BSC News

NYLIM and Centrifuge Launch Tokenized Bond Fund
New York Life Investment Management (@NYLIManagement), one of the largest active asset managers in the United States with approximately $807 billion in assets under management, has entered the tokenization space with the launch of its first onchain fund. The firm has partnered with @Centrifuge to bring its U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Strategy onto blockchain rails, with the product listed under the ticker HYB.
The fund, formally named the NYLIM Anemoy U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Segregated Portfolio, gives eligible investors access to an actively managed institutional credit strategy through Centrifuge's platform. Subscriptions and redemptions are settled in Circle's USDC stablecoin, while the underlying portfolio management, investment process, and risk controls remain unchanged from NYLIM's existing institutional approach.
Pushing Tokenization Beyond Treasuries
The launch is notable for where it sits in the credit spectrum. The tokenized real-world asset market has been dominated by Treasury bills and short-duration instruments, which account for the bulk of onchain fixed-income value. By bringing an actively managed high-yield strategy onchain, NYLIM and Centrifuge are pushing the asset class into higher-yielding, riskier credit territory that has seen little institutional presence until now.
Centrifuge is not new to working with major financial names. The protocol already supports tokenized products with partners including Apollo Global Management and Janus Henderson, covering private credit funds, Treasury strategies, and a flagship CLO portfolio. The NYLIM partnership, however, represents one of the first major insurance-affiliated asset managers to move into tokenization in this way.
The broader RWA tokenization market continues to grow at pace. Data from RWA.xyz shows roughly $38 billion in tokenized RWA value on public blockchains as of late August 2026, up from around $20.6 billion a year earlier. High-yield corporate bonds remain a small but fast-expanding segment of that total.
For NYLIM, the move signals a broader strategic interest in blockchain-based distribution. Thomas Sy, Head of Multi-Asset Solutions at NYLIM, noted that the firm sees tokenization as a meaningful shift in how investment products can be accessed and managed across both public and private markets.
Sources:
Centrifuge and NYLIM Official Press Release (BusinessWire)
CoinDesk: New York Life Makes Tokenization Debut with Centrifuge
The Block: New York Life and Centrifuge Launch Tokenized High-Yield Bond Strategy

What the SEC's Innovation Exemption Does
@OndoFinance's native $ONDO token surged more than 6% on September 17 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission formally issued its "Innovation Exemption," a regulatory order that directly benefits platforms like Ondo's Oasis Pro.
The SEC granted temporary, conditional exemptive relief to Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs), allowing them to trade tokenized National Market System (NMS) stocks using permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools. The exemption is valid for five years and includes limits on the number of trading symbols and trading volume.
The exemption gives tokenized securities venues a five-year permit to operate without registering as a traditional exchange. It had been in the works for more than a year, but was released just days after a crypto market structure legislative effort failed in the U.S. Senate.
Under the framework, the SEC requires tokens to represent real ownership of the underlying stock, with holders receiving the same rights and privileges as traditional shareholders, including dividends and voting rights. The regulator explicitly excluded synthetic security tokens that are derivatives and do not provide ownership of the underlying shares.
Why Ondo Finance Is Well Positioned
The exemption is particularly significant for @OndoFinance, which has spent the past year building the regulated infrastructure needed to operate exactly this type of venue in the U.S.
Ondo Finance completed its acquisition of Oasis Pro, enabling it to develop and provide tokenized securities markets in the United States. The acquisition gave Ondo Finance the most comprehensive set of SEC registrations to provide digital asset services in the country, including an SEC-registered broker-dealer, alternative trading system, and transfer agent.
Ondo Finance's Oasis Pro Markets also holds FINRA authorization to offer tokenized equities and funds to U.S. retail and institutional investors. Most recently, Oasis Pro Markets became the first tokenization firm to join DTCC's Fund/SERV network, plugging tokenized funds directly into the infrastructure connecting America's fund companies and wealth platforms.
Ondo Finance has already rolled out its first implementation of the SEC's third-party custodial tokenization model, with BlackRock's IVV ETF and Micron shares among the first securities tokenized under a U.S. framework rather than an offshore structure.
The SEC's move signals a continued push by the current administration to bring traditional equity markets onchain. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins described the exemption as "a significant step forward, within its statutory authority, to bring America's capital markets into the digital age."
Sources:
SEC.gov: SEC Issues Innovation Exemption to Facilitate the Trading of Tokenized NMS Stock
CoinDesk: SEC Rolls Out Innovation Exemption for Tokenized Securities Trading Venues
TheStreet: Ondo Finance Acquires Oasis Pro to Expand Tokenized Securities Platform in U.S.

@NEARProtocol's futures platform has introduced default confidentiality for all perpetual futures trades, marking a meaningful step forward for on-chain trading privacy. The change means that traders can now open and manage perps positions from their accounts without that activity being publicly visible or traceable on-chain.
What Has Changed and Why It Matters
On traditional transparent blockchains, every trade is visible before it settles. On-chain transactions are visible before they settle, exposing order size, timing, and direction to bots that can trade against users. That dynamic has long enabled so-called maximal extractable value, or MEV, strategies that act as a hidden tax on traders.
The new default confidentiality on NEAR's perps platform addresses this directly. The NEAR blockchain's futures platform now supports default confidentiality for trades, allowing users to conduct perpetual futures transactions without publicly linking their positions to their on-chain accounts. The feature means traders can open perpetual futures positions from their accounts while keeping the connection between the trade and their identity private on-chain.
Crucially, the change applies to trades conducted through the platform and is presented as a default privacy feature rather than an optional setting. That distinction matters. Rather than asking users to actively opt into privacy, confidentiality is baked in from the start.
Built on NEAR's Broader Privacy Infrastructure
The perps update sits within a broader privacy push from @NEARProtocol. The protocol unveiled Confidential Intents, a privacy layer integrated into the NEAR Intents framework that enables private cross-chain transactions without broadcasting details to the public mempool. Confidential Intents addresses transaction visibility by running transactions through a dedicated NEAR private shard operated by permissioned validators.
Unlike privacy coins such as Monero or Zcash, which are designed to hide transaction details by default, NEAR's system offers optional confidentiality focused on trade execution, keeping only specific transfers and positions out of public view while preserving auditability for law enforcement. NEAR has indicated that the product is aimed squarely at institutions wary of broadcasting trading strategies on transparent ledgers.
The approach appears to be gaining traction. near.com has surpassed $70 million in confidential total value locked (TVL), and nearly 40% of recent NEAR developer activity, based on Artemis, is now focused on privacy, identity, and intent-based applications.
With default privacy now extended to perpetuals, $NEAR continues to position its ecosystem as a serious option for traders who want execution without exposure.
Sources:
CoinDesk: NEAR token jumps 17% after Confidential Intents launch
PR Newswire: near.com Confidential TVL Reaches $70 Million
Hokanews: NEAR Perps Platform Adds Default Privacy for Trades

Direct stablecoin-to-bank transfers in over 180 countries
@Stabledotcom, the financial ecosystem built on Unlimit, has formally partnered with @0xPolygon to bring stablecoin payments directly to bank accounts. The integration supports $USDT and $PYUSD transfers from custodial wallets to personal bank accounts across more than 180 nations, removing the need for an intermediary deposit step in the process.
The key distinction in the arrangement is user custody. Under the current model for many crypto-to-fiat flows, funds must pass through an intermediate account before reaching a bank. Stablecom's implementation keeps users in control of their money until the transaction fully settles, reducing counterparty exposure during transit.
Built on Polygon's Open Money Stack
The integration runs on the Polygon Open Money Stack (OMS), Polygon's purpose-built payments infrastructure. The Open Money Stack combines fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, wallet infrastructure, compliance tooling, stablecoin orchestration, and onchain settlement into one open, vertically integrated platform. According to Polygon, the infrastructure is designed to reduce the need for multiple service providers and simplify operations for developers and businesses.
The Open Money Stack provides licensed corridor infrastructure with approximately 48-state coverage, money transmission licensing, stablecoin settlement on Polygon, and off-ramp delivery in local fiat across international corridors. For Stablecom, that means the underlying compliance and banking relationships are handled at the infrastructure level, rather than requiring the company to build or license them independently.
The Open Money Stack integrates digital wallets, fiat gateway services, regulatory compliance features, and stablecoin settlement capabilities, allowing companies to minimize the need for multiple payment provider integrations. Rather than building a closed network, the Open Money Stack is designed to be interoperable, meaning businesses can use only the parts they need and still connect with other networks.
Polygon has been actively expanding its stablecoin payments footprint. The network has cleared $2.5 trillion in cumulative stablecoin transfer volume, with mature surrounding infrastructure covering custody, indexers, and compliance vendors. The Stablecom partnership adds another live use case to that growing roster of fintech integrations.
Sources:
Polygon Open Money Stack, Polygon.technology
Polygon Labs Unveils Open Money Stack, CoinDesk

SEC Steps In With Innovation Exemption
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has launched its "Innovation Exemption," creating a formal regulatory pathway for so-called Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs) to facilitate the trading of tokenized American stocks on public, permissionless blockchain networks.
The SEC issued an order granting temporary, conditional exemptive relief to TSVs from the definition of "exchange" in the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, allowing them to trade tokenized National Market System (NMS) stock using permissioned automated market makers (AMMs) and liquidity pools. The move means that qualifying platforms will be able to facilitate trading in tokenized versions of U.S.-listed stocks using AMMs and liquidity pools on public, permissionless blockchains without having to register as national securities exchanges.
The relief applies only to "tokenized NMS stock," meaning shares of exchange-listed companies tokenized either by the issuer or by an unaffiliated third party, as long as the token carries the same rights as a traditional share. Crucially, the exemption does not include synthetics, which are financial instruments that replicate the price of an asset without directly owning it.
To protect issuers, a TSV must provide a 30-day notice before tokenizing another company's securities and give that company the opportunity to object. If the issuer objects, the venue cannot trade that stock, but even silence is treated as tacit permission. The exemptions are set to expire five years after publication.
Clarity Act Collapse Prompts Regulatory Action
The SEC's move comes just days after the Senate voted 49-50 against the Clarity Act, which would have regulated the digital asset industry comprehensively for the first time at the federal level. The procedural vote left the bill stalled on Capitol Hill after months of negotiations aimed at building bipartisan support.
On Wednesday, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins warned that he would "act decisively within the SEC's statutory authority to deliver certainty for American investors and for the entrepreneurs shaping our technological future." Atkins acknowledged that this interim measure must be followed by durable rulemaking to ensure that onchain markets remain a viable pathway as capital markets continue to evolve.
What the Clarity Act's failure leaves unresolved is the question of durability: agency rules can change with a new administration, while legislation would have given the industry a more permanent framework. Citi analysts have estimated that tokenized assets could grow into a $5.5 trillion market by 2030, underscoring the scale of what is at stake as regulators and lawmakers navigate the path forward.
Sources:
SEC Official Press Release: Innovation Exemption for Tokenized NMS Stock
CoinDesk: SEC Rolls Out Innovation Exemption for Tokenized Securities Venues
CNBC: Senate Cloture Vote on Clarity Act Fails

Circle's Arc blockchain went live on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, putting block production in the hands of some of the biggest names in traditional finance. The launch generated immediate buzz, and the on-chain numbers backed up the hype: Total Value Locked across the network crossed $300 million on day one, according to DeFiLlama data, representing an increase of over 654,000%. The chain is already on track to reach half a billion dollars in TVL.
Institutional Validators and a Wave of Integrations
The planned full list of validators includes BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo Corporation, Visa, and Worldpay (now Global Payments). That validator roster signals an unusually institutional starting point for a blockchain network, setting Arc apart from most Layer 1 launches that rely on crypto-native infrastructure providers alone.
Circle opened the public mainnet with a new Aave V4 lending market, Morpho, and Uniswap among the protocols available from day one, with more than 100 applications live at launch overall. Bitget Wallet was also part of the day-one launch, giving its 100 million users immediate access to the network.
Built for Finance, Fees Paid in USDC
Arc is designed to feel like conventional payments infrastructure. Gas is paid in USDC rather than a volatile token, settlement is sub-second, and opt-in privacy is planned. The blockchain arrives as Circle tries to diversify beyond issuing its $74 billion $USDC stablecoin. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire has publicly described Arc as "a bigger opportunity than USDC."
Arc's public testnet launched in October 2025 and processed more than 700 million transactions in less than a year. The day-one TVL milestone suggests demand is real, not just a product of validator name-dropping, though the next 12 months could determine whether Arc drives measurable ecosystem adoption or becomes another blockchain ecosystem measured by partnerships more than usage.
Sources:
Circle official press release: Arc Mainnet Launch
The Block: Circle Launches Arc Mainnet
Ledger Insights: Circle Launches Arc Blockchain

Bottomline Goes On-Chain With Chainlink
@BottomlinePay has officially launched Global Pay Connect, a new payment platform built on Chainlink's blockchain infrastructure, giving its network of over 600 global banks a direct path to on-chain settlement without overhauling their existing systems.
Bottomline ranks among the top three SWIFT service providers globally, processing more than $16 trillion in payments each year across its platforms. The scale of that footprint makes the Chainlink integration notable: it puts blockchain-powered payment rails within reach of institutions that already depend on Bottomline for their daily financial messaging operations.
The solution relies on two core components of Chainlink's stack. CCIP handles cross-chain messaging and the transfer of tokenised value across networks, while the Chainlink Runtime Environment coordinates payment workflows end-to-end. Together, they allow a single connection to reach multiple blockchain networks, public and private, rather than requiring banks to build separate integrations for each one.
Critically, participating banks do not need to change their core operational procedures. Institutional clients can interact with distributed ledger networks through standard ISO 20022 messaging protocols via a single, network-agnostic point of connectivity. That matters in a market where SWIFT messaging is deeply embedded in bank operations and costly to replace.
A Concrete Step Toward Institutional Blockchain Adoption
Johann Eid, Chief Business Officer at Chainlink Labs, described the rationale plainly: "Global Pay Connect enables hundreds of financial institutions to use their existing infrastructure to access onchain payment rails through a single, network-agnostic connection."
The Bottomline deal extends Chainlink's broader push into traditional finance. Chainlink's Project Pangea already links more than 50 banks across Europe and South Korea that together manage over $10 trillion in assets, targeting same-day settlement for foreign exchange trades using regulated stablecoins. The Bottomline partnership adds considerably more institutional scale to that effort.
It is worth noting that the announcement represents an agreement and a platform launch rather than confirmed live transactions across all 600-plus banks. No committed transaction volumes or a public go-live date for individual banks have been released. Even so, the fact that a top-three SWIFT provider has embedded Chainlink's interoperability tools into a commercially available product marks a meaningful step toward connecting traditional payment infrastructure with on-chain settlement.
Sources:
Bottomline Official Press Release: Global Pay Connect Launch (GlobeNewswire)
Bottomline Taps Chainlink to Bring 600 Banks On-Chain (PYMNTS)
Bottomline Partners With Chainlink to Connect Swift Banks to Onchain Payments (Crowdfund Insider)

MoonPay and WisdomTree Join Forces on Tokenized Finance
@MoonPay has announced a strategic partnership with WisdomTree (@WisdomTreePrime) that will give U.S. investors the ability to purchase tokenized mutual funds using stablecoins. The deal marks a notable step in connecting traditional asset management with on-chain infrastructure.
Through the integration of MoonPay's Institutional and Trade platforms, the partnership will provide American investors with direct on-chain access to WisdomTree's $WTGXX fund. The arrangement is designed to bridge stablecoin liquidity with regulated asset management services, offering a more seamless path for investors looking to move between digital and traditional financial products.
What the Integration Means for Investors
The partnership positions MoonPay as a gateway for institutional-grade financial products, extending its platform beyond crypto on-ramps into the broader tokenized real-world asset space. For WisdomTree, the deal expands the distribution reach of its on-chain fund offerings to a new segment of digitally native investors who hold stablecoins.
The $WTGXX fund, part of WisdomTree's suite of blockchain-enabled financial products, will be accessible through MoonPay's existing infrastructure, removing friction that has historically kept retail and institutional investors from participating in tokenized fund structures.
The integration is expected to launch before the end of 2026. No further timeline details have been disclosed at this stage.
Sources:
MoonPay Official Website | WisdomTree Official Website

A Narrow Lead in the Launchpad Fee Race
@LaunchOnSF has edged past @ponsdotfamily in 24-hour fee generation, recording $665,331 against Pons' $656,127. The margin is slim, but the direction of travel matters. StonkFun's $STONK token overtook $PONS in daily protocol revenue barely five weeks after the Solana platform went live. That speed of ascent underlines how quickly retail capital can rotate toward whichever platform is generating the strongest momentum at any given moment.
StonkFun collects a 1% platform fee on every trade against the Raydium LaunchLab bonding curves it configures, along with creator fees and a share of liquidity provider earnings. Approximately 60% of platform revenue is used to buy $STONK on the open market and burn it. Pons runs a comparable model on Robinhood Chain: every trade on a launched token incurs a 1% fee, with 70% going to the token's creator and 30% to the Pons protocol, of which 80% is automatically used to buy back and burn $PONS tokens from the open market.
Two Platforms, Two Chains, One Narrative
$STONK is the token of StonkFun, a Solana launchpad for memecoins paired against tokenized stocks, while $PONS is the token of Pons, the dominant launchpad on Robinhood Chain. Both platforms have built their identities around the same emerging meta: stock-paired tokens that blend retail investor culture with on-chain speculation.
Both platforms print more daily revenue than Pump.fun, both burn supply at a pace crypto has rarely seen, and both ride the same tokenized-stock wave. Pons has been the more established name, previously generating headline numbers at scale. Pons generated about $5.95 million in fees over 24 hours at its peak, ranking fourth among services tracked by DefiLlama and surpassing the Robinhood Chain on which it operates. StonkFun has closed that gap rapidly, with StonkFun generating about $1.84 million of protocol revenue over a prior 24-hour period, ranking third among DeFiLlama-tracked protocols behind Tether and Circle, as a point-in-time snapshot of activity.
The latest daily figures, with Stonk at $665,331 and Pons at $656,127, reflect a more compressed competitive environment. The day either platform's daily fees roll over is the day its token loses the narrative. Until then, this remains one of the few corners of the market where the fundamentals update every 24 hours, in public, on-chain.
Sources
StonkFun Fees and Revenue: DefiLlama
Pons Fees and Revenue: DefiLlama
StonkFun Overtakes Pons in Revenue: AMBCrypto

Kulechov Calls for a Growth-First Strategy
Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov (@StaniKulechov) has a message for the DeFi sector following Washington's latest regulatory stumble: grow first, ask for permission later.
Speaking at Avalanche Summit in New York on September 17, Kulechov argued that decentralized finance may need to take what he calls the "Uber path" to regulation. The idea is straightforward: build a product used by millions of people, prove its real-world value, and become so embedded in everyday finance that lawmakers have no choice but to address it. He said DeFi needs stronger real-world use and millions of users to demonstrate its significance to policymakers.
Kulechov also noted that DeFi's current barriers are no longer mainly technical. "Tokenization and DeFi are not a technological challenge anymore," he said, according to The Block. "I think it's a go-to-market challenge."
The CLARITY Act Falls in the Senate
Kulechov's comments came less than 24 hours after a key U.S. Senate vote dealt a significant blow to the crypto industry's push for comprehensive market structure rules. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, known as the CLARITY Act, failed a procedural cloture vote on September 15, recording just 49 votes in favour against 50 opposed, well short of the 60 needed to advance to full floor debate.
The bill would have divided regulatory oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC, creating defined compliance pathways for crypto exchanges, brokers, and DeFi protocols. Despite last-minute revisions by Republican negotiators that incorporated over 100 changes sought by Democrats, opposition held firm, with several Democratic senators who had been involved in months of negotiations ultimately voting no. Ethics concerns around public officials' crypto holdings were central to the breakdown.
Kulechov said he remains hopeful that some form of the legislation could still move this year, pointing out that lawmakers on both sides broadly support clearer definitions and market structure for the industry. But he was clear about the fallback position: if legislation stalls, user adoption becomes the primary tool for forcing the issue.
With the CLARITY Act sidelined for now, regulatory momentum is expected to shift toward agency-level action. The SEC's Regulation Crypto Assets framework remains open for public comment until October 20, 2026, while the CFTC is also expected to continue advancing rules independently.
Sources:
The Block: Aave founder pitches 'Uber path' for DeFi after Clarity Act fails Senate vote
CoinDesk: Crypto Clarity Act flames out in failed U.S. Senate vote
CNBC: Senate cloture vote on Clarity Act fails, dealing regulatory blow to crypto industry

XRP Ledger AI Starter Kit erhält ein großes Update
Ripple hat Version 1.1 seines XRP Ledger AI Starter Kit veröffentlicht und unterstützt nun den Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) sowie den Open Wallet Standard. MPP ist ein offener Zahlungsstandard, der gemeinsam von dem globalen Zahlungsunternehmen Stripe und der Layer-1-Blockchain Tempo entwickelt wurde. MPP ermöglicht es KI-Agenten, für Dienste wie Daten und Rechenleistung zu bezahlen. Das aktualisierte Kit erlaubt es KI-Agenten, Online-Services mit $XRP und von der Ledger ausgegebenen Tokens wie RLUSD zu bezahlen.
MPP ermöglicht Pay-per-Use-Funktionalität: Dienstanbieter kalkulieren Preise für Anfragen, Agenten autorisieren Zahlungen, und anschließend liefern die Anbieter die Ressourcen. Die Integration des Open Wallet Standard ermöglicht es Agenten, Transaktionen anzufordern, ohne auf private Schlüssel zuzugreifen, und setzt Schutzmaßnahmen wie Ausgabenlimits und genehmigte Zieladressen durch.

Four USDC Pairs Cut From Binance Spot
Binance is removing four USDC spot trading pairs from its platform as part of its latest periodic market review. The exchange has scheduled the removal of BREV/USDC, COOKIE/USDC, LA/USDC and QNT/USDC for September 18 at 03:00 UTC, which corresponds to 11:00 a.m. UTC+8.
Binance stated that decisions to remove spot trading pairs are based on multiple factors, with low liquidity and trading volume being particularly prominent, and that it periodically reviews market conditions and user experience for all listed pairs.
The cleanup spans distinct sectors, removing interoperability middleware protocol Quant ($QNT), zero-knowledge coprocessor Brevis (BREV), Web3 AI data analytics platform CookieDAO (COOKIE), and decentralized AI verification protocol Lagrange (LA).
Tokens Remain Available on Binance
Holders of the affected tokens do not need to move assets off the exchange. Binance explicitly stated that removing a spot pair "does not affect the availability of the tokens on Binance Spot," and that customers can continue trading the base and quote assets through other supported markets after the USDC pairs close.
BREV, for example, continues to have a BREV/USDT market on Binance, and COOKIE retains a COOKIE/USDT spot market on the exchange. USDT-denominated alternatives remain in place for all four tokens.
Spot Trading Bots tied to the affected USDC pairs will also terminate simultaneously at the removal deadline. Users running automated strategies on these pairs should update or close their bots before the cutoff to avoid disruption.
Sources:
Crypto.news: Binance to remove 4 USDC spot pairs on Sept. 18
U.Today: XRP and Reddit In, Quant Out: Binance Announces New Wave of Listings and Delistings

ZCAT Surges 50% as ZEC Distributions Cross $8 Million
Anonymous Cat (solana:HcRLc9VDgjLeK154xDawfb1dmVJ98DoSqcwTHGqiDeJR), the Solana-based memecoin trading under the ticker $ZCAT, has gained roughly 50% in the past 24 hours as cumulative Zcash distributions to holders crossed $8 million. ZCAT has paid out approximately 5,963 ZEC tokens to holders, a sum worth roughly $8 million at prevailing market prices as of September 16.
The reward mechanism is straightforward. Every ZCAT transfer or trade is subject to a 3% tax, and those proceeds are automatically converted into ZEC and airdropped to eligible holders. The tax is converted into Zcash and rewards wallets holding at least $20 worth of ZCAT. No staking or manual claiming is required.
The pace of distributions has accelerated sharply. By September 7, the project had already distributed over 2,320 ZEC across roughly 470,000 individual payouts, valued at approximately $2.8 million. The pace accelerated from there.
StonkFun, ZEC Pairing, and the Risks Involved
ZCAT launched in August 2026 and has a short price history, thin liquidity relative to established assets, and the price behaviour typical of a new memecoin. It launched through StonkFun, a Solana launchpad that lets new tokens use assets other than SOL or stablecoins as their trading pair, and now also trades through Raydium's LaunchLab.
The ZCAT/$ZEC pairing is central to the project's identity, tying the memecoin's fortunes directly to Zcash's price. Reward value depends on the ZEC price, so a fall in ZEC reduces the value of distributions even if ZCAT itself holds steady. The token previously reached a market cap near $168 million before experiencing sharp valuation swings.
The rewards depend on continued ZCAT trading rather than income from a business or investment, meaning payouts could fall sharply if activity and liquidity decline. Prospective holders should weigh those risks carefully before participating.
Sources:
CoinDesk: This cat memecoin has paid holders $2.8 million in Zcash as ZEC tops $1,200
Crypto Briefing: Zcash surpasses $8M in ZEC distributions to Solana holders through ZCAT memecoin
MEXC Learn: What Is Anonymous Cat (ZCAT)? The Solana Meme Coin Paying ZEC

MOEX to Launch Five Crypto Perpetual Futures on September 22
Russia's largest stock exchange, Moscow Exchange (MOEX), is set to expand its crypto derivatives offering with the launch of perpetual futures linked to five major digital assets. The new contracts will cover Bitcoin ($BTC), Ethereum ($ETH), Solana ($SOL), XRP and Tron (TRX), going live on September 22, 2026.
The exchange has identified the instruments as BTCUSDF, ETHUSDF, SOLUSDF, XRPUSDF and TRXUSDF, corresponding to the MOEXBTC, MOEXETH, MOEXSOL, MOEXXRP and MOEXTRX indices. Unlike traditional futures, the perpetual contracts have no fixed expiration date and will automatically roll forward each trading day.
The contracts are quoted in U.S. dollars and settled in Russian rubles, with no delivery of the underlying crypto assets involved. Access will be restricted: the new derivative products will be available exclusively to qualified investors on Russia's largest stock exchange.
Strong Early Demand for MOEX Crypto Derivatives
The September 22 launch builds on growing traction in MOEX's existing crypto derivatives business. Bitcoin and Ether index futures began trading in November 2025, while contracts linked to Solana, XRP and Tron followed on May 14, 2026. Since May 13, the indices have used prices from major cryptocurrency exchanges and update every 15 seconds during relevant trading periods.
Over 72,000 qualified investors have traded digital asset perpetual futures since their launch, with cumulative volume exceeding 600 billion rubles. That figure relates to the exchange's existing cryptocurrency derivatives activity and does not represent trading volume for the new perpetual contracts, which have not yet begun trading.
MOEX started trading cryptocurrency derivatives shortly after the Central Bank of Russia authorized financial firms to offer such products in May 2025, and was among the first participants in the country's traditional financial market to do so, alongside players such as Sber, Russia's largest bank. The expansion signals a broader push by Russian financial institutions to build domestic infrastructure for regulated crypto exposure, channelling activity through state-supervised venues rather than offshore platforms.
Sources:
crypto.news: MOEX to launch 5 crypto perpetual futures on Sept. 22
Cryptopolitan: Moscow Exchange to launch perpetual futures on Bitcoin and Ethereum
Crypto Briefing: Moscow Exchange plans to launch Bitcoin, Ether perpetual futures in September

JPMorgan is not ready to write off the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act just yet, even after the bill suffered a stinging procedural defeat in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.
A Narrow but Open Door
"We understand that the bill remains on the Senate calendar and leadership could call for another vote before this Congress adjourns at the end of the year," JPMorgan analysts said in a Wednesday note. The bank was quick to add, however, that the remaining window for passage is extremely narrow.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act failed to survive the politics of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday as a 49-50 vote meant to start the bill toward passage fell far short of the 60 supporters required to advance. Every Democrat present voted no, including senators who had spent months negotiating the bill, such as Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks, with their main objection being that the bill's ethics provisions were not strong enough to address crypto profits made by President Trump and his family.
Republican leaders had released a revised version of the bill on Sunday, adding new ethics restrictions to address Democratic concerns about public officials profiting from crypto ventures. Those changes were not enough, however, to resolve the remaining opposition.
Tillis Maneuver Keeps Revival Alive
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted "no," but did so for procedural reasons so he could enter a motion to reconsider and preserve the option of a future vote. He initially voted yes and then switched to no so that, under Senate rules, he could file a motion to reconsider as a member of the prevailing side, a mechanism that preserves the ability for leadership to bring the same cloture question back without restarting the process from zero.
The motion to reconsider, filed at 3:01 p.m. Eastern Time immediately after the result was announced, keeps a procedural path open for leadership to bring the same cloture question back without starting the process from zero, though it does not, by itself, create the additional votes needed to reach 60.
The bill would create a new federal regulatory framework for the $2.3 trillion crypto industry, but has faced growing opposition from Democrats due to President Donald Trump's investments in the sector. The setback is a significant blow to the cryptocurrency industry's lobbying efforts ahead of the midterm elections, as crypto groups have spent heavily in recent election cycles and viewed the Clarity Act as a cornerstone of their push for comprehensive federal regulation.
With Congress scheduled to spend much of October in recess and the political calendar tightening before year-end, the path JPMorgan describes as still open is, by its own admission, extremely slim.
Sources:
CNBC: Senate cloture vote on Clarity Act fails, dealing regulatory blow to crypto industry
CoinDesk: Crypto Clarity Act flames out in failed U.S. Senate vote
Axios: Crypto's Clarity Act fails to advance in Senate

Adapter Goes Live on Mainnet
Stellar's (@StellarOrg) Protocol 28, codenamed Adapter, is now live on mainnet following a validator vote on September 16, 2026. Validators approved the upgrade on September 16, 2026, with Adapter going active within hours of the vote. This marks the official rollout, following a testnet run back in August.
It is a builder-focused release: most of what is inside makes life easier for the people writing smart contracts on Stellar, while a change under the hood helps the network reach consensus faster as it continues to scale.
What the Upgrade Actually Changes
Adapter bundles three distinct technical proposals. The most significant infrastructure change, known as CAP-83, addresses a long-standing bottleneck in the consensus process. Right now, validators need a complete transaction set before confirming the next ledger. CAP-83 lets validators start voting before the full set arrives, keeping consensus moving even when transaction data is slow to propagate across the network.
On the smart contract side, CAP-85 allows groups of smart contracts that share code to upgrade together in one move, instead of updating each one by one. It introduces a shared, updatable code reference that multiple contracts can point back to. Change that single reference, and every connected contract upgrades at the same moment, no matter how many there are. The third proposal, CAP-86, eases migration of contract data during structure updates, reducing friction for developers managing evolving applications.
The full performance gains will be phased in after mainnet as parallel transaction-set downloading is gradually enabled. Stellar says the upgrade is designed to support larger and more complex applications on the network.
For ordinary users, the changes are largely invisible at the surface level. For everyday users, little changes at first glance. Stellar payment systems still move the same way. But behind the scenes, the network just got a meaningful boost in how it handles growth.
Sources:
Stellar Development Foundation: Introducing Adapter, Protocol 28
Stellar Development Foundation: Protocol 28 Upgrade Guide
Coin Gabbar: Stellar Protocol 28 Live on Mainnet

COTI ($COTI) ist mit seiner Privacy-on-Demand-Infrastruktur live auf Avalanche gegangen und markiert damit zum ersten Mal, dass Avalanche-Anwendungen auf vollständig verschlüsselte Token-Transaktionen zugreifen können, ohne dass Nutzer jemals das Avalanche-Ökosystem verlassen müssen.
Was der Launch umfasst
Der Rollout, der am 16. September 2026 stattfand, umfasst zwei Komponenten. Erstens ermöglicht die Privacy-on-Demand-Infrastruktur-Ebene Entwicklern, sensible Daten privat zu verarbeiten und dabei Vermögenswerte und Smart Contracts auf der Avalanche C-Chain beizubehalten. Zweitens ist das COTI Privacy Portal jetzt live und unterstützt zunächst $AVAX und USDC. Das Portal ist für Personen konzipiert, die keine Kryptografen sind: Ein-Klick-Shield- und Unshield-Operationen ermöglichen es Nutzern, Token privat zu halten, zu senden und zu empfangen – über eine einfache Benutzeroberfläche.

Motion Token Crosses $2M Market Cap on Injective
A memecoin called Motion (motion-6:native) has crossed a $2 million market cap on Injective's SproutSomeFun launchpad, drawing more than 3,339 holders since its debut. The milestone is a small but notable sign of growing retail activity within the Injective ecosystem, which has historically focused on derivatives and institutional-grade DeFi infrastructure.
Motion is a community token launched on the Injective blockchain through a bonding-curve launchpad native to the network. The token was distributed via a fair launch with no presale, private sale, or team allocation, and no further tokens can be minted. That structure is consistent with the broader shift toward fairer token distribution models seen across newer launchpads.
How SproutSomeFun Works
SproutSomeFun sets itself apart from earlier token launch models by replacing traditional presales and manual liquidity seeding with bonding curves. A bonding curve is a mathematical pricing mechanism encoded in smart contracts that governs how token prices increase as demand rises. The model delivers what platforms call a fair launch: every buyer enters through the same curve from the same starting point, with no presale or insider allocation funded in advance.
On SproutSomeFun specifically, users can mint tokens in a single transaction through the Injective EVM platform, removing several steps that typically slow down early participation. Tokens that generate enough demand can then graduate into a Choice DEX liquidity pool, giving successful projects a path to deeper, more sustainable trading.
Platforms such as Pumpfun use bonding curves to bootstrap liquidity before moving successful tokens into automated market maker pools through a graduation process. Once a token's market cap on the bonding curve hits the graduation threshold, the curve is closed and the entire liquidity pool is migrated to a deeper AMM pool, automatically and irreversibly. SproutSomeFun follows a broadly similar model, adapted for the Injective chain.
Whether Motion sustains its early momentum will depend on continued community engagement. Memecoin markets are notoriously short-lived, and a $2 million market cap, while encouraging for an early-stage launch, remains modest. Still, the holder count and the structure of the launch suggest organic rather than manufactured demand, which is typically a healthier foundation for any community token.
Sources:
MEXC: Motion (MOTION) Tokenomics
Crypto.news: What is a bonding curve?
Pump.fun: The bonding curve explained

Buterin's Case for AI as a Defensive Tool
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has pushed back against the growing belief that increasingly capable AI systems will make cybersecurity an unwinnable battle for defenders. In a blog post published on May 18, 2026, Buterin argued that AI-assisted formal verification, which uses machine-checkable mathematical proofs to confirm that software behaves as intended, could become one of the most critical tools for securing crypto infrastructure as AI makes vulnerability discovery faster and cheaper.
Formal verification is not a new concept. It is used to assess the correctness of safety-critical systems where failure can have devastating consequences, and in the context of smart contracts, simple errors in design can lead to irrecoverable losses for users. What Buterin argues is that AI can now dramatically lower the cost and complexity of applying it at scale.
The traditional obstacle has been accessibility. Traditional formal verification can be expensive and time-consuming, requiring specialized expertise in theorem provers, proof systems, and mathematical logic. Buterin contends that AI tools can shoulder much of that burden, generating both optimized code and the corresponding mathematical proofs, while developers focus on confirming that the high-level specifications match their actual intentions.
Narrowing the Attack Surface on Ethereum
Buterin was direct about the stakes for the $ETH ecosystem. He argued that AI-assisted formal verification could help secure blockchain networks, smart contracts, and cryptographic systems against software flaws that can expose users to irreversible financial losses. He specifically identified areas where the security properties are well-defined even if the underlying implementation is complex, making them strong candidates for formal methods.
These include quantum-resistant signatures, STARK proof systems, consensus algorithms, and ZK-EVMs, all areas where security properties are simple to define even though the underlying code is extraordinarily complex. Projects already moving in this direction include Arklib, which is working toward a fully formally verified STARK implementation, and evm-asm, which is building an EVM verified against a human-readable reference implementation.
Buterin acknowledged that defining what security means for any given system requires careful analysis, and that formal verification is not a complete solution on its own. But his broader point is that defenders are not helpless: the same AI capabilities that make attacks easier also make rigorous, mathematically grounded defenses more practical than at any point before.
Sources:
CoinDesk: Vitalik Buterin Says AI Formal Verification Could Make Crypto More Secure
Decrypt: Ethereum Founder Says AI Verification Could Help Secure Crypto Networks
CoinTelegraph: Why Vitalik Buterin's AI Formal Verification Idea Still Cannot Promise Bug-Free Crypto

Committee Passes First Federal Crypto Tax Framework
The House Ways and Means Committee voted 38-5 on September 16 to advance the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357), marking what committee chairman Jason Smith called "a historic moment" and "the first-ever tax framework for digital assets."
The bill covers stablecoins, mining and staking, digital asset lending, and transaction fees, and would establish special tax treatment for qualifying dollar-pegged stablecoins and certain crypto lending agreements, while extending wash-sale rules to widely traded digital assets.
Chairman Smith described the legislation as addressing "the uncertainty and burdensome compliance challenges that threaten to undermine the rapidly growing and increasingly popular $2 trillion digital asset economy."
Key Provisions and What Comes Next
The legislation would create a de minimis exemption for certain crypto transaction fees, allowing taxpayers to avoid recognizing gains or losses when digital assets are used to pay qualifying network or transaction fees of $10 or less. That exemption does not apply to service providers doing transactions on behalf of others, and that part of the bill would not go into effect until December 2027.
One area the bill leaves open is the timing of mining and staking income. Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Thomas Barthold told lawmakers that the bill says income earned from validating crypto transactions will be treated as ordinary income, but that it "does not decide when that income must be recognized."
The bill will now be reviewed by the full House, making it the first federal tax framework for digital assets to clear a committee. With the House heading toward its pre-election recess, further action is more likely later in the congressional session.
Sources:
House Ways and Means Committee: Digital Asset Tax Legislation Advances
CoinTelegraph: House Tax Committee Advances Crypto Tax Overhaul in 38-5 Vote
CoinDesk: U.S. House Tax Committee Advances Crypto Tax Bill