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This is a general announcement. Products and services referred to here may not be available in your region. Fellow Binancians, Binance will support the BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) network upgrade and hard fork to ensure the best user experience. In preparation for the BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) network upgrade and hard fork, Binance will perform wallet maintenance for BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) at 2026-07-30 06:00 (UTC). To support the wallet maintenance, deposits and withdrawals on BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) will be suspended starting from 2026-07-30 05:55 (UTC), and be resumed when the maintenance is complete. The maintenance will take about one hour.The BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) network upgrade and hard fork will take place at 2026-08-25 02:30 (UTC). Binance will suspend the deposits and withdrawals of token(s) on the BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) starting from approximately 2026-08-25 02:25 (UTC). Please note: The trading of token(s) on the aforementioned network will not be impacted.Binance will handle all technical requirements involved for all users.Deposits and withdrawals for token(s) on the aforementioned network will be reopened once the upgraded network is deemed to be stable. No further announcement will be posted.There may be discrepancies in the translated version of this original article in English. Please reference this original version for the latest or most accurate information where any discrepancies may arise. For more information, please refer to the announcements from the project team: BNB Smart Chain v1.7.7 Thank you for your support! Binance Team 2026-07-29

Liquidity providers (LPs) are now concerned over Uniswap’s fee switch across the Robinhood Chain and the DEX’s other V4 versions across other networks. 

The latest fee switch was activated on Monday, the 27th of July. Experts now claim that those who provide liquidity in V2 and V3 will see up to a 25% haircut. For those in V4, the shared profits can be cut by up to 33%, mainly for Uniswap [UNI] buyback and burn. 

According to some LPs like Guil Lambert, the new fees ‘structurally can’t work,’ pressing his colleagues to explore better yield opportunities. 

The fee switch is live on all UniV4 pools. LPs now pay 10- 25% of fee revenues to the protocol. I’ll keep being an LP, but providing liquidity as usual structurally can’t work, to be honest.

Aerodrome Finance’s Alexander Cutler jumped on the opportunity to woo disgruntled Uniswap LPs back to their DEX, which is on Base.  

Source: X Are Uniswap fees ‘horrible’ or good for UNI? For his part, analyst KoolKrypto called the entire Uniswap protocol fee switch ‘horrible’ for LPs. In fact, he projected that the LPs will likely move to Aerodrome and other competitors. 

According to him, Uniswap LPs were not profitable even before the fee switch went live. As a result, the new fee cuts will worsen the situation. 

It will not be optimal or even viable to provide liquidity on most pairs for Uniswap going forward. The relative success of the Robinhood chain launch might have provided a small bump, but Uniswap’s business model is unsustainable, and I expect it to start melting away from here.

Source: X Worth noting that since Uniswap’s debut, LPs have been the ones collecting the generated trading fees, with zero going to protocol revenue.

Last year, the fee switch was activated. A percentage of the generated fees is set aside for UNI buybacks and burn while LPs pocket the rest. So far, Uniswap has generated nearly $6B in fees but only collected $27 million in revenue since 2020. 

Source: DeFiLlama In fact, the latest fee switch plan was announced about three weeks ago. Apart from Guil Lambert and a few others, who complained that the fee switch would make Uniswap V4 uncompetitive, most LPs didn’t voice major concern.

In fact, the proposal got an overwhelming 97% support with only 2.7% voting against it. However, whether the critics’ concerns, like uncompetitiveness or LPs’ migration to rivals, will emerge remains to be seen. 

Source: Uniswap Governance Final Summary Uniswap LPs warned that the recent fee switch on Robinhood Chain and other networks will force them to migrate to rivals. Liquidity providers have collected $6B of generated Uniswap fees since 2020, but some claim they have been mostly unprofitable. 

People can now pay with Bitcoin to buy flights from Dubai-based airline Emirates. 

Working with Crypto.com, Emirates said Tuesday the customers now have the option to book flights using the crypto exchange’s payment feature.

Crypto.com and Emirates last year announced they would work together. 

Emirates’ Deputy President and Chief Commercial Officer Adnan Kazim said the move “reflects the rapidly evolving preferences of a younger, digitally fluent generation who manage their money and plan their journeys primarily from their phones and they expect the airlines they fly with to keep pace.”

Emirates first teased plans back in 2022 to implement Bitcoin payments; the latest move allows Crypto.com customers to use any digital assets to make payments. 

Under the new setup, travelers with a Crypto.com account can select Crypto.com Pay at checkout when booking on emirates.com or through the Emirates App. 

The option is limited for now to eligible UAE residents making bookings priced and settled in Emirati Dirham.

The integration runs through Crypto.com’s Dubai-licensed entity, which the company says was the first virtual asset service provider to receive a Stored Value Facilities license from the Central Bank of the UAE. 

The launch also feeds into wider government targets. It supports Dubai’s Cashless Strategy, part of the D33 Economic Agenda, which is aiming to make 90% of transactions across the emirate’s government and private sectors digital by the end of 2026. 

It follows on from an earlier Emirates partnership with Dubai Finance to advance digital payments, and comes after Crypto.com struck its own deal with Dubai Finance to accept digital payments for government services.

Mathew Di Salvo

Mathew is a reporter who's covered the space since 2019, reporting on everything from Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele's Bitcoin bet to crypto exchange FTX's bankruptcy.

In brief XRP is trading at $1.06, off nearly 8% over the past week. The movement happens as the U.S. Senate shelved the Clarity Act before its August recess and global markets braced for the Fed's July 29 rate decision. XRP's technicals are almost uniformly bearish: a confirmed death cross, RSI at 40.9, negative Squeeze momentum, and a composite score of -63%—the only technical lifeline is that it is deeply oversold. The global macro backdrop is as unfavorable as it's been all year for crypto markets.

New Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, in only his second FOMC meeting, is widely expected to hold rates at 3.50%–3.75%, but CME FedWatch put hike odds near 38% as recently as last weekend—the highest of this cycle. Even a hawkish hold can rattle risk assets. Bitcoin is parked near $63,400–$64,000, well below its June highs around $80,000, and altcoins are taking the brunt.

XRP, the cryptocurrency developed by the founders of payments company Ripple, had a moment of optimism this month that now feels like a distant memory. As Decrypt reported on July 21, the coin cautiously jumped 3.25% to $1.1485 when reports broke that President Donald Trump had agreed to the Clarity Act's long-stalled ethics provision, briefly nudging Senate passage odds on Polymarket to 43%. That lasted about a week.

On Monday, the Senate formally shelved the Clarity Act to prioritize a Russia sanctions bill and federal nominations. The chamber's August recess begins around August 7—which means there is a thin frame for the bill to be approved this year. Miss that window, and the next opportunity might not come until 2027.

For XRP, the stakes are concrete: The Clarity Act would codify its commodity classification into law, the legal bedrock that institutional custodians, banks, and ETF issuers need to feel comfortable building products around it. Standard Chartered's conditional $8 XRP target—contingent on full Senate passage plus $4 billion to $8 billion in new ETF inflows—stays theoretical without it.

So things are not looking great for Clarity, or XRP.

XRP price: What the charts sayXRP is trading at $1.0641 and a roughly $65 billion market cap on Binance, with a 24-hour low of $1.0450 and a high of $1.0679. The token peaked near $3.40 in mid-2025 and has been in a sustained descending channel ever since, logging lower highs and lower lows for months.

XRP price data. Image: TradingviewThe Average Directional Index, or ADX, sits at 11.2—one of the weakest readings XRP has posted all summer. The ADX measures trend strength on a 0–100 scale, regardless of whether that trend is up or down. Think of it as measuring how much conviction the market has: anything below 25 signals no confirmed trend is in place, and sub-20 readings are associated with choppy, directionless markets where false breakouts and stop hunts are common.

As Decrypt flagged on July 16, when the reading was 13.3, XRP has been stuck in exactly this trendless limbo for most of July. One mildly constructive signal: the directional indicator is starting to rotate from DI- (bearish dominance) toward DI+ (bullish pressure building). So there’s hopium somewhere in there.

The Exponential Moving Averages, or EMAs—which smooth out price action over time to reveal trend direction—confirm the big picture: the 50-day EMA is trading below the 200-day EMA in the formation traders call a death cross. When the shorter average sits below the longer one, it means the medium-term trajectory is still pointed downward, regardless of short-term bounces. This alignment has been in place since XRP's slide from the $3.65 all-time high, and there is no sign yet of the two averages starting to converge.

The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, reads 40.9. RSI is a momentum gauge on a 0–100 scale: above 70 is overbought, below 30 is oversold. At 40.9, XRP is in bearish territory—below the neutral 50 line—but not yet at the extreme levels that typically attract aggressive buyers looking for a floor.

On the Fibonacci side (natural supports and resistances that appear during a trend) the current bearish leg runs from $1.1646 down to $1.0450. Below that price, the next Fib support is $1.0125, followed by $0.9711.

What happens nextTwo events will define XRP's next directional move. If Fed Chair Warsh holds and signals a dovish tone—or hints at September cuts—crypto gets a relief pop, and XRP could test the Fibonacci golden zone between $1.10 and $1.12. If the statement reads hawkish or a dissenting vote appears, the sell-off has room to extend toward $1.01 and, below that, the $0.97 zone.

The Clarity Act is the bigger, longer-term variable. The Senate's August recess starts August 7. If a floor vote doesn't materialize before then, XRP's primary institutional catalyst evaporates until at least late 2026—and possibly well beyond, given the midterm election calendar that follows.

The technical setup argues for patience rather than urgency. A market this trendless—ADX at 11.2, Squeeze loaded with negative momentum, death cross intact—can compress for longer than most traders expect before resolving. The oversold indicators could produce a short-term bounce toward but without a macro catalyst or a legislative surprise, that bounce is more likely a selling opportunity than the start of a new trend.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

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Ethereum’s Layer 2 ecosystem just lost roughly 90% of its locked value. The total value locked across the network’s scaling solutions has dropped to approximately $5 billion, a figure that would have been impressive in 2023 but looks downright alarming in the context of where things stood just months ago.

Earlier in 2026, L2 TVL exceeded $48 billion as tracked by L2BEAT. That’s not a typo. We’re talking about a decline of more than $43 billion.

The scale of the drop To appreciate how dramatic this contraction is, consider where the major players were sitting not long ago. Arbitrum alone recorded a TVL of approximately $16.8 billion in early 2026. Base, the Coinbase-backed chain that had become a darling of the retail onboarding narrative, held about $10.7 billion. Optimism stood at around $8 billion.

Add those three together and you get $35.5 billion, more than seven times the current total across the entire L2 landscape. And that’s before counting zkSync Era and the rest of the more than 73 active Ethereum L2 rollups that were operating as of April 2026.

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For context, Ethereum’s mainnet DeFi TVL was sitting around $41 billion as of late July 2026. So the L2 ecosystem, which was once approaching parity with mainnet in terms of locked capital, now represents a fraction of its parent chain’s economic activity.

What’s driving the exodus No major protocol team has issued a post-mortem. No data aggregator has published a detailed breakdown of where the capital went.

Bridging dynamics also matter. L2 TVL is inherently more volatile than mainnet TVL because assets need to be actively bridged over. When users lose confidence or spot better opportunities elsewhere, the unbridging process can create cascading outflows that look more dramatic than gradual organic decline.

With over 73 rollups competing for users and liquidity, fragmentation may have reached a tipping point where no single chain could maintain the critical mass needed to sustain deep liquidity pools and attractive yields.

What this means for investors On the tactical side, anyone farming yields or providing liquidity on L2 platforms should be paying close attention to pool depths and slippage conditions. A $5 billion total spread across dozens of chains means individual protocol TVLs could be thin enough to create meaningful execution risk on larger positions.

For token holders in L2-native governance assets, the decline raises uncomfortable valuation questions. Tokens like ARB, OP, and others derive much of their fundamental value from the economic activity happening on their respective chains. When that activity contracts by 90%, the case for holding those tokens gets considerably harder to make.

The gap between Ethereum mainnet’s $41 billion TVL and the L2 ecosystem’s $5 billion also creates a potential opportunity narrative. If rollups are genuinely the future of Ethereum scaling, the current ratio implies either that mainnet is overvalued relative to its scaling layers, or that L2s are significantly underweighted.

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

SharpLink, the Nasdaq-listed company trading under ticker SBET, pulled in 420 ETH from staking rewards for the week ending late July 2026. Its total Ethereum treasury now sits at 888,521 ETH, making it one of the largest corporate holders of the asset on the planet.

Nearly 100% of its holdings are actively staked across both native and liquid staking arrangements, meaning the company is essentially running a yield-generating machine on top of its directional Ethereum bet.

The numbers behind SharpLink’s staking engine Since launching its staking strategy on June 2, 2025, SharpLink has accumulated 24,338 ETH in total rewards. That’s pure yield, generated by locking up tokens to help secure the Ethereum network.

This week’s 420 ETH haul is a slight dip from recent performance. For the week ending July 5, 2026, the company earned 449 ETH in staking rewards.

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SharpLink’s holdings have grown steadily over the past several months. Back in February 2026, the company held 867,798 ETH with 13,615 ETH in cumulative staking rewards. The treasury has since expanded by roughly 20,700 ETH while cumulative rewards have nearly doubled to 24,338 ETH.

From sports betting to Ethereum treasury SharpLink wasn’t always in the business of hoarding Ethereum. The company formerly operated as SharpLink Gaming, focused on sports betting technology and affiliate marketing. The pivot to becoming an institutional-grade Ethereum treasury platform happened around June 2025.

Under co-founder Joseph Lubin, who also co-founded Ethereum itself, the company has prioritized transparency in its operations, publishing weekly metrics through a public ETH dashboard and filing regularly with the SEC.

The company deploys its ETH across both native staking and liquid staking arrangements. Native staking involves running validator nodes directly on Ethereum’s proof-of-stake network, while liquid staking uses protocols that issue derivative tokens representing staked ETH, preserving some liquidity while still earning yield.

What this means for investors SharpLink’s model offers equity investors something they can’t easily get from spot Ethereum ETFs or direct token ownership: staking yield exposure through a traditional brokerage account. Most spot ETFs in the US market do not currently pass through staking rewards to shareholders. SharpLink’s structure is different because the company itself stakes the ETH, captures the yield, and that value theoretically accrues to the equity.

Through buybacks and strategic equity issuances, SharpLink aims to increase the amount of Ethereum backing each outstanding share over time. It’s a playbook borrowed directly from MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin treasury approach, adapted for Ethereum with the added twist of staking income.

SBET shareholders are exposed to Ethereum price volatility, smart contract risk from liquid staking protocols, potential slashing penalties on validators, and dilution concerns that come with equity issuance programs.

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

The two-developer project overtook Solana's dominant tokenized-card platform four days after relaunching, generating $1.6M in daily fees at its peak before activity cooled.

Fake World Assets, an Ethereum-based NFT gacha protocol built by two-person team Token Works, overtook Solana's Collector Crypt in daily revenue on July 25, four days after its July 20 relaunch, according to DefiLlama data.

The protocol pulled in $447,604 in revenue on July 25, its peak day, per DefiLlama — ahead of Collector Crypt, whose daily revenue has averaged roughly $360,000 over the past week. Total fees paid into Fake World Assets that day reached $1.6 million, against roughly 2,000 ETH in volume across some 90,000 transactions, including about 35,000 individual pulls, in the four days after relaunch.

The launch surge has cooled and the flip has partially reversed: Collector Crypt retook the daily lead with $270,186 in revenue over the past 24 hours against Fake World Assets' $167,869, per DefiLlama's chain rankings. Even at that reduced pace, Fake World Assets is the second-highest revenue-generating protocol on Ethereum over the past day, behind only Sky's $464,303 — ahead of Aave ($105,282), Uniswap ($76,028), Lido ($74,755), and the $74,808 in ETH the network itself burned over the period.

The flip shows demand for gacha mechanics on Ethereum despite transaction costs that exceed Solana's, and the roughly 35,000 purchases in four days suggest real users paying a premium to participate. Whether the revenue holds is another question: daily fees have fallen by half from the July 25 peak, the daily token emissions that reward early users expire 15 days after launch, and Collector Crypt's June numbers remain an order of magnitude larger on a monthly basis.

Fake World Assets was built by developers known as Adam (@Rhynotic) and Teto (@tetonotsorry), who say the project is self-funded. Its name plays on the "real world assets" label attached to Collector Crypt's tokenized trading cards.

Top Ethereum protocols by 24-hour revenue

RankProtocolCategoryRevenue (24h)1SkyCDP$464,3032Fake World AssetsNFT gacha$167,8693AaveLending$105,2824UniswapDEX$76,0285Ethereum (ETH burned)Chain$74,8086LidoLiquid staking$74,7557Titan BuilderBlock builder$61,0348ether.fiRestaking$54,781Source: DefiLlama, July 28, 2026.

NFT DepositsUsers deposit ETH-backed NFTs into the protocol, and purchasers pay to pull a randomized item from the pool, with pricing that fluctuates based on the ETH backing each asset. A purchaser can keep the NFT or sell it back for most of its ETH backing — 85%, with the remainder retained by the protocol. Randomness comes from Chainlink VRF, and the deposited pool has grown past 1,500 NFTs, including CryptoPunks as top-tier prizes.

The protocol also runs what it calls a "loss-to-earn" mechanism: depositors whose assets get pulled by other users are compensated through token emissions and fee distributions, an incentive to keep the pool stocked. FWA token emissions run daily for the first 15 days after launch, with 1% of supply going to purchasers and 1% to depositors each day.

The Solana incumbentCollector Crypt has led the onchain gacha category since launching the feature in December 2024, converting authenticated physical Pokemon and other trading cards into NFTs on Solana.

Users spent over $209M on its packs in June alone, roughly two-thirds of the category's record $324M month, and the platform crossed $50M in cumulative revenue in mid-June. Its CARDS token listed on KuCoin on July 9, and Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter launched a gacha product powered by Collector Crypt's infrastructure on July 13.

Tokenized stocks on Robinhood's three-week-old chain averaged $29.7 million in daily DEX volume over the past week, more than Solana's xStocks and Backpack venues combined, with memecoin pairs supplying the push.

Tokenized stocks on Robinhood Chain averaged $29.7 million in daily DEX volume over the past seven days, according to a Dune dashboard maintained by OKX's Web3 wallet team — more than Solana's two stock-trading venues, xStocks at $11.1 million and Backpack's Sunrise at $13.4 million, combined.

Robinhood built the chain to put equities onchain, and through mid-July the network's activity was almost entirely memecoin speculation. The volume that finally arrived came through those same memecoins: tokens launched with tokenized stocks as their liquidity pairs, a loop that locks real equity supply in pools and has pulled stock trading up with it. If the pattern holds, Robinhood Chain has found a retail on-ramp for tokenized equities that RWA platforms have spent years searching for.

Tokenized Nvidia is the chain's most-traded stock, with $13.9 million in volume over the past day, followed by SpaceX at $6.2 million, Apple at $4.5 million and GameStop at $2.2 million, per Uniswap's explore page for the chain. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has framed the equities push as the chain's core purpose. "Robinhood Chain exists to make real world assets programmable, globally portable, and always available, with the product quality you've come to expect from Robinhood," he posted on X on July 16.

Memecoins Did the MarketingThe surge traces to launch platforms Bankr and long.xyz, which in mid-July began letting users issue memecoins backed by tokenized stock liquidity across more than 90 tickers. The pairs now populate the chain's trending list: DEX Screener shows memecoins trading against NVDA, TSLA, INTC, RBLX and SPCX among Robinhood Chain's top 100 pools, led by Artificial Inu (AI/NVDA) at $2.6 million in daily volume.

Because these tokens hold tokenized shares as pool collateral, memecoin trading generates stock-token volume as a byproduct, and the deposited shares stay locked while the pairs trade. Daily active tokenized-stock traders on the chain peaked above 20,000 in the week of July 20, per the Dune data, the highest of any stock-token platform tracked.

Binance Looms Over EveryoneThe chain-versus-chain race has a much larger elephant outside it: Binance's bStocks on BNB Chain averaged $676.8 million in daily DEX volume over the same seven days, more than 20 times Robinhood's figure, per the same dashboard.

Top tokenized-stock venues by DEX volume

RankVenueChainAvg. daily volume (7d)1bStocks (Binance)BNB Chain$676.8 million2RobinhoodRobinhood Chain$29.7 million3Ondo Global MarketsEthereum, BNB, Solana, HyperEVM$24.9 million4Sunrise (Backpack)Solana$13.4 million5xStocks (Backed)Solana$11.1 millionSource: Dune (@okxweb3wallet), average of the last seven completed days, July 28, 2026.

Ondo's multichain stock tokens averaged $24.9 million. The dashboard counts only genuine tokenized stocks — about 102 assets from Robinhood's RWA factory — and excludes the chain's official market-maker address, so the figures understate total activity but strip out house liquidity.

Tokenized stocks also remain a sliver of Robinhood Chain itself. The chain cleared roughly $444 million in total DEX volume over the past day against $332.7 million in total value locked, per DefiLlama, and most of that volume is memecoins like CASHCAT and PONS. Real-world assets on the chain carry about $81 million in active market value, next to $489 million in stablecoins.

Solana still dwarfs Robinhood Chain in overall DEX volume, value locked and users. But on the narrower question of where tokenized stocks change hands onchain, Robinhood Chain now clears more than any Solana venue, three weeks after launch.

George Town, Cayman Islands, July 28th, 2026, Chainwire

Zest Protocol today announces Stacks Vaults, a new vault layer built on top of its lending markets. Stacks Vaults will let users deposit a single asset into an automated strategy that manages yield on their behalf. The first Stacks Vault will be built around stBTC, the liquid staking Bitcoin token Stacking DAO introduced recently.

Stacks Vaults marks the evolution of Zest Protocol from a lending market into yield infrastructure. Until now, earning optimized yield on Stacks required actively managing positions across markets. Stacks Vaults change that: a holder deposits once, selects a strategy, and the vault handles the mechanics in the background.

The first vault will be an stBTC looping vault. A holder will deposit stBTC, and the vault will use it as collateral to borrow sBTC, stake the borrowed Bitcoin into stBTC, and repeat the process to compound yield on top of the base Bitcoin Staking rewards. The holder maintains a single position while Zest Protocol manages the strategy automatically.

“Lending markets were the foundation. Vaults are what gets built on top,” said Tycho Onnasch, Founder, Zest Protocol. “With Stacks Vaults, a holder deposits a single asset and the strategy runs itself. The stBTC looping vault is the first, and it won’t be the last. Every yield source on Stacks becomes a strategy we can automate.”

The speed of this announcement is as significant as the product itself. Bitcoin Staking creates the base yield, stBTC carries that yield into the ecosystem as a liquid asset, and Stacks Vaults will be the first infrastructure built to put it to work. Additional vaults with different assets and strategies are expected to follow, each built on the same automated foundation.

Zest Protocol is the leading Bitcoin lending protocol on Stacks, with $70M deployed across its platform and a track record of over two years serving the Bitcoin-native finance ecosystem. The ZEST token went live in May 2026 in one of the most successful token launches of the year. Zest Protocol has spent years building the lending infrastructure that Bitcoin-native finance now runs on, and Stacks Vaults is the next layer in that stack.

Stacks Vaults and the stBTC looping vault will launch alongside stBTC before Stacks Bitcoin Staking goes live. Holders will be able to deposit sBTC or stBTC directly into the vault, while Zest Protocol automatically manages the looping strategy and continuously monitors the position. More details will be available at zestprotocol.com.

About Zest Protocol

Zest Protocol is a lending protocol built for Bitcoin, giving BTC holders ways to borrow, lend, and earn yield without leaving Bitcoin-native infrastructure. Learn more at zestprotocol.com.

About Stacks

Stacks is growing Bitcoin by turning idle Bitcoin into productive capital. The network enables self-custodial Bitcoin yield and a growing ecosystem of Bitcoin-native financial applications that settle on Bitcoin. Learn more at stacks.co.

Stargate Finance, the cross-chain liquidity protocol built on LayerZero, is plugging into NEAR Intents to power select cross-chain swaps and routes. The integration connects Stargate’s unified liquidity pools with NEAR’s solver network, which lets users specify what they want (say, swapping USDC on Arbitrum for USDT on Optimism) without having to manually chart the path to get there.

What NEAR Intents actually does Users declare an outcome, like “I want token X on chain Y,” and a competitive network of solvers races to fulfill that request at the best possible price. The user doesn’t need to know which bridge was used, which liquidity pool was tapped, or how many intermediary hops were involved.

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NEAR Intents has processed over $24 billion in cumulative cross-chain swap volume across 34 chains, supporting more than 125 assets.

For Stargate specifically, this means its existing liquidity pools, which have historically concentrated on stablecoins like USDT and USDC, now gain access to NEAR’s solver infrastructure.

Why this pairing makes strategic sense Stargate launched in March 2022 with unified liquidity pools that allow native asset transfers across chains without wrapped tokens.

NEAR Intents has been on something of an integration spree. The network previously connected with Sui in July 2025, Starknet in December 2025, and the aggregator LI.FI in February 2026.

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

Cover image via depositphotos.com 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.

Flare Networks CEO Hugo Philion has announced plans to scale FAssets technology to Bitcoin through the wrapped FBTC token. Against the backdrop of a prolonged industry slowdown, which Philion described as "the market sucks, but not forever," the project is attempting to turn Flare into a programmable layer for the isolated assets.

Last Sunday, Flare announced a major six-month roadmap with the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Right now, the FAssets system allows users to convert coins into FXRP tokens at a 1:1 ratio, giving holders access to staking, lending and liquidity pools.

FXRP issuance has already exceeded 150 million tokens and, over the next six months, Flare aims to attract up to 5 billion XRP, or around 5% of the total supply.

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Philion intends to bring the same model to Bitcoin through FBTC. The main argument for attracting large capital will be confidential computing technology — Flare Confidential Compute (FCC), based on trusted execution environments (TEEs).

Privacy for Bitcoin whalesFCC addresses a fundamental problem in DeFi — the complete transparency of blockchains, which discourages institutional investors. The technology will allow funds to execute large transactions and take out loans while keeping commercial data hidden from competitors.

Although Flare is fully funded and is not at risk of shutting down, Philion is not promising an immediate surge in prices. 

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Though the next six months will be devoted exclusively to deploying the code, large players will need more time to audit the bridges, while lending protocols will require a massive inflow of stablecoins such as USDT and USDC.

Meanwhile, growing cross-chain activity already keeps network TVL above $200 million and directly feeds protocol revenue into FIRE, an updated value-accrual mechanism that automatically buys back and burns native FLR tokens to drive long-term ecosystem scarcity.

Jul 28, 2026, 9:36 a.m.

4 min read

(Tim Mossholder/Unsplash)Summary

BitMEX, a pioneering crypto derivatives exchange known for inventing the perpetual swap, will permanently shut down in September after years of regulatory and legal troubles.A wave of closures and bankruptcies, including BitMart, Movement Labs and Storj Labs, underscores how collapsing retail trading volumes and rising regulatory costs are squeezing smaller crypto firms.Analysts say only large, well-capitalized exchanges with strong compliance, transparent reserves and diversified services are likely to survive as retail speculation fades and rules like the EU’s MiCA take hold.The early freewheeling era of crypto trading took a final blow as BitMEX announced it would permanently shut down its operations in September. The platform, famous for inventing the perpetual swap in 2016, may not be the last.

At least three other crypto firms have announced closures or bankruptcies in the past week, including Bitmart, which let its users know they have 30 days to close trades and six months to withdraw all their funds from the platform. Users have raised concerns about withdrawal delays following the announcement. BitMart did not specify why it was closing.

Analysts say exchanges can no longer survive on retail hype alone; they need institutional compliance, clear proof of reserves, and cross-asset trading to stay alive. Jason Fernandes, co-founder of AdLunam, says he believes it all boils down to a steep fall in retail trading.

“There isn't enough volume or retail trading anymore,” said Fernandes, who is also a crypto market and blockchain investment analyst. “Retail interest even in Telegram groups has dropped significantly.”

"We are going to see a lot more of these closures announcements. I think the only exchanges that will survive are those not dependent on retail trading to be successful. In the short term, I don't see a return for retail trading in the numbers we used to see in 2021."

Trading volume fallingCrypto’s centralized exchanges are experiencing their quietest stretch in over two years., Spot trading volume across major centralized venues fell to $1.05 trillion by April 2026, its lowest monthly total in 25 months, according to the CoinDesk Data Exchange Review. For context, that represents a steep plunge from the historical monthly activity recorded during peak market cycles. Colin Wu of Wu Blockchain recently revealed that in South Korea, trading volume at the top five crypto exchanges had dropped 88%.

But it’s not just crypto exchanges. Movement Labs and Storj Labs filed for Chapter ll bankruptcy, marking the third and fourth crypto-related company failure, respectively, in seven days as investor capital shifts heavily toward artificial intelligence.

The unexpected closures highlight a potential new reality for the industry. Retail speculation and interest have weakened, and platforms carrying historical regulatory baggage can no longer afford to continue operating. For years, platforms like BitMEX relied purely on company reputation and the high-leverage gambling habits of day traders. New regulatory regimes, such as the European Union’s (EU) Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) rules, are making smaller, regional venues too expensive to run.

"The fact that BitMEX shuts down isn’t a surprise," said market analyst Michael Van De Poppe, a prominent Dutch crypto analyst, trader, and entrepreneur who serves as the founder and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of MN Capital and MN Fund.

"Only big exchanges are able to comply with all the regulatory frameworks, and smaller exchanges have two options: leave or get taken over,” he said. “The retail speculation and gambling period is likely behind us."

Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe, estimated only about 80% of the more than 3,000 virtual asset services providers (VASPs) in the EU would survive MiCA. “It's not only because of MiCA itself, it's because of the whole width and heaviness of the European regulatory burden,” he said in an interview.

Traders left BitMEX years ago after the company faced enforcement actions from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Department of Justice. The drop in volume left the platform more exposed to shifts in market conditions. BitMEX was reportedly ordered to pay $100 million in fines for violating bank secrecy rules. However, a couple years later, President Donald Trump pardoned BitMEX, although they apparently faced immense issues recovering from years of litigation.

BitMEX is now facing legal action alleging it withheld trader collateral and engaged in insider trading. The new lawsuit accuses Hayes and fellow co-founders, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed, of designing a system to retain customers’ collateral and transfer the remaining bitcoin to the platform’s insurance fund.

"One lawsuit won't move the market, but allegations involving 622 BTC (worth over $40.5 million) of withheld collateral reinforce the oldest doubt in crypto: your funds are safe until the day they aren't," said Samuel Videau, chief technology officer at Genius. "What's ending is opacity,the model where you wire assets to a black box and take the operator's word for it."

The overall crypto derivatives market has barely flinched. The perpetual swap product BitMEX built now generates the bulk of trading activity on larger exchanges like Binance and OKX, alongside traditional platforms like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).

"The derivatives market is now much larger and more diversified," said Edwin Cheung, executive director at crypto trading platform Gate. "Most displaced volume is likely to be absorbed by other established platforms."

The shift suggests exchanges now need scale, regulatory compliance and broader services to survive, rather than relying on retail trading alone.

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Crypto Flows, Share and the Selective Rotation

Crypto Flows, Share and the Selective Rotation

Markets repositioned since June, but Binance held share (~55% user funds, ~24% spot) and drew net inflows in early July while the tracked market saw outflows.

Jul 22, 2026

Markets repositioned since June, but Binance held share (~55% user funds, ~24% spot) and drew net inflows in early July while the tracked market saw outflows.

Why it matters:

Markets repositioned since June, but Binance held share (~55% user funds, ~24% spot) and drew net inflows in early July while the tracked market saw outflows.

TL;DR: Sei Labs has shared a new proposal, SIP-5, that lays out how existing accounts can stay safe once quantum computers are powerful enough to break today’s cryptography. The plan lets users keep current addresses and balances, allowing you to add a quantum-resistant key when you are ready, and does it all well before any real threat exists.

What is SIP-5Every EVM blockchain today rests on the same kind of cryptography. It works because the math behind it is impossible for classical computers to reverse. A powerful enough quantum computer would change that. In theory, it could take a public key that has already been seen onchain and work backward to the private key that controls the account.

That machine does not exist yet, but many experts believe the timeline for one is accelerating. The point of SIP-5 is to introduce a solution well before a threat exists.

SIP-5 is Sei Lab’s proposed path for upgrading existing accounts to quantum-resistant security without breaking anything people already rely on. It is a proposal, shared openly, so the ecosystem can look at it and decide together how to move forward.

Why this is the right time to talk about itQuantum computers capable of breaking today’s signatures are not here. Waiting until the threat is imminent, however, means designing the fix under pressure. Rushing such an upgrade could introduce many implementation risks.

SIP-5 takes the opposite stance. It proposes adding the quantum-resistant option far in advance, so the solution is in place well before the threat exists. And, if the timeline moves faster than anyone expects, the network is already prepared.

What it would mean for account holders on SeiYour address will stay the same. Your balance will stay the same, as will your transaction history, approvals, and the contracts you interact with. SIP-5 is built specifically to avoid forcing users to abandon their old accounts.

Under SIP-5, when you are ready, you attach a new quantum-resistant key to your existing account. From that point on, the account would be protected by the new key. Under the proposal, you would also choose your own pace. You can move early if you want the extra security sooner, or you can wait.

The real trade-offsThis approach has two trade-offs, which is why Sei Labs is not proposing it as something to immediately be implemented.

The first is that there is a future cutoff point, set by governance if and when the plan is adopted, after which an account can only continue to send transactions if it has already added its quantum-resistant key.

An account that never adds one would still be able to receive funds, but it would no longer be able to send. That is the practical reason the option is being introduced so far ahead of time. The window to prepare is meant to be long and unhurried, which is only possible if the conversation starts now.

The second trade-off is that upgrading to post-quantum signatures will slow the performance of every EVM blockchain. Today’s post-quantum signature schemes are many times larger than existing signature schemes. That means bigger messages to broadcast across the network, so fewer can be sent at once.

To solve for these tradeoffs Sei Labs is simultaneously proposing the emergency solution that SIP-5 provides, and beginning work on finding an even better solution through new, high-performance post-quantum cryptography.

Where this fitsSIP-5 is a proposal and it is written that way on purpose. It defines the minimum needed to keep accounts working across a quantum transition and leaves the bigger governance decisions for the moment they actually become relevant. Wallets, explorers, and other tooling would need time to add support, and the proposal calls for that groundwork to be in place before any cutoff is ever set.

A network built for modern trading has to plan for long term threats that are not immediate today. SIP-5 is what that looks like in practice.

Read the full proposal here: https://github.com/sei-protocol/sips/blob/main/sips/sip-5.md

Ethena Labs has now distributed over $751 million in rewards to users since its synthetic dollar protocol went live. That’s a number that would make most DeFi protocols blush, and it underscores just how much yield a delta-neutral staking strategy can generate when conditions are right.

But here’s the thing. While the rewards counter keeps climbing, the protocol’s USDe supply has fallen to roughly $4.3 billion, down from a peak north of $10 billion.

How Ethena prints yield without a money printer For the uninitiated, Ethena’s USDe isn’t your typical stablecoin. It doesn’t sit on a pile of Treasury bills like USDC or claim to be backed 1:1 by cash in a bank vault.

Instead, it uses a delta-neutral strategy. In English: the protocol takes staked ETH derivatives as collateral, then opens short perpetual futures positions against them. The long exposure from holding the collateral and the short exposure from the futures cancel each other out, keeping the value stable.

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The yield comes from two places. First, the funding-rate payments that flow to the short side of perpetual futures markets when conditions are favorable. Second, the staking yields generated by the underlying collateral itself.

It has delivered an average APY of 10.9% on sUSDe, the yield-bearing staked version, since January 2024.

Founded in 2023 by Guy Young, a former hedge fund manager, Ethena Labs launched the USDe protocol in early 2024.

The supply question nobody wants to answer Dropping from over $10 billion to approximately $4.3 billion represents a decline of more than 55%. Reports point to shifting market conditions following significant events in October 2025 as the catalyst.

The delta-neutral model depends heavily on funding rates remaining positive. When the market flips bearish or funding goes negative for extended periods, the yield engine stalls, and capital tends to rotate elsewhere.

Governance moves and the ENA token economy The Season 5 ENA airdrop kicked off in May 2026, distributing roughly 300 million tokens, or about 2% of the total 15 billion ENA supply.

More consequentially, Ethena activated a fee switch in Q1 2026 that directs between 10% and 20% of protocol revenue to stakers of the ENA governance token.

What this means for investors watching the synthetic dollar space For investors evaluating Ethena, the key metric to watch isn’t past rewards. It’s the trajectory of funding rates across major perpetual futures venues. When funding is positive and elevated, Ethena’s engine hums. When it compresses, the protocol’s competitive advantage narrows considerably against simpler, lower-risk alternatives like tokenized Treasuries.

The fee switch activation adds another dimension. A 10–20% revenue share on declining volumes is still a declining payout.

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

Hyperliquid’s SK Hynix perpetual contract briefly fell about 17.9% on July 28 after an unusually low pre-market trade in South Korea fed into the contract’s oracle pricing.

Summary

17.9% intraday decline followed one anomalous NXT trade involving only a single SK Hynix share. Trade.xyz operates the SKHX market and is investigating the oracle-driven move, Hyperliquid representatives said publicly. HIP-3 deployers control oracle inputs, leverage settings and settlements for markets they independently create themselves. The market, officially listed as xyz:SKHX, tracks the U.S. dollar value of one common SK Hynix share traded in South Korea. Hyperliquid’s interface displays the contract as SKHYNIX-USDC and permits leverage of up to 10 times. 

A Hyperliquid representative said the market was deployed and operated by Trade.xyz under the HIP-3 framework. Trade.xyz is investigating and plans to publish an update after reaching a conclusion, according to a statement reported by ChainThink. 

Hyperliquid Community Addresses SK Hynix Perp Anomaly: Deployed by XYZ and Under Investigation

Hyperliquid’s xyz:SKHYNIX perpetual contract briefly fell 17.9% after an anomalous pre-market trade in South Korea’s NXT market priced one SK Hynix share at KRW 1.272 million,… pic.twitter.com/7dpHsi5Ks0

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) July 28, 2026 One SK Hynix share triggered the initial price anomaly

The disruption began shortly after South Korea’s alternative exchange, NextTrade, opened its pre-market session. One SK Hynix share changed hands at 1.272 million won, 29.96% below the previous close of 1.816 million won. 

The trade briefly placed the stock at its daily lower price limit. Korean reports attributed the print to a possible order error combined with limited liquidity during the early session. The underlying price later moved back above that isolated trade.

On-chain tracker HyperInsight said SKHX dropped from about $1,128.20 to $927 as the external price change moved through the oracle and mark-price system. The contract later recovered above $1,100.

The event occurred during a broader decline in South Korean semiconductor shares. SK Hynix closed the regular Seoul session at 1.55 million won, down 14.65%, although that closing move was less severe than the initial one-share print.Trade.xyz documentation states that the SKHX oracle tracks one SK Hynix common share and converts its Korean won price into U.S. dollars using the prevailing exchange rate. 

That design allowed the unusual NXT transaction to affect the on-chain contract even though it involved only one share. Leveraged positions linked to the mark price could then face liquidations or automatic deleveraging as the contract moved lower.

DefiLlama’s later snapshot showed SKHX at approximately $1,067, down 13.7% over 24 hours. Open interest stood near $406 million after falling about 20%, while daily volume exceeded $1 billion. These figures can continue changing as positions are opened and closed. 

There is no verified evidence that Hyperliquid’s blockchain or smart contracts were compromised. The available information points to an external market print passing through Trade.xyz’s pricing methodology.

HIP-3 makes Trade.xyz responsible for market operation HIP-3 allows independent teams to launch perpetual markets on Hyperliquid while using the network’s order books, margin system and liquidation engine. The deployer defines the contract, selects its oracle and controls leverage limits and settlement.

Hyperliquid’s API documentation says deployers supply oracle prices, external perpetual prices and as many as two additional mark-price inputs. The protocol combines those values with a local price based on the best bid, best offer and latest trade. Deployers are expected to consider unusual market conditions when designing price feeds. They must stake 500,000 HYPE and can face slashing for misconduct involving their markets.

As previously reported, Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework places oracle selection and market controls with outside deployers. That structure expands the number of tradable assets but makes each deployer’s price methodology central to risk management.

Trade.xyz has not published its conclusion Trade.xyz had not issued a final incident report when checked. Key unanswered questions include which NXT price inputs entered the oracle, whether filters operated as designed and whether any safeguards will change.

The market remained active after the disruption. Hyperliquid’s documentation allows deployers to halt trading, adjust open-interest limits or settle a contract, but no permanent SKHX suspension had been announced.

Notably, other decentralised exchanges have also introduced perpetual contracts for Korean stocks, increasing the links between thin local trading sessions and continuously operating crypto derivatives.

The next verified update is expected from Trade.xyz. Any final assessment should clarify whether the contract behaved according to its published rules or whether its oracle methodology requires changes.

Hyperliquid is reportedly testing a KYC (Know Your Customer) feature with an allowlist, raising questions about the decentralized exchange’s (DEX) plans. 

According to analyst Rajiv Patel, the platform pushed a new feature, dubbed Stars, that allows deployers to make a HIP-3 (commodity futures) allowlist for trading. The allowlist can have up to 10K addresses; those not included can only fund their accounts but not trade. Sounds like a centralized exchange (CEX), right?

Most analysts speculated that the move could be a push to activate a front-end for U.S. users, calling it a ‘Hyperliquid U.S.’ In fact, crypto investor McKenna also shared a similar stance and added,

Clearly the conversation with Hyperliquid Labs, HPC and TradeXYZ with the SEC/CFTC have been productive. Building the infrastructure to onboard into the United States.

Another analyst added that the move was likely to segment U.S. users and market makers (MMs) to separate orderbooks (liquidity pools) from Hyperliquid’s massive offshore segment. 

Source: X Is Hyperliquid following Uniswap’s steps? AMBCrypto shares a similar outlook, but the trend is not unique to Hyperliquid. Last week, Uniswap unveiled its first ‘permissioned pools’ with the same allowlist feature. According to Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams, the move was aimed at ensuring trading of “regulated tokens and tokenized assets.”

Now that Hyperliquid is the second DEX exploring a similar KYC feature, the move is likely designed to ensure tokenized assets trading meets U.S. compliance checks. 

Worth pointing out that Hyperliquid became the first DEX to start screening and blocking addresses linked to the sanctioned HTX exchange (formerly Huobi Global, owned by Justin Sun). 

The move comes amid increased engagement with the U.S. regulators on how the U.S. markets can access Hyperliquid in a regulated way. 

Currently, the U.S. does not have any clear DeFi regulatory framework. But Hyperliquid Labs, Hyperliquid Policy Center, and TradeXYZ (top issuers of pre-IPO and commodity futures on the DEX) recently met with the U.S. SEC.

Part of the agenda was to explore viable ways of accessing on-chain trading within regulatory bounds. The KYC feature may be just one of the steps towards regulated trading in DeFi. 

Some viewed the move as short-term bearish for the HYPE, Hyperliquid’s native token. Separately, HIP-3 daily volume has hit about 60% of the total Hyperliquid volume and is dominated by TradeXYZ (99%). 

Source: ASXN Critics view this as a dominance risk for the DEX, especially if TradeXYZ is hacked or decides to build its own platform. 

However, TradeXYZ’s CEO Collins Belton downplayed the fears. He noted that ‘there is no reason to leave,’ citing Hyperliquid’s connected ecosystem, including crypto, commodities, options, and prediction markets. 

Meanwhile, HYPE traded at $55, extending July losses to 25% from the monthly peak of $73. 

Final Summary Like Uniswap, Hyperliquid is reportedly exploring a KYC-based front-end for regulated tokenized asset trading. TradeXYZ dismissed plans of leaving the Hyperliquid ecosystem amid rising dominance risk.

Core Scientific has revealed a landmark 15-year partnership with Advanced Micro Devices valued at more than $14 billion, marking a strategic shift from bitcoin mining to artificial intelligence-focused data centers.

Core Scientific’s largest expansion to dateUnder the agreement, Core Scientific will lease AMD 529 megawatts (MW) of AI infrastructure capacity across the United States. The deal includes an option for AMD to reserve up to an additional 1,925 MW by December 28, 2028, potentially increasing the total partnership capacity to approximately 2.5 gigawatts (GW).

PartyLeased CapacityLocationAMD377 MWPecos, Hunt County (Texas), Muskogee (Oklahoma)Cloud provider (unnamed)152 MWAuburn (Alabama), Dalton (Georgia)Total under agreement529 MW (with AMD rights up to 2.5 GW)United StatesAccording to Core Scientific, the 529 MW of leased capacity supports initial customer deployments starting in 2027. The company reported that the arrangement could deliver more than $14 billion in base contracted revenue.

AMD, a global leader in semiconductor solutions, will collaborate with Core Scientific on data center design and the deployment of its Instinct graphics processing units, EPYC processors, and ROCm software platform.

An unnamed cloud provider has also signed leases, supported by AMD, for an additional 152 MW at sites in Alabama and Georgia, increasing customer diversification.

Mini dictionary: ROCm is an open software platform developed by AMD to support high-performance computing and AI applications across its GPU and CPU lineup, providing developers with tools for optimized machine learning and data science workloads.

Financials and strategic transitionThe company also disclosed that AMD received warrants to purchase up to 30 million shares of Core Scientific stock at $23.47 per share. The initial leases triggered the vesting of around 6.5 million warrants, with additional warrants to vest as more capacity is contracted.

Colocation accounted for $136.7 million, or 83% of Core Scientific’s $164.2 million in second-quarter revenue, while revenue from its self-mining operation fell 66% to $21.5 million.

With the new agreements, Core Scientific’s total leased customer capacity reaches roughly 1.1 GW, and the company estimates potential contracted revenue from these leases at over $24 billion. As of mid-July, Core Scientific billed customers for 437 MW, translating to about $635 million in annualized colocation revenue.

This partnership underscores Core Scientific’s ongoing shift away from bitcoin mining. The company recently terminated its agreement to purchase 3-nanometer bitcoin-mining chips designed by Block, recording a $41.9 million impairment charge on its books. The cancelled agreement would have supplied around 15 exahash per second (EH/s) of hashrate capacity.

As of June 30, Core Scientific held 848 BTC valued at $49.7 million, up from 547 BTC in the previous quarter. It reported sales of 2,385 BTC for $208.2 million in the first quarter of the year.

Market reactionFollowing the announcement, Core Scientific’s shares rose 5.6% in pre-market trading. However, shares of AMD fell 4% as broader chip sector stocks declined.

The agreements provide AMD with significant access to U.S. AI data center infrastructure, while positioning Core Scientific as a key player in the growing AI hosting market.

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.

Hyperscale Data, Inc. announced another Bitcoin buy, bringing its holdings up to 1,106 digital coins — worth $69.7 million at today’s prices.

NYSE-listed Hyperscale added just 18.594 Bitcoin to its stash since last week’s buy of 51.5 coins.

Hyperscale shares (GPUS) were trading nearly 4% lower Tuesday morning in New York. 

“Every Bitcoin we acquire further strengthens Hyperscale Data’s balance sheet and expands our financial flexibility,” Milton ‘Todd’ Ault III, Hyperscale Data’s executive chairman, said. 

“A stronger and larger Bitcoin treasury gives us additional options to finance growth, pursue strategic opportunities, and create long-term value for our stockholders. We intend to continue building our Bitcoin position over time.”

The holdings are split across the company’s wholly owned subsidiaries, Sentinum, Inc. and Ault Capital Group, Inc. (ACG). 

The buildout is part of the company’s goal of establishing a $100 million digital asset treasury and reaching full parity between its Bitcoin holdings and market capitalization. 

Hyperscale is following in the footsteps of Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy — by using spare cash to buy Bitcoin. 

Under the leadership of Michael Saylor, Strategy shifted from a traditional software business to buying Bitcoin and allowing investors to get exposure to the asset via its shares which trade on the Nasdaq. 

This model has inspired other corporations to add the leading cryptocurrency to their treasuries — though Hyperscale’s case is unusual in that its holdings now exceed its entire market cap, a situation more commonly seen in deeply discounted treasury plays.

Mathew Di Salvo

Mathew is a reporter who's covered the space since 2019, reporting on everything from Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele's Bitcoin bet to crypto exchange FTX's bankruptcy.

In 2023 a group of developers forked the XRP Ledger because its validators would not adopt smart contracts. Three years later the parent chain is shipping its own programmability layer, and the drafted specification names the fork’s technology as an inspiration. Here is what actually happened, what it means for XAH, and why three competing architectures now answer the same question.

Summary

Xahau launched in 2023 as a fork of the XRP Ledger’s rippled codebase, carrying the Hooks amendment that XRPL validators never adopted, with its own token, its own validator set, and a governance system run through a genesis account hook. The XRP Ledger is now building programmability natively: XLS-100d Smart Escrows, using WebAssembly, sits among known amendments with a devnet live, and XLS-101 Smart Contracts is a drafted specification that cites both Hooks and the Ethereum Virtual Machine as influences. Xahau rejects the sidechain framing entirely, positioning itself as an independent Layer 1 that diverged in its own direction, with features the parent lacks and vice versa, and describing the borrowing as mutual. Three architectures now answer the same question for one ecosystem: Hooks on Xahau, Solidity through the EVM sidechain whose first year this publication audited at $25,741 in total value locked, and WebAssembly natively on the main ledger. The open question is what a fork is worth once the chain it left ships the capability it forked for, and XAH is the asset where that question gets priced. Forks in crypto usually happen over money or ideology. This one happened over a feature. In 2023, after years in which the XRP Ledger’s validators declined to adopt Hooks, a lightweight smart-contract system that would let small pieces of code live on accounts and govern the transactions those accounts send and receive, the developers behind it stopped waiting. They took the ledger’s open-source rippled codebase, added Hooks, launched a network called Xahau with its own token and its own validators, and shipped the capability the parent chain would not. Ripple’s chief technology officer publicly supported the move at the time, saying he could not think of a better path forward for the technology. Three years later the parent chain is building programmability after all. XLS-100d, a WebAssembly-based Smart Escrows amendment, is among the known amendments with a devnet running, and XLS-101d, a drafted specification for general smart contracts, explicitly names both Hooks and the Ethereum Virtual Machine among its influences. This piece examines what that convergence actually means: for the ledger that spent years refusing, for the fork that stopped waiting, and for an ecosystem that now has three separate answers to the question of how a payments chain becomes programmable.

JUST IN: Ripple joins Squid’s $6m strategic round. Squid, powered by Axelar, routes liquidity across 100+ chains with $6B+ cross-chain volume and XRPL integration pic.twitter.com/95RBM2OkKY

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) May 24, 2026 Understanding the fork requires understanding what it kept, because Xahau is not a departure from the XRP Ledger’s design so much as an addition to it.

The network preserved the core: the consensus protocol, the native decentralized exchange, and the fee-and-reserve logic that protects the ledger against spam by charging and burning fees in the native token. What it added was Hooks, small pieces of code installed on an account that impose rules on transactions before those transactions execute, enabling functions such as time locks on transfers, social-recovery arrangements for accounts, and self-custodial direct debits. The design philosophy is deliberately narrow. Hooks were never intended to replicate a general-purpose virtual machine; they are lightweight logic reacting to ledger events, executing fast enough to preserve settlement speed and cheap enough to suit a payments chain.

Two further design choices distinguish it. Xahau substituted a simpler token standard for the parent’s NFT implementation, and it built a governance system in which the genesis account itself is controlled by a hook that regulates matters including the emission of new XAH, administered through a two-tiered arrangement with up to twenty independently owned validators as participants. Governance by smart contract, on a chain whose reason for existing is smart contracts, is at least internally consistent. XAH functions as the network’s fee and reserve asset, with a balance-rewards mechanism that has no equivalent on the parent chain.

The launch was contentious in the way ecosystem splits usually are, with parts of the XRP community expressing unease at the lack of official involvement, and with the fork’s supporters arguing that validators refusing an amendment for years had left no alternative. The relevant point for today is that Xahau shipped and kept shipping, accumulating a validator set, an exchange listing history, and a working developer story around a capability the main ledger did not have.

What the parent is shipping now The XRP Ledger’s current roadmap describes a different route to the same destination, and the specifications are public.

XLS-100d, Smart Escrows, brings WebAssembly-based conditional logic to escrow objects, allowing programmable conditions to govern the release of funds, and it appears among the ledger’s known amendments with a dedicated devnet for developers to test against.

That is a narrow, payments-native form of programmability: not a general computing environment, but escrows that can enforce arbitrary conditions written in a widely supported bytecode format. XLS-101d, Smart Contracts, is the broader specification, drafted in 2025, proposing general smart contract capability on the ledger and citing both Hooks and the EVM among the designs it draws from.

The choice of WebAssembly instead of a bespoke virtual machine is the interesting technical decision, because it imports an existing toolchain and developer base rather than asking builders to learn something proprietary. It is also, in its way, an admission: the ledger that resisted programmability for years is now adopting a mainstream execution standard, and doing so with public acknowledgment of the technology that forked away over exactly this question.

The timing places three approaches in the same ecosystem simultaneously. Hooks run on Xahau. Solidity runs on the XRPL EVM sidechain, whose first year this publication audited and found holding $25,741 in total value locked, a figure that remains the sharpest available evidence that architectural compatibility does not produce developer gravity by itself. And WebAssembly is arriving natively on the main ledger. Three answers, one ecosystem, and no consolidation in sight.

The fork refuses the frame The narrative that writes itself, that a parent chain has absorbed the innovation its fork proved out, is one Xahau explicitly rejects, and its objection deserves fair treatment because it complicates the story usefully.

The current positioning from the Xahau side is that it is not a sidechain and never was one in any meaningful operational sense: it is an independent Layer 1, built from a fork of the XRPL codebase, that has evolved in a completely different direction with its own validators, its own governance, and its own economics. On this account the two networks occasionally adopt ideas from one another and otherwise develop separately, with features existing on each that do not exist on the other. The sidechain confusion, the argument goes, comes from early marketing history and not from present reality.

That framing is defensible on the technical facts and self-interested at the same time, which is normal for any project describing itself. Independence is real: separate consensus, separate validator set, separate token with its own monetary policy. Mutual borrowing is also real, since specifications flow in both directions among developers who largely know each other. But the asymmetry is equally real and no framing dissolves it. When the parent ledger ships general programmability, a developer choosing where to build weighs Xahau’s head start and Hooks’ elegance against the main ledger’s liquidity, its institutional relationships, its exchange support, and the ecosystem’s marketing gravity. Forks that exist to supply a missing capability face their hardest test at exactly the moment the capability stops being missing, and no amount of correct positioning about independence changes the competitive arithmetic a builder actually runs.

The threshold that decides everything Everything in this piece depends on a governance mechanic that outsiders consistently underestimate, and the ledger’s own recent history supplies the cautionary case.

XRP Ledger amendments activate only when validators on the default list signal support at or above eighty percent, and that support must hold continuously for two weeks before the change takes effect. Fall below the line at any point in the window and the clock resets. There is no foundation that can force adoption, no core team veto, and no timetable: an amendment can sit in the known-amendments list indefinitely, gathering partial support, activating never. Hooks itself is the proof. The specification existed, the implementation worked, the technology was sound enough that the ledger’s own chief technology officer publicly endorsed the fork that shipped it, and the amendment still never reached the threshold on the main chain. Years of availability produced no activation, which is precisely why Xahau exists at all.

That history should discipline every forecast about XLS-100d and XLS-101d. A specification in the known-amendments list is a proposal that validators may or may not adopt, and a drafted specification like the general smart contracts proposal is a step earlier still. Both could activate this year; both could sit for three years; either outcome would be consistent with the ledger’s record. The ecosystem’s more recent experience cuts the same way in the opposite direction, since a maintenance amendment this summer sat near forty-eight percent support for a month before validators moved and carried it past the threshold at eighty-six percent, showing that stalled votes can turn quickly once the coalition assembles. Prediction is unwise in both directions.

The threshold also shapes the competitive dynamic between the two chains in a way neither side usually discusses. Xahau’s governance runs through a hook on its genesis account under a two-tier arrangement with up to twenty validators, which is a materially different mechanism from the parent’s eighty percent supermajority, and the fork’s ability to ship features it decides to ship is not a small advantage for a network whose entire premise is programmability. A chain that can adopt is structurally different from a chain that must persuade. Whether that speed advantage matters more than the parent’s liquidity is the actual competition, and it is a question about governance architecture more than about virtual machines.

For a reader tracking this, the practical instruction is simple: ignore roadmap announcements and watch the validator vote count, published continuously, on the specific amendments. Announcements are intentions. The count is the only thing that has ever decided what the XRP Ledger does.

What it means for XAH The honest assessment splits into a bear case and a bull case that are both stronger than the ecosystem’s usual discourse allows.

The bear case is straightforward. XAH’s investment thesis has substantially been that Xahau is where XRPL-ecosystem smart contracts live. If XLS-100d and XLS-101d ship and function, that thesis erodes toward a narrower claim: Xahau is where a particular style of lightweight account-attached logic lives, competing against native WebAssembly contracts on a chain with vastly more liquidity, more integrations, and more attention. Fee-burn value accrual on a chain whose activity moves elsewhere is the same problem this publication has documented across the value-accrual arc, arriving in a smaller ecosystem with less cushion.

The bull case rests on three points that deserve their weight. First, shipping schedules: XLS-101d is a draft, amendments require validator adoption at an eighty percent threshold sustained over two weeks, and the ledger’s own history, including the years Hooks spent unadopted, is the strongest available evidence that XRPL amendments can stall indefinitely. Xahau’s capability exists today; the parent’s is a specification and a devnet. Second, design divergence: Hooks and WebAssembly contracts are not substitutes for every purpose, and lightweight event-triggered logic on accounts has properties a general contract environment does not. Third, and most underrated, the governance experiment: a chain whose emission and genesis account are administered by a hook under a two-tier validator arrangement is running a live test of on-chain governance that the parent has not attempted, and if that works at scale it is an independent reason for the network to exist.

The verdict this piece can honestly offer is narrower than either case: the fork’s premise has changed, and the market has not repriced it because the parent’s capability is not live yet. When XLS-100d activates, the question stops being theoretical, and XAH becomes the cleanest available measure of what a fork is worth after the reason for forking has been addressed at home.

What to watch XLS-100d’s amendment vote. Smart Escrows crossing the eighty percent validator threshold and completing its two-week activation window is the event that converts this from a roadmap story into a live competitive fact. Watch the vote count, not the announcements.

XLS-101d’s progression. A drafted specification is a long way from an activated amendment. Whether the general smart-contract proposal moves toward candidate status within the year, or joins the long list of XRPL specifications that never reached a vote, determines the scale of the challenge to Xahau.

Developer migration signals. New deployments, tooling investment, and grant activity across the three environments are the leading indicators. The EVM sidechain’s first-year experience is the cautionary baseline: compatibility alone moved nothing.

Xahau’s differentiation response. The fork’s strongest move is to lean into what the parent will not copy, meaning its governance model, its balance rewards, and Hooks’ specific ergonomics. Whether the project pivots toward those or defends the general smart-contract ground is the strategic tell worth watching.

A closing observation about what this episode says about the ecosystem’s decision-making, since the technical story has a governance moral. The XRP Ledger’s amendment threshold is a genuine decentralization feature, the same property this publication has praised when validators declined to follow Ripple’s own signaling on other proposals, and it is also the reason a capability the ecosystem clearly wanted took six years and a fork to arrive. Both statements are true, and the tension between them is the permanent condition of any network that makes protocol change hard on purpose. Chains that can ship quickly capture opportunities and make mistakes quickly; chains that require supermajorities avoid mistakes and miss windows. Neither is a flaw to be fixed.

What the Xahau episode adds is the observation that in an open-source ecosystem, the slow chain does not actually prevent the feature from existing. It only determines where the feature lives, who benefits from it, and which token captures whatever value it generates. The developers who wanted Hooks did not wait; they left, built, and launched, and the parent chain’s caution cost it three years of programmability and handed a competitor its founding purpose. Now the parent is building the capability anyway, on its own timeline, with the fork’s work as a reference. That is either the system working exactly as designed, with experimentation happening safely outside the main ledger before the ideas mature into it, or an expensive way to arrive at a destination the ecosystem could have reached directly. Both readings have adherents, and the amendment vote will not settle which is right.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Protocol specifications, amendment statuses, and roadmaps change, and drafted proposals may never activate. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 27, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions What is Xahau? An independent Layer 1 blockchain launched in 2023 as a fork of the XRP Ledger’s open-source rippled codebase, created to implement Hooks, a lightweight smart contract system that XRPL validators had not adopted. It retains the parent’s consensus protocol, decentralized exchange, and fee-burning design while adding programmability, its own token XAH, its own validator set, and a governance system administered through a hook on the genesis account.

What are Hooks? Small pieces of code installed on an account that impose rules on transactions the account sends or receives, executing before those transactions complete. They enable functions such as transaction time locks, social-recovery arrangements, and self-custodial direct debits. Hooks were designed for speed and low cost rather than to replicate a general-purpose virtual machine, which is the core design difference from EVM-style smart contracts.

What is the XRP Ledger building now? Two things. XLS-100d, Smart Escrows, uses WebAssembly to allow programmable conditions on escrow releases and appears among known amendments with a devnet available. XLS-101d, Smart Contracts, is a drafted specification for general smart contract capability that cites both Hooks and the Ethereum Virtual Machine among its influences. Neither is yet activated on the main ledger.

Is XRPL copying Xahau? Borrowing openly, in one direction, while the fork maintains that exchange runs both ways. The drafted XRPL specification names Hooks as an influence, which is a public acknowledgment. Xahau’s position is that it is an independent chain that has evolved in its own direction, with features on each network absent from the other, and that both occasionally adopt ideas from the other.

How many ways can you write smart contracts in the XRP ecosystem? Three, currently. Hooks on Xahau, Solidity via the XRPL EVM sidechain, and WebAssembly natively on the main ledger once the relevant amendments activate. The EVM sidechain’s first year, which this publication audited at $25,741 in total value locked, is the ecosystem’s own evidence that offering an execution environment does not by itself attract developers.

What does this mean for the XAH token? It puts pressure on the fork’s core premise. If the parent ledger ships working programmability, Xahau’s claim narrows from being the ecosystem’s smart contract chain to offering a particular style of lightweight logic against a far more liquid competitor. The counterweights are timing, since XRPL amendments require sustained eighty percent validator support and can stall for years, and genuine design differences between the two approaches.

Why did XRPL validators never adopt Hooks? The amendment never reached the sustained supermajority the ledger’s governance requires, and no single public explanation covers it. Ripple’s chief technology officer stated at the time of the fork that he did not believe validators were voting on political grounds and that Xahau had made good decisions, describing the fork as a reasonable path forward for the technology.

What would settle the competition? Activation and adoption, in that order. The amendment vote on Smart Escrows converts the parent’s programmability from a roadmap to a fact, and developer behavior afterward, new deployments and where tooling investment goes, decides which environment accumulates gravity. Ecosystem history suggests capability alone does not determine the outcome. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

Clear Creek Financial Management, a Wall Street investment advisory firm with over $1.5 billion in assets under management (AUM), has revealed its crypto ETF investments. It has products pegged to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP and Solana (SOL) in its latest filing of Form 13F with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Wall Street Firm Discloses Bitcoin, ETH, XRP, SOL Holdings The filing reflects the firm’s biggest crypto investment as the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF. It holds 304,155 shares, which valued at $9.69 million at the close of the reporting period. Clear Creek also held shares in the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, holding $477,412 worth of the fund, and the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF, which has $248,539 worth of holdings.

Ethereum was also the second largest allocation of the firm’s crypto ETF. The filing revealed 337,162 shares of the Bitwise Ethereum ETF valued at $3.80 million. It also had 14,336 shares worth $170,455 of the iShares Ethereum Trust and 21,374 shares of the Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF, valued at $321,251.

In addition to the two biggest cryptocurrencies, Clear Creek also had stakes in XRP and Solana ETFs. According to the filing, the firm held 11,621 shares of the Bitwise XRP ETF, which currently have a value of $135,501.

The investment manager stated he had 11,258 shares of the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF with a value of $112,693 in addition to 28,144 shares of the Grayscale Solana Staking ETF valued at $155,636 worth.

The filing comes as institutional interest in crypto ETFs expands. Moreover, the latest 13F filing reveals that Clear Creek Financial Management has a crypto strategy beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum as it is also holding XRP and Solana investment products.

Tether Signs MoU with the Nairobi Securities Exchange to Explore Digital Assets Use Cases, Tokenization, Blockchain Technology, and Digital Asset Education in Africa

28 July 2026 – Tether, the largest company in the digital asset industry, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) to explore digital asset education, tokenization, and financial market innovation in Nairobi.

The NSE, established in 1954, is one of the leading African exchanges, based in Kenya, that offers trading facilities to people seeking exposure to Kenya’s and Africa’s economic growth. With a market cap of approximately $26.4 billion, NSE plays a vital role in Kenya’s economic growth by encouraging savings and investment and helping local and international companies access cost-effective capital. NSE is a member of the Association of Futures Markets and is a partner exchange in the United Nations-led SSE initiative. The NSE provides a world-class platform for trading equities, debt securities, and derivatives for people in Nairobi and the diaspora.

Tether and NSE aim to close the gap between where Kenyan investors are today and where they need to be by proposing an investor education program through training sessions, workshops, and other accessible, structured knowledge-transfer initiatives on capital markets in the digital age, targeting participants from NSE-listed brokers and retail investor groups, to build awareness and participation in capital markets through digital assets.

This MoU also aims to support the development and implementation of a blockchain-based market infrastructure for the tokenization and instant settlement of securities within the NSE using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and enable fractionalized access to securities for both local and diaspora investors via the Hadron platform. Tether and NSE will also design and pilot secured onboarding flows tailored to the Kenyan regulatory environment to streamline Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes.

Another key area of focus is the potential development of Real World Asset (RWA) Tokenization, which will explore the Hadron platform’s features and functionality to enable the issuance and trading of tokenized securities and other financial instruments. To promote financial freedom and optimize the institution’s financial workflow, Tether aims to support the integration of instant and atomic settlement mechanisms to reduce the institution’s current three-level settlement cycle. Additionally, both parties will assess the viability of integrating USD₮ as a potential digital settlement infrastructure layer to enhance liquidity and attract increased capital flow where permitted by.

“The use cases for digital assets are evolving, from crypto into real-life applications and, ultimately, cross-border institutional finance. This is what true freedom means. We’re glad to deepen our collaboration with the Nairobi Securities Exchange to advance practical institutional adoption and technological progress. Our goal is to streamline operations and enable efficient, transparent, accountable, and sustainable processes, while protecting data and privacy,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. 

“This MoU is fully aligned with the NSE’s 2025–2029 Strategic Plan, which is anchored on leveraging technology, deepening market participation, and expanding access to investment opportunities for all investors. By collaborating with Tether, we are exploring innovative technologies that have the potential to modernize market infrastructure, enhance operational efficiency, and broaden investor access while maintaining the highest standards of market integrity and regulatory compliance. As we execute our strategy, partnerships such as this will play a critical role in positioning the NSE as a globally competitive exchange and a catalyst for Kenya’s economic growth,” said Frank Mwiti, Chief Executive Officer, NSE.

 TRON DAO, the community-governed DAO dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet through blockchain technology and decentralized applications (dApps), today announced the futures listing of TRX, the native utility token of the TRON network, on Bitnomial, a CFTC-regulated U.S. exchange and clearinghouse.

The new futures listing introduces a regulated derivatives market for TRX, the native utility token of the TRON network, giving eligible U.S. traders and institutions an additional way to manage exposure through exchange-traded futures. The listing represents continued progress in the development of regulated financial products tied to the TRON  ecosystem.

TRX powers activity across the TRON blockchain, including transaction fees, smart contract execution, decentralized applications, and on-chain governance. The network has become a leading platform for stablecoin settlement, supporting more than $90 billion in circulating USDT and over $26 billion in total value locked (TVL), while processing billions of transactions across its global user base.

“The launch of the TRX futures contract on Bitnomial expands the ways market participants can access and manage exposure to the TRON ecosystem through a regulated U.S. venue,” said Justin Sun, Founder of TRON. “As digital assets become more integrated into traditional financial markets, regulated products like TRX futures help provide market participants with additional tools to access and manage exposure to blockchain-based assets.”

“TRX is one of the largest digital assets by market capitalization, backed by one of the most established networks in crypto, and now has a regulated US futures market to match, live today on Bitnomial Exchange,” said Michael Dunn, President of Bitnomial Exchange. “Institutions and traders can hedge and express views on TRX with portfolio margining across positions and settlement through Bitnomial Clearinghouse. Additionally, six months of trading history on a CFTC-regulated futures market meets a key milestone for enabling spot ETFs under the SEC’s generic listing standards.”

Bitnomial, LLC, headquartered in Chicago, is a derivatives exchange company that owns and operates U.S. CFTC-regulated exchange (DCM), clearinghouse (DCO), and clearing brokerage (FCM) subsidiaries. Bitnomial offers leveraged spot, perpetuals, futures, options, and prediction markets on a single unified exchange and clearinghouse with digital asset margin and settlement capabilities. 

The launch of TRX futures follows Bitnomial’s earlier introduction of spot trading for TRX, expanding the range of regulated products available for the asset within the U.S. market. It also builds on broader institutional momentum for the TRON ecosystem, including the availability of TRX custody and staking through Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States.

As demand for regulated digital asset products continues to increase, the availability of TRX futures on Bitnomial offers market participants additional tools for trading and portfolio management while further connecting the TRON ecosystem with traditional financial markets.

All Bitnomial futures contracts are offered by, and subject to the rules of, Bitnomial Exchange, LLC.

About TRON DAO TRON DAO is a community-governed DAO dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet via blockchain technology and dApps.

Founded in September 2017, the TRON blockchain has experienced significant growth since its MainNet launch in May 2018. Until recently, TRON hosted the largest circulating supply of USD Tether (USDT) stablecoin, which currently exceeds $90 billion. As of July 2026, the TRON blockchain has recorded over 395 million in total user accounts, more than 14 billion in total transactions, and over $27 billion in total value locked (TVL), based on TRONSCAN. Recognized as the global settlement layer for stablecoin transactions and everyday purchases with proven success, TRON is “Moving Trillions, Empowering Billions.”

TRONNetwork | TRONDAO | X | YouTube | Telegram | Discord | Reddit | GitHub | Medium | Forum

Media Contact

Yeweon Park [email protected] About Bitnomial, LLC Bitnomial, LLC, headquartered in Chicago, is a derivatives exchange company that owns and operates U.S. CFTC-regulated exchange (DCM), clearinghouse (DCO), and clearing brokerage (FCM) subsidiaries. Bitnomial offers leveraged spot, perpetuals, futures, options, and prediction markets on a single unified exchange and clearinghouse with digital asset margin and settlement capabilities.

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Native USDC deposits and withdrawals on Injective are now live on Kraken, one of the world’s largest crypto platforms.

Kraken clients  can now move USDC directly between the platform and Injective without having to withdraw to another blockchain or completing a separate crosschain transfer. The integration creates a direct onramping path into Injective’s onchain markets, tokenization infrastructure, payment rails and applications.

Direct Exchange Access to Native USDCUSDC on Injective is issued natively by Circle. It gives users and institutions a 1:1 dollar-denominated asset for trading, settlement, payments and onchain capital allocation.

When an exchange does not support Injective directly, moving USDC onto the network requires users to withdraw on another chain and complete a separate crosschain transfer.

Injective USDC support on Kraken removes that extra network hop. Kraken clients can withdraw USDC directly to an Injective address, put the asset to work onchain and deposit it back to Kraken through the same network.

That matters for any financial system built around active capital. Every added transfer, interface and network selection creates friction. Direct deposits and withdrawals reduce those steps with a clear route into Injective.

Once on Injective, native USDC can move across an onchain financial system built for fast execution and near-zero fees. Users can access spot and derivatives markets, interact with tokenized assets, settle payments and use applications built around programmable dollars.

From INJ Trading to Network SecurityKraken listed INJ for trading in August 2021. The listing gave Kraken clients access to the native asset used for transaction fees, staking, governance and network security across Injective.

 Kraken also operates an institutional validator on Injective, giving institutions another way to participate in non-custodial staking and help secure the network.

In 2025, Pineapple used Kraken’s validator as one of the major nodes supporting its $100 million INJ Digital Asset Treasury. Kraken helped connect that institutional capital to Injective’s proof of stake network.

Native USDC support adds another layer. The relationship now spans INJ trading, staking, validator infrastructure, institutional treasury support and direct stablecoin movement.

Kraken Brings Scale to Injective’s Dollar RailsKraken has operated since 2011 and is one of the world’s largest digital asset platforms. It is trusted by millions worldwide and reported $2.0 trillion in total platform transaction volume for 2025.

Today’s news means clients can now use Kraken to access USDC natively on the first blockchain purpose-built for finance. Injective USDC support on Kraken both expands access to the native dollar liquidity used across the ecosystem and provides clients with a direct route to using USDC on Injective for onchain trading,tokenization, payments and programmable financial applications.

Get StartedOn Kraken, select USDC and choose either Deposit or Withdraw. Select Injective as the network and verify the destination address before confirming the transfer.

Only send USDC through a network supported by Kraken.

Get started with Kraken⁠

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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AI and Open SaaS Take Centre StageThe Internet Computer Protocol ($ICP) wrapped up a busy week with a string of updates spanning artificial intelligence, decentralised finance, and raw network performance, underscoring the pace of development at DFINITY and across its ecosystem.

DFINITY previewed a new MCP (Model Context Protocol) server designed to power real-time AI applications on-chain. The move builds on the foundation's broader push into on-chain AI. Internet Computer runs AI models as smart contracts, positioning itself as a platform where AI can build and update applications directly on-chain. The MCP server addition is aimed at making that vision more accessible to developers building live, responsive AI tools. Lightweight Rust and Motoko SDKs are already available for implementing MCP servers on the Internet Computer, signalling that developer infrastructure around this capability is maturing quickly.

Separately, DFINITY founder and Chief Scientist Dominic Williams unveiled the upcoming Open SaaS suite, a product offering that extends the network's pitch to software teams looking to build and distribute applications on decentralised infrastructure. Internet Computer is a Layer-1 blockchain developed by the DFINITY Foundation, positioning itself as a sovereign frontier cloud designed to run web-scale applications and AI workloads in a tamperproof, always-on environment.

Network Performance and Developer MomentumOn the performance side, mainnet throughput reached a peak of 25,621 TPS during the week, with daily transaction volume topping 126 million. Those figures reflect a network operating at significant scale. The network has sustained over 1,000 transactions per second for full 24-hour cycles recently, with growth driven by developers migrating complex workloads on-chain.

Developer engagement also stood out. $ICP ranked third in commits per developer across all crypto projects, a metric that tracks ecosystem health beyond price and volume. The network had previously ranked first across all cryptocurrencies for developer commits over a nine-month period, making the continued top-three placement a sign that the builder base remains active. Internet Computer's adoption is driven by three main areas: Chain Fusion DeFi, on-chain AI, and enterprise cloud use cases, and this week's announcements touched all three.

Taken together, the updates paint a picture of a protocol pushing hard on multiple fronts simultaneously, with AI tooling, product infrastructure, and raw throughput all moving in the same direction.

Sources:
CoinDesk: Internet Computer Bets Big on AI
DFINITY: Awesome Internet Computer (GitHub)
DFINITY: Internet Computer Roadmap 2025 Update

Solana is about to get a lot more room to breathe. The network’s per-block compute limit is jumping from 60 million to 100 million Compute Units, a 66% increase that will go live within 24 hours at the start of Epoch 1009.

Think of Compute Units as the fuel budget each block gets to process transactions. A higher cap means more transactions, more complex smart contract calls, and more overall activity can fit into a single block.

From 50M to 100M in rapid succession Here’s the thing about this upgrade: it’s the second major compute limit increase in less than a week. SIMD-0256, which raised the cap from the original 50 million CUs to 60 million, only went live on July 23, 2025. Now SIMD-0286 is pushing it to 100 million.

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SIMD-0286 was authored by Lucas Bruder from Jito Labs back in May 2025. Jito is one of the most influential infrastructure players in the Solana ecosystem, best known for its MEV-focused validator client.

One important nuance: this upgrade only touches the Maximum Block Units limit. The Max Writable Account Units stays locked at 12 million, and Max Vote Units remains at 36 million. It’s like widening a highway without increasing the speed limit for any single car.

Why Solana needs the headroom That said, there’s a trade-off worth flagging. Higher compute limits mean each block takes more resources to process and validate. Validators running on lower-end hardware could see increased execution times, which could theoretically impact the network’s famously fast block production. The Solana community will need to watch validator performance metrics closely in the days after activation.

What this means for investors The risk side of the equation centers on execution. If the higher compute limit leads to validator instability, block production hiccups, or increased centralization pressure as smaller validators struggle to keep up, the upgrade could backfire.

Watch for validator metrics in the 48-72 hours after Epoch 1009 begins. Skip time, block production rates, and transaction success rates will tell the real story of whether Solana’s infrastructure can handle the ambition its governance process keeps approving.

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