Giga Watt

Macauley Peterson

Kraken has become the first major crypto exchange to fully adopt Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) across its Ethereum staking infrastructure, using the open-source SSV Network protocol.&nbsp;



The move marks a major shift towards a more decentralized validator architecture for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>.



“Following the successful transition, essentially all of Kraken’s ETH staking infrastructure runs on distributed validator clusters, rather than single-machine validators,” a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/kraken">Kraken</a> spokesperson told Blockworks.



DVT decentralizes validator operations by splitting responsibilities across multiple independent nodes that cooperate to perform attestations and block proposals. Kraken said each validator is now operated by “a cluster of typically four independent nodes,” with deliberate diversity in both software and geography.&nbsp;



“We design for maximum diversity: nodes are spread across different regions and run a mix of Ethereum client implementations to avoid any single-client bug impacting the whole cluster,” the spokesperson added.



Key management was also overhauled as part of the migration. “As part of our transition to DVT, validator keys were split and distributed to cluster operators to ensure no single operator holds the entire key,” Kraken said. For newly created validators, keys are generated in a distributed manner “so the full private key is never assembled.”



To reduce slashing risk, Kraken’s operators use a synchronized, distributed slashing-protection database. “If a node goes offline, it can sync the history of signed duties from the cluster before signing anything new,” the spokesperson explained.



SSV Labs, which develops the underlying DVT protocol, emphasized the modularity and configurability of its approach. “The nature of DVT is more diversity by design, and it is more of a ‘user’ choice. Every participant can optimize for diversity, whatever that means for them,” an SSV spokesperson told Blockworks.



Kraken’s implementation gives a strong boost to DVT adoption, according to Alon Muroch, SSV Labs founder and core contributor. “It demonstrates that the technology is ready for use at scale in institutional staking environments,” Muroch said.



Originally known under Blox.io and CoinDash brands, the team behind SSV Network pivoted, beginning in early 2021, launching the <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/ssv">SSV</a> token, to focus on noncustodial ETH staking infrastructure, and later DVT, <a href="https://medium.com/%40researchcoindelta/ssv-network-transforming-ethereum-staking-with-unrivaled-security-9c69aa7dbad7">supported</a> by an Ethereum Foundation grant. SSV Network was created <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ssv-network-decentralized-staking-infrastructure">to make centralized staking providers obsolete</a>.



Earlier this year, Obol — another DVT provider — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/obol-launches-obol-token-validator">launched its native OBOL token</a> to empower community governance and operator coordination. The <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/bellcurve/dca8d3ea-2574-11ee-b0e7-1b2252d58a45">rise of DVT solutions</a> like SSV and Obol help Ethereum reduce centralization risks by distributing validator duties across diverse operators and geographic locations, enhancing uptime, slashing safety, and the overall robustness of network consensus.



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Ethereum

Kraken completes full DVT integration for Ethereum staking

Kunal Doshi

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>.



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



The weakness in the market continues, with BTC and ETH down 7.5% and 9.5%, respectively, over the last seven days. With majors showing a first real sign of correction in weeks, it’s an apt time to ask if the local top could be in.&nbsp;



One segment of the market I like to watch is retail interest. When retail participation surges, it often signals that the crowd is in, which historically marks the local top in markets.&nbsp;



The first key indicator is weekly spot volume on CEXs. Last week, spot volumes reached $465 billion, approaching levels seen in January and March this year when the market was hitting new highs. Since most retail users trade through CEXs given the ease of onboarding, elevated volumes here provide a clear signal of growing retail engagement.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdsqsxAIBX1fsW9isKUsLqvY7vqxmSMOOerKhK4188P1Mn-klqSAEVNaHOJvasn9AQsLfiUSrH2LQEDtb71ngDkKs12_JwcY6E-O6RmagNotrbLDP8ug-cPbcm0Qph53pdvHss9KA?key=7EbrmKQzVODYrpHPXbYHAw" alt=""/></figure>



Search trends offer another powerful lens into retail sentiment. Interest in terms like “Crypto”, “Ethereum”, and “Altcoins” is climbing sharply, set to reach levels last seen at the peak of the 2021 bull market.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcYlbO3tbIIWZqAxNu-hE7gWZ7UFtvHrXR9q04jm9f-ycWnDtxyyP_2dXzBm0uMj2VM0LNd-FFwnhVTkkyMB0dRHfgQHxjLgq8I6VVDrs-hKHAPl92ONYahwC4SVRhK45jivyUcgg?key=7EbrmKQzVODYrpHPXbYHAw" alt=""/></figure>



Even anecdotal signals matter. I am noticing more friends asking how to get started in crypto, which always catches my attention. While retail adoption is positive for the long term, sudden FOMO-driven spikes in these indicators often reflect emotional, late-stage buying from people chasing quick gains.



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</ul>

0xResearch Newsletter

Same game, new players — but retail’s now smarter

Katherine Ross

Stablecoin payments processor Loop Crypto raised a strategic round co-led by VanEck and Fabric Ventures, the firm exclusively told Blockworks.&nbsp;



This brings the total funding raised by the firm to $6 million, but the team declined to give specifics on the most recent round.&nbsp;



Co-founders Eleni Steinman and Shane van Coller noted that they — like many in crypto — couldn’t have foreseen the rapid rise in stablecoins.&nbsp;



For Steinman specifically, Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge earlier this year showed that bigger players “see the value in rebuilding the payment rails and that it&#8217;s working…people really are choosing stablecoin payments because of their value proposition of being faster, cheaper, and just inherently global.”



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/vaneck">VanEck’s</a> Wyatt Lonergan said: “Once you start moving to stablecoins, like everything is instant, and in fact, that win, win, lose is inverted. The losers are kind of the banks that sit between you and the merchant, and the merchant can get access to their funds, and you can do all these really expressive, interesting things with stablecoins.”



“And that&#8217;s a lot of the tools that Loop has built to enable what feels like the same payment process for a merchant or a business to accept money,” Lonergan added.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/two-vaneck-funds-back-depin-dawn">Exclusive: 2 VanEck funds back Solana-based DePIN DAWN</a>



Loop has, as an example, built out the ability to charge a subscription using stablecoins.&nbsp;



“We basically get an approval from the user who&#8217;s paying in that stablecoin for our smart contract to spend that stablecoin on their behalf. So when they sign up for the subscription, the first thing that they do is sign this approval transaction, which gives us the ability to go and pull money from their wallets when that subscription becomes due in the future. So it really is a pull payment from the wallet, versus a payment that a lot of other payment solutions do,” van Coller explained.&nbsp;



Loop currently serves merchants such as Helius, OpenPay, Kaito, and Privy, just to name a few. A press release noted that paid transaction volume in the second quarter of this year jumped by 344% in comparison to the same time period last year.&nbsp;



Loop, the team noted, has had both crypto native and non-crypto native merchants looking for stablecoin payment solutions.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vaneck-venture-fund-crypto-ai">Is crypto’s ‘ChatGPT’ moment nearly here?</a>



“​​Our game plan is to keep trying to grow…basically, how many merchants are using us, right? Are we solving their problems? And the quality of that merchant really matters to us too, so we don&#8217;t want to serve just like 1,000 merchants who are maybe doing a few transactions, but can we solve problems for 10 really good merchants and build tools that really meet their needs,” Steinman told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Lonergan added that he sees a “huge role” for projects in the space that are “neutral,” meaning that they aren’t pushing their own stablecoin and instead allow merchants to have a slew of choices based on their needs.&nbsp;



“It feels like even though it&#8217;s been massive growth, like it&#8217;s still really tiny compared to the payments. B2B payments is a $190 trillion category…And so I&#8217;m not quite sure that we know what businesses and consumers want yet. I think the winners are going to be ones that still could play that neutral role and just, again, facilitate whatever the customer needs,” Lonergan said.&nbsp;



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raise

Exclusive: Loop Crypto raises round led by VanEck, Fabric Ventures

Byron Gilliam

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



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



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.”



— Alfred North Whitehead
</blockquote>



Investors love the pricing power of “last mile” businesses.&nbsp;



Comcast charges $75 a month for internet access because it buried the cable outside your house that connects you to the world wide web.&nbsp;



Walmart is the last mile of consumer goods because its shelves are where supply meets demand, and brands pay dearly (in discounts and promotions) to win a place on them.



Amazon charges third-party sellers as much as 45% of their sale price for access to its virtual shelf space and last-mile network of warehouses and delivery trucks.



Is this how the stablecoin business will work as well?



Last week, we learned that both Stripe and Circle are building stablecoin-optimized blockchains, and the timing (on the same day, even) inevitably frames this as a competition: “Circle and Stripe now appear to be converging on the same goal: building rival financial networks for digital money,” Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-19/circle-bets-on-its-own-blockchain-in-challenge-to-payment-giants">reported</a>.&nbsp;



If so, they will likely be converging from different directions.&nbsp;



Stripe’s blockchain, Tempo, is expected to focus first on retail-merchant payments, while Circle’s Arc sounds more like behind-the-scenes infrastructure — “an enterprise-grade foundation for stablecoin payments, FX and capital markets applications,” as they pitch it.



It’s tempting to say Stripe starts with an advantage here, since it’s already a last-mile business — it owns the checkout button and the customer relationship, connecting directly to more than a million merchants.&nbsp;



Circle, by contrast, has no direct contact to its end-users at all — we get our USDC on exchanges, not from Circle itself.



But the last mile isn’t always the place to make money.



Gas stations, for example, earn only pennies on each gallon of gas they sell while the oil majors they buy from make much bigger profits upstream. Retail brokers have to offer customers free trading while the exchanges they connect to mint money from data and transaction fees.



In other industries, however, the last mile and the infrastructure can be equally profitable: Nvidia and AWS, for example, both do very well for themselves.



The business of moving money that Stripe and Circle are both hoping to disrupt is enormous: Austin Campbell <a href="https://youtu.be/cULv9k3ExdM?si=Zk9cEvnFaOvDG9xY&amp;t=621">notes</a> that international transfers alone move roughly $1.25 quintillion annually. The all-in cost for a bank to make an international wire transfer is <a href="https://www.financialprofessionals.org/docs/librariesprovider8/default-document-library/determining-your-true-cost-of-payments.pdf?sfvrsn=52b5166b_2&amp;utm_source=chatgpt.com">over $8</a>, so I imagine there’s a lot of money for Circle to make just from banks (without ever reaching the end user) if it figures out how to do it cheaper with stablecoins.



Payments are also highly complex.



A single dollar spent on a YouTube ad, for example, might be collected in euros, split between Google in Ireland, a content creator in India and a publisher in Brazil, then routed through multiple banks, in multiple currencies — all of which is set in motion by a click on a website.



If Stripe can use programmable money to automate that complexity at the de minimis cost of a stablecoin transaction, its Tempo blockchain could be a hit.



There are many more niches of the payments world to disrupt, so even if Stripe and Circle are destined to converge, it might be a long time before they actually compete.&nbsp;



There should be plenty for both to do — it’s reasonable to imagine that every kind of payment could someday be made in stablecoins.



Guillaume Poncin, CTO of the crypto infrastructure provider Alchemy, told me that banking infrastructure “will run on blockchain rails,” noting that stablecoins are particularly well-suited for cross-border payments, ACH transfers and interchange payments between banks.



It might happen fast. “In five years,” Cosmo Jiang told <a href="https://youtu.be/QX6jxGQlM-w?si=s6g2i_xxfXP0md8z&amp;t=4617">Empire</a>, &#8220;I&#8217;d be shocked if not all the financial applications on your phone were running on blockchain rails.”



If so, it probably won’t happen on a general-purpose chain like Ethereum.



For stablecoins to be used at scale in the real world, they will probably have to be on a specialized blockchain like what Circle is <a href="https://6778953.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6778953/Arc%20Litepaper%20-%202025.pdf">building</a> — with predictable fees, dispute resolution, privacy for users and transparency for regulators.&nbsp;



I’m sure Stripe’s yet-to-be-announced chain will have similar functionality. But that doesn’t mean it will be a direct competitor.



If the stablecoin market gets as big as they think it will, it might not be Stripe vs. Circle, but Stripe and Circle both.



Or neither, maybe.



Austin Campbell believes that in the race to build stablecoin payment rails, “the answer to who will win is none of the people on the field.”



The race itself is only in its first mile.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

The stablecoin marathon enters its first mile

Ben Strack

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



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



Recent developments in Congress and comments from senators indicate that a market structure bill won’t be as easy to pass as the GENIUS Act.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Clarity on CLARITY?</h2>



Before Fed Chair Jerome Powell takes the Jackson Hole spotlight Friday, other bigwigs in the same valley gave us some regulatory tidbits to chew on at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium. 



US Sen. Tim Scott and SEC Chair Paul Atkins shared the type of praise for Donald Trump you’d expect from a Republican leader and an agency head nominated by the president. Making the US “the crypto capital of the world,” yada yada yada.&nbsp;



But between the lines, there were some more substantial soundbites. For example, Scott — chair of the Senate Banking Committee — addressed market structure legislation. Perhaps you remember Scott, Cynthia Lummis and others introducing a “discussion draft” last month that built upon the CLARITY Act <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-house-passes-clarity-act">passed by the House</a>.



It looks to define “ancillary assets” in a bid to clarify which digital assets are not securities, and it directs the SEC to “tailor existing requirements to digital asset activity.”



Eighteen Democrats voted for the GENIUS Act. Scott said he thinks he’ll have between 12 and 18 Dems at least open to voting for a market structure bill.&nbsp;



But it’s “a far more complicated piece of legislation,” he acknowledged, and someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren standing in the way of Democrats wanting to participate is, in his words, “a real force to overcome.”



Patrick Daugherty, head of the blockchain and digital assets practice at law firm Foley &amp; Lardner, agreed that this legislative effort is no sure thing. He also emphasized the difference between what the House passed and what the Senate Banking Committee revealed.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The CLARITY Act would help layer-1 blockchain builders, for example, raise capital more efficiently and protect them from failing to register with the SEC, the lawyer told me. Crypto exchanges would also be safer from attack for trading unregistered tokens.



Side note: To the contrary, it seems crypto project leaders may have to fend off overly friendly commissioners wanting to get coffee near their hometowns.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeLzxBefKCZDDMAL8wKNkXH-Grfs0UA3qpnt15WCkY-_MRBywz_vX7J_20aPpr1vSlN0RqSUfcaWuZeWSWTItQnRF9qYep96CrRv15Vzr7DZlgi8IZyeEr9zECtr_r2waX1Uh0lSg?key=8kOZ-8YQc2Z_Vp7WC6s7Iw" alt="" style="width:772px;height:auto"/></figure>



This CLARITY legislation would give both the SEC and CFTC jurisdiction over certain parts of the industry — with regulation around this technology able to shift from one agency to the other, Daugherty added.&nbsp;



Scott’s proposal puts more of the rule-making and regulation burden on the SEC. It’s worth noting, though, that the Senate Agriculture Committee — with oversight of the CFTC — is expected to soon introduce its own draft language focused on digital commodities.



“More than the stablecoin statute, either market structure statute, if enacted, will require considerable rulemaking and interpretation by the SEC and the securities bar who are following developments closely,” Daugherty said. “Will CLARITY clarify the law? Yes, but less than some would like.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Atkins doubles down on ‘super-app’ approach</h2>



Atkins hammered home some of his “Project Crypto” priorities in a discussion later that morning — with some relating to the regulatory jurisdictions mentioned above. If you forgot the gist of the SEC chair’s broad plans:



<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 portion of SEC chair Paul Atkins&#39; response to yesterday&#39;s White House report. &quot;Project Crypto&quot; underway &#8230; <a href="https://t.co/yO5g0S806i">pic.twitter.com/yO5g0S806i</a>&mdash; Ben Strack 🟪 (@strack_ben) <a href="https://twitter.com/strack_ben/status/1950975816323493918?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Atkins had also noted, in the July 31 remarks, that he would help the Senate craft a market structure bill “that future proofs our markets against regulatory mischief.”



He then said Tuesday: “I didn’t come to Washington to engage in a turf battle,”



He doubled down on themes of being flexible as the marketplace and technology evolves, as well as implementing a so-called super-app approach.&nbsp;



“Five or 10 years from now, things will be completely different I’m sure,” Atkins said. “And we can’t put things into little cement-surrounded pockets that are immutable.”



Friendly competition and a balance of power is key, he noted — in part to guard against one regulator becoming “too obstinate.”



Related is the super-app piece. Atkins is talking about (as elaborated on a few weeks ago), letting securities intermediaries offer a bunch of products and services “under one roof with a single license.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfqdwpPcuNa8UKy_-j5QRSXTYqzGlfD0aPdGQnkmwF9BC0SHOFi3iktxkZUaklGhNmBFSZPk0xo-0kH6IpSUlbUdxbU31J9a-qNPuZK3jm2H-hHcBIkp3FstM7bJtfxlFhYgWft0g?key=8kOZ-8YQc2Z_Vp7WC6s7Iw" alt=""/></figure>



Republicans previously <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/majority/what-they-are-saying-support-for-scotts-september-deadline-on-digital-asset-market-structure-legislation">aimed</a> to advance market structure legislation by Sept. 30, and Scott reiterated on Tuesday the urgency of getting this done: “Executive action is not enough. Period.”



Between future-proofing this bill and getting enough bipartisan support, it seems this tall task could take longer than some hope.



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congress

Why a market structure bill is ‘far more complicated’ than the GENIUS Act

The term “Ethereum layer-2” is generally thought to mean that a chain <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/layer-2-secured-by-ethereum">inherits Ethereum’s security</a>. But the line has always been blurry, and remains so, especially with the rise of OP Stack chains that use alternative data availability (DA) layers. These so-called &#8220;Optimiums&#8221; settle to Ethereum but post data elsewhere, introducing some additional trust-assumptions.



Toghrul Maharramov, a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollup</a> researcher and former <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/scroll">Scroll</a> contributor, has been a vocal critic of looser L2 definitions, and <a href="https://x.com/toghrulmaharram/status/1958059218814029970?s=46&amp;t=yjAdM2ddX0KgGQimu7jcDQ">declared</a> Wednesday on X:



“Optimiums are not L2s. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to psyop you.”



A good example of this is Celo, which Blockworks reported <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/rollup-reality-check">as a case study</a> of an L1 becoming an L2. For the most part, Ethereum rollups post their data to Ethereum itself — originally via calldata and now, predominantly, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-blobs-balancing-act">via blobs</a>. That enables the useful property of permissionless <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/glossary#S">state</a> reconstruction and withdrawals from an L2 to Ethereum mainnet.



Optimiums, by contrast, outsource DA to off-chain networks like EigenDA, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/celestia">Celestia</a> or <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/avail">Avail</a>, and rely on attestations to prove that data is available. They may use fraud proofs and settle to Ethereum, but they add a layer of trust that Ethereum cannot directly verify.



Vitalik Buterin has used “L2” liberally, and indeed <a href="https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1838809754002690403">specifically referred</a> to Celo as moving to an “L2,” so we’re in good company there, but the difference is more than semantics.&nbsp;



Ethereum scaling tracker L2BEAT now classifies most Optimiums as “<a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary?tab=others">Others</a>,” a catch-all category for chains that don’t meet the strict rollup criteria. Celo, for example, completed its transition in March 2025 to run on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">OP Stack</a> with EigenDA.



According to L2BEAT, it fails two key checks for rollup status:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>It has fewer than five external actors who can submit fraud proofs</li>



<li>It has no DA bridge that posts EigenDA availability proofs on Ethereum</li>
</ul>



The result: no L1-enforced remedy if data goes missing.



Lisk, which migrated to Ethereum in late 2024, also falls into this bucket for similar reasons — reliance on a permissioned challenger set — although it does post data on Ethereum.



According to Sreeram Kannan, founder of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a>, we can think of rollups as “out-of-protocol scaling for execution,” while EigenDA is “out-of-protocol scaling for blob space.” In both cases, the data and logic happen outside Ethereum’s protocol rules — but only rollups ensure Ethereum can enforce validity directly.



“When a certificate from EigenDA shows up, you’re trusting that that certificate implies that the data is available,” he told Blockworks.



That trust model has no on-chain enforcement today.



“If the DA claimed the data is available and the data is not available, there’s no recourse,” Kannan said.



So, is “L2” just Ethereum-aligned marketing? Or should it reflect the protocol’s ability to enforce both correctness and availability?



L2BEAT’s current stance is that Ethereum must be able to reject bad state roots and verify data availability independently. Anything else requires more trust — whether that’s in a DA quorum, a governance council, or a permissioned set of challengers.



Optimiums without either state validation or a DA bridge remain in the “Others” category. But as the tech matures, some may graduate to “Validiums &amp; Optimiums” or even gain rollup status. To do that, you’d need some robust fallback mechanism or a way to make DA failures an “objectively attributable fault,” —&nbsp;a tough problem to crack.



Until then, the debate continues, grounded in practical considerations for users about who is trustworthy to keep funds safe.&nbsp;



“If you&#8217;re just honest, every layer-2 is controlled by a multisig, so we should be talking more about that,” Kannan said. This is certainly a prime bugaboo for critics of Ethereum’s scaling scheme, he acknowledges.



“But I would want to also point out that every app on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a> has like a 2-of-3 or some very small <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/safe-exploit-comprehensive-review">multisig</a> that controls it,” he said, meaning there’s more work to be done to minimize trust all around.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



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Optimiums and the ‘L2’: Ethereum security revisited

Kate Irwin

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



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Arbitrum’s gaming investment group is offering Ronin up to 750,000 ARB spread across three consecutive years to join them as an “Orbit” chain.



Currently, that’s worth about $367,500, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot.



But in this down-and-out gaming market, maybe that’s enough.&nbsp;



Ronin’s cofounders shared screenshots on social media of the offer from Arbitrum Gaming Ventures (AGV), noting that it would also include Gaming Content Creator Program access (social content support funded by Arbitrum DAO).&nbsp;



They’d also get financial assistance with audit costs via an existing $10 million Arbitrum ecosystem audit program.



“Cool to see Arbitrum throwing their hat into the ring,” Jeff “Jihoz” Zirlin, one of the founders, <a href="https://x.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957845308681195992">wrote</a> in a pretty neutral-seeming response to the offer, which came from AGV councilmember and Offchain Labs Head of Gaming and Consumer Partnerships David Bolger.



<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">The proposals are starting to roll in. Many of the questions we&#39;ve gotten around Ronin 2 revolve around: • How will Builder score be calculated? • Which L2 provider will be chosen? These are not fully up to Sky Mavis. They will be worked on and decided in conjunction with… <a href="https://t.co/zkq0jmh51G">pic.twitter.com/zkq0jmh51G</a>&mdash; Jihoz.ron (@Jihoz_Axie) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957845308681195992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The proposal emphasizes Arbitrum’s continued interest in gaming.



Despite some <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arbitrum-gaming-catalyst-dao-relations-rep">controversy</a> earlier this year around how much money AGV more broadly was committing to gaming, they’re still pushing forward in the sector.&nbsp;



AGV was previously known as the Arbitrum Gaming Catalyst. Its founding partner, Daniel Peng, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockchain-gaming-reckoning-gdc">told me</a> back in March that they were talking to over 100 game teams (some of those talks seemed to have resulted in investments since).



Arbitrum Gaming Ventures is now helping fund <a href="https://x.com/ArbitrumPlay/status/1920545754432877026">titles like</a> Wildcard (a fun MOBA-style creature battler), plus gaming startups like Xai Games and Proof of Play (the latter of which recently killed its onchain game Pirate Nation).



“Studio Chain” is also <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/studio-chain-gaming-blockchain-launch">building</a> with Arbitrum, which is a gaming- and entertainment-focused Orbit chain from the My Pet Hooligan-affiliated Karrat Foundation.



Ronin’s founders don’t seem totally sold on the idea of jumping on the ARB train just yet. They’re still open to offers from other sequencers.&nbsp;



<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">We&#39;re starting to see different L2 providers submit their proposals to Ronin. This means that they&#39;re looking to provide access to their sequencer technology which would facilitate Ronin becoming an Ethereum layer 2. What does a sequencer do? • Collects user transactions from…&mdash; Jihoz.ron (@Jihoz_Axie) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jihoz_Axie/status/1957942407028437202?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Ronin and Sky Mavis cofounder Aleksander Larsen specifically <a href="https://x.com/Psycheout86/status/1958051860780032326">mentioned</a> Optimism and zkSync as other possible vectors for Ronin to become an L2 besides going the Arbitrum route.



Zirlin also emphasized that these decisions are “not fully up to Sky Mavis.”



“They will be worked on and decided in conjunction with the governing validators,” he explained.



Last week, Ronin’s leaders <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ronin-becoming-ethereum-l2">announced</a> they were planning to rejoin Ethereum, moving away from being a sidechain to turn into a true Ethereum L2.&nbsp;



The change could help speed up transactions and make Ronin more than just a gaming chain.&nbsp;



Where will they land? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.



But it’s probably a sign that sidechains are over. At least, for now.



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Arbitrum

Arbitrum Gaming Ventures offers Ronin 750K ARB to become Orbit chain

Donovan Choy

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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When one thinks of DeFi’s greatest innovations, automated market makers (AMMs) come to mind.



Popularized by early OG teams like Bancor and Uniswap in 2018, AMMs enabled permissionless liquidity provision without the need for professional market makers to manage an order book.



This permissionless structure has immense benefits for bootstrapping markets around illiquid tokens, but it comes with many well-known tradeoffs.&nbsp;



Since liquidity positions and execution is public, LPs are vulnerable to MEV attacks, manifesting in price impact and slippage problems for the end-user.



Protocol designers have tried to tackle these problems in a variety of ways over the years (e.g. Uniswap v3’s concentrated liquidity or dark pools). Others such as Hyperliquid have simply opted for the reliability of the central limit order book (CLOB) design.



In recent months, a wave of new AMM DEXs on Solana has been charting its own path to address these issues.



These DEXs are popularly referred to as prop (short for proprietary) AMMs, or dark AMMs; they include players like HumidFi, SolFi, Tessera, ZeroFi, GoonFi and Obric.



You’ve probably never heard these names, and that’s by design.



Prop AMMs do not use a frontend. They quote prices privately and rely on vault-based liquidity supplied by one proprietary market maker as opposed to external liquidity pools.&nbsp;



By centralizing liquidity provision in the hands of a few, this design choice enables prop AMMs to protect order flow execution from MEV attacks by high-frequency traders that public AMMs are susceptible to.



How then do prop AMMs find users? They simply plug into a DEX aggregator — such as Jupiter or Titan — on the backend, which allows the aggregator to query across DEXs for the best price quotes.



Almost all of prop AMMs’ volumes are routed from DEX aggregators, as per the below chart.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdfh9PlPhK62j0oabljX3Y9b9CMZJbsgM4elHIz1devfa5yzuDFNshf6XM_Vb-BaDPB-xYWkymlWFIT8Gi5n_FT5FUBhsvKeGq44T_jdKMVJmRKTHBERFQfbbqSCEwyzgEe8ohpIA?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt=""/></figure>



Chris Chung, CEO and co-founder of Titan told me: “Initially, when prop AMMs first launched, you had to be integrated with all of them to even stand a chance of finding the best route due to their dominance. The first three (SolFi, ZeroFi and Obric) had a stranglehold over the market, but standard onchain AMMs could still compete.



“With the influx of many new prop AMMs, the market share of prop AMMs has continued to keep going up, but each successive one has seen less of an impact on a router&#8217;s success vs. its peers.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Prop AMM dominance</h2>



Since January 2025, prop AMM volumes have consistently made up about 13% to 24% of monthly DEX volumes.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe_FKTLqlXCzEKHrpkK5JJXl6iQj-2mYHUOSVrfhoIr3sjNLA5HRq5waxjI8pXkAAkRz9zGFZTpxEHtaWNUOS-NjtrFGPaXSl1hT7RVY1PVifCVA_TcddlOCYI-G30gbVH-FoMYzg?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt="" style="width:653px;height:auto"/></figure>



Isolating volumes data down to highly liquid trading pairs, like SOL-stablecoin, brings the growing usage of prop AMMs into clearer view.



For SOL-stablecoin volumes in the last week, prop AMMs are collectively processing ~53% ($7.42 billion) of all DEX volumes, per Blockworks Research data.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc51fptUJGHA9AFk4HqgRhBYrQx6RxDIBcYdBhAMnDxUy531pvhQDQXJc_H7pfMezTL8VZzfDdsVmv6z7Qt7NJ0-JL8RCbKRhODRUx6uIj7Sko6hLPJxu9bgkDNg2kCRMkuuNTb?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt=""/></figure>



Blockworks Research data shows a similar story emerges on stablecoin pairs — SolFi and Obric together captured ~50% of the $1.1 billion in trading volumes over the last week.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdfrZbR8oFbo0Mu18Bc1mTFK7PIN_jp6z_MPnsq8PWbBzS0Bb6mYdO32qxSdZTigK_kC80wLXvhUg7wbRWYsKYJiG9wmbglmBFcTfqpaPSXmQctk8y-Ok2RV6FeN8MWdK3IGWSb0Q?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt=""/></figure>



And as expected, illiquid assets like memecoins are still traded on traditional AMMs (there’s a caveat, though: larger memecoins like <a href="https://solscan.io/tx/ai6HWvsU43upmtQ4DUGMmRK83g4P5RX6xz8VkRecZfJPEtiKeSiFLg9FTxdc8XS6PCbWHEwv9Vrs49BrcZ8pUKU?ref=solanatracker.io">POPCAT</a> and <a href="https://solscan.io/tx/5kYPVw38ac5xbiy7sqTZwWD2pn2ESa4RzEfXgW1FeunAX9frxkBF2nhtkhqaZonm7qnkLc9uzjdJHphC8M4jcWeQ?cluster=mainnet">FARTCOIN</a> are showing up on prop AMM routes).



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe043dnm19xm83_03syacFOe769iEubskgCLRUFskPlQn--i84gZoh-9RHHSY4O1sFGDOYuGGCHRfsz6ziNd0jFIlcZUWouUwasIB7JW5ZscQsf2mGo5n6ENKmoA8ovLJvsYr_R?key=Htjrz4d2NG5fLa1a3iXfvg" alt=""/></figure>



Blockworks’ Carlos Gonzalez Campo <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/prop-am-ms-changing-solana-s-market-structure">predicts</a> that tokens will increasingly bifurcate into traditional AMMs vs. prop AMMs based on asset maturity:



“On the one hand, long-tail assets (e.g. new memecoins) will be dominated by traditional AMMs like Raydium and Pump. On the other hand, it appears that prop AMMs like HumidiFi and SolFi will gradually dominate liquid markets (e.g. SOL-USD, stable-to-stable pairs).”



It looks like traditional AMMs will continue to power long-tail speculation and early price discovery as long as there’s demand to gamble on illiquid memecoins.



But for mature assets, liquidity is consolidating around AMMs that deliver tighter spreads and more predictable execution. The dominance of aggregators on Solana is steering its market structure toward a more efficient equilibrium where ideology matters less than fill quality.



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AMMs

Solana’s proprietary AMMs are reshaping liquid asset markets for users

Marc Arjoon

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>.



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



Tether was the seventh-largest net buyer of US Treasurys in Q2 2025. With ~$8 billion in incremental purchases, Tether is positioning its reserves as a quasi-sovereign allocator. This aligns with its business model: backing USDT with highly liquid, low-risk assets while capturing yield from elevated short-term rates. The move underscores two dynamics:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Institutionalization of stablecoins: Tether is now functionally a material participant in global USD funding markets, alongside central banks and sovereign wealth funds.</li>



<li>Liquidity concentration risk: Treasury bills are becoming the backbone of USDT collateral. Any regulatory, liquidity or market shock to this exposure could reverberate across crypto markets and short-term dollar funding channels.</li>
</ul>



Tether’s ascent as a top-10 foreign buyer signals a structural shift: Stablecoin issuers are no longer just liquidity users within crypto, but systemically relevant investors in global sovereign debt markets. For Treasurys, this is supportive in the near term, but the reliance on a private, opaque entity adds a new risk layer to the market’s stability profile.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcEgLQZXraQbDhjDN6TxCu-ElgXpdIWQYR8_Kblu4Rw3JpOoPyUnGZNKmlYC7TbJgyEsZ2MH6_y5xm97jsPB3sJdafOQ8yDoX-GULOujStorO3eGr_tSm2qzFBfNHULGHknO1IbxQ?key=y1XQPN8YOtqWP06vY2OM3g" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://x.com/PlasmaFDN/status/1957845665494483451">Plasma</a></figcaption></figure>



Continuing on the tokenized asset front, Figure Technology Solutions (hereafter “Figure”) formally <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/blockchain-lender-figure-technology-reveals-revenue-surge-us-ipo-filing-2025-08-18/">filed</a> for an IPO. It’s aiming for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker FIGR, with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and BofA Securities serving as lead underwriters.&nbsp;



The company reported a 22% YoY increase in revenue to approximately $190.6 million for the first half of 2025. Even more compelling is Figure’s return to profitability: $29.1 million in net income, reversing a $15.6 million loss in the same period last year. Figure also disclosed that, since inception, it has originated over $16 billion in home equity loans, and counts more than 160 partners — including mortgage originators, banks, servicers and credit unions — utilizing its Provenance blockchain-powered lending platform.&nbsp;



In 2025, public markets have seen a vibrant “crypto IPO summer.” It was marked by standout debuts and filings from major players like Circle, Bullish, Gemini and others, driven by renewed regulatory clarity, investor enthusiasm and institutional backing. Figure Technology distinguishes itself within this wave by anchoring its strategy not around an exchange or stablecoin, but rather around tokenization of real-world, traditionally illiquid assets using public infrastructure (Provenance). With its profitability and healthy growth, Figure showcases a highly touted use case for blockchains in capital markets.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc_HMETD3zYYbeEnLgjiZ2jpq1KggVZE1w04DqfZpQIn6NdyTk7oaXS3IyWxJ6fqruBW_oNDz_r5oEoj_zzO0Z6TRDc3H1gHi-3zxsKEANdSdQKCylTOPuRa-mJ9s1xBLAy7mPunQ?key=y1XQPN8YOtqWP06vY2OM3g" alt="" style="width:668px;height:auto"/></figure>



<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2064124/000162828025040673/ftintermediateinc-sx1.htm"></a>



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Tether: Quasi-sovereign allocator

David Canellis

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>.



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Everyone is searching for top signals.



It could be that crypto is destined to forever follow the global money supply. Any sign of the bull market’s end would then be buried in macroeconomic data. Boring!



Empire is all about giving a look behind the curtain of the crypto industry.&nbsp;



So let’s instead draw a more interesting correlation: how many shares crypto’s richest executives are cashing in on the way up.



First, it’s worth making one thing clear: People are allowed to make money. If any of us were in the same position, there’s no doubt that we’d be offloading our equity as markets heat up. That’s what it’s there for. 



And boy, have insiders been putting up numbers.&nbsp;



Since January 1, insiders at just four publicly-traded companies in and around crypto have altogether net-sold almost $1.7 billion in company shares.



More than three-quarters of that sum was sold in the past three months alone — during bitcoin’s push from around $103,000 to over $124,000.



The chart below plots those insider stock sales (the colorful columns) against the price of bitcoin (the purple line).&nbsp;



As you can see, insider sales remained relatively quiet for the first half of the year but ramped up once Circle went public in June.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcb-qLWXKS6SWLprYnRZP-dUnNiGZx48n4zzo2VwgeFqnQUjhIuiR9n1NEW99eBjNN_Q-hzw1PxgdzgomU9AGwERa2WbLJwJM-gZq62AutochOYt5Y2rCRkMCDYL0uejg-JfFDdtg?key=r_WgUn7XBsOqyXnRPtHFIA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Openinsider, CoinGecko</figcaption></figure>



Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire alone made $46.4 million by selling nearly 1.6 million shares on Circle’s second day of trade, some flowing through a trust. The stock was sold for $29.30 on average, while CRCL’s share price has since climbed past $135 — a 360% increase.



Still, that technically places Allaire in fifth position by value generated by stock sales for 2025 to date, excluding VC firms General Catalyst Group VI and Chuang Xi Capital, which cashed in $104 million and $68.2 million in shares, respectively, directly following Circle’s IPO.



As for who’s been selling the most stock in crypto, at least out of company executives, it’s Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, hands down.



Armstrong has sold $485.8 million in COIN shares so far this year through a trust, per OpenInsider data, which collates SEC filings.&nbsp;



That’s nearly $85 million more than former Robinhood CEO Bhatt Baiju’s $399.7 million worth of shares, and almost $300 million more than current CEO Vlad Tenev’s $207.1 million.



Not all insiders have been strictly dumping, however. Nine execs from Strategy have actually been buying shares over the past five months or so, led by Peter L. Briger, a recently-appointed company director and former co-CEO at Fortress Investment Group.&nbsp;



Briger <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1050446/000095017025099806/xslF345X03/ownership.xml">participated</a> in the STRC preferred stock offering in July to the tune of $19.8 million through an LLC.&nbsp;



What does any of this tell us about where we’re at in the cycle? It’s obviously been hot enough for insiders to start itching for a big payday, it seems.&nbsp;



Are they savvy enough to have sold the top?&nbsp;



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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Economy

Crypto insiders ramp up stock sales, nearing $1.7B in 2025

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



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“We are what we repeatedly do.”



— Aristotle
</blockquote>



Central banks are buying gold in the 21st century for the same reason Romans bought it in the first: It has value because people perceive it to have value.&nbsp;



That circular logic has proved so durable that the purchasing power of gold is <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18706/w18706.pdf">virtually unchanged</a> since antiquity.



In that sense, central banks are buying gold now because Romans were buying it then.



Perception has become reality through repetition.



The bet with crypto is that it can pull off the same trick, but faster — compressing millennia of belief into a few short decades.&nbsp;



Lately, it’s started to look like it might.



Recent <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5029660">research</a> offers empirical evidence that people are using crypto to protect against the risk of government default: “A 10% increase in sovereign CDS spreads is associated with a 2.9-4% increase in crypto app downloads.”



10%!!! 



It doesn’t take much to move a credit default swap 10%, so that correlation suggests people are quick to turn to crypto at any sign of a debt crisis.



Importantly, the correlation tests positive for causality: “Crypto adoption jumps in the months following news related to sovereign risk.”



The researchers established cause and effect by studying credit-risk events like inflation shocks in Argentina, Turkey and Venezuela and sovereign debt crises in Sri Lanka, Greece and Ecuador.



Advocates have been telling these stories for years as proof of crypto’s utility, but with limited effect likely because the evidence was only anecdotal.



But the data now supports the narrative.



In short, the study confirms that when bank depositors are reduced to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/15/what-is-behind-lebanons-bank-robberies-explainer?utm_source=chatgpt.com">stealing their own money</a>, people really do turn to crypto.



Other studies also suggest that crypto’s narratives often line up with reality.



Bitcoin, for example, has long been framed as an escape hatch from irresponsible economic policymaking by corrupt governments — and that is, in fact, how people use it.



“We document a flight-to-bitcoin (FTB) phenomenon,” one <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278469">study</a> concludes, “whereby local demand for bitcoin increases with local economic policy uncertainties.”&nbsp;



“FTB is driven by investors’ lack of confidence in government as FTB is stronger in countries where the confidence in government is low and corruption incidents surge,” the authors explain.&nbsp;



It gets even better for the broader crypto narrative: “Bitcoin ownership shifts from centralized exchanges to decentralized wallets amid such turbulence.”



What could be more crypto-narrative-confirming than that?&nbsp;



Another <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612325013984">study</a> even cites crypto as a reason for corrupt governments to change their ways, concluding that “the control of corruption appears to discourage cryptocurrency adoption.”



Crypto advocates sometimes celebrate government dysfunction as another confirmation of their narrative (and who doesn’t love having their narrative confirmed?). But if crypto could frighten governments into good-governance reforms, that would be an even better story, I think.



The same study finds that “higher emigrant ratios in…lower-income countries are associated with increased cryptocurrency usage” — with the implication that people find crypto useful for remittances.&nbsp;



Remittances is one of crypto&#8217;s original use cases, but it’s always been surprisingly hard to quantify.&nbsp;



Western Union still hasn’t been fully undermined by crypto, but seeing the empirical evidence makes the remittances narrative more substantial.



Finally, another <a href="https://www.emerald.com/jfrc/article-abstract/33/3/406/1274488/Sanctions-and-cryptocurrency-a-catalyst-for?redirectedFrom=PDF">study</a> backs one of crypto’s grandest storylines — that it puts money and finance beyond the reach of government control. 



Studying the relationship between international sanctions and crypto usage, the authors conclude that “sanctions can act as a significant motivator for countries to adopt cryptocurrencies.”



Satoshi set out to create non-sovereign money, and sanctions evasion is proof that it works as such.



If these academic studies feel, well, academic to you, you’re probably reading from a developed economy: All of the studies found their results primarily in emerging markets.



In the US, by contrast, bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative took a hit in 2023 when it failed to hedge against 9% inflation.



But the study on sovereign default risk showed that people mostly use bitcoin to hedge inflation risks resulting from a sovereign debt crisis, and not, say, supply shocks.



Even with CPI at 9%, no one doubted the US’s ability to service its debts, so people didn’t feel compelled to swap their dollars for bitcoin.



But there are signs that crypto’s value proposition is starting to be recognized in developed countries, too.



“In just the last year,” the lead author of the paper on sovereign debt <a href="https://youtu.be/YEXsFk4XKX0?si=kXyB3ybbVzjp-MGA&amp;t=2827">observed</a>, “we’ve seen [the crypto] narrative migrate from being just an emerging markets’ story to one that folks in advanced economies are contemplating, too.”



The signs are mostly anecdotal so far, but also impossible to miss: Larry Fink referring to bitcoin as a “flight to safety” asset class; Jim Cramer recommending both bitcoin and ethereum as a hedge against deficit spending; even the US government itself starting a strategic bitcoin reserve to hedge against its own irresponsibility.



The risk of US default remains small — but not so small that Wall Street, CNBC and the US Treasury can resist hedging it with bitcoin.



The more that behavior is repeated, the more the perception of crypto will become its reality.



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Are crypto narratives becoming reality?

Skeptics of Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap have speculated that layer-2 networks might eventually peel away from the ecosystem. The concern was that rollup teams would grow tired of paying Ethereum’s data availability fees and break off into sovereign layer-1 chains with their own validators.



But so far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, the gravitational pull has flowed the other way: independent layer-1s are re-architecting themselves as <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> L2s.



Celo and Lisk are two prominent examples. Celo launched in 2020 aiming to build a mobile-first, payments-centric L1 with its own stablecoins and identity layer. Lisk’s origins go back even further to 2016, when it launched with a focus on onboarding JavaScript developers through a custom SDK and sidechains.



But by the 2022–2023 bear market, both faced a common challenge seen across many mid-tier L1s: limited liquidity, fragmented developer ecosystems, and difficulty attracting and retaining users beyond niche use cases.



Rather than double down on independence, both chains opted to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celo-migration-to-ethereum">plug into Ethereum</a>. Celo completed its migration in March 2025, relaunching as an <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">OP Stack</a> rollup using <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eigencloud-launch-a16z-eigenlayer">EigenDA</a> for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-roadmap-data-availability-da">data availability</a>.



“It was the right time to return home to Ethereum,” Rene Reinsberg, Celo co-founder, told Blockworks, citing new infrastructure like rollup-in-a-box stacks. “This allowed Celo to maintain its unique technical advantages like 1-block finality, sub-cent gas fees, and ERC-20 tokens as gas currencies… while gaining Ethereum’s security, community, and network effects.”



Celo says its community overwhelmingly supported the shift, with unanimous votes through onchain governance and proposals reviewed in public calls and open forums.&nbsp;



“Building in the open was, and remains, a core priority,” Reinsberg said.



The results are <a href="https://blockworks.co/analytics/celo">showing in the metrics</a>. According to Celo, daily active users now top 600,000, and stablecoin transfers have reached over 123 million across more than 1.1 million wallets. The chain also reports over $1 billion in monthly stablecoin volume and a 365% increase in protocol revenue since the migration. Celo’s onchain FX platform, Mento, recently processed over $200 million in a single day.



Much of the usage has been driven by real-world applications like MiniPay, a mobile wallet integrated with Opera’s browser.&nbsp;



“MiniPay’s built for everyday users,” the team said, noting that it recently surpassed 8 million activated wallets. Meanwhile, DeFi integrations have accelerated, with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/aave">Aave</a> V3 hitting its initial supply caps, prompting governance to raise limits for USDT, ETH, and CELO.



Lisk’s path followed a similar arc. In May 2024, it migrated its <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/lsk">LSK</a> token to Ethereum and relaunched as an OP Stack rollup using Ethereum’s blobspace for DA. Its “DAO Season 1” campaign reportedly attracted over 277,000 new accounts and 48 million transactions. Lisk is now betting on distribution and Ethereum-native interoperability to power its next growth phase.



“The so‑called ‘crisis’ in Ethereum was never truly real, because Ethereum has never been just another ecosystem,” Dominic Schwenter, COO of Lisk, told Blockworks.



“Projects are joining the Ethereum ecosystem to interoperate, not compete…It has set the highest standard for what it means to scale technology at the most decentralized level possible,” he said.



The contrast with the feared L2-to-L1 narrative is stark, with virtually no examples of successful pivots. DYdX <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-solana-cosmos-convergence-blockchain-founders">left StarkEx</a> for a Cosmos appchain in 2023. Starknet continues to post data to Ethereum, and every major rollup launched since 2021 — <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/arbitrum">Arbitrum</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/base">Base</a>, OP Mainnet, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/zksync">zkSync</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/unichain-mainnet-is-live">Unichain</a>, Linea — remains anchored to Ethereum.



“The Ethereum community has the strongest network effects,” Reinsberg said. “This fact has helped guide the migration.” And rather than see it as a step down in sovereignty, Celo sees its L2 status as a way to scale Ethereum into emerging markets where mobile-first financial access is critical.



The upshot is, Ethereum’s center of gravity is growing stronger. Despite the persistent “L1 premium” reflected in certain token prices, no L2 has broken away to become a sovereign L1 in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollup</a> era, while several L1s have chosen to become L2s.&nbsp;



For users, that means cheaper fees, more stablecoin liquidity, and a better onchain UX. For Ethereum, it signals a future where more of the network forms around a shared security and settlement core.



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Rollup reality check: It’s the L1s that are defecting

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More crypto IPO filings from Gemini and Figure affirm investors will soon have a more complex investment universe to navigate.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one">Circle’s IPO turned heads</a> in June. Bullish followed suit with its own <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bullish-stock-surges-ipo-110">NYSE listing</a> two months later. It’s safe to say we’re just getting started.&nbsp;



I’m a journalist, so I won’t tell you which stocks to pick. I also don’t know; that would depend on the specific exposure you’re looking for. You must know by now that crypto companies are not a monolith. You have your miners, your exchanges, your stablecoin issuers, etc. Coinbase was one of the only renowned crypto stocks in town for a while after its 2021 direct listing.&nbsp;



More recent <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-act-passes-house">regulatory</a> <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-house-passes-clarity-act">tailwinds</a>, crypto price surges and TradFi’s embrace of the space spurred demand for more pure-play exposure to crypto sectors with big growth potential (i.e. stablecoins and tokenization), Bitwise research head Ryan Rasmussen noted.&nbsp;



You therefore saw what he called the “massively oversubscribed” IPOs for Circle and Bullish. And he argued that investors haven’t fully gotten their fill.



“We expect investors to remain excited about crypto IPOs through the year end and beyond,” he told me. “Despite a handful of recent and successful crypto IPOs, there remains a massive shortage of publicly traded crypto companies.”



Gemini submitted an <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2055592/000110465925079323/tm255912-12_drsa.htm">S-1</a> with the SEC on Friday, marking its latest step toward an IPO. Blockchain-based lender Figure followed <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2064124/000162828025040673/ftintermediateinc-sx1.htm">suit</a> Monday, applying to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Market.



Asset manager <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/grayscale-exposure-signals-etfs">Grayscale</a> and crypto custodian BitGo are among those also waiting their turn.



I asked Dan Weiskopf, co-PM of the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), about how to evaluate this growing set of public companies. His fund was essentially the first to focus on blockchain/crypto equities when it launched in 2018.&nbsp;



The space, of course, was a lot smaller seven years ago. The category’s universe has expanded by 25-35% over the past six months alone, Weiskopf told me.&nbsp;



BLOK’s process begins by evaluating the management’s experience in and commitment to the space. It tries to omit positions in firms “just trying to chase the fast buck,” Weiskopf noted.&nbsp;



“We are focused on operators who are trying to solve the necessary infrastructure problem beyond just facilitating transactions,” the BLOK PM added.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Also, valuations matter. Overpaying will obviously hurt returns.&nbsp;



“We have learned from past cycles that patience can be rewarded,” Weiskopf said. “We nibbled on CRCL when it first came out, but the run-up was too fast. We will be watching for the moat to be built on partnerships and distribution.”



A reminder: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one">CRCL shares opened</a> at $69 (up from the IPO price of $31). Circle stock peaked near $300 later that month but was trading around $134 as of this afternoon.



When the bench of public crypto firms is deep enough, retail and institutional investors will want exposure via index funds, Rasmussen explained — like they do across other markets, from energy to biotech.&nbsp;



“Most investors don’t want to spend time attempting to pick winners and losers,” Rasmussen said. “They just want to own the market.” (I’ve heard that sentiment on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hashdex-crypto-etfs-index-sec-interview">the tokens front</a>, too).&nbsp;



And there will, indeed, be winners and losers.



Gemini, in its S-1, noted the “highly competitive industry” in which it operates — adding that DEXs and DAOs “may be able to innovate faster and offer products and services that we do not offer.”&nbsp;



The crypto platform, which lost $282 million in the first half of 2025, looks to diversify its revenue streams beyond mainly transactions.



Figure summarizes its mission as “building the future of capital markets using blockchain-based technology.” Its success will depend in part on the continued demand for home equity lines of credit, which Figure notes comprised over 99% of its total loan originations in 2025’s first half.



So as the crypto stock universe expands, take note of the nuances. Or, I guess, just buy the index.



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Forward Guidance newsletter

Evaluating crypto stocks with more IPOs on deck

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Wyoming’s Stable Token Commission is launching its state stablecoin, FRNT, across seven blockchains using LayerZero’s tech. There are plans for it to be yield-bearing.



LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino emphasized in an interview that would be a key differentiator between what could set FRNT apart from other stablecoins.



The “Frontier” stablecoin, which is backed by US dollars and short-term US Treasurys and won’t have a fixed supply, is being deployed on Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon and Avalanche.&nbsp;



It’s a first for any US state — and a sign that you can just do things.&nbsp;



It has taken a few years, though: The Wyoming Stable Token Act passed in March 2023, which established the Commission and set all this in motion.



“When I heard that a state was doing this, I was like, okay, like, that’s kind of crazy. Clearly very forward-thinking and innovative,” Pellegrino said.



“Wyoming has done this with their banking regulation around crypto, with all of the DAO structure. They&#8217;ve been really, really progressive on that side,” he added. “They had the vision of like, hey, we have a competitive advantage here that no central issuer has, right?”&nbsp;



Some of the profits from FRNT interest will be paid to the Wyoming School Foundation to fund state-level education (the <a href="https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2023/SF0127">Stable Token Act</a> states that after operational costs are deducted, some profits will be kept as savings for future expenses).&nbsp;



The Commission says the stablecoin facilitates “secure, transparent, and efficient digital transactions” and is intended for people and businesses around the world. Like all crypto transactions, FRNT transactions in theory let users avoid middlemen payment providers, but users will still have to pay a nominal fee every time.



Besides funding education, the move puts Wyoming on the global stage yet again as a key crypto player — and destination.



<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">Today, Commission Chairman &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/GovernorGordon?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GovernorGordon</a> announced the mainnet launch of the Frontier Stable Token (FRNT). This historic move marks Wyoming as the first public entity in the United States to issue a blockchain-based stable token. FRNT is designed to provide secure&#8230;&mdash; Wyoming Stable Token Commission (@wyostable) <a href="https://twitter.com/wyostable/status/1957767185415245891?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 19, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Pellegrino predicts FRNT will see adoption from emerging markets looking to gain access to the US Dollar and economy.



“Getting exposure to it will become easier and easier as it’s adopted in more places,” he said.



Wyoming Stable Token Commission Executive Director Anthony Apollo explained in a statement that using LayerZero’s tech allows them to adhere to state guidance to take a “multi-chain, technology-neutral” approach.&nbsp;



The stablecoin on Solana will be available on Kraken “in the coming days,” according to a <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/WYGOV/bulletins/3ee734a">release</a> from Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.



FRNT will also be available to spend via a Visa <a href="https://www.rain.xyz/resources/frontier-stable-token-frnt-debuts-rain-issued-card-on-avalanche-for-everyday-stablecoin-spending">card</a> from payments firm Rain.



The governor’s office and the Stable Token Commission are expected to make another announcement when FRNT becomes more publicly available.



Based on a <a href="https://stabletoken.wyo.gov/pages/about-us">timeline</a> from the Stable Token Commission, that may be as soon as next month.



“Everything’s just like a really great bellwether for the industry as a whole,” Pellegrino said. “Just shows the US leaning in in a way that they were not a couple of years ago.”



Updated 8/19/2025 at 3:05 p.m. to reflect future plans about FRNT as a yield-bearing token.



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kraken

Wyoming FRNT stablecoin on Solana to go live on Kraken

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The decentralized wireless company Helium is planning to funnel 100% of Helium mobile subscriber revenues to HNT token burns, co-founder and CEO Amir Haleem <a href="https://x.com/amirhaleem/status/1957200674539581521">tweeted</a> yesterday.



It’s not clear if Helium plans to buy HNT on the open market or simply burn tokens from its treasury, but the initiative is going into effect “this week, barring any weird logistics,” he <a href="https://x.com/amirhaleem/status/1957214730344624605">said</a>.



In any case, that’s an <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/helium-halving-tailwinds">estimated</a> $2.3 million in monthly gross revenues offchain that otherwise would have gone to Helium’s parent company, Nova Labs, now being redirected to HNT token holders.



HNT is Helium’s native SPL token, which migrated to Solana from its own L1 appchain in April 2023.



When users pay USD to use Helium’s network, it’s swapped under the hood to HNT, which is then burned for a consumable fixed-price token of $0.00001 known as “Data Credits.”



Today, Helium has about <a href="https://world.helium.com/en/network/mobile">1.1 million</a> daily users across 108,850 hotspots.



The majority of Helium’s revenues is driven primarily by WiFi carrier offload, rather than its own mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).&nbsp;



When users of big telcos like AT&amp;T or T-Mobile are near a Helium WiFi spot, they can shift that data onto Helium’s network automatically and pay Helium on a per-demand basis.



This way, major carriers avoid additional CapEx while still managing to improve coverage for customers in hard-to-serve or obscure locations.



Earlier this month, Helium also went through its biennial emission halving, halving annual HNT emissions from 15 million to 7.5 million.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXehCb3TC7b1tPlN4mCnp1nz9rbFuYoKbLj1q3V5pwGT4ge0_YBpqmyaz-fgctD4RW-OLhjO82YBENqd6vYl35HA3eFcxmpqaJElcqmngTOvZwF7OyJy_VaMZI09Ivun7fs-QgR9?key=F1UcsFQTLvYx0-0eewtjyQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/helium-halving-tailwinds#top-idea">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>



Both mechanics in tandem — an emission halving and circulating supply burn — could create a net deflationary effect for the HNT token.



Blockworks’ Nick Carpinito told me: &#8220;Amir&#8217;s announcement creates immediate deflationary pressure on HNT by burning tokens equivalent to Helium Mobile&#8217;s subscriber revenue, which could accelerate the timeline for HNT to become net-deflationary sooner than expected.”&nbsp;



“While we don&#8217;t yet know the specific mechanics (whether Nova Labs will burn from its treasury or make open market purchases, or whether this applies to gross vs. net revenue), this represents a significant step toward integrating Nova Labs&#8217; offchain revenue streams directly into HNT&#8217;s tokenomics as we anticipated in our July analysis.&#8221;



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DePIN

Helium eyes a potential path to deflationary tokenomics

Ether treasury company BTCS is leaning into its “Ethereum-first” identity with a one-time blockchain dividend: a $0.05 per-share payout in ETH, plus an optional cash alternative for investors who don’t opt in.&nbsp;



The company also unveiled a $0.35 per-share loyalty payment — payable only in ETH — for holders who move shares to book entry with its transfer agent and keep them there through Jan. 26, 2026. Instead of your shares being held at your broker, they’re recorded in your name on the company’s official shareholder register.&nbsp;



Framed as both a reward and a balance-sheet signal, the move arrives while BTCS trades below its asset base. Management points to a $4.41 share price on August 15 against roughly $6.65 per share in cash and digital assets. That valuation gap also shows up in Blockworks Research’s mNAV (enterprise value / net asset value) tracker of Ethereum-treasury peers.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdnPSIUZtIaAVGfpYrsrezJFjbsSOFHZ-f3gYwwp9-v7PJGXa9JjCqaUPw87n2LmDR5bN1dLnhPk1Y0rfFQEblKUJjoQC9VCSJbAU_uLYefbAPXQ3gt0PIG4iNcsfJvISKoVaOlrw?key=LR3gLDoIhpkH5qeVLviMHA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/treasury-companies?dashboard=366">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>



As of Aug. 18, BTCS sat near the low end at ~0.75×, compared with SBET ~1.08×, GAME ~1.20×, and BMNR/BTBT ~1.40–1.45×; only DYNX was lower. In other words, the market is still assigning BTCS a below-peer multiple on its balance sheet.



CEO Charles Allen cast the program as both shareholder alignment and a shot across the bow against short sellers.



“As the largest shareholder of BTCS, let me be perfectly clear: my goal is to grow our market cap primarily through share price appreciation, not toxic dilution,” he <a href="https://x.com/Charles_BTCS/status/1957397105661657378">wrote</a> on X, adding that concentrating shares at the transfer agent is intended to make them harder to borrow for shorting.



Operationally, investors who want ETH must complete an opt-in at bividend.com and transfer shares to Equity Stock Transfer before the record date; otherwise, they’ll receive $0.05 in cash. The loyalty payment is paid after 120 days to those who keep shares in book entry for the full window.



Whether this closes BTCS’s valuation gap is the open question. The persistent mNAV discount suggests investors are still pricing execution risk around the company’s DeFi/TradFi “accretion flywheel,” ETH-denominated revenue exposure, and liquidity dynamics.



Still, paying out effectively a share dividend in ether is novel. If the program meaningfully shrinks lendable float and builds a stickier base, the multiple could drift toward peers. If not, BTCS will still have delivered a crypto-native distribution that puts real ETH in loyal holders’ wallets but, considering its shares have fallen about –40% over the past month, while ETH is up 20%, that may be a small consolation.



The record date for the “bividend” is Sept. 26, 2025. To qualify, you’d need to own shares by the close on Wed, Sept. 24 (or earlier).



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