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For 16 years, the question has sat at the center of the crypto world like an open wound. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Governments have investigated. Journalists have spent years chasing leads. Craig Wright spent years in court claiming the title before being exposed as a fraud. And still, nobody has been able to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, who actually built Bitcoin.

A new documentary called "Finding Satoshi" thinks it has the answer.

What Is The "Finding Satoshi" Documentary?

Released on Wednesday, "Finding Satoshi" is the result of a four-year investigation led by New York Times bestselling author William D. Cohan and private investigator Tyler Maroney of Quest Research and Investigations. The film draws on experts in cryptography, programming, and linguistics to build its case.

The documentary arrives weeks after the New York Times published its own investigation pointing to British cryptographer Adam Back as the most likely Satoshi candidate, based on writing pattern analysis across 134,308 posts from cypherpunk mailing lists.

"Finding Satoshi" takes a different view entirely.

Who Are The Main Suspects In The Documentary?

The investigation began by identifying six credible candidates. The shortlist included:

Adam Back

Nick Szabo

Hal Finney

Len Sassaman

Paul Le Roux

Wei Dai

Data scientist Alyssa Blackburn analyzed Satoshi's early mining and communications activity and found that Nakamoto was predominantly active between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. PST. Among the six candidates, only Finney and Sassaman matched that activity window. Blackburn described it as "inconceivable" that Back, Szabo, or Dai could be Satoshi based on that finding alone.

What Is The Case Against Hal Finney?

Finney was a cryptographer, a PGP contributor, and the first person ever to receive Bitcoin from Satoshi Nakamoto in January 2009. He also developed Reusable Proofs of Work, an earlier form of digital cash that shares structural similarities with Bitcoin.

Will Price, co-founder of PGP Corp. and a colleague of Finney's for 15 years, pointed to a two-month gap before Bitcoin's genesis block during which Finney made no commits to his PGP work. Price noted that Finney was coding in C++ on Windows at the time, the same language and platform used for the original Bitcoin client.

Finney's widow, Fran Finney, participated in the documentary and said she believed her husband "probably played a role" in Bitcoin's creation, though she stopped short of saying he wrote the white paper. Both Finney and his wife denied he was Satoshi during his lifetime.

The Stylometry Problem

One key issue with the Finney theory is stylistic. Satoshi Nakamoto consistently used British spellings throughout the white paper and forum posts. Finney did not. Even the NYT's own stylometric analysis found Finney a very close second to Back, with the original result described as inconclusive before the methodology was adjusted.

What Is The Case Against Len Sassaman?

Sassaman was a cryptographer and cypherpunk who studied under David Chaum, widely regarded as the founding figure of modern cryptography and digital cash. He lived in Europe during Bitcoin's active period and regularly used British spellings in his own writing, consistent with Satoshi's documented style.

Sassaman died by suicide in July 2011, roughly six months after Satoshi's last public post. The documentary theorizes that Finney wrote Bitcoin's code while Sassaman handled the written work, including the nine-page white paper.

Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent and a close friend of both men, said their interests matched Satoshi's profile precisely, describing both as cypherpunks in the truest sense. Cohen also addressed Sassaman's public criticism of Bitcoin, suggesting it was a deliberate tactic to deflect suspicion from a hidden identity.

What Sassaman's Widow Said

Meredith L. Patterson, Sassaman's widow, appears in the documentary. She confirmed that Sassaman was deeply interested in pseudonyms and actively worked to avoid stylometric detection, the practice of identifying authors through writing patterns.

Conclusion

"Finding Satoshi" presents a structured, evidence-backed case that Hal Finney and Len Sassaman jointly created Bitcoin under the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym. The timeline gaps, coding activity, linguistic patterns, and testimony from both men's widows form the core of the argument. However, key inconsistencies remain, particularly around British spellings in Finney's writing, and no cryptographic proof has been presented. The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains unconfirmed.

Resources

Report by The Wall Street Journal: Documentary Claims to Solve $80 Billion Mystery at Heart of Bitcoin

Report by Protos: Are we done Finding Satoshi?

Report by The New York Times: My Quest to Solve Bitcoin’s Great Mystery

MoneyGram International and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) have extended their partnership in a multi-year agreement aimed at expanding stablecoin-based payment services, starting with Latin America. The announcement was made on April 22 at Stellar House in Mexico City.

MoneyGram 🤝 @StellarOrg

We’re extending our five-year partnership with SDF, continuing to turn stablecoin potential into real-world utility and financial inclusion.

Building on our success in Colombia, the MoneyGram app’s stablecoin balance is now live in El Salvador.

Read… pic.twitter.com/9lbvyZlBeJ

— MoneyGram (@MoneyGram) April 22, 2026

What Does The MoneyGram And Stellar Extension Actually Cover?

The renewed agreement builds on more than five years of collaboration since 2021, focused on making USDC settlement faster and cheaper across key remittance markets. The expanded scope includes rolling out MoneyGram's stablecoin balance feature, currently live in Colombia, to El Salvador, with further markets across Central and South America expected throughout the year.

The stablecoin balance feature, built on Stellar and powered by Circle's USDC and Crossmint, allows users to:

Receive funds instantly into a USD-denominated balance

Hold digital dollars without converting to local currency

Cash out at any MoneyGram retail location

MoneyGram's network covers more than 200 countries and territories, with nearly 500,000 retail locations worldwide.

How Does The Technical Infrastructure Work?

The system runs on the Stellar blockchain, which was purpose-built for payment settlement at scale. Crossmint handles wallet infrastructure, while Circle's USDC provides the dollar-pegged stablecoin layer. Together, these components enable near-instant settlement and flexible cash access across MoneyGram's physical and digital network.

Since 2021, the partnership has also produced the MoneyGram Ramps API, a developer-facing tool that allows third-party platforms to plug into MoneyGram's cash on/off-ramp network, one of the largest of its kind for digital assets globally.

Why Latin America First?

Latin America is a high-volume remittance corridor. Many families in the region depend on cross-border transfers as a primary source of income, and a significant portion of recipients remain unbanked or underbanked. Colombia served as the initial test market, where the stablecoin balance feature saw strong user adoption before the El Salvador launch.

What Sets This Apart From MoneyGram's Past Crypto Partnerships?

MoneyGram previously worked with Ripple using its On-Demand Liquidity product, which was focused on foreign exchange trading rather than consumer payments. That relationship wound down after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against Ripple in December 2020.

The Stellar partnership operates differently. It is directly consumer-facing, touching how individuals send, receive, and hold money, rather than functioning as a backend FX liquidity mechanism.

"We are building an open payments network that moves seamlessly across fiat and stablecoin, enabling faster, lower-cost transactions, starting with the people who need it most," said Anthony Soohoo, MoneyGram's Chairman and CEO.

Stellar's Broader Regulatory Momentum

The MoneyGram extension comes a week after Stellar crossed $2 billion in real-world assets on-chain. The network also recently integrated EURAU, a MiCAR-compliant euro stablecoin issued by AllUnity, a joint venture between DWS, Flow Traders, and Galaxy. 

EURAU is backed one-to-one by reserves held across European banks and licensed by Germany's BaFin. That puts Stellar alongside Circle's EURC and Société Générale-Forge's EURCV as regulated euro settlement options on the network.

Conclusion

MoneyGram and Stellar's extended partnership delivers a working stablecoin payment layer across MoneyGram's 500,000-location global network. With Colombia and El Salvador live, USDC settlement active on Stellar, and a developer API available for broader integration, the infrastructure is operational and expanding into new remittance markets on a defined timeline.

Resources

Press release by MoneyGram: MoneyGram and Stellar Extend Partnership to Scale Real-World Stablecoin Utility Globally

Report by CoinDesk: MoneyGram Partners With Stellar and USDC for Blockchain-Based Payments

Stellar Development Foundation official announcement of the EURAU integration with quotes from AllUnity and SDF leadership.

AllUnity launch release covering EURAU's BaFin license, MiCAR framework, and reserve structure.

Spot XRP ETFs in the United States have brought in $68.88 million in net inflows during April 2026, making it the strongest month of the year for the funds and a full reversal from March. The run has put XRP ahead of every other altcoin ETF this month, even as Tuesday's session closed with zero net flows across all five products.

The figures come from SoSoValue data through April 21. Cumulative net inflows since launch now sit at $1.28 billion, with total net assets at $1.07 billion, representing 1.22% of XRP's circulating supply.

How does April compare to the rest of 2026?

April's $68.88 million haul is already the best month of 2026 by a wide margin. February pulled in $58.09 million, and January came in at $15.59 million. March flipped negative at $31.16 million in outflows. With seven trading days still left in the month, April has already cleared every other reading and is still adding to its total.

Daily flows tell the same story. Since the $661,000 outflow on April 9, the funds have posted uninterrupted positive or flat sessions. April 15 alone brought $17.11 million in net inflows, followed by $11.87 million on the 16th and $13.74 million on the 17th. Tuesday's reading broke the streak of positive days but did not pull the month into the red.

The weekly view underlines the momentum. The week ending April 17 saw $55.39 million in net inflows, the strongest weekly print of 2026 for the category.

Who is leading the pack?

Five issuers run spot XRP ETFs in the US, and the leaderboard has tightened in recent weeks. Canary Capital's XRPC now sits at the top of cumulative net inflows with $421.86 million, edging out Bitwise's XRP at $416.75 million. Franklin Templeton's XRPZ follows at $345.01 million, and Grayscale's GXRP has collected $120.93 million since launch.

21Shares' TOXR remains the outlier, with a cumulative negative $20.70 million, the only fund in the group still running net outflows.

Fees separate the products more than performance does right now. Franklin charges the lowest rate at 0.19%, followed by 21Shares at 0.30%, Bitwise at 0.34%, Grayscale at 0.35%, and Canary at 0.50%.

How do XRP ETFs stack up against other altcoin ETFs?

XRP is the clear leader among altcoin ETF categories this month. Spot Solana ETFs pulled in $35.17 million during the strong week ending April 17, roughly 36% below XRP's $55.39 million. Spot Chainlink ETFs brought in $5.30 million over the same stretch, a fraction of what XRP and Solana attracted.

Across the five major spot crypto products, including XRP, Solana, and Chainlink, combined weekly inflows reached roughly $1.37 billion. XRP took the largest altcoin slice of that pie. Solana posted its first positive week after three straight weeks of outflows, but still trailed XRP in both absolute and relative terms.

Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs continue to dominate the broader flow picture, but they play in a different league. Among altcoin-specific products, no other category is showing the April momentum that XRP has delivered.

What is driving the April surge?

The inflows have arrived through a choppy price environment. XRP has faced pressure earlier in 2026, trading well below its 2025 peaks, yet ETF demand has held firm. That pattern suggests institutional allocators are treating the ETFs as a structural position rather than a short-term trade.

JPMorgan's earlier forecast pegged first-year inflows for XRP ETFs at $4 billion to $8.4 billion. Cumulative flows have reached $1.28 billion in under a year, leaving plenty of room to run against the low end of that forecast if the April pace holds.

The steady buying also continues to lock up $XRP. Spot ETF products now hold a combined 1.22% of XRP's circulating supply, a figure that has climbed alongside this month's inflows and represents a steady source of non-speculative demand.

Sources:

SoSoValue US XRP Spot ETF Dashboard primary source for daily, weekly, and monthly flow data plus the five-issuer cumulative breakdown through April 21.

Yahoo Finance weekly flow comparisons across spot XRP, Solana, and Chainlink ETFs and combined altcoin ETF totals.

Cardano's Leios testnet upgrade is a dedicated public network launching in June 2026 to stress-test Ouroboros Leios, a full redesign of the consensus protocol built to push transaction throughput from roughly 10 to 15 per second today to 30 to 65 times Praos levels, with peak capacity targeted at 1,500 TPS or more under realistic network conditions. Early Linear Leios variants are expected to exceed 1,000 TPS. IOG product manager Carlos Lopez de Lara confirmed the June timing.

For a chain that has been criticized for years over slow throughput, this is the upgrade that has to land.

Why is Leios a big deal for Cardano?

Cardano currently runs on Ouroboros Praos, which produces blocks sequentially every 20 seconds. That design was built for security and decentralization, not speed, and it shows. On-chain activity has thinned out. DeFi Llama data shows Cardano TVL sitting around $137 million in early April, with monthly fee revenue sitting in the low tens of thousands of dollars. Stake pool operators need sustained network usage to cover costs once block rewards keep tapering.

Leios is the direct answer. It keeps the same proof-of-stake security guarantees as Praos, but rewires how blocks get produced and validated. The chain is not sharded. Every node still validates the full chain. The gains come from doing more work in parallel.

How does the new block structure work?

Leios splits block production into three layers that run simultaneously.

Input Blocks (IBs): Produced continuously, these carry the raw transactions.

Endorser Blocks (EBs): Produced every five seconds or so by committees, these endorse multiple IBs in parallel using BLS aggregated signatures to keep the bandwidth cost low.

Ranking Blocks (RBs): Issued every 20 seconds using the proven Praos mechanics, these lock in the final linear chain order.

The practical effect is that wallets and apps get early confidence from endorser blocks well before the final ranking block confirms the order. When paired with Ouroboros Peras, the fast-finality overlay already in development, Cardano is targeting roughly two-minute high-confidence settlement.

Node requirements stay reasonable. IOG's current specs point to six or more CPU cores, 100 Mbps bandwidth, and SSD storage, which keeps the door open for independent stake pool operators instead of pushing them out.

When does the dedicated testnet launch?

June 2026 is the target. Lopez de Lara confirmed it publicly and even asked the community to pitch a name for the network. The purpose is exactly what SPOs and developers have been asking for. Large-scale public stress testing. Parameter tuning. Node integration work. Wallet and indexer compatibility checks. Real load conditions, not just simulations.

Mainnet activation comes after the testnet holds up under pressure, passes audits, and clears on-chain governance. That deployment is scheduled for the second half of 2026 through a single hard fork, following the van Rossem intra-era upgrade to Protocol Version 11 in late June. Initial parameters will be set conservatively, with throughput turned up gradually as the ecosystem adapts.

To get here faster, IOG has already made hard calls. Work on Acropolis was paused. Tiered pricing was cancelled, returning 4.1 million $ADA to the treasury. The message is clear. Leios is now the priority.

What about the van Rossem hard fork?

Running alongside Leios in the same window is the van Rossem intra-era hard fork, expected at the end of June 2026. This one introduces Protocol Version 11 and focuses on Plutus performance, ledger consistency, and node security. It does not require moving to a new era, which keeps the integration lift lighter than past forks. It was pushed back slightly from the earlier target after a storage bug surfaced in testing.

Van Rossem is the quiet cleanup pass that makes the Leios rollout safer. Leios is the headline.

The bigger picture

Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) has framed Leios as Cardano's answer to the blockchain trilemma, arguing the network can scale without giving ground on security or decentralization. That claim now has a hard deadline attached. If the June testnet shows the throughput numbers the simulations promise, Cardano has a real case against faster competitors. If it slips or underperforms, the ghost-chain narrative around $ADA gets harder to push back on. The next two months matter.

Sources:

Ouroboros Leios Official Hub - primary technical documentation, roadmap, and FAQ from the Cardano scaling team

Ouroboros Leios Roadmap - official throughput targets and SPO hardware specs

Leios Development Tracker - real-time milestones and engineering progress from IOG

Input Output Global - official Leios handover and Ouroboros Omega vision paper

Cardano.org - announcement of the public development tracker

Leios Research Paper - peer-review grade protocol specification

Invezz - market context and on-chain metrics around the Leios timeline

OpenGradient is a decentralized infrastructure network built to host, execute, and verify AI model inference at scale, where every computation produces cryptographic proof that can be checked on-chain without trusting any single operator.

The project describes itself as the Network for Open Intelligence, and it has recently launched $OPG as its native token to power the network's operations. At its core, OpenGradient functions as an AI coprocessor, a dedicated layer that other agents, blockchains, and applications can route AI workloads to rather than relying on centralised API providers.

Today, $OPG launches as the native token powering OpenGradient’s verifiable AI network.

This marks the network going fully live, bringing permissionless AI infrastructure with secure, verifiable execution onchain to the world. 🧵👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/suQGK0L6F1

— OpenGradient (∇, ∇) (@OpenGradient) April 21, 2026

What Problem Does OpenGradient Solve?

Every AI application today relies on a single point of trust. When an AI agent manages a portfolio, approves a loan, or moderates content, there is currently no way to independently verify which model ran, what prompt was used, or whether the output was modified before it reached the end user.

According to OpenGradient's documentation, AI infrastructure is consolidating into a handful of providers, and that creates three specific issues.

Opacity: When a large language model makes a decision affecting money, health, or governance, there is no way to prove what happened inside the system. Model versions can change silently, system prompts can be injected, and responses can be filtered without the user ever knowing.

Single points of failure: If the provider goes down, rate-limits access, or changes model behaviour, dependent applications break with no fallback and no recourse.

Trust without verification: Operators can swap models, inject content, or log prompts without disclosure. For financial agents, medical reasoning tools, or audit trails, accepting this on faith is not a viable approach.

OpenGradient addresses all three by making verification the default, not an optional add-on.

How Does OpenGradient Work?

OpenGradient is built on a Hybrid AI Compute Architecture, abbreviated as HACA, which separates the execution of AI inference from its verification. This separation is the key architectural decision that makes the system practical.

When a request comes in, it goes directly to a specialised inference node and returns with web2-level latency. The cryptographic proof is then submitted and validated asynchronously by full nodes, before being permanently recorded on the network's EVM-compatible chain. The user does not wait for block confirmation to receive a response, but every response is eventually settled and auditable.

What Are The Different Node Types?

Instead of using a single validator set where every node performs every task, OpenGradient uses specialised node types.

Full Nodes run consensus, manage the ledger, verify proofs, and handle payment settlement. They do not run models or use GPUs.

Inference Nodes are stateless GPU workers that execute models. These come in two forms: LLM Proxy Nodes that route requests to providers like OpenAI and Anthropic through Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) enclaves, and Local Inference Nodes that run open-source models directly on hardware.

Data Nodes operate inside secure enclaves to provide trusted access to external data such as price feeds and APIs, with attestations confirming the data was not tampered with.

Decentralised Storage on a system called Walrus keeps model files and large proofs off-chain, referenced by identifiers recorded on the ledger.

This division of labour means each node type can be scaled and secured independently for its specific workload.

What Can Developers Build On OpenGradient?

The network supports a range of use cases across enterprise, financial, and consumer applications. Several are available now, and others are in development on the alpha testnet.

Currently available:

AI agents where every LLM call is cryptographically signed with the exact prompt used, making the reasoning chain verifiable on-chain

Verifiable access to models including GPT-4, Claude, Grok, and Gemini through a unified API with TEE verification

Privacy-preserving applications where TEE nodes process prompts inside hardware enclaves, preventing the node operator from seeing or logging requests

Persistent memory for AI applications through MemSync, which handles memory extraction, classification, and user profile generation on verified infrastructure

In development on alpha testnet:

Smart contract integration allowing AI models to be called natively from Solidity via precompiles

Atomic AI transactions where model inference executes as part of a state transition rather than as an external oracle call

Composable AI workflows that chain multiple models together with mixed verification methods in a single transaction

What Is TEE Verification?

TEE stands for Trusted Execution Environment. It is a secure area inside a processor where code and data are isolated from the rest of the system. In OpenGradient's context, TEE verification means an inference node processes a prompt inside hardware that prevents even the node operator from accessing, logging, or modifying the interaction. The result comes with a hardware attestation proving the computation ran correctly.

How Does $OPG Fit In?

$OPG is the native token of the OpenGradient network. It is used to pay for inference through a system called x402, which supports standard HTTP-based calls with payment-gated access. Payments are processed on Base, with execution and verification handled on the OpenGradient network itself.

Conclusion

OpenGradient is a purpose-built network for verifiable AI inference, combining specialised node types, TEE hardware attestation, zero-knowledge machine learning proofs, and an EVM-compatible settlement layer. 

The network currently supports verified access to major LLMs, privacy-preserving inference, persistent memory through MemSync, and decentralised model hosting via Walrus. On-chain ML execution, atomic AI transactions, and composable model workflows are in development on the alpha testnet. The $OPG token powers payment for inference across the network through the x402 protocol on Base.

Resources

OpenGradient on X: Posts (April, 2026)

OpenGradient Website: General Info

OpenGradient documentation: About OpenGradient

Chainlink has completed a SOC 2 Type 2 examination conducted by Big Four accounting firm Deloitte and Touche LLP, covering its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and Data Feeds products, making it the only oracle platform in the blockchain industry to hold SOC 2 Type 1, SOC 2 Type 2, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification simultaneously.

NEW: Big-4 firm Deloitte & Touche LLP completed SOC 2 Type 2 examination for Chainlink CCIP & Data Feeds.

Chainlink is the only data and interop oracle platform meeting key institutional security standards:

• SOC 2 Type 2
• SOC 2 Type 1
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification pic.twitter.com/bnuYrbCYX7

— Chainlink (@chainlink) April 21, 2026

The examination was performed in accordance with attestation standards set by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The certified services specifically cover Chainlink CCIP and Data Feeds, including Price Feeds and SmartData feeds such as Proof of Reserve and Net Asset Value (NAV) feeds.

What Is A SOC 2 Type 2 Audit, And Why Does It Matter?

SOC 2 stands for System and Organization Controls 2. It is a security framework developed by the AICPA that evaluates how a technology company manages customer data and operational controls across five trust service criteria: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.

There are two levels. SOC 2 Type 1 assesses whether a company's security controls are properly designed at a single point in time. SOC 2 Type 2 goes further, testing whether those controls actually worked consistently over a sustained period of time. Passing a Type 2 audit from a Big Four firm like Deloitte carries significantly more weight for regulated institutions, because it is not a snapshot. It is an ongoing record.

Chainlink previously became the first oracle platform in the blockchain industry to achieve SOC 2 Type 1 attestation. The new Type 2 result builds directly on that, moving from design verification to operational verification.

For banks, asset managers, and large enterprises, independent third-party attestation is not optional. Internal security claims from a technology vendor carry little weight in compliance frameworks. An attestation from Deloitte, a firm that audits some of the world's largest financial institutions, provides the kind of documented, external validation that legal and compliance teams can present to regulators.

What Services Are Covered By The Audit?

The Deloitte examination covered two core Chainlink product lines used directly by institutional clients.

Chainlink CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol):

Enables tokenized assets and data to move across more than 75 blockchains

Used by financial institutions building multi-chain infrastructure

Relevant to cross-border settlement and asset transfer use cases

Chainlink Data Feeds:

Price Feeds: Real-time, tamper-resistant pricing data for a wide range of assets

SmartData Feeds: Includes Proof of Reserve and NAV feeds for fund and asset-backed products

NAV, or Net Asset Value, is the per-unit value of a fund's assets minus its liabilities. Delivering verified NAV data on-chain is a core requirement for tokenized fund products, and it is among the services now covered by the audit.

Chainlink's Growing Institutional Stack

The SOC 2 Type 2 result arrives alongside a broader expansion of Chainlink's institutional product suite and partnerships.

One day before the audit announcement, OpenAssets, a digital asset infrastructure provider whose network includes ICE (the world's largest exchange), Tether, Fanatics, Mysten Labs, and KraneShares, selected Chainlink as its oracle platform for institutional tokenized asset issuance and distribution.

The integration connects several specific Chainlink products with OpenAssets' white-label tokenization platform:

Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE): Handles orchestration and workflow automation for institutional processes

CCIP: Moves tokenized assets across more than 75 blockchains

Digital Transfer Agent (DTA): Connects tokenized assets to legacy financial system requirements

NAVLink: Delivers verified Net Asset Value data on-chain

Price Feeds: Provides real-time pricing data for a wide range of assets

"As 68 trillion in assets is expected to move onchain in the next few years, institutional tokenization requires a broad set of tools across the entire asset lifecycle," said Gabor Gurbacs, CEO of OpenAssets.

SIX Group Joins Chainlink DataLink

Also around the same period, Chainlink added SIX Group, the operator of Switzerland's and Spain's stock exchanges, to its DataLink platform. The integration makes equities data covering more than 2 trillion euros in combined market capitalization available on-chain for the first time.

Chainlink DataLink is an institutional-grade data publishing service that allows regulated data providers to publish proprietary market data on-chain while retaining control over entitlements and distribution rights. Through this integration, smart contracts across more than 75 blockchains can now access real-time market data from the SIX Swiss Exchange and BME (Bolsas y Mercados Españoles), reaching over 2,600 applications within the Chainlink ecosystem.

Is Chainlink The Only Oracle Platform With This Certification?

Yes, according to Chainlink's own statement. Chainlink is currently the only data and interoperability oracle platform to hold all three of the following:

SOC 2 Type 1 attestation

SOC 2 Type 2 attestation

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 is an internationally recognized standard for information security management systems, maintained by the International Organization for Standardization. Together, these three certifications represent the benchmark set that most large regulated institutions require before integrating external technology providers into their financial infrastructure.

Chainlink's existing institutional adopters include Swift, Euroclear, and Mastercard.

Conclusion

Chainlink now holds SOC 2 Type 1, SOC 2 Type 2, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification, the only oracle platform in the blockchain industry to carry all three. The Deloitte attestation covers CCIP and Data Feeds directly, the two product lines most central to institutional tokenization and cross-chain data delivery. 

Combined with the OpenAssets partnership and the SIX Group DataLink integration, the audit result reflects a consistent build-out of compliance infrastructure aimed squarely at regulated financial institutions entering on-chain markets.

Resources

Chainlink on X: Post on April 22

Blog article by Chainlink: Chainlink Becomes First Data and Interoperability Oracle Platform To Achieve ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Compliance

Press release by OpenAssets: OpenAssets Forms Strategic Partnership With Chainlink to Unlock a Trillion-Dollar Wave of Institutional Tokenization

Press release: SIX and Chainlink Bring Data of Swiss and Spanish Equities with a Combined Market Value of €2 Trillion Onchain

The Coinbase Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain has published its first position paper, concluding that while no quantum computer today can break blockchain encryption, the industry must begin preparing for one that eventually will.

The 50-page report was authored by some of the most credible names in cryptography and distributed systems research, including Dan Boneh, director of the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research; Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation; Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer; Yehuda Lindell, Coinbase's head of cryptography; and Dahlia Malkhi, an expert in resilient distributed systems. Researchers from UT Austin, Bar-Ilan University, and UC Santa Barbara also contributed. 

What Is The Coinbase Quantum Advisory Board?

Coinbase assembled the Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain specifically to ensure its security strategy is shaped by science rather than news cycles. The board's first position paper is a comprehensive assessment of what quantum computing means for the crypto industry, where the real risks lie, and what needs to happen next.

The board has high confidence that a "fault-tolerant quantum computer," one powerful enough to break the cryptography securing digital assets across major blockchains, will eventually be built. Most expert timelines suggest at least a decade away, but the report does not rule out a significantly shorter timeline.

That uncertainty is exactly why preparation cannot wait.

Where Are The Real Vulnerabilities In Crypto?

Not every part of a blockchain is equally at risk. The paper draws a clear line between what is safe and what is not.

What quantum computing does not threaten:

Bitcoin mining and hash functions

The historical transaction records of major blockchains

Most core blockchain infrastructure

What is genuinely at risk:

Digital signatures, the cryptography that proves ownership of assets

Wallets where public key information is already visible on-chain

Proof-of-stake validator signature schemes

For Bitcoin specifically, researchers estimate that approximately 6.9 million BTC fall into the most exposed category, held in addresses where the public key has already been revealed on-chain. A separate estimate in the report puts approximately 4.5 million Bitcoin in early or reused address types that carry similar exposure.

What Is A "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" Attack?

One risk the paper identifies as beginning right now, not in the future, is the harvest now, decrypt later attack. Adversaries can collect encrypted blockchain data today and store it, waiting for quantum hardware to mature enough to crack it retroactively. For long-held assets in exposed address types, this is not a theoretical future risk. It is a present one.

Why Switching To Quantum-Safe Cryptography Is Harder Than It Sounds

The technical solution already exists. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has already standardized several post-quantum cryptographic algorithms, and the cryptographic research community has been developing quantum-resistant alternatives for over 20 years.

The problem is rolling them out at blockchain scale.

Post-quantum digital signatures are significantly larger in data size than the signatures currently in use, in some cases tens to hundreds of times larger. The Coinbase report includes an estimate that replacing current signatures with quantum-resistant alternatives could expand block sizes by up to 38 times.

For Bitcoin, which operates under a strict block size limit and requires consensus across a fully decentralized set of stakeholders, a 38-times increase in signature data is not a minor adjustment. It is a fundamental architectural change touching every node, wallet, exchange, and application in the ecosystem.

Why Coordination Across Decentralized Networks Is Uniquely Difficult

Traditional financial institutions can push security upgrades through centralized systems. Blockchain networks cannot. Every user must take action. Millions of wallets need to migrate. And because there is no central authority to enforce a deadline, the coordination challenge is unlike anything conventional finance has faced.

What Major Blockchains Are Doing Right Now

The report reviews the current state of post-quantum preparation across several major networks:

Bitcoin is exploring new address formats that better protect public keys. Bitcoin developers are actively debating BIP 361, a proposal for a structured migration away from legacy address types. No full upgrade plan has been committed to yet.

Ethereum has published a detailed migration roadmap and has elevated post-quantum security to a top strategic priority, with a dedicated research team. The foundation's roadmap could also improve network scalability in the process.

Solana, Algorand, and Aptos have each begun offering or planning quantum-resistant options for users.

Optimism and other Layer 2 networks have announced transition plans with specific deadlines.

Ripple published a four-phase XRPL post-quantum roadmap targeting completion by 2028.

What Happens To Wallets That Never Upgrade?

This is the hardest question the paper raises, and it has no clean answer.

Lost keys, inactive holders, and abandoned accounts mean that a meaningful portion of digital assets will inevitably remain in unupgraded wallets when quantum computers become powerful enough to matter. Each blockchain community will need to decide whether to freeze, revoke, or leave those assets vulnerable.

The advisory board recommends that these decisions be made and communicated publicly as soon as possible. The longer communities wait, the harder it becomes to act without causing market disruption.

What Coinbase Is Doing In Response

Coinbase states it is building its systems to be flexible enough to adopt new cryptographic standards quickly. The exchange is working with hardware and infrastructure partners on upgrade readiness and is sharing the research publicly on the grounds that quantum preparedness is an industry-wide challenge that no single company can solve alone.

The board's first position paper is described as the first output, not the last.

Conclusion

The Coinbase Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain has produced a technically grounded, credible assessment of a real but not yet immediate threat. 

The board's conclusion is measured: today's crypto holdings are secure, current quantum hardware is nowhere near capable of breaking blockchain encryption, and expert consensus points to at least a decade before a genuinely threatening machine exists. 

What the paper makes clear, though, is that upgrading decentralized ecosystems takes years, post-quantum signatures carry significant data overhead, and coordination across millions of independent wallet holders is a problem with no easy solution. The work of preparing has to start well before the threat becomes urgent, and by the board's own assessment, that time is now.

Resources

Report by Coinbase: Coinbase Quantum Advisory Council Publishes Position Paper on Quantum Computing and Blockchain

Report by CoinDesk 1: Coinbase advisory board says quantum computing threat is on the horizon, crypto needs a plan

BIP 361: Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset 

Ethereum’s Quantum Roadmap: Future-proofing Ethereum

Report by CoinDesk 2: Solana's quantum-threat readiness reveals harsh tradeoff: security vs speed

Aptos on X: Post on Dec. 18, 2025

Yes, the CLARITY Act is on track for another delay. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) has urged the Senate Banking Committee to push its markup of the crypto market structure bill to May, with bank lobbying over stablecoin yield provisions once again in the way.

It is the third major slip of 2026. And with the congressional calendar tightening fast, every week lost is starting to matter.

Why is the CLARITY Act being delayed again?

The short answer is stablecoins. The long answer involves a lobbying blitz, a Fed chair nomination hearing eating up committee time, and a compromise deal that banks suddenly want rewritten.

Tillis told Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott to skip an April markup and aim for May instead. Tillis has been leading negotiations between banks and crypto firms for months and wants more time to finish the stablecoin yield language.

The committee has until Friday to notice a markup if it wants to hold a vote during the week of April 27. Most of this week is already locked up by the confirmation hearing for Kevin Warsh, President Trump's pick to replace Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair. That leaves almost no window for the CLARITY Act to move on its original schedule.

What are the banks pushing back on?

Stablecoin yield. Specifically, whether exchanges and third-party platforms can pay rewards on stablecoin balances.

The American Bankers Association has warned that allowing stablecoin rewards could pull as much as $6.6 trillion out of the traditional banking system. Community banks, with less balance sheet flexibility, are seen as the most exposed.

Tillis has been working with Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) on a compromise. The current draft keeps a ban on rewards for idle stablecoin balances while allowing yield tied to transactional activity on third-party platforms. Coinbase and other crypto firms have pushed back against a total ban, arguing it would kill product development and hand foreign platforms an edge.

The compromise looked close to being settled in late March. Then the North Carolina Bankers Association and other industry groups began pressuring Tillis's office to reopen the deal. Banking trade groups are now reportedly lobbying other Banking Committee members directly, widening the pressure campaign well beyond Tillis and Alsobrooks.

What does this mean for 2026 passage odds?

Galaxy Research has flagged a hard deadline. If the Banking Committee does not clear the bill in April, the odds of passage in 2026 fall to near zero. A Senate floor vote requires 60 votes, meaning Democratic support is essential, and the August recess leaves almost no usable floor time after summer.

Polymarket traders agree the picture has darkened. Odds of the CLARITY Act being signed into law in 2026 now sit at 51 percent, down from a February peak of 82 percent when Trump endorsed the bill. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has already shifted his public timeline from April to the end of May.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report earlier this month, finding that a full ban on stablecoin yields would boost bank lending by just $2.1 billion, or about 0.02 percent, while costing consumers an estimated $800 million. White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt went further, telling banks their continued lobbying could only be motivated by "greed or ignorance" and to move on.

Is a compromise still possible?

Tillis has floated what he called a "crypto palooza," an in-person session that would put bank and crypto representatives in the same room as senators rather than staffers. It could break the deadlock. It would also add time to a process that is already 270-plus days past the 294-134 House vote in July 2025.

The Digital Chamber sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee this week urging a markup as soon as the calendar allows. Government affairs director Taylor Barr said more than 70 million Americans holding digital assets are still waiting for regulatory clarity.

What to watch this week

Friday is the functional deadline for the Banking Committee to notice an April 27 markup. If nothing moves by then, May becomes the working target. Beyond that, every additional slip eats into the narrow window before August recess and the November midterms.

Whether Tillis gets his room, or the banks get their rewrite, the "Delayed Again?!" headline keeps writing itself until someone actually calls a markup.

Sources:

Crypto in America Primary reporting on Senate Banking Committee timing, Warsh hearing collision, and bank lobbying campaign details

Unchained Galaxy Research passage odds, Garlinghouse timeline shift, and Tillis-Alsobrooks negotiation background

Crypto.news ABA deposit flight warning, $6.6 trillion figure, NC Bankers Association pressure campaign, and Witt X post context

CryptoSlate Full Witt statement, CEA report figures on bank lending and consumer cost, and stablecoin market size context

CoinMarketCap Current draft language on idle balance ban versus transactional activity yield

Polymarket Live prediction market odds on 2026 passage

BitcoinEthereumNews Digital Chamber letter and Taylor Barr statement on regulatory clarity

Japan Securities Clearing Corporation (JSCC), a subsidiary of Japan Exchange Group (JPX), has launched a proof-of-concept to tokenize Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) as collateral on the Canton Network. The pilot, announced April 20, brings in Mizuho Financial Group, Nomura Holdings, and Canton builder Digital Asset.

The setup puts Japan's central securities clearer and two of its largest banking groups on the same institutional blockchain already used for US Treasury collateral pilots by the DTCC. It is a clear signal that Asia's biggest sovereign bond market wants in on the tokenized collateral race.

What is JSCC actually testing?

The goal is to move JGB collateral on-chain without losing any of the legal protections bondholders have today. That means keeping full compliance with Japan's Book-Entry Transfer Act and the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act while settling on Canton.

Specific test objectives include:

Transferring and managing JGBs across multiple institutions on a single ledger

Running collateral posting and substitution 24/7 in real time

Supporting cross-border flows between clearing houses, institutional investors, clients, and agents

Confirming that rights over JGBs can be updated on-chain with the same legal standing as off-chain records

The work sits inside the Financial Services Agency's Payment Innovation Project (PIP) sandbox, which selected the project in February 2026. That gives regulators a live view of how tokenized collateral behaves before anything goes into production.

Why is this a big deal for Canton?

Canton Network (@CantonNetwork) is a permissioned public blockchain aimed at capital markets. It uses a component called the Global Synchronizer to let separate applications settle atomically while keeping transaction details private between counterparties. That mix of privacy and interoperability is why banks and market infrastructure firms have gravitated to it over general-purpose chains.

Canton already hosts production workflows for institutions including DTCC, HSBC, Euroclear, Broadridge, and Tradeweb, with reported asset activity above 6 trillion dollars across pilots and live use cases. Adding JSCC, Mizuho, and Nomura puts Japanese sovereign debt alongside US Treasuries and UK Gilts in the growing Canton collateral stack. For Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz, who also sits on the Canton Foundation board, it is validation in one of the most conservative financial markets on earth.

How does this fit with the DTCC pilots?

JSCC and DTCC have been quietly aligned on this. The two clearing houses co-authored a paper on tokenized collateral, and JSCC was the first external adopter of DTCC's digital asset sandbox for this exact use case. DTCC ran its own Canton-based tokenized US Treasury pilot in December 2025.

The pattern is starting to look deliberate. Major clearers in the US, UK, Europe, and now Japan are testing the same infrastructure for the same problem: moving high quality sovereign collateral faster, with less friction, across borders and time zones. If these pilots graduate, the result is a shared rail for moving Treasuries, Gilts, and JGBs between institutions without the current overnight delays and manual reconciliation.

What is the upside for Japan?

JGBs are the bedrock collateral for Japanese finance. Most of that collateral currently moves through legacy systems that close overnight and do not talk well to foreign counterparties. Tokenizing JGBs on Canton could unlock:

Instant collateral substitution instead of end-of-day batches

Cross-border repo with less trapped liquidity

Automated margin management tied directly to on-chain positions

New products that combine JGBs with other tokenized assets already on Canton

The joint statement frames this as a way to lock in JGBs' role in digital markets and boost Japan's financial competitiveness. In practice, it is also a hedge. If US and European peers move to tokenized collateral and Japan does not, Tokyo risks losing flow to markets that settle faster.

What happens next?

There is no hard timeline for production rollout, and the four partners have not disclosed technical specs or any live volume. The PoC will run inside the FSA sandbox first, with results likely feeding into a broader industry discussion. Executives attached to the project include Mizuho CEO Masahiro Kihara, Nomura CEO Kentaro Okuda, JSCC CEO Isao Hasegawa, and Digital Asset's Rooz.

Watch for whether JSCC opens the trial to more clearing members, and whether Canton-based JGB collateral eventually gets bridged into the DTCC pilot workflow. That would be the real test of cross-border tokenized settlement.

Sources:

Japan Exchange Group - Official JSCC joint press release with Mizuho, Nomura, and Digital Asset

Canton Network - Canton Network architecture, Global Synchronizer, and institutional use cases

Canton Foundation - Canton Foundation governance and board composition

RedotPay, a global stablecoin-based payments fintech, has integrated SUI and USDC-Sui into its platform, allowing users to spend and send Sui-native assets at merchants worldwide with low transaction fees. 

Starting today, anywhere @RedotPay is accepted, so is SUI.

7M+ RedotPay customers. 130M+ merchants. 100+ countries. $SUI and $USDC-Sui are live for real-world use.

So, who’s buying the intern a coffee with SUI? ☕ pic.twitter.com/RHvOdPMehE

— Sui (@SuiNetwork) April 21, 2026

The integration gives RedotPay customers direct access to Sui's payments infrastructure and adds two more assets to a multi-currency wallet that already supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and several others.

What Is RedotPay And How Does It Work?

RedotPay processes over $10 billion in annualized payment volume as of November 2025, making it one of the fastest-growing stablecoin payment networks globally. Its flagship product is a crypto card supported by both Apple Pay and Google Pay, with built-in on and off-ramps that let users spend digital assets at real-world merchants without manually converting to fiat first.

The platform supports a Multi-Currency Wallet covering BNB, BTC, ETH, SOL, TON, TRX, USDC, USDT, XRP, and the Sonic token S, among others. SUI and USDC-Sui are the latest additions to that list.

One of RedotPay's key features is its "send crypto, receive local currency" function. A user can send digital assets from the app and the recipient collects local fiat currency on their end, removing the need for both parties to hold or manage crypto directly.

Why Does The Sui Integration Matter?

RedotPay is among the first crypto card providers to support native USDC on Sui rather than a bridged version. Bridged assets are tokens that originate on one blockchain and are wrapped or transported to another, which introduces additional smart contract risk and can slow settlement. Native USDC on Sui is issued directly on the Sui network by Circle, making it a first-party asset rather than a derivative of one.

Sui was built by Mysten Labs, a team that includes engineers from Meta's Diem stablecoin project. The network was designed specifically to handle high transaction volumes with low latency, which aligns with the requirements of a payments-focused use case.

“By integrating with RedotPay, we are moving past the ‘experimental’ phase of crypto payments,” Adeniyi Abiodun, Co-founder and CPO at Mysten Labs, said. “Users can now leverage the speed of Native USDC on Sui to buy coffee, pay for travel, or shop online at over 130 million merchants worldwide without the friction of typical blockchain wait times. This is the standard for on-chain payments.”

What Can RedotPay Users Do With SUI And USDC-Sui?

The practical scope of the integration covers several everyday use cases:

Spending SUI or USDC-Sui at merchants via the RedotPay card through Apple Pay or Google Pay

Sending crypto internationally while the recipient receives local currency

Swapping between digital assets within the app with near-instant finality

Accessing Sui's payments infrastructure without managing blockchain infrastructure directly

What Is Happening With SUI Beyond RedotPay?

The RedotPay integration is one of several recent developments that point to growing institutional and retail interest in Sui.

CME Group, one of the world's largest derivatives exchanges, has announced plans to launch regulated futures contracts for both Avalanche and SUI, with trading expected to begin on May 4, subject to regulatory approval. CME already offers crypto futures on Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Stellar, and Chainlink. SUI and AVAX are the next additions.

The SUI futures contract is sized at 50,000 SUI for the standard contract and 5,000 SUI for the micro version. Both are cash-settled, meaning no actual SUI changes hands at expiry. Settlement prices reference CME CF rates tied to New York settlement windows, and clearing runs through CME Clearing.

How Big Is CME's Crypto Derivatives Business?

CME recorded $3 trillion in notional volume across its crypto futures and options in 2025. Year-to-date figures through early 2026 show average daily volume of 407,200 contracts, up 46% year over year. March 2026 average daily volume rose 19% year over year, with nearly $8 billion in average notional value traded daily. The SUI listing sits within a portfolio that has been expanding steadily in both asset count and trading volume.

Conclusion

RedotPay's integration of SUI and native USDC-Sui gives its users access to Sui's low-fee payment infrastructure across more than 130 million merchants globally. Combined with the platform's existing multi-currency support and local currency payout feature, the addition broadens RedotPay's practical reach for cross-border spending. At the same time, upcoming CME futures for SUI reflect growing institutional interest in the network beyond retail payments.

Resources

Sui Network on X: Posts (April, 2026)

Blog article by RedotPay: RedotPay Integrates SUI and USDC-Sui to Enable Seamless Stablecoin-based Payments and Global Payouts

Announcement by CME Group: CME Group to Continue Expansion of Regulated Crypto Suite with Launch of Avalanche and Sui Futures

OpenAssets, a digital asset infrastructure provider, has selected Chainlink as its oracle platform to support the issuance and distribution of institutional tokenized assets. The partnership connects two networks with significant institutional reach and gives financial institutions access to a combined technology stack for building tokenization platforms and stablecoin systems without building foundational infrastructure from scratch.

Digital asset infra provider @OpenAssetsInc enters a strategic partnership with Chainlink to power the issuance & distribution of institutional tokenized assets.

This enables institutions to launch advanced onchain solutions, unlocking a trillion-dollar wave of tokenization. pic.twitter.com/JHpg0qnQ6U

— Chainlink (@chainlink) April 20, 2026

Who Are OpenAssets And Chainlink?

OpenAssets builds modular, white-label infrastructure that lets institutions launch their own tokenization platforms. Its existing network includes ICE, the world's largest exchange, Tether, the world's largest stablecoin issuer, Fanatics, Mysten Labs, and KraneShares, among others.

Chainlink is the most widely adopted oracle network in the industry. Oracles are the bridge between off-chain data, such as asset prices or NAV figures, and on-chain environments like smart contracts. Without them, blockchains have no native way to read external data. Chainlink's institutional adopters include Swift, Euroclear, and Mastercard.

The partnership brings both networks together under one infrastructure arrangement aimed at financial institutions entering onchain markets.

What Does The Partnership Actually Do?

The integration is built around several specific Chainlink products working alongside OpenAssets' white-label platform. Together, they cover the main technical requirements for institutional tokenization.

Here is what each component contributes:

Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE): Handles orchestration and workflow automation for institutional processes

Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP): Allows tokenized assets to move across more than 75 blockchains

Digital Transfer Agent (DTA): A technical standard that connects tokenized assets to legacy financial system requirements

NAVLink: Delivers verified Net Asset Value data on-chain for fund and asset-backed products

Price Feeds: Provides real-time, tamper-resistant pricing data for a wide range of assets

"As 68 trillion in assets is expected to move onchain in the next few years, institutional tokenization requires a broad set of tools across the entire asset lifecycle,” said Gabor Gurbacs, CEO of OpenAssets. “Secure data oracles, cross-chain coordination, and integration with existing systems are an important part of it.”

What Is A Protocol-Agnostic Platform?

OpenAssets describes its platform as both protocol-agnostic and asset-agnostic. In plain terms, this means institutions are not locked into a specific blockchain or asset class. A bank could use the same infrastructure to tokenize Treasury bills, real estate, or fund shares, and deploy across multiple chains without rebuilding the underlying system each time.

How Does This Fit Into Chainlink's Broader Institutional Push?

The OpenAssets deal is one of several recent moves by Chainlink to expand its institutional data and infrastructure footprint.

Days before this announcement, Chainlink added SIX Group, the operator of Switzerland's and Spain's stock exchanges, to its DataLink platform. That integration made equities data covering more than two trillion euros in combined market capitalization available on-chain for the first time. The data now reaches over 2,600 applications within the Chainlink ecosystem via smart contracts across more than 75 blockchains.

Chainlink DataLink is an institutional-grade data publishing service designed for regulated data providers that need to maintain entitlement controls when moving proprietary data on-chain. A financial data firm using DataLink can publish its information to blockchain environments without losing control over who can access it or under what conditions.

In early April, Chainlink also collaborated with Midas, a tokenized real-world asset platform with approximately $1.7 billion in assets minted, on a product called the Attestation Engine. The system records key financial data including NAV and Proof of Reserves as cryptographically verified, on-chain records stored permanently on IPFS. It operates as an independent trust layer alongside Midas's existing real-time dashboards rather than replacing them, providing periodic high-integrity checkpoints that anyone can verify independently.

Conclusion

The Chainlink and OpenAssets partnership combines white-label tokenization infrastructure with oracle-based data connectivity, cross-chain interoperability, and legacy system integration. 

OpenAssets brings institutional network reach covering exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and sports platforms. Chainlink contributes the data layer, compliance tooling, and cross-chain transport. Together, the stack covers the core technical requirements for institutions building production-grade tokenization and stablecoin platforms at scale.

Resources

Press release by OpenAssets: OpenAssets Forms Strategic Partnership With Chainlink to Unlock a Trillion-Dollar Wave of Institutional Tokenization

Press release: SIX and Chainlink Bring Data of Swiss and Spanish Equities with a Combined Market Value of €2 Trillion Onchain

Chainlink on X: Post on April 7

Midas on X: Post on March 18

Ripple has published a detailed roadmap to make the XRP Ledger (XRPL) fully quantum-resistant by 2028. The plan covers four phases, starting with emergency preparedness and ending with a full protocol upgrade. The move comes after Google Quantum AI research confirmed that the cryptography most blockchains rely on today could be broken by a powerful enough quantum computer.

Why Quantum Computing is a Real Threat To Crypto

The concern is not just theoretical anymore. Quantum computers are built differently from classical machines. Where a traditional computer processes data in binary, a quantum computer uses quantum bits, or qubits, that can represent multiple states simultaneously. This gives quantum machines the potential to crack certain types of encryption far faster than anything available today.

For blockchains, the specific risk is this: every time an account signs a transaction, its public key becomes visible on-chain. Think of it like writing your home address on the outside of an envelope. Anyone can see it, but they cannot read what is inside without your private key. A sufficiently advanced quantum computer, however, could reverse-engineer that private key from the public one, giving an attacker direct access to the funds.

Ripple also flagged a subtler risk known as "harvest now, decrypt later." Bad actors can collect publicly visible cryptographic data from blockchains today and store it, waiting until quantum hardware is powerful enough to crack it.

How Exposed Is XRP Compared To Bitcoin?

The exposure levels are very different between the two assets.

An April 2026 audit by XRPL validator "Vet" found that approximately 300,000 XRP accounts holding 2.4 billion XRP have never signed a transaction. Because their public keys have never appeared on the blockchain, they are not vulnerable to quantum attacks. Only two large dormant accounts with more than 21 million XRP and over five years of inactivity have exposed public keys, representing just 0.03% of the total XRP supply currently at risk.

Bitcoin faces a much larger problem. Roughly 32% of all Bitcoin, including an estimated one million coins linked to Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, is stored in a format that makes it easier for a quantum computer to target.

What Is Ripple's Four-Phase Plan?

Ripple's roadmap is built around two parallel goals: preserving XRPL's current performance while preparing for a worst-case scenario where classical cryptography breaks sooner than expected.

Here is how the four phases break down:

Phase 1 (Q-Day Readiness): A contingency plan is already in development. If existing cryptography breaks unexpectedly, XRPL would enforce a hard shift away from classical signatures. Ripple is exploring post-quantum zero-knowledge proofs to let users prove wallet ownership and migrate funds safely, even in a compromised environment.

Phase 2 (First Half Of 2026): Full assessment of quantum risk across the network. Ripple will test NIST-recommended post-quantum signature schemes in collaboration with Project Eleven, which is building a hybrid post-quantum signing prototype including validator-level testing and a post-quantum custody wallet.

Phase 3 (Second Half Of 2026): Post-quantum signature schemes will run alongside existing elliptic curve signatures on Devnet for developer testing. Ripple will also explore post-quantum-friendly primitives for zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption to support privacy features in tokenization use cases.

Phase 4 (Targeting 2028): A formal amendment to the XRPL ecosystem will introduce native post-quantum cryptography across the full network.

Where XRPL Already Has An Advantage

XRPL already supports native key rotation, which lets users switch to new, more secure keys without moving funds to a new account. Ethereum has no equivalent feature built into its protocol. 

Any post-quantum migration on Ethereum would require users to manually transfer assets to entirely new accounts. XRPL's seed-based key generation also enables deterministic derivation of new keys, giving it a practical foundation that most other networks would have to build from scratch.

Conclusion

Ripple's post-quantum roadmap is one of the most detailed published by any blockchain project to date. With 0.03% of XRP supply currently at risk and a structured four-phase plan targeting full transition by 2028, XRPL is in a comparatively strong position. The cryptography is not broken today, but Ripple's argument is clear: preparation timelines now matter.

Resources

Blog article by Ripple: Post-Quantum Readiness on the XRP Ledger

Report by CoinDesk: Ripple wants the XRP Ledger to be quantum-proof by 2028. Here is its plan

Report by Benzinga: Ripple Gets Quantum-Ready With Multi-Phase XRP Ledger Update Plan

Paper by Google: Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities: Resource Estimates and Mitigations 

Aster, the BNB Chain-aligned perpetuals exchange, has crossed 15 million registered users. The platform confirmed the milestone in a post on April 19, with its live counter ticking higher almost immediately after the announcement.

The number puts Aster firmly in second place among perp DEXs, trailing only Hyperliquid on most volume metrics while pulling ahead of rivals like edgeX, Lighter, and ApeX.

How big is 15 million in perp DEX terms?

In its official post, Aster said 15,050,000 traders had signed up. The figure on asterdex.com has since moved to 15.14 million.

For context, the user count sat near 9.5 million in February 2026. Adding roughly 5.5 million accounts in about two months is one of the sharpest adoption curves the perps sector has seen, and it lands at a moment when the wider category is already running at record volumes. Lifetime trading volume on the platform now sits at $4.45 trillion.

Where does Aster sit on the leaderboard?

DefiLlama's perps dashboard tells the competitive story. On a 24-hour normalized basis, Hyperliquid leads at $4.896 billion, with Aster second at $1.853 billion. edgeX follows at $1.488 billion, Lighter at $1.355 billion, and ApeX at $1.112 billion.

Total 24-hour perp volume across all DEXs came in near $16.53 billion, with 30-day cumulative volume at roughly $601.6 billion. Aster's own 30-day reported volume of $60.4 billion gives it close to 10 percent of that market.

Open interest is where Hyperliquid still dominates. Hyperliquid holds $7.407 billion in OI, over three times Aster's $1.965 billion. The split hints at different user behavior: Hyperliquid retains more sticky capital, while Aster's ratio of open interest to volume suggests heavier flip-and-exit trading.

Inside the platform

Aster is the product of a merger between APX Finance, an established perp trading engine with deep liquidity, and Astherus, a yield and liquidity protocol. The rebrand to Aster happened in early 2025, when the ASTER token replaced the legacy APX ticker. CZ’s YZi Labs is among its backers.

The design pitch is CEX-like speed with non-custodial settlement. That shows up in a few features traders tend to notice:

Multi-chain trading without bridging

Hidden orders that mask size and direction, cutting MEV exposure

A Simple Mode with one-click trades up to 100x, alongside a Pro Mode

Yield-bearing collateral and tokenized stock perps

The platform currently supports 181 symbols across crypto, equities, and commodities. TVL sits at $1.13 billion according to the homepage, while DefiLlama reports $888 million, with BNB Chain holding the bulk at $662 million. Annualized fees have been tracking in the $80 million range.

Can Aster close the gap on Hyperliquid?

Short term, Hyperliquid's lead in open interest and 30-day volume is substantial. The protocol cleared $187 billion in 30-day volume against Aster's $60.4 billion, a roughly 3x gap. On daily volume, though, Aster has flipped Hyperliquid on occasion through late 2025, and user growth keeps widening the top of the funnel.

The next structural push is Aster Chain, a dedicated Layer 1 the team is building for private, high-speed perps. The design targets 100,000-plus TPS, ZK proofs, gasless trading, and protection against liquidation sniping. If it ships on spec, it addresses the main areas where Hyperliquid's purpose-built L1 has had an edge.

For now, 15 million registered users gives Aster something most of its peers cannot match: sheer distribution. Whether that converts into durable open interest is the question the next quarter will answer.

Visit Aster on asterdex.com and follow @Aster_DEX on X for updates.

Sources:

Aster on X announcing the 15 million registered user milestone

DefiLlama Perps Dashboard for live perp DEX volume, open interest, and ranking data

Aster Official Site for live user count, TVL, symbol count, and lifetime trading volume

Kaspa has processed more than 1.957 billion cumulative on-chain transactions as of April 20, 2026, putting the network within days of the 2 billion mark at current activity levels. The timing matters. The milestone lands right before the Toccata hard fork, Kaspa's largest protocol upgrade to date, now set for mainnet activation between June 5 and June 20, 2026.

The transaction count is not a vanity metric. It reflects what the network has actually processed since launch, running on a proof-of-work BlockDAG at 10 blocks per second without the congestion that slows down linear chains like Bitcoin.

What do the numbers actually show?

According to the official Kaspa explorer, the network has crossed a block height of 412,700,579 with an average block time of 0.1 seconds. Circulating supply sits at 27.37 billion $KAS, which is 95.39% of the 28.7 billion maximum. Active wallet addresses stand at 538,449, and the current block reward is 2.914 KAS. The next reward reduction is scheduled for May 5, 2026.

The throughput story has been consistent. Hourly bursts have topped 1 million transactions during peak activity, driven by L1 transfers and Layer 2 protocols like Igra L2 that settle on Kaspa. Analysts have pointed out that Kaspa has processed more transactions in four years than Bitcoin has in roughly 17. That comparison is not about superiority. It is about what a parallel-block architecture produces when it runs under real demand.

KAS has caught some tailwind alongside the milestone. The token trades around $0.0347, up 8.67% on the week, with a market cap near $949.75 million and 24-hour volume of $26.61 million, a 20.23% rise over the prior day.

What is Toccata, and why does it matter?

Toccata, officially named Kaspa Covenants++, is a non-backward-compatible hard fork that turns Kaspa from a payments-focused settlement layer into a programmable Layer 1. Nodes must upgrade, and the rollout has followed a tight schedule.

The feature freeze happened on April 15, 2026. Testnet 12 is already running covenant and ZK testing, and developers plan a full transition rehearsal on TN10 before the mainnet date is locked in. The activation window slipped from the original May 5 target to give core developer Michael Sutton (@michaelsuttonil) and the team time to finalize the sequencing commitment architecture that ZK circuits and runtimes bind to.

Toccata introduces several things at the base layer:

Native assets and tokens directly on-chain

Covenants via extended opcodes under KIP-17, letting UTXOs carry forward enforceable spending rules such as timed releases and multi-stage logic

SilverScript, a new high-level compiler and SDK designed to make covenant programming safer

ZK opcodes and verifiers, including Groth16 and RISC Zero STARK on testnet, for privacy tools and trust-minimized bridges

Early groundwork for vProgs, the synchronously composable verifiable programs, planned for a later phase

Sutton has been direct about the scope. "We are not there yet," he said of vProgs, the synchronously composable verifiable programs on the longer roadmap. The current focus, he notes, is standalone ZK apps with L1 bridging.

What happens after Toccata activates?

For node operators, disk usage is expected to rise by 20 to 50%, and existing functionality continues to work. New SDKs and APIs will support the added capabilities without breaking current tools.

As with any non-backward-compatible fork, execution is the open variable. The TN10 rehearsal and the April feature freeze are meant to compress that risk before mainnet.

The longer roadmap keeps pushing throughput. Targets sit at 25, 40, and eventually 100 blocks per second. The goal is to keep the base layer lean while programmability runs through L1 sequencing rather than a global virtual machine.

The 2 billion transaction mark is worth noting on its own. It is also the baseline Toccata is built on. If the upgrade lands cleanly, Kaspa shifts from a chain that moves value fast to one that can enforce rules on how that value moves, without giving up the speed that got it here.

For the latest updates, visit the official Kaspa website.

Sources:

Kaspa Explorer — Live network statistics for total transactions, block height, circulating supply, and active wallet addresses

Toccata Hard Fork Outlook — Official Kaspa.org breakdown of Toccata features, timeline, and activation window, based on the post by core developer Michael Sutton

KAS.live Hardfork Countdown — Community countdown tracker for the June 5, 2026 Toccata activation

Kaspa Main Site — Official project site with BlockDAG architecture and GHOSTDAG protocol documentation

CoinMarketCap Kaspa Page — Price, market cap, volume, and supply data for KAS

Supra is launching SupraOS, a blockchain-enforced AI agent management system that lets users run and control AI agents locally with end-to-end encryption, with an alpha release on April 20 capped at 100 seats. 

Co-founder Joshua Tobkin announced the product on X, describing it as a way for individuals and organizations to manage multiple AI agents without giving up control of their data to a third party. A public release is expected roughly one week after the alpha.

What Is SupraOS and How Does It Work?

SupraOS is an AI agent management platform designed to run on the user's own hardware, a setup commonly called self-hosting. Because it runs locally, all data stays with the user rather than passing through external servers. Tobkin confirmed the full codebase, approximately 300,000 lines of code, will be open-sourced and made available for free.

The system connects AI agent activity to Supra's Layer-1 blockchain, which means the rules governing how agents behave are enforced cryptographically rather than through a centralized authority or standard terms of service. Tobkin described it as "blockchain enforced AI agent management," where the blockchain itself acts as the governance layer. This approach is sometimes called cryptographic AI governance, meaning the enforcement mechanism is math and consensus rather than a company policy.

How SupraOS Ties Into Supra's Existing Infrastructure

Supra already operates a decentralized oracle network and Layer-1 blockchain built to deliver verified real-world data to smart contracts in under three seconds. Its execution engine, SupraBTM, processes transactions in parallel and runs roughly four to seven times faster than traditional EVM systems according to reported benchmarks. The network also supports multiple virtual machines including Ethereum's EVM and MoveVM, with SolanaVM support planned.

SupraOS extends this infrastructure into AI agent management. Tobkin noted that Supra's Layer-1 will also engage in decentralized AI training through SupraOS users, meaning the user base running agents locally will contribute to a broader distributed training network at the same time.

Why Does Self-Hosting Matter for AI Agents?

Most AI platforms today process user data on centralized servers. That means the platform provider has access to what the AI sees, what it does, and what it learns from. Self-hosting removes that dependency. A user running SupraOS keeps full ownership of their data, their agent configurations, and their agent activity logs.

The end-to-end encryption Tobkin referenced means that even if data is transmitted during agent operations, it cannot be read by anyone other than the user. This is the same principle used by encrypted messaging apps, applied here to AI agent workflows.

Tobkin's framing of the product targets both individuals managing personal productivity agents and organizations building AI-centric workflows, where multiple agents handle different functions simultaneously.

What Is Supra's Background?

Just about a month ago, Supra completed Mastercard's Start Path program, a fintech accelerator that connects later-stage startups to Mastercard's network. The project was recognized alongside other Web3 projects for its work on financial infrastructure. Supra was co-founded by Joshua D. Tobkin, Jon Jones, and Eleanna Kalaitzi, with a founding focus on building a decentralized oracle and automation layer for cross-chain financial systems.

The SUPRA token powers the underlying network, covering gas fees, validator staking, oracle data payments, and cross-chain utility across Ethereum, BNB Chain, Solana, and Cosmos. Validators must stake 55 million SUPRA tokens to run a node.

Conclusion

SupraOS adds a self-hosted AI agent management layer to infrastructure Supra has already built for oracle data delivery, on-chain automation, and cross-chain messaging. The open-source codebase, local data storage, and blockchain-based governance layer distinguish it from AI platforms that process user data centrally. With 100 alpha seats opening April 20 and a public release expected within a week, the product's practical performance will be tested against Supra's existing Layer-1 capabilities shortly.

Resources 

Supra on X: Posts in 2026

Joshua Tonkin on X: Post on April 19

Supra oracle website: General info

Supra oracle blog: Recent developments

The $RAVE token has lost more than 97% of its value over the last two days, falling from a peak market cap of $6.5 billion to roughly $145 million, after on-chain investigator ZachXBT raised allegations of insider-driven price manipulation. 

The collapse comes after the token surged from $0.25 to $28 in just nine days. Over 30 days, RAVE posted a staggering 10,000% gain.

Binance, Bitget, and Gate.io have all opened investigations into the trading activity behind the token's abnormal price behaviour, and the project's own denial appears to have accelerated the selloff rather than slowing it.

What Triggered The RAVE Price Crash?

Crypto sleuth, ZachXBT, flagged suspicious trading patterns on-chain. He was initially motivated by a $10,000 bounty offered for uncovering unfair trading practices on exchanges. His findings drew enough attention that Binance, Bitget, and Gate.io all launched formal reviews.

A summary of the RAVE -95% price fluctuation from $26 to $1 over the past 24 hours.

RAVE Timeline: April 18, 2026

7:26 am UTC: I posted a call to action for Binance, Bitget, & Gate to investigate RAVE market manipulation and offered a $10K bounty.

10:56 am UTC: I posted an… pic.twitter.com/mivKcdyBrw

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) April 19, 2026

ZachXBT had earlier contacted RaveDAO directly to flag a notable concern: roughly 90% of the 1 billion RAVE token supply was concentrated across just three Gnosis Safe multi-signature wallets attributed to the team. Gnosis Safe is a type of crypto wallet that requires multiple private keys to authorize a transaction, commonly used by project teams to control large token reserves. He also noted that millions of tokens had been transferred to exchanges in the days before RAVE's price surged, a pattern consistent with preparation for a coordinated sell. 

After the exchanges moved, ZachXBT announced his own separate whistleblower bounty of $25,000 for anyone with evidence identifying the parties involved.

The "Bait And Liquidate" Pattern

Investigators flagged a specific tactic in the RAVE price action known as a "bait and liquidate" pattern:

Visible token transfers to exchanges suggested incoming sell pressure, drawing traders into short positions.

Those tokens were then withdrawn rather than sold, causing prices to move sharply higher.

Short sellers were forced to cover at progressively worse prices, generating large liquidations that fueled further price momentum.

Earlier, the original rally took RAVE from around $0.25 to $27.33 in nine days, a move of roughly 10,800%. That surge triggered $44 million in liquidations on Friday alone, placing RAVE just behind Bitcoin and Ether in terms of liquidation volume that day, with the bulk coming from short sellers.

How Did RaveDAO Respond?

RaveDAO posted a thread on X stating the team "is not engaged in, nor responsible for, recent price action." The statement did not address the specific on-chain findings: the wallet concentration, the pre-rally transfers, or ZachXBT's observation that selling continued from team wallets even as the token lost more than 90% of its value.

The team's thread did confirm that it plans to "liquidate portions of unlocked tokens" when appropriate, to fund operations and marketing. It also said it was exploring "price-triggered or performance-triggered locks" to align team incentives with project growth. The collapse accelerated after the denial rather than stabilizing on it.

ZachXBT continued tracking transactions after the statement, intercepting further deposits from team-linked wallets into Bitget as RAVE fell from $1.00 to $0.60.

What Is RaveDAO, And Why Did The Rally Happen?

RaveDAO presents itself as a Web3 entertainment platform focused on on-chain ticketing for electronic music events, tracing its origins to a 2023 afterparty in Istanbul. The project reported approximately $3 million in 2025 revenue and lists Binance, OKX, Bitget, and Polygon as partners.

The original rally was not driven by any major new development. There was no network upgrade, no significant partnership announcement, and no large token burn. The price action fits what is known in market analysis as the Wyckoff Theory, a framework developed over a century ago to describe how assets move through accumulation, markup, distribution, and markdown phases.

RAVE spent several months in a tight trading range before the surge, consistent with the accumulation phase. The markup phase, characterized by parabolic price action and high futures volume fueled by FOMO (fear of missing out), followed. The token has since moved into the distribution and markdown phases.

RAVE market cap fell from $6.5 billion to $145 million at the steepest point of the crash.

RAVE token price chart (Image: CoinMarketCap and TradingView)

Despite a 100% monthly gain at the time of reporting, RAVE was down 94% over the trailing week and trading near $0.55 with a market cap around $137 million. Trading volume remained elevated at $367 million, down 57% over the last 24 hours.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen confirmed the investigation on X. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the exchange was reviewing the matter and would "always" do its part to examine signs of market misconduct.

Conclusion

The RAVE crash is a textbook case of what can happen when a low-regulation market, concentrated token supply, and opaque team wallets converge. The token went from a relatively unknown project to a $6.5 billion asset in nine days without a single major fundamental catalyst, then gave nearly all of it back within 48 hours once scrutiny arrived. 

ZachXBT's on-chain findings prompted formal investigations from three major exchanges. RaveDAO's response confirmed planned token sales but left the core allegations unanswered.

Resources

Report by CoinDesk: RaveDAO's RAVE token collapses 90% in a day as exchange probes widen

ZachXBT on X: Posts (April 18 - April 20)

RaveDAO on X: Posts (April 18 - April 20)

On April 18, 2026, attackers drained 116,500 rsETH tokens worth roughly $292 million at from KelpDAO's cross-chain bridge, triggering one of the largest DeFi exploits of the year. 

KelpDAO was exploited, with ~$294M stolen! 🚨

The attacker minted 116,500 $RSETH ($294M).

By selling $RSETH and using it as collateral to borrow $ETH, the attacker obtained 106,467 $ETH ($250M).https://t.co/hSZZ7Teffv pic.twitter.com/0GfWLIX7rK

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 19, 2026

The hack wiped out about 18% of rsETH's total circulating supply of 630,000 tokens, froze markets across major lending platforms, and sent total value locked (TVL) across DeFi falling by more than $13 billion in 48 hours. 

LayerZero, whose infrastructure the bridge relied on, has since pointed to a configuration choice by KelpDAO as the root cause, while early attribution links the attack to North Korea's Lazarus Group.

How Did the KelpDAO Bridge Get Drained?

KelpDAO is a liquid restaking protocol, a type of DeFi platform that takes user-deposited ETH, routes it through EigenLayer to earn extra yield on top of standard Ethereum staking rewards, and issues rsETH as a tradeable receipt token. Think of rsETH as a claim check: it represents staked ETH and the yield it earns, and it can be traded or used as collateral across DeFi.

The bridge that was drained was built using LayerZero's OFT (Omnichain Fungible Token) standard. LayerZero is a cross-chain messaging layer, meaning it is the infrastructure that lets different blockchains send verified instructions to one another. 

KelpDAO had deployed rsETH across more than 20 networks including Base, Arbitrum, Linea, Blast, Mantle, and Scroll. The bridge held the rsETH reserves that backed the wrapped versions of the token on all of those layer 2 chains.

At 17:35 UTC on April 18, attackers tricked LayerZero's messaging layer into believing a valid cross-chain instruction had arrived from another network. That triggered KelpDAO's bridge to release 116,500 rsETH to an attacker-controlled address. 

KelpDAO's emergency multisig paused the core contracts 46 minutes later at 18:21 UTC. Two follow-up attempts, at 18:26 UTC and 18:28 UTC, both failed after the pause was already in place, according to CoinDesk. Each of those follow-up attempts carried a message trying to drain another 40,000 rsETH, worth around $100 million.

How Attackers Bypassed The Verification Layer

LayerZero has since released a detailed breakdown of how the attack worked technically, and it is more sophisticated than a simple smart contract bug.

LayerZero's bridge verification relies on RPC nodes: servers that let software read and write data on a blockchain. The attacker identified two RPC nodes that LayerZero's verifier depended on to confirm cross-chain transactions. They replaced the software running on those two nodes with malicious versions that were engineered to report one thing to LayerZero's verifier (that a valid transaction had occurred) while continuing to report accurate data to every other system querying the same nodes. That selective deception was specifically designed to stay invisible to LayerZero's own monitoring, which queries the same RPCs from different IP addresses.

Compromising two nodes alone was not enough, because LayerZero's verifier also queried uncompromised external RPC nodes. So the attackers ran a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against those external nodes to force the system to fail over to the compromised ones. 

Traffic logs shared by LayerZero show the DDoS running between 10:20 a.m. and 11:40 a.m. Pacific Time on April 18. Once the failover triggered, the poisoned nodes told the verifier a legitimate cross-chain message had arrived, and the bridge released the rsETH. The malicious node software then self-destructed, wiping its binaries and local logs.

Why Did KelpDAO's Configuration Make This Possible?

LayerZero has been direct about where it believes responsibility lies. KelpDAO ran what is called a 1-of-1 DVN configuration. DVN stands for Decentralized Verifier Network, which is LayerZero's term for the entities that verify cross-chain messages. 

Running a 1-of-1 configuration meant LayerZero Labs was the only entity confirming messages to and from the rsETH bridge. Compromise one verifier's data feed, and you can forge a valid message.

LayerZero's public integration documentation and direct communications to KelpDAO had recommended a multi-verifier setup, where consensus across several independent DVNs would be required before a message is accepted as valid. Under that setup, poisoning one verifier's data feed would not have been enough to push a fraudulent transaction through.

"KelpDAO chose to utilize a 1/1 DVN configuration," LayerZero wrote in its post-mortem. "A properly hardened configuration would have required consensus across multiple independent DVNs, rendering this attack ineffective even in the event of any single DVN being compromised."

Ripple CTO David Schwartz made a pointed observation on the same theme. He noted that when evaluating DeFi bridging systems for RLUSD, he found that most protocols had strong security mechanisms available but routinely pitched those mechanisms as optional features that added operational complexity. 

In his view, the implicit message from vendors was that customers should not bother using the most important security features because they were inconvenient. He described having a feeling that KelpDAO likely chose not to use key LayerZero security features for exactly that reason.

“I have a funny feeling part of the problem is going to be something like KelpDAO choosing not to use key LayerZero security features out of convenience,” Schwartz stated. 

KelpDAO has not publicly responded to LayerZero's framing or addressed why it operated a 1-of-1 verifier setup despite those recommendations, yet.

What Happened to rsETH After The Drain?

Because the bridge held the reserves backing rsETH on every layer 2 chain where it was deployed, the drain left holders on those networks facing a serious question: is there anything backing my tokens? That uncertainty created a feedback loop: concern about backing on layer 2s could push holders to redeem their rsETH for ETH on Ethereum mainnet, which could in turn force KelpDAO to unwind its EigenLayer restaking positions to honor those withdrawals.

KelpDAO confirmed the incident in its first public post on X at 20:10 UTC, nearly three hours after the drain. The protocol said it was working with LayerZero, Unichain, its auditors, and outside security specialists to investigate.

Which Protocols Froze Markets?

The contagion spread quickly across DeFi:

Aave froze rsETH markets on both V3 and V4 within hours. Founder Stani Kulechov clarified that the exploit was external and Aave's own contracts were not affected.

SparkLend and Fluid both froze their rsETH markets.

Lido Finance paused further deposits into its earnETH product, which carries rsETH exposure, while clarifying that stETH and wstETH are unaffected.

Ethena temporarily paused its LayerZero OFT bridges from Ethereum mainnet as a precaution, saying it has no rsETH exposure and remains more than 101% overcollateralized. 

How Much Did DeFi TVL Fall?

The financial fallout extended well beyond KelpDAO's own ecosystem. Total value locked across DeFi fell from $99 billion to $86 billion in the 48 hours following the exploit, a drop of $13.21 billion, according to data from DefiLlama. TVL is a standard measure of the combined dollar value of assets deposited across DeFi protocols and is widely used as a proxy for overall market liquidity and activity.

Aave alone saw $9.5 billion in deposits exit over that period, with its TVL declining to $17.947 billion. Protocol-level data showed double-digit percentage drops across platforms including Euler, Sentora, and Aave, with losses concentrated in lending, restaking, and yield strategies tied to rsETH collateral.

The mechanism behind those outflows was straightforward but damaging. Attackers used the stolen rsETH as collateral to borrow funds on lending platforms. Because those tokens no longer had legitimate collateral backing them, borrowing against them created potential shortfalls for lenders. It is similar to depositing counterfeit currency in a bank and taking out loans against it: the bank is left holding bad debt. Protocols responded by freezing affected markets, which in turn prompted users to pull funds broadly, accelerating the TVL decline.

AAVE fell by18% over the last 48 hours.

Is Lazarus Group Behind The Attack?

LayerZero attributed the attack with preliminary confidence to North Korea's Lazarus Group and its TraderTraitor subunit, based on analysis of the attacker's methods and infrastructure. Peter Chung, head of research at Presto Research, noted in a research note that the incident highlights risks in cross-chain infrastructure, particularly in verification systems, and that early analysis suggests the issue originated in the verification layer rather than in smart contracts themselves.

If the attribution holds, the KelpDAO exploit would represent the second major DeFi drain linked to Lazarus Group in 18 days. On April 1, Solana-based perpetuals protocol Drift was drained of about $285 million in an attack later linked to the same North Korean unit. The two attacks used structurally different methods: social engineering at Drift, and infrastructure poisoning at KelpDAO. Combined, the two incidents account for more than $575 million drained from DeFi in under three weeks.

What Has LayerZero Done Since The Attack?

LayerZero confirmed zero contagion to any other application on the protocol. Every OFT-standard token and application running multi-verifier setups was unaffected. The LayerZero Labs verifier is back online. The company also announced it will no longer sign messages for any application running a 1-of-1 DVN configuration, which effectively forces a protocol-wide migration off single-verifier setups.

Conclusion

The KelpDAO exploit was not a bug in LayerZero's code. It was a targeted infrastructure attack made possible by a single configuration decision: running a 1-of-1 verifier setup despite documented recommendations against it. Attackers, preliminarily attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, poisoned RPC nodes, forced a failover through a coordinated DDoS, and drained 116,500 rsETH before KelpDAO could pause its contracts. The downstream effects included over $13 billion in DeFi TVL wiped out in 48 hours, freezes across Aave, SparkLend, Fluid, and Lido, and a broader conversation about the gap between the security features cross-chain bridges offer and the features their integrators actually use.

Resources

Lookonchain on X: Posts (April 18 - April 20)

Report by CoinDesk: 2026's biggest crypto exploit: $292 million gets drained from Kelp DAO with wrapped ether stranded across 20 chains

LayerZero on X: Post on April 20

Report by The Block: Kelp DAO's rsETH bridge apparently exploited for roughly $292 million in LayerZero-based attack

DeFiLlama portal: DeFi TVL data

Bitcoin miner reserves have dropped by roughly 61,000 $BTC since the start of the current cycle, falling from about 1.862 million BTC to 1.801 million BTC, according to CryptoQuant data published April 16. The slide confirms what public company filings have been signaling for months: the biggest U.S. miners are net sellers, and they have been for a while.

At today's price near $77,700, that 61,000 BTC works out to around $4.74 billion in supply that has moved from miner wallets into the open market or onto corporate balance sheets elsewhere.

Which miners are doing the selling?

CryptoQuant broke the numbers out by operator. Marathon Digital tops the list at 13,210 BTC sold, followed by Riot Platforms at 4,026 BTC and Core Scientific at 1,992 BTC. Combined, those three names account for 19,264 BTC, or roughly $1.50 billion at current prices.

That is only part of the picture. The Miner Mag reported publicly traded miners collectively sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026. That single quarter already tops net selling by public miners for all of 2025.

Bitdeer liquidated its treasury completely in February. Core Scientific has signaled plans to monetize most of its remaining stack through the rest of Q1. This is not one struggling firm. It is a sector-wide pattern.

Why are miners offloading coins now?

The short answer: they are pivoting to AI.

Riot, Marathon, and Core Scientific have all been reallocating capital toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers. The industrial playbook they built for Bitcoin mining maps almost directly onto what hyperscalers need for AI training and inference:

Low-cost power contracts already locked in

High-density server racks ready for retrofit

Cooling infrastructure at an industrial scale

Site permitting and grid access in place

The margins on HPC colocation are higher and more predictable than block rewards. But the pivot costs money, and BTC on the balance sheet is the cheapest source of capital. Selling it funds the buildout without diluting shareholders or adding debt. Core Scientific’s long-standing colocation partnership with CoreWeave is a prime example. Riot has announced its own HPC expansion. Marathon has talked openly about diversifying revenue beyond block rewards.

The economics of pure mining make the pivot easier to justify. After the April 2024 halving, hashrate and difficulty kept climbing while block rewards dropped. Hashprice, the industry's measure of revenue per unit of computing power, now sits at roughly $33 per petahash per second, according to Hashrate Index. It dropped below the $35 breakeven mark for older ASICs in July 2025 and has not recovered. CoinShares estimates around 20% of the network is mining at a loss.

Weaker operators are forced to sell production as it arrives. Stronger ones are choosing to sell to fund the pivot to AI infrastructure.

Is the selling being absorbed?

Yes, and one name is doing most of the work. Michael Saylor's Strategy (MSTR) bought 4,871 BTC in the first week of April for $330 million, then came back the following week with another 13,927 BTC for $1 billion. That is 18,798 BTC absorbed by a single corporate buyer in fourteen days, nearly a third of the entire miner reserve decline for the cycle.

Strategy now holds 780,897 BTC acquired for $59.02 billion at an average cost basis of $75,577. The most recent purchase was funded entirely through STRC preferred stock sales with no MSTR dilution. A CryptoQuant report flagged Strategy's 30-day accumulation at roughly 44,000 BTC through late March, putting the firm alongside spot ETFs as one of only two institutional channels soaking up supply at scale.

Not every mining operation is distributing. CryptoQuant flagged an uptick in AntPool-affiliated wallet balances, pointing to a split between U.S. public miners offloading and certain overseas pools quietly adding.

The result is a structural drawdown in miner-held supply, not a panic. Reserves have been grinding lower since late 2023, with the slope steepening after the halving. What changed in recent weeks is concentration. Q1 2026 was the heaviest quarter of public miner selling on record, and the data through mid-April suggests Q2 has opened in a similar shape.

What does it mean for the market?

Miner distribution at this scale used to be a reliable bearish signal. It is less reliable now. Public miners represent a smaller share of the total network hashrate than they did two cycles ago, and the coins they sell are being absorbed by ETFs, corporate treasuries, and long-term holders rather than retail.

That does not make the selling irrelevant. It does mean traders watching miner reserve charts for a price signal are looking at only one side of the flow equation. The question for the next few weeks is whether Saylor and the ETF desks keep matching miner distribution coin for coin, or if absorption finally runs out of room above $77,000.

For now, the reserves keep falling, and the price keeps climbing, through $77,000 as of publication.

Sources:

CryptoQuant original post detailing the 61,000 $BTC reserve decline and individual miner selling figures

Cointribune breakdown of hashprice, reserves, and CoinShares Q1 2026 data

The Daily Hodl coverage of the STRC-funded Strategy buy

CryptoQuant Miner Reserve chart live on-chain dashboard tracking aggregate miner holdings

JPMorgan thinks the United States is closer to a federal crypto rulebook than most people realize. In a client note dated April 15, the bank's analysts said Senate negotiations on the CLARITY Act have narrowed to just 2-3 unresolved issues, down from more than a dozen a few weeks ago.

That is a concrete shift, not vibes. And it lands right as the industry was starting to write off 2026.

What JPMorgan Actually Said

The bank's research note, first reported by CoinDesk and picked up across financial media, frames the bill as "close to completion." A senior policy source told the bank that the fight over stablecoin rewards, which has stalled talks for months, is now "in a good place." A Senate staffer described the current draft as "very close."

The remaining sticking points are DeFi oversight and token classification. Those are not small items, but they look workable compared to the mess of 12-plus open questions the bill carried into early 2026.

JPMorgan sees passage of the CLARITY Act as a potential positive catalyst for digital asset markets in the second half of 2026, especially for institutional flows that have been waiting on legal certainty.

What Is the CLARITY Act?

The Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act of 2025, filed as H.R. 3633, is the most ambitious U.S. crypto framework ever to reach this stage. It does a few things at once:

Splits jurisdiction between the SEC and CFTC, handing the CFTC primary oversight of "digital commodities" on mature, decentralized networks

Keeps the SEC in charge of securities-like offerings but carves out new exemptions for digital-asset fundraising

Builds a federal framework for permitted payment stablecoins, DeFi platforms, and token classification

Adds consumer protections and illicit-finance rules, and blocks the Fed from offering certain CBDC products directly to individuals

If enacted, it replaces the regulation-by-enforcement era with actual statutory rules. That is the whole point.

How Did We Get Here?

The bill has moved faster than most crypto watchers expected. House Financial Services Chairman French Hill introduced it on May 29, 2025. The House passed it 294-134 in July 2025, with real bipartisan support. It landed in the Senate Banking Committee in September 2025. An earlier markup attempt in January 2026 was shelved after industry pushback, shifting the action to closed-door negotiations.

JPMorgan's note is the clearest public signal yet that those private talks have gone somewhere.

No final text is public. No floor vote is scheduled. But the shape of the compromise is coming into view.

Why the Stablecoin Fight Matters

Stablecoin rewards have been the biggest single obstacle. Banks argued that yield-bearing stablecoins, and the rewards programs exchanges like Coinbase run on top of them, would let crypto platforms function as unregulated deposit-takers, pulling funds out of the banking system. Crypto firms argued the opposite, that restricting rewards would kill one of the most useful consumer features on-chain.

The current Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise text bans passive yield on stablecoin balances but allows activity-based rewards tied to transactions or platform use. That is the version banks can live with. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rejected the bill twice this year, including a January withdrawal that forced the Senate Banking Committee to cancel its scheduled markup, with stablecoin yield worth roughly $1.35 billion in 2025 revenue to the exchange. On April 10 he reversed course and publicly backed the bill, posting "It's time to pass the Clarity Act" after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's Wall Street Journal op-ed and a White House Council of Economic Advisers report challenged the banking industry's numbers on deposit flight. That swing from the industry's loudest holdout to a public endorser is part of what JPMorgan is reading as momentum.

The GENIUS Act, signed in 2025, licensed dollar-pegged payment stablecoins but left the yield question open. CLARITY is supposed to close it.

What Could Still Go Wrong?

The calendar. The Senate Banking Committee released its schedule for the week of April 20 without the CLARITY Act on it. The only item on the agenda is a nomination hearing for Fed Chair candidate Kevin Warsh. Chairman Tim Scott has still not set a markup date.

Paradigm's Justin Slaughter has estimated the bill needs to clear the committee by mid-May to have any chance of a floor vote before the calendar closes. JPMorgan flagged the political risk directly: if Democrats retake the House in November, crypto legislation drops down the priority list.

Senator Cynthia Lummis put it more bluntly on April 10: "This is our last chance to pass the Clarity Act until at least 2030."

Polymarket prices passage of the act in 2026 at around 60%, down from 82% earlier this year. The odds are still in the bill's favor, but barely.

What It Means for the Market

The news has already moved some tokens. $XRP and other assets with clear regulatory overhang saw pops on the April 16 reporting. Beyond that, passage would give institutions what they have asked for: rules they can underwrite against.

For DeFi, the stakes are higher. Token classification will decide which protocols can serve U.S. users openly and which stay in the gray zone. JPMorgan's note does not spell out where that line lands, and that is probably because the line is still being drawn.

A policy advisor quoted in the reporting put it plainly: "there is no such thing as a perfect bill." That pretty much sums up the mood in Washington right now. Get something workable across the finish line before the election cycle eats the oxygen.

Closer than we think, maybe. But the clock is louder than the note.

Sources:

CoinDesk - Original scoop on the JPMorgan client note, including the 12-to-2-or-3 issue reduction and "in a good place" stablecoin quote

FinTech Weekly - Tillis-Alsobrooks yield compromise text and Coinbase position shift

Congress.gov - Official H.R. 3633 bill text, French Hill sponsorship, and legislative actions

U.S. House Committee on Financial Services - Confirmation of Chairman French Hill as sponsor and House passage vote

Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, is facing a class action lawsuit from investors who lost money in the $280 million Drift Protocol exploit that took place on April 1. The lawsuit, filed by Drift investor Joshua McCollum on behalf of more than 100 plaintiffs in a US district court in Massachusetts, accuses Circle of allowing attackers to move roughly $230 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum through its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) without stepping in to stop it.

"Circle permitted this criminal use of its technology and services," attorneys representing McCollum wrote. "These losses would not have occurred, or would have been substantially reduced, had Circle taken timely action."

How Did the Attackers Pull It Off?

Drift Protocol later confirmed that the attackers spent six months posing as a quantitative trading firm to gain access to the platform. Once inside, they used a technical method called durable nonce accounts to pre-sign transactions, which allowed them to delay the execution of those transactions until the right moment.

The results were swift and severe:

Attackers drained an estimated $280 to $285 million from the Solana-based exchange in under 12 minutes.

The stolen funds were then moved from Solana to Ethereum over approximately eight hours using Circle's CCTP.

Drift's total value locked (TVL) dropped sharply from roughly $550 million to under $250 million.

At least 20 other DeFi protocols reported indirect losses tied to their exposure to Drift.

On-chain investigator ZachXBT also publicly criticized Circle for not intervening during the multi-hour transfer window, which allegedly occurred during US business hours.

What Is CCTP and Why Does It Matter Here?

Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) is a native USDC transfer system that allows USDC to be burned on one blockchain and minted on another. It is designed to move stablecoins across chains without relying on third-party bridges. In this case, plaintiffs argue that CCTP was the exact mechanism used to move stolen funds from Solana to Ethereum, and that Circle could have intervened to stop those transfers.

What Does the Lawsuit Actually Allege?

The complaint, filed by the law firm Gibbs Mura, levels two core legal accusations against Circle: aiding and abetting conversion, and negligence. In legal terms, conversion refers to the unauthorized taking or use of someone else's property. Plaintiffs argue Circle's inaction effectively allowed that to happen on a massive scale.

The filing highlights that the alleged transfers occurred during US business hours. It also points to a separate incident that took place nine days before the Drift-related lawsuit: Circle reportedly froze 16 unrelated business wallets in a different matter. According to the plaintiffs, this proves Circle has both the capability and the willingness to freeze funds when it chooses to act. 

The lawsuit argues that Circle did not apply that same capability during the Drift exploit, even though the funds were being moved over several hours. Mira Gibb, the law firm representing McCollum and other Drift investors, is seeking damages, with the final amount to be determined at trial.

How Did Circle Respond?

Earlier this week, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, stated that Circle only freezes USDC when directed to do so by formal law enforcement or a court order. According to Allaire, unilateral decisions to freeze funds create what he described as "moral quandaries" and expose the company to legal risk.

"If there are others that believe that Circle should just step away from what the law says and do its own, make its own decisions, I think it's a very risky proposition," Allaire said.

Allaire also called for clearer legal frameworks, citing proposed legislation like the CLARITY Act as a path toward defining what stablecoin issuers are actually responsible for in situations like this. The case sits in a grey area: crypto companies that issue stablecoins may have the technical ability to freeze assets, but the legal authority to do so without a court order is unclear.

What Happened to Drift After the Hack?

In response to the exploit, Drift suspended deposits and withdrawals indefinitely. The protocol later announced a $150 million recovery plan developed in partnership with Tether. As part of that plan, Drift said it is shifting from USDC to USDT as its primary settlement asset, a direct consequence of the hack and the subsequent fallout with Circle.

What Is the Impact on Circle's Stock?

Circle's stock (CRCL) came under pressure following the Drift exploit and the subsequent lawsuit news. On Thursday, CRCL closed 1.84% higher at $107.46, with Allaire separately noting potential opportunities around a yuan-backed stablecoin. However, the stock fell 1.42% in after-market trading as the lawsuit gained media attention. The intraday range was $101.75 to $108.02, and trading volume came in below the average of 12 million shares.

Conclusion

The lawsuit against Circle over the Drift Protocol hack puts a sharp focus on how much responsibility stablecoin issuers carry when their technology is used to move stolen funds. Circle has the technical tools to freeze USDC and block cross-chain transfers, and plaintiffs argue it should have used them. Circle says it cannot act without a legal order. That tension is now playing out in a Massachusetts federal court, and the outcome could set a precedent for how stablecoin companies handle future exploits in real time.

Resources

Statement from Lawyers: Class Action Filed Over Drift Protocol $280 Million Hack By Gibbs Mura, A Law Group

Report by The Block: Circle CEO Allaire defends decision not to freeze USDC in Drift exploit, citing 'moral quandary'

Report by CoinTelegraph: Stablecoin issuer Circle faces lawsuit over $280M Drift Protocol hack

Drift Protocol on X: Post on March 5

PeckShield on X: Posts (April 1-2)