rca

The decentralized social network Farcaster has changed ownership for the second time this year. Network School, led by Balaji Srinivasan, has acquired Farcaster from Neynar, with the transaction amount not disclosed. Neynar co-founder Rish stated on Thursday that after considering multiple acquisition offers, the company decided to transfer the "Farcaster application, protocol codebase, and related products" to Network School, citing that Farcaster needs a different operational model in the next phase. Rish and another co-founder, Manan, will leave, while the remaining Neynar employees will join Network School to continue developing Farcaster.Neynar acquired the platform from Farcaster's original developer, Merkle Manufactory, in January this year, and the deal also included the token issuance platform Clanker. Rish's announcement did not mention the fate of Clanker, but GM Farcaster host Adrienne and NourishProf mentioned during a live broadcast on Thursday that Rish is considering splitting Clanker and seeking other buyers for it. Meanwhile, an in-app announcement indicates that Farcaster will be renamed "Network Nation Protocol," aiming to build a network composed of a voluntarily joined digital society, ultimately landing in the physical world.Users must choose to accept or reject a "social smart contract," with acceptors receiving an on-chain access NFT as proof.

BVNK announced the launch of a global currency platform that connects stablecoins with Mastercard's payment network, enabling stablecoins to facilitate fund transfers through Mastercard's card organization channels.The first planned integration partners for the platform include payment service providers Nuvei and Marqeta. BVNK stated that the platform's local withdrawal coverage is expected to further expand by 2027.

According to Forbes, venture capitalist Alex Lazarow wrote that in the past two years, Stripe, Mastercard, and Circle have acquired American stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, British BVNK, and Singapore cross-border payment platform Tazapay, respectively, with a total transaction value exceeding $3 billion. These three companies were established between 2020 and 2022, raising a total of approximately $200 million, indicating that stablecoin payment infrastructure is becoming a field where traditional payment giants and cryptocurrency companies are competing to establish a presence.Among them, Stripe announced in 2024 that it would acquire Bridge for slightly over $1 billion; the total value of Mastercard's acquisition of BVNK could reach up to $1.8 billion, including $1.5 billion in base consideration and $300 million in contingent consideration; Circle agreed to acquire Tazapay for $400 million in stock, with the transaction expected to be completed in 2027. The growth in stablecoin adoption, the gradual clarification of regulatory frameworks, and the rising demand for real-time cross-border payments are the main factors driving mergers and acquisitions.Data shows that in 2025, the adjusted transaction volume of stablecoins is expected to grow by 91% year-on-year, reaching $10.9 trillion, close to Visa's $14.2 trillion; the scale of real-world payments is expected to more than double, reaching approximately $390 billion. These transactions reflect that acquirers value not only stablecoin technology but also verified business scale, payment networks, and compliance qualifications.As stablecoin payment infrastructure matures, applications such as dollar accounts, stablecoin payment cards, and cross-border remittances are also emerging, and in the future, more local infrastructure companies similar to Bridge and BVNK may be acquired in various regions around the world.

Privacy infrastructure Hinkal announced on October 9, 2026, its participation in the Mastercard Crypto Partner Program. This program connects crypto and blockchain teams, Mastercard teams, and its global payment network, with members including stablecoin issuers, infrastructure providers, fiat exchange service providers, crypto card supporters, and blockchain and blockchain service providers. Mastercard positions it as a way to transform technological capabilities into compliant use cases for global commerce; some members can also access financial institutions within the card issuing and acquiring networks and receive regulatory and compliance support aligned with global standards.Related use cases include cross-border payments and remittances, B2B transactions, fund and settlement flows, stablecoin payments, and card projects that allow users to spend digital assets at regular merchants. Hinkal can provide embeddable privacy capabilities for wallets, payment platforms, and chains, allowing stablecoins to settle in private balances and transfer using zero-knowledge proofs, ensuring that the amount, sender, or receiver is not disclosed during on-chain transfer verification. This capability is already live on Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, TRON, and other major EVM chains, accessible via SDK and API.Existing integrations include Private Send in Polygon Wallet, Hinkal Private Send in the Tether wallet development kit, Turnkey wallets that can enhance privacy features through Hinkal SDK, and Avvio running Hinkal private payments on its own interface.

On September 29, the Orca community released a token holder proposal to adjust the protocol fee distribution to 10% flowing into the xORCA pool, 10% allocated to the team's buyback account, and 80% for team operations. The proposal also plans to transfer approximately 14.2 million ORCA from the community treasury and about 70,000 SOL from the fee treasury to a team-controlled account, and to dissolve the council, shifting to pure token holder governance.The original distribution was 20% xORCA, 30% fee treasury, and 50% team, later adjusted to 40% / 10% / 50%. The team stated that they have negotiated the acquisition of a leading Solana DeFi protocol, which is expected to bring about a 50% increase in TVL. Voting requires 3 million yes votes, with a voting period of 5 days, and the council can veto with 4 votes. Risks include concentration of control and reduced xORCA yields, with the team committing to disclose buyback and strategic account deployment status every six months.

The decentralized exchange Orca based on Solana has announced a merger with the lending platform Loopscale, with the new entity named Formation. After the merger, the team will be led by Loopscale co-founder Luke Truitt as CEO. Formation plans to combine Orca's trading infrastructure with Loopscale's lending and investment vaults to provide a one-stop path for emerging assets from issuance, financing to trading.The company aims to extend from crypto trading and lending into capital-intensive fields such as AI, energy, robotics, and defense. Truitt stated that the pace at which the frontier economy creates new business models and financing demands is faster than the evolution of traditional market infrastructure. Formation claims that traditional financing is too costly for smaller-scale transactions and plans to reduce costs and eventually connect to regulated U.S. capital markets. In the coming year, Formation will launch tools and new investment strategies aimed at asset issuers and has already partnered with Figure, Shinhan Asset Management, Superstate, R3, and Securitize to promote asset tokenization and distribution.Christopher Montagano from Orca will serve as Formation's Chief Strategy and Legal Officer, stating that mere liquidity is not enough to scale assets. Both parties confirmed that the existing agreements will still form the basis for the ORCA and xORCA token networks, and the financial terms of the merger have not been disclosed.

ChainCatcher live report, at the OKX NOW conference roundtable "Next Generation Financial System: Who Will Build It?", Mastercard's Executive Vice President of Blockchain and Digital Assets Raj Dhamodharan looked ahead to the payment landscape ten years from now: the underlying rails will change, new technologies such as stablecoins will be applied more behind the scenes, but the simplicity and trust of user experience will not change. He pointed out that stablecoins' "almost zero-cost transfers" are just the surface; cross-border payments still require a multi-layered combination of local liquidity and compliance systems, "payment rails are just one of the raw materials."Also present, OKX Global Managing Partner and CMO Haider Rafique revealed two sets of industry data: the global stablecoin market size is approximately $250 billion, and there are over 700 million crypto users; he also confirmed that the OKX Card exclusively uses the Mastercard network in markets such as Europe, and both parties are exploring cooperation in payment and AI-driven e-commerce.

According to Crypto Briefing, Orca's Chief Legal Officer Christopher Montagano stated at the Korea Blockchain Week that the innovation exemption released by the SEC on September 17 provides the conditions to verify whether DeFi blockchain tracks are more efficient than traditional infrastructure.The exemption offers a conditional relief period of 5 years, until September 17, 2031; under this framework, tokenized securities venues and specific liquidity providers can operate tokenized U.S. stock licensed trading without registering as exchanges or brokers.Montagano stated that the exemption is specifically designed for AMM but does not constitute a ruling on DeFi; relevant parties must still comply with sanction rules and obtain issuer consent to distinguish it from unlicensed DeFi. Orca has been involved in discussions with the SEC since 2025 and began trading tokenized stocks in November of the same year.

Bitwise Asset Management announced the launch of the Bitwise NEAR ETF (ticker NRR) on NYSE Arca, referred to as the first spot NEAR ETP in the United States, with a management fee of 0.75%. The plan is to stake the NEAR held by the fund through its proprietary staking team, aiming to participate in approximately 5% of the average staking rewards.

The U.S. SEC filing shows that Bitwise NEAR ETF has submitted Form 8-A registration statement, applying to register its common beneficial certificates on the NYSE Arca exchange.The document indicates that the ETF is sponsored by Bitwise Investment Advisers, LLC, and the corresponding S-1 filing was submitted to the SEC on September 16.The Bitwise NEAR ETF aims to provide exposure to exchange-traded products related to NEAR assets. This Form 8-A was signed on September 24, signed by Bitwise Chief Operating Officer Teddy Fusaro.

According to The Defiant, BVNK, a stablecoin infrastructure company under Mastercard, announced the addition of the Stellar network as a stablecoin payment channel. This integration has officially launched in over 130 markets, and more Stellar native assets will be supported in the future.BVNK is a stablecoin infrastructure company that was acquired by Mastercard for up to $1.8 billion.

According to The Block, SoFi has begun using SoFiUSD to settle debit and credit card transactions on the Mastercard network and plans to migrate the entire card program to blockchain settlement, with an expected annual processing volume exceeding $25 billion.SoFi claims to be the first bank to launch stablecoin settlement on the Mastercard network.

Tesla announced that the Cyber Autonomous Driving Vehicle Cybercab will be publicly showcased from September 17 to 27 in Beijing and Shanghai, with static displays at the Tesla Experience Store in Beijing Huamao and the North Hall on LG1 level of Shanghai Xinyetai Guohui.

The U.S. SEC is reviewing Grayscale's application to rename the Grayscale Litecoin Trust to "Grayscale Litecoin Trust ETF," which is planned to be listed on NYSE Arca under the stock ticker LTCN.

According to CNBC, Ant International has launched a collaboration with Visa and Mastercard to establish a "Know Your Agent" (KYA) interoperability framework, which will set universal standards for AI agent identity recognition, verification, and transaction monitoring, allowing agents verified on one network to be used across ecosystems.McKinsey estimates that by 2030, AI agents could participate in $30 trillion to $50 trillion in global consumer transactions.

Mastercard recently released the report "A Short History of the Future of Shopping and Payments," predicting that by 2030, approximately 300 million shoppers worldwide will regularly use AI agents, primarily concentrated in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, China, and South Korea. The report is based on a survey conducted from June to July 2026 involving 13 markets and 13,000 pairs of parents and teenagers (a total of 26,000 respondents).The survey shows that 65% of British teenagers believe AI will change the shopping habits of their generation, and the likelihood of teenagers globally using AI for shopping is about twice that of their parents. 22% of British teenagers expect shopping to be dominated by AI within five years, compared to only 11% in France. 79% of teenagers and 70% of parents have used AI to research products in the past year, while 51% of teenagers and 46% of parents have used AI to complete a purchase at least once.The report cites Gartner's prediction that by 2028, the majority of B2B procurement will be mediated by AI agents, driving over $15 trillion in spending; by 2030, 20% of monetary transactions will be programmable. The report also suggests that "Know Your Agent" (KYA) could become a compliance advantage, with payment intent, consent, and machine-readable warranties forming the infrastructure of agent-based commerce.

On September 3 local time, Tesla held a Cybercab launch event in Austin, Texas, USA. This vehicle is a mass-produced model designed for autonomous driving scenarios, eliminating the steering wheel, pedals, and traditional rearview mirrors, and adopting a two-seat layout, with driving entirely controlled by Tesla's autonomous driving software. The Cybercab was unveiled as a concept car at the "We, Robot" event in October 2024, with the first mass-produced vehicle rolling off the line at the Texas Gigafactory in February this year, and mass production starting in April, taking about 18 months from concept to mass production.The vehicle relies on 8 high-definition cameras to perceive the environment and makes driving decisions through an end-to-end neural network, without relying on lidar and high-precision maps. According to Tesla's data, as of September 2026, the global fleet's cumulative assisted driving mileage has exceeded 22.5 billion kilometers. In terms of energy efficiency, it is expected to travel 9.8 kilometers per kilowatt-hour, with an energy consumption of about 10.2 kilowatt-hours per 100 kilometers. The curb weight is 1412 kilograms, equipped with a 47.6 kilowatt-hour battery pack and a 163-kilowatt motor, with a laboratory range of 673 kilometers. After scaling up ride-hailing operations, the cost per mile can be reduced to $0.2, equivalent to about 0.84 yuan per kilometer.The Cybercab will be showcased in multiple cities such as Beijing and Shanghai starting in mid-September. This exhibition does not involve the sale of the vehicle in China, nor does it represent that Tesla will conduct autonomous ride-hailing commercial operations domestically.

According to GMGN data, trader LaserCat previously invested about $10,700 betting on a bull market, currently with an unrealized profit of about $1,123,200, yielding a return of 10,467.74%.