Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the United States drew $517.19 million in net inflows on Wednesday, marking the strongest single-day surge since May 4. The increase came as Bitcoin’s price surpassed $69,000 for the first time in two months, underscoring a notable resurgence in institutional investor activity.

BlackRock’s IBIT dominates ETF inflowsBlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) accounted for $284.7 million of the total inflow, maintaining a significant lead over competitors. ARK 21Shares’ ARKB followed with $77.7 million, while Fidelity’s FBTC captured $62.4 million during the same session. Eight out of twelve registered funds posted positive inflows, reflecting broad participation and renewed confidence in regulated crypto investment vehicles.

SoSoValue data indicated that this was the largest daily intake for U.S. spot Bitcoin funds in over three months, helping push their combined net assets to $84.31 billion. This total equals around 6.08% of Bitcoin’s overall market capitalization. Cumulative ETF inflows now stand at $52.79 billion, with IBIT alone responsible for more than half of Wednesday’s intake.

The distribution of inflows across multiple funds, rather than being concentrated in a single product, has been described by analysts as a positive signal of institutional demand within the sector. Recent analysis by VanEck revealed that the 30-day net inflow reached $663 million, recovering much of the $2.4 billion in outflows experienced the previous month. Wednesday’s allocation represented nearly 78% of that 30-day total, altering the prevailing narrative on demand for U.S. crypto ETFs.

Prior months had been characterized by withdrawals throughout May and June, with client flows turning more erratic through July and early August. The renewed inflows indicate that institutional investors are returning when liquidity improves. Rachael Lucas, representing BTC Markets, described the purchases as a move geared toward longer-term positioning by investors operating under formal compliance structures rather than short-lived retail speculation.

VanEck’s recent analysis pointed out that almost 78% of the prior 30-day ETF inflow was matched in a single day, signaling a swift change in institutional sentiment following a drawn-out period of withdrawals.

Treasury actions and regulatory shifts support risk appetiteThe ETF inflows coincided with a rally that accelerated after the U.S. Treasury announced it would double the cap on its long-end bond buybacks from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. This program, targeting 10-to-30 year maturities, will run from September 9 through November 4, the end of the refunding quarter. The Treasury cited robust market offers as a reason for the increase and intends to review sizing after November.

Bond yields declined on the announcement, the dollar weakened, and risk assets rallied. Jeff Mei of BTSE suggested that the Treasury’s policy shift sparked renewed risk appetite, fueling both ETF inflows and the cryptocurrency’s price strength.

On the regulatory front, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled proposals introducing new exemptions for crypto investment contracts. The updates would allow offerings up to $5 million over four years or up to $75 million per year, accompanied by additional disclosure requirements. Market analysts noted that these measures may further support institutional participation.

Technical and structural shifts shape Bitcoin’s outlookTechnically, Bitcoin’s price reached $69,892 before trading around $69,514, near its 200-day trend zone and at the midpoint of its broader $60,000 to $80,000 range. Analyst Daan Crypto Trades observed that Bitcoin generated a new higher high while testing its critical 200-day moving average and exponential moving average. This region remains closely watched for signs of whether upward momentum could carry BTC past $70,000 in the coming sessions.

Daan Crypto Trades explained that Bitcoin’s trend remains upward after retracing much of June’s sharp decline, but the asset is now positioned in the center of its established range, and several key technical levels remain in play.

Expectations are for continued volatility as the market navigates ongoing resistance. Sustained closes above the moving average area would offer a stronger technical signal for further gains.

Against this backdrop, a significant transformation is underway as Wall Street increasingly shifts toward Web3. Investors have begun using platforms such as 1stepSwap to directly hold tokenized shares of leading U.S. companies, as well as gold and silver, in their crypto wallets. By tokenizing real-world assets and automatically searching for the best available prices, these platforms eliminate intermediaries and enable near-instant execution.

The combination of ETF inflows, government policy actions, regulatory adaptation, and technological innovation is shaping a new landscape for crypto and traditional asset markets alike.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Binance has seen the sharpest percentage drop in XRP reserves, while Upbit and Bithumb continue to hold the bulk of tracked supply.

XRP’s struggle near $1 continues even as its peers display modest gains this week. The crypto asset went down almost 10% over the past month before it rebounded significantly on Wednesday evening.

Despite the weakness, much more XRP is being withdrawn than deposited across major platforms.

Reserves Slide According to the latest analysis shared by CryptoQuant, XRP reserves across Upbit, Binance, and Bithumb have fallen by roughly 240 million from their late-May and early-June levels, as of August 19. South Korean giant Upbit held 6.40 billion XRP, down from 6.51 billion on May 30, which is a decline of about 110 million, or 1.7%.

The figures for Bithumb fell to 1.82 billion from 1.85 billion on June 2, a decrease of roughly 30 million, or 1.6%. Meanwhile, Binance recorded the largest percentage decline, with its reserves for the token dropping to 2.62 billion from 2.72 billion over the same period, which translates to a reduction of approximately 100 million XRP, or 3.7%.

Combined reserves across the three exchanges decreased from about 11.08 billion to 10.84 billion, representing a decline of roughly 2.2%. Despite the overall reduction, Upbit remains the largest holder of the crypto asset among the three exchanges. In fact, Upbit and Bithumb together hold about 8.22 billion XRP and account for nearly 76% of the reserves tracked across the three platforms.

The falling exchange reserves come as wallet activity across major exchanges turns more focused on withdrawals. As recently reported by CryptoPotato, Coinbase recorded a seven-day net wallet count of -14,300 as of August 18. The exchange accounted for 47.3% of the total absolute imbalance, its highest share since July 2024.

Binance posted a net wallet count of -3,270, while Crypto.com recorded -2,680. Both exchanges moved into negative territory on July 18, almost a week after Coinbase. Binance’s share of the overall imbalance also rose from nearly zero on July 16 to around 10%. Upbit, however, saw its share fall to about 12% from 40% in June.

You may also like: Important Ripple News and XRP Price Update: August 19 XRP Wallet Activity Turns Withdrawal-Heavy Across Exchanges: What It Means for Price? Ripple’s (XRP) $1 Breakdown Could Get Worse Before It Gets Better Whale Activity The asset’s weak price performance has not stopped large transactions from picking up on the XRP Ledger. Data shared by crypto analyst Ali Martinez revealed that transactions worth more than $1 million jumped 280% in a single day and reached nearly 40, compared with around 10 during each of the previous two days.

The spike came shortly after wallets holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP accumulated about 72 million tokens in one day.

Network activity has also picked up, as the ledger recorded nearly 50,000 active addresses over a 24-hour period last week. Despite the rise in activity, social sentiment around XRP fell to a three-month low.

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The American mutual fund Kinetics Internet Portfolio, which has $275 million in assets and is part of Kinetics Portfolios Trust, has acquired a direct equity stake in Ripple Labs Inc.

The investment was disclosed in the fund's quarterly Form NPORT-P report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to the document, the fund owns Class A common shares (Class A Common Shares) issued by Ripple.

SEC Form NPORT-P filing confirming Ripple Labs equity ownership by Kinetics Portfolios Trust. Source: SEC.govThe distinctive aspect of the transaction is that the institutional investor invested directly in the company — through Ripple shares — rather than in the 

volatile XRP cryptocurrency.

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The position is estimated at approximately $150,000, making it small in size relative to a $275 million fund. The filing reflects the portfolio's holdings as of June 30, 2026, but due to regulatory reporting delays, the information became public only in August.

IPO and Washington factors: What is making funds rush to buy Ripple sharesThe fund's purchase coincided with a noticeable softening in Ripple management's rhetoric regarding a potential public listing. Speaking at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium 2026, CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the company now takes a "more neutral" view of the idea of an IPO.

Previously, Ripple's senior management, including President Monica Long, had categorically denied having such plans, citing the company's strong balance sheet and the absence of a clear timeline.

Because Ripple Labs remains a private company, the fund acquired the securities through specialized over-the-counter pre-IPO platforms for accredited investors. The transaction comes amid Ripple's own large-scale $750 million tender offer to repurchase its shares, which valued the company at $50 billion.

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At the same time, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened a proposed new regulatory framework, known as "Regulation Crypto Assets," for public comment, while the U.S. administration is holding direct closed-door meetings with Ripple executives at the White House.

Against the backdrop of these regulatory changes and the confirmation of Ripple's multibillion-dollar valuation, institutional investors are rushing to gain exposure to the company through the private market rather than waiting for an official IPO.

Reading Treasury’s newly proposed GENIUS Act rules on Bits + Bips, Austin Campbell said Coinbase’s US platform “might have to delist Tether,” pointing to Europe’s MiCA delistings as the template.

Original Image Credits: Official White House Photo by Abe McNatt

Posted August 18, 2026 at 4:26 pm EST.

Austin Campbell, founder of Zero Knowledge Group, said on the Bits + Bips podcast that Treasury’s newly proposed rules for the GENIUS Act could leave US exchanges unable to offer Tether‘s USDT, forcing platforms such as Coinbase to delist it for American users.

“There may be a de minimis, but I’m starting to think Coinbase’s US platform might have to delist Tether,” Campbell said on the Aug. 17 show, hours after the Treasury Department released the proposal. “And by the way, Europe has already been doing this.”

The rule is Treasury’s notice of proposed rulemaking for Section 3 of the GENIUS Act, which governs who may issue, offer and sell payment stablecoins in the United States.

Beginning Jan. 18, 2027, a digital asset service provider, the category that covers exchanges, generally may not offer or make available a foreign-issued stablecoin unless the issuer can and will comply with US lawful orders and any reciprocal arrangement between Treasury and the issuer’s home country.

“You cannot offer, sell, or make available a foreign-issued payment stablecoin in the US unless that issuer can and will comply with lawful orders and reciprocal arrangements,” Campbell said on the podcast, summarizing the core prohibition. “So basically, Tether can be used offshore, but not here.”

The European precedent Campbell’s read has a recent template. Under the EU’s MiCA regime, EU-regulated exchanges faced the same binary, carry a compliant stablecoin or lose their own license, and USDT lost its listings. Coinbase removed USDT for users in the European Economic Area effective March 31, 2025, with Crypto.com and Binance following the same quarter.

“I will remind people that’s not new, and we’re not going first,” Campbell said on the show. “The European Union with MiCA basically said, ‘If you’re not registered, goodbye.'”

USDT has about $183 billion in circulation, roughly 59% of the stablecoin market. It has not pursued the kind of registration MiCA required, and its answer to the US framework is more layered than a straight refusal.

Tether’s two-track answer The company has split its strategy. It kept USDT as an offshore, dollar-pegged token and launched a separate, US-domestic stablecoin, USAT, in January 2026, built to comply with the GENIUS Act, issued through Anchorage Digital Bank and run by Bo Hines, the former head of the White House’s crypto council.

Co-host Chris Perkins, head of Franklin Crypto, pointed to that split on the show. “They also have USAT onshore being led by Bo Hines,” Perkins said. “I don’t think that they’re just ignoring Genius. I think they have a plan.”

That plan is what makes Campbell’s scenario coherent rather than hypothetical. If USDT stays foreign and unregistered while USAT carries Tether’s compliant US business, USDT is exactly the sort of foreign-issued stablecoin the proposed rule is written to reach.

Caveats The rule is a proposal, not final. Treasury has opened a roughly 60-day comment window, and the foreign-issuer restriction does not take effect until Jan. 18, 2027.

A path also stays open: Treasury can deem a foreign issuer’s home regime “comparable” to the US framework and let it register, though no country has such a determination yet. And the proposal is silent on stablecoin yield, the issue tangled up in the separate CLARITY Act fight.

Related Listen: In an AI Agent World, Do Money Markets Win Over Stablecoins? – Bits + Bips

AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.

The Kelp DAO bridge exploit did not just steal $292 million. It triggered the largest infrastructure migration in DeFi history, and the math shows LayerZero may never recover the lost ground.

Summary

Publicly announced migrations from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP have reached approximately $15 billion in total value, led by BitGo moving $7.4 billion in WBTC, Mantle shifting its $2.5 billion Super Portal, and Lombard transferring over $1 billion in bitcoin-backed assets. The April 18, 2026 Kelp DAO bridge exploit drained 116,500 rsETH worth $292 million through a forged cross-chain message that exploited a single-verifier configuration, with the attack later attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. LayerZero’s Decentralized Verifier Network model allows applications to select as few as one verifier to validate cross-chain messages, while Chainlink CCIP requires a minimum of 16 independent node operators per lane plus a separate Risk Management Network. Wyoming’s Stable Token Commission became the first U.S. public entity to abandon LayerZero, selecting Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive multi-year infrastructure for the Frontier Stable Token on August 18, 2026. LayerZero’s ZRO token has fallen to a market capitalization of roughly $302 million, down from an all-time high near $7.47, as Nethermind became the latest infrastructure provider to exit its verifier role and join Chainlink as a node operator. On April 18, 2026, an attacker forged a cross-chain message on a LayerZero-powered bridge and walked away with 116,500 rsETH. The tokens were worth $292 million. Within hours, the stolen assets had been deposited on Aave as collateral to borrow $190 million in WETH, spreading stress across lending markets and freezing rsETH pools on both Aave V3 and V4. It was the largest DeFi exploit of the year. But the money was only the beginning of what LayerZero lost.

Four months later, the damage ledger reads differently. BitGo, the custodian behind the largest bitcoin-backed token in decentralized finance, has moved $7.4 billion in WBTC to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol. Kraken, Mantle, Lombard, Solv Protocol, Virtuals, Re, and the state of Wyoming have followed. The cumulative value of announced migrations now approaches $15 billion. Nethermind, one of LayerZero’s own verifier network operators, has ended its role and joined Chainlink as a node operator. The question is no longer whether cross-chain infrastructure is becoming a winner-take-all market. The question is whether LayerZero can stop the bleeding.

The exploit that broke trust The Kelp DAO attack was not a smart contract hack. It was a sophisticated assault on off-chain infrastructure that began six weeks before the theft, when an attacker socially engineered a LayerZero Labs developer on March 6, 2026, harvesting session keys and pivoting into LayerZero’s RPC cloud environment. From that position, the attacker poisoned internal RPC nodes and launched a DDoS attack against external nodes, feeding false data to a single verifier that was the only checkpoint standing between the attacker and $292 million.

The critical vulnerability was a configuration choice. Kelp DAO’s rsETH bridge ran with a 1-of-1 DVN setup, meaning a single Decentralized Verifier Network node operated by LayerZero Labs was the sole validator of cross-chain messages. No second verifier existed to disagree. When the attacker compromised the data feeding that lone verifier, the Ethereum contract released funds based on a token burn that never happened on the source chain.

BREAKING: Curve Finance halts LayerZero infrastructure out of precaution after rsETH LayerZero hack, affecting CRV bridging on multiple chains and crvUSD fast bridge pic.twitter.com/UwNvfxBew9

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 19, 2026 Mandiant, CrowdStrike, and independent security researchers all attributed the attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, specifically the TraderTraitor cluster. The attackers routed approximately $175 million in ETH through privacy rails, while Arbitrum managed to lock $71 million in ETH linked to the exploit.

The damage did not stop at Kelp DAO. The attacker deposited 89,567 rsETH on Aave V3 as collateral and borrowed $190 million in WETH against assets that were now backed by nothing. Aave was forced to freeze rsETH markets on both V3 and V4 to prevent further contagion. The liquidation of the attacker’s positions took weeks, with Aave completing the final rsETH liquidations only after the token’s price had been severely disrupted. DeFi United launched a recovery plan for affected holders, but the full scope of secondary losses across lending markets, liquidity pools, and derivative positions linked to rsETH has never been comprehensively tallied.

What followed was a blame war. LayerZero initially pointed to Kelp DAO for choosing the risky 1-of-1 configuration. Kelp DAO fired back that the single-verifier setup was LayerZero’s own default. For three weeks, LayerZero prioritized a technical post-mortem over clear communication, an approach its own leadership later admitted fell short. On May 9, LayerZero publicly acknowledged it “made a mistake” by allowing its own verifier network to secure high-value assets in a risky configuration.

By then, the exodus had already begun.

The migration ledger The departures did not arrive as a wave. They arrived as a cascade, each one making the next more likely.

Kelp DAO itself moved first, shifting rsETH to Chainlink CCIP while the dispute with LayerZero was still active. Solv Protocol followed in early May, moving more than $700 million in tokenized bitcoin infrastructure. Kraken announced on May 14 that Chainlink CCIP would become the exclusive bridge infrastructure for kBTC and all future wrapped assets. The next day, Lombard migrated over $1 billion in bitcoin-backed assets, including LBTC and BTC.b.

By mid-May, the total had crossed $4 billion. Then it accelerated.

Virtuals Protocol migrated $700 million in VIRTUAL tokens to enable cross-chain payments for AI agents. Re selected Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive bridge for reUSD, backed by $475 million in protocol TVL. Yuzu Money transferred $54.5 million. On July 9, Mantle announced the migration of its Super Portal, co-developed with Bybit, covering $2.5 billion in MNT tokens. The portal was temporarily suspended during the migration window of July 9 to 15.

Then came the largest single departure. On August 4, BitGo announced it would move WBTC, the biggest bitcoin-backed token in DeFi, from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP. The migration covers $7.4 billion in assets and makes Chainlink CCIP the default infrastructure for all future assets BitGo issues. That single announcement nearly doubled the cumulative migration total.

On August 18, Wyoming’s Stable Token Commission finalized its migration, making the Frontier Stable Token the first state-issued stablecoin in the United States to run exclusively on Chainlink CCIP under a multi-year contract. Wyoming cited concerns about LayerZero’s “disclosure practices and operational security.”

The running tally now approaches $15 billion across at least ten named protocols and one sovereign state entity.

The architecture gap that made it possible The exodus is not simply about one exploit. It reflects a structural difference in how LayerZero and Chainlink CCIP approach cross-chain security, and the Kelp DAO hack made that difference impossible to ignore.

LayerZero V2 uses a modular architecture centered on Ultra Light Nodes and configurable Decentralized Verifier Networks. Each application chooses its own set of DVNs and specifies a threshold for how many must agree before a cross-chain message is validated. The design is flexible. It is also, as the Kelp exploit proved, flexible enough to be fatal. A 1-of-1 setup is cheap but means a single compromised verifier can authorize fraudulent transactions. Costs scale with the number of required verifiers, creating a direct tradeoff between security and expense.

Chainlink CCIP takes a different approach. Every cross-chain lane is secured by a minimum of 16 independent, Chainlink-operated node operators. A separate Risk Management Network monitors for anomalous activity and enforces value-based rate limits on each lane, acting as a circuit breaker that caps potential losses even if the primary validation layer is compromised. The system is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and ISO 27001 certified.

The practical difference is who bears the security burden. Under LayerZero’s model, each application team must understand verifier economics, select trustworthy DVNs, and set thresholds that balance cost against risk. Under CCIP, the baseline security is embedded in the protocol itself. As BitGo’s announcement made clear, the new setup lets the issuer retain direct control over token contracts, transfer limits, and cross-chain settings without needing to manage a verifier stack.

LayerZero has responded by removing support for 1-of-1 DVN configurations and announcing plans to move most routes toward stricter 5-of-5 verifier setups. Whether that is enough to reverse the migration trend is an open question. The 5-of-5 model increases costs for applications and still leaves the selection of verifiers in the hands of each deployer, a responsibility many teams have now decided they would prefer not to carry.

The math on LayerZero’s revenue loss This is the arithmetic nobody has published, and it tells a story more damaging than any headline.

LayerZero currently takes a 0% protocol fee on cross-chain messaging. All messaging fees flow to the DVNs and Executors that secure and deliver messages. Revenue for the broader LayerZero ecosystem comes from three potential lines: messaging fees if the fee switch is activated, Stargate swap fees, and fees from the Zero L1. ZRO buybacks are funded by a Stargate ecosystem allocation routed to the LayerZero Foundation.

The fee switch has not been activated. The LayerZero Foundation runs an immutable voting contract that enforces a public on-chain referendum every six months, and token holders have not yet voted to turn it on.

Here is what the math looks like. LayerZero accounts for an estimated 57% of all cross-chain volume, with over $100 billion in cumulative value transferred across its rails. The Chainlink CCIP migration wave represents roughly $15 billion in bridge TVL that has either migrated or is in the process of migrating. That is not transaction volume. That is the base layer of assets that generate recurring cross-chain messaging fees every time they move between chains.

Consider the arithmetic protocol by protocol. BitGo’s $7.4 billion in WBTC is the single largest wrapped asset in DeFi. Every time WBTC moves between Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, or any other supported chain, it generates a cross-chain message. Under LayerZero, that message produced fees for DVN operators and Executors. Under Chainlink CCIP, those same fees flow to Chainlink node operators. Mantle’s $2.5 billion in MNT tokens bridges regularly between Mantle L2 and Ethereum mainnet. Lombard’s $1 billion in LBTC and BTC.b moves between Corn, Berachain, Rootstock, and other networks. Solv’s $700 million in SolvBTC bridges across four chains. Virtuals’ $700 million in VIRTUAL tokens crosses between Base and other networks to power AI agent payments.

Add Kelp DAO’s rsETH, Re’s $475 million reUSD, Kraken’s $330 million in kBTC and future wrapped assets, and Yuzu Money’s $54.5 million. The aggregate is not a static number. It is a flow generator. Each dollar of bridge TVL produces messaging revenue proportional to how frequently it moves between chains. Wrapped bitcoin products, which rebalance and settle constantly, are among the highest-frequency bridge users in DeFi.

The lost fee revenue accrues not to LayerZero today, since the fee switch is off, but to the future value of ever activating it. Every migration shrinks the denominator of what a fee switch would be worth. Every departure makes it harder to argue that ZRO holders should vote to activate fees, because the remaining transaction base may not justify the cost to users.

ZRO’s market capitalization has fallen to roughly $302 million, down from an all-time high near $7.47 per token. The top 100 wallets control 87.39% of supply. A June 2026 unlock released 25.71 million ZRO worth approximately $23 million, adding sell pressure to an already declining token. The price has dropped 38.87% in the past month alone.

The uncomfortable conclusion: LayerZero’s revenue potential is being hollowed out before the revenue engine is even switched on. The migrations are not just a loss of current activity. They are a structural reduction in the protocol’s future earning capacity.

When verifiers walk The Nethermind departure on August 19 adds a dimension that goes beyond TVL. Nethermind is not a token project moving its assets to a different bridge. It is an Ethereum core engineering firm that was operating a DVN node for LayerZero, validating cross-chain messages as part of the security infrastructure itself.

Nethermind ended its LayerZero verifier role after what it described as an “extensive infrastructure review” and joined Chainlink as a node operator and strategic technology provider. The company did not publish the review or identify a specific LayerZero flaw. It did not disclose the migration’s cost or timeline. What it did do was move from being part of LayerZero’s security layer to being part of Chainlink’s.

JUST IN: S&P Global’s stablecoin stability assessments (SSAs) are now available onchain through Chainlink DataLink, bringing $1.2T+ in indexed assets to DeFi pic.twitter.com/tl1hxOcqXn

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) April 11, 2026 The significance is structural. LayerZero’s security model depends on a diverse, high-quality set of DVN operators. When one of those operators not only leaves but joins the competing protocol, it signals something about the relative attractiveness of operating infrastructure for each network. If the Nethermind departure prompts other DVN operators to reassess their positions, LayerZero faces a potential reinforcing loop: fewer high-quality verifiers make the network less attractive to applications, which reduces fee revenue for remaining verifiers, which makes the network less attractive to verifiers.

LayerZero’s move toward 5-of-5 verifier requirements could intensify this dynamic. More required verifiers means more operators must be recruited and retained per lane, at a time when at least one prominent operator has concluded the opportunity lies elsewhere.

A state government takes a side Wyoming’s decision deserves its own examination because it represents something new in the cross-chain debate: a sovereign entity making an infrastructure choice based on operational security rather than token economics.

The Frontier Stable Token launched in January 2026 as the first fiat-backed, fully reserved stable token issued by a U.S. public entity, backed by U.S. dollars and short-term Treasuries. The Commission supports FRNT across eight networks: Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, Hedera, Optimism, Polygon, and Solana.

The original cross-chain infrastructure was LayerZero. The migration to Chainlink CCIP, finalized on August 18, was driven by what the Commission called concerns about LayerZero’s “disclosure practices and operational security.” The contract is exclusive and multi-year. LayerZero has been fully deprecated. The Commission said it conducted a full assessment of its cross-chain provider and concluded that the operational security standards did not meet the requirements of a public financial instrument.

FRNT is not a large-cap token. Its significance lies in what it represents: a government-issued financial instrument choosing one cross-chain protocol over another on the basis of security review, not developer preference or token incentives. The Commission’s eight-network deployment across Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, Hedera, Optimism, Polygon, and Solana means Chainlink CCIP now secures a sovereign stablecoin across a wider network footprint than most private-sector tokens manage.

This matters because government adoption of cross-chain infrastructure creates a different kind of lock-in than protocol adoption. When BitGo migrates, it can theoretically migrate again. When a state government signs a multi-year exclusive contract, it creates a precedent that other public entities may follow. If federal stablecoin legislation advances and other states issue their own stable tokens, the Wyoming precedent positions Chainlink CCIP as the default choice for government-grade cross-chain infrastructure.

The LINK token rose approximately 3% to trade near $9.67 on the announcement. The market read it as confirmation of a trend rather than a one-off event.

Winner-take-all dynamics in cross-chain infrastructure Cross-chain messaging has network effects that tilt toward consolidation. The more assets and protocols that use a given infrastructure, the more liquidity flows through its lanes, the more node operators are incentivized to secure it, and the more attractive it becomes to the next migrating protocol. The reverse also holds: as assets leave a network, remaining participants bear a proportionally larger share of security costs while enjoying fewer network benefits.

LayerZero’s position entering 2026 was dominant. It accounted for an estimated 57% of all cross-chain volume, peaking at 76% in Q2 2025. Over $100 billion in cumulative value had crossed its rails. The Kelp DAO exploit did not break LayerZero’s code. It broke the market’s confidence in LayerZero’s security model, specifically the principle that applications should be responsible for configuring their own verification thresholds.

Chainlink’s response has been to offer a model where security is not optional and not configurable downward. Sixteen node operators per lane, a separate monitoring network, rate limits, SOC 2 compliance. It is more expensive per message. It is also the model that $15 billion in assets have now chosen.

The question for the second half of 2026 is whether this becomes self-reinforcing. If LayerZero’s 5-of-5 verifier mandate increases costs to levels comparable with CCIP, applications face a choice between two similarly priced systems, one of which has been accumulating institutional migration momentum for four months. If the fee switch referendum fails because the remaining transaction base no longer justifies activation, ZRO’s value proposition weakens further, potentially driving additional departures.

There is also the matter of developer mindshare. LayerZero’s OFT standard embeds protocol-specific code into token contracts, creating what critics call vendor lock-in. Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token standard, by contrast, is designed to let issuers retain full ownership of their token contracts and swap providers without redeploying. For teams that have already experienced one forced migration, the standard that makes the next migration easier holds obvious appeal.

Cross-chain infrastructure may not be a natural monopoly. But the $15 billion exodus suggests it has strong winner-take-most characteristics, and the current trajectory favors the protocol that made security non-negotiable.

What to watch LayerZero’s next fee switch referendum. If token holders vote against activation because the remaining transaction base cannot justify the cost to users, it will confirm the revenue hollowing thesis and likely accelerate departures.

DVN operator retention. Whether additional verifier network operators follow Nethermind to Chainlink will signal whether LayerZero’s 5-of-5 mandate can attract enough high-quality validators to function as designed.

Federal stablecoin legislation and state token adoption. If other U.S. states issue stable tokens and follow Wyoming’s precedent of selecting Chainlink CCIP, cross-chain infrastructure becomes a regulated-market standard rather than a protocol-level choice.

Kelp DAO recovery fund outcomes. Aave has completed liquidation of the attacker’s final rsETH positions, but DeFi United’s recovery plan for affected holders will test whether the ecosystem can absorb a $292 million loss without lasting contagion.

LayerZero monthly active transaction volume. The raw number of cross-chain messages processed per month, compared with pre-exodus baselines, will be the clearest measure of whether the migration wave has stabilized or is still accelerating.

Is LayerZero still safe to use after the Kelp DAO exploit? LayerZero has removed support for 1-of-1 DVN configurations and is moving toward stricter 5-of-5 verifier setups. The protocol’s code was not broken in the exploit. The vulnerability was a configuration choice that allowed a single verifier to validate high-value transactions. Applications using multiple independent verifiers face a meaningfully different risk profile than Kelp DAO’s original setup.

How much total value has migrated from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP? Publicly announced migrations total approximately $15 billion as of mid-August 2026. The largest single migration is BitGo’s $7.4 billion WBTC, followed by Mantle’s $2.5 billion Super Portal and Lombard’s $1 billion in bitcoin-backed assets. Smaller migrations from Solv, Virtuals, Re, Kraken, and Yuzu Money account for the remainder.

What is the difference between LayerZero’s DVN model and Chainlink CCIP’s security? LayerZero allows each application to choose its own set of Decentralized Verifier Network operators and set a threshold for how many must agree. Chainlink CCIP requires a minimum of 16 independent node operators per lane and adds a separate Risk Management Network that monitors for anomalies and enforces rate limits. The core difference is whether security configuration is the responsibility of the application or the protocol.

Who was behind the Kelp DAO exploit? Mandiant, CrowdStrike, and independent security researchers attributed the attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, specifically the TraderTraitor cluster. The breach began on March 6, 2026, when an attacker socially engineered a LayerZero Labs developer to harvest session keys and gain access to the RPC cloud environment.

Why did Wyoming choose Chainlink CCIP for the Frontier Stable Token? The Wyoming Stable Token Commission cited concerns about LayerZero’s disclosure practices and operational security. The Commission selected Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive, multi-year cross-chain infrastructure for FRNT, fully retiring LayerZero. FRNT is the first fiat-backed stable token issued by a U.S. public entity.

What happens to LayerZero’s revenue if migrations continue? LayerZero currently takes 0% on messaging fees, with all fees flowing to DVNs and Executors. Revenue potential depends on activating a fee switch through a token holder referendum. Each migration reduces the transaction base that would generate fees if the switch is activated, structurally reducing the future value of ZRO.

Has LayerZero lost its dominant market share in cross-chain messaging? LayerZero accounted for an estimated 57% of all cross-chain volume entering 2026, peaking at 76% in Q2 2025. The $15 billion in migrations represents a significant reduction in the asset base generating cross-chain messages through LayerZero, though exact market share figures for mid-2026 have not been published.

Could the migration trend reverse? LayerZero’s move to 5-of-5 verifier requirements and the deprecation of insecure configurations address the specific vulnerability exploited in the Kelp DAO attack. However, reversing the trend would require migrated protocols to switch back, which involves smart contract upgrades, governance votes, and reputational risk for teams that publicly cited security as their reason for leaving. Multi-year exclusive contracts, like Wyoming’s, make reversal structurally impossible for some participants. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Crypto assets are volatile and carry significant risk. Always conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Published Aug. 20, 2026.

Table of contents

Coinbase has announced that users in Brazil can now buy and sell USDC directly against the Brazilian real on Coinbase Advanced. In its Aug. 19 announcement, the company said the change removes a step in the trading flow and reduces BRL USDC onramping costs by 85%.

The rollout concerns direct BRL-to-USDC access on Coinbase Advanced. Coinbase presented the launch as part of its expansion in Brazil, which it described as a significant crypto market.

What is changing Rather than requiring an intermediate trade or conversion route, eligible users can trade USDC directly in BRL on the Advanced platform. The company said the design is intended to lower friction and costs for users seeking dollar-denominated stablecoin liquidity.

Coinbase’s 85% figure is its own claim about the reduction in USDC onramping costs via BRL on Coinbase Advanced. The release does not provide a universal fee schedule in the announcement, so actual costs can depend on the applicable account, product and transaction conditions.

Stablecoin context The company linked the product change to its broader view of stablecoins as payment and settlement infrastructure. Those wider market statements are Coinbase’s characterization, not independently verified transaction results from this launch.

The announcement is a product-access update, not a change to the USDC protocol or a new stablecoin issuance. Users should consult Coinbase’s in-product disclosures and regional terms for availability and applicable charges. The company did not announce a change to USDC redemption mechanics in the post.

AUTHOR

Jide Idowu is a skilled freelance writer with expertise in blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and digital finance. Known for his ability to break down complex topics into clear, engaging content, Jide crafts articles, blog posts, and analyses that resonate with both beginners and seasoned professionals. His work spans a wide range of subjects, from emerging crypto trends to in-depth explorations of blockchain innovations. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for educating readers, Jide is a reliable voice in the rapidly evolving world of digital assets.

https://coinpedia.org/price-analysis/jito-surges-as-solanas-market-layer-goes-live-can-jto-price-extend-its-rally-beyond-1

The holders of JitoSOL have achieved the necessary governance quorum, enabling the Jito Stake Pool to cast a decisive YES vote on three active Solana governance proposals. This development involves approximately 10 million SOL being used to influence protocol governance, marking a significant step for JitoSOL holders in participating in Solana’s decision-making processes. The quorum was reached under the JIP-30 trigger mechanism, which allows the stake pool to reflect the collective vote of JitoSOL holders once the threshold is met, thereby integrating liquid staking token holders into Solana’s governance framework.

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The move appears to reflect a growing trend of liquid staking tokens playing a crucial role in blockchain governance. By involving JitoSOL holders in decision-making, the initiative could enhance engagement and confidence in the Solana ecosystem. The market response to this development suggests a positive outlook, potentially impacting Solana’s market dynamics and price trajectory.

Key Takeaways The move appears to integrate JitoSOL holders into Solana’s governance, suggesting increased community involvement. JitoSOL’s governance mechanism indicates strong support for the current Solana proposals, potentially impacting market sentiment. The development could indicate a shift in the governance role of liquid staking tokens within the Solana ecosystem. What to Watch The effects of this governance decision on Solana’s market dynamics will be crucial in the coming days. Observers should monitor Solana’s price movements and any subsequent governance outcomes. Additionally, further integration of liquid staking tokens into other blockchain governance frameworks could indicate a broader trend, potentially influencing market confidence and participation.

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Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h September 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → September 1 2026 0.9% — — View market → September 1 2026 1% — — View market → September 1 2026 1.8% — — View market → September 1 2026 16.1% — — View market → September 1 2026 60.9% — — View market → September 1 2026 7% — — View market → September 1 2026 1.7% — — View market → September 1 2026 0.3% — — View market → September 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → September 1 2026 0.7% — — View market →

Shibarium metrics surge even as SHIB price lagsShiba Inu's $SHIB token is trading at approximately $0.00000443, up around 7% over the past month but still a long way from the all-time highs set in October 2021. Price alone, however, is not the full story right now. The more notable movement is happening on Shibarium, the Layer 2 network built to scale the Shiba Inu ecosystem.

Over the past 30 days, on-chain fees on Shibarium have risen 79.5%, reaching $22.10. More strikingly, total value locked (TVL) on the protocol has jumped 298% over the same period, including a 287% increase in just one week, bringing TVL to $97,453. The figures come from DeFiLlama, one of the primary trackers for decentralised finance data across blockchain networks.

Context matters: a small but accelerating baseThe absolute numbers remain modest. For context, a recent report from The Crypto Basic noted that Shibarium's TVL stood at $25,273 as recently as August 10 , which makes the move to nearly $97,500 within days a meaningful percentage gain even if the overall pool is still small. Separate data from Coin-Turk, published August 15, put Shibarium's TVL at $102,324 , broadly consistent with the upward trend shown in DeFiLlama's figures.

Activity on the transaction side has also picked up. On August 9, Shibarium processed around 4,480 transactions, a 507% jump from the lows recorded just days earlier , with blockchain trackers flagging it as a one-month high. Data from Shibariumscan shows the Layer 2 network has now processed 1.56 billion transactions since launching in August 2023, across roughly 269.93 million recorded addresses.

Analysts caution against reading too much into short-term spikes. Single-day surges can be inflated by bots, high-frequency wallets, or temporary programmes that dry up as quickly as they appear. The percentage gains on TVL and fees are also amplified by the small starting base. Still, the direction of travel across multiple metrics, fees, TVL, and transaction counts, points to rising engagement with the Shibarium ecosystem over recent weeks, even if the network remains a fraction of the size of leading Layer 2 platforms.

Shibarium uses BONE as its gas token, tying network activity directly to BONE demand for transaction fees. SHIB itself does not function as the gas currency, meaning the token's utility is more indirect, linked to broader ecosystem participation and any burn dynamics that follow from network usage.

Whether the current momentum can be sustained remains to be seen, but the data suggests on-chain activity and capital flowing into Shibarium are growing at a faster pace than the token price alone would imply.

Sources:
DeFiLlama: Shibarium chain data
The Crypto Basic: Shibarium transactions surge 507%
Coin-Turk: Shibarium DEX volume and TVL, August 2026

Crypto exchange UEX.US has announced the listing of Shiba Inu (SHIB), giving users another avenue to trade and access financial services tied to the meme coin.

According to the exchange, users can now trade Shiba Inu against USDT and other major assets. In addition, they can purchase the token through PayPal, bank wire transfers, or card payments.

Moreover, UEX.US has introduced a 4.5% APY Savings Rewards rate for SHIB from the first day. The platform also allows users to borrow up to 90% of their SHIB holdings without selling their tokens.

The listing expands SHIB’s reach among exchange users and adds another trading venue for the asset. Notably, the announcement comes about a week after Australian-based exchange FrameEx listed SHIB, after which the token briefly climbed to $0.00001004.

SHIB Shows Signs of a Modest Recovery Meanwhile, SHIB is showing signs of recovery after finding support around $0.0000043 earlier this week. It is currently trading at $0.000004461, while several market indicators pointed to improving sentiment.

For instance, Santiment’s Social Dominance metric has recovered since August 16, reaching 0.016% at press time. This increase suggests that SHIB-related discussions are gaining prominence across cryptocurrency conversations.

Shiba Inu Social Dominance Chart Derivatives data also offers a more constructive outlook. CoinGlass data showed SHIB’s long-to-short ratio at 1.01. Since the ratio sits slightly above one, long positions marginally outnumber short positions, indicating that traders are becoming more optimistic about SHIB’s near-term direction.

Furthermore, SHIB’s funding rate turned positive on Tuesday and climbed to 0.0087% on Wednesday. Positive funding generally means traders holding long positions are paying those holding shorts, signaling stronger demand for bullish exposure. 

SHIB funding rates chart  $0.0000043 Support Remains Critical From a technical perspective, SHIB’s ability to hold above $0.0000043 could determine whether its latest recovery develops into a stronger rebound.

The token retested this support zone yesterday and attracted buyers around the level. It subsequently moved back above $0.0000044, suggesting that selling pressure may be easing. If SHIB continues to hold $0.0000043, its next potential target is the 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA), currently around $0.0000046.

Momentum indicators also provide some encouragement. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) stood near the neutral 50 level at 46, indicating that bearish momentum is weakening without yet confirming a strong bullish reversal. Meanwhile, the MACD’s declining red histogram bars point to fading downside momentum. 

SHIB/USDT daily chart However, the recovery remains vulnerable. A daily close below $0.0000043 could invalidate the immediate bullish setup and expose SHIB to further losses towards the psychological $0.0000040 level. 

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

Most crypto projects talk about bridging the digital and physical worlds. Virtuals Protocol is trying to do it with actual robots.

The project’s Eastworlds initiative, which launched in late February 2026, operates as a robotics accelerator and deployment lab designed to do something deceptively simple: put humanoid robots into real environments, collect the data they generate, and funnel it back into an AI training pipeline. The twist is that this entire data economy is anchored to the $VIRTUAL token.

What Eastworlds actually does At its core, Eastworlds is a neodeployment lab. It takes robotics teams that have promising technology stuck in the demo phase and gives them the infrastructure to operate in the real world. Selected teams get access to advanced hardware, including Unitree G1 humanoid robot units, along with teleoperation workflows and operational support lasting up to one month.

The real product, though, isn’t the robots themselves. It’s the data.

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Every time a robot manipulates an object, navigates a space, or executes a locomotion task, Eastworlds captures that interaction as training data for autonomous policies. The initiative has documented more than 500,000 individual tasks and currently generates approximately 200 hours of humanoid teleoperation data per week. That volume positions Eastworlds as one of the more significant sources of operational robotics data outside of China, where much of the world’s humanoid robot development is concentrated.

The data flywheel and the token Virtuals Protocol has structured Eastworlds around what it calls a “data flywheel.” Deployed robots generate training data. That data improves autonomous policies. Better policies make robots more capable in the field. More capable robots generate higher-quality data.

Where $VIRTUAL fits into this loop is as the economic layer. The Virtuals Protocol ecosystem revolves around tokenized AI agents, and the data harvested through Eastworlds feeds directly into training those agents.

Entry into the Eastworlds program requires teams to meet a minimum fully diluted valuation of $5 million for a week of participation. The target industries include logistics, manufacturing, and service sectors.

Why this approach is different Eastworlds takes a platform approach. By providing hardware, environments, and operational support to multiple external teams, it can generate data across a wider range of tasks, environments, and use cases than any single company could manage alone.

The centralized decision-making around team onboarding and scheduling, managed entirely by the Eastworlds team, keeps the operation streamlined. That’s a practical necessity when you’re coordinating expensive hardware and limited facility time, but it also means Virtuals Protocol maintains tight control over who gets access and what kind of data flows into the ecosystem.

What to watch For traders and investors in the $VIRTUAL ecosystem, the key metric to track is whether the data flywheel actually accelerates. Generating 200 hours of teleoperation data weekly is a solid starting point, but the value proposition hinges on that data translating into measurably better autonomous policies that attract more teams, which in turn generate more data.

The competitive landscape is also worth monitoring. Major robotics companies like Tesla, Figure, and Agility Robotics are all pursuing their own data collection strategies through proprietary deployments. Eastworlds’ advantage is its open-platform model, but its disadvantage is scale.

The $5 million valuation floor for participating teams also raises questions about how quickly Eastworlds can expand its roster.

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

Coinbase has added more than 290 perpetual contract markets to the Base App through Hyperliquid, giving eligible users access to leverage of up to 50 times.

Summary

More than 290 perpetual markets are available through the Base App. Hyperliquid executes the trades while users remain inside their existing wallets. Leverage reaches 50x on supported markets, raising the risk of liquidation. Users in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada cannot access the product. According to an Aug. 19 report, Coinbase said that the integration covers Bitcoin, Ethereum, and contracts tied to stocks and commodities, although the leverage limit varies by market.

Coinbase brings Hyperliquid trading into Base App Rather than operating a separate derivatives venue inside the Base App, Coinbase is routing perpetual contract orders to Hyperliquid for execution. Users can open and manage positions without leaving their existing wallets, according to the company.

Coinbase Head of Engineering Chintan Turakhia described Hyperliquid as one of the highest-performance on-chain perpetual trading protocols, pointing to its liquidity and execution speed as reasons for the integration.

“Because we support multiple chains and ecosystems, this integration lets our users tap into its deep liquidity and speed without ever leaving their existing wallet,” Turakhia said in a statement.

The arrangement keeps the trading interface inside the Base App while relying on Hyperliquid’s infrastructure to process orders. Coinbase did not disclose whether it receives a share of trading fees, pays Hyperliquid for order execution, or applies additional charges to trades placed through the app.

Perpetual contracts let traders take long or short positions on an asset without buying the underlying instrument. Unlike dated futures, the contracts have no fixed expiry, while funding payments between long and short traders help keep their prices close to the referenced market.

Alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum, the available markets include contracts linked to equities and commodities. Coinbase did not provide a complete list of the supported markets in its announcement, and leverage can fall below the advertised 50x maximum depending on the asset.

The stock-linked products provide price exposure through derivatives rather than ownership of company shares. Traders therefore do not receive voting rights, dividends or other rights normally attached to the underlying stock.

A June report on pre-IPO perpetuals examined Coinbase’s contracts tied to private companies, including SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Such products rely on constructed reference prices because privately held companies do not have continuously traded public shares.

Up to 50x leverage raises liquidation risk Using 50x leverage allows a trader to control a position worth 50 times the capital committed as margin. The same structure can amplify losses, with relatively small price changes capable of exhausting the funds supporting a position.

Coinbase said positions may be liquidated when losses pass the applicable maintenance threshold. Hyperliquid’s execution system can close a position if the trader no longer has enough collateral to keep it open, although the precise liquidation level depends on the market, position size, and leverage selected.

Turakhia said perpetual contracts account for about 75% of current cryptocurrency trading volume, describing the product as the most requested addition among frequent Base App users.

“Perps are where the volume is—roughly 75% of all crypto trading today is perps, not spot,” he said.

Coinbase did not identify the dataset or measurement period behind the 75% figure. Trading-volume estimates can differ depending on whether a calculation includes centralized exchanges, decentralized protocols, dated futures, options, and exchanges that do not publish independently verified figures.

Hyperliquid has developed into one of the largest on-chain venues for perpetual contracts. A May review of the protocol cited industry trackers showing that it processed more monthly perpetual volume than several competing decentralized platforms combined.

For Base App users, the integration removes the need to open a separate Hyperliquid interface before entering a position. Coinbase, however, has not said whether the Base App will offer every Hyperliquid order type or provide the same trading controls available through Hyperliquid’s native platform.

US users remain blocked from Base App perpetuals Coinbase said the new perpetual product is unavailable in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other jurisdictions that restrict leveraged cryptocurrency derivatives.

American customers therefore cannot use the Base App integration to trade Hyperliquid perpetuals. Coinbase offers separate futures products in the United States through Coinbase Financial Markets, a futures commission merchant registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a member of the National Futures Association.

According to Coinbase’s risk disclosures, its regulated U.S. futures service can liquidate positions if a customer’s margin ratio reaches 100%. The company also warns that leveraged futures may produce losses exceeding the amount initially deposited.

Funds placed in a U.S. Coinbase Financial Markets futures account fall under CFTC customer-protection rules, including segregation requirements. Coinbase states that ordinary spot balances held by Coinbase Inc. do not receive the same protection.

Hyperliquid perpetuals inside the Base App are separate from the regulated U.S. futures service. Coinbase has not announced a timetable for seeking American access to the new integration or identified a U.S.-regulated entity that would offer the contracts.

The geographic limits also exclude UK users from the product, even though Coinbase has recently expanded other services in the country. In August, the exchange began rolling out access to almost 4,000 U.S. stocks for eligible UK customers, with trading available 24 hours a day on weekdays.

Base App has returned its focus to financial products The Hyperliquid integration follows a change in Base App’s product priorities after its earlier focus on social feeds, creators, and creator tokens failed to produce the user growth its developers expected.

As crypto.news reported in July, Base creator Jesse Pollak said the network had fallen behind in prediction markets and perpetual futures while concentrating on social products.

Pollak wrote that demand for the social features had “disintegrated completely” and called the creator-led approach the “wrong bet.” He subsequently stepped back from leading the Base App to concentrate on the development of the Base blockchain, while Coinbase resumed control of the application.

Trading, payments, stablecoins, and AI agents have since taken a more prominent role in the app’s development. Coinbase has also pursued an “Everything Exchange” model that combines crypto markets with stocks, derivatives, prediction markets, and other financial products.

In July, coverage of prediction markets showed that Coinbase had described the category as one of its fastest-growing products. The company’s first-quarter 2026 shareholder materials said retail derivatives had passed $200 million in annualized revenue, while derivatives volume over the previous 12 months had risen 169% year over year.

Base already offered perpetual trading through Avantis and prediction markets through Limitless, but Pollak acknowledged in July that both products trailed larger competitors. Dune Analytics data cited at the time showed that Limitless accounted for about 0.5% of monthly prediction-market notional volume.

Stellar's RWA Market Hits $3.25 Billion@StellarOrg ($XLM) now hosts 70 tokenized real-world assets held across 18,917 addresses, according to data from RWAxyz. The total value of those assets has reached $3.25 billion, a milestone that puts Stellar firmly among the leading networks for regulated asset tokenization.

Spiko leads the issuer rankings, accounting for 41.63% of total value at $1.5 billion. Spiko's offerings include EUTBL, USTBL, and UKTBL, each a regulated tokenized money market fund backed by treasury bills from the Eurozone, United States, and United Kingdom respectively. Franklin Templeton ranks second at $570.6 million. Franklin Templeton is the issuer of BENJI, the first regulated money market fund on a blockchain, originally launched on Stellar in April 2021. Ondo sits third at $534.5 million. Ondo Finance's USDY is a tokenized note backed by short-term US Treasuries.

Despite the growth in total asset value, RWA transfer volume fell 57% over the same 30-day period, suggesting that while capital is accumulating on the network, day-to-day trading and settlement activity has slowed in the near term.

Stablecoins Tell a Different StoryStablecoin activity on Stellar moved sharply in the opposite direction. Thirty-day transfer volume rose 40.77% to $7.59 billion, and stablecoin market cap climbed 20.25% to $394.88 million across 694,000 holders, per RWAxyz data.

The divergence between softer RWA transfer volumes and surging stablecoin flows points to two distinct user bases on the network: institutional issuers accumulating longer-dated tokenized instruments, and a larger base of users actively transacting in dollar-pegged assets.

The Stellar Development Foundation's Q2 2026 report showed tokenized RWAs had reached $3.05 billion, doubling in a single quarter, while the broader RWA market grew roughly 50% over the same stretch, meaning Stellar expanded about four times faster than the industry average. The $3.25 billion figure reported by RWAxyz reflects continued growth since that period.

Stellar's architecture was designed with institutional asset issuance in mind. The network includes built-in compliance tools, including controlled access accounts and clawback capabilities that regulated institutions require. Among major RWA networks, Stellar holds around 13% market share, behind Ethereum but ahead of Polygon, Solana, and others.

Sources:
Messari: State of Stellar Q1 2026
Bitget News: Stellar network's real-world assets market cap surpasses $3B
CoinDesk: Franklin Templeton Brings Tokenized Treasury Fund to Europe on Stellar

11 minutes ago

U.S. President Donald Trump met with executives from crypto and fintech firms including Coinbase, Ripple, Robinhood, Gemini, and Chainlink at the White House’s Roosevelt Room on Wednesday local time, delivering a speech in support of cryptocurrencies. Trump said his administration has “completely ended the war on cryptocurrencies,” noting the industry is thriving, and the U.S. must retain its “undisputed leadership” in areas such as Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, prediction markets, and artificial intelligence, while committing to becoming the “world’s crypto capital.” He added that the U.S. government has discussed accumulating “significant quantities” of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, claiming crypto assets “have greatly eased pressure on the U.S. dollar.” Meanwhile, he urged Congress to pass a “fair version” of the Clarity Act (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act) promptly, arguing this would keep the U.S. ahead of China and other countries. Trump also noted that the SEC Chair is working to bring Hyperliquid to the U.S. market in a compliant manner, and highlighted policy achievements including the signed Genius Act (stablecoin legislation), strategic Bitcoin reserves, and the ban on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

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Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave, announced a governance proposal to bring the Neuberger Securitize High Income Tokenized Fund, known as HINC, onto Aave Horizon as supply-only collateral. Neuberger Berman, the asset manager behind the fund, oversees roughly $230 billion in assets under management.

What HINC brings to the table HINC is a high-yield fixed-income strategy fund that invests primarily in high-yield corporate bonds, collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), and bank loans. The fund requires a minimum investment of $100,000, which signals this isn’t aimed at retail participants. It’s built for qualified, institutional users who want exposure to below-investment-grade credit products while tapping into onchain borrowing.

If the Aave governance proposal passes, HINC holders would be able to borrow stablecoins including USDC, GHO, and RLUSD against their fund positions. That’s a meaningful expansion of what’s available as collateral on Aave Horizon, which until now has focused more on treasuries and investment-grade instruments.

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Securitize handles the tokenization and infrastructure for HINC. The firm has previously worked with VanEck on its VBILL tokenized treasury fund.

Neuberger Berman itself serves as subadvisor on the fund. The firm is part of a larger group managing approximately $567 billion as of March 2026.

Why Aave Horizon matters Aave Horizon is an institutional-grade lending protocol built on Ethereum, specifically designed for qualified users to borrow stablecoins against tokenized real-world assets. The platform already has hundreds of millions in market size. The onboarding of HINC would be Aave Horizon’s first below-investment-grade credit asset, moving the platform beyond the safer, more conservative corner of fixed income and into territory where yields are higher but so are the risks.

HINC’s multi-chain integration adds another layer to the story. The fund is structured to operate across Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Sui, which gives institutional participants flexibility in choosing their preferred blockchain infrastructure.

The bigger picture for tokenized RWAs The supply-only designation for HINC is worth noting. Collateral marked as supply-only can be deposited to earn yield or posted as collateral for borrowing, but it cannot itself be borrowed by other users. That constraint limits certain forms of leverage and rehypothecation, which is a sensible guardrail for a fund investing in below-investment-grade instruments.

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

Solana has taken its first step on the path to 200ms slot times, pushing the first reduction from 400ms to 350ms on mainnet. When complete, Solana will theoretically be capable of processing twice as many blocks as previously, doubling network scalability.

The reduction is set to take effect from epoch 1020, scheduled for August 21, 2026. Meanwhile, Anza CEO Brennan Watt claims the Solana testnet has already succeeded in reaching 200ms slots.

Combined with Solana’s recent block limit increase, experts like Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz argue these developments facilitate a 4x performance increase for the network, with critical improvements like Alpenglow still expected later this year.

350ms Slot Times Pushed to Mainnet Anza, the Research and Development firm spearheading Solana’s development, has activated the first of four incremental improvements to network scalability, dropping slot times from 400ms to 350ms.

While the feature has been activated onchain, the drop will not become effective until Epoch 1020, currently expected on August 21.

As part of an extended rollout to Agave v4.2, Anza’s validator client software, slot times on the network will drop to 200ms, effectively doubling the speed at which Solana produces blocks. 

Beyond improving Solana’s performance, the reduction also functions as a censorship resistance measure by shortening the time in which leaders hold a monopoly over block production.

Solana Testnet Hits 182ms Slot Time Fortunately for the Solana mainnet, testnet implementation of slot time reductions have progressed smoothly. Anza CEO Brennan Watt asserts that testnet slot times have been pushed as low as 182ms. 

Testnet block explorer data confirms that the average slot time over the past hour is 193ms, suggesting that all staggered reductions have been successful. Based on testnet data, consequent reductions have been activated every 2 epochs.

While it is unconfirmed that mainnet rollout will follow the same cadence, the same implementation schedule would see 200ms slot times operational on mainnet by epoch 1026, or roughly the 1st of September.

However, mainnet rollout may be slightly slower. Solana’s validators have collectively agreed not to progress to the next reduction if the network’s skip rate is too high.

Slot Time Reduction + Block Limit Increase = 4x Performance Improvement?  While making a significant impact on network scalability, Solana’s slot time improvements are only one piece of a much larger plan to increase bandwidth and reduce latency across crypto’s most performant chain.

In a recent podcast appearance, Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz claimed that Solana’s upcoming slot time reduction, when combined with block limit increases, will make four times more performant in the immediate term.

Beyond faster slots and higher block capacity, Solana is also set to embrace further performance enhancements in its next major network upgrade, Alpenglow. Designed by Anza, Alpenglow promises to reimagine Solana’s consensus mechanism, bringing transaction finality down to 150ms and reducing validator voting costs to ~1.6 $SOL per epoch, down from around 2.4 $SOL per epoch.

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Jupiter’s dominance of Solana’s DEX aggregator market has reached a new low. According to Blockworks data, Jupiter accounted for 48% of Solana DEX aggregator volume on August 18, marking the first time its daily share has fallen below 50% since launch. OKX captured 37%, while DFlow and Titan accounted for 13% and 2%, respectively.

The latest figures extend a decline that has accelerated over the past several months. In early April, Jupiter controlled about 90% of weekly aggregator volume. By Aug. 1, that figure had fallen to 71%, representing a roughly 20% decline in 4 months.

OKX and DFlow have captured much of the share Jupiter has lost. OKX held 13% of daily volume on Aug. 1, while DFlow accounted for 11%.

Jupiter Continues Expanding As Revenue Declines Jupiter’s declining aggregator share comes as the company continues to expand its broader DeFi ecosystem.

Jupiter Lend has steadily gained ground against competitors such as Kamino in recent weeks. Its Gacha product also attracted more than $27 million in user spending within 3 weeks of its launch.

On Aug. 10, Jupiter launched Lend v2, which introduced Smart Collateral and Smart Debt. The optional features allow deposited and borrowed assets to also provide DEX liquidity, giving users the potential to earn lending yield alongside trading fees and, where applicable, staking rewards.

The additional yield depends on actual trading activity through the associated liquidity pools, linking Lend v2's performance partly to Jupiter’s routing activity.

Jupiter’s falling market share also comes against a backdrop of declining revenue. DefiLlama data indicates that Jupiter generated about $2.24 million in revenue so far in August. That figure puts the platform on pace for another relatively weak month if the current trend continues.

The decline looks more significant when compared with Jupiter’s 2024 and 2025 performance.

Monthly revenue surged throughout 2024 and peaked at over $28 million in late 2024. Several months in 2025 also generated more than $10 million, with some approaching or exceeding $20 million.

Revenue has since fallen considerably. Recent monthly figures have fallen to their lowest levels in roughly two years, highlighting the pressure facing its core business as trading activity and aggregator share change.

OKX Gains While Titan Fades OKX has emerged as Jupiter’s most significant challenger in the aggregator market. Incentivized trading campaigns may have contributed to its rising share.

Titan, meanwhile, has fallen from being Solana’s second-largest aggregator to just 2% of daily volume according to Blockworks data. Titan operates as a meta-aggregator, meaning its quotes can include routing through other aggregators. That structure can cause some of its flow to appear in competing venues.

Despite weaker overall onchain activity during the crypto bear market, DEX aggregators remain important to Solana traders even as DEX aggregator share of spot volume has dropped to its lowest level in months.

Jupiter’s fall below 50% therefore marks more than a change in one platform’s market share. It signals a more competitive Solana trading market, with OKX and DFlow increasingly challenging the dominance Jupiter held for years.

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SEC Unveils ‘Regulation Crypto Assets’ Framework for Crypto Startups to Raise Money

The Case for $900 - $2000 $SOL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is The Graph abandoning decentralization?

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

What happens to the former core development teams?

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

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

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

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

Does Foundation-run liquid staking centralize delegation?

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

How can the Foundation reinterpret the mandate?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q2 2026 is out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

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

TL;DR:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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