HashStack #019

Tether announced the launch of USDT on the RGB protocol, alongside Taproot Assets.

Philippines proposes 10,000 BTC strategic reserve with 20 year lockup

Major v30 Bitcoin Core upgrade to happen in October. 

Google increased its stake in fifth largest bitcoin miner, Terawulf as the miner plans a $400M fundraise via a convertible note offering. 

Bitdeer’s Q2 mining revenue up 43% as bitcoin holdings swell to $175M

Neobank Sofi is tapping the Lightning network, Lightspark, for its upcoming money transfer service.

Ming Shing entered into a $483M agreement to buy BTC from Winning Mission Group and Rich Plenty Investment via promissory notes and stock warrants.

Starknet to launch Bitcoin staking in a few weeks with weightage up to 25%, and the rest in STRK.

HashKey Chain partnered with GF Securities to launch Hong Kong’s first corporate paper tokenization product. 

Ethereum Foundation pauses grant program.

EF posted a new blog about protocol roadmap of improving UX, including interoperability, acceleration, and finalisation.

Optimism partners with Flashbots for sequencing.

Arbitrum DAO votes on Nova Cost cap removal, which will allow the DAO to stop subsidizing fees on Arbitrum Nova.

Sonenium announced a scoring system that tracks onchain participation.

Solana SIMD-0326 of new consensus protocol, Alpenglow, passed. 

Bitlayer joins forces with Kamino and Orca to bring YBTC to Solana. YBTC also launched on Sui mainnet. 

Tron lowered network fees by 60%. The network also announced that it is selected as  one of the primary networks by the U.S. Department of Commerce for posting economic data. 

Camp network launched L1 mainnet. 

B strategy to launch BNB treasury company with plans to raise $1B.

Seal is now available on Walrus mainnet, live on Sui.

Numerai gets $500M from JP Morgan for its AI-powered hedge fund. 

Prime Intellect releases Environment Hub, allowing anyone to build, share and run RL environments.

Nous Research launched Hermes 4, a hybrid reasoning model with strong math, coding and uncensored alignment.

CredMont is live on Vana, its first credit card data DAO.

Gensyn introduced Judge, a cryptographically verified system for reproducible AI evals.

Aethir and Arizona State University have launched the Global AI & Blockchain Education Initiative, merging ASU’s AI research labs with Aethir’s decentralized GPU cloud and allocating $3 million in compute credits for 2025–2026.

Olas has introduced the Marketplace App, a platform for deploying, hiring, and monetizing AI agents designed for on-chain services.

Virtuals Protocol has rolled out liquid staking through VVET, enabling users to stake $VIRTUAL while maintaining liquidity and earning rewards, with $xVIRTUAL and $VVET managing governance and flexibility in the background.

Aave announced Horizon for institutional stablecoin borrowing using U.S. Treasurys and CLO as collateral. Only institutions are able to supply RWA collateral while anyone can supply stablecoin and benefit from institutional lending rates.

1inch launched native cross chain swaps between Solana and EVM chains.

Aave has continued expanding its ecosystem with notable milestones: borrowing on Arbitrum surpassed $875 million, making it the leading Layer 2 chain by volume; the protocol launched on Aptos, extending its reach beyond Ethereum-based ecosystems; and governance approved the addition of Tether Gold (XAUT) as collateral on Aave v3.

Kamino introduces the USD benchmark rate.

More than 100+ signatories have joined the DeFi Education Fund in sending a letter to Congress to promote greater software developer protection in market structure legislation.

Google Cloud is developing its own blockchain (GCUL) for payments.

Finastra integrates USDC into Global Pay Plus, enabling stablecoin settlement to hundreds of financial institutions

PetroChina explores stablecoin use for cross border energy trade.

Under the new Hong Kong stablecoin ordinance framework, more than 77 firms have filed for stablecoin license. 

Raydium partners with World Liberty Financial to launch USD1 on Solana. 

Plasma announced partnership with Ether.fi, with Ether.fi contributing over $500M from its ETH staking vaults to Plasma. 

Dinari partnered with Rain card and Offramp to allow USD+ to be spendable anywhere Visa is accepted. 

Maple Finance launched MapleKit, allowing Developers to seamlessly integrate syrupUSDC and earn from a reward pool of $250K. Additionally, syrupUSDC has also launched on Arbitrum.

Mantra plans complete migration of OM token from Ethereum to native chain by Jan 2026.

Chainlink partnered with the Department of Commerce to provide macro economic data via their oracle network.

Matrixdock’s tokenized gold, XAUm, launched on Sui.

Goldfinch Finance announced the launch of PGIM’s Private Credit Fund on Goldfinch Prime. 

Centrifuge launched deRWA tokens across the EVM ecosystem. 

Galaxy partnered with Superstate to allow shareholders to tokenize their shares on Solana. 

M0 announces $40M series B round from Polychain Capital, Ribbit Capital and Endeavor Global's Catalyst Fund.

Aria completed a $15M seed and strategic funding to pioneer onchain markets for IP assets. 

Utila secures $22m in Series A extension led by Red Dot Capital Partners, as stablecoin infrastructure demand surges. 

aPriori, a MEV infrastructure and liquid staking protocol on Monad, secures $20M strategic funding from HashKey Capital, Pantera Capital among others. 

Rain, a stablecoin card issuer, raised $58M Series B led by Sapphire Ventures. 

Arcana, a chain abstraction and wallet infrastructure provider, was acquired by Avail. 

Meta Era, a blockchain media company, completed a pre-A funding led by Fenbushi Capital with participation from HashKey Capital, Amber Group, Conflux among others. 

DigiFT completed a $11 million strategic funding round led by SBI Holdings.

Space and Time partnered with a16z crypto to develop zkVM.

FOMO Pay and Volkswagen Group Singapore partnered to enable digital currency payments (BTC, ETH, stablecoins) for vehicles and services.

Sign Mobile is now officially launched on Android and iOS.