been hijacked,” said Bobby Ong, the co-founder of CoinGecko, on X.

Read More: $1 Million Bounty On Offer for Finding Bugs On Solana Validator Client Firedancer

Domains of Top Protocols At-Risk The number of crypto protocols joining the likes of Compound Finance and Celer Network may grow, as the pseudonymous founder of DefiLlama, who goes by the screen name @0xngmi on X, noted that 124 additional front-end domains of prominent crypto protocols are using Squarespace including Pendle Finance, Hyperliquid, dYdX, Nostra Finance, Axelar Network, Polymarket, Thorchain, Aptos Labs, NEAR, and Safe. 

A spokesperson for Safe, a wallet infrastructure provider, confirmed with Unchained that Squarespace is involved with its front-end website, but emphasized they haven’t identified any abnormal activity and have systems in place to detect irregular changes. 

“We currently remain unaffected,” Safe’s spokesperson said. “Our teams will continue to monitor the situation and keep our community and users informed.”

“As always, stay vigilant,” the spokesperson at Safe added. In a similar vein, the dYdX trading team said to Unchained over Telegram, “dYdX.exchange is secure with no detected vulnerabilities” and that they will also continue to “monitor the situation.” Axelar Network also has not identified any issues with its domain and will continue to track for any further developments, per a post on X. 

Read More: 50% of Illicit Funds End Up At Centralized Crypto Exchanges, Chainalysis

The domains of these protocols —  barring Compound Finance and Celer Network  — remain unaffected. Yet Ogle says protocol team members should be worried as the situation is “not good” and that people should not go to any of these websites “under any circumstances until the official Twitter says it’s safe.”

At presstime, Compound(dot)Finance gets redirected to Compound-Finance(dot)app, in which the latter is flagged by Google as a dangerous site. “Attackers on the site you’re trying to visit might trick you into installing software or revealing things like your password, phone, or credit card number,” according to Google’s warning.

The message Google raises when people try to visit compound(dot)finance, which gets redirected to compound-finance(dot)app. If a user proceeds despite the flagrant, red warning, they’ll see a website that looks like a standard crypto protocol.

The interface of the phishing site is hosted by Compound Finance’s front end. Difference Between a Domain and Protocol While the domain websites of crypto projects may go down in the event of a hijacking, the actual protocols remain unaffected. People or bots can still interact with a project’s smart contract without going through a front-end website, Ogle said. 

“You could transfer funds on the blockchain, you could go through their bridge, all that kind of stuff can happen without ever even using the website.” Even if a protocol’s front-end domain is attacked and “taken down by these hackers right now or whatever, you still don’t lose your money. You still have access to it.”

Representatives of Squarespace did not immediately respond to Unchained’s requests for comments.

UPDATE (July 12, 2024 10:03 a.m. ET) Includes status update of Axelar Network

Synthetix governance has moved to retire sUSD entirely under SIP-423, introduced June 12. The proposal would freeze the stablecoin contract and pay all holders back at face value in vested SNX at a conversion of four SNX per sUSD. A companion SIP-424 covering technical implementation is pending.

Synthetix governance has moved to retire sUSD, proposing to pay all holders back at face value in vested SNX under SIP-423, introduced June 12. The stablecoin now trades at roughly $0.25 against its $1.00 target, per CoinGecko and DefiLlama.

Synthetix founder Kain Warwick and core contributor Benjamin Celermajer authored the proposal. Under SIP-423, the sUSD contract would be frozen and deprecated. Each eligible sUSD holder would receive four SNX tokens per sUSD, at a conversion that values SNX at $0.25 and sUSD at its intended $1.00 face value. The SNX tokens carry a one-year lock followed by a one-year linear vest from the freeze date. The claim window opens approximately one year after the freeze.

Four ComponentsSIP-423 has four parts. First, a holder snapshot: an audit of all sUSD balances on Ethereum and Optimism at a governance-defined cutoff block. Second, the sUSD retirement itself. Third, a restructure of the existing Debt Jubilee under SIP-420, which would close the 420 Pool, remove sUSD staking ratio requirements, and give existing debt participants the choice of a four-year lock with a one-year vest, or an early exit by repaying their remaining debt in full. The fourth component, SNX staking reform, is deferred to a separate build.

A contingent USDT path is included: if Synthetix generates more than $10 million in protocol revenue within the two-year lock-up period, 25% of that revenue can be distributed as USDT to legacy sUSD holders who prefer cash over SNX. Both the $10 million threshold and the 25% share are adjustable by the Spartan Council via SCCP.

Vote PendingSIP-423 carried a Vote_Pending status as of publication. A companion proposal, SIP-424, covering the technical implementation of the wind-down, has not yet been published.

The SIP notes that sUSD held in LP pools, vaults, or other deposit contracts cannot be automatically recovered. A separate Treasury claims process handles those cases. Core team members and the protocol itself hold material sUSD positions.

The DepegsUSD's peg has eroded sharply. The SIP's abstract states the token "trades below peg" and that Jubilee participants face "escalating sUSD staking requirements, both of which continue to hinder growth of the Synthetix Exchange." sUSD is down roughly 28% over the past seven days and about 61% over the past 30 days, per CoinGecko.

Synthetix carries approximately $17.5 million in sUSD circulating supply across Ethereum and Optimism, per DefiLlama. SNX trades around $0.2453, per CoinGecko, slightly below the $0.25 conversion floor set in SIP-423. The protocol's total value locked stands at $32.5 million, per DefiLlama.

Synthetix has attempted to stabilize sUSD before. In March 2026, the protocol was still extending sUSD rewards on Infinex to support the peg. The Defiant's January 2026 interview with Warwick covered his arguments for restructuring the debt model; SIP-423 is the structural outcome of that direction. Synthetix launched a perpetual DEX on Ethereum mainnet in December 2025, signaling a shift toward exchange-driven revenue rather than sUSD issuance.

SIP-423 is Synthetix's first proposal to wind down sUSD rather than repair it.

Crypto exchange Coinbase in a surprising move on Friday announced suspending trading for Enjin Coin (ENJ) from mid-June. As a result, ENJ price tumbled 10% in a few hours, with the fall extending to over 20% this week. The crypto exchange also announced a suspension of trading for Metal (MTL), causing a more than 8% fall in prices.

Coinbase Announces ENJ and MTL Trading Suspension In the latest posts on X on May 31, Coinbase said it will suspend trading for Enjin Coin (ENJ) based on recent reviews. Users will not be able to trade Enjin Coin (ENJ) from around 2 PM ET on June 14.

“We regularly monitor the assets on our exchange to ensure they meet our listing standards,” said Coinbase, citing reasons for the suspension.

Notably, trading will be suspended on Coinbase Simple and Advanced Trade, Coinbase Exchange, Coinbase Prime, and Native DEX. This indicates an overall takedown of Enjin Coin from the crypto exchange, sparking concerns among ENJ holders as they panic sell their tokens.

Coinbase also stated that it has moved ENJ order books to limit-only mode. This would allow limit orders to be placed and canceled, and matches may occur.

ENJ price dropped more than 15% after the announcement, with the price currently trading at $0.316. Derivatives trading also witnessed a massive decline in ENJ open interest after the move by Coinbase.

Also Read: Mt Gox $10B Bitcoin Distribution Won’t Affect BTC Price: Details

Metal Dao (MTL) Price Plunges 9% Coinbase asked users to transfer their MTL tokens to a self-custodial wallet that will support MTL V2 by June 23rd at 11 PM ET to ensure access to the airdropped assets. “If you do not transfer your MTL assets by this date, you will not be able to access the V2 assets,” the exchange asserts.

Coinbase will not support MTL token airdrop. It will suspend trading for Metal DAO (MTL) at 2 PM ET on June 14. The exchanges has moved MTL order books to limit-only mode, similar to Enjin Coin (ENJ).

MTL price fell 9% after the news and extended the fall by over 12% this week, with the price currently trading at $1.67. The 24-hour low and high are $1.61 and $1.82, respectively. Furthermore, the trading volume has decreased by 42% in the last 24 hours, indicating a decline in interest among traders.

Also Read: Will Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, XRP, SHIB Prices Set to Rally in June as CPI & PCE Inflation Cools

Theta Network adds Deutsche Telekom to participate in its core consensus mechanism. As a validator, the telecom giant will play a direct role in verifying transactions on the decentralized L1 network.

Summary

Deutsche Telekom joined Theta Network as an enterprise validator, helping secure and verify transactions on its decentralized Layer 1 blockchain. The telecom giant will stake THETA and earn TFUEL rewards, aligning its infrastructure strategy with decentralized computing. The move expands Deutsche Telekom’s Web3 footprint, following its prior validator roles for Ethereum, Polkadot, and Chainlink. In a press release dated Oct. 31, Theta Network announced that German telecom heavyweight Deutsche Telekom will now operate an enterprise validator node on its blockchain.

The move places the telecommunications giant alongside other corporate validators like Google and Samsung, tasking it with the core blockchain function of verifying transactions and securing the Layer 1 network. The company’s specific validator address is now publicly active on the Theta blockchain.

Theta Network moves toward decentralized infrastructure for telecoms To secure its role on Theta Network, Deutsche Telekom will stake the protocol’s native THETA token. In return, the company will earn staking rewards paid in TFUEL, the network’s operational token used for gas fees and payments on the Theta EdgeCloud platform.

Deutsche Telekom framed the move as a natural extension of its existing infrastructure business into decentralized computing. The company cited Theta’s emphasis on performance and reliability in AI-heavy environments as key to its decision.

“Theta’s decentralized architecture aligns with our focus on dependable, secure infrastructure. As a digital leader, we’re happy to support this innovative technology and contribute to its growth, unlocking new possibilities and opportunities in the process,” Dirk Roeder, Head of Telekom MMS Web3 Infrastructure and Solutions, said.

This foray into Theta Network is not Deutsche Telekom’s first blockchain rodeo. The telecom giant has built a considerable Web3 portfolio through its subsidiary, Deutsche Telekom MMS, having previously provided enterprise-grade infrastructure and validation services for major protocols including Ethereum, Polkadot, and Chainlink.

Theta Network, for its part, underscored the broader context of the partnership by pointing to Theta EdgeCloud, its hybrid cloud–edge computing platform. The platform is designed to leverage a global network of community-run edge nodes and cloud partners, creating a distributed marketplace for GPU computing power.

Polkadot 2.0 replaces the old two-year slot auction model with Agile Coretime, a flexible system that lets developers buy network compute time on a monthly basis or even block by block. This change went live in September 2024 and was finalized with the release of Polkadot SDK version 2509 in October 2025, completing the three-pillar Polkadot 2.0 upgrade alongside Asynchronous Backing and Elastic Scaling.

For developers, the practical difference is significant: launching a parachain no longer requires locking up large amounts of DOT for years at a time. You pay for what you use, when you need it.

What Was Wrong with the Old Parachain Slot System?Before Polkadot 2.0, projects that wanted to run a parachain (a custom blockchain that plugs into Polkadot's shared security) had to win a slot through a candle auction. Those auctions required teams to lock DOT tokens for lease periods of up to two years. Only the highest bidders secured a spot.

This created real barriers:

Small and mid-size teams needed to raise or hold massive amounts of DOT just to get started.Once a slot was won, the team paid for continuous blockspace whether or not they were using it.If a project's traffic was low for a few months, it was still burning through its lease.New projects with promising ideas but limited capital were simply priced out.The auction model also created unpredictable costs. Project budgets depended on DOT's market price at the time of the auction, introducing a layer of financial risk that had nothing to do with the actual work of building.

How Does Agile Coretime Actually Work?In Polkadot's architecture, a "core" is the virtual abstraction of computing power that the Relay Chain provides to secure a parachain's blocks. Think of it as a processing slot. Agile Coretime is the system that controls how those cores get assigned and purchased.

There are two main ways to obtain coretime today:

Bulk coretime: A team buys access to a core for a fixed period, up to 28 days, represented as an NFT on the Coretime Chain. This is suitable for parachains that need to produce blocks continuously, such as every 6 or 12 seconds. Renewal orders take priority over new orders, which protects active chains from price spikes.On-demand coretime: A team pays per block, each time they need one produced. This suits projects with irregular traffic, test deployments, or applications that only need to process transactions occasionally.Bulk coretime can also be split and resold on secondary markets, which means a team running a lighter workload can divide its core allocation and sell unused portions to other projects. This creates a more efficient use of network capacity overall.

Eskimor, lead developer at Parity Technologies, described: 

"Agile Coretime is a huge milestone in making the high quality blockspace Polkadot offers more accessible. With this and other features we have in the pipeline, I expect more experimentation and awesome projects to be launched on Polkadot."

What Are the Other Pillars of Polkadot 2.0?Agile Coretime is one piece of a three-part upgrade. Understanding how all three work together matters for developers assessing the platform.

Asynchronous BackingAsynchronous Backing changed how parachain blocks are validated. Previously, each parachain block had to be fully validated before the next one could start. The async model decouples those stages, allowing parachain block preparation and relay chain inclusion to happen in parallel. The result is that block times dropped from 12 seconds to 6 seconds, roughly doubling throughput for chains running on Polkadot.

Elastic ScalingElastic Scaling, completed in October 2025, allows a parachain to temporarily use multiple cores at the same time when demand is high, then release them when traffic drops. A chain that normally runs on one core can burst to two, three, or more during a spike. Early projections suggest individual parachains could theoretically handle hundreds of thousands of transactions per second under this model.

Together, these three upgrades form what the Polkadot community calls the "scaling trilogy," and they all converged in the Polkadot SDK 2509 release.

What Does This Mean for Developers in Practice?The most direct change is cost structure. Instead of locking millions of dollars worth of DOT into a two-year lease, a new project can buy a single month of bulk coretime to start. If the project grows, it renews and scales up. If it shrinks or pivots, it scales back or sells unused coretime.

Builders can also mix and match:

Reserve bulk coretime for steady workloads where consistent block production matters.Use on-demand coretime for testing, low-traffic phases, or applications with predictable low frequency.During traffic spikes, elastic scaling allows temporary expansion across multiple cores without a new contract or auction.This flexibility is especially useful for use cases like gaming (where traffic spikes around events), DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure networks), and AI-adjacent applications that may see highly variable load patterns.

Polkadot SDK 2509 also introduced Ethereum compatibility through Polkadot Hub, meaning Solidity smart contracts can run on Polkadot with minimal changes. Combined with PolkaVM, which supports contracts written in Rust and C++ compiled to RISC-V, developers now have multiple entry points depending on their existing skill set.

Since 2025, Polkadot has attracted 450 to 500 monthly active developers and distributes grants through an on-chain treasury that disbursed roughly $21.8 million in 2025.

What Is JAM, and Why Does It Matter?The next major upgrade on Polkadot's roadmap is JAM, which stands for Join-Accumulate Machine. JAM is designed to replace the Relay Chain entirely with a more general-purpose architecture that treats Polkadot less like a blockchain router and more like a distributed computer. JAM enables smart contracts written in Solidity, Rust, or C++ to run across hundreds of parallel cores.

JAM was announced by Gavin Wood in April 2024. A public JAM testnet launched in January 2026, with 43 independent teams building implementations across 15 programming languages and competing for a 10 million DOT prize pool administered by the Web3 Foundation. As of June 2026, JAM is not yet live on mainnet.

The current target window for critical testing milestones and early mainnet upgrade proposals through Polkadot's OpenGov process is Q3 to Q4 2026. It builds on the same coretime model introduced in Polkadot 2.0, so the resource-purchasing mechanics that developers learn today carry forward.

DOT Tokenomics and What Changed in March 2026A separate but related update happened in March 2026. Polkadot enacted a hard supply cap of 2.1 billion DOT and cut annual token issuance by 53.6%. This mirrors Bitcoin's supply-capping approach and was designed to reduce long-term sell pressure on the token.

Alongside the supply cap, Polkadot also overhauled how protocol revenue is handled. Previously, a portion of DOT from coretime sales was burned. That changed in January 2026 when Polkadot's governance passed the Dynamic Allocation Pool (DAP) proposal. 

Under the DAP model, coretime sales revenue, transaction fees, and validator slashes no longer get destroyed. Instead, they flow into a governance-controlled pool that allocates funds to validators, nominators, the treasury, and a strategic reserve. The practical result is that network revenue is now recycled back into the ecosystem rather than removed from circulation entirely.

As of June 2026, DOT is trading around $0.94, down significantly from 2025 highs. The first U.S. spot DOT ETF, the 21Shares TDOT, launched in March 2026, though early inflows have remained modest.

ConclusionPolkadot 2.0 is fully deployed. Agile Coretime, Asynchronous Backing, and Elastic Scaling are live on mainnet as of the SDK 2509 release in October 2025. Together, they give developers a credible toolkit: flexible blockspace pricing, six-second block times, and the ability to scale compute capacity up and down in real time. 

JAM is the next step, currently in public testnet with a mainnet governance proposal expected in Q3 to Q4 2026. It extends the same coretime model to a broader execution environment. The infrastructure is in place; what happens next depends on developer adoption.

ResourcesPolkadot Developer Docs – Agile Coretime – Official reference for bulk coretime and on-demand coretime mechanics on Polkadot.Polkadot Wiki – Agile Coretime (Scheduling) – Deep dive into coretime scheduling, multi-threading, and bulk purchase mechanics.Parity Technologies – Polkadot Upgrade 2025: What You Need to Know – Overview of SDK 2509, Asynchronous Backing, Agile Coretime, and Elastic Scaling from Polkadot's core development team.Polkadot Newsroom – Polkadot Launches Agile Coretime – Official press release with developer commentary from Parity Technologies.OneKey Blog – What's Next for Polkadot: Upcoming Upgrades and Milestones for 2025-26 – Summary of coretime market development, JAM roadmap, and developer strategy for 2025-26.Polkadot Developer Docs – Obtain Coretime – Practical guide for purchasing bulk and on-demand coretime when deploying a parachain.Elastic Scaling – Polkadot Developer Docs – Technical documentation for multi-core parallel execution on Polkadot.Parity Technologies – Refining Polkadot's Economic Architecture: DOT Issuance, DAP, and Network Adjustments – Official explanation of the Dynamic Allocation Pool, the 2.1 billion DOT supply cap, and the March 2026 issuance reduction.

Two New Referenda Target Polkadot's Staking Economics@Polkadot has put two new OpenGov proposals to its community: referenda 1909 and 1910. Together, they represent the next step in a broader effort to overhaul the network's staking architecture, shifting risk away from everyday participants and toward the validators who operate the infrastructure.

Referendum 1909 builds on the 10,000 $DOT validator self-stake minimum that was established by the earlier Referendum 1890. The new proposal adds self-stake rewards for validators, sets validator commissions to 0%, and introduces permissionless chilling, meaning that under-bonded validators can be removed from the active set without requiring a governance action. The intent is to sharpen validator incentives and ensure operators carry genuine financial exposure to their own performance.

Referendum 1910 addresses the nominator side of the equation. It proposes removing nominator slashing entirely and reducing the unbonding period to 48 hours. Under Polkadot's current model, nominators who back a misbehaving validator can lose a portion of their staked funds. The existing unbonding period, meanwhile, sits at approximately 28 days, meaning stakers must wait nearly a month before withdrawn $DOT becomes transferable.

Rebalancing Risk Between Validators and NominatorsThe two proposals are designed to work in tandem. By concentrating slashing risk on validators through the self-stake requirement and removing it for nominators, Polkadot aims to make staking more accessible to a broader range of participants. Cutting the unbonding window to 48 hours addresses a longstanding liquidity concern that has discouraged some holders from participating at all.

Taken together, referenda 1909 and 1910 continue a reform trajectory that @Polkadot's governance community began earlier in 2026. The core logic remains consistent: validators, who control the infrastructure, should absorb the primary operational risk, while nominators should be able to delegate and earn rewards with fewer barriers and less exposure to losses outside their control.

Both proposals are open for a vote through Polkadot's OpenGov system, where $DOT holders can participate directly in the decision.

Sources:
Polkadot OpenGov Votes on Mandatory 10,000 DOT Validator Self-Bond (BanklessTimes)
Staking on Polkadot (Polkadot Wiki)
Polkadot OpenGov Referenda Tracker (Subsquare)

CRV price trades near $0.24 as LlamaLend exploit concerns weigh on short-term sentiment.

Summary

CRV price is holding above $0.22 support but struggling below $0.25 resistance. A $240K LlamaLend pool exploit has added fresh uncertainty around Curve’s ecosystem. A daily close below $0.22 could expose the psychological $0.20 level. Curve DAO (CRV) token is trading at $0.24 at press time, down 3.5% over the past 24 hours. The pullback comes during a recovery attempt, with price still near the upper half of its seven-day range between $0.21 and $0.26.

CRV is up about 5% on the week but remains down 20% over the past month.

Derivatives activity has softened. Volume is down 12% to $127 million, while open interest has slipped 1.73% to $67.8 million, according to CoinGlass data.

As uncertainty persists, the drop in open interest shows that some leveraged positions are being closed rather than opened, indicating caution among traders.

LlamaLend pool exploit adds pressure Curve Finance’s March 2 statement confirming that it is looking into an attack on the sDOLA LlamaLend markets has dampened sentiment. The issue stemmed from how the pool’s price oracle was configured, which introduced the risk of manipulation.

Blockchain security firm BlockSec had clarified that the vulnerability affected only the sDOLA–crvUSD LlamaLend pool and not Inverse Finance itself. The exploit resulted in an estimated $240,000 profit for the attacker.

Borrowers who used sDOLA as collateral were liquidated, while lenders were unaffected. sDOLA holders even saw gains due to the price distortion.

Correction: After further investigation and discussion with @InverseFinance, we confirm that its contract was not affected by the attack. The actual victim was the sDOLA–crvUSD Curve LlamaLend pool. The root cause was an improper oracle configuration by the pool creator, who used… https://t.co/DTDJX1gVrS

— BlockSec Phalcon (@Phalcon_xyz) March 2, 2026 The attack relied on a flash loan. Funds were borrowed, sDOLA was redeemed and re-staked as a donation, and the pool’s pricing mechanism was temporarily distorted.

That shift pushed several positions below liquidation thresholds, allowing the attacker to liquidate them at a profit.

Curve emphasized that the core protocol contracts were not compromised. Even so, the incident has revived concerns about oracle design and integration risks within DeFi lending markets.

CRV price technical analysis CRV continues to trade in a bearish structure. The daily chart shows a sequence of lower highs and lower lows. Price sits below the descending 50-day moving average, reinforcing the short- to mid-term downward bias.

CRV daily chart. Credit: crypto.news Attempts to reclaim the 0.25–0.26 zone have failed so far, leaving overhead supply in place. Bollinger Bands expanded to the downside after a period of contraction, confirming that the latest volatility break favored sellers.

Price is now hugging the lower band, a sign that sell pressure has not fully eased. A close back above the mid-band would be the first sign of stabilization, but that has yet to occur.

The momentum is still skewed toward bears because the relative strength index is less than 50. It recently recovered from around the 30 level, but there hasn’t been any major bullish divergence. 

Immediate support sits near 0.22, which marks the lower boundary of the current range and a liquidity cluster. A daily close below that level could open the path toward the psychological 0.20 mark.

On the upside, 0.25 acts as near-term resistance. A sustained move above 0.30 would be required to break the pattern of lower highs and shift the broader structure.

South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit has announced it will delist Loopring (LRC), marking another instance of tighter listing oversight within one of Asia’s most closely regulated digital asset markets. The exchange said trading support for LRC will end in mid-March, with withdrawals to remain available for a limited period thereafter, giving users time to manage positions before services are fully discontinued.

The decision follows what Upbit described as a comprehensive internal review of the project. According to the exchange, concerns were raised regarding disclosure standards, business transparency, and the sustainability of the project’s roadmap. While Upbit did not allege misconduct, it indicated that the token no longer satisfied the platform’s listing maintenance criteria, which are designed to protect investors and ensure adequate levels of project communication and operational clarity.

Delisting timeline and user impact Under the announced schedule, deposits of Loopring have already been suspended, and trading support will cease on the specified termination date. After trading ends, open orders will be automatically canceled. Withdrawals will remain available for a defined grace period before full support is terminated. Upbit advised users to review their holdings carefully and take necessary action to avoid disruptions once services conclude.

For retail investors, the immediate implication is reduced liquidity within the South Korean market. Upbit commands a significant share of domestic crypto trading volume, and removal from its platform can materially affect a token’s accessibility and price stability in the region. Market participants often view delistings by major exchanges as negative catalysts, particularly when they stem from compliance or transparency concerns rather than purely commercial considerations.

Broader regulatory context in South Korea South Korea has developed one of the world’s more structured regulatory environments for digital asset trading. Exchanges operating domestically are subject to strict reporting standards and periodic asset reviews. Projects listed on major platforms are expected to maintain consistent disclosures regarding development progress, governance structure, tokenomics, and risk factors. Failure to meet these standards can result in trading suspensions, watchlist designations, or full delistings.

In recent years, local exchanges have demonstrated greater willingness to remove tokens that fall short of evolving compliance benchmarks. This reflects both regulatory pressure and a broader industry shift toward enhanced investor protection. For exchanges, maintaining credibility and regulatory alignment has become a strategic priority, particularly as institutional participation in digital assets expands.

Loopring, an Ethereum-based layer-2 protocol designed to facilitate scalable decentralized exchange infrastructure, continues to operate independently of any single exchange listing. However, delisting from a major venue such as Upbit may limit exposure to one of the region’s most active retail trading bases. The longer-term impact on LRC’s liquidity and valuation will depend on trading activity across other global exchanges and the project’s ability to address the concerns highlighted during the review process.

As exchanges worldwide refine listing frameworks in response to regulatory developments, Upbit’s decision underscores the growing importance of transparency, consistent disclosure, and operational sustainability in the digital asset sector. The move serves as a reminder that exchange listings are conditional, and that ongoing compliance is increasingly central to a token’s continued market access.

Canary Capital has brought Hedera’s HBAR token into the ETF mainstream. The firm filed a Form 424B3 prospectus supplement with the SEC for its spot HBAR ETF, trading under the ticker HBR on Nasdaq.

The filing, submitted around October 27, 2025, preceded the fund’s trading debut on Nasdaq the following day. It makes HBR the first US spot ETF offering direct exposure to HBAR, the native cryptocurrency of the Hedera network.

What the filing actually means A 424B3 is a prospectus supplement, essentially the final paperwork that tells investors exactly what they’re buying before shares start changing hands. The more important backstory is the S-1/A filing Canary submitted on September 22, 2025, which served as the precursor registration statement. The 424B3 was the last regulatory hurdle before shares could actually trade.

The ETF is structured as a grantor trust that holds 100% HBAR, plus minor cash reserves. That structure means investors own a proportional share of actual HBAR tokens sitting in custody, not derivatives or futures contracts.

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Custodial duties are split between BitGo Trust Company and Coinbase Custody. Pricing relies on a benchmark from CoinDesk for valuation of the underlying HBAR holdings.

The sponsor fee is set at 0.95%. For context, that’s higher than most spot Bitcoin ETFs, which have largely settled into a fee war in the 0.20%-0.25% range.

The numbers so far As of June 2026, the fund’s net assets sit at approximately $52.6 million. The market price per share was around $11.14 as of June 8, 2026. The fund’s CUSIP number is 136945102.

Canary Capital CEO Steven McClurg framed the approval as a significant moment for broadening investor access to digital assets.

Why this matters beyond HBAR The Hedera network operates a hashgraph-based distributed ledger, which is technically distinct from traditional blockchain architecture. It’s governed by the Hedera Governing Council, a body that has included companies like Google, IBM, and Boeing.

For investors considering the HBR fund, the 0.95% sponsor fee is the most immediate cost to weigh. With $52.6 million in net assets, the fund is still relatively small. Smaller ETFs can trade at wider bid-ask spreads, meaning investors might pay a slight premium when buying and accept a slight discount when selling compared to the fund’s net asset value.

Every dollar flowing into HBR translates to actual HBAR purchases by the trust, creating buying pressure that didn’t previously exist from the traditional finance channel.

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

Altcoins

16 June 2026 | 03:27 Hedera HBAR is trading around $0.083, stuck in a range that has held since late May despite a series of institutional developments that would move most assets considerably higher.

Key Takeaways:

HBAR trades near $0.083, below the $0.095 resistance level, with all three major moving averages positioned above current price Canary Capital’s HBAR spot ETF has recorded over $93 million in net inflows since launch, with only a single day of outflows A mid-June open interest surge of 40% alongside a 98% volume spike explains short-term price volatility despite positive fundamentals JPMorgan Asset Management named Hedera the preferred public-permissioned DLT for tokenizing money market funds A JPMorgan endorsement, a Merck supply chain deal, tier-one institutional custody via Copper.co, and $93 million in ETF inflows have all landed within weeks of each other — and the price has barely reacted.

Why Price and Fundamentals Are Moving in Opposite Directions In mid-June 2026, HBAR’s open interest on derivatives exchanges surged by 40%, simultaneous with a 98% spike in trading volume that pushed 24-hour figures above $513 million, according to data from CoinGlass. When a token’s derivatives market is that active relative to its spot market, price responds to liquidation cascades rather than to news — which is the structural reason why positive catalysts have not translated into sustained upward movement.

The spot bid from Canary Capital’s ETF, which has logged over $93 million in net inflows with only a single day of outflows, provides a baseline floor but is not large enough on its own to absorb the volatility generated by that level of leverage. Adding to the near-term headwinds is an upcoming ecosystem token unlock of approximately 3.97 billion HBAR, which OTC desk activity suggests is being anticipated by large holders. Until the unlock clears or spot buying picks up, short-sellers hold the structural advantage.

HBAR’s Descending Channel and Where Support Sits Since peaking near $0.12 in late 2025, HBAR has moved lower through a descending channel, and all three major moving averages sit above the current price and slope downward — meaning any recovery attempt has to work through layered resistance before it carries technical significance.

The nearest support floor at $0.078 has held twice in recent weeks. A confirmed daily close above $0.095 would open a path toward $0.102 and eventually $0.13. RSI at 47.27 places the asset in neutral-to-weak territory, while its 14-period average sits at 39.09 — a level that historically precedes either a bounce or an acceleration downward depending on whether buyers step in at support.

Level / Indicator Value Signal Current price $0.083 Neutral zone Near-term support $0.078 Held twice in June Key resistance $0.095 Needs daily close above Next target if $0.095 clears $0.102 → $0.13 Technical projection 50-day moving average $0.088 Price below — bearish 100-day moving average $0.089 Overhead resistance 200-day moving average $0.100 Not reclaimed in months RSI (14-period) 47.27 Neutral momentum What Merck’s Supply Chain Partnership and JPMorgan’s Endorsement Actually Mean On June 9, The Hashgraph Group formalized a partnership with Merck & Co. that connects the pharmaceutical company’s M-Trust authentication technology with TrackTrace, a decentralized product passport system built on Hedera. Every unit batch in Merck’s global supply chain receives an immutable cryptographic identity recorded through the Hedera Consensus Service. The mechanism that makes this economically viable on Hedera rather than a general-purpose blockchain is fee predictability — Hedera’s transaction costs are pegged in US dollar terms, starting at fractions of a cent, which means Merck can log millions of supply chain entries at a fixed, forecastable cost that variable gas fee networks cannot match at enterprise scale. In global pharmaceutical logistics, where regulators in both the US and EU are tightening traceability requirements, that cost predictability is not a minor advantage — it is the difference between a system that can scale compliantly and one that cannot.

On the institutional finance side, a JPMorgan Asset Management report explicitly identified Hedera as the optimal public-permissioned distributed ledger technology framework for the tokenization of money market funds — a sector representing trillions in institutional capital. The bank’s analysis pointed to three specific attributes: its consensus mechanism’s security architecture, an energy footprint of just 0.00025 kWh per transaction compared to Ethereum’s 2.95 kWh, and the fixed-fee model that makes large-scale settlements predictable. This kind of assessment from an institution with direct financial interest in getting infrastructure decisions right moves Hedera out of the altcoin conversation and into a category where corporate treasuries evaluate it alongside traditional financial infrastructure rather than alongside other layer-1 tokens.

A Network Running at Enterprise Scale The network’s raw performance data reflects the same picture:

Metric Value Notes Total processed transactions 71+ billion Since mainnet; mostly enterprise data logging Network throughput capacity 10,000+ TPS Theoretical maximum Active operational load ~2,400 TPS Average real-world rate RWA settlements $10 billion+ Cumulative on-chain value settled Active wallet growth (Q1 2026) +140% YoY Year-over-year change in active addresses Energy per transaction 0.00025 kWh vs. Ethereum ~2.95 kWh / Bitcoin ~1,087 kWh Hedera has processed over 71 billion transactions since mainnet launch, settled more than $10 billion in real-world assets on-chain, and grown its active wallet count by 140% year-over-year in Q1 2026 — none of which has translated into meaningful upward price pressure for the same reasons outlined above.

Under the Hood: What the Block Node Migration Changes Hedera is currently overhauling how it stores historical transaction data. Previously, nodes relied on external cloud providers like AWS or Google Cloud for historical data retrieval — an external dependency that created complications for enterprises seeking regulatory certification. The new architecture stores transaction history directly on dedicated Block Nodes rather than external cloud providers, cutting confirmation times to under a second and removing the external dependency entirely. For industries like pharmaceuticals and finance, where compliance certification requires a self-contained and independently verifiable audit trail, that distinction matters considerably.

AI Infrastructure, Copper.co Custody, and the Japan Listing The Hedera Agent Kit V4 allows AI agents to execute independent on-chain financial transactions within hard-coded compliance guardrails:

Hourly HBAR spending caps set at the protocol level that the agent cannot exceed Whitelisted payment destinations the agent cannot override Mandatory audit trails of the agent’s decision logic, recorded immutably to the Hedera Consensus Service at the point of execution This solves a problem that has slowed enterprise AI deployment in regulated industries: how to let a system transact independently without losing the audit trail that compliance teams require. Separately, Hedera’s payment schemas were accepted into the x402 protocol standard, enabling native HBAR and USDC micropayments for machine-to-machine API transactions — directly relevant to technology companies building AI systems that require continuous low-cost payments between services.

On June 12, Copper.co integrated Hedera into its institutional custody platform, giving corporate treasuries and large funds tier-one custody and staking access within a compliance-grade framework. This removes the last significant compliance barrier that had kept institutional capital on the sidelines despite growing interest in the network. In Asia, Hedera cleared Japan’s Financial Services Agency regulatory process — among the most stringent in the world for digital assets — and secured a listing on OKCoin Japan with a direct Japanese yen trading pair, giving Japanese investors their first regulated access to HBAR.

Where Hedera’s Critics Have a Point Two structural criticisms of Hedera remain unresolved by the recent run of positive developments. First, despite 71 billion total transactions, the majority of that volume comes from enterprise data logging — health trackers, ad fraud verification, supply chain entries — rather than the retail DeFi activity that drives token appreciation and speculative engagement on competing networks like Solana or Ethereum. Second, while anyone can hold HBAR and open a wallet, only Governing Council members — currently including Google, IBM, Boeing, FedEx, Accenture, Nvidia, and McLaren Racing among others — validate transactions at the consensus layer. Hedera is phasing in public node validation, but the network remains permissioned at its core, which rules it out for anyone who prioritizes decentralization above all else.

The long-term bull case, with price targets toward $1.00 extending into the 2026–2030 window, depends on corporate pilot programs transitioning to full mainnet production use — converting enterprise activity into sustained, recurring demand for the token. That transition has no fixed timeline. In the near term, the price behavior will be determined by two competing forces: whether the 3.97 billion token unlock generates enough sell pressure to break the $0.078 floor, and whether the accumulation of institutional developments — the ETF inflows, Copper.co custody, the Japan FSA clearance, and the JPMorgan endorsement — is sufficient to hold support and eventually force a clean break above $0.095.

Date Category Development Q1 2026 Regulatory SEC/CFTC classify HBAR as digital commodity, removing securities-classification risk for institutional holders Q1 2026 Markets Canary Capital HBAR spot ETF surpasses $93M in net inflows with only one day of outflows since launch Q1–Apr 2026 Governance FedEx and Accenture join the Governing Council for logistics and enterprise AI infrastructure respectively Q2 2026 Infrastructure x402 standard integration approved; native HBAR/USDC micropayments for machine-to-machine transactions Jun 9, 2026 Enterprise Merck & Co. supply chain partnership: M-Trust connected to TrackTrace for immutable pharmaceutical batch tracking Jun 12, 2026 Institutional Copper.co adds Hedera to institutional custody platform; tier-one custody and staking for corporate treasuries Jun 2026 Regulatory HBAR listed on OKCoin Japan with JPY pair after clearing Japan’s FSA framework This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Consult a professional before making investment decisions.

Author

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.

In brief Kraken will migrate its wrapped Bitcoin product, kBTC, from LayerZero to Chainlink's interoperability protocol. The asset maintains a market cap of more than $260 million, and Kraken said it will use Chainlink for future wrapped assets, as well. LayerZero admitted it "made a mistake" with Kelp DAO's setup, which was exploited for $292 million in April. Crypto exchange Kraken is the latest firm to ditch LayerZero’s cross-chain interoperability technology following its role in last month’s $292 million Kelp DAO exploit. 

As a result, the firm will migrate its existing wrapped Bitcoin product, kBTC, to Chainlink’s cross-chain interoperability protocol (CCIP). In the future, any wrapped Kraken products will also make use of Chainlink’s technology. 

“Kraken chose Chainlink CCIP because it offers enterprise-grade infrastructure with strict security & risk management requirements,” the exchange posted on X.

Holders of the firm’s kBTC token, which is backed 1:1 by Bitcoin held in custody by Kraken, do not need to take any action at this time. The token holds a market cap of around $266 million at the time of writing. 

Kraken is deprecating its existing cross-chain provider and migrating to @Chainlink CCIP as its exclusive cross-chain infra to secure Kraken Wrapped Bitcoin (kBTC) & all future Kraken Wrapped Assets.

Kraken chose Chainlink CCIP because it offers enterprise-grade infrastructure…

— Kraken (@krakenfx) May 14, 2026

Kraken’s migration extends the list of major crypto firms which have announced their intentions to detach themselves from LayerZero’s cross-chain tech after the interoperability protocol team admitted it “made a mistake” that led to the Kelp DAO exploit. 

Prior to Kraken’s departure, Kelp DAO announced its intentions to shift to Chainlink’s technology and was followed by Solv Protocol, which said it would migrate the tech backing $700 million worth of Bitcoin-related assets to CCIP as well. Last week, on-chain reinsurance protocol Re also announced plans to make the switch from LayerZero to Chainlink.  

“Together, Chainlink and Kraken can help accelerate the global adoption of crypto by unlocking utility and distribution for all Kraken Wrapped Assets across DeFi,” Kraken said. 

Although the firm did not mention the Kelp DAO exploit, Kraken’s decision and those of the other crypto firms migrating away from LayerZero come after the April 18 exploit that was later attributed to Lazarus Group, the notorious North Korean state-sponsored hacker group. 

Attackers from Lazarus were able to drain 116,500 rsETH liquid staking tokens from Kelp DAO’s infrastructure after "poisoning" internal RPCs used by LayerZero Labs, according to a postmortem from the interoperability firm. 

Last week, the protocol said no other applications have been impacted and funds are not at risk.

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

Updated Jan 18, 2023, 9:51 p.m. Published Jan 18, 2023, 9:08 p.m.

3 min read

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (L-R) (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)Decentralized finance giant MakerDAO's community was heavily favoring keeping Gemini’s GUSD stablecoin as part of Maker’s reserve. The ongoing vote is testing confidence in Gemini, the Winklevoss-founded exchange that has been swept up in recent crypto contagion.

Voters are casting votes whether to keep the GUSD ceiling at the current $500 million, to decrease it to $100 million or to zero, which would boot GUSD from the reserve, according to Maker’s governance site.

At press time, 69% of the votes favored keeping the GUSD ceiling intact at $500 million, while 31% voted for dropping GUSD to zero. The final result may change; the voting ends Thursday (Jan. 19) at 16:15 UTC.

The Maker protocol is led by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), in which holders of the protocol’s governance token, maker (MKR), can vote on proposals. Currently, MakerDAO holds $489 million in GUSD in its Peg Stability Module (PSM) facility, which acts as a reserve system with $7 billion of assets to back its DAI stableoin’s value and price peg to the dollar.

Starting in October, Gemini has been paying a 1.25% annual yield to Maker on GUSD holdings based on an earlier agreement.

The voting comes as Gemini, the issuer of GUSD, is under pressure after halting withdrawals from its yield-paying product, called Gemini Earn, and because of a lawsuit by the top U.S. securities regulator. Gemini is the brainchild of mega-crypto investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who still helm the company.

Crypto investors worry that Gemini’s woes may destabilize its GUSD stablecoin, roiling Maker’s $5 billion DAI.

“Recent MakerDAO governance discussions have raised concerns about GUSD’s heavy reliance on the PSM and Gemini holding GUSD reserves at Silvergate,” Riyad Carey, analyst of digital asset research firm Kaiko, wrote in a report earlier this month.

Currently, MakerDAO holds some 85% of all GUSD in circulation, making Gemini’s stablecoin overwhelmingly reliant on its relationship with MakerDAO.

Additionally, concerns loom about GUSD’s value being partly backed by cash held at Silvergate Capital (SI), the embattled crypto-friendly bank that has suffered in the fallout from last year’s various crypto debacles, most notably FTX’s demise. The bank’s shares lost 88% of their value in the past year on the New York Stock Exchange.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit last week alleging that Gemini Trust and major crypto lender Genesis Global Capital sold unregistered securities to customers through the Gemini Earn program. (CoinDesk and Genesis are owned by the same parent company, DCG.)

Users’ assets in the Earn program are locked up at the moment, after Genesis’ lending arm, which powered Gemini Earn, suspended customer withdrawals in November as FTX collapsed. The withdrawal freeze has led to scuffling between the two firms. According to recent reports, Genesis is laying groundwork with its creditors for a bankruptcy filing.

GUSD was an integral part of Gemini’s Earn program, offering as high as 8% annual yield for investors depositing GUSD, according to Kaiko.

Read more: Crypto Exchange Gemini Suffers $485M Rush of Outflows Amid Contagion Fears

“Holding GUSD is akin to holding GUSD’s underlying assets with additional risk related to Gemini,” Carey said. “It seems possible that the community may opt to move on from GUSD in favor of new pilot projects,” he wrote at the time.

The “worst-case scenario” for GUSD would be Gemini’s troubles forcing a delay in GUSD redemptions and causing a temporary deviation from its dollar peg, according to Carey. However, “even a significant depegging would be unlikely to rattle DAI,” he added.

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PLFIF is excited to announce the results of Filecoin Public Goods Funding (ProPGF) Batch 2 - General Track, with $3,220,200 allocated across 16 projects supporting critical infrastructure, developer tooling, ecosystem growth, and coordination within the Filecoin network.

Batch 2 reflects a maturing funding strategy: more selective, more capital disciplined, and strongly aligned with long-term network resilience.

🌱 About ProPGF Protocol Labs’ Filecoin Public Goods Funding (PGF) programs support projects that strengthen the Filecoin ecosystem and broader open-source infrastructure.

Funding is distributed through:

ProPGF - Prospective funding for forward-looking initiatives RetroPGF - Retroactive rewards for demonstrated impact While RetroPGF evaluates past impact, ProPGF is designed to strategically allocate capital toward future ecosystem priorities through milestone-based funding and structured review.

ProPGF runs in recurring cycles and continues to evolve as Filecoin’s capital formation layer matures.

📊 Batch 2 at a Glance 102 total applications 53 shortlisted 42 advanced to final review 16 projects funded $3,220,200 allocated The majority of grants are structured over 6 months, with select soft commitments extending toward 12 months This represents a 15.7% acceptance rate, reflecting the rigor of the review process and the competitive nature of the round.

🧮 Capital Discipline & Negotiation

Across the 16 selected projects:

Total requested: $4,632,800 Total approved: $3,220,200 Note: Batch 2 reflects a more capital-disciplined approach: of the $4.63M requested across selected proposals, $3.22M was approved. This reflects a selective funding approach - prioritizing scope clarity, milestone alignment, and long-term ecosystem impact.

The committee conducted structured negotiations across scope, milestones, and budget sizing to ensure:

Capital efficiency Alignment with ecosystem priorities Clear accountability through milestone gating Average grant size: $201,262 Median grant size: $129,000

This reflects a portfolio approach — balancing large, high-leverage infrastructure bets with smaller, targeted interventions.

🏗 Funding Allocation by Category Batch 2 demonstrates a clear prioritization of core network stability and dependencies.

Capital Distribution:

Infra & Core Dependencies: 62.4% Tooling & Developer Ecosystem: 16.1% Ecosystem Growth: 16.3% Coordination: 3.1% Integrations: 2.0% Over 60% of capital was allocated toward core infrastructure — nodes, maintenance, retrieval systems, indexing, and protocol-level dependencies — signaling strong emphasis on network robustness.

🚀 Meet the Funded Projects 🏗 Infra & Core Dependencies Filecoin Infrastructure Services  by ChainSafe Team – $138,000 The project aims to increase independent operator diversity on Filecoin’s Calibnet test network by running a long-lived, production-like storage miner using Curio. Forest: Efficient and lightweight Filecoin node implementation by ChainSafe Team – $504,000 Forest is a lightweight Filecoin node implementation that makes running network infrastructure cheaper and more reliable. This grant supports its continued maintenance and protocol upgrade readiness. IPNI by IPNI Team - $288,000 IPNI is the indexing service that helps applications discover where data is stored across Filecoin and IPFS. This funding ensures it remains reliable, scalable, and sustainably operated as network usage grows. Enhancing the visibility and verifiability of Filecoin Onchain Cloud within the Filecoin ecosystem through the Filfox explorer by 6Block Team – $30,000 This project enhances the Filfox explorer to improve the visibility and verifiability of FOC, PDP, and Filecoin Pay activity, helping developers, providers, and integrators better understand and troubleshoot onchain service behavior. Curio Storage by Curio Team – $500,000 Curio Storage is building core software and infrastructure that helps Filecoin Storage Providers (SPs) deliver paid deals. This grant funds continued development of “Market 2.0” deal interfaces, plus ongoing support and calibration network stability work that operators rely on. Lotus Miner + Boost Maintenance by Storswift Team – $50,000 This project funds ongoing maintenance of Lotus Miner and Boost, two core components that many Storage Providers rely on for storage and deal operations. The work ensures these systems remain secure, upgrade-compatible, and stable. Calib Network Miner by Storswift Team – $28,000 This project adds a production-grade, independent miner to the Calibration Network to improve upgrade testing, operator diversity, and overall network resilience. Venus Maintenance by IPFS Team – $300,000 Venus maintains and upgrades the second-largest Filecoin client implementation, ensuring continued client diversity and network resilience. This grant supports four network upgrades, zero-day compatibility, and ongoing maintenance of Filscan and FIPs.cc to improve transparency and governance clarity across the ecosystem. Drand by Drand Team – $120,000 This grant funds the continued operation and maintenance of drand - the public randomness service that underpins Filecoin’s block production and network liveness. OpenModel by 6Block Team – $50,000 OpenModel is building a decentralized AI model distribution and compute infrastructure on Filecoin, enabling fast, verifiable model downloads and pay-as-you-go access using Filecoin Pay. 🛠 Tooling & Developer Ecosystem Filecoin Developer Experience & FEVM Development by FIL-B Team – $420,000 FIL-B is building and running the developer experience layer for Filecoin in 2026, partnering with the FOC pod to drive builder adoption (docs, integrations, activations) while also improving core FEVM and Filecoin DX. ProbeLab Gauge for FOC and Retrieval Testing by ProbeLab Team – $100,000 ProbeLab will build retrieval testing tooling and live dashboards to measure Filecoin’s retrieval success rate and Filecoin Onchain Cloud (FOC) performance. This provides transparent, real-time metrics and SLAs to help developers, Storage Providers, and protocol teams monitor and improve network reliability. 🌍 Ecosystem Growth Secured Finance by Secured Finance Team – $225,000 Secured Finance maintains and expands USDFC, a FIL-collateralized stablecoin designed as native financial infrastructure for Filecoin. This grant supports interoperable payment rails, improved user interfaces, and audited onchain vaults to enable stable-value transactions and capital retention within the Filecoin ecosystem. FilPonto by FILPonto Team – $300,000 FilPonto supports core Filecoin infrastructure and ecosystem coordination, sustained FOC developer contributions, and a flexible grants pool for high-impact integrations and experimentation. This grant funds advanced JS contributions to FOC, and responsive technical support across the ecosystem. 🤝 Coordination Filecoin Foundation Infrastructure & Coordination Stewardship by SEAD Team – $101,200 This project provides ongoing stewardship and governance of the Filecoin Foundation’s core coordination infrastructure, including shared systems such as Slack, Google Workspace, and GitHub. The grant ensures secure access management, clear ownership boundaries, and operational continuity across organizational lines to reduce systemic risk and support ecosystem execution. 🔗 Integrations Oku Trade by Oku Team – $66,000 Oku Trade provides Filecoin’s primary decentralized exchange interface and meta-aggregator, enabling fee-less swaps, bridging, and liquidity provision via Uniswap v3 infrastructure. This grant supports ongoing hosting and indexing to ensure reliable DEX access and liquidity flows across EVM networks into Filecoin. 📈 What Batch 2 Signals Compared to earlier cycles, Batch 2 reflects:

Stronger selectivity (16 out of 102 funded) Greater capital concentration into core infrastructure Clear negotiation discipline Emphasis on long-term network sustainability This was not a broad experimentation round. It was a stability and resilience round.

📉 For Teams Not Selected We recognize the high quality of many proposals that were not funded in this cycle.

ProPGF operates within a defined capital envelope and prioritizes strategic alignment, scope readiness, and budget feasibility.

Importantly, we are currently working on a separate grant initiative outside of ProPGF, designed to support projects that may be better suited for a different funding structure or scope.

Our team will be reaching out directly to selected applicants as this program takes shape.

We strongly encourage teams to remain engaged and apply in future cycles.

💸 What Happens Next Agreements and KYB completion Milestone tracking via Karma Grantee Slack onboarding Structured reporting and transparency Initial disbursements begin shortly.

🔭 Looking Ahead As Filecoin continues to mature, so too does its capital allocation strategy.

ProPGF is evolving toward:

Greater funding transparency Stronger milestone accountability Better capital efficiency Alignment with long-term network KPIs Batch 2 marks another step toward building sustainable capital infrastructure around Filecoin.

We’re excited to support this cohort and look forward to sharing more about the long-term roadmap for ProPGF in upcoming posts.

📣 Stay Engaged If you’d like to explore the scope of funded work and follow progress updates from Batch 2 teams, please visit filpgf.io and navigate to the ProPGF Batch 2 → Approved Projects section. All funded projects will be reporting milestone updates there.

For applicants: you should be able to access your full application details directly via filpgf.io. If you encounter any issues or have questions regarding agreements, KYB, or payouts, please reach out to [email protected].

We appreciate the continued engagement from the ecosystem and look forward to building the next phase of Filecoin infrastructure together.

TLDR: Unstoppable Wallet completed NEAR Intents integration across app, web, and Telegram swap tools.  1Click Swap API now enables crosschain execution with near-instant settlement and routing options.  Integration adds DEX-level privacy with no KYC and no metadata tracking across swap transactions ecosystem.  Users can choose tradeoffs between speed, cost, and liquidity routes within Unstoppable Wallet integration layer. NEAR Protocol integration with Unstoppable Wallet expands crosschain swap capabilities via NEAR Intents. Unstoppable Wallet has completed integration of Intents 1Click Swap API across app, Telegram bot, and web interface. 

The rollout enables faster crosschain swaps with privacy features and access to decentralized liquidity routing. The update extends NEAR Intents as a universal liquidity layer across multiple user-facing swap environments.

NEAR Protocol Intents Integration Expands Across Unstoppable Wallet Platforms Unstoppable has completed the integration and testing phase of NEAR Intents across its wallet ecosystem. 

The rollout now spans all Unstoppable products, embedding swap infrastructure directly into its core user environments and expanding functionality across multiple access points.

The 1Click Swap API now runs across the Unstoppable mobile application, Telegram bot, and web interface. This integration standardizes crosschain execution flows and allows users to initiate swaps from different entry points without changing platforms or relying on external routing tools.

The system introduces a privacy-focused structure with no KYC requirements and no metadata tracking inside the integration layer. Transactions execute near instantly, positioning the experience closer to centralized exchange speed while still relying on decentralized routing infrastructure powered by NEAR Intents.

According to Unstoppable, the setup improves access to a wider asset range across multiple chains. It also provides competitive pricing in many stable swap scenarios. 

The routing system operates alongside existing pathways, giving users multiple execution options within a single interface.

Unstoppable now completes its NEAR Intents @near_intents integration and testing phase and now includes in all Unstoppable products.

WHY THIS IMPORTANT?

This gives you DEX-level privacy with centralized exchange speed.

Plus, in many cases NEAR able to provide the most… pic.twitter.com/l2OlF9UmZb

— Unstoppable | Privacy Wallet (@unstoppablebyhs) June 8, 2026

Crosschain Liquidity Layer Drives Broader Swap Accessibility The integration extends NEAR Intents’ universal liquidity layer to a broader user base across several interfaces. This allows users to access crosschain swaps without relying on centralized exchange environments or fragmented third-party routing systems.

NEAR Intents operates as a liquidity aggregation and routing framework across decentralized markets. It builds execution paths that pull liquidity from different sources, helping optimize swap outcomes depending on real-time market conditions.

Unstoppable Wallet users retain full control over execution preferences during swaps. They can select between different tradeoffs, including speed, cost efficiency, and routing complexity, depending on the asset pair and market environment.

The development teams also confirmed additional NEAR-related integrations are in progress. While full details remain undisclosed, Unstoppable indicated that further expansion of the integration pipeline is already underway.

Grayscale Investments has submitted a revised S-1 filing for its proposed spot NEAR ETF, which tracks the prominent AI coin. This move coincides as investor interest grows amid the blockbuster SpaceX IPO frenzy.

Inside Grayscale’s Amended NEAR ETF Filing Grayscale submitted the revised registration statement on filed Friday, June 12 as Amendment No. 1 to Form S-1. It comes on the heels of the BNB coin ETF amendment.

Moreover, it follows the trust’s earlier registration statement filed in January. It adds the SEC Registration No. 333-292834 to the filing, which was missing in the previous submission.

Custody arrangements marked one of the biggest differences. The initial application lists Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC as the sole custodian.

The updated version includes a replacement for Coinbase Custody as the primary custodian with BitGo Bank & Trust N.A. in its place. However, Coinbase Custody will remain as an additional custodian for the Grayscale NEAR ETF.

The asset manager also beefed up the terminology around staking activities. The revised filing makes a clear statement that they will only offer exposure to NEAR staking yield via the ETF only if the US law permits it. It confirmed that neither the trust, sponsor nor the custodians are currently staking NEAR tokens.

With this filing, Grayscale eyes to expand its altcoin ETF line. Recently, it launched the Hyperliquid staking ETF in June.

Meanwhile, the statistics of the NEAR Protocol ecosystem were also updated. The modified filing reveals circulating supply grew to 1.3 billion NEAR tokens as of March 31, 2026, and the market capitalization dropped to $1.5 billion. Also, the filing disclosed that the token’s market ranking has dropped from No. 39 to No. 43.

Of particular note, the amendment also provides for the addition of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP attorney Dylan H. Lojac as legal counsel. It also included formatting changes for compliance purposes related to the new checkbox for the emerging growth company election.

The SpaceX IPO Factor The filing comes after crypto narratives related to artificial intelligence are resurfacing, sparked by Elon Musk-led SpaceX’s successful IPO launch. It spurred a surge of interest in aerospace AI-related stocks and digital assets and next-generation technology narratives.

Over the past few months, NEAR has been trying to establish itself as a blockchain that is focused on decentralized AI applications and autonomous agent infrastructure. Now, it is attracting renewed investor interest.

June 22, NEAR officially announced its next major protocol upgrade: the SPICE (Separation of Consensus and Execution) proposal, a critical milestone toward Nightshade 3.0. Once fully rolled out, NEAR will cut its block time from 600 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds — a roughly 3x speed improvement, approaching the upper speed limit allowed by physical constraints. At the heart of SPICE is the decoupling of the consensus layer from the execution layer. This lets validators finalize block consensus without waiting for transaction execution, reducing latency and enabling support for more complex, time-intensive transactions. NEAR noted this upgrade will be the largest underlying architecture overhaul since Stateless Validation launched in 2024. Post-implementation, transaction experiences for apps like NEAR Intents and near.com will see notable improvements. Alex Shevchenko, CEO of Defuse Labs, added that NEAR’s final confirmation time is expected to drop to roughly 0.4 seconds — faster than Visa’s standard ~3 seconds — bringing the network’s payment experience close to “instantaneous.” NEAR also highlighted that faster block times are foundational to the AI Agent economy, enabling high-speed payments and complex transactions between autonomous agents, plus the ability to run longer tasks across multiple blocks. Additionally, SPICE will clear the path for Nightshade 3.0, laying the groundwork for future cross-shard atomic execution. The NEAR development team explained this will help mitigate development complexity and potential security vulnerabilities stemming from asynchronous network environments, boosting both the network’s scalability and security.

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Analyst: SK Hynix’s US listing and fund-raising could trigger a valuation re-rating.

According to Bloomberg, SK Hynix is set to issue American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the Nasdaq on July 10. The listing aims to raise nearly $30 billion, making it one of the largest ADR issuances in history. Market participants widely believe the move will significantly expand its global investor base and may drive a valuation re-rating. Multiple asset management firms project that if its valuation converges with Micron Technology’s, its share price could rise by 30% over the next year. One fund manager noted that SK Hynix should trade at a valuation at least on par with Micron, as demand for memory chips is likely to outpace supply for years to come. The listing comes amid an unusually strong boom in the memory chip sector. Shares of Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung Electronics have all surged over 200% this year, marking their best annual performance in decades. Demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) from AI servers is widely seen as the driver of a structural "memory supercycle".

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