Merit Circle is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on increasing accessibility and participation in the play-to-earn gaming industry by providing educational opportunities and  'scholarships' (in-game assets on loan) to people from around the world. In addition to profit-sharing with 'scholars', Merit Circle grows its treasury by holding various assets (i.e., game-related NFTs) and early-stage financial investments in Play-to-Earn games. Merit Circle's token ($MC) is used to govern the Merit Circle DAO and serve as an index for the Play-to-Earn industry.

Merit Circle

Byron Gilliam

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“We are the best place in the world to fail.”



— Jeff Bezos
</blockquote>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1438" height="762" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-5.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-104617" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-5.png?w=1438 1438w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-5.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-5.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-5.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-5.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-5.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-5.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-5.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1438px) 100vw, 1438px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Crypto markets can win by frequently failing</h2>



Charlie Munger once said that in 50 years of reading Barron&#8217;s, he had found just one investable idea.



It was an unusually good one, though.



After a Barron’s article caught Munger’s eye in 2020, he spent just 90 minutes researching the auto parts company Tenneco before investing around $5 million.



Two years later, Tenneco was taken private at 15 times the price Munger had paid.



Munger then rolled his $80 million windfall into a fund managed by his friend, Li Lu, who more than quadrupled his money from there.



“So I have made $400 or $500 million reading Barron&#8217;s for 50 years and following one idea,” Munger concluded.



The twofold moral of the story, he implied, is that 1) it only takes one great idea to make it big, and 2) you should ignore all the others while you wait for it.



“The trick in investing,” Warren Buffett liked to say, “is just to sit there and watch pitch after pitch go by and wait for the one right in your sweet spot.”



I&#8217;m not sure how actionable that advice is for us mere mortals of investing; few of us will be able to pick out the one winner in 50 years of Barron&#8217;s articles.



But we can take heart in the idea that one big winner can more than offset a lot of our inevitable losers.



This is even more true in business.



In baseball, to extend Buffett’s analogy, swinging for the fences can only ever earn you four runs.



In the stock market, you might get the occasional “10-bagger” (or maybe even a 15-bagger, like Munger’s Tenneco investment), but not much more.



In business, however, “that upside isn’t really capped,” as Jeff Bezos explains. “Every once in a while in business, you step up to the plate, you swing as hard as you can, and you get 1,000 runs.”



Bezos was always swinging as hard as he could.



Unlike Munger, he usually struck out.



Worse yet, many of the pitches he swung and missed on seem a bit ridiculous in hindsight.&nbsp;



At one point, Bezos hired staff jewelers to craft custom rings over an open flame on the mezzanine of an Amazon fulfillment center in Kentucky because he briefly believed that the retail jewelry market was the key to Amazon’s future.



Personalized “zShops,” auto retailing, partnering with Toy“R”Us, and no-checkout stores are among Bezos’s other passing enthusiasms that failed to get anyone else enthused.&nbsp;



His investing track record wasn’t much better.



Bezos used money raised in Amazon’s 1997 IPO to make venture-capital investments in Drugstore.com, Pets.com, Gear.com, Wineshopper.com, Greenlight.com, Homegrocer.com, and Kozmo.com, all of which, perhaps predictably, turned out to be losers.



(A seed-round investment in Google was a giant winner, but he made that one with personal money.)



In other cases — such as auctions, search engines, and mobile phones — he picked a reasonable pitch to swing at, but whiffed.



He never regretted the misses, however, because if he wasn’t so willing to swing hard at seemingly every pitch, Amazon wouldn’t be anything more than an online bookstore.



From the beginning, he was always looking for opportunities to become much more than that.



When an employee suggested a subscription service for unlimited free shipping, for example, Bezos not only adopted the idea, he committed Amazon to losing an unknowable amount of money to make it not just a big bet, but a transformational one.



Similarly, when Amazon engineers began working on an early version of cloud computing — while they were still unsure it could work — Bezos demanded that they think bigger: &#8220;This has to scale to infinity. Infinity!&#8221;



Amazon Web Services does now effectively scale to infinity, which makes Bezos look like a prescient tech genius.



But he was equally high-conviction on all of his misses, too, which suggests that his real genius was in his willingness to always swing so hard — just in case he hit something.



That strategy won’t work for most of us; we’d all quickly go bust if we invested as aggressively as Bezos.



But the best financial markets encourage this kind of risk taking — where would we be without business founders willing to take irrational risks?



We’re fortunate that every entrepreneur wildly overestimates their odds of success because society captures the uncapped upside of all that risk-taking without bearing any of the downside risks.



At its best, crypto will enable more of this.&nbsp;



During Permissionless last week, I heard, for example, that “AI arbitration” would be a perfect use case for crypto; that crypto will turn data into an asset class; that decentralization is the only way to audit artificial intelligence; and that “DeSci” might accelerate the development of personalized medicine.



Whatever the investment merits of these ideas may be, I find it notable that they’re being floated at all, because the stock market, with all its centralized gatekeepers, is unlikely to encourage these kinds of bets.&nbsp;



Not that “permissionless capital markets” are perfectly decentralized. Far from it.&nbsp;



But they are permissionless in the sense of allowing anyone to take a swing at building something significant, and allowing anyone to back them.



It might be a long wait still for the next big crypto hit, of course.



In addition to finding just one investable idea in 50 years of reading Barron’s, Munger also said he read Fortune magazine for 60 years without finding any at all.



No one has that kind of patience in crypto.



But Permissionless capital markets could be well suited to the Bezos model of swinging hard at every reasonable pitch that comes by, no matter what the odds of connecting.



Like Amazon, crypto could win by being the best place to fail.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

Crypto markets can win by frequently failing

Jeff Albus

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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On Friday, the SEC <a href="https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1938752099564560864">informed</a> REX Shares and Osprey Funds that it had “no further comments” on their solana staking ETF filing.



In ETF regulatory parlance, industry watchers often view that phrase as the SEC’s implicit greenlight. It’s the same wink-and-a-nod that preceded the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-approves-bitcoin-etf">launch</a> of spot bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity and others.



Essentially, the review is done. Fire when ready. According to <a href="https://x.com/REXShares/status/1939724797111304346">a post on X</a>, the fund will begin trading this Wednesday, July 2.



The product, officially titled the REX-Osprey Solana and Staking ETF, would be the first US ETF to offer investors exposure to Solana’s price movements alongside native staking rewards.



Unlike traditional crypto trusts, this ETF is <a href="https://www.rexshares.com/rex-osprey-etfs/">structured</a> under the Investment Company Act of 1940 using a C-corporation format, which allows staking income to flow through to investors without triggering regulatory red flags around yield, taxation or custody.



That structure was the hurdle.



When treated as ordinary income, staking rewards had proven incompatible with trust-based fund models, which couldn’t easily distribute variable staking yields.



On May 30, the SEC asked REX and Osprey to delay the effective date of their registration statements, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-staking-etf-objection-implications">citing unresolved concerns</a> over whether the proposed fund structures met the definition of an “investment company” under the 1940 Act.



Bloomberg’s James Seyffart <a href="https://x.com/JSeyff/status/1928543214530683328">noted</a> at the time that the funds’ “unique” C-corp format could bypass the typical 19b-4 rule-change process, and the SEC’s silence on the C-corp workaround now appears to validate it as a compliant solution.



REX Shares, stretching for its victory lap, has already begun <a href="https://x.com/REXShares/status/1938719417258647982">publicly teasing</a> the ETF as “coming soon.” Meanwhile, analysts like Eric Balchunas weighed in: “They are good to launch it looks like. Wow,” he <a href="https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1938752099564560864">posted</a> on X.



Until now, <a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/solana/solana-supply-staking-and-validators">access to staking</a> meant handing tokens over to a crypto exchange or configuring your own validator setup. This ETF dramatically lowers that barrier.



For the first time, traditional investors may gain passive Solana exposure plus staking yields using the same brokerage account they use for stocks or index funds.



That leap in accessibility is precedent-setting. Several Ethereum-staking ETFs are queued behind this one, and Solana’s approval now offers them a roadmap. Though let&#8217;s be clear — Ethereum’s staking mechanics (like slashing and its longer unbonding period) will add complexity.



I think we can now also say that, at least under the present administration, the SEC was never trying to block staking outright. It just needed the right wrapper: one that could handle yield, taxes, custody, and compliance in a way that TradFi understands.



And while REX and Osprey aren’t quite household names in the way that <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1920909692563239283">BlackRock</a> is, they now hold the first-mover advantage in what could become a multibillion-dollar ETF category.



The timing also coincides with a rise in staking momentum, with Jito, the Solana-based liquid staking and MEV protocol, <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana?dashboard=131">up 5.7%</a> today. Meanwhile, Robinhood just <a href="https://x.com/0xMert_/status/1939720784185839810">launched</a> its own in-app SOL staking, offering retail investors a direct alternative.



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ETFs

SEC clears way for first Solana staking ETF

Ben Strack

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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In the 1980s, Ric Edelman started what is now called Edelman Financial Engines — a registered investment adviser that had $287 billion assets under management at the end of Q1. He’s now recommending a 10% allocation to crypto for conservative investors.&nbsp;



That should go up to 25% and 40% for those with moderate or aggressive risk appetites, respectively, he advised in a report earlier this month. An excerpt is below:&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfJI_umRSaqZhtBgPATTc1J2FsaZ89W4yQs5ufpSnKlTRSG8qZ6RgPzFxHFXX3akaA8Z7nDTf_E4fPbG3mO83cBdtGueASM4DbRpXTAwfahj1L44rBjhUkXSxrz9Z-jhCXFkU-d?key=CQQjHWZiLz6MTvfVBls3nA" alt=""/></figure>



Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas labeled Edelman “Mr. RIA” in an<a href="https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1939647937472053509"> X post</a> — calling his statement “arguably the most important full throated endorsement of crypto from TradFi world<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-fink-bitcoin-dollar"> since Larry Fink</a>.”



It’s worth noting that Edelman has been bullish on crypto for years, creating the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals in 2018. He said this month he expects BTC to hit $500,000 by 2030.&nbsp;



Still, it’s a dramatic increase from when Edelman, in his 2021 book The Truth About Crypto, recommended a 1% allocation. We had heard of<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/advisers-bitcoin-etfs-client-portfolios"> adviser allocations to bitcoin ETFs</a> ranging from 1% to 10%, and BlackRock in February started allocating 1-2% of the assets in its alternatives-focused model portfolios to its IBIT offering.



Unlike four years ago, there’s no risk the US government could ban crypto (and it actually supports the space), Edelman told me. Bank and brokerage firms can also now trade and custody crypto, allowing the adviser community to participate. Crypto has survived scandals and institutional engagement has begun, he added.



“A 40% allocation today is actually safer than a 1% allocation was four years ago,” Edelman said.



The financial pro has lots of chats with advisers, senior firm management and individual investors.&nbsp;



“Some are crypto-curious with no established view,” Edelman explained. “Others are skeptics, and some are downright hostile.”



As he put it, there are those who stubbornly resist (i.e. anti-MAGA folks who frame crypto in a political way, or those who don’t understand modern portfolio theory). But much of the “hostile” group can be converted by simply shifting their focus away from crypto and toward their business.



“Demonstrating that crypto can help them attract more clients, AUM and referrals is powerful commentary,” Edelman noted. (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tradfi-crypto-vanguard-stands-apart-bitcoin">He has told me</a> he expects crypto skeptic/fund giant Vanguard to ultimately reverse its anti-crypto policy position, too.)



When following up with Edelman on his latest allocation advice, I wanted to clarify what type of crypto exposure he was referring to. He leaves that to the adviser or investor, he said, as preferences range (BTC only, a mix of several tokens, crypto-linked equities, etc).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Digital asset investment products notched net inflows of $2.7 billion from June 23-27, CoinShares data<a href="https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-240-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-35a6ac1da67c"> shows</a> — marking an 11th straight inflow week for the segment. While the bulk of that capital flowed into bitcoin products ($2.2 billion), $429 million went to ether offerings.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcOQsEF1RArSQprqX23mMQPh-heMuGVVk-FadYF0ADLeghiI2NjzN7elYqp_O8yNvRPEA632coGB47d8e8Ged47qiCAwdTV-DwLLmA9EDYsnLeUGcgHvXLLqawlWBdnwbDEMlNjxA?key=CQQjHWZiLz6MTvfVBls3nA" alt=""/></figure>



On the crypto stock front,<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one"> Circle’s IPO</a> earlier this month clearly piqued both institutional and retail interest (its stock price was ~$180 this afternoon. There’s Coinbase, Strategy and Robinhood too, of course — with COIN, MSTR and HOOD having seen year-to-date gains around 37%, 34% and 134%, respectively.&nbsp;



HOOD stock was up 11% on Monday, as of 1:30 p.m. ET, after sharing some tokenized stock news.



A related update: Kraken, which signaled it would soon<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/kraken-tokenized-stocks-tradfi-crypto"> offer tokenized US stocks and ETFs</a> to non-US investors, went<a href="https://blog.kraken.com/product/xstocks/tokenized-equities-now-available"> live</a> with that today.If you missed my Permissionless/tokenization piece from Friday,<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenization-superpowers-access-permissionless"> here you go</a>. Until next time.



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Forward Guidance newsletter

Why an RIA founder is suggesting a 10-40% crypto allocation

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Frustrated owners of Ledger’s Nano S hardware wallet aren’t happy the company will <a href="https://developers.ledger.com/docs/news">no longer provide updates</a> for the nearly decade-old device.



For some, hardware wallets are intended to be a way to safely HODL crypto for many years — sometimes decades. At least that’s (in theory) what many users want to do, so the potential for long-term cold storage is one of the main appeals of a hardware wallet.



But Ledger retired its Nano S device in 2022 and is now in the process of phasing out support for it. The Nano S was released in 2016, meaning it was sold for six years.



I spotted dozens of frustrated, confused, and angry comments on CT from crypto traders unsure about what the move means. They called the Nano S sunset “<a href="https://x.com/pcaversaccio/status/1937908615261700349">uncool</a>” and “<a href="https://x.com/YorkDucks/status/1938617817240395832">scammy</a>,” while others <a href="https://x.com/zachherbert/status/1938364193700450395">raised</a> concerns about the device’s security going forward if any possible bugs are left unaddressed.&nbsp;



For some customers, it may also raise questions about whether they’ll need to keep buying new hardware wallets every five to 10 years if more older models are deprecated in the future. While older Ledger wallets cost around $100 each, newer models like the Ledger Flex are $250 and the Ledger Stax is $400. The Nano X is $150.



In response to the confusion, Ledger repeatedly <a href="https://x.com/Ledger/status/1938911425063227809">said</a> that while updates for the device are being phased out, the wallet will “still work.” The company is recommending users buy a newer device, though (and is <a href="https://x.com/Ledger/status/1938862606875341023">offering</a> Nano S owners 20% off to upgrade to a wallet that’s still being updated).



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">👉 Your Ledger Nano S still works, and the Ledger Nano S Plus remains fully supported. The Nano S had an incredible run, it was officially retired in 2022. Since then, we’ve been gradually phasing out its full support. 🧵 <a href="https://t.co/OqFNsHL9ti">pic.twitter.com/OqFNsHL9ti</a>&mdash; Charles Guillemet (@P3b7_) <a href="https://twitter.com/P3b7_/status/1938247864322347032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 26, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet explained that technical issues played a factor in the decision to sunset updates for the Nano S — as well as the reality that crypto use cases and the sheer number of chains have greatly increased since 2016.



“Memory is its primary constraint,” he <a href="https://x.com/P3b7_/status/1938247868671820068">said</a> of the Nano S. “Initially robust, the rapid growth of blockchains means the Ledger Nano S can’t support new applications, feature submissions, or app updates. The LedgerOS, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Exchange apps alone nearly fill its 320KB memory, leaving very little room for anything else.”



He explained that the Nano S can’t support clearer transaction signing messages, swaps on some chains, language packs, or features like Transaction Check and Ledger Sync.



“BTC, ETH, and other major apps will remain functional on the Ledger Nano S for the foreseeable future. It still supports essential actions like sending, receiving, buying, selling, and swapping,” Guillemet said.



The company also <a href="https://x.com/Ledger/status/1939232198730690969">confirmed</a> that bitcoin transactions will continue to work on the Nano S “for the foreseeable future,” unless major changes were made to the Bitcoin protocol itself — in which case it would warn customers in advance.&nbsp;



The Nano S Plus, Nano X, and other Ledger devices are still being supported — for now.



I’ve reached out to Ledger for additional comment.



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Ledger

Ledger faces backlash over ending Nano S hardware wallet support

Macauley Peterson

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Kadena announced at EthCC in Cannes that its long-planned Chainweb EVM testnet is live. Unlike Ethereum L2s that promise scaling via rollups, Chainweb EVM runs on Kadena’s <a href="https://docs.kadena.io/smart-contracts/basic-concepts#chainweb-and-parallel-chains">braided proof-of-work architecture</a>, designed to scale horizontally without fragmentation from discrete sequencers or bridges.



The result, according to Stuart Popejoy, Kadena co-founder and CEO, is “seamless EVM compatibility without compromising decentralization or throughput.”



“This is vanilla EVM with Pectra, so you can deploy today right now onto our chains,” Popejoy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvgDmvsDC2A">told</a> the audience in Cannes at EthCC today.



Chainweb EVM initially runs five parallel <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">EVM</a> chains on testnet, with Kadena&#8217;s architecture allowing this number to grow with demand, while still maintaining sub-cent transaction fees. As Popejoy explained:



“Every time we add chains, the throughput goes up linearly for that amount,” Popejoy said. “So for instance, when we went from 10 to 20 chains, our throughput doubled.”



Kadena’s existing chains run Pact, the network’s native smart contract language, designed to prioritize security, auditability, and formal verification. Unlike Solidity (which is Turing-complete and can express anything at the cost of complexity), Pact is intentionally Turing-incomplete.



But like so many L1s and former L1s which have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cosmos-canonical-evm">adopted the EVM</a>, the network effects of Ethereum’s virtual machine — especially for things like tooling and wallets — are hard to disrupt. Just today, there were additional EVM <a href="https://x.com/cosmos/status/1939698692178464945">launches</a> from heavyweights Ripple and TON, using the Cosmos stack.



Kadena is pitching its <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/proof-of-work-2">proof-of-work</a> roots as a feature, not a bug:



“Proof-of-work is still the most secure and the most decentralized consensus technology out there,” Popejoy said, although this is <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.14527">debated</a>. “It eliminates the need for sequencers&#8230;and it&#8217;s a far more secure architecture.”



But the real question is whether developers and users will come. Kadena knows that onboarding Solidity developers will require overcoming significant UX complexity across multiple chains. Asked how they plan to abstract this complexity away, Popejoy said:



“Since its launch in 2020, Kadena’s multichain architecture has uniquely allowed dApps to scale linearly with demand&#8230;With our upcoming Chainweb EVM launch, we’re bringing this technology to Solidity developers, both by adapting techniques from Pact as well as working with builder partners to leverage advanced account abstraction and gas station functionality arriving with the Pectra EVM upgrade.”



To help bootstrap the ecosystem, Kadena is putting up real money: a $50 million grant program, half of it earmarked for Solidity-based dapps, AI integrations, and half for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/real-world-assets">real-world asset</a> (RWA) tokenization.



On the RWA side, Kadena is trying to differentiate with a compliance-first approach, according to chief business officer Annelise Osborne.



&#8220;From the outset, we have taken a deliberate and thoughtful approach in designing our Real World Assets (RWA) Token Standard to meet the complex needs of regulated entities seeking to tokenize assets on a public blockchain,&#8221; Osborne told Blockworks. &#8220;Our standard draws on the widely recognized ERC-3643 (T-REX) protocol and integrates <a href="https://docs.onchainid.com/">ONCHAINID</a>, enabling compliance features directly within token contracts.&#8221;



Even with grants and ambitious claims, Kadena&#8217;s challenge is clear: can they attract enough developers and users to sustain real activity once those incentives dry up?&nbsp;



“The goal isn&#8217;t just to be another EVM option,” Popejoy told Blockworks, but rather “the place where DeFi developers go when they&#8217;re tired of dealing with high fees, slow transactions, and complex bridging.”



Although Popejoy touts “an unparalleled EVM user experience,” Kadena’s <a href="https://www.kadena.io/perspectives/the-advantages-of-kadena-s-proof-of-work-mining">30-second block times</a> may feel slow compared to most L2s or the UX on, say, Solana or Sui.



The next few months on the road to mainnet should be telling.



“If we can nail that developer experience, where you get all the familiarity of Ethereum but with our performance and security, that&#8217;s when we know we&#8217;ve succeeded,” Popejoy said.



Correction, June 30, 2025 at 4:35 pm ET: Updated Annelise Osborne&#8217;s job title, and quote attribution.



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0xResearch Newsletter

Kadena makes its play for Ethereum’s devs

Injective took a significant step forward at the Injective Summit, where it announced three game-changing developments: iBuild, a no-code platform that lets anyone build Web3 apps using simple text commands powered by AI; a brand new Injective Revenue Fund alongside a revamped Burn Auction; and the Injective Council, a new governing body comprising top industry leaders ready to meaningfully help guide Injective’s future.



Held in New York and headlined by compelling speakers like New York Mayor <a href="https://x.com/ericadamsfornyc?lang=en?utm_source=blockworks">Eric Adams</a>, Citi’s <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracechao82/?utm_source=blockworks">Grace Chao</a>, and Gemini’s <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danchen13/?utm_source=blockworks">Dan Chen</a>, the Summit convened global financial institutions and key DeFi builders committed to shaping the next era of blockchain-powered finance.



More than a conference, the Summit doubled as a statement, leaving no doubt that Injective is a rising cornerstone of real-world finance. From powering dApps that generate some of the highest onchain revenues to attracting top institutional partners, Injective is a financial system where capital moves faster, further, and more transparently than ever before.



Let’s break down the three primary announcements and explore how they’re shaping the next chapter of Injective’s story for users, developers, and investors.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">First, an intro to Injective</h2>



Injective is the blockchain fully dedicated to finance, aligning the needs of end users, traditional institutions, and forward-thinking developers passionate about making their mark in the next era of finance.



And with a robust <a href="https://injhub.com/featured-dapps/?category=featured?utm_source=blockworks">ecosystem</a> of focused players, including standouts like Coinbase International, Google Cloud, and Deutsche Telekom, Injective is quickly solidifying itself as the go-to infrastructure for building high-performance, real-world financial applications onchain.



Unlike general-purpose blockchains, Injective was purpose-built to support everything from decentralized exchanges and lending markets to structured products and RWAs. Its architecture is optimized for speed, interoperability, and low fees, making it one of the most capital-efficient networks in the space.



To support builders in developing finance-related applications, Injective offers a suite of custom, in-house-developed blockchain modules. They embed financial primitives—an onchain CLOB, oracles, bridging, tokenization, and much more—directly at the chain level, giving developers plug-and-play functionality to integrate advanced financial logic into their apps without needing to build core infrastructure from scratch.



And iBuild is the next major development to support ecosystem builders.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Leveling the development playing field</h2>



Injective’s iBuild is a first-of-its-kind AI-powered platform that empowers anyone to build high-fidelity Web3 finance applications using simple text prompts—no coding skills required.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="IBuild" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/1097553501?h=a03b063973&amp;dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963" width="1024" height="576" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share"></iframe>
</div></figure>



Just tell iBuild what you want to build—anything from a lending platform to an asset management tool or RWA product launchpad—and the tool will generate a production-ready app, ready to launch on Injective.



It’s intuitive. It’s fast. And it radically lowers the barrier for the next generation of fintech builders on the blockchain, purpose-built for financial applications. As a chain known for fantastic developer support (thanks to Injective’s MultiVM, plug-and-play modules, etc.), this tool straps a rocket to an already strong builder foundation.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“dApp development will no longer be gate-kept by builders with years of experience and many projects under their belt. We are leveling the playing field and making it easy for anyone, with any skill level, to build a full-featured dApp in an afternoon. iBuild now enables Injective to be the most developer-friendly chain out there.” — Eric Chen, CEO &amp; Co-Founder, Injective Foundation
</blockquote>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Turning up the heat</h2>



Up until this point, every week, 60% of the fees generated by dApps using Injective’s <a href="https://docs.injective.network/developers/modules/injective/exchange?utm_source=blockworks">exchange module</a> were collected and pooled into a fund, which would then be put up for auction for users to bid on, using INJ. The winning bidder’s INJ was permanently burned in exchange for the diverse basket of assets from the pool, creating a deflationary mechanism within the ecosystem known as the “Burn Auction.”



To give you a sense of scale, across the history of the Burn Auction, over 6.6 million INJ has been burned ($≈31M), with the most recent (at time of writing) five completed auctions burning an average of 8,920 INJ ($≈98,000) per auction, INJ, USDT, and wETH were distributed to winners.



Moving forward, the auction will be a monthly event known as “Community Burn,” raising the stakes of this ecosystem game to attract more participation and up the “spectacle” factor.&nbsp;



And while this industry loves higher stakes, that’s not the most noteworthy part.



Previously, the Burn Auction operated as a winner-take-all event. In the Community Burn setup, participation will be powered by a revised mechanism: a smart contract that fully handles the process and serves as the sole bidder in the auction.



This enables anyone to register their address through the contract on a first-come, first-served basis, leaving the contract to handle the bidding process, placing bids at a fixed percentage below the pool’s value.&nbsp;



By upgrading to a smart contract-driven event, the auction now has clearer rules that encourage ecosystem participants to be active and pay attention in order to best ensure their involvement. Spots are limited, allocations per address are capped, and everything is recorded fully onchain for transparency and auditability. This ensures fairness, scalability, and efficiency as the ecosystem expands.



While it is limited-access, don’t get the impression that it’s an elitist event. Remember, the point of the auction is to burn INJ, benefiting all Injective stakeholders.&nbsp;



The Community Burn is more than creating a spectacle; it’s about empowering the community of one of the highest revenue-generating chains on the planet.



Alongside this, Injective unveiled the Injective Revenue Fund, which will act as a transparent public fund that collects revenue across Injective in real-time. This revenue can contribute more to the burns while also being used for a wide array of ecosystem initiatives moving forward, helping to accelerate all of Injective into a new era of finance where users have direct access to governing and earning from onchain revenue.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Key leadership joins governance</h2>



The last major announcement at Injective Summit was the formation of the Injective Council, a new governing body of core strategic partners dedicated to helping shape the future of Injective.



The Injective team made it very clear that this is not an advisory board. It’s a hands-on cohort of some of the most respected industry names in the world, combining their visionary minds, expertise, and willpower to grow Injective. The council will have full access to all needed context to fulfill their role, including Injective’s internal roadmap, first looks at product initiatives, and connection to Injective’s network of other top-tier industry leaders, for collaboration as needed.&nbsp;



Council members will meet with the Injective Foundation several times annually to review recent progress, evaluate upcoming initiatives, and help directly steer high-impact decisions, from new partnerships to groundbreaking protocol upgrades.



At time of writing, the Injective Council is already unmatched, with leaders from Google Cloud, Deutsche Telekom, Galaxy Digital, and more.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Built to lead finance forward</h2>



Injective’s latest developments are not just incremental changes. They’re foundational, reflecting the network stepping fully into its role as a core infrastructure layer for onchain finance.



With iBuild, Injective removes the technical barrier to dApp creation and opens the door for a new generation of builders. The upgraded Community Burn transforms protocol revenue into a community-aligned incentive system. And with the Injective Council, the network brings in hands-on leadership from some of the most influential names across crypto, Big Tech, and traditional finance.



Injective is building long-term systems designed to move capital efficiently, create new opportunities, and grow value onchain. For investors and developers alike, the message is clear: Injective is not waiting for the future of finance. It is bringing it directly to us, today.



This content is sponsored and does not serve as an endorsement by Blockworks. The veracity of this content has not been verified and should not serve as financial advice. We encourage readers to conduct their own research before making financial decisions.



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The state of Injective: Where onchain money goes further

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Time to check in on the bull market.



There are no formal definitions for when bitcoin “bull markets” start and end. The <a href="https://fund-docs.vanguard.com/AU-Vanguard_A_timeline_of_bull_and_bear_markets.pdf">old-world says</a> that a “bull run” begins once an asset has risen at least 20% from the local trough, and ends when it’s retraced by the same amount from a recent peak.



It goes without saying, but those are rookie numbers. Let’s just start “bull markets” from the bottom of the previous bear cycle and go from there.



In that case, bitcoin has now been in a bull market for 952 days, starting on November 21, 2022, when BTC/USD hit a low of $15,504.&nbsp;



At $107,500, bitcoin has rallied by 590% over the bull market to date.



Does it compare to prior bull markets? Yes and no. Ignoring the initial price discovery that ran from the genesis block until mid-2011, the first bull market from late 2011 onwards topped out at 620x, sometime around day 750.



The second bull market, from late 2015, managed over 100x in less than 850 days.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeF0bq45R_vYT_Mdhk9yuCEKqzIYQGK4Xt7D-hqdJeQFErhEKPtin71EBjyBssJUwAG0XhP3gehYjWnz_win0mvJfPimlMpu1CoSx0RnShMSHNYGO1QmVnULVjJ_CRUxIFbw3-p9w?key=PR0IWCKSZ3cOysrYEzK3wA" alt=""/></figure>



It took around 1,060 days, close to three years, for bitcoin to pop nearly 22x in its third up cycle between late 2018 and 2022.&nbsp;



This time around, bitcoin has reached 6.2x at most, which is more-or-less in line with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-cycle-returns">historical rate of diminishing returns</a> of bull cycles. You can see that on the log scale chart above. Notice that the distances between the lines are relatively constant.



If we’re indeed looking at a similar bull market to the last one — a big if as three bull markets are not enough for any legitimate trends to emerge — then we would have another 110 days or so before bitcoin reaches its cycle peak.&nbsp;



Awkwardly, the US dollar has lost about 10% of its value since November 2022, at least using the DXY index as a proxy. Which means that bitcoin’s price right now, in November 2022 dollars, is actually closer to $97,700.



Nevermind that. We can instead definitely say that bitcoin is on track for its second-longest bull market so far.&nbsp;



And if bitcoin peaks sometime after mid-October, then this one will officially be an all-timer, at least in terms of duration.



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Bitcoin

Bitcoin bull market on track to be second longest on record

Katherine Ross

Robinhood is expanding its crypto suite, and they’re launching a layer-2 blockchain.



The L2 will be built on Arbitrum, and the goal is to optimize for tokenized real-world assets, including tokenized stocks that will initially only be available for users in the European Union.&nbsp;



Over 200 stocks and ETFs will be available for EU users, and they’ll also receive dividends for holding the tokens. Similarly to the L2, the tokens will be issued on Arbitrum. Last week, Gemini announced that it would also be launching tokenized stocks in the EU, starting with MSTR.



The L2 is still in development, and Robinhood eventually wants it to be able to support 24/7 trading, self-custody and bridging.&nbsp;



“Last year, in a nutshell, I was really like, ‘How do we rebuild Robinhood, in [many] countries, completely onchain?’ I think that&#8217;s kind of what we are delivering right now. It&#8217;s really exciting to see that in one app… and we are able to offer stock, ETF, perpetual, spot crypto. And you know, in the future, you could see the connection between all these products,” Robinhood’s Johann Kerbrat told Blockworks.



Alongside tokenized stocks, eligible EU users will also be able to trade perpetual futures. The orders are routed through Bitstamp’s perpetual features exchange (following <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-bitstamp-institutional-clients">Robinhood’s acquisition</a>).



“To get access to perps, you will have to fill out a questionnaire and make sure that you&#8217;re a qualified trader…The goal for us is to make it easy and to be able to use that when you want to go there, but we&#8217;re also making sure that we are compliant, and we&#8217;re offering these products to the right people,” Kerbrat said.



The next big step for Kerbrat and Robinhood is opening more to DeFi, he added.



Robinhood told Blockworks that it’s now built the technology, and all it needs is a bit of clarity before it rolls out the same features to US users.&nbsp;



But US users aren’t being completely left out, Robinhood will be rolling out Ethereum and Solana staking to US users, a feature it <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-solana-staking-europe">launched</a> in the EU over a year ago. It will also let US users pick the tax lots for crypto trades, basically meaning that a user holding bitcoin could choose which one to sell.



“We’re onboarding the world to crypto by making it as easy to use as possible—with the goal of bringing powerful tools into one intuitive platform,” Kerbrat said in a press release.



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Robinhood unveils L2, tokenized stocks and perpetual futures for EU users

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



At Permissionless last week, Empire co-host Jason Yanowitz sat down with World Liberty Financial’s Zak Folkman.



As Yanowitz pointed out, World Liberty Financial has <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-backed-project-token-swaps">certainly garnered</a> a fair bit of controversy, although, Folkman said, “we’re not really doing anything controversial.”



Quick sidebar here: Folkman also went on to say that legacy media (meaning the New York Times and other larger news sources) are “corrupt” and try to create a narrative; he referred to the fact that they use unnamed sources and “unverified facts.” Given that Blockworks has previously reported on the project using anonymous sources, I wanted to explain that this is a normal practice in journalism.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/trust-ethics">Our goal is to report the truth</a>, and sometimes the way to do that is to keep a source anonymous. However, we have strict guidelines in place to ensure that every story that goes out is heavily vetted.&nbsp;



But let’s get back to Folkman, shall we? According to him, World Liberty Financial was already operating before Trump took office.



“We started our token sale even before [President Donald Trump] got elected…So, you know, this is a project that we&#8217;ve been working on for quite some time now. The entire goal was to build DeFi products that make Web3 technology available to people who are familiar in operating in a Web2 environment,” Folkman said.&nbsp;



Folkman, later on in the conversation, also said that the team’s fielded a lot of interest from public firms who want to use WLFI in corporate treasuries.&nbsp;



He said World Liberty plans to undergo an audit on its stablecoin, USD1, and that it would be putting its attestation report on its website “within the next few days.”



He added that they’re working closely with Chainlink as well, “to be the first stablecoin that&#8217;s going to implement Chainlink&#8217;s proof of reserves and securement.”



He also said that a mobile app is in the works.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s something that we&#8217;ve been working on for a very long time now with some of the best partners and builders in the space, both on our team and companies that we&#8217;ve partnered with. And this is kind of the culmination of what I was talking about in terms of creating a Web2-style FinTech application that allows a non-native crypto user to be able to very easily deposit…get the benefit of earning through DeFi applications and [be] able to send and receive crypto between friends and family very easily,” he told Yanowitz.



So there you have it. The World Liberty Financial empire keeps growing.



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Empire Newsletter

World Liberty Financial has a mobile app ‘in the works’

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The legendary Peter Lynch advised investors to stop following the news.



&#8220;The person who never bothers to think about the economy, blithely ignores the condition of the market, and invests on a regular schedule is better off than the person who studies and tries to time his investments, getting into stocks when he feels confident and out when he feels queasy.&#8221;



The news has been unusually nauseating this year: trade wars, real wars, recession fears, AI doomerism.



And yet, here we are, right back at the all-time highs in both the Nasdaq and S&amp;P 500.



There’s nothing particularly new about this.



Writing in the simpler times of 1993, Lynch noted in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/One-Up-Wall-Street-Already/dp/0743200403/ref=asc_df_0743200403?mcid=06a3bcc798a1339bb508b59f992086b6&amp;hvocijid=18147238387577396879-0743200403-&amp;hvexpln=73&amp;tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=721245378154&amp;hvpos=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=18147238387577396879&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9004338&amp;hvtargid=pla-2281435179778&amp;psc=1">One Up on Wall Street</a> that “if you had paid close attention to the negative tone of most of our ‘whither the economy’ sessions over the past six years, you would have been scared out of your stocks during the strongest leg of the greatest market advance in modern history, when investors who maintained their blissful ignorance of the world coming to an end were merrily tripling or quadrupling their money.&#8221;



Markets have gone on to far greater advances since then, and I&#8217;d argue that the only way to have fully captured them was to have remained blissfully ignorant of the world.



It&#8217;s easy to look at the long-term performance of stocks and think everyone should always be fully invested.



It’s much harder to look at the daily news and think now is the time to be invested.



Lynch suggests you don’t try.



&#8220;The best way not to be scared out of stocks is to buy them on a regular schedule, month in and month out.&#8221;



US investors have taken that advice to heart, to a degree that Lynch probably would not have imagined.



Now, an <a href="https://www.ici.org/401k">estimated</a> 70 million American workers invest in 401k plans, metronomically pouring pre-tax money into equities, no matter what the news is.



This makes the stock market <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w21749">less volatile</a> than it otherwise would be. Or should be, probably.



And that should make them more valuable, too, because investors will accept lower returns (i.e., higher valuations) for assets that cause them less worry.



So it makes sense that equities would be more expensive now than they used to be.



They might get even more expensive.&nbsp;



As long as we have jobs — and therefore 401k plans — it might be hard for the market to go down much.



That would make stocks increasingly less scary — and increasingly more valuable.



Let’s check the charts.&nbsp;



Still saving:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf0CdTEdndC0ELMWMKRXea2e5gXkHrAzqXdHLxm7EO765pJWKMrB6dH5sY6x3hmmcby86ZRcIlEbi9Asa1g1xNE3kyOle_H1dcPAfP7TnIkRntJt0DYgakh0wLhj9ZRUPww7LeHOQ?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



The US personal savings rate ticked down to 4.5% in June. That’s low by historical standards, but still 4.5% of a large and ever-growing number. Some portion of those savings will go into buying equities every month, whatever the news.



Sentiment still has some catching up to do:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdOxbmvGu24eXZ--zEKV2pO3rnBTvsufLyBiszLsZPqRtJtaEJ0gQ2cZmYCnMV1xuCCdQDEftIWLXbiI6RdazxyKdmh2mHn6ZVEj3-DHv8kahrLFXSRWSVHLaVolIChyJvz1TQo8Q?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Stocks are back at all-time highs, but investor sentiment, as measured by AAII, remains on the bearish side of neutral.



Moving out on the risk curve:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdaw4Qltlu2yDv4jQh5FgswdigVK0lIuGUjRkGoJ4i1GS_tQXsdFA_u1gvIv9MHelOS-wdPV4x2_saINMbeoe4q3tGlA5ThMixq6FBhQwaXi5u3UbW1rD0qjQqceUH3FgJ3YIKWTg?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



US investors are embracing risk, perhaps because stocks seem less risky after weathering all the seemingly bad news this year. If equities are less risky overall, it makes sense to buy higher-risk equities.



The rest of the world is buying value:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd0wBUVjqfswDbw8ZHcmrNKjIFGcGYEwPqYGI7YSqQNAnHGWkoQeN4zA80t6-ghDYzJNdUt0R2utT4RPW7S4Zmy3f4xaCSwHSA5jlqZhN_TPE3rCx5DSTSjr69k20fdGfWI51zkWw?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Per Goldman Sachs, there’s been an unprecedented divergence between the outperformance of growth stocks in the US (the dark blue line) and the outperformance of value stocks in the rest of the world (the light blue line). While the rest of the world reaches for safety, US investors are all-in on growth.



Is everything safe now?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdWvbyWbMIN-wmQJh8a9yWe9hviXJwu5P9PT8sTd9Sb50HdUnrkfJS_E5MGUfwDyfDd5WBHJQb9BBcLcX5Lv0T8XBANj3L4ALED4zC6xciB1eF_usCKwVP6JjYjoKRe8ukyhCXmoQ?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Ed Yardeni notes that profit margins in the semiconductor industry continue to rise. Semis were historically the most cyclical and therefore riskiest sector to invest in. Now, they seem almost defensive.



Good news or bad for humans?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd2kPoU8IplUKpwRTpnZw25Cai9qnrmofuyHa6isuIz1j_gk2hgPyin07QTEZ2OoHnUBOkaEC94TzPNiisxY4lnUDQMUzq1vENlqyQLXCHc0mgF-0JHoJ0MTKP9qi_BZCcoCPvG?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Less than 10% of companies polled by the US Census Bureau report employing AI over the past two weeks. That might mean AI has only just started disrupting the job market. Or it might mean humans are more useful to employers than the AI hype would have you believe.



The proximate cause for all-time highs?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf8yLCrXPDYXEXMjlgL7fdZyQpj_B5F_qsXu5p2HaJWImXDAJefM1ijWVn089QGO7PWlN7HYhnoGTNFKUUkT4Z0klxtkWngQF3jV8dJ58dMctf23CVuOFej3THEZyLp0R1MifgUzQ?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Expectations for an imminent rate cut are giving investors a reason to buy now.



One less reason to worry:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeyxhbgXm5wszaF7lxyyBCtAz2Bp3GU9DwaPmk18KHbDToCLAdjdaQdX3kfddOFDuG3D1j_1YdhDutccQNcyiKvG4ed02_Mkljny1-Nissd6pK8CRZqHGNb7EdP8kFbZz6_G0X-2g?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



The Cleveland Fed InflationNow model sees US prices, as measured by CPI, rising at an annual rate of just 1.6% in Q2.



Stocks for the long run:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcuydBiqR10sZL6C1QpRNdyoF7k3OMmOLKYlz-ZlM8Pd7iLH1bH0uP9f468MNIA2TrDrBvk461FWwFpaKfDi_zhKzoY-5tiz4YENUB7_DXIaGb407Cy9w9fTtLQhVQy48BN7PO60Q?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Bank of America strategists say US equities are on the cusp of just the seventh “great breakout” since 1990.



Noting the new highs in equities this week, a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-26/wall-street-goes-all-in-on-risky-stocks-as-bears-race-for-cover?fromMostRead=true">Bloomberg article</a> listed all of the things that should be worrying markets at the moment — tariffs, the economy, consumer spending, and even professional advice to be cautious — and then concluded that “investors appear to be ignoring all of it.”



Peter Lynch would approve.



Have a great weekend, breakout readers.



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Friday charts: Retail is one-upping Wall Street

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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A major topic at Permissionless was stablecoins and broader tokenization. It was, in fact, one of the main themes of the “Rebooting the Global Financial System” panel I moderated yesterday.



“Rebooting” could have been replaced with “rebuilding,” a couple panelists agreed.&nbsp;



But first, from an offstage chat with CoinFund president Christopher Perkins: He told me “stablecoin summer” is going to unlock “DeFi fall.”&nbsp;



“Tokenization is the new ETF,” he explained. “It’s a new wrapper with superpowers — of instant settlement…and 24/7 access to capital formation.”



Those using stablecoins will want yield, and will seek that out onchain via money market funds, alternatives, etc.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“So you’re going to see those dollars coming [onchain] translate to second- and third-order implications for DeFi,” he said.



Tokenized public equities are particularly exciting, Perkins added, as it unlocks constant access to those companies for anyone with internet access.&nbsp;



That sentiment was elaborated on by Inversion founder (and Empire podcast host) Santiago Santos, who took the Day 3 main stage with Blockworks founders Jason Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito.



Crypto has historically tapped into “trapped pools of capital” around the world in part because of the lack of access to the US stock market, he argued. A Chinese investor with such limitations, for example, might resort to holding ETH to express a long position in technology.



“What happens when you now have tokenized stocks onchain?” Santos posed. Capital that previously flowed to layer-1s or memecoins could migrate, he noted.



While we’re on the tokenized stocks subject, Dinari said yesterday it secured Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) broker-dealer approval for its Dinari Securities subsidiary.



Why is this significant? Dinari believes it’s the first company tokenizing publicly traded shares outside the US with an affiliated company now licensed to do the same for American customers, Chief Business Officer Anna Wroblewska told me.



Dinari Securities expects to start offering tokenized stocks to US users in Q3. As this begins, Dinari plans to test a blockchain ledger system for brokerage clients as it continues talking with the SEC about a tokenization framework, Wroblewska explained.



During the aforementioned panel, Ondo Finance CEO Nathan Allman noted the firm’s plans next month to launch a tokenization platform offering exposure to public US stocks, bonds and ETFs. (He called these highly liquid securities the “low-hanging fruit” in my latest <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-iceberg-rwas-mature-ondo">interview</a> with him.)



Sitting beside Allman, Apollo Global Management’s Christine Moy noted efforts to tokenize the more illiquid private markets (the firm brought its Diversified Credit Fund on-chain in January).&nbsp;



On the segment growth evolution front, an S&amp;P Global <a href="https://www.spglobal.com/en/research-insights/special-reports/look-forward/future-of-capital-markets/tokenization-financial-markets-value-flow">report</a> published this week addressed tokenization use cases expanding in three phases.



The first (from 2025-2028) centers around cross-border payments and collateral operations. The ability to instantly swap an asset for a cash payment offers tangible commercial benefits to institutions involved with repo transactions and intraday liquidity management, the report notes.



Phase two (2027-2033) would include credit expansion as tokenization connects borrowers to lenders. Corporations using tokenization for cross-border payments will also seek onchain loans, the analysts wrote.



In a third phase (2031-2035), blockchains could support transactions between wallets controlled by AI agents, for example.



The S&amp;P Global analysts conclude: “If the adoption of tokenization increases as expected, it will intersect with other megatrends — such as the growth of private credit and AI — to significantly disrupt the future of capital markets over the next five to 10 years.”



Gradually, then suddenly.



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Equities

How tokenization’s ‘superpowers’ could transform US stock access

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Brave is one of the few web browsers that’s embraced crypto.



It has the affiliated BAT rewards token and a built-in crypto wallet, to name a few of its tie-ins.&nbsp;



But it’s also taken a privacy-forward approach — and splashed that across its marketing to help set it apart from other Chromium-based browsers.



“We’re kind of in [a] metaphysical rebellion against the big tech surveillance powers that evolved on JavaScript,” Brave CEO and cofounder Brendan Eich, who created the JavaScript language, said onstage during Blockworks’ Permissionless conference this week.



“We didn’t think about this enough in the mid-90s. The cookie was for keeping your login tokens,” he added. “It wasn’t for third-party tracking, but that’s how it evolved, and JavaScript was just fuel on that fire.”



Eich argued that internet advertising is inherently a “toxic system” where involved parties are “all fighting each other and cheating each other.”&nbsp;



But tech that can use blockchain rails, like ZK Proofs for privacy plus “proof of humanity” verification for fraud prevention, could help bring about a new, browser-native, more private ad system.



“We’ve gotta get onto blockchains that are faster and private by design,” he <a href="https://x.com/StakeWithPride/status/1937916138425618523">said</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><a href="https://twitter.com/brave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Brave</a> in May 2025 passed 88M Monthly Active Users (MAU). On track for 100M in Q4. The well-known &quot;summer slump&quot; on desktop (school breaks, holiday trips =&gt; people outside) started, but overall browser + search growth holds strong. Also, we saw a nice bump in user-minutes. 1/6 <a href="https://t.co/aDakeadfCS">https://t.co/aDakeadfCS</a>&mdash; BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1930811477365293561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Brave began as a web browser, because that type of product is a starting point with the potential to reach a mass consumer audience.&nbsp;



“It’s the universal app, the daily driver. We have more user minutes and a smaller user population than X does,” Eich said. Brave’s <a href="https://brave.com/transparency/">transparency</a> page lists 38.6 million daily active users and 88.1 million monthly.



And while not all Brave users may like this bit, Brave Search is helping the firm’s AI business by using that data to refine its LLM (Brave offers Leo AI).



“It seems like the browser is still relevant, but we found that the flipside of the browser coin is Search,” the CEO said.



Eich previously cofounded the Mozilla Foundation and its affiliated company and worked on Mozilla projects for 11 years. He spoke onstage with Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Syed (Midnight is a Cardano-affiliated, ZK- and privacy-focused chain). Midnight, whose foundation <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/midnight-foundation-launches-to-support-growth-of-secure-and-decentralized-blockchain-network-822794925.html">launched</a> just last month, is planning to include BAT holders in its upcoming NIGHT airdrop.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Had a great discussion with <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanEich?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BrendanEich</a> of <a href="https://twitter.com/brave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brave</a> at <a href="https://twitter.com/Permissionless?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Permissionless</a> on building a user-first web. We covered privacy, wallet-native identity, and <a href="https://twitter.com/MidnightNtwrk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MidnightNtwrk</a>’s new tokenomics and incentives whitepaper. Catch the recording:<a href="https://t.co/M8SmAMfZb4">https://t.co/M8SmAMfZb4</a> <a href="https://t.co/i0TPOlZ6jd">pic.twitter.com/i0TPOlZ6jd</a>&mdash; Fahmi Syed (@F_ZK_Now) <a href="https://twitter.com/F_ZK_Now/status/1937955388260815161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Last month, Brave <a href="https://x.com/brave/status/1921945493870874799">said</a> it’s adding Cardano support to the Brave Wallet, which already supports lots of chains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and others.&nbsp;



During the Permissionless talk, Eich concluded with some advice for crypto devs that may give vibe-coders pause: Rewrite your code.&nbsp;



Then maybe consider writing it again, and again.



“Human intelligence is not about to be surpassed by these [AI] models,” Eich said. “Be a human, write and read code.”



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internet

Brave CEO: We’re in a ‘metaphysical rebellion’ against big tech surveillance

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Permissionless Day 3 concluded yesterday, and we’re back with some highlight quotes. In case you missed it, we also did a recap of Day 2 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0x-permissionless-day-2">here</a>.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">What role will crypto play in working AI products?</h4>



Haseeb of Dragonfly Capital: “We all know the obvious answers which [are]: engineer, accountant, lawyer, girlfriend, maybe in reverse order.”



Casey Caruso of Topology cited brain models coming within the decade: “The long story short is that we don&#8217;t have enough data on neural activity to train a brain model today and one thing that crypto is really good at is incentivizing people to aggregate data, so I&#8217;m super convinced that there&#8217;s going to be a DePIN network to collect this data, and from there we&#8217;ll have a model that can actually unlock things like mind reading — as crazy as that sounds.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Does this Bitcoin-treasury-strategy thing going on in TradFi actually have legs?</h4>



Thomas Lee CIO of FundStrat Capital is optimistic:



“Oil companies have historically traded on a premium to their proven reserves because of expectation of future reserves. ExxonMobil was in the top five largest stocks in the S&amp;P 500 for 25 years from 1990-2015. Never valued on earnings but a price premium to its proven reserves.&nbsp;



“[Strategy] will probably become the biggest stock in the US. It doesn&#8217;t make earnings — it’s valued purely on its price to bitcoin reserves.”&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Joe Lubin of Consensys on what motivated their lawsuit against the SEC:</h4>



The SEC “secretly decided to reclassify ether as a security…[and] tried to pin it on essentially people responsible for the Merge — on us as promoters, EIP writers, builders and Danny (Ryan)&#8230;When we saw that researchers were getting subpoenas, that’s when we decided to sue the SEC.”&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Felix Jauvin on the macro factors driving stablecoin hype:</h4>



“We’re going into this world now where fiscal deficits are increasing…The big question at hand is, who is to be the one buying this debt? There’s a very logical reasoning for why we’re seeing such a push for the GENIUS Act right now, because that is a huge unlock for US T-bills coming forth.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Joe Cutler, Partner at Perkins Cole, lamenting the entry of institutions into crypto thus far:</h4>



Crypto was about “democratizing access to the control over value, and that&#8217;s not happening in the institutional rebuild. I worry about that.&nbsp;



“The second thing is, it was also destined to sort of remake the value propositions of aggregation of wealth, money, power and control into a more balanced system than it was before, and I don&#8217;t see that happening either in the march towards institutional adoption…&nbsp;



“I just hope that we get out the map once in a while and remind ourselves what country we&#8217;re in, not what road.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Is <a href="https://www.jpmorgan.com/kinexys/content-hub/deposit-tokens">JPMD</a> a permissioned coin on a permissionless network?</h4>



Suresh Shetty CTO of Kinexys by JPMorgan: “I’d say JPMD is a deposit token that is going to connect to public chains of which its primary use cases are cross border payments and settlement of securities.”



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Recapping Day 3 of Permissionless IV

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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It’s satisfying to think that Bitcoin has won. After all, the sitting US President himself is a big fan.&nbsp;



Regulators are, meanwhile, paying it little mind, at least publicly, while many of Wall Street’s largest operators support bitcoin trading and even offer ETFs directly to their customer base.



The US strategic reserve is the ultimate cherry: Bitcoin — both the asset and the underlying blockchain — are now formally intertwined with the health of federal finances, even if that’s only marginally so compared to gold.



Sounds bullish. But it’s enough to make any card-carrying cypherpunk a little nervous.



There&#8217;s a lot of precedent for the government wanting to monitor crypto and personal data. 



Thirty years ago, activists were gearing up to rally against a new Senate bill that would’ve made encryption tools, as we know them today, outright illegal.



On June 27, 1995, Senator Chuck Grassley introduced the so-called “<a href="https://archive.epic.org/crypto/ban/grassley.html">Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act</a>.” Grassley was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on administrative oversight at the time.&nbsp;



Today, he’s President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the third in line for succession of the Presidency behind the Vice President and Speaker of the House.



Grassley sought to crystallize an existing drive from the Clinton administration to ensure the government could decrypt any and all encrypted communications, indefinitely, under the guise of protecting society from criminals and other baddies who might want to hide their wrongdoing from authorities.



At the time, the administration was pushing for a government-backed hardware encryption system known as the <a href="https://www.wired.com/1994/06/nsa-clipper/">Clipper Chip</a>, which used a classified encryption algorithm known as Skipjack.&nbsp;



Such an implementation would require two US government agencies to keep copies of all encryption keys related to Skipjack in escrow. This was meant to be a national standard for secure voice and data communications, but the public itself was not to be mandated to use Skipjack.



Grassley’s bill took it one step further by criminalizing the use of computers to facilitate racketeering, particularly through the lens of encryption. The most offensive provision was for a “universal decoding device” for any encryption method that would need to be shared with the Justice Department — meaning the only legal forms of encryption were those that could be easily decrypted by the US government.



The proposed law would’ve also made it a crime to distribute encryption software that didn’t have a backdoor over any network accessible to foreign nationals, which of course, included the internet.&nbsp;



US authorities were mulling whether to prosecute legendary cypherpunk <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/zimmermann-cypherpunk-bitcoin">Phil Zimmermann</a> over his creation and dissemination of the source code to Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), one of the first-ever encryption tools available to the public.&nbsp;



PGP’s source code had been uploaded online and printed in book form to sidestep US export restrictions that were central to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cypherpunk-movement-history-wired-1993">Crypto Wars</a> of the ‘90s. After years of probes, no charges were ever brought against Zimmermann.



Grassley’s bill never made it off the ground, thanks in no small part to the barrage of denouncements from tech professionals, scholars and activist groups — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Computer Professionals for Responsibility, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, among others.



Obviously, Bitcoin could never exist if the US government had a secret backdoor to everyone’s private keys. It’s not unimaginable that at some point in the past decade and a half of discourse, officials might have hoped that a backdoor would be possible.



The conversation around encryption has clearly evolved since 1995. The same can be said of Bitcoin over the past five years.&nbsp;



But in a world where Bitcoin is on par with gold or oil for strategic and economic importance to the most powerful governments on the planet, would those governments be inclined to stay hands off?&nbsp;



Perhaps Bitcoin is impervious to that level of influence. 



But odds are that it won’t go without saying — as was the case with Grassley’s bill.



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Why the fight for Bitcoin to exist might not be over yet

Jack Kubinec

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Firedancer has quietly delegated stake to 32 Solana validators to kick off its new delegation program, according to the client’s <a href="https://delegation.firedancer.io/validators">website</a>.



Delegation, or staking some of an organization’s crypto with a number of validators based on some criteria, has been <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-foundation-pruning-validators-delegation">used by the Solana Foundation</a> to help smaller validators get started on the network. Firedancer may be hoping the delegation program can help convince validators to start running its Frankendancer client, which currently <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana?dashboard=131">accounts</a> for just 8% of all staked SOL. That <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/4-big-questions-following-the-solana-accelerate-conference">proportion is up</a> from 5-6% around a month ago.&nbsp;



Firedancer is a from-scratch rewrite of Solana’s software being created by Chicago-based trading firm Jump. Firedancer would be Solana’s first true alternative client from the original built by Solana Labs, which is now known as Agave. With two clients, Solana would be protected from having a single point of failure on the client side — which can cause things like network downtime.



A limited version of the client, called Frankendancer because it combined chunks of the Agave client with Jump-written code like Frankenstein’s monster, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-solana-firedancer-testnet">went live in late 2024</a>. Full Firedancer is live in <a href="https://x.com/solana/status/1837375225341583686">non-voting</a> mode. The participants in Firedancer’s delegation program are running Frankendancer.



Onchain data <a href="https://solscan.io/account/AjLzAtJHDVQ4c2WMnSXt94a5BNt4CorH63af2uEmgkyF#stakeAccounts">shows</a> an account labeled as having been funded by Jump Crypto delegated roughly 20,000 SOL to the approved validators. One validator, Watchtower, received over 1.2 million SOL. In a Discord message, Solana Foundation validator relations lead Tim Garcia <a href="https://discord.com/channels/428295358100013066/1069760203240784002/1385498863070347345">said</a> a user named italo, who is <a href="https://x.com/italoacasas?lang=en">associated</a> with Watchtower, is running the delegation program for Firedancer.



The Firedancer delegation participants I spoke to had generally positive things to say about the client.&nbsp;



H2O Nodes noted that Frankendancer is more stable now than the original Solana client was when it started running a validator in 2022. Ian Unsworth from Kairos Research said the firm’s validator has been packing more compute units into blocks since switching to Frankendancer, which translates to incrementally higher rewards compared to the network average. RockawayX founder and CEO Viktor Fischer agreed — estimating that Frankendancer offers 10-15% higher performance when measured by average compute units.&nbsp;



Unsworth said Frankendancer is yet to face a true stress test, but added that the reported forthcoming pump.fun token could spike network activity and push Frankendancer’s limits.



Firedancer has <a href="https://delegation.firedancer.io/blog/introducing-the-firedancer-delegation-program">said</a> that it plans to delegate 2 million SOL to around 100 validators in the first phase of its delegation program. It also noted every iteration of the program will run for around 3 months.&nbsp;



Notably, Firedancer’s initial delegation standard of 20,000 SOL per validator is less generous than the Solana Foundation’s Delegation Program. The Solana Foundation stakes 35 million SOL across 569 validators, for an average of roughly 60,000 SOL per validator.



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Lightspeed Newsletter

Firedancer begins delegating stake to Solana validators

The stage is set for Lido DAO to finally implement “Dual Governance.”&nbsp;



A vote of LDO holders running through 10:00 a.m. ET on Monday, June 30, will determine whether to change how power is distributed within Ethereum’s largest liquid staking protocol.



If approved, the proposal will activate a new framework that gives stETH holders — users whose ether is staked via Lido — a formal mechanism to delay or veto governance actions, adding a novel layer of accountability to the voting system. The new technical mechanism has implications for all of crypto, not just Lido, according to the prominent albeit pseudonymous researcher and advisor Hasu.



“Lido really reduces the risk that users have from any kind of governance attack [and] the trust that they need in the maintainer companies and the LDO holders,” Hasu told Blockworks.



That should further institutional adoption of stETH, the team expects.&nbsp;



At the heart of Dual Governance is a custom-built dynamic timelock module. Unlike static timelocks that simply delay execution by a fixed period, this design scales in response to opposition registered from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/steth">stETH</a> holders. For example, if 1% of the total stETH supply signals objection to a proposal, execution is delayed by an additional five days. If opposition grows to 10%, the delay extends linearly up to 45 days. This mechanism ensures that in the event of a controversial or potentially harmful decision by LDO token holders, stETH users have a predictable window to exit before changes take effect.



That’s never been done before in a governance system, but is absolutely essential for Lido, given the variability of the Ethereum staking withdrawal queue itself.



The idea emerged from the core tension between providing liquidity and minimizing trust assumptions. Liquid staking protocols inherently rely on pooled delegation and active protocol maintenance to stay compatible with Ethereum upgrades. We saw this in practice during <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-hard-fork-updates">debates around the delayed Pectra upgrade</a>, in which Lido’s Ivan Metrikin was an important voice in the All-Core Devs decision-making process.



While traditional time locks give users a chance to exit before governance decisions are enforced, to withdraw stETH back to native ether can sometimes take weeks, making a short fixed period inadequate. The dynamic timelock aims to bridge that gap by adjusting execution delays to match the scale of user opposition, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all delay. Simple or uncontroversial changes can pass quickly, while the governance system will automatically hit the brakes on the process if big stETH holders begin to object.



Lido contributors, including Hasu and Victor “kadmil” from the DAO operations team, acknowledged the design was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lido-dao-proposes-governance-switch-up">years in the making</a> and incorporated dedicated stress tests to ensure it could resist governance attacks and flash loan manipulation.



“We have paid people to try to break the design with flash loans,” Victor told Blockworks, with subsequent adjustments tailored “to make it flash-loan resistant.”



Wrapped versions of stETH — like those used in <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a> restaking or <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/0xresearch/65fe22d6-fd1e-11ee-b6dd-27c1387857db">Pendle</a> yield strategies — are not eligible to vote directly, but the withdrawal process gives holders time to reclaim their base stETH and participate if needed.



This is about giving users access to liquidity while preserving the right to exit in a way no other protocol has managed, Hasu explained.



“There used to be this dilemma between trust and liquidity, and dual governance is effectively breaking that dilemma,” he said. “You no longer have to choose — you can have both.”



The initiative has drawn comparisons to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/makerdao">MakerDAO’s</a> “emergency shutdown” lever, but differs by offering a non-destructive, graduated response rather than a single catastrophic reset. It also reflects a broader trend in DeFi governance toward more nuanced, multi-stakeholder systems that separate capital voting from user safeguards.&nbsp;



Hasu expects Lido’s implementation to become a blueprint for other protocols facing similar governance risks.



An earlier Snapshot vote on the proposal <a href="https://snapshot.box/#/s:lido-snapshot.eth/proposal/0x3bdf528b31956e029e867ebf79b02ee07e9a973987b34c5cffc14392e8b4480c">passed</a> nearly unanimously. If the on-chain Aragon vote passes as anticipated, it will formally decouple the authority to propose and pass measures from the power to immediately execute them, thus placing stETH holders effectively in the role of constitutional overseers of the DAO.



As of 9:00 a.m. ET Friday, just 4% of token holders have participated. To pass, <a href="https://vote.lido.fi/vote/189">the on-chain Aragon vote</a> requires a minimum quorum of 5%.



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