on-chain

ARK Invest's Q3 2026 DeFi report shows that stock tokenization has become the main driving force behind the rebound in on-chain trading activity for the quarter. The trading volume of tokenized stock spot DEX reached approximately $50 billion, about 9 times that of the previous quarter, with its share of total spot DEX trading volume rising from about 1% to around 9%. Overall, DEX spot trading volume increased by approximately 13% quarter-over-quarter to $571 billion, marking the first growth in nearly four quarters.Robinhood Chain achieved approximately $65 billion in DEX trading volume and $51 million in network revenue in its first quarter, with network revenue nearing the level of BNB Chain during the same period. However, ARK expects that recent adjustments to the Gas mechanism will cause the chain's revenue to decline from current levels. The total supply of stablecoins decreased by about 3% quarter-over-quarter to $309 billion, but adjusted trading volume increased by approximately 16% quarter-over-quarter to $781 billion, with the number of monthly active addresses growing by about 39% to 73 million.In the perpetual contract DEX, there is a divergence between open positions and trading volume: the value of open contracts increased by about 76% quarter-over-quarter to $24 billion, while quarterly trading volume decreased by about 16% to $1.4 trillion. Among them, Hyperliquid's open contract value is about $13 billion, accounting for approximately 53%. ARK believes this indicates fewer but larger positions held for longer durations.

On October 20, the on-chain intelligence platform Arkham announced the launch of Arkham Enterprise, positioned as a high-level analytical platform for professional workflows, with uses including asset tracking, risk scoring, case management, and transaction research. Arkham stated that the platform relies on the world's best tagging set, containing 3.9 billion attribution records, covering $18 trillion in on-chain transaction volume. On the same day, the company adjusted the features of the free platform and launched Enterprise Grants.The data update frequency for both the free and Enterprise platforms has been upgraded in sync. Previously, a large amount of data and tags were updated once a day; after the underlying infrastructure was rebuilt, transactions, new tags, and address balances have been changed to real-time updates, with new transactions appearing without needing to refresh the page. Most alerts supporting on-chain have reduced latency by about 80%, and the database load will also decrease. Tracer 2.0 has been rebuilt for professional on-chain investigations, allowing users to pull counterparties into a network graph from any address and track funds hop by hop; with the addition of bridge support, funds can be followed across supported chains in the same tracking. Visualizer 2.0 presents incoming and outgoing transactions, counterparties, and tokens in real-time through an interactive graph after pasting an address or entity.Enterprise also offers case management and risk scoring. The former allows investigation findings to be grouped by case and form structured records; the latter assesses the risk of addresses and entities based on Arkham attribution data, with indicators covering sanction exposure, mixer exposure, sources of funds, and the number of transaction hops between addresses and marked sources. The adjustments to the free version effective that day include: Tracer 2.0, transaction filtering, complete transaction history, creation of custom tags and entities, and the counterparty section of the browser page is only available to Enterprise users. Free users can view the most recent 100 transactions and retain and edit existing custom tags and entities; the free platform still includes all Arkham tags, Visualizer 2.0, prediction markets, block explorers, and tagging features. Enterprise Grants provide free access to Enterprise for select independent investigators, researchers, and public interest organizations.

The founder of the Solana landing service analysis platform Circular, Ben, stated that he believes the trading terminal Axiom charges traders through misleading "validator bribes" and routes the related funds to the landing service Lunar under HelloMoon. Ben mentioned that since April, the bribes paid by Axiom traders to Lunar amount to approximately $55.7 million, but the latest 30-day analysis shows that only about 1% can be traced back to additional on-chain validator incentives, and he inquired whether Axiom shares in this tip revenue.Circular claims that it reconstructed the activities related to Lunar and Axiom from April 26, 2026, to October 19, based on on-chain payment flows: during this period, Lunar received 530,166 SOL in bribes, valued at approximately $55.67 million based on its quoted price of $105/SOL, corresponding to 189 million successful payments of bribes to Lunar from Axiom transactions. In the last 30 days, 45 million Axiom transactions made payments to Lunar, accounting for 80.6% of successful Axiom transactions; Lunar received 138,964 SOL, approximately $14.59 million, of which about 1,579 SOL was attributed to additional on-chain validator incentives, accounting for 1.14%.Ben also cited on-chain cases from September 26 and October 7, stating that after he paid bribes as suggested by the Axiom interface, the identifiable additional priority fee increase was about 1% of the amount paid to Lunar. He indicated that Axiom controls transaction routing and fee recommendations and has published its associated Lunar address on GitHub for verification. The above content represents Circular's on-chain statistics and personal judgment, and the post also states that the related proportions do not exclude other service costs or off-chain payments, and its estimate of the platform's revenue share is not based on tracked payments to Axiom.

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, on-site infrastructure provider ZeroHash announced the launch of the AUTH product at the Money20/20 USA conference held in Las Vegas. This product is a set of on-chain identity verification and account connection tools designed to address user experience issues during the on-chain transfer of crypto assets, stablecoins, and tokenized securities. Users no longer need to copy long strings of wallet addresses made up of letters and numbers, nor do they need to manually select a blockchain network to complete asset transfers.It is reported that AUTH transforms on-chain asset transfers from an address model to an account model, allowing users to directly connect self-custody accounts with custodial accounts. The process involves: selecting the account to connect, logging in via account credentials and multi-factor authentication, and then assets are transferred directly on-chain, with the entire process being nearly instantaneous.AUTH currently offers over 600 connections, covering both custodial and non-custodial accounts, involving approximately 250 million users across more than 190 countries. Partner platforms include Robinhood, Gemini, Coinbase (exchange and wallet), MetaMask, and Phantom.ZeroHash stated that AUTH emphasizes trust and control in addition to usability: replacing original addresses with verified, user-authorized accounts, while allowing partners to configure the supported account types, on-chain assets, and transfer methods themselves.In addition, ZeroHash appointed Ryan Beaudry as the General Manager of AUTH, who previously served as the Executive Vice President of Global Open Finance Products and Operations at Mastercard. AUTH can be used as a standalone product or enabled through ZeroHash's existing SDK, and platforms that have integrated other ZeroHash products do not need to connect separately.

Snapshot posted on platform X, stating that ENS is voting to activate ENSv2 on the Ethereum mainnet through an on-chain proposal that includes 15 calls. This proposal is executed in one go by the execution contract controlled by the ENS DAO, which, if passed, will freeze new registrations of version 1 while allowing un-migrated domain names to continue renewing.After the upgrade, ENSv2 will allow owners to customize the subdomain registry and grant resolution rights individually without transferring domain ownership. In addition, ENS Labs will synchronize eligible domain names, open v2 registrations and migrations, and transfer the remaining management rights to the ENS DAO.

The outstanding balance of Coinbase's crypto asset collateralized loans has reached $2.3 billion, with the product launching in January 2025. Eligible users outside of New York State can stake Bitcoin to borrow USDC without selling their holdings, with loans routed through the Morpho decentralized lending protocol on the Base network.Coinbase has added fixed-rate loans through Morpho Midnight, expanding the stakable assets to XRP, DOGE, ADA, and LTC; as of mid-September 2026, the scale of floating-rate loans has exceeded $1.4 billion, supported by approximately $3 billion in collateral. JPMD tokenized deposits from JPMorgan Chase have been operating on Base for institutions since mid-2026, while Citigroup and BNY Mellon are also advancing related layouts, and several UK banks plan to launch related networks in 2027.

Crypto podcast host Andy (@andyyy) posted a preview stating that a major AI product/feature will be released in the coming days, aimed at institutional-level on-chain asset management, with embedded risk strategies. It is reported that this product has already conducted pilot programs with several funds and asset management institutions.Andy previously accurately predicted the launch of the SEC's crypto exemption policy a week in advance.

According to The Defiant, OKX announced the launch of the Onchain Spot and Perps public beta within its app. Qualified users can use free points (XP) to simulate trading in stock, index, and commodity markets, preparing for subsequent real fund trading. This simulated trading competition shares a prize pool of 250,000 USDT with Outcomes Season 3, running from October 14, 22:00 EST to November 14, 11:00. XP points have no cash value and cannot be withdrawn, transferred between accounts, or exchanged for financial instruments.The first simulated markets include gold, S&P 500 ETF, SpaceX, and Nvidia themes, with separate trading pairs for spot and perpetual contracts. Participants are testing trading strategies rather than purchasing shares of the aforementioned companies. OKX's product announcement indicates that qualified customers come from Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, as well as the Middle East and North Africa; users must complete identity verification and use a passkey to open a dedicated on-chain account through their existing OKX account.The trading venue operates on Exchange OS built on X Layer, and OKX refers to this account as self-custodial, supporting a unified balance between spot, perpetual contracts, and Outcomes. The spot and perpetual markets share margin, eliminating the need for internal transfers between product accounts.OKX stated that after the competition ends, real fund trading will be opened, allowing users to fund their on-chain accounts from their OKX exchange accounts, with spot and perpetual contracts settled on-chain in USDS. The activity XP and positions will not convert to real fund positions.

According to The Defiant, the on-chain insurance protocol Firelight based on the Flare network announced on October 15 that its on-chain insurance has launched the Protected Strategies USDC vault for Kraken DeFi Earn, providing a collateral-backed compensation mechanism for specific protocol failures.The independent manager of the vault, Sentora, insures the vault rather than Kraken itself. Depositors do not need to actively choose to participate, but the insurance comes with conditions: Kraken discloses that the compensation limit for each deposit address during each insurance period is $100,000, and the total compensation amount is also constrained by the overall vault limit and available capital. Compensation is issued by Sentora in USDC to eligible wallets, and Kraken does not provide funds or guarantees.Firelight lists six types of failures that are eligible for compensation: smart contract vulnerabilities, oracle failures, governance attacks, and bad debts, depegging, or redemption failures caused by protocol mechanism failures. Insurance only applies to markets and positions recorded during the insurance period. Normal fluctuations, normal liquidations, depegging that operates as designed during redemption, and withdrawal delays caused by high organic utilization are excluded; insider theft, stolen private keys, phishing, and regulatory actions are also not covered.The trigger conditions for redemption failure are if the insured position cannot be withdrawn for more than 72 consecutive hours, or if the amount returned after deducting disclosed fees is less than 90% of fair value. Compensation does not require depositors to file claims themselves, as it is determined by a five-member risk committee through a three-fifths majority vote.On-chain records show that the insurance scale marked as "Kraken DeFi Protected" is $30.5 million.

According to on-chain intelligence platform Arkham, the total value of on-chain assets held by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is approximately 530 million USD, of which 527.81 million USD is in ETH, distributed across multiple addresses (including vitalik.eth).The remaining assets include 1.76 million USD in Aave LUSD, 478,000 USD in ZCHF, and 346,000 USD in WHITE.

X-Agent released the latest technical article "From Agent Payments to an Onchain Personal Assistant," revealing the important product direction for the next phase: moving from Agent Payments to an Onchain Personal Assistant that can understand user intent, obtain authorization, execute on-chain operations, and continuously track results.Unlike simply allowing the AI Agent to "have a wallet," X-Agent aims to solve a more critical issue: how to enable the Agent to safely complete an on-chain task on behalf of the user. For example, when a renewal bill arrives, the AI assistant can understand the bill, verify the payee and amount, generate a payment plan, and complete the transaction after user authorization; even if there are timeouts or interruptions during the process, it should resume the original task and check the payment status, rather than blindly repeating the payment. After the payment is completed, the Agent also needs to continue confirming whether the service purchased by the user has truly been delivered.To achieve this goal, X-Agent plans to further connect the three major modules: Agent ID, Agentic Email, and Agentic Wallet, which will respectively handle identity and responsibility attribution, task and communication entry, and controlled on-chain fund execution. Through mechanisms such as payment pre-calculation, one-time authorization, budget control, recovery, and reconciliation, clear security boundaries will be established for the Agent's autonomous execution. Its core logic can be summarized as: user intent → clear authorization → on-chain execution → result verification.X-Agent believes that a true on-chain AI assistant is not just "initiating a transaction on behalf of the user," but is capable of continuously completing tasks and being accountable for the final results under controlled permissions. This also means that X-Agent is exploring a persistent on-chain AI assistant aimed at individual users, moving beyond the infrastructure of Agent payments.

OAK Research researcher Lilian Aliaga wrote that the on-chain options protocol Derive (formerly Lyra) has a nominal trading volume of $14.22 billion since January this year, approximately 2.6 times that of the entire year of 2025, accounting for nearly 75% of the on-chain options nominal trading volume and 88.1% of the paid premiums. The nominal trading volume in September was $3.43 billion, and it has exceeded $1 billion in the first week of October.The article states that Derive completed its V3 migration on October 6, 2026, abandoning its own chain and opting for zero-knowledge applications to settle directly on Ethereum, planning to become an options engine accessible to other applications. V3 introduces mutually isolated risk domains, including Prime covering BTC and ETH, an independent HYPE domain, an Alt domain covering SOL, XRP, ZEC, and DOGE, and an RWA domain covering tokenized gold.According to the article, Derive launched V2 in December 2023, replacing automated market makers with an order book as the main source of liquidity, and will launch portfolio margin in February 2024; Lyra will be renamed Derive in August 2024, and DRV will be launched in January 2025. In October 2025, FalconX became the publicly confirmed institutional market maker quoting on Derive, with collateral retained on its own side and positions represented on-chain in fxUSDC.

According to the official announcement, the Osmosis community forum has initiated a discussion on the proposal to "Terminate OSMO Inflation Issuance." The proposal aims to stop the mint module from daily issuing OSMO, with staking rewards coming entirely from protocol revenue; based on the current burn rate, approximately 2% of the OSMO supply is destroyed each year, and there will be no new issuance to hedge.The target date for the proposal to go on-chain is October 20, and the daily vesting release for developers will also be paused. There are approximately 51.9 million OSMO remaining in the vesting module account, and any future releases will require a separate governance decision.

According to CryptoQuant analyst nocoffeenobrain's monitoring, Bitcoin holdings aged 1-3 years and over 3 years showed signs of activity as early as the end of September, when the BTC price rose from the mid-$70,000s to the mid-$80,000s.Recently, Ledger was hacked, prompting a large number of users to migrate their assets to new signers and change their mnemonic phrases. It is expected that the 7-day moving average will further rise in the coming days. Analysts pointed out that similar patterns have occurred before—during the period from January to February this year, when BTC fell from the mid-$90,000s to the mid-$60,000s, and during the period from July to August when BTC fluctuated in the mid-$60,000s, both of the aforementioned holding age segments showed synchronized activity.

The stablecoin infrastructure platform Interlace announced a joint initiative with multiple industry partners, including OSL, AllScale, Stable, Hetu, Cregis, WIDTH, KEM, and KTX, to launch the white paper titled Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure: From On-Chain Settlement to Real-World Payments. As stablecoins evolve from crypto-native financial instruments into global financial infrastructure, stablecoin payment activity is also growing rapidly. In Q1 2026, stablecoin transaction volume exceeded $28 trillion, while stablecoin B2B payments reached $226 billion in 2025, representing a 733% year-over-year increase. However, as stablecoin payments expand into real-world commercial use cases, the industry still lacks a systematic framework for defining the capabilities covered by stablecoin payment infrastructure and how on-chain assets can be connected with real-world commerce. The white paper will focus on this gap, covering key topics such as stablecoin payment infrastructure, end-to-end costs, compliance and risk management, and enterprise-scale adoption. Drawing on industry data, practical experience, and real-world cases, it will further explore the development path of stablecoin payment infrastructure. The full white paper is expected to be officially released within the next 1-2 months.

Recently, the police in Binhai City, Shandong, China received a report from a citizen named Xie, stating that 1,300 USDC stablecoins and NFTs worth tens of thousands of yuan had mysteriously disappeared from his digital wallet. There were no obvious transfer alerts or signs of phishing links in the wallet. The police began an on-chain investigation into the virtual currency transfer records and actively sought cooperation with enterprises to analyze the suspect's account.After extensive work, a major suspect named Chen (30 years old, from Fengyang County, Chuzhou, Anhui) was identified. On October 9, technical police officers went to Fengyang County to arrest him. Upon arrival, Chen initially denied the allegations. However, the police utilized the immutable and traceable characteristics of blockchain evidence to gradually break down his psychological defenses. Chen ultimately confessed to the theft. Chen has now been criminally detained in accordance with the law, and his family has actively compensated the victim for the losses. This case marks the first instance of virtual currency theft in Binhai City.

According to The Defiant, trading firm DRW executed a total return swap with Marex on the Canton network through Derivnex, referencing the on-chain corporate bond benchmark from S&P Dow Jones Indices. S&P Dow Jones Indices announced this transaction with Kaiko on October 13.The swap was provided by Marex, with DRW as the counterparty, referencing the iBoxx USD Liquid Investment Grade Index, which tracks investment-grade corporate bonds that are dollar-denominated and have good liquidity. The swap provides both parties with exposure to the index without holding the underlying bonds. The transaction will synchronize events such as valuations during the contract's duration between both parties, and plans to migrate margin, collateral, and contract payments to the same infrastructure will be advanced in subsequent phases.Kaiko's tokens combine benchmark data with access permissions and usage rules, retaining the authorized control of S&P Dow Jones Indices, and distributing signed official index values for Derivnex to use for valuation. Derivnex expresses the transaction terms in the form of Canton smart contracts and introduces a universal domain model standard for derivatives trading. DRW founder and CEO Don Wilson stated that both parties can "work off the same record, thereby simplifying the process," and noted that once cash and collateral flows are integrated, more transactions are expected to achieve greater efficiency.