News linked to both this project and an event.
According to The Block, Payward—the parent company of Kraken—announced that it will open up access to IPO offering-price subscriptions for U.S. publicly traded companies to Kraken users and select partner platform users via the xStocks framework in the coming weeks. Users may submit non-binding subscription indications prior to listing; Payward will aggregate demand and coordinate with underwriting syndicates to allocate tokenized shares at the offering price on the listing day. These stock tokens are fully backed 1:1 by the underlying equities held in custody by regulated entities and are tradable across blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, and TON. Payward stated that it plans to expand into additional markets and onboard more partners to the xStocks Alliance in the future.
xStocks, a framework under Kraken parent company Payward, will launch services allowing users on Kraken and partner platforms to participate in US stock IPOs at the offering price. Users will receive on-chain tokenized shares with a 1:1 correspondence to the underlying stock, which will be held by regulated custodians.Users can submit non-binding subscription intentions via partner platforms weeks before the IPO. Payward aggregates demand, coordinates with the underwriting syndicate for share allocation, and completes pricing, allocation, and token issuance on the listing date. xStocks tokens will be tradable across multiple blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, and TON, and can be integrated with DeFi protocols. (The Block)
According to PR Newswire, the Open Transaction Layer (OTL) officially launched on May 28 as an open industry initiative aimed at establishing a unified transaction coordination standard for on-chain finance. OTL defines shared protocols among institutions, non-custodial wallets, and AI agents for identity verification, messaging, and transaction coordination—covering the entire transaction lifecycle, including discovery, compliance, and settlement. The founding alliance comprises over 25 members, including leading financial institutions, payment service providers, and blockchain foundations such as Fireblocks, Checkout.com, Cross River Bank, MetaMask, Robinhood, Securitize, Wintermute, Solana Foundation, and Polygon. OTL’s technical specifications are built upon mature standards including W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and ISO 20022, and adopt a modular five-layer architecture covering Identity, Session, Transport, Messaging, and Application layers. The specifications have been published under an open-source license at otl.network, and the alliance is also open to additional institutional participation.
: Multiple institutions including Robinhood, MetaMask, and eToro, along with Fireblocks, Checkout.com, Cross River Bank, Securitize, Wintermute, and others, jointly announced their participation in the "Open Transaction Layer (OTL)" initiative, aimed at establishing a unified transaction coordination protocol layer for on-chain finance.OTL is positioned as an open protocol stack for coordinating identity verification, compliance validation, transaction messaging, and execution processes among wallets, institutions, and AI agents, addressing the integration fragmentation problem currently plaguing cross-institutional interactions in on-chain finance, where entities operate in silos.The current coalition members include payment companies, trading platforms, wallets, market makers, and custody and stablecoin infrastructure providers, including Robinhood, MetaMask, eToro, MoonPay, SoFi, Wintermute, among others, as well as foundations from multiple public chains such as TON, Solana, Stellar, and Polygon. (Financefeeds)
According to an official announcement, Aztec Labs has acquired Obsidion—the team behind ZKPassport. The Obsidion team will continue developing ZKPassport while also leading the development of new consumer-facing products. The ZKPassport protocol will remain open-source. Aztec Labs stated that ZKPassport enables users to prove attributes such as age, nationality, or sanctions status using government-issued identity documents—without uploading any personal data to a server and without personal data ever leaving the user’s device. It already supports over 130 countries and regions and has been used for nationality and sanctions compliance verification in the Aztec Network token sale.
According to Bloomberg, last month India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology warned that prediction markets such as Polymarket and online gambling platforms are illegal and should be blocked. Nevertheless, Polymarket and Kalshi continue to allow Indian users to register and participate in trading. In an official notice posted on its website, the relevant Indian government department stated that users can still access these “illegal and blocked platforms,” despite domestic bans already being in place, and instructed internet service providers to cut off access.
Open-source data visualization tool Grafana announced on X that it recently discovered an unauthorized attacker had obtained a token granting access to Grafana Labs’ GitHub environment and used it to download code repositories. An investigation confirmed that no customer data or personal information was compromised, and no impact was found on customer systems or business operations. Forensic analysis was initiated immediately following the incident, and the source of the credential leak has been identified. Additional security measures have also been deployed to strengthen environmental protections. Additionally, Grafana disclosed that the attacker attempted to extort payment via ransomware to prevent public disclosure of the code repositories; however, the company ultimately decided not to pay the ransom. More details from the post-incident review will be shared after the investigation concludes.
Odaily, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated when discussing the removal of Section 604 of the CLARITY Act that this provision could subject open source developers to long-term legal liability for others' use of their code. He pointed out that once developers publish open source software, even if someone subsequently misuses the code without consent, the developer could still be held permanently accountable, calling this a serious threat to the open source innovation environment.
According to CoinPost, Japanese blockchain infrastructure company Nihon Blockchain Kiban has officially decided to issue the trust-based JPY-pegged stablecoin EJPY. The stablecoin is planned to be deployed on Japan Open Chain (JOC) and Ethereum, with the goal of launching issuance and circulation on JOC within fiscal year 2026. The announcement states that the trust-based architecture required for EJPY has achieved phased progress. The company noted that EJPY will primarily serve inter-corporate settlements, digital asset payments, fund transfers, and various Web3 payment use cases, and that it will advance a multi-chain strategy centered on JOC. Specific details—including the actual launch date, issuance terms, partner institutions, and supported blockchains—will be announced separately after consultations with regulatory authorities and relevant organizations and completion of necessary procedures.
Wintermute’s weekly market report indicates Bitcoin recently broke through $80,000 and briefly touched around $83,000, while also reclaiming the 200-day moving average for the first time in seven months. However, this rally is clearly more driven by leveraged capital rather than spot buying.The report notes that over the past month, Bitcoin open interest increased by approximately $10 billion, while spot trading volume dropped to a two-year low, a classic short squeeze scenario. Although ETFs still recorded net inflows of $623 million and BTC reserves on exchanges fell to a seven-year low, the current RSI has entered overbought territory. If spot buying fails to sustain after the short squeeze ends, BTC prices could face a rapid correction risk.Wintermute also stated that the current crypto market rally is more driven by the strength of US equities and the resonance of leverage, rather than an independent bull market narrative. Upcoming US CPI data and changes in Federal Reserve policy expectations will be key factors in determining whether BTC can stably hold above $80,000.
the Ethereum Protocol Support Team has announced the launch of Ethereum Protocol Fellowship Cohort 7 (EPF7). The application channel is now open, with a deadline of May 13th.This program is designed to cultivate engineers capable of participating in Ethereum core protocol development, focusing on the network's core attributes including censorship resistance, open-source nature, privacy, and security. Key areas of focus include client implementations, protocol specifications, testing, and cutting-edge research.EPF7 will adopt a "small-scale, high-density" model, reducing participant numbers to enhance the depth of mentorship and the quality of project contributions, while strengthening collaboration opportunities with the core development team. The project runs from June to November. Selected participants will receive mentorship support from the Ethereum core developer community. Some participants will also receive monthly grants to focus on protocol development work. The program goals include nurturing long-term contributors for the Ethereum core research and development team, and driving participants towards producing substantive results in client development and protocol research.It is reported that the EPF team will host an online information session on May 6th at 15:00 UTC to further introduce project details and answer application-related questions.
the Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) has announced it has formally submitted a comment letter regarding the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on prediction markets. The HPC advocates for establishing clear compliance pathways for decentralized prediction markets built on public, permissionless blockchains, while simultaneously refining the regulatory framework for centralized prediction markets.In its comment letter, the HPC calls on the CFTC to develop more flexible, function-oriented rules tailored to decentralized market structures; to establish clear legal channels for U.S. market participants to access decentralized prediction markets; and to support U.S. leadership in the field of decentralized finance innovation.The HPC states that prediction markets are a natural extension of the federal derivatives framework. They help participants directly manage their economic risk exposure to real-world events and aggregate dispersed information through continuously updated market prices. Their price discovery capabilities have been widely validated and, in some cases, outperform traditional polling and expert forecasts.The HPC points out that decentralized prediction markets based on public blockchains offer advantages such as transparency, non-custodial operation, and high resilience. They do not rely on centralized operators to hold user funds, nor do they present single points of failure. All transactions are recorded in real-time on a public ledger, facilitating both regulatory oversight and market surveillance, while market access standards are more transparent and uniform.The HPC emphasizes that the current rulemaking process should not codify reliance on single exchange operators, custodial intermediaries, or traditional settlement monitoring mechanisms. Doing so would prevent U.S. users from legally participating in decentralized prediction markets. The HPC states it will continue to promote compliant access to Hyperliquid and HIP-4 Outcome Markets for U.S. market participants, and will maintain ongoing communication with the CFTC.
pricing on the Kalshi prediction market indicates the market currently sees only about a 50% probability of a Fed rate cut before 2027, a sharp decline from the 80-90% probability seen earlier this year. As the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) convenes, the market is effectively pricing in a "higher for longer" interest rate environment, reflecting a lack of confidence in near-term monetary policy easing.
on Sunday that after the Department of Justice concluded its investigation into Powell, Republican Senator Thom Tillis dropped his opposition to Kevin Warsh's Federal Reserve Chair nomination confirmation process. The Senate Banking Committee ultimately voted 13 to 11 in favor of sending Kevin Warsh's nomination as Federal Reserve Chair to a full Senate vote. According to the official website of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, the vote is scheduled for April 29th at 10:00 AM Eastern Time.On the same day, the Federal Open Market Committee will also announce its latest interest rate decision. Current Chair Jerome Powell will preside over his 63rd—and potentially final—press conference since taking the helm of the Federal Reserve eight years ago. Powell's term as Federal Reserve Chair expires on May 15th, but his term as a Board member runs until January 31, 2028. Whether Powell will also step down from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors has become a key focus for the market.
the open interest (OI) for options on the Bitcoin spot ETF, IBIT, issued by BlackRock, rose to $27.61 billion on Friday, surpassing the $26.9 billion in the Bitcoin options market on the crypto derivatives platform Deribit for the first time.According to Volmex data, the call options holdings in IBIT are primarily betting that the Bitcoin price will rise to $109,709 in the short term, approximately 41% higher than the current level of around $77,400. Meanwhile, the Deribit market mainly expects Bitcoin to rise to about $106,000. Additionally, the average time to maturity of IBIT options is about two months longer than those on Deribit, indicating that investors in the regulated U.S. market are more inclined towards long-term holdings and stronger bullish sentiment. This further highlights the accelerating trend of institutionalization in the Bitcoin market. (CoinDesk)
According to an official announcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand (SEC), the Thai SEC is soliciting public comments on proposed amendments to the regulations governing futures contract business licenses. The key proposals include permitting existing digital asset service providers to directly apply for futures contract business licenses without having to establish new entities, and formally including digital assets within the scope of underlying assets eligible for futures contracts.
According to CoinDesk, U.S. Representatives have introduced the “PACE Act,” aimed at modernizing the U.S. payment system. The bill would allow qualified companies direct access to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails to reduce payment delays, lower transaction fees, and accelerate fund transfers for consumers and businesses. The report notes that the proposal has garnered support from fintech and cryptocurrency groups, with the goal of making the payment system faster, lower-cost, and more competitive.
According to The Block, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published a new consultation paper seeking feedback on how to bring digital asset activities—including stablecoin issuance, trading platforms, custody, and staking—under regulatory oversight. The consultation period ends on 3 June 2026. Crypto firms will be able to begin applying for FCA authorization as early as 30 September 2026, and the new regulatory regime is expected to officially take effect in 2027. The FCA stated that, prior to the new regime coming into force, crypto assets are largely unregulated in the UK—except for financial promotions and anti-financial crime oversight. Industry insiders note that the UK’s progress on crypto regulation clearly lags behind Europe, which has already established a comprehensive enforcement framework; however, some practitioners view the FCA’s systematic, phased implementation approach positively.
Odaily News The State Bank of Pakistan has officially allowed banks to open accounts for licensed Virtual Asset Service Providers, lifting its 2018 ban. (Cointelegraph)
Circle Chief Strategy Officer Dante Disparte responded to the major security breach affecting Drift Protocol on April 1, which resulted in over $270 million in stolen funds. He stated that open financial systems must be built upon foundations of legal accountability, shared security, and rules that evolve in real time with emerging threats. Circle freezes USDC funds only when legally required—a measure reflecting its compliance obligations and safeguarding users’ assets and privacy rights. He emphasized that openness and accountability must be balanced, and all participants across the ecosystem—including protocols, wallets, infrastructure providers, exchanges, and stablecoin issuers—must jointly shoulder responsibility for security and accountability. Circle is collaborating with U.S. and international policymakers to advance stablecoin legislation, including the GENIUS Act, to establish a more modern legal framework enabling lawful, rapid intervention against illicit activities while protecting property rights and privacy—ensuring the continued resilience and robust growth of open financial systems.