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According to CoinDesk, Ben Edgington, the coordinator of the Ethereum rapid finality research direction, along with several researchers, submitted a draft proposing to reduce the transaction finality waiting time from about 16 minutes to about 4 minutes, improving it by approximately four times.The current goal is to push this draft into the formal upgrade proposal process. The core idea of the draft is to separate the original "block selection" and "finality confirmation" mechanisms of validators, allowing finality to progress at a faster pace and facilitating future adoption of quantum-resistant signatures.Faster finality is expected to reduce the costs incurred by cross-chain transfer services due to capital occupation. The Ethereum Foundation's research provides an example: if a service advances about 1 million dollars per hour, under a 16-minute delay, approximately 267,000 dollars would be pending recovery, which could be reduced to about 67,000 dollars after shortening to 4 minutes.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) stated in the frequently asked questions document regarding retail payment regulation conclusions that the removal of surcharges for the designated card networks eftpos, Mastercard, and Visa starting from October 1, 2026, is in the public interest. The RBA will lift the ban on the "no surcharge" rule for the aforementioned networks from that date, with the changes based on Standard No. 3 of 2016 and the revisions to the merchant card payment costs and surcharge standards in 2026. eftpos, Mastercard, and Visa have all decided to implement the no surcharge rule from that date, generally applicable to their credit, debit, and prepaid cards, including cards issued overseas.American Express, UnionPay, and PayPal have also decided to eliminate surcharges, but are currently not formally regulated by the RBA. American Express and UnionPay will withdraw from their existing commitments with the RBA on October 1, 2026, while PayPal's no surcharge rule will take effect on October 5, 2026. This scope is limited to fees charged due to customer card payments and does not include surcharges for weekends, public holidays, booking fees, or service fees. Merchants must comply with the new card organization rules unless exceptions apply; businesses, non-profit organizations, and inter-business card payments do not receive a general exemption.The reforms will be implemented in phases. Starting from October 1, 2026, a lower interchange fee cap will apply to domestic card transactions; from October 30, designated card networks and large acquirers must publish the specified card payment fee information on their websites. From January 30, 2027, large acquirers must disclose how the decrease in interchange fees is passed on to merchant service fees; starting April 1, the interchange fee cap will apply to transactions involving overseas-issued cards acquired in Australia, and acquirers must also provide merchants with more detailed statements. The RBA stated that businesses can still factor the costs of accepting card payments into their overall pricing and may offer discounts for specific payment methods.

The blockchain infrastructure layer Espresso announced the completion of its mainnet upgrade. Benchmark tests show that its data throughput reaches 181 MB/s, which translates to approximately 1 million stablecoin transfers per second, based on an average of 180 bytes per transaction.The average final confirmation time for transactions is 337 milliseconds, and under peak load of 1 million transactions per second, it is 778 milliseconds.

According to the "X Layer Q3 2026 Fundamental Report" released by Principia Labs, the Ethereum Layer 2 network X Layer saw growth in on-chain activity and the scale of the DeFi ecosystem in the third quarter. Among them, TradeZone processed approximately 287 million transactions, which is 2.6 times the EVM transaction volume during the same period; the daily average number of EVM transactions increased by 262% month-over-month to 1.22 million.The report also shows that the total locked value in DeFi increased by 100% month-over-month to 173.4 million USD, and the revenue from ecological application transaction fees increased by 490% month-over-month to 1.86 million USD. The market capitalization of OKB increased by 53.8% month-over-month to 2.54 billion USD. Principia Labs believes that with the development of Exchange OS, X Layer is gradually forming a full-stack trading system covering on-chain transactions and DeFi applications.

According to Catcher Predict monitoring on-chain data, significant capital movements are predicted in the Polymarket market. A large whale invested $50,000 in the event "Power Balance: 2026 Midterm Elections" for the outcome "Republican Victory." Based on the current transaction price, the latest corresponding winning probability for this target is 8.82%.

Uniswap founder Hayden posted on the X platform that the first large transaction of UNI executed through regulated traditional financial channels has been completed, marking the first instance of a DeFi token executing a large transaction through this channel.

Arbitrum posted on platform X that the Fhenix mainnet has been launched, bringing FHE-driven privacy features to Arbitrum. Users can now switch transactions from public mode to private mode through Fhenix Dual Mode.

The Meme coin Kimchi on the Solana chain reached a market value of 40 million USD within 1 hour of its launch, currently reported at 38.71 million USD, with a transaction volume of 23.7 million USD. Kimchi (@kimchi1x) currently holds 75.32% of the total supply of this Meme coin.This trader rarely posts trading records or calls, mainly sharing photos and videos related to life, travel, luxury cars, and watches. Alon, co-founder of Pump.fun, stated that Kimchi is the first person to truly bridge the gap between the crypto industry and pop culture, as well as the first case of a trader growing into a public figure. Alon mentioned that Kimchi is helping Pump.fun define its creative direction and expand the ecosystem.

The publicly listed esports company NIP Group, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Bitcoin mining equipment with a total hash rate of approximately 4.47 EH/s, increasing its total deployed hash rate to about 13.85 EH/s. The transaction is valued at up to $27.3 million, and the company will issue up to 247.1 million Class A common shares to the seller.NIP Group expects that once the related equipment is fully deployed, the monthly output of the mining site will reach approximately 195 Bitcoins, exceeding the previously set target of 160 Bitcoins, which is valued at around $16 million based on the then-current price. The equipment is currently operating in a hosting facility and can immediately increase Bitcoin output upon completion of the transaction. NIP Group launched its Bitcoin mining business in July 2025 and plans to gradually expand its hash rate to higher levels. The company stated that the additional hash rate will serve its digital infrastructure strategy and plans to expand into AI, high-performance computing, and gaming applications.

According to a report by The Block, Coinbase released a report titled "The Always-On Dollar" indicating that in the third quarter of 2026, the average hourly transfer amount of organic stablecoin transactions exceeded $400 million. Over the past 12 months, as of July 31, approximately 73% of filtered stablecoin transfer volume occurred outside of U.S. banking hours, highlighting the demand for 24/7 stablecoin payments.The report shows that the adjusted quarterly transfer volume of stablecoins has grown to four times its original amount since the beginning of 2023, reaching $891 billion in the third quarter of 2026. At the current growth rate, this figure is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by the end of 2027. The report also noted that using USDC to remit $200 through the Base network can save about 86% in fees compared to traditional payment channels. Furthermore, if 80% of global international transactions shift to stablecoin payment networks, the global annual GDP could increase by an additional $155 billion.Looking ahead, the report believes that stablecoins are likely to become an important payment infrastructure for the AI agent economy. McKinsey estimates that by 2030, between $3 trillion to $5 trillion in B2C commercial transactions will be facilitated by AI agents, with stablecoins supporting small transactions such as payment task fees between agents, purchasing API calls, and on-demand access to data and computing power.

CME Group announced that FalconX and GSR have completed the first block trade of CME's newly launched Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Uniswap (UNI) futures.CME stated that the new contracts further expand its single cryptocurrency futures product line, which now covers assets such as BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, ADA, LINK, XLM, AVAX, and SUI.

X-Agent's latest Dune data shows that as of October 20, the platform's related on-chain activities have reached 1,268,897 transactions, with the number of Agentic Wallets reaching 39,649. At the same time, a total of 680,285 x402 payments and 233,188 AI Activity Syncs have been generated.From the Dune trend data, X-Agent's on-chain activity saw significant growth in October, with Transactions rapidly increasing in volume for the month, and x402 Payments also experiencing notable growth recently. Compared to traditional AI products that mainly measure user numbers, conversation volume, and model invocation counts, what is more noteworthy in this data set is that AI Agents within the X-Agent ecosystem are gradually generating real, verifiable on-chain economic activities.Through the infrastructure of Agentic Wallet, x402 payments, and AI Activity Sync, Agents are evolving from mere information exchange tools to economic participants capable of executing tasks, using wallets, initiating payments, and generating on-chain records. This further validates the path of the Agent Economy that X-Agent is promoting: Build → Act → Pay → Verify. From "creating AI Agents" to "enabling Agents to truly execute and transact," X-Agent is attempting to connect Agent capabilities, on-chain execution, and payment settlement into a complete closed loop.As the scale of x402 payments and Agentic Wallet continues to grow, the Agent Economy is gradually transforming from a concept into real network activities that can be directly observed and measured by on-chain data.

Solana's official announcement states that in Q3 2026, the number of non-voting transactions on the Solana chain reached 8.92 billion, an increase of 104% compared to Q4 2025.

According to CoinDesk, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated that he is personally developing a new programming language for the Cardano network and collaborating with Input Output Global engineer Lucas Rosa. Lucas Rosa is a co-creator of Aiken, one of Cardano's main smart contract languages. Hoskinson posted on the X platform that this will be the first programming language to combine user transaction completion intentions with cryptographic proofs.It is reported that the language will support three tools: transaction intent, data with carry proofs, and Groth16 proofs. Transaction intent allows users to specify the goals they want to achieve, while leaving the specific steps to the application, for example, traders can request that a token be exchanged for another only when the final price meets certain conditions, without specifying the exact path.Data with carry proofs can attach cryptographic evidence to information, proving that it complies with specific rules, allowing other applications to verify without recalculating. Groth16 is a widely used proof system that can generate small-sized, fast-verifying proofs, demonstrating that conditions have been met without exposing private data.With the combination of the three, developers can build applications that coordinate transactions, check complex conditions, and pass verified information between services, ultimately verified by Cardano with a small proof. Currently, Cardano developers mainly use Haskell-based Plutus and Aiken to write smart contracts, while Input Output Global, founded by Hoskinson, has its own privacy blockchain Midnight with its language Compact. The name, public code, and release date of this new language have not yet been announced.

According to data from Blockworks, the Solana network ranks first in stablecoin transfers, with a transaction volume of 557 million in September, an increase of 33% compared to August. The average daily transaction volume is 18.6 million.

The decentralized perpetual contract trading platform Lighter announced that its EVM development network (devnet) has officially launched. This development network is an EVM-equivalent rollup built in collaboration with Axiom and powered by OpenVM. It operates in sync with Lighter Core, both designed to settle jointly to Ethereum through a single ZK proof.Developers can deploy using Foundry, Hardhat, Viem, and Ethers, and can read accounts, balances, positions, orders, and market data from Lighter Core; they can also place, modify, and cancel orders through smart contracts, and transfer assets between the development network L1, Lighter Core, and Lighter EVM.Lighter stated that the team can be contacted via email at evm@lighter.xyz to request access. Currently, it is onboarding developers in batches to ensure a quick response to issues and will expand access to all developers in the coming weeks.

On October 16, Circle announced that in the first half of 2026, the on-chain settlement amount of USDC exceeded $36 trillion, and Circle minted and redeemed over $315 billion of USDC during the same period, averaging about $1.7 billion per day. The company stated that as of June, USDC accounted for approximately 77% of the global stablecoin trading volume, an increase from 60% a year ago.More attention from the market is focused on the income distribution of USDC. Circle disclosed that the company generated approximately $1.4 billion in revenue in the first half of the year, of which about $819 million was allocated to USDC distribution partners and transaction costs, accounting for about 59% of the revenue; another approximately $473 million was invested in licensing, banking partnerships, settlement liquidity, compliance systems, product development, and multi-chain deployment, accounting for about 34%. According to the announcement, for every $1 of revenue Circle earns, it ultimately retains only about 7 cents in net profit.This announcement may be in response to market concerns regarding "the monopolization of reserve income by stablecoin issuers." Circle stated that partners can share corresponding reserve income by holding and expanding their USDC balances on their platforms; currently, more than 150 trading platforms, wallets, banks, fintech companies, payment platforms, and enterprises have formed economic interests tied to the growth of USDC. Circle also mentioned that Binance signed a five-year commercial agreement with it in September and invested $100 million in Circle.On the product side, Circle announced the expansion of its free redemption mechanism: all Circle customers can still redeem USDC for free through traditional banking channels, with the funds typically arriving within two business days; customers who make payments through the Circle Payments Network or use eligible products such as Arc, Circle Mint, and Circle Wallets will be able to enjoy free, near-real-time redemption capabilities.

According to Catcher Predict monitoring on-chain data, it predicts significant capital movements in the Polymarket market. A large whale invested $58,800 in the "LoL: Cloud9 vs. Karmine Corp (BO5) - World Championship Qualifiers" event, specifically on the "Game 2 Winner." Based on the current transaction price, the latest corresponding winning probability for this bet is 49%.

Cryptocurrency media Watcher Guru reported that Australia has proposed legislation requiring the reporting of cryptocurrency transactions and the initiation of international tax information sharing.According to the bill, cryptocurrency platforms will be required to report transactions involving Australian residents to tax authorities starting from July 2027.