Cari Raises $32.5M From a Consortium of US Banks
Cari has raised $32.5 million in the first tranche of its initial funding round, entirely from banks. Glacier Bank joined the six original design-partner banks: First Horizon, Huntington, KeyBank, M&T Bank, Old National and SouthState.
The all-bank cap table is unusual for a crypto-adjacent startup and underlines Cari's pitch: give regional and community banks a way to move money on-chain, in real time and around the clock, without ceding control to third-party stablecoins. Full production is targeted for the end of 2026.
Cari has raised $32.5 million in the first tranche of its initial funding round, entirely from banks. Glacier Bank joined the six original design-partner banks: First Horizon, Huntington, KeyBank, M&T Bank, Old National and SouthState.
Cari runs a permissioned Layer 2 governed by its member banks, letting chartered institutions issue tokenized versions of their own commercial bank deposits, liabilities that stay on the bank's balance sheet rather than moving to an outside stablecoin issuer. The network already counts more than 30 committed banks representing over $10 trillion in combined assets, with roughly 40 more in talks. Cari reached a minimum viable product in March and delivered its full product suite in July, though it remains in pre-production.
The all-bank cap table is unusual for a crypto-adjacent startup and underlines Cari's pitch: give regional and community banks a way to move money on-chain, in real time and around the clock, without ceding control to third-party stablecoins. Full production is targeted for the end of 2026.
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Soul Protocol Prepares Its Cross-Chain Mainnet Launch
Soul Protocol, the LayerZero-based cross-chain lending network, is preparing to launch its mainnet next month, moving into production after a testnet that drew more than 182,000 users and 80,000 wallets and processed over 463,000 cross-chain transactions.
If the launch lands on schedule, Soul joins a wave of omnichain money markets betting that the next phase of DeFi is chain-agnostic, with liquidity that follows the user rather than the network.
Soul Protocol, the LayerZero-based cross-chain lending network, is preparing to launch its mainnet next month, moving into production after a testnet that drew more than 182,000 users and 80,000 wallets and processed over 463,000 cross-chain transactions.
Soul's pitch is to fix DeFi's liquidity fragmentation. Rather than bridging assets or minting wrapped tokens, it uses LayerZero messaging to let users lend and borrow native assets directly across chains such as Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism and Avalanche. At mainnet the team runs its token generation event, converting testnet Seed points into the $SO token. Soul has raised roughly $10 million to date, including a $4M private round backed by angels from Coinbase, LayerZero and Flowdesk.
If the launch lands on schedule, Soul joins a wave of omnichain money markets betting that the next phase of DeFi is chain-agnostic, with liquidity that follows the user rather than the network.
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Bitget Launches H100 & B200 GPU Compute Perpetuals
Quoted in USD per GPU-hour and settled in USDT, the perps trade 24/7 with leverage of up to 10x, letting traders take a view on compute prices without buying GPUs or signing cloud rental agreements.
The launch lands ahead of CME Group, which is scheduled to list its own H100 and B200 GPU rental-price futures in October, and extends Bitget's "Universal Exchange" model beyond crypto, equities and commodities into compute.
Quoted in USD per GPU-hour and settled in USDT, the perps trade 24/7 with leverage of up to 10x, letting traders take a view on compute prices without buying GPUs or signing cloud rental agreements.
The contracts follow the H100 and B200 GPU Rental Price Indices from Silicon Data, which standardize the average hourly rental cost of each chip across multiple cloud and compute providers. The move turns one of the core input costs of AI into a directly tradable market.
The launch lands ahead of CME Group, which is scheduled to list its own H100 and B200 GPU rental-price futures in October, and extends Bitget's "Universal Exchange" model beyond crypto, equities and commodities into compute.
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Cronos Rewinds Its Chain to Undo $120M Tectonic Hack
Cronos rolled back its blockchain to reverse a $120M exploit of lending protocol Tectonic, restoring most affected balances but confirming in a post-mortem that $9.19 million had already left the network and cannot be recovered.
The $9.19 million that escaped before the halt, about 7.6% of the affected funds, is beyond the rollback's reach. Cronos did not name the attacker or say what will happen to the missing money.
Cronos rolled back its blockchain to reverse a $120M exploit of lending protocol Tectonic, restoring most affected balances but confirming in a post-mortem that $9.19 million had already left the network and cannot be recovered.
On August 30, an attacker manipulated the price of TONIC, Tectonic's governance token, and used the inflated asset as collateral to borrow $120.4 million across nine lending markets. Validators halted the chain, then rolled it back to block 90,896,188, the last block before the attack, discarding 10,961 blocks, about one hour and 54 minutes of history. The reorg restored roughly $111.2 million of impacted value to its pre-exploit state.
The $9.19 million that escaped before the halt, about 7.6% of the affected funds, is beyond the rollback's reach. Cronos did not name the attacker or say what will happen to the missing money.
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Ethereum Targets a Quantum-Resistant L1 by 2029
Ethereum Foundation has set a December 2029 target to make Ethereum's base layer quantum-resistant, publishing a research roadmap that spans the chain's execution, consensus and data layers alongside its first unified tier list for a network upgrade.
Beyond the next fork, the roadmap names five cross-upgrade research areas that will shape Ethereum for years: fast finality, post-quantum security, privacy, state, and zkEVM, with post-quantum cryptography flagged as the defining challenge.
Ethereum Foundation has set a December 2029 target to make Ethereum's base layer quantum-resistant, publishing a research roadmap that spans the chain's execution, consensus and data layers alongside its first unified tier list for a network upgrade.
In a parallel post, the cluster graded all 62 EIPs proposed for the Hegota upgrade, drawing 397 assessments from about 60 protocol specialists across nine teams. Two proposals earned the top S-tier "must ship" rating: EIP-7805 (FOCIL), a fork-choice enforced inclusion-list design that hardens the chain against censorship, and EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions), a core account-abstraction change. Another 15 were rated A-tier "expected to ship", while 28 were rejected outright.
Beyond the next fork, the roadmap names five cross-upgrade research areas that will shape Ethereum for years: fast finality, post-quantum security, privacy, state, and zkEVM, with post-quantum cryptography flagged as the defining challenge.
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Mapping Summer Gainers. Coins That Actually Grew
Two ways to read top gainer, and they barely overlap. By price, the summer went to Akedo and Bitway. But a lot of that is just a small base moving. Rank by actual dollars added to FDV and the board flips: Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP.
One name shows up on both sides, Zcash, +182% in price and +$12.5B in value. Worth keeping both columns in mind before calling anything the "best" performer.
Two ways to read top gainer, and they barely overlap. By price, the summer went to Akedo and Bitway. But a lot of that is just a small base moving. Rank by actual dollars added to FDV and the board flips: Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP.
One name shows up on both sides, Zcash, +182% in price and +$12.5B in value. Worth keeping both columns in mind before calling anything the "best" performer.
Robinhood Taps Crypto com for Prediction Markets
Robinhood has struck a deal to bring Crypto.com's yes-or-no event contracts into its prediction-markets hub and take an equity stake in the crypto exchange, in a move first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Prediction markets have turned into a competitive battleground this year, with brokers and exchanges racing to lock in contract supply. Crypto com tie-up deepens Robinhood's bid to be the default destination for event-contract trading in the US.
Robinhood has struck a deal to bring Crypto.com's yes-or-no event contracts into its prediction-markets hub and take an equity stake in the crypto exchange, in a move first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The partnership adds Crypto com to Robinhood's growing roster of contract suppliers, which already includes Kalshi, Interactive Brokers' ForecastEx and Rothera, the prediction exchange Robinhood launched with Susquehanna in 2025. Plugging in another CFTC-registered venue widens the range of outcome-based markets Robinhood's retail users can trade without leaving the app, while the equity stake ties the two firms together as prediction markets become one of the fastest-growing corners of retail trading.
Prediction markets have turned into a competitive battleground this year, with brokers and exchanges racing to lock in contract supply. Crypto com tie-up deepens Robinhood's bid to be the default destination for event-contract trading in the US.
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Circle to Acquire Cross-Border Payments Firm Tazapay
Circle has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tazapay, a Singapore-based B2B cross-border payments company, in a move to push USDC deeper into global business settlement.
The deal is expected to close in 2027, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals including the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Circle says Tazapay customers should see no disruption to service, APIs, pricing or support in the meantime.
Circle has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tazapay, a Singapore-based B2B cross-border payments company, in a move to push USDC deeper into global business settlement.
Tazapay brings more than $25 billion in annualized payment volume, 60-plus banking and fintech partners, and local payout rails spanning over 100 markets, with roughly 60% of its transaction volume already touching stablecoins. Circle plans to fold those rails into its own network to originate and terminate cross-border payments around the clock, a step CEO Jeremy Allaire framed as accelerating worldwide USDC adoption. Tazapay has been a design partner for Circle Payments Network since 2025.
The deal is expected to close in 2027, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals including the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Circle says Tazapay customers should see no disruption to service, APIs, pricing or support in the meantime.
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Kolo Enters the Euro-Card Race with IBAN transfers
What sets it apart — BTC cashback with no token to hold and no stake, plus 0% FX on stablecoins. The tradeoff is real: Wirex sends free, Kolo charges €1. But on rewards and FX, Kolo leads the table.
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What sets it apart — BTC cashback with no token to hold and no stake, plus 0% FX on stablecoins. The tradeoff is real: Wirex sends free, Kolo charges €1. But on rewards and FX, Kolo leads the table.
Try Kolo → get.kolo.xyz/p704299
Visa Taps Onchain Lending to Finance Stablecoin Card Programs
Visa is combining its VisaNet settlement data with onchain lending infrastructure to help stablecoin-linked card programs access working capital, as stablecoin settlement volume surpasses a $20B annualized run rate, up more than 15x YoY.
Visa is working with decentralized lending platform Credit Coop to use settlement data alongside onchain transaction records for credit underwriting, while smart contracts can automate collateral management, disbursements and repayments.
The initiative could make settlement financing more accessible to smaller stablecoin card issuers while creating a data-driven path for programs to graduate from onchain revolving facilities to larger institutional credit lines.
Visa is combining its VisaNet settlement data with onchain lending infrastructure to help stablecoin-linked card programs access working capital, as stablecoin settlement volume surpasses a $20B annualized run rate, up more than 15x YoY.
More than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs are now live on Visa’s network, with payment volume growing nearly 200% YoY. The company says early-stage programs often struggle to secure traditional working capital needed to fund daily settlement obligations.
Visa is working with decentralized lending platform Credit Coop to use settlement data alongside onchain transaction records for credit underwriting, while smart contracts can automate collateral management, disbursements and repayments.
Credit Coop has financed more than $2.5B in cumulative settlement volume since 2023, processing over 3,000 borrow events and 9,000 repayment events onchain with zero defaults.
The initiative could make settlement financing more accessible to smaller stablecoin card issuers while creating a data-driven path for programs to graduate from onchain revolving facilities to larger institutional credit lines.
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Tether Freezes $39.3M USDT Linked to Xinbi Guarantee
Tether has frozen approximately 39.27M USDT across 10 TRON addresses that blockchain intelligence platform MistTrack identified as linked to Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language Telegram-based guarantee marketplace.
The marketplace has hosted vendors offering services including money laundering, stolen personal data and infrastructure used in fraud schemes such as “pig butchering” scams. Xinbi was also sanctioned by the UK in March 2026.
The affected addresses were identified on TRON, where USDT remains one of the most widely used stablecoins for transfers and settlement.
Tether has frozen approximately 39.27M USDT across 10 TRON addresses that blockchain intelligence platform MistTrack identified as linked to Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language Telegram-based guarantee marketplace.
Xinbi Guarantee emerged on Telegram around 2022 and has been identified as a major marketplace serving scam operators and money-laundering networks across Southeast Asia. Research from Elliptic found that the platform had received more than $8.4B in USDT, while TRM Labs estimates its total transaction volume at approximately $24.2B.
The marketplace has hosted vendors offering services including money laundering, stolen personal data and infrastructure used in fraud schemes such as “pig butchering” scams. Xinbi was also sanctioned by the UK in March 2026.
The affected addresses were identified on TRON, where USDT remains one of the most widely used stablecoins for transfers and settlement.
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Plume Brings RWA Yield to Institutional MPC Wallet Fordefi
Plume has launched its Vaults on Fordefi Earn, bringing real-world credit-backed yield directly to the institutional MPC wallet and custody platform, which processes around $120B in monthly onchain volume.
The integration allows institutions to access RWA yield while keeping assets within the custody and security controls they already use, creating a new distribution channel for tokenized real-world credit.
Plume has launched its Vaults on Fordefi Earn, bringing real-world credit-backed yield directly to the institutional MPC wallet and custody platform, which processes around $120B in monthly onchain volume.
The first Vaults now live on Fordefi are nOPAL, backed by Brazilian credit receivables, and nFXCF, offering FalconX structured credit exposure.
The integration allows institutions to access RWA yield while keeping assets within the custody and security controls they already use, creating a new distribution channel for tokenized real-world credit.
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Cryptomarket Check-In. Major Events & Headlines
The week AI stopped hedging and TradFi stopped waiting: OpenAI declared AGI, while banks and exchanges bought their way deeper onchain.
Five that actually mattered:
— Circle to acquire payments firm Tazapay for $400M
— OpenAI launches GPT-6 Astra, a model it calls the onset of AGI
— Revolut wins conditional US approval to form a national bank
— Cronos rolled back its chain to reverse a $120M Tectonic exploit
— Bitget launches 24/7 H100/B200 GPU-compute perps at up to 10x
The week AI stopped hedging and TradFi stopped waiting: OpenAI declared AGI, while banks and exchanges bought their way deeper onchain.
Five that actually mattered:
— Circle to acquire payments firm Tazapay for $400M
— OpenAI launches GPT-6 Astra, a model it calls the onset of AGI
— Revolut wins conditional US approval to form a national bank
— Cronos rolled back its chain to reverse a $120M Tectonic exploit
— Bitget launches 24/7 H100/B200 GPU-compute perps at up to 10x
ZKsync Open-Sources Prividium as Bundesbank Tests It
Matter Labs open-sourced Prividium, the permissioning engine behind its ZKsync institutional chain platform, and Germany's Deutsche Bundesbank became the first institution to test it.
The Bundesbank test signals growing central-bank interest in production-grade, privacy-preserving infrastructure, and positions Prividium as a template for how regulated finance might run blockchains without ceding control to a single provider.
Matter Labs open-sourced Prividium, the permissioning engine behind its ZKsync institutional chain platform, and Germany's Deutsche Bundesbank became the first institution to test it.
Prividium lets a regulated firm run a permissioned chain from public code inside its own environment, keeping smart-contract and token data on-premises while zero-knowledge proofs verify correctness. Publishing the core as open source means institutions can inspect, run and modify it themselves rather than depend on a single vendor. Matter Labs said the change followed feedback from regulated institutions, which argued that a commercial-only core created a single-vendor dependency they could not accept, and that independent control of the code was a precondition for adoption.
The Bundesbank test signals growing central-bank interest in production-grade, privacy-preserving infrastructure, and positions Prividium as a template for how regulated finance might run blockchains without ceding control to a single provider.
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DeFi Dev Corp Closes $11M SOL-Backed CHAD Offering
DeFi Dev closed its CHAD offering, an $11M SOL-backed preferred stock it bills as the first digital credit instrument of its kind to trade on a major exchange.
The instrument extends the digital-asset treasury model, pioneered in Bitcoin by Strategy, into Solana, giving equity investors a yield-bearing, SOL-linked security rather than direct token exposure.
DeFi Dev closed its CHAD offering, an $11M SOL-backed preferred stock it bills as the first digital credit instrument of its kind to trade on a major exchange.
The Nasdaq-listed treasury company (DFDV) priced 1.375 million shares of its Variable Rate Series C Perpetual Preferred Stock at $8 apiece, carrying a 13% initial annual dividend. Modeled on Strategy's preferred-stock playbook, CHAD lets DeFi Dev raise capital to buy more SOL without diluting common shareholders. The offering drew participation from Fundstrat's Tom Lee, and follows the firm's recent purchase of about 19,000 SOL that lifted its holdings to roughly 2.33 million SOL and SOL equivalents.
The instrument extends the digital-asset treasury model, pioneered in Bitcoin by Strategy, into Solana, giving equity investors a yield-bearing, SOL-linked security rather than direct token exposure.
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OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Images 2.5
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Images 2.5, a new state-of-the-art image model with sharper detail, more precise editing and generation up to 50% faster than Images 2.0.
Images 2.5 is rolling out today to all ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex users across desktop, mobile and web, arriving as OpenAI users generate more than 3 billion images every week, with C2PA metadata and invisible watermarking on outputs.
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Images 2.5, a new state-of-the-art image model with sharper detail, more precise editing and generation up to 50% faster than Images 2.0.
The model preserves reference subjects more faithfully, renders more natural lighting and textures, and follows editing instructions reliably across multiple turns without degrading quality. In ChatGPT it adds Sketch, which turns a rough drawing into a finished image, ready-made templates for formats like posters and merch, comments placed directly on an image for focused edits, and shareable prompts. For developers, two API models ship alongside: GPT-Image-2.5 Flare, the new default at higher quality and 50% lower latency, and GPT-Image-2.5 Sunburst for premium, tightly controlled work.
Images 2.5 is rolling out today to all ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex users across desktop, mobile and web, arriving as OpenAI users generate more than 3 billion images every week, with C2PA metadata and invisible watermarking on outputs.
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First Staked TRON ETF Debuts in the US
Canary launched a staked TRON ETF, TRXS, which begins trading on Cboe today as the first US fund tracking TRON's TRX while staking the tokens it holds.
The launch lands as TRON cements its role in stablecoin settlement: the network processed $2.1T in USDT transfers in Q2 and has crossed 15B lifetime transactions. TRXS joins Canary's growing crypto lineup alongside its XRP, Litecoin and HBAR products.
Canary launched a staked TRON ETF, TRXS, which begins trading on Cboe today as the first US fund tracking TRON's TRX while staking the tokens it holds.
TRXS earns extra TRX through TRON's proof-of-stake system: the trust stakes substantially all of its holdings, staking fees are capped at 20% of rewards, and the remaining 80% is retained and folded into the fund's daily net asset value instead of being paid out separately. The annual sponsor fee is 1.10%, accruing daily and payable in TRX or cash. BitGo Bank & Trust custodies the TRX, U.S. Bank handles cash, and U.S. Bancorp Fund Services runs administration.
The launch lands as TRON cements its role in stablecoin settlement: the network processed $2.1T in USDT transfers in Q2 and has crossed 15B lifetime transactions. TRXS joins Canary's growing crypto lineup alongside its XRP, Litecoin and HBAR products.
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Meta Launches Muse, a Personal AI Agent
Meta launched its personal agent Muse, a consumer AI agent now live in the US that works around the clock to understand a user's goals and complete tasks on their behalf.
Muse is rolling out across iOS, Android, muse ai and WhatsApp, with Stripe checkout built in from day one. Meta is pitching it as a secure-by-design answer to the trust problem facing consumer AI agents.
Meta launched its personal agent Muse, a consumer AI agent now live in the US that works around the clock to understand a user's goals and complete tasks on their behalf.
Muse can send emails, book travel, make purchases and run multi-step projects with the permissions a user grants it. Each account gets its own dedicated cloud computer, the Muse Secure VM, where the agent, connected data and credentials live in isolation. A separate Sentinel layer monitors everything leaving that VM: it either matches the action to a policy the user has already authorized or pauses to ask for approval. Credentials go into secure storage, so Muse can use passwords and payment methods without ever seeing them. A Muse Confidential VM, encrypting the whole machine with a key only the user holds, is due later in 2026.
Muse is rolling out across iOS, Android, muse ai and WhatsApp, with Stripe checkout built in from day one. Meta is pitching it as a secure-by-design answer to the trust problem facing consumer AI agents.
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Etherscan Flow Turns Transactions Into Maps
Etherscan launched Etherscan Flow, a tool that turns a tangle of onchain transactions into one clear visual map of how funds moved, with every hop verified against live onchain data.
The release pushes Etherscan past the plain block explorer toward investigation tooling, letting analysts, auditors and everyday users trace and share money trails without stitching together raw transaction logs by hand.
Etherscan launched Etherscan Flow, a tool that turns a tangle of onchain transactions into one clear visual map of how funds moved, with every hop verified against live onchain data.
Users can build a flow from scratch or hand the job to an AI agent through the new Etherscan Flow agent skill, part of the explorer's Build with AI suite. The skill queries Etherscan's live API and produces a structured Flow Case file that imports into etherscan.io/flow for visual inspection, working across more than 60 EVM-compatible chains.
The release pushes Etherscan past the plain block explorer toward investigation tooling, letting analysts, auditors and everyday users trace and share money trails without stitching together raw transaction logs by hand.
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Bybit Debuts Bybit AI, a Chat Trading Tool
Bybit launched Bybit AI, a conversational assistant built into its app that lets users trade and manage their accounts with plain natural-language commands instead of tapping through menus.
The move puts Bybit among the exchanges racing to wrap AI agents around trading, days after Binance opened early access to its own in-app assistant, as venues bet natural-language interfaces will lower the barrier for everyday users.
Bybit launched Bybit AI, a conversational assistant built into its app that lets users trade and manage their accounts with plain natural-language commands instead of tapping through menus.
Through chat, users can query their assets and place spot, derivatives and options orders, and reach Earn, copy trading, lending, P2P and customer-support tickets without leaving the conversation. Enabling Bybit AI automatically creates a separate sub-account whose assets are physically segregated from the user's main account, ringfencing whatever the assistant is able to touch. The design keeps the assistant's activity walled off from a user's core balance while it acts on their instructions.
The move puts Bybit among the exchanges racing to wrap AI agents around trading, days after Binance opened early access to its own in-app assistant, as venues bet natural-language interfaces will lower the barrier for everyday users.
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