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Strive buys 1,107 bitcoin for $94.5 million, extending weekly purchase streak

Strive buys 1,107 bitcoin for $94.5 million, extending weekly purchase streak

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Strive bought another 1,107 bitcoin for $94.5 million on Monday, September 28, 2026, pushing its total treasury to 27,462 BTC even as larger rival Strategy has periodically paused its own accumulation. The purchase marks at least the ninth consecutive week Strive has added to its position, according to reporting by CryptoPotato.

  • Strive spent $94.5 million to buy 1,107 BTC at an average price of $85,396 per coin.
  • Total holdings reached 27,462 BTC, valued near $2.3 billion at bitcoin’s current price of $83,300.
  • Warrant exercises generated an additional $12.4 million, and 85% of total capital raised has come from SATA.
  • $94.5M spent on the latest 1,107 BTC purchase
  • 27,462 total BTC held, up from 26,355 before this buy
  • $2.3B current value of the stack at $83,300 per bitcoin
  • 85% of Strive’s capital raised so far through SATA preferred stock

Strive CEO Matt Cole disclosed the purchase minutes after it closed, posting the details on X. The buy brings the firm’s average acquisition price across its entire position to roughly $80,862, according to data from tracking site Newhedge.

Strive’s ninth straight weekly buy widens the gap with Strategy

Strive has now made bitcoin purchases in at least nine consecutive weeks. Some of those buys landed in weeks when Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder, stood on the sidelines or was selling.

At bitcoin’s ($BTC) current price of $83,300, Strive’s stack is valued near $2.3 billion against an average cost basis of $80,862, putting the position only modestly in the green. Strive trades on public markets under the ticker $ASST, and its bitcoin purchases have continued through a stretch of price volatility that has slowed other corporate buyers.

SATA preferred shares supplied 85% of Strive’s bitcoin capital

Strive funds its bitcoin buying through a Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, a publicly traded instrument marketed under the ticker $SATA. The security is structured as a digital credit product, raising capital from investors to purchase bitcoin while paying them a relatively high and stable yield in return.

Strive acquired 1,107 $BTC for $94.5M at an average cost of $85,396 per bitcoin, bringing total holdings to ₿27,462. Warrant exercises generated another $12.4M. Including those proceeds, 85% of total capital raised came from SATA.

Matt Cole, CEO of Strive, in a post on X

The $12.4 million in warrant exercises Cole cited is included in that 85% calculation, meaning SATA has been the dominant funding source for Strive’s bitcoin treasury almost since the program’s launch.

What happens if Strive’s cost basis moves underwater

Strive’s position sits only about 3% above its average purchase price of $80,862. A meaningful pullback in bitcoin would erase that cushion and test how the SATA structure performs when the underlying asset is not appreciating.

The open question is whether Strive keeps buying at this pace regardless of price, and whether Strategy resumes its own purchases or continues to sit out weeks that Strive fills. Cole’s weekly disclosures on X have become the primary signal for tracking that cadence.

The BlockWest read. The story here is less about bitcoin’s price than about who is financing these purchases. With 85% of capital coming from SATA, Strive has effectively converted preferred-stock investors into the marginal buyer of bitcoin, transferring yield-seeking capital into treasury risk. Allocators in SATA should watch the cost-basis gap as closely as Strive’s headline BTC count.

Investors will be watching for Cole’s next weekly disclosure on X, whether Strategy resumes buying in the coming weeks, and whether bitcoin holds above Strive’s $80,862 average cost basis as the accumulation streak continues.

Goldman Sachs makes Treasury fund available to crypto firms through Lynq

Goldman Sachs makes Treasury fund available to crypto firms through Lynq

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Goldman Sachs is opening its roughly $100 billion FTIXX Treasury fund to institutional crypto firms through a new distribution deal with settlement network Lynq, without wrapping the fund in a token. The move gives digital-asset trading firms a regulated place to park idle cash between trades and earn yield, deepening the links between Wall Street’s money-market infrastructure and crypto’s institutional plumbing.

  • FTIXX becomes the first outside fund offered on Lynq, which previously carried only one investment product.
  • Trades in the fund will be handled by SEC-registered broker-dealer tZERO Securities.
  • Lynq’s network already counts more than 30 institutional digital-asset firms and over $89 million in assets.
  • $100B approximate size of Goldman’s FTIXX Treasury fund now on Lynq
  • 30+ institutional digital-asset firms already onboarded to Lynq’s network
  • $89M total assets currently held across Lynq’s settlement platform
  • 2nd investment product on Lynq, after just one previously available

Goldman Sachs is putting one of its largest Treasury funds within reach of crypto firms without building a blockchain-native version of it, according to reporting by CoinDesk. The bank’s roughly $100 billion FTIXX fund will be distributed through Lynq, a settlement network built for digital-asset companies, with trades executed by tZERO Securities. It is the first outside fund added to Lynq, which had offered only a single investment product before this integration.

FTIXX skips tokenization unlike BlackRock’s BUIDL and Franklin Templeton’s BENJI

Goldman’s approach diverges from the path other asset managers have taken to reach crypto markets. BlackRock built BUIDL as a tokenized fund from the ground up, and Franklin Templeton offers tokenized shares of its money-market fund through BENJI. FTIXX remains an unmodified, traditional Treasury fund, with Lynq simply serving as a new access point for firms that already move money on the network.

Goldman does not need to build a new blockchain product to reach digital-asset firms. Lynq instead routes an established Wall Street fund into the settlement workflow those firms already use.

Lynq CEO Jerald David told CoinDesk TV the integration reflects a broader shift in how traditional and crypto-native firms interact.

“There’s a convergence now that you’re seeing between traditional market participants and digital asset market participants as well.”

Jerald David, CEO, Lynq

Lynq’s clients wanted a treasury option with a different yield profile

Lynq’s institutional client base, which includes B2C2, Wintermute, Galaxy, FalconX, Crypto.com and Fireblocks, routinely moves large sums between trades. David said those firms had been asking for a place to hold cash in the interim rather than letting it sit idle, earning yield until it is needed elsewhere.

“We needed to demonstrate that there was client demand,” David said. He added that clients wanted “a treasury asset on the platform that may have had a different yield profile than the other instrument that’s on there right now.”

Adding FTIXX to the platform required technical work on Lynq’s side. The company modified its infrastructure, restricted the offering to U.S. clients, and integrated with Mosaic, according to David. Customers must also establish a relationship with tZERO Securities and complete standard onboarding and eligibility checks before accessing the fund. Lynq itself runs on a private, permissioned Avalanche layer-1 blockchain, and David described the platform as now “multi-asset capable” with FTIXX as its second available product.

Lynq’s network has 30-plus firms and $89 million on the platform so far

Lynq has onboarded more than 30 institutional digital-asset firms and holds over $89 million in assets, the company said. Those figures are modest next to FTIXX’s roughly $100 billion size, underscoring that this is an early-stage distribution channel rather than a large-scale reallocation of Treasury assets into crypto infrastructure.

David called FTIXX “Goldman Sachs’s flagship treasury fund” and said it is “the second asset now available for institutional clients” on Lynq.

The BlockWest read. The real story here is not tokenization, it is distribution. Goldman is testing whether crypto-native trading desks will route idle cash into a conventional fund if the settlement rails feel native to them, rather than waiting for a tokenized wrapper. If FTIXX’s balance on Lynq grows past the network’s current $89 million base, expect BlackRock and Franklin Templeton’s tokenized-fund strategy to face direct competition from this untokenized, broker-dealer-mediated model.

Lynq has not disclosed how much of FTIXX’s roughly $100 billion has moved onto the platform since the integration went live, leaving open how quickly institutional crypto firms will actually shift cash into the fund. David has signaled Lynq intends to keep expanding beyond its current two products, making the network’s next asset addition and its client growth beyond 30 firms the figures to watch.

Core Lightning patches flaw that could let peers broadcast revoked channel states

Core Lightning patches flaw that could let peers broadcast revoked channel states

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Core Lightning, one of the most widely deployed Lightning Network node implementations, has patched a flaw that could have let a peer broadcast an outdated, revoked channel state without triggering the penalty meant to punish cheating. The fix shipped quietly in late August but was only explained publicly by Bitcoin Optech’s newsletter on Friday, September 25, 2025, giving operators still running older builds a clear picture of what they were exposed to.

  • Core Lightning shipped the fix in v26.06.7 on Aug. 28, with source code released after an embargo on Sept. 11.
  • The flaw only applied when a peer skipped naming an upfront shutdown script at channel open, then matched outputs later.
  • Docker images tagged v26.06.7 between Aug. 28 and Sept. 1 reported the new version number but shipped without the actual fixes.
  • Aug. 28 date Core Lightning shipped the embargoed v26.06.7 fix
  • Sept. 22 date v26.06.8 landed with further security fixes
  • Sept. 25 date Bitcoin Optech publicly detailed the already-shipped patch
  • 5 days window, Aug. 28 to Sept. 1, images ran without the fix

According to reporting by CryptoSlate, the bug sat in how Core Lightning distinguished a legitimate cooperative channel close from a broadcast of an old, already-revoked commitment. In Lightning, peers continually replace earlier commitments as channel balances shift, and the protocol’s penalty mechanism exists specifically to let an honest party seize funds if a counterparty ever tries to cheat by publishing a stale state.

Revoked commitment could pass as a legitimate close

Before the fix, Core Lightning could mistake a revoked commitment broadcast for a cooperative close whenever its outputs happened to match shutdown scripts already on file. That mistake depended on one specific setup: a peer that had not specified an upfront shutdown script when the channel opened could later name the output script of its own revoked commitment inside a shutdown message.

It could then abandon the cooperative close and broadcast the old commitment instead. Matching outputs alone made the transaction look legitimate, bypassing the penalty path, according to the maintainers’ patch notes and regression test.

The repair, carried into the main branch through pull request 9509 merged on Sept. 15, checks a transaction’s locktime and sequence encoding to identify a commitment before ever treating its outputs as a possible mutual close. The maintainers describe this as a potential way to evade the penalty rather than a confirmed instance of theft, and stress it is a channel-handling issue specific to Core Lightning, not a change to Bitcoin’s base-chain rules.

Docker images misreported their own version for five days

A separate problem complicated the rollout for operators who run Core Lightning through Docker. The project’s v26.06.7 release notes disclose that images served under that tag and related tags between Aug. 28 and Sept. 1 reported the new version number on startup while still lacking its fixes.

That five-day mismatch meant an operator could believe they had already patched when they had not. The project has published the corrected image digests and instructs anyone with a mismatched digest to re-pull the image.

V26.06.8 is the version the project now recommends

The version history splits into two distinct patches. Core Lightning shipped v26.06.7 on Aug. 28, then published its initially embargoed release source on Sept. 11, before the PR carrying those changes merged on Sept. 15.

V26.06.8 followed on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2025, bundling additional security fixes with immediately available source, though the project notes a few tests remained withheld. Optech’s Sept. 25 write-up explained the revoked-close repair after the fix had become available in v26.06.8.

Any Core Lightning build older than the fixed v26.06.7 release needs updating, and the project strongly recommends jumping straight to v26.06.8 rather than stopping at the earlier patch. Because the revoked-close path requires the specific shutdown-script condition described above, running a vulnerable version does not mean every open channel was exposed to it.

The BlockWest read. The bigger exposure here sits with custodians and exchanges running Lightning liquidity at scale, not solo node operators who read release notes closely. A five-day window where Docker images silently misreported their own patch status is the kind of gap that automated fleets, not individual hobbyists, are built to miss. Any institution routing customer funds through Core Lightning should treat digest verification as a standing operational control, not a one-time checklist item.

The Core Lightning project has not stated that any funds were actually lost to this path, only that the mechanism existed and has since been closed. Operators still running builds older than v26.06.7, or Docker images pulled during the Aug. 28 to Sept. 1 window, are being told to verify their image digest against the corrected list and upgrade to v26.06.8 without waiting for further confirmation of real-world exploitation.

Armada shareholders redeem shares ahead of Evernorth merger vote

Armada shareholders redeem shares ahead of Evernorth merger vote

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Armada Acquisition Corp. II shareholders faced a 5 p.m. ET deadline on Monday, September 28 to request redemption of their shares ahead of a Wednesday, September 30 vote on the SPAC’s merger with XRP treasury company Evernorth Holdings. How many holders cash out will determine how much of the deal’s trust cash remains available for Evernorth to spend on XRP after closing.

  • Armada’s trust held about $241.9 million as of Aug. 20, before any shareholder redemption decisions were made.
  • Evernorth expects at least 473,276,430 XRP in its treasury at closing, combining prior purchases and agreed contributions.
  • A separate $30 million convertible note financing, agreed Sept. 11, would fund only if the merger closes and is not earmarked for XRP.
  • 473.3M XRP Evernorth expects in its treasury at closing
  • $241.9M Armada’s trust balance as of Aug. 20, before redemptions
  • $30M convertible note financing tied to the merger closing
  • $1.54 XRP price used for CryptoSlate’s Sept. 27 purchasing-power estimates

Armada Acquisition Corp. II is a cash-holding special purpose acquisition company seeking shareholder approval to merge with Evernorth Holdings, a company built around holding and expanding an XRP treasury. According to reporting by CryptoSlate, Armada’s definitive proxy statement sets both the redemption deadline and the Sept. 30 vote but does not disclose how many shareholders intend to redeem. Every share redeemed removes cash from the trust that Evernorth could otherwise direct toward future XRP purchases once the deal closes.

Redemptions, not the vote, will decide leftover cash

A shareholder may elect redemption regardless of how that holder votes on the merger, under the proxy’s redemption procedures. The proxy sets an illustrative redemption value of about $10.52 per share, based on the Aug. 20 trust balance.

Armada’s June 30 quarterly report had listed $241.2 million in trust and 23 million shares subject to possible redemption, figures that predate the Aug. 20 balance and cannot stand in for a closing number either. A favorable Sept. 30 vote would still leave the transaction subject to standard closing conditions, and the trust may need to cover transaction expenses and other corporate costs before any cash reaches Evernorth’s XRP allocation decisions.

CryptoSlate’s own arithmetic illustrates the range. Spending the full $241.9 million trust balance at the $1.54 reference price CryptoSlate cited on its XRP page at 12:10 UTC Sept. 27 would buy roughly 157 million XRP; spending only the $30 million note proceeds at that same price would buy about 19.5 million XRP.

The 473.3 million XRP figure already includes past purchases

The headline treasury number is not new post-merger demand. Evernorth’s proxy figure of at least 473,276,430 XRP combines tokens already purchased with contributions agreed under the merger terms, including 126,791,458 XRP already contributed by Ripple Labs Inc. as part of the expected closing holdings.

In a November 2025 announcement filed with the SEC, Evernorth said it had bought an additional 84,365,876.3625 XRP at an average price of $2.53657058, using part of $214 million in advance-funded private-placement cash. At CryptoSlate’s Sept. 27 reference price of $1.54, that purchase price sits roughly 39% above the current spot price, underscoring that the treasury total reflects historical buying rather than fresh market demand tied to this week’s vote.

A separate August amendment changed the number of shares issuable to private-placement investors at closing, tying it to XRP’s then-current volume-weighted price rather than the $2.36 price used when the deal was signed. Evernorth said the adjustment could reduce the share count at prevailing prices, a change that affects ownership dilution but requires no additional XRP trade.

What the $30 million note can and cannot fund

Evernorth agreed on Sept. 11 to issue $30 million principal of 4% convertible senior payment-in-kind notes due 2031, with payment and issuance to occur concurrently with the merger closing. The company said it intends to use net proceeds for general corporate purposes, including XRP purchases and other activity in the XRP ecosystem, but transaction expenses would reduce net cash and the allocation to token buying remains discretionary.

Evernorth said it “may use the proceeds for purposes other than buying XRP.”

Evernorth Holdings, Form 8-K filed Sept. 17

A midpoint scenario shows the sensitivity. If half of the Aug. 20 trust balance were redeemed, roughly $121 million would remain before interest, expenses or other adjustments, equivalent to about 78.5 million XRP at the $1.54 reference price if every dollar were spent on tokens.

XRP’s CryptoSlate market page showed a price-based Market Signal of Bullish 68 out of 100 on Sept. 27, an indicator CryptoSlate describes as reflecting observed market conditions rather than a forecast or evidence traders are pricing in this deal.

The BlockWest read. For allocators watching corporate XRP treasuries as a demand signal, the number to track is not the 473.3 million token headline but the cash Evernorth actually deploys after closing costs and redemptions are settled. A SPAC merger that leaves Evernorth with a smaller, more constrained trust changes the balance-sheet math for any future token purchases, regardless of how the Sept. 30 vote turns out.

Armada’s redemption tally and a post-closing statement should show how much trust cash and note proceeds actually reached Evernorth, and later use-of-proceeds disclosures will establish whether any of that cash went toward new XRP purchases rather than transaction costs or other corporate needs.

Bitcoin’s BIP138 draft adds privacy risk to multisig wallet recovery

Bitcoin’s BIP138 draft adds privacy risk to multisig wallet recovery

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A newly merged Bitcoin proposal aims to fix a real recovery gap in complex wallets, but its own design creates a new party that could read sensitive wallet data without ever holding a private key. BIP138 addresses cases where a seed phrase alone cannot rebuild a multisignature or miniscript wallet, at the cost of a conditional privacy exposure the draft itself acknowledges.

  • BIP138 was merged into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals repository on September 21 but remains in Draft status.
  • The specification stores encrypted descriptors and wallet policies that a seed phrase cannot regenerate for multisig setups.
  • A holder of an eligible extended public key (xpub) can decrypt a backup copy without needing the wallet’s seed.
  • Sep 21 date BIP138 merged into the Bitcoin BIPs repository as a draft
  • #1951 GitHub pull request number that merged the proposal into the repository

Bitcoin’s BIP138 wallet-backup proposal was merged as a draft pull request into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals repository on September 21. The proposal targets a specific failure mode in multisignature and miniscript wallets, where a seed phrase can regenerate one signer’s private keys but cannot reconstruct the descriptor that tells wallet software how to find and spend the coins. Losing that descriptor, or losing a cosigner’s public key when one seed is deliberately dropped for redundancy, can leave funds unrecoverable even with a working seed.

Merge sets a draft, not a network change

The BIP138 draft answers the descriptor problem with an encrypted file that holds descriptors, wallet policies, or other non-seed metadata needed to rebuild a multisig account. Private key material is stripped out before the file is encrypted, so the backup itself cannot expose spending keys. The story was first reported by CryptoSlate.

The full specification is published in the BIP-0138 document now sitting in the BIPs repository. Its merge establishes a formally reviewed draft that developers can build against, but it is not a change to the Bitcoin network’s consensus rules, and it does not guarantee that today’s wallets can already produce or restore files in this format.

An xpub holder can open the backup without a seed

The tradeoff sits in who can decrypt the file. Anyone holding an eligible xpub from the backed-up wallet can open a copy of the encrypted backup without possessing the wallet’s seed, revealing the public keys and script structure needed for recovery. That same access does not grant the ability to sign transactions, since the xpub alone contains no private key material.

The draft narrows who qualifies as a valid recovery key. Public keys that appear directly in a spending script, and xpub roots that a spending transaction could expose on-chain, are excluded, so a cosigner’s key cannot double as a key to the off-chain backup file.

The privacy concern arises when an xpub was disclosed before the multisig wallet existed, such as to a wallet-service provider. If that same xpub is later reused as an eligible multisig key, the provider could decrypt a backup copy if it obtained one, learning wallet metadata without gaining spending authority. BIP138 describes this as a conditional exposure tied to xpub reuse, not a reported breach of any deployed wallet.

A working Rust build exists but Liana stays incompatible

A public Rust implementation with command-line build instructions already accompanies the draft. The BIP notes that Liana, an existing Bitcoin wallet, uses an earlier backup format incompatible with the current BIP138 file, meaning adoption will require wallet developers to build support for the new specification rather than assume existing tools already comply.

The BlockWest read. Wallet builders and custodians running multisig setups for treasuries or client funds now face a design choice rather than a fix they can bolt on. Adopting BIP138 means auditing every place an xpub has ever been shared, since reused keys given to exchanges, cosigners or service providers could later unlock metadata those parties were never meant to see.

BIP138 remains in Draft status, so its excluded-key rules and encryption scheme can still change before wallets ship support for it. The open question for developers is whether Liana and other multisig wallets migrate to the new format, or whether the incompatibility the BIP flags persists as adoption spreads.

Fifteen institutions held crypto allocations steady through 50% bitcoin decline

Fifteen institutions held crypto allocations steady through 50% bitcoin decline

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Institutional investors held their crypto exposure steady through a brutal bitcoin drawdown, according to new research from Bitwise, suggesting professional allocators now treat crypto volatility as a cost of doing business rather than a reason to exit. The findings, drawn from interviews with 15 institutions, point to a debate that has shifted from whether to hold crypto to how much and through which vehicle.

  • None of the 15 institutions Bitwise interviewed reduced crypto allocations during the roughly 50% price decline.
  • Crypto allocations across the surveyed portfolios range from 0.5% to 13% of investable assets, with most between 1% and 2%.
  • Nearly every institution interviewed already uses or plans to use spot crypto ETFs rather than direct custody.
  • 50% bitcoin’s decline from Q4 2025 into Q2 2026
  • 15 institutions interviewed for Bitwise’s survey
  • 0.5%-13% range of crypto allocation across surveyed portfolios
  • ~80% share of crypto exposure held in bitcoin within market-cap baskets

Bitcoin fell by roughly 50% between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026, a decline sharp enough to test the conviction of any allocator. Yet a survey conducted by asset manager Bitwise found that none of the 15 institutions it interviewed trimmed their crypto exposure during that stretch. Some held their existing targets steady, while others kept working toward higher allocations they had already set. The story was first reported by CryptoPotato.

Every crypto-holding institution in the survey owns bitcoin

Bitcoin remains the one asset with universal buy-in. Every institution in the survey that holds any crypto also holds BTC, according to the Bitwise report.

Many of the institutions frame bitcoin as a store of value and a hedge against currency debasement, drawing comparisons to gold rather than to speculative technology assets. Positioning varies: some hold bitcoin as a standalone allocation, while others use a market-cap-weighted basket of crypto assets that still leaves roughly 80% of total crypto exposure concentrated in BTC, dwarfing the weight given to any other token.

Ethereum and Solana do not get the same treatment. Bitwise found that institutions holding either asset generally keep smaller positions with shorter investment horizons than their bitcoin allocations.

Institutions split over whether Ethereum and Solana justify a bet

Decisions to hold Ethereum or Solana are tied to specific expectations about adoption and value accrual rather than a broad thesis, according to the survey. Some institutions avoid both assets entirely, telling Bitwise they see no clear link between blockchain activity and token price. Others treat the two as venture-style technology bets, tracking real-world usage, transaction volume and fee generation as signals of whether the wager is paying off.

That divide reinforces a broader pattern in the survey: institutional allocators are not applying a single crypto framework across assets. Bitcoin gets treated as a macro hedge, while Ethereum and Solana are underwritten more like early-stage technology equity, with narrower conviction and closer monitoring.

Spot ETFs are replacing direct custody as the entry point

Spot crypto exchange-traded funds have changed how institutions access the asset class, Bitwise found. Almost every institution interviewed either already uses spot ETFs or plans to adopt them, citing lower costs, reduced operational burden and simpler reporting compared with direct custody.

Investors still holding private, less liquid crypto vehicles are also evaluating ETFs, pointing to better liquidity and more flexibility when rebalancing portfolios. Several institutions told Bitwise they are moving away from illiquid private placements altogether and adding market-neutral strategies to dampen volatility, a shift aimed partly at making crypto allocations easier to clear through internal investment committees.

Not every institution is following the ETF path. Some face rules barring them from holding spot commodities even through an ETF wrapper, while others prefer direct control of assets and are building their own custody infrastructure.

One institution raised a separate concern with Bitwise: public disclosure of ETF holdings through 13F filings, which can reveal a fund’s crypto position to competitors and the market. That worry sits alongside the operational advantages driving other institutions toward ETFs, underscoring that the format’s convenience comes with a transparency tradeoff some allocators are unwilling to accept.

The BlockWest read. The real signal here is not that bitcoin held support through a 50% drop. It is that a 1%-2% allocation has become a fixed line item on institutional balance sheets, insulated from mark-to-market pain because sizing was set small enough to survive it. That changes the fight ahead: managers will compete less on convincing boards to enter crypto and more on ETF structure, custody control and 13F exposure.

Bitwise’s report frames the next phase of institutional adoption as a question of sizing and vehicle choice rather than participation, leaving open how far allocators will push targets beyond the 1% to 2% range once volatility eases and whether 13F disclosure concerns keep some institutions building proprietary custody instead of following peers into spot ETFs.

Evercrest sues LayerZero Labs over $292M rsETH bridge exploit

Evercrest sues LayerZero Labs over $292M rsETH bridge exploit

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Update (Sep 26, 9:05pm): New draft specifies the bridge connected KelpDAO with Unichain, and clarifies LayerZero uses a Decentralized Verifier Network (DVN) structure, details not in published version.

A $292 million exploit on KelpDAO’s rsETH bridge in April has turned into a British Columbia lawsuit that asks a court to decide who bears responsibility when cross-chain infrastructure fails. Customers have already answered that question with their assets, moving roughly $14.5 billion away from LayerZero toward a rival network since the attack.

  • Evercrest Technologies sued LayerZero Labs, its Canadian affiliate, and CEO Bryan Pellegrino in British Columbia.
  • The April 18 exploit drained 116,500 rsETH worth $292 million from Kelp’s cross-chain bridge.
  • Projects tied to roughly $14.5 billion in assets had announced moves to Chainlink’s CCIP by Aug. 4.
  • $292M value of rsETH stolen in the April 18 Kelp bridge exploit
  • $14.5B assets moved toward Chainlink’s CCIP by Aug. 4, nearly 50x the exploit
  • $7.4B WBTC’s share of the Aug. 4 migration, the largest single asset
  • $650M Kelp user withdrawals since the attack, according to the lawsuit

Evercrest Technologies, the company behind KelpDAO, has sued LayerZero Labs, its Canadian affiliate, and CEO Bryan Pellegrino in a British Columbia court, according to CryptoSlate. The claim alleges negligent misrepresentation, negligence and defamation over an April 18 exploit that drained 116,500 rsETH worth $292 million from Kelp’s bridge, and it seeks aggravated and punitive damages. Kelp users have withdrawn more than $650 million since the attack, the lawsuit states.

Pellegrino has called the suit meritless.

Evercrest says LayerZero approved Kelp’s single-verifier setup in writing

On April 18, attackers tricked LayerZero’s verifier into approving a forged cross-chain transfer, letting 116,500 rsETH leave Kelp’s bridge. LayerZero’s own incident report traces the breach to a developer who was socially engineered in March into cloning a malicious GitHub repository, giving attackers access to LayerZero’s RPC environment and letting them poison two internal nodes. That intrusion succeeded because Kelp’s bridge required sign-off from a single party, LayerZero’s own signing service, leaving no independent check on the false data it received.

Evercrest alleges LayerZero reviewed and approved that setup in writing, including telling Kelp in February 2024 there was “no problem” with the default arrangement. The suit further alleges LayerZero warned another developer, USDT0, about risks in default configurations while withholding a comparable warning from Kelp. Those allegations have yet to be tested in court.

LayerZero’s own account places the choice on Kelp, saying the application had previously run a two-of-two setup before moving to one-of-one. Its verifier now refuses to sign on any channel where it is the sole required signer, and the company requires multiple independent RPC sources across providers and geographies. By Aug. 4, default pathways on both versions of its endpoint required a minimum of three verifiers, though applications can still build custom configurations at the protocol level.

Nearly $14.5 billion has left LayerZero for Chainlink’s CCIP since the exploit

By Aug. 4, projects tied to roughly $14.5 billion in assets had announced moves from LayerZero to Chainlink’s CCIP, nearly 50 times the $292 million stolen in April. BitGo accounted for the largest single migration, moving WBTC representing about $7.4 billion of that total and naming CCIP its exclusive cross-chain

Blockchain Association replaces CEO as Senate blocks crypto market bill

Blockchain Association replaces CEO as Senate blocks crypto market bill

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The Blockchain Association is swapping chief executives just as Washington’s crypto agenda stalls, with founding leader Kristin Smith stepping back into the top job days after the Senate blocked the industry’s marquee market-structure bill. The reshuffle puts a familiar face in charge of one of crypto’s largest lobbying groups at a moment when the sector’s legislative momentum has clearly cooled.

  • Summer Mersinger will leave the Blockchain Association CEO post effective Friday (October 16).
  • Kristin Smith returns as interim CEO after running the group from its 2018 founding until 15 months ago.
  • The Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act last week, opposed by every Democrat and some Republicans.
  • Oct 16 date the CEO handover between Mersinger and Smith takes effect
  • 2018 year Kristin Smith founded the Blockchain Association she now returns to lead

Summer Mersinger is departing as chief executive of the Blockchain Association, according to a statement posted by the group on Friday, as first reported by CoinDesk. She will be succeeded on an interim basis by Kristin Smith, the association’s founding CEO, effective Friday (October 16). The handover follows a week after the Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the industry’s marquee market-structure bill.

Senate rejection of the Clarity Act precedes the exit by a week

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate last week. Every Senate Democrat and a number of Republicans declined to support it, denying the bill the votes it needed to move forward.

The defeat marks a setback for an industry that had notched a string of Washington wins earlier in Mersinger’s tenure, including passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, known as the GENIUS Act, the first major federal crypto law. Mersinger joined the Blockchain Association shortly before that bill’s passage after leaving her post as a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Mersinger framed her departure around those gains in the group’s statement.

“I’m proud of how far we’ve come together, from the GENIUS Act to real regulatory clarity at the SEC and CFTC. Kristin built this association from the ground up, and BA is in good hands. I’ll be cheering them on.”

Summer Mersinger, outgoing CEO, Blockchain Association

Kristin Smith returns to the group she built in 2018

Smith served as the Blockchain Association’s first chief executive from its founding in 2018, steering the trade group through its early advocacy years before stepping down 15 months ago. She left to become president of the Solana Policy Institute, a newer group focused on policy tied to the Solana blockchain, while retaining the BA board presidency.

Smith will keep her Solana Policy Institute role while serving as interim Blockchain Association CEO, a spokesman for the group confirmed. Her Solana Policy Institute biography lists her continued involvement with both organizations.

Smith credited Mersinger with leading the association through what she called the “most consequential moment in the history of crypto policy,” pointing to the GENIUS Act’s passage and expanded activity at the SEC and CFTC during Mersinger’s tenure.

Friday’s handover leaves the interim question open

Smith’s appointment is explicitly interim, and the Blockchain Association’s statement did not lay out a timeline for naming a permanent successor. The board, which Smith continues to chair as president, will oversee that search alongside her dual role at the Solana Policy Institute.

The leadership change takes effect Friday (October 16), roughly three weeks after the Friday (September 25) announcement. Whether Smith stays on past the interim period, or the association turns to an outside candidate, is not addressed in the statement.

The BlockWest read. The reshuffle signals that crypto’s Washington lobby is regrouping, not retreating, after the Clarity Act stumble. Putting Smith, a founder with standing across both traditional lobbying circles and Solana-aligned firms, back in charge suggests the association wants continuity heading into the next push for market-structure legislation rather than a rebuild. For firms weighing policy risk, the Senate’s rejection, not the personnel change, remains the real obstacle.

The Blockchain Association has not said whether it will run a formal search for a permanent chief executive or whether Smith could keep the job past the October 16 transition. Congress has also not set a new timetable for revisiting the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act after last week’s failed Senate vote.

Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade activates on developer network ahead of mainnet launch

Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade activates on developer network ahead of mainnet launch

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Solana’s push to make transactions final in a fraction of a second has cleared its second public test network, putting the long-promised Alpenglow upgrade one step closer to real money. Developers building exchanges and payment apps now have a live environment to test against before any changes reach Solana’s mainnet, where actual funds move.

  • Alpenglow is now active on both Solana’s devnet and its separate testnet as of this week.
  • The upgrade targets roughly 150 milliseconds for transaction finality, down from about 12.8 seconds today.
  • Anza has not scheduled a mainnet launch, and the 150ms target remains untested under live-market conditions.
  • 150ms target finality time under Alpenglow versus today’s network
  • 12.8s current time Solana takes to finalize a transaction
  • Sept 25 date Anza announced Alpenglow’s activation on devnet
  • Sept 28 tentative date Anza’s schedule resumes feature activations

Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade has reached its public developer network, according to reporting by CoinDesk. The upgrade targets around 150 milliseconds for finality, the point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed, compared with roughly 12.8 seconds under Solana’s existing system. A finality window that short could shorten the wait for an exchange to release a deposit or for a payment app to confirm a sale to a merchant.

Anza flips the switch on devnet a day after testnet transition

Anza, the company that builds Solana’s core validator software, announced the developer-network activation on Friday, September 25, in a post on X. That came one day after the separate testnet completed its own transition to Alpenglow.

The Solana Foundation’s upgrade dashboard now lists Alpenglow as active on both networks. Devnet is where application teams check software using tokens that carry no real value, while the testnet is used mainly to stress-test validator operations under simulated load. Neither network handles funds with market value, which is why the mainnet rollout, still unscheduled, is the step that matters for exchanges and payment processors.

Vote removal will shrink transaction counts without any drop in usage

Alpenglow rewrites how validators, the computers that check and record transactions, reach agreement on the blockchain’s history. Instead of recording their votes as transactions embedded inside blocks, validators will exchange those votes directly, cutting the process to one or two rounds rather than the current multi-step confirmation chain.

That change carries a side effect that will show up in public dashboards before it shows up in wallets. Transaction totals that previously included validator votes will fall even if the number of user payments and trades stays flat, and the Solana Foundation has told data providers to adjust how they compare activity across periods.

Services that build transaction histories will also need to keep competing candidate blocks separate until the network settles on one, since mixing their contents could produce an inaccurate record. The Foundation’s guide states that applications which simply send transactions and read account balances require no changes at all.

No mainnet date yet, and the 150ms figure remains a simulation

Solana has not set a firm launch date for Alpenglow on the network that carries real funds. Anza’s software schedule tentatively allows feature activations to resume on Monday, September 28, but that date is not identified as an Alpenglow launch window.

The 150-millisecond figure itself is still a target drawn from simulations rather than a result demonstrated under live-market trading conditions. Wallet processing time and exchanges’ own deposit checks will add further delay on top of whatever finality Alpenglow ultimately delivers.

The BlockWest read. For exchanges and market makers, the real test is not the 150ms simulation but whether Alpenglow holds up when order flow spikes and validators disagree on competing blocks in real time. Data providers and analytics platforms face a quieter but immediate task: recalibrating on-chain volume comparisons before the vote-removal effect gets mistaken for a drop in actual Solana usage.

Whether Alpenglow’s 150-millisecond target survives contact with live order flow will only be answered once Anza sets a mainnet date, something it has not yet done even as the September 28 activation window approaches.

Securitize stock rises 15% as SEC exempts tokenized equity venues from exchange registration

Securitize stock rises 15% as SEC exempts tokenized equity venues from exchange registration

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Securitize’s stock jumped 15% on Friday, right as the SEC cleared a legal path for tokenized equities to trade without full exchange registration. For BlockWest readers, the move is an early test of whether regulatory permission alone can turn years of tokenization pitch decks into a liquid, tradable market.

  • SECZ shares rose more than 15% Friday to trade at $16.53, up 77% over the prior five trading sessions.
  • The SEC’s Innovation Exemption, issued September 17, lets tokenized securities venues skip exchange registration for five years.
  • Securitize tokenized $295 million of its own shares on Solana and Avalanche in July, the largest issuer-sponsored tokenized stock launch on record.
  • $16.53 Securitize’s Friday share price on the NYSE
  • 77% five-day share gain versus a 158% one-month gain
  • 158% one-month gain against roughly 50% year-to-date return
  • $295M value of SECZ shares tokenized on Solana and Avalanche in July

Securitize, the blockchain infrastructure firm that serves as transfer agent for BlackRock’s tokenized BUIDL money market fund, saw its stock surge more than 15% on Friday, according to reporting by BeInCrypto. Shares traded at $16.53, extending a run that has lifted the stock 77% over five trading days and 158% over the past month, based on data from TradingView.

The rally coincided with the SEC opening a new legal channel for trading tokenized equities. It converts a long-discussed real-world asset narrative into an active trading opportunity for a specific set of platforms.

SEC’s five-year Innovation Exemption lets venues skip exchange registration

On September 17, the SEC issued a five-year Innovation Exemption that allows tokenized securities venues to operate without registering as a national exchange, according to a report by UPI. The order also frees certain liquidity providers from dealer registration requirements when they supply tokenized stock to automated market maker pools.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins described the exemption as a temporary bridge rather than a permanent framework.

in a permissioned environment today while the commission considers the need for additional action to facilitate onchain trading

Paul Atkins, SEC chair

The order builds on a January statement in which the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission classified tokenized securities, concluding that tokenization changes a security’s form but not its legal status, a distinction detailed in guidance from Norton Rose Fulbright.

Securitize’s $295 million share tokenization set an issuer record in July

Securitize went public on the NYSE in July through a merger with Cantor Equity Partners II. The same day, it tokenized $295 million of its own SECZ shares on the Solana and Avalanche blockchains, the largest issuer-sponsored tokenized stock launch on record.

The stock’s longer-term returns tell a different story than its recent spike. Its six-month, year-to-date, and one-year returns all sit near 50 percent, while the one-month gain alone is 158 percent.

That gap means most of the year’s advance has come in the past several weeks, concentrated around the SEC’s exemption announcement rather than spread evenly across the year.

Whether trading demand follows regulatory clarity is still unresolved

Regulatory clarity removes one obstacle for tokenization platforms, but it does not by itself create investor demand. Securitize is still working toward consistent profitability, a factor the exemption does not directly address.

Atkins himself framed the current rules as provisional, saying the commission is weighing further action on onchain trading. That leaves open whether the five-year exemption becomes a permanent structure or a stopgap replaced by fuller rulemaking.

The BlockWest read. The more durable story here is not Securitize’s share price but the precedent for issuers acting as their own transfer agent and liquidity venue at once. If that model survives the exemption’s five-year window, other asset managers with tokenized funds, not just BlackRock’s BUIDL, will have a template for listing equity onchain without waiting on a full exchange license.

The open question is what Atkins meant by “additional action to facilitate onchain trading,” and whether the SEC moves toward permanent rules before the Innovation Exemption’s five-year term runs out. Until then, Securitize’s ability to convert its NYSE listing and tokenized share structure into sustained profitability will be the test investors watch next.

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