South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, has partnered with the Optimism Foundation to build Giwa Chain, a new Ethereum-based Layer 2 blockchain network.

 

Giwa Chain, which will be built on Optimism’s open source OP Stack, will be the first of its kind built on the self-managed tier of Optimism’s OP Enterprise and stems from the growing need for exchanges to build their own blockchains.

 

 

While crypto exchanges using shared chains are not inherently problematic, issues arise as usage increases, making it difficult for these networks to handle the growing workloads of exchanges, including institutional transaction volumes, compliance requirements, and fee economics, which often compound as an exchange scales. For a global exchange like Upbit, which serves more than 13 million users and ranks among the top exchanges by spot trading volume, owning and managing its own blockchain is critical for performance and scalability.

 

By partnering with Optimism to build a self-managed chain, Upbit allows Optimism to manage key technical aspects of the chain’s infrastructure, including tooling and engineering support, while still retaining sovereignty over the chain’s control and overseeing key functions such as the primary sequencer, chain configuration, and operational authority.

 

“Operating our own Giwa Chain is a strategic move for Upbit. Our goal is to provide institutional and retail users with a level of performance and compliance consistent with our existing platform,” said Minseok Jung, Chief Operating Officer of Dunamu Inc.

 

“The Optimism Foundation’s self-managed tier provides a suitable framework, allowing us to maintain operational control while building on established infrastructure. This approach aligns with our requirements for scalability and oversight.”

 

Giwa Chain is currently live on testnet, with mainnet deployment to follow. Dunamu, the parent company of Upbit, has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Optimism Foundation on May 4, outlining key aspects of Giwa Chain, including its architecture reviews, performance benchmarking, and security audits.

 

Crypto Exchanges Building Their Own Chains

There has been an increase in the number of cryptocurrency exchanges building their own layer 2 blockchains, with many doing so for improved infrastructural performance and to gain control over fees, transaction sequencing, user experience, and compliance.

 

The OP Stack has been instrumental in this development, with the Optimism Foundation stating that its OP Stack currently houses over 32 layer 2 blockchain networks, including Binance’s opBNB chain, Kraken’s Ink chain, Gate.io’s Gate Layer, and OKX’s X Layer.

 

 

Social media giant Meta is currently running a pilot program that tests issuing creators’ payouts in stablecoins. “Meta now offers USDC stablecoin payouts via supported crypto wallets on the Solana and Polygon blockchain networks,” the team wrote on its Business Help Center page

 

Since this is still a pilot program, only creators in Colombia and the Philippines are currently eligible for the service, with the program expected to expand to more than 160 countries before the end of the year, according to an X post by Polygon Labs.

 

 

While the announcement was well received by many in the crypto community, a spokesperson for Meta clarified the goal of the initiative, stating that Meta was not issuing its own stablecoin but was instead tapping into Circle’s $77 billion USDC stablecoin, with plans to integrate the stablecoin into its payment infrastructure.

 

The Meta USDC creator payout program is currently supported by several popular crypto wallets, including MetaMask, Phantom, and Binance, with global payments platform Stripe handling the technical infrastructure and serving as the payments provider. Solana and Polygon are the only blockchain networks currently supported for this program.

 

Meta Pushes Again Into Crypto After Setbacks

Meta’s recent move into crypto follows several setbacks it has had to deal with in the past. In 2019, it launched Libra, a cryptocurrency which it said could be used across its different social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

 

However, things did not go as planned, as some stakeholders, such as PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa, which were involved in the project, started pulling out due to scrutiny and backlash from U.S. regulators and from some members of the U.S. Congress.

 

Although Meta made several efforts to save the project, including rebranding it from Libra to Diem, a stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar in an effort to appease federal regulators, nothing worked, as federal regulators stated that the project could not move forward.

 

Other projects associated with Libra and Diem, such as the Novi wallet, a cryptocurrency wallet built by Meta that allowed users to hold and transfer Libra, also failed, and the entire project was eventually wound down. According to Stuart Levey, then CEO of the Diem Association, “it became clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project could not move ahead.”

 

 

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX has launched Agent Payments Protocol (APP), a new payment protocol that allows AI agents to perform commercial activities.

 

The new payment protocol, according to OKX, is an open standard that defines how AI agents communicate and negotiate, pay for services, and pay each other. It also, for the first time, allows AI agents to move beyond simple payments and into full-scale commerce.

 

 

“In the past few months, AI agents moved from answering questions to running workflows, managing business processes, and acting autonomously on behalf of users,” OKX wrote in a blog post. “The bottleneck shifted from intelligence to commerce - not just paying, but the full cycle of doing business: quoting, negotiating, escrowing funds, metering usage, settling, and resolving disputes.”

 

This existing problem among AI agents is what OKX aims to solve with its new Agent Payments Protocol (APP), allowing agents not only to manage single payment requests but also to manage payment requests across multiple levels.

 

Inside the Agent Payment Protocol

The agent payment protocol (APP) from OKX is an open standard designed to work across all chains, especially the Solana and Ethereum blockchains.

 

APP unlocks new capabilities for AI agents, making it possible for these agents to operate and communicate autonomously across the full commerce lifecycle, pay each other through agent-to-agent payments, and also allowing AI agents to perform upfront and top-up payments, including deductions.

 

At its implementation layer is the payment software development kit (SDK) that makes it possible for developers to accept and make agent payments with just a few lines of code. According to the blog announcement, the agent payment protocol supports a wide variety of payments, including one-time payments, batch payments, pay-as-you-go, and escrow payments, which OKX says is coming soon.

 

Embedded within the payment protocol is the OKX self-custodial agentic wallet, which supports over 20 blockchains. Since the wallet is secured by means of a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), a hardware-based security environment, the wallet’s private keys and sensitive operations are kept highly secure.

 

Despite its early launch, the OKX agent payment protocol is currently supported by major cloud infrastructure firms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Alibaba Cloud, as well as blockchain companies such as Uniswap, Paxos, MoonPay, Zerion, and Nansen.

 

With the launch of its payment protocol, OKX joins companies such as Coinbase, Stripe, and OpenAI, which have already launched their payment protocols, namely x402, Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), and Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), respectively.

 

 

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of Amazon, has integrated the data standards and services of the decentralized oracle network Chainlink into its platform, enabling connectivity between traditional cloud infrastructure and blockchain networks.

 

The integration, according to AWS, aims to address the blockchain oracle problem. Although blockchain networks operate as decentralized ledgers, they are not inherently designed to connect with external data sources, application programming interfaces (APIs), and other blockchains. This limitation presents a significant challenge for developers building digital asset solutions and tokenization products that depend on real-world data for operational efficiency.

 

 

By integrating Chainlink data standards into its marketplace, AWS addresses this connectivity problem, making it possible for blockchain networks to connect to its cloud infrastructure while maintaining the security, compliance, and reliability standards required by financial institutions.

 

The integration brings three Chainlink oracle services into the AWS Marketplace. These include Chainlink Data Feeds, which provide access to decentralized price and market data for asset valuation, assessment, and risk management; Chainlink Data Streams, which deliver fast and secure data that enables on-chain systems to respond to market movements in real time and manage risk dynamically; and Chainlink Proof of Reserve, which provides secure and verifiable on-chain reserve attestations for stablecoins and other tokenized assets.

 

Through this integration, enterprises will be able to build tokenization solutions that leverage AWS cloud capabilities alongside blockchain functionality without needing to independently solve the blockchain oracle problem. Developers will also be able to connect external data sources to blockchain applications through secure oracle networks while using AWS compute resources.

 

Platforms Integrate with Decentralized Oracle Networks

Decentralized oracle networks, which are blockchain-based middleware systems that securely bridge real-world data to blockchain networks using several independent nodes, have increasingly been integrated into platforms in recent times.

 

Just this month, Polymarket integrated Pyth Network into its prediction market platform. Through this integration, Polymarket enabled traders to place predictions on real-life commodities such as gold and silver, as well as U.S. stocks, including NVIDIA and Apple.

 

Allor Network, also this month, integrated the decentralized oracle network Band Protocol into its platform, allowing for the secure delivery of real-world data for its Web3 applications.

 

Chainlink decentralized oracles have also been integrated into traditional finance platforms, including SWIFT and SIX Group, the organization behind Switzerland’s principal stock exchange, the SIX Swiss Exchange, with plans underway to integrate them into the Australian Stock Exchange platform.

 

 

Rare Network and SCRIB3 are teaming up to launch Amplify Cardano, a $2 million community-driven marketing and events program that could fundamentally shift how the world's most technically rigorous blockchain tells its story.

 

If you've spent any real time in the Cardano ecosystem, you already know the frustration. The technology is genuinely impressive. The community is deep, global, and unusually committed. The governance transition Cardano pulled off last year was historic. And yet, ask someone outside of crypto to name a breakout project built on Cardano and you'll mostly get silence.

 

That's the gap Amplify Cardano is trying to close, and the two organizations behind it have the credentials to actually do it.

 

 

Two Prongs, One Clear Goal
The proposal, expected to be formally put on chain in the coming days, is currently seeking $2 million in treasury funding and built around a two-part structure. The first prong is a Community Accelerator Fund of $1 million, designed to give 3-5 high-potential ecosystem projects the full-stack marketing support they need to compete with the Jupiters and Jitos of the Solana world. We're talking brand development, paid media, PR, website builds, social media management, the whole thing. And not at inflated agency rates, either. Projects accepted into the program will receive services at 30-50% below standard market pricing, which is a genuinely meaningful discount in an industry where a monthly social media retainer alone can run $25,000.

 

SCRIB3, the crypto-native creative and communications agency co-leading this effort, isn't a newcomer to this space. Founded in late 2022, the firm has quietly built one of the more impressive rosters in web3 marketing, working across DeFi protocols, Layer 1s, and infrastructure projects. Its team includes a former aerospace engineer turned crypto growth strategist who has worked with over 40 protocols, alongside partners with backgrounds in strategy at Uber and private equity. SCRIB3 has also been embedded in Cardano governance for some time now, including sending team members to the Constitutional Convention in Buenos Aires in late 2024 and serving on the Growth and Marketing Committee. They know the community. They know the gaps.

 

 

Grassroots at Scale: Rare Network's Events Machine
The second prong is where things get especially interesting for the long-suffering Cardano community member who has watched the ecosystem struggle to show up, across the globe... where it absolutely should have a presence. Rare Network will manage a $1 million Community-Led Events and Marketing Fund, built to support 100-plus projects and individual contributors over 18 months with grants ranging from $500 to $15,000 per request.

 

That might sound modest at the individual level, but the aggregate effect is the point. The vision is coverage and frequency. Cardano should have something happening somewhere, all the time. A local meetup in Lagos. A DeFi workshop in Buenos Aires. Comprehensive content creation. A hackathon at local universities. A networking social at Consensus. Social Media Campaigns. All of it coordinated, funded, and reported back to the community through Rare Network's management layer.

 

Rare Network's track record here is hard to argue with. The company has been running Rare Evo, a premier blockchain conferece, every year for five years now.  Initially spinning out of a pure Cardano Community event, Rare Evo has become a destination for multiple chains, spanning the entire industry. From TradFi to DeFi, Institutions and Policy-makers, and NFTs and Gaming. The Las Vegas event covers every aspect of the indsutry and draws thousands of attendees, pulls over a million related video views across its productions, and has featured Charles Hoskinson, Frederik Gregaard, and Nikhil Joshi from Cardano's founding leadership on stage. Beyond that annual flagship, the team has produced more than 60 side events and meetups at major industry gatherings including Consensus, TOKEN2049, ETHDenver, Paris Blockchain Week, and the Cardano Summit. Their Rare Social events average over 2,000 registered attendees each.

 

Perhaps most tellingly, Rare Network was named a formal event partner in Cardano's Unified Global Events Marketing Strategy alongside the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO, a governance proposal that passed with nearly 80% DRep support.

 

 

Fixing What Grants Programs Get Wrong
The proposal is also refreshingly honest about why previous approaches have fallen short. Most Layer 1 ecosystems try to solve the marketing problem through grants programs, but those programs fail at a high rate. They hand projects money and then leave them to figure out the rest, which means navigating agency RFPs, building marketing plans from scratch, and hoping things click, usually on a deadline. Most teams, especially lean early-stage ones, simply aren't equipped to execute that way.

 

The Amplify Cardano model is different. Instead of funding and stepping back, SCRIB3 does the work directly for the Accelerator projects alongside the Accelerator projects, with KPIs and statements of work approved by Cardano's Growth and Marketing Committee and Product Committee. The program isn't just writing checks; it's delivering results against a defined standard with oversight built in from the start.

 

On the community side, Rare Network has already piloted the model. The Amplify Cardano program launched in early 2026 through Project Catalyst Fund 14 and funded five events and two marketing campaigns before the Catalyst program was paused. That pause, actually, underscores exactly why a dedicated fund managed by experienced operators makes sense. Community organizers shouldn't be held hostage to governance cycles when they want to throw an event next month.

 

The Numbers Make Sense
At $2 million total, the ask represents less than 0.02% of ADA's market cap, and is meaningfully below what comparable ecosystems invest in equivalent programming. The Cardano community's own Q4 2025 GMC survey ranked marketing support for builders second and community events third among their top priorities for treasury spending. This proposal answers both in a single package, with experienced operators who have already demonstrated they can deliver.

 

Cardano has spent a decade building something genuinely worth talking about. Now it has a real plan for making sure the rest of the world hears about it.

 

 

MetaMask cofounder Dan Finlay has left Consensys after spending about a decade working with the self-custodial wallet firm.

 

Finlay announced his departure from Consensys in a Thursday post on X, citing burnout and the need to spend more time with his family. He also wished the Consensys team well, saying the team has an amazing road ahead of them.

 

 

Since joining Consensys in 2016, Dan Finlay, alongside cofounder Aaron Davis, worked hand in hand on the development of MetaMask, Consensys’s self-custodial wallet. Finlay played an instrumental role in shaping MetaMask, transforming it from a browser-based Ethereum wallet into one of the mainstream crypto wallets, enabling access to decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and many other on-chain services.

 

Finlay was also key in the design and creation of some of MetaMask’s technical features, including Snaps, a MetaMask feature that allows third-party developers to safely extend MetaMask’s capabilities. Some of the capabilities added through Snaps include the ability to explore other blockchains such as Bitcoin, Solana, and Cosmos, as well as improved security features and the ability to receive warnings about malicious transactions occurring within a MetaMask wallet.

 

On his last day at Consensys, Finlay highlighted the launch of Advanced Permissions, ERC-7715, stating that he was over the moon regarding its launch. Advanced Permissions is a feature that allows decentralized applications to request pre-approved permissions from a MetaMask user to execute transactions on their behalf.

 

With this Advanced Permissions ERC-7715 feature, a user can activate or grant a particular request in their MetaMask wallet without having to manually approve it repeatedly.

 

Voluntary Exits Not Uncommon Among Crypto Founders

Like Dan Finlay, it is not uncommon to see crypto founders voluntarily step away from work to focus on other important aspects of life, especially their families.

 

On the same day Finlay announced his exit from ConsenSys, Bitcoin advocate and podcaster Preston Pysh announced that he was stepping away from public work and social media to focus on his wife and children.

 

Earlier this month, Ethereum researcher Josh Stark announced his departure from the Ethereum Foundation after spending five years there. According to an X post, Stark said he was stepping away from work to focus more on his family and friends.

 

 

Volo Protocol, a decentralized finance protocol built on the Sui blockchain, has suffered a security breach that led to the loss of approximately $3.5 million in digital assets.

 

In an effort to maintain transparency, the team in an X post on Wednesday publicly announced the security breach. According to the team, the attack only affected assets in selected vaults, including Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Matrixdock Gold XAUm, and USDC (USDC).

 

 

On detecting the breach, the team said it acted quickly to contain it and minimize further damage. It stated, “We detected the attack, immediately notified the Sui Foundation and ecosystem partners to contain the damage, and froze the vaults to prevent any further exposure.”

 

As of the time of its first reporting on the incident, the Volo team said that the $28 million in total value locked across other vaults was safe, adding that all vaults on the protocol were temporarily frozen pending a full postmortem and remediation. The team also said it was in damage control mode and was actively working with on chain investigators and ecosystem partners to recover the stolen funds.

 

The team released updates on the hack

Since the hack happened, the Volo team has, in three separate updates, transparently informed the community about the efforts being made to recover the stolen funds.

 

In the first two updates, the team said it was already working with ecosystem partners and had successfully frozen approximately $500 million of the stolen funds, while also intercepting and blocking the hacker’s attempt to bridge 19.6 WBTC. According to the Volo team, these funds were no longer under the hacker’s control.

 

In a third update, the team said it had already frozen $2 million of the stolen funds, and that together with ecosystem partners and security teams, it had flagged the hacker’s EVM addresses across the majority of centralized exchanges, swappers, and KYC tools.

 

The Volo protocol hack came shortly after the KelpDAO exploit and the Drift Protocol exploit, which led to a combined loss of over $570 million, and are currently the largest DeFi hacks that have occurred this year. So far, over $770 million has been lost to DeFi hacks this year.

 

 

Coinbase dropped a new public discovery tool aimed at making it easier for both people and AI agents to find and use paid online services that settle instantly with crypto micropayments.

 

The platform went live today at agentic.market and works as an open directory for thousands of services built on the x402 protocol. You can jump in and browse immediately without login, API keys, nothing like that required. It pulls fresh data straight from real payments moving through Coinbase’s Developer Platform, so you see live pricing, how much volume each service is actually getting, how many different users are paying, and the latest activity timestamps. This release picks up right where Coinbase left off with its Agentic Wallets back in February, which first let AI agents hold their own funds and spend them independently. 

 

The x402 Bazaar is where paid online services show up once they’re set up with the right discovery info and start receiving payments, so you don’t have to submit a separate listing. It acts as x402’s backend index, tracking what’s available, how it’s priced, and what’s happening on-chain, while Agentic.Market turns that into a public marketplace where people and AI agents can easily search, compare, and plug these services into their workflows. This includes things like AI model runs, data and analytics feeds, media tools for images and video, search and scraping services, social and messaging integrations, core infrastructure like storage and compute, and even trading tools for moving assets around. Coinbase says the protocol is built so both humans and machines can pay programmatically for things like paid APIs, pay‑per‑call tools, and agents buying access at runtime, so the whole setup is really about making it simple.

 

 

Coinbase noted that the x402 protocol already has more than 165 million transactions and moved roughly 50 million dollars in volume, with over 480,000 agents actively taking part across around 100,000 services. The directory puts the busiest and most reliable ones front and center, which helps both humans and machines figure out what is actually getting real traction day to day. 

 

This is about smoothing out the little daily frictions that slow down building, and rolling out useful agents that can move naturally between on-chain steps like shifting assets or chasing better yields and off-chain jobs like running inference or grabbing fresh data, all paid for through in stablecoins. Teams handling internal automation or tools that face customers now have one, clean spot with data to check out providers without digging through random docs or dealing with payment mismatches. Work in DeFi or tokenization gets clearer ways to add agent driven logic that works natively instead of forcing awkward bridges or extra steps.

 

This is still early, so real momentum will come down to more services jumping on the x402 standard and agents getting better at handling payment details and safety checks on their own. Even with that, the way it indexes itself automatically and stays completely open shows Coinbase leaning toward letting the ecosystem expand through actual use rather than any kind of control. Groups that start implementing x402 features into their agents today could end up in a much better spot, as these machine-to-machine payments become normal.

 

 

Wrapped XRP (wXRP) is now live on Solana, issued by regulated custodian Hex Trust and bridged securely via LayerZero, backed 1:1 of XRP that lets users trade, provide liquidity, lend, and earn yield across Solana’s DeFi apps. 

 

 

This is the latest piece of a multi-chain rollout that Hex Trust detailed back in December 2025, as the same wXRP infrastructure is already operating on Ethereum, Optimism, and HyperEVM, giving XRP holders regulated on-ramps into deeper liquidity pools wherever DeFi happens. RippleX SVP Markus Infanger, noted the move addresses growing demand to use XRP across the wider crypto ecosystem and it aligns with Ripple’s own RLUSD stablecoin work. LayerZero handles the bridging that has captured the majority of reliable cross-chain volume after earlier bridge exploits elsewhere.

 

Major Solana based players such as Ondo Finance which has expanded tokenized treasury and equity products onto the network, and Superstate whose leadership has publicly endorsed Solana as one of only two viable chains for RWAs work alongside Ethereum now operate in a way where they can integrate wXRP straight into liquidity pools lending markets and atomic settlement flows. 

 

At the same time, big institutions like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton are building on Solana with their own tokenized market funds. BlackRock brought its BUIDL fund  which holds cash and Treasuries to deliver dollar yields to Solana, giving qualified investors fast, low-cost access to on-chain returns. Franklin Templeton did the same with its on-chain US Government Money Market Fund. WisdomTree brought its tokenized funds covering money markets, stocks, bonds, alternatives, and balanced portfolios, VanEck launched its low-fee Treasury bill fund VBILL, Hamilton Lane added tokenized access to private infrastructure and secondary funds, and Apollo made its ACRED private credit product available as collateral in protocols like Morpho. This lets firms keep their traditional compliance and custody setups intact while plugging these assets straight into Solana, so institutions can easily use wXRP for liquidity, collateral, or quick settlements.

 

Solana has been scaling RWA activity with tokenized ecosystems on-chain surpassing two billion dollars in value and protocols like Kamino handling over one billion dollars in real world asset deposits across isolated lending markets, where institutions borrow against assets and earn yield from cash flows. Ripple has targeted these kinds of entities through its custody solutions and partnerships with banks, including BBVA, DBS Bank, DZ Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, and more recently Kyobo Life Insurance, for on-chain settlement and staking capabilities that now extend naturally to Solana networks.

 

There’s support across Phantom wallet, Jupiter Exchange, Meteora, and Titan Exchange, ensures that the infrastructure is ready for immediate use, which removes one of the frictions that has kept payment assets like XRP siloed from builders who prefer Solana for its sub-cent fees and near instant finality.

 

 

Global payments giant Visa has launched a validator node on Tempo’s Layer 1 blockchain network, enabling it to participate directly in the verification and processing of transactions on the network.

 

The validator role follows a six month collaboration between Visa and Tempo’s engineering team, which worked to integrate Visa’s secure infrastructure into the Tempo network. According to Visa, the validator will be configured and managed in house.

 

With the integration of Visa’s infrastructure into the Tempo network, Visa joins Stripe and Zodia Custody as the first external validators to verify and process transactions on the Tempo blockchain, with more validators expected in the future.

 

 

Since Visa processes billions of transactions globally, its role as an anchor validator places it in a crucial position in securing Tempo’s blockchain and strengthening its resilience, reliability and performance for stablecoin payment use cases.

 

Speaking on the collaboration, Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, said the move highlights Visa’s role in supporting the development of stablecoin payment systems and its commitment to reliability, security, and trust in blockchain networks.

 

What is Tempo Layer-1 Blockchain? 

Tempo is a purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain designed for large-scale stablecoin payments and other real-world financial applications. Although Tempo was initially incubated by Stripe and the crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, it became an independent company with its own team, Tempo Labs, in September 2025.

 

Unlike most Layer 1 blockchains, which are designed for general-purpose decentralized finance activity, the Tempo blockchain was designed for fast, low-cost, and reliable stablecoin transfers that traditional blockchains often struggle to support under high load.

 

The Tempo blockchain was also designed for agentic and machine-to-machine commerce. Through Stripe’s Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), the Tempo network enables autonomous AI agents to make payments and conduct other real-world commerce activities without human intervention.

 

Visa Intensifies Push for Blockchain Adoption

Visa remains one of the few traditional finance (TradFi) giants spearheading global adoption and integration of blockchain technology into TradFi payment infrastructure. Similar to its most recent Tempo validator role, in March of this year, Visa became the first major payment company to serve as a super validator on Canton Network, a privacy-focused institutional blockchain network, with plans to also become one of the validators on Circle’s Arc blockchain.

 

It has also expanded its push for blockchain-based payments, including the launch of USDC settlement on Solana for US residents, enabling support for four stablecoins on its platform, and powering over 130 stablecoin card programs in more than 40 countries.

 

 

During a recent Fireside Dev chat, the Midnight team and Charles Hoskinson walked through how the partner chain model is actually playing out in practice. Rather than simply opening the gates and hoping everything works, they're taking a methodical, phased approach to de-risk the entire network before scaling up just like Cardano. Smart contract deployment is currently limited to an approved list of trusted partners, and any attempt to deploy outside that whitelist gets rejected at the network layer before it even reaches a block producer.

 

The team identified three specific risks they wanted to eliminate early on with value at risk by preventing exploits in untested contracts that could lock up real funds, privacy at risk by ensuring the ZK proving system is tested in a controlled environment, and state space at risk by avoiding cheap state inflation attacks while they refine their cost models.

 

These guardrails are designed to be temporary and milestone driven, expected to lift in 60 to 90 days once the network proves itself on value handling, privacy guarantees, and ledger stability. As Charles put it, you have to build the basement before you build the house. Currently Midnight runs on a federated set of high-assurance node operators, including Google Cloud, and this approach delivers the stability and institutional-grade uptime that enterprises require. As technical milestones are hit, the expansion sequence will open the door to broader validator participation and decentralization.

 

The critical point here is that Midnight isn't operating in isolation. It's built to strengthen Cardano, not compete with it. Every NIGHT token holder is structurally tied back to the Cardano ecosystem through the dual token model: NIGHT is primarily used to secure the network, DUST is generated from simply holding NIGHT and used as gas for transactions. SPOs benefit directly through new staking and operational revenue opportunities while the partner-chain design forces infrastructure upgrades that strengthen the entire Cardano network. When Midnight succeeds, Cardano succeeds. The broader industry has spent too long overlooking this ecosystem.

 

The team is focused on making the UX easier for end users through the Lace wallet that lets anyone generate DUST directly from their existing Cardano assets. Teams are building passkey-based onboarding so users never need seed phrases, and they're exploring sponsored transactions where enterprises or banks cover DUST costs entirely, meaning users never think about buying gas.

 

Real integrations are happening right now with SundaeSwap rolling out capacity exchanges with passkey onboarding, letting users create a Midnight-compatible wallet in seconds without dealing with a 24-word phrase. The broader vision includes the Midnight Passport and integrations with everyday tools like Google Drive, biometrics, and QR-code account creation in under 60 seconds. The goal is for a new user to go from zero to fully onboarded without ever seeing the blockchain.

 

The 1AM Wallet v5.0.1 has officially launched, bringing native Cardano integration that lets users spend, manage, and interact directly with ADA and Cardano assets without any bridges or third-party tools. It also introduces one-click DUST generation from within the wallet itself, along with a complete UI redesign, doubled sync speeds, and a significantly lower memory footprint for a faster and lighter experience overall.

 

Midnight brings serious credibility to the ecosystem with companies like Google and Vodafone involved from the early stages, along with fresh capital. By offloading private transactions and shielded smart contracts to the sidechain, it reduces mainnet congestion and allows each chain to focus on what it does best. The team is transparent about current limitations instead of overhyping what doesn't exist yet. They're iterating and learning in public, which stands in sharp contrast to the move-fast-and-break-things culture that has torched so many projects in this space.

 

Midnight isn't taking anything away from Cardano, but it's adding a privacy layer that institutions genuinely need and creating new earning opportunities for operators. The foundation is being laid right now, and the finished structure is going to justify the investment.

 

 

Hyperliquid's RWA trading just hit a new all time high, with open interest crossing $2.3 billion on its blockchain which says a lot about how much liquidity is actually flowing into real world assets through a decentralized venue. The platform has quietly become a go-to spot for trading, building apps, and launching tokens all in one place, and the RWA growth is starting to grow rapidly. It’s fees are competing with top blockchains and stable coin companies within crypto.

 

 

On March 31, Cointelegraph reported that Ripple Prime expanded its Hyperliquid integration with HIP-3. That means institutions now get seamless on-chain perpetuals on traditional assets like gold, silver, oil, and even compute prices.

 

This is the kind of bridge that allows retail to hedge oil exposure at 3 a.m on a Sunday when traditional futures are closed. The same rails powering crypto perps now handle real-world commodities that move markets worldwide. It's infrastructure that pulls capital on-chain because the UX finally matches what people expect from a modern trading venue.

 

On the prime brokerage side, a traditional S&P futures trade runs through six different entities: prime broker, FCM, CME Clearing, and so on with multiple fee layers, T+1 settlement, financing charges, and all the custody overhead that comes with it. On HIP-3, connect your wallet, post USDC margin, trade the perp, and settle instantly on-chain. One fee, self-custody, the smart contract is the clearinghouse, and the blockchain handles custody. It's making large chunks of what they actually do look pretty unnecessary, once the regulatory picture clears up. 

 

Hyperliquid's terms of service explicitly block US users, and enforce this with IP geoblocking, so if you're in the States you'll hit a wall at app.hyperliquid.xyz. The underlying protocol is fully permissionless since it's non-custodial and requires no KYC, but using it from the US still carries real regulatory risk given the CFTC's jurisdiction over leveraged perps. In February 2026 they launched a $29 million Policy Center in D.C. led by Jake Chervinsky, pushing for regulatory clarity around on-chain derivatives. Until something like the CLARITY Act or formal CFTC guidance moves things forward, the restriction is basically the protocol protecting itself while it keeps running 24/7 for the rest of the world. For US builders and investors, the play is watching that policy push closely because when the rails open, the infrastructure is already battle tested and ready to go.

 

Non-crypto assets on Hyperliquid with HIP-3 markets now cover licensed indices like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, individual equities, commodities, and even compute perps tied to GPU rental rates for H100, H200, and A100 chips through projects like Global Compute Index and Hyperbolic. At peak moments these non-crypto pairs have accounted for up to 45% of total volume, with HIP-3 open interest recently sitting around $1.9 billion.

 

Late last year, Aster looked like it could replace Hyperliquid with BNB Chain speed, incentives, and early buzz that some called the “Hyperliquid killer.” Hyperliquid has pulled ahead in TVL, open interest, fees, and real value returned to holders. Aster remains solid, yet Hyperliquid’s dedicated L1 edge with tighter spreads, deeper books, and consistent performance has widened the gap.

 

 

@CosimoCapital posted a thread making a pretty compelling case for why a future proposal of HIP-4 prediction markets could be a serious unlock. The core problem with most prediction market platforms is thin liquidity and parlays that just don't work because every market is isolated from everything else. Hyperliquid flips that by letting prediction markets tap into the same infrastructure already handling massive perpetuals and commodities volume. "When prediction markets share a unified liquidity pool with perpetual markets," Cosimo wrote, "the parlay math transforms completely." One account, cross-margined across oil perps, equity moves, and event outcomes, all settling instantly. It's not just another betting app. It could end up being "the everything market for global event risk."

 

 

This opens up some genuinely interesting scenarios with macro hedges like "if CPI beats and the Fed holds and BTC closes green," or geopolitical risk desks chaining election outcomes to commodity moves, parametric insurance, treasury automation, you name it. Every multi-leg position multiplies fee events too, so five legs means five burns, which turns HIP-4 volume into structural HYPE supply reduction over time. Hyperliquid is pulling in roughly $700 million in annualized trading fees from its perpetuals and spot markets, and around 97 to 99% of it flows automatically into the Assistance Fund, which runs daily HYPE buybacks on a continuous basis. There's constant structural demand and deflationary pressure on circulating supply whether the market is up, down, or sideways.

 

And yet CEXs still dominate headlines, but Hyperliquid delivers the speed and depth traders love as everything is transparent, on-chain, and runs non-stop. For builders shipping interoperability tools, this is the tool that makes cross-border and cross-asset trading feel native.

 

Hyperliquid is quietly becoming a 24/7 venue where crypto-native capital meets macro and physical assets without intermediaries. The current restriction is more about protecting the protocol long term than anything else, and the policy push happening in DC is very much part of the plan. Once clarity comes, the floodgates will open and give a much needed update to trading.