Flash News

TREE NEWS update: Solana staking protocol Marinade said nodes running Alpenglow’s Agave 4.3.2 skip about half their slots in each epoch’s first block-production window, and that a fix has been merged but not yet released. Until the patched version ships, the Protected Staking Rewards (PSR) mechanism will not deduct validator bonds for those slots, and the Staking Auction Market (SAM) will not count them as uptime shortfalls. Marinade said the client bug should not be borne by validators.

TREE NEWS update: Ripple has secured final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a federally supervised trust bank that will manage reserves for its $2.6 billion RLUSD stablecoin and offer custody services. The approval comes as banking groups challenge crypto charters in court.

TREE NEWS update: The federal bank regulator has granted Ripple a final charter for Ripple National Trust Bank, converting its December 2025 conditional approval into full authorization. The trust bank will manage reserves for Ripple’s stablecoin. Ripple has not yet announced an opening date for the institution.

TREE NEWS update: Initia has drafted a fix for a security vulnerability discovered on Oct. 23 and the remedy is now being audited by security partners, the project said. Once the audit is complete, Initia will publish a detailed plan to restore backing for affected assets and orderly restart its L1 and Rollup networks, expected within the coming days. Users were warned to beware of unofficial links, messages and statements.

TREE NEWS reports: Ether dropped below $2,300 on October 27, trading at $2,299.46 per token, down 1.25% on the day. The move marks a fresh intraday low for the second-largest cryptocurrency, based on OKX market data.

TREE NEWS update: Marinade has exempted first-window slots from PSR and SAM bond charge calculations to address an Agave slot-skipping bug. A fix is included in an Agave 4.4 release candidate. The exemption applies to bond charges tied to the bug.

TREE NEWS update: Zhongou Ruibo, a Chinese private fund manager with 10 billion yuan in assets, has begun external fundraising for a quantitative CTA strategy product, marking the discretionary manager’s first publicly offered quant vehicle. The strategy ran internally with proprietary capital for about five years. The firm now has four quant products, with three more in model development, and focuses on low- to medium-frequency quant strategies.

TREE NEWS update: Sean Bowe, co-founder of Zcash, called to stop funding the Zcash Community Grants program, saying ZCG already holds enough money to continue supporting projects and that its share of new ZEC issuance should be redirected to a reserve for the network. The grants program has received over $125 million. Bowe did not specify how the reserve would be governed.

TREE NEWS update: Payward, the parent company of Kraken, plans to become the first CFTC-regulated HIP-3 deployer on Hyperliquid, offering perpetual futures to US customers. Under the arrangement, Bitnomial will deploy and manage the markets and clear and settle contracts, while NinjaTrader Clearing will carry client accounts. Hyperliquid said the HIP-3* extension adds an on-chain whitelist so licensed institutions can verify customer identities and control trading access, while existing markets remain unchanged.

TREE NEWS update: Ethereum developers have merged a fix into the Glamsterdam upgrade that prevents validator deposits pending at the Gloas fork from being credited to a builder sharing the same key. The change addresses a scenario its author described as a conditional finding rather than a live exploit. The fix was merged ahead of the Gloas fork to close the deposit-crediting edge case.

TREE NEWS update: A team from China Information and Communication Technologies Group’s optical communications laboratory, together with Peng Cheng Laboratory and FiberHome Fujikura, completed a 3.2 Pb/s bidirectional real-time transmission test over a single multi-core fiber, setting a world record for real-time optical transmission capacity. The rate exceeds the same team’s 2.5 Pb/s record set earlier this year by nearly 30%. The trial used a 10.3 km 24-core fiber with S+C+L band multiplexing and space-division multiplexing.

TREE NEWS update: BOB announced on X that it will stop supporting oUSDT on the BOB network on Oct 31, giving holders until that deadline to move the asset out via a cross-chain bridge. The protocol urged users holding oUSDT on BOB to complete the transfer before support ends.

TREE NEWS update: WORPT, a crypto payment app, launched in Thailand under the Tourist DigiPay regulatory sandbox, letting foreign tourists convert USDT and USDC into Thai baht and pay via Thai QR PromptPay, with merchants receiving baht. The app was developed jointly by SEC-approved digital asset exchange Waan Exchange (Waanx) and Bank of Thailand-regulated e-money provider Wipay, with partners including Tether, The Mall Group and Visa. A physical Visa prepaid card is planned for mid-November, with a virtual card due in early 2027.

TREE NEWS update: Keystone has halted web orders and will junk 18,835 wallets in stock after a stolen authenticity key exposed 25,964 buyer records, the wallet maker said. Some of those records still held names and addresses, including data kept beyond its 180-day retention limit.

TREE NEWS reports: A DeFi Education Fund and Ipsos survey found that 13% of U.S. respondents said political candidates should support blockchain, cryptocurrency and DeFi, down from 35% when asked about support for next-generation fintech in general. 74% said the financial system needs change to give individuals more control over assets, but only 9% said they are very or extremely familiar with crypto and 5% highly trust decentralized platforms.

TREE NEWS reports: Prediction markets give Democrats a 92% chance of winning the House and 67% of the Senate one week before the Nov. 3 US midterm elections, with Polymarket projecting 236 House seats for Democrats and Kalshi 234. Trump’s approval rating edged up 1 point to 32%, and Democrats lead Republicans 47% to 36% among registered voters in an Oct. 26 Reuters/Ipsos poll. Crypto and AI-linked stocks could face short-term pressure if Democrats sweep both chambers, while a Republican hold would likely lift CLARITY Act prospects.

TREE NEWS update: The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is inviting community banks and their subsidiaries to apply to issue payment stablecoins under the GENIUS Act. The agency cannot accept applications until the White House budget office approves its forms. The move signals the OCC’s preparation for a stablecoin licensing regime under the new law.

TREE NEWS update: Polymarket has investigated “dozens” of trades tied to the U.S. midterm elections, with at least two cases referred to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the platform’s global intelligence and investigations head, Shana Bautista, said. Bautista, a former FBI official who joined in June, leads a 16-person team using a new election-monitoring system that aggregates social media, Federal Election Commission data and partner information from crypto firms and banks, triggering hundreds of alerts daily ahead of the Nov. 3 vote.

TREE NEWS update: Bloom suffered a security breach in which hackers drained $953,000 from 48 wallets. The platform pledged to reimburse nine affected traders and said no private keys were accessed or compromised. The incident, which unfolded rapidly, is the latest exploit targeting a crypto trading bot service.