TLDR Crypto 2026-10-23

More than 93.5% of voting power, across 2,800+ wallets, backed researching a move from an Ethereum L2 to an independent post-quantum L1 in a seven-day Snapshot poll that closed Thursday. StarkWare did not vote. A draft whitepaper is expected in November, and STRK holders must vote again on any actual transition. Starknet's hash-based cryptography lets accounts adopt post-quantum signatures without protocol changes, but it inherits Ethereum's security through its bridge and data availability, so it is only as quantum-safe as Ethereum.

US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $528.4M on Wednesday, the largest single day in nearly a month. IBIT added $235M and Fidelity's FBTC $212.7M, about 85% of the total. The funds have drawn over $1B in three sessions this week, with cumulative net inflows near $58B and net assets of $109.3B. Ether ETFs returned to inflows of $14.9M after five days of outflows. K33 says bitcoin's 28-day realized volatility fell to 1.2%, near this year's low, as traders wait for the Fed's October 28 decision and the November 3 midterms.

Daily.fun is a prediction markets platform built to bring consumer-grade UX to onchain market trading. It enables users to open card packs to win positions across prediction markets and other digital assets, along with various novel mechanisms to make prediction market trading more engaging and real-time. The product is in an early beta, and potential users can sign up for the waitlist on their website.

Solana activated Alpenglow on Wednesday. It targets finality of about 150 milliseconds under normal conditions, down from several seconds. Validators now send votes directly to each other and combine approvals into certificates, so a block can finalize after one or two voting rounds. Before, votes were recorded as transactions across successive blocks. The handover took about 900 ms, and 446 of 654 validators voted on the starting block. Apps often showed payments as confirmed before full settlement, so the change mainly gives stronger assurance. Exchanges could credit deposits sooner, and shops could confirm stablecoin payments faster. The 150 ms figure is a target, not a guarantee, and Anza said some computers receive finality information later than voting validators. Wallets, fees, and how apps run are unchanged. Validator votes no longer appear as transactions, so dashboards will show a sharp drop in transaction totals even though user activity hasn't changed.

Confidential inference is a sub-sector of onchain AI focused on keeping model inputs and outputs private from infrastructure providers, using trusted execution environments (TEEs), zero-knowledge proofs, or fully homomorphic encryption. As protocols like Gensyn, Ritual, and Hyperbolic expand onchain compute capacity, enterprise users are demanding privacy guarantees that standard GPU inference pipelines cannot provide. The economic structure supports a premium-fee tier above commodity inference, with operators running TEE-secured hardware positioned to charge more for provable privacy. Enterprise AI deployment requirements and data-handling regulations are expected to drive further adoption into 2027, as confidential compute shifts from a niche offering to a standard procurement requirement.

XMTP Labs is shutting down its hosted messaging network in early 2027 and transitioning to open-source, self-hosted software, after admitting its early bet on Web3 identity, wallets, and a token failed to generate developer demand. The project has confirmed no token will launch, and developers can run the full stack, inspect it, and set their own policies. CTO Nick Molnar consolidated the backend into a single Rust binary supporting attachments, push notifications, handles, and signed webhooks, with SDKs available for mobile, web, servers, and agents without a wallet requirement. Self-hosted deployments are isolated by default, and agents from different companies can coordinate when connected to the same backend instance.

The SEC under Chair Paul Atkins has proposed "Regulation Crypto Assets," a framework designed to create clear regulatory pathways for crypto tokens with disclosure-based protections for retail participants. Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad filed an official comment letter backing the proposal, signaling active industry engagement with the rulemaking process. The filing stands in contrast to the Gensler era, when the SEC pursued exchanges through enforcement actions rather than seeking comment on proposed frameworks. A finalized rule could establish a disclosure-based compliance path for token issuers targeting US retail distribution, replacing enforcement as the de facto regulatory mechanism.

Aerodrome and Velodrome merged into Aero on October 21, going live across seven networks including Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Robinhood Chain under a single AERO token. The protocol conducted no token sale and took no venture backing. The full upgraded supply was distributed to existing AERO, veAERO, VELO, and veVELO holders, split 94.5% to the Aerodrome community and 5.5% to Velodrome, weighted by each protocol's share of combined revenue over the prior 52 weeks. All exchange revenue flows to sAERO stakers, who allocate AERO rewards to liquidity markets, while LP incentives are capped to a multiple of projected pool revenue so uncapped tokens go unminted. The combined protocol has distributed over $580 million to stakers since inception, and ships Slipstream V3 concentrated liquidity with MEV recapture and metaswaps that bridge, route, and swap in a single transaction.

AI agents use virtual cards issued to the agent startup, so Visa and Mastercard classify them as commercial cards.

Eligible Kalshi Prime clients can borrow against bitcoin, ether, and GENIUS Act-compliant stablecoins to fund leveraged perpetual futures positions.

The share of volume for agentic traders is as follows: Grok Bot 45.7%, Grok 29.7%, Custom CLI 12.4%, Claude 6.5%, ChatGPT 3.7%, Claude Code 1.1%, and Perplexity 0.7%.

Lighter CEO Vladimir Novakovski announced the onchain perps exchange will file for a US derivatives license next month and integrate into Robinhood's US platform upon approval, giving the exchange direct access to Robinhood's retail user base.