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On October 19, the team from the fully homomorphic encryption company Zama announced that users participating in the incentive distribution platform Merkl on the Zama confidential vault can now directly receive cZAMA rewards in the Zama app. The rewards are settled through confidential transfers, and both the positions and the reward amounts remain confidential from deposit to distribution.In September 2026, Zama launched confidential access to 16 selected vaults on the lending protocol Morpho and initiated the first batch of confidential incentives with Merkl, where rewards are calculated based on encrypted balances. When depositing into eligible vaults, users can activate additional incentive options, granting viewing permissions for Merkl to read encrypted balances to calculate rewards without disclosing personal positions. This permission is enabled by default on the deposit interface, and deposits not shared with Merkl do not qualify for incentives.Confidential vaults accumulate based on the user's confidential vault shares and can be claimed during the ongoing activity; existing public vaults with confidential access have rewards collectively obtained by the vault packaging contracts, which are distributed after the activity ends. Zama recommends claiming confidential activities at the end to reduce multiple on-chain fees. Taking the Flowdesk Confidential High Yield USDT vault on Morpho as an example, the related activity ended on October 12, and eligible depositors can now claim their rewards. Users need to check their earnings in Merkl using their wallet and complete the claim in the Zama app by connecting the same wallet; the amount received will not be publicly disclosed on-chain.

According to official news from IoTeX, the Zanzibar hard fork has been activated on the IoTeX mainnet (block height 53,533,081). According to IIP-59, voter rewards will be calculated and distributed on-chain during each reward cycle, eliminating off-chain services and intermediaries, allowing anyone to directly verify each payment on-chain. The first on-chain distribution will take place the following day.This upgrade also strengthens consensus by checking the proof of holding representative keys, preparing for subsequent BLS signature aggregation. Node operators need to upgrade to iotex-core v2.5.1 without the need to modify configurations or resynchronize.

Zakura has announced an experimental network layer P2Pv2 for Zcash nodes, intended to replace the old protocol inherited from Bitcoin. This layer combines high-throughput networking, resource control, and a consensus engine tested for properties, allowing developers to add services without permission. Zakura states that approximately 50,000 transactions per second require each full node to continuously receive about 100MB/s of block data, while the 25-second block of NU7 can carry a maximum of 2MB, with existing network throughput differing by more than a thousand times from this rate. Tachyon can reduce the proof after entering the block, but the network still needs to propagate a large number of individual transactions.P2Pv2 replaces the protocol stack from about a decade ago with protocols that can be optimized for latency, throughput, or robustness, allowing a secure connection to carry multiple independent services. The transport layer uses its own zakura-quic, based on quinn-proto, utilizing QUIC and TLS 1.3, and authenticating peers with Ed25519 node identity. Related changes remove the dependency on Iroh, allowing nodes to configure socket buffers, flow control windows, timers, and connection admission before the TLS handshake. The new transport directly connects to peer addresses without using relays, external address lookups, automatic port mapping, or QUIC NAT traversal. Nodes sign identities, addresses, protocol scopes, and service IDs, allowing clients to find peers based on specific services.The independent component zakura-header-chain verifies block headers and retains competing branches in a directed acyclic graph, selecting the best qualified chain. Block synchronization schedules requests based on the delivery rates measured by each peer, and a verified commitment tree is used to skip the reconstruction of Sapling, Orchard, and Ironwood trees for each block. Currently, the Mainnet still defaults to the old P2P stack, while the Testnet and Regtest run dual stacks by default, with the native protocol version being p2p-v2/3. Zakura notes that P2Pv2 still has known denial-of-service risks and has not yet become a hardened trust boundary; production hardening, resource control, and block relay protocols are still in progress.

On Thursday, Rockstar released the trailer for the launch of "GTA 6," in which an airplane's fuselage is printed with the words "DacityCoin AudaCity," and a character ignites a neon pink flare on the wing. The term "Dacity Coin" appears for only about two seconds but triggers a surge in on-chain transactions. Within an hour of the trailer's release, a meme coin of the same name on Solana skyrocketed 2900% from a market value of $104,000, reaching a peak of $3.18 million. Since the token was created five days before the trailer was released, traders had ample time to buy in before the surge.The birth of this token stems from game footage of "GTA 6" leaked by the notorious Rockstar hacker "Cyberleek," which featured Dacity Coin, though only a few traders noticed at the time. The coin launched on October 11 on the Solana new listing platform Pump.fun, with its market value briefly soaring to $1.14 million, then falling back to $144,700 and consolidating until it surged again on Thursday. According to DEX Screener data, 24 traders made over $10,000 in profit on this token, with the highest earner turning $1,912 into $44,000. Currently, Dacity's market value is $1.5 million, down about 53% from its peak of $3.18 million.According to the GTA wiki, the game's protagonist, Lucia, is asked to promote the AudaCity brand with parachuting stunts and attract investment for Dacity Coin. If true, the game seems to satirize the various extreme performances that meme coin creators have conducted over the years to promote their tokens. There have been precedents for similar situations: in February 2025, "Fortnite" introduced a fictional cryptocurrency called Dill Bits, after which a real token of the same name appeared on Solana, peaking at a market value of $4.78 million before plummeting 96%; in April of the same year, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney called it a scam, after which the coin surged 2700% and then dropped 82% within days. Rockstar has yet to respond regarding Dacity Coin.

On October 15, a staff member from the public relations department of CK Hutchison Holdings told reporters that Li Ka-shing currently has no plans to make a public appearance to respond. Recently, rumors circulating online claiming "Li Ka-shing has passed away" have attracted attention.CK Hutchison Holdings issued a statement on the same day, stating that the related rumors are completely unfounded. The accompanying image in the report is a recent photo of Li Ka-shing published by the Li Ka-shing Foundation in May, and the text also includes the statement issued by CK Hutchison Holdings regarding the death rumors and a stern statement from the Ta Kung Pao.

Vice President Joe Burnett of Strive posted on platform X that investors can now participate in the SATS perpetual preferred stock IPO through Fidelity.

Galaxy Digital Research Director Alex Thorn stated that over half of the BTC supply is located in addresses of unknown ownership. Despite the trend of institutionalization and centralized holdings in recent years, there is still a massive (possibly even the majority of) amount of Bitcoin being self-custodied by individuals.

The well-known financial media FX168 has reached a cooperation with the Web3 asset data platform RootData, which will utilize RootData's tokenized stock data to provide more support for its news, in-depth reports, and investment research content, in order to enhance the coverage efficiency of the integration trends between TradFi and Crypto. It is reported that the RootData tokenized stock sector has tracked real-time trading data for over 8,000 tokenized stocks and contracts, covering mainstream trading platforms such as Binance, OKX, Gate, Bitget, and Kraken, with indicators including trading volume, liquidity depth, open interest, and price volatility.FX168 Finance is a leading financial media and data service provider, dedicated to providing real-time market insights, in-depth analysis, and intelligent content distribution services across a wide range of asset classes including foreign exchange, commodities, stocks, digital assets, and macroeconomics. As the RWA narrative heats up, tokenized stocks are becoming an important asset class connecting traditional finance and the Web3 market, and this cooperation will provide readers with more timely and quantifiable cross-market references.

Google has started to roll out Gemini 4 Argon to Google AI subscription users, applicable on platforms including Google Antigravity, the Gemini app, and the AI mode in Google Search. Gemini 4 Argon is launched at a promotional price of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens.

Bitget officially launched the rToken US stock transfer feature, currently supporting over 3,000 US stocks and ETFs. Users can transfer eligible stock assets from their traditional brokerage accounts to Bitget, and once the stocks are credited, they will be automatically converted into US stock spot rTokens based on the corresponding number of shares. Throughout the transfer process, Bitget does not charge any fees.The rTokens after the transfer can be directly integrated into the Bitget Universal Exchange (UEX) ecosystem, used for wealth management, lending, margin trading, and other yield-generating products, enhancing the capital efficiency and usage scenarios of stock assets. To coincide with the feature launch, Bitget is also launching a reward campaign with a total value of $1 million in SpaceX stock tokens (rSPCX). Users can receive corresponding SpaceX stock rewards based on the transfer amount, with rewards distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Users can select the stocks and quantities they wish to transfer on the US stock transfer page and use the reward calculator on the page to view the estimated transfer amount and corresponding activity rewards.Bitget CEO Gracy Chen stated, "This feature aims to help investors consolidate their stock assets scattered across different brokerages into a unified ecosystem without selling their existing positions, achieving flexible allocation across asset classes."

According to Gate market data, the decline in the U.S. stock market's storage and optical communication sectors has narrowed.In the storage sector, Micron Technology (MU) fell by 2.88%, Western Digital (WDC) fell by 2.11%, SanDisk (SNDK) fell by 5.68%, Seagate Technology (STX) fell by 3.62%, and SK Hynix (SKHY) fell by 3.67%.In the optical communication concept stocks, Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) fell by 6.47%, Coherent (COHR) fell by 7.14%, Credo (CRDO) fell by 5.69%, Lumentum (LITE) fell by 1.57%, and Nokia (NOK) fell by 2.99%.

The official NEAR public chain stated on X that cryptographic agility is a fundamental requirement of the blockchain industry, and the upgrade of signature schemes should become routine. NEAR accounts now support post-quantum ML-DSA signature schemes without the need to migrate assets.The NEAR core development team, Near One, is advancing NEP-655. This proposal involves commitment-based implicit accounts derived from the initial state hash, with assets located after that hash, without exposing public keys or key hashes on-chain. The related functionality has currently been launched on the testnet, with the mainnet planned for release in the coming weeks.For developers, the team is designing the NEAR Intents wallet contract to support custom signature extensions, including ML-DSA and hash-based schemes. For chains that cannot currently add post-quantum keys, the team is advancing the Q-day recovery registry on NEAR, allowing users to submit recovery keys in a rotatable hash format. NEAR claims that quantum computing factors were considered in its design back in 2018.

The Solana client development company Anza posted on X that SIMD-0525 has been completed, and the 200 millisecond slot is now live on the Solana mainnet test version.Anza stated that the block landing frequency has reached twice that of the genesis, and the duration of one epoch has been shortened from about two days to about one day. Anza was formed by the original core engineering team of Solana Labs and is responsible for maintaining the Solana validator client Agave.

Telegram has renamed its wallet service "Gram wallet," which was originally available to only a select group of users, to "Money," and has officially launched it to over one billion users across the platform. "Money" is a built-in wallet for the Gram token, supporting storage, transfers, and the purchase of platform gifts and collectible usernames.In addition, the accompanying trading platform "Walt" offers services for over 300 assets, covering tokenized stocks, precious metals, perpetual contracts, and wealth management projects. Users can make instant transfers to the "Money" wallet through "Walt" without incurring network fees. The official also reminds that investing in crypto assets carries corresponding risks.

According to official news from Uniswap, the stock tokens for the United States and South Korea issued by Stove Finance have been launched on Arbitrum and are now available for trading on Uniswap Apps, supported by UniswapX.

According to Arkham monitoring, the whale 0x355 invested nearly 4.9 million USD in BNB, ETH, LINK, PENDLE, MORPHO, and ENA tokens on Binance four months ago.Currently, the value of this portfolio has increased by nearly 800,000 USD compared to the initial investment, mainly benefiting from the recent price increases of ETH and BNB. The other altcoins held by this whale have seen relatively small price changes due to the later buying time.

Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm posted on X platform stating that the U.S. Department of the Treasury recently acknowledged in a document that there were issues with the previous rules regarding mixers, and mentioned that this policy could have a "chilling effect" on legitimate activities.Storm stated that although the relevant department of the U.S. Department of the Treasury now believes there are issues with the policy, the U.S. Department of Justice still insists in its case that even legitimate transactions conducted through Tornado Cash constitute illegal activities due to the potential for being used for money laundering, evading sanctions, and other criminal purposes.Storm claimed that the non-criminal department of the U.S. government believes the policy is inappropriate, while the criminal justice department considers all related transactions to be criminal; he has been detained and prosecuted for over 1,139 days and stated that his case stems from developing open-source code.Storm also mentioned that a new document was submitted today to the Southern District of New York (SDNY) federal court, and the U.S. Department of Justice is still pushing for his conviction.