merge

Digital asset treasury company Evernorth Holdings, Inc. announced that it has completed its business combination with special purpose acquisition company Armada Acquisition Corp. II. Armada was initiated by Arrington XRP Capital Fund, LP. Evernorth aims to provide institutional access to the XRP ecosystem at scale, with common stock expected to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN on October 12, 2026, and ringing the Nasdaq closing bell on October 14.At the time of closing, the company holds approximately 473 million XRP and has raised about $300 million in gross cash proceeds (before transaction expenses). Investors include Arrington Capital, SBI Group, Ripple, Pantera Capital, Kraken, GSR, and others. Founder and CEO Asheesh Birla stated that the goal is to establish an actively managed XRP treasury to support ecosystem growth and meet public market demands for transparency and governance.The company stated that as institutional on-chain finance develops, the need for capital expansion in tokenized assets, on-chain credit markets, and settlement infrastructure arises. Evernorth intends to be a source of such capital and operate according to the reporting, governance, and disclosure standards of Nasdaq-listed companies. Michael Arrington, founder of Arrington Capital, stated that support for Evernorth is an extension of its XRP thesis, which will bring scalable capital, active participation, and public company standards.

Aero announced the token exchange terms and schedule for the merger of Aerodrome and Velodrome. The merger will start on October 21 at 20:00 (Eastern Time), at which point the token emissions of the two old platforms will cease. Existing AERO will be exchanged at a 1:1 ratio for the new AERO, with each VELO exchanging for approximately 0.044 AERO. This ratio applies to both circulating tokens and locked tokens. The exchange rate for VELO depends on the supply at the time of launch, with Aerodrome holders receiving 94.5% of the new supply and Velodrome holders receiving 5.5%.According to DefiLlama data, as of October 9, the total locked amount for the two exchanges is approximately $422 million. The merger was announced in November 2025, and the developers, Dromos Labs, originally planned to complete it in the second quarter of 2026. The new model replaces the original weekly voting cycle with real-time allocation, allowing staked AERO (sAERO) holders to direct rewards to the liquidity pool and accumulate earnings along with exchange revenue. There is an initial 47-hour cooling period for allocation adjustments.Existing veAERO and veVELO positions will be converted to new sAERO positions, with the remaining lock-up time carried over and rounded up to the nearest whole week, and permanent locks will convert to the longest staking period. Tokens will not be automatically exchanged; self-custodied assets must be managed through the upgrade portal at aerodrome.finance or velodrome.finance, and rewards and rebases must be claimed and active votes cleared first.

According to BBX data, yesterday global digital asset institutions disclosed the latest developments in capital operations, top venture capital layouts, and privacy infrastructure expansion. The core information is as follows:First Digital has reached a merger agreement with a SPAC, valuing at $250 million, aiming for a Nasdaq listing: The issuer of the dollar stablecoin FDUSD, First Digital, officially announced the signing of a final business merger agreement with the special purpose acquisition company CSLM Digital Asset Acquisition Corp III. The pre-transaction equity valuation for this deal is $250 million. Upon completion of the merger, First Digital will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of a newly established Cayman holding company, with its existing shareholders fully exchanged for Class A common stock of the holding company. The newly merged entity is expected to officially list on Nasdaq in the first half of 2027.AI trading agent startup Catalyst completes $30 million seed round financing, led by Sequoia Capital: AI trading agent startup Catalyst announced the completion of a $30 million seed round financing. This round was led by the world’s top venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, with participation from Wall Street high-frequency quantitative firm Jump Trading, Peak XV, Lux Capital, AntiFund, cryptocurrency exchange giant Coinbase, and Premji Invest, among other well-known institutions. The funds will be used to advance the development of the next-generation on-chain smart trading agent protocol.Blockchain privacy infrastructure Soda Labs receives exclusive $3 million seed round investment from NextBlock: Blockchain privacy infrastructure developer Soda Labs announced the completion of a $3 million seed round financing, exclusively invested by NextBlock. This funding will be specifically used for global market expansion, expanding the verification node network and blockchain support coverage, core team building, and accelerating the integration of its underlying protocol with commercial banks, traditional payment companies, and real-world asset (RWA) platforms. Soda Labs disclosed that its core privacy layer Bubble currently supports Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, and COTI, and is fully expanding to high-performance networks like Solana.

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.

Binance has now completed the token merger of Stargate Finance (STG) into LayerZero (ZRO). The tokens have been distributed at a ratio of 1 STG = 0.08634 ZRO. The old STG tokens will no longer support deposits and withdrawals.

The AI merger analysis platform Comparables.ai announced the completion of a $6 million seed round financing, led by Pragmatech and Araya Ventures, with participation from Purple Ventures, Gorilla Capital, hi5 Ventures, Somersault Ventures, and other institutions.

According to CoinDesk, Armada Acquisition Corp. II (XRPN) closed at $39.42 last Friday, up 68% on the day, and has risen approximately 273% over the week, reaching a high of $53 during intraday trading, compared to $10.58 a week ago, with a further pre-market increase of 9.5% on Monday. The company is the SPAC driving the listing of XRP treasury company Evernorth, which stated that the merger is expected to be completed on October 7 (Wednesday), pending the fulfillment of remaining conditions.Evernorth is expected to hold approximately 473 million XRP at the time of closing, valued at about $714 million based on Monday's price of approximately $1.51. Its disclosed financing includes about $300 million in total cash proceeds, of which $225 million comes from a private placement, $30 million from convertible notes, and $48 million from Armada's trust funds, with supporters also directly investing in XRP. However, the company purchased 84.4 million XRP for $214.1 million by the end of 2025, at an average price of approximately $2.54, which is now worth about $127 million.Armada Trust held $241.2 million at the end of June, with each public share redemption valued at approximately $10.49. Evernorth's announcement on October 1 indicated that about $48 million of the trust funds would be reserved for trading, suggesting that approximately 80% of the trust funds would be returned to shareholders. Redemptions will reduce the number of publicly tradable shares, allowing relatively small orders to significantly drive up the stock price.

Cryptocurrency trader Ansem posted that frequently monitoring the market and judging price trends based on 15-minute candlesticks can easily lead to overtrading. Investors should manage their spot, perpetual contract, and high-risk on-chain trading accounts separately, and should not attempt to catch every local top and bottom, as this may harm long-term investment returns. Instead of frequent trading, it is better to study historical bull markets and observe how long upward trends typically last.The upward cycles of altcoins are usually faster, often outperforming the market for 4 to 6 months, after which new market leaders emerge, especially after a market capitalization growth of more than 10 times. However, there may be a few exceptions in this cycle: some altcoins may see significant revenue growth alongside price increases, thus their fundamentals may improve simultaneously.In past cycles, altcoins primarily peaked due to shifts in market attention and weakening momentum, but in this cycle, if some projects experience substantial changes in revenue and other data, institutional funds may continue to buy actively, and investors need to adjust their original judgments in a timely manner based on new information.In the last cycle, Bitcoin bottomed out in January 2023 and peaked in October 2025, with an upward trend lasting about 33 months. If this cycle bottomed out in July, it is currently only in the 4th month.It is believed that in a longer-term bull market, multiple "mini-bulls" led by specific altcoins will emerge, and investors need to identify these phase-strong assets and continuously reinvest profits into high-performing targets, allowing short-term winners to gradually transform into long-term investments.

Zach Pandl, the Director of Research at Grayscale, stated that the AI crypto sector rose by 54% in September, significantly outperforming the overall crypto market, which increased by 24%. Despite this recent surge, the sector's market capitalization is still only about $15 billion, making it the smallest category among the six crypto sectors defined by Grayscale.Among the representative tokens in the sector, NEAR rose by 183% in September, Venice (VVV) increased by 70%, World (WLD) went up by 47%, and Bittensor (TAO) climbed by 37%. These projects involve agent commerce, privacy AI applications, human verification, and an open AI network encompassing reasoning, agents, data, and computation.Grayscale believes that public blockchains can provide an open infrastructure for agent payments, identity, privacy computing, and verifiable records, complementing the current AI development ecosystem that is concentrated among a few companies. The AI crypto sector may see one or more major winners in the next five years, and recent performance indicates that investors are beginning to price in the role of blockchain as infrastructure in the emerging agent economy.

According to The Block, shareholders of Armada Acquisition Corp. II have approved its business combination with XRP Treasury company Evernorth, clearing a key step for the latter's listing on Nasdaq.The transaction is expected to raise approximately $300 million in total cash proceeds, with investors also contributing in physical XRP. Upon completion of the transaction, Evernorth is expected to hold approximately 473 million XRP. The transaction is expected to be completed on October 7, and the combined company plans to trade under the ticker XRPN starting October 8.

The White House has urged the European Union to tap into emergency diesel reserves to lower global prices. The Trump administration is exploring multiple options to reduce fuel costs ahead of the midterm elections in November, including pushing foreign countries to release reserves and restricting U.S. diesel exports.

The cross-chain liquidity protocol ThorChain's official announcement states that the network interruption is an emergency security mechanism aimed at protecting the protocol's security. The suspension is not a selective freeze of specific funds, nor is it a targeted exchange against individuals.The announcement mentioned that in the security incident in May 2026, 10.7 million dollars were stolen from the liquidity pool. At that time, the attacker's address was not blacklisted, so it could still trade on ThorChain. ThorChain stated that it is a permissionless blockchain platform designed with the intention of not conducting any censorship.

According to Bloomberg, artificial intelligence infrastructure company Verda has completed a new round of financing of $189 million, led by Emergence Capital, with participation from MUFG Innovation Partners, computer manufacturer Super Micro Computer, Varma Mutual Pension Insurance, and Lifeline Ventures.It is reported that the company's valuation has reached at least $1 billion after the financing.

The ongoing X-Agent AI MCP Hackathon has received nearly 40 projects, with some public works turning work decisions, capital management, and inter-machine trading into runnable products. X-Agent introduces three cases: BountyProof checks whether tasks are open, claimed, have relevant submissions, and the authenticity of rewards before the Agent accepts GitHub bounty tasks, with the core question being "Is this work worth doing?"Abstain empowers the Agent with the "do not trade" capability, returning execution, abandonment, or no trade based on preset rules before order execution. sumplus helps the Agent choose suitable model service solutions based on task context, output scale, model capability, and invocation costs, making the Agent an autonomous buyer of models, computing power, data, and API services.The three projects correspond to the foundational economic behaviors of the Agent: accepting work, utilizing funds, and purchasing services, pointing to work, capital, and trading primitives. X-Agent believes that a true Agent economy requires a complete cycle of "building, deploying, operating, discovering, invoking, paying, earning revenue, and distributing," positioning itself as the application layer of the Agent economy. This hackathon is still in the review stage, and the mentioned projects are only for public case reference, not representing shortlisted or award results.

Animoca Brands and the Nasdaq-listed company Currenc Group have suspended the previously proposed reverse merger negotiations, which were originally intended to facilitate Animoca's listing. In a statement released on Tuesday, Animoca indicated that after assessing the project timeline and the "evolving market environment," both parties agreed that the time required to complete the transaction no longer aligned with their short-term and mid-term goals.Animoca co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu stated, "Corporate agility must take precedence over" advancing the merger with Currenc. Animoca added that the company "remains fully committed to relisting on a major public exchange," and if conditions permit, both parties may consider resuming merger negotiations. The reverse merger plan was first announced in November 2025, originally intended for Currenc to acquire Animoca through an Australian arrangement, with Animoca shareholders collectively holding 95% of the merged company's shares post-merger.Animoca was previously listed on the Australian Securities Exchange but was delisted in 2020 due to scrutiny over its involvement in crypto-related activities. In 2022, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission convicted Animoca and imposed a fine for failing to submit annual reports for 2019-2021 and some semi-annual reports. Animoca stated that it is actively advancing the preparation of its audited financial statements for the fiscal year 2024 and continues to seek the optimal path for relisting. Currenc Group is a fintech company headquartered in Singapore, focusing on AI and tokenization solutions.

Binance will support the merger of Stargate Finance (STG) into LayerZero (ZRO). Binance will stop STG spot trading pairs on October 6, 2026, at 11:00 and will suspend deposits and withdrawals of the old STG tokens at 11:30.All STG tokens will be exchanged for ZRO tokens at a ratio of 1 STG = 0.08634 ZRO. Users should manage their positions and assets before the relevant time.

Anthropic announced that starting today, Claude Cowork and chat will merge into the same Claude. Users can ask brief questions or deliver deadline tasks, and Claude can continue processing even after the computer is turned off. This capability will be rolled out to Pro and Max plans in the coming weeks, followed by more plans.Claude Docs and Claude Slides will launch simultaneously, and Claude Design is now available for use in conversations. Users can co-write documents or draft slides with Claude, supporting direct editing, presenting in Claude, and downloading as PowerPoint or PDF. The three features are currently in testing for paid plans, and enterprise administrators can decide when to enable them; the standalone Claude Design can still be used as usual.Anthropic stated that previously, Cowork and Design belonged to different entrances, making task attribution and context connection inconvenient. Claude can now determine the capabilities required for tasks and call upon existing context, skills, and connectors in any conversation. Chat users do not need to change their operations; Cowork users can retain chats, projects, products, connectors, and skills. Team and Free plans will be launched subsequently, and enterprise administrators will be informed of organizational changes at least 30 days in advance.

The DeBot team member Cat announced that on September 16th, early in the morning, DeBot received a wallet security risk alert and immediately initiated emergency protective measures. The affected wallets have been temporarily isolated. The official statement indicated that the assets in the affected wallets, including local currency and stablecoin assets, will be automatically transferred to a new non-private key wallet at a 1:1 ratio, and a portion of the Meme tokens will be transferred. The new wallet can still conduct secure transactions normally.During the protection period, users can still withdraw and transfer tokens normally, but it is temporarily not possible to export private keys. The specific recovery time will be notified separately. As of the announcement, no abnormal user assets have been found. The platform reminds users to immediately stop using the old wallet, refrain from continuing to recharge, and suggests checking for other public chain assets or some Meme coins that have not been automatically transferred and completing manual transfers in a timely manner.

On September 15, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting regarding the situation in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Heyaari reported that the situation in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and surrounding areas is increasingly turbulent, with escalating conflict on Yemen's western coast.The escalation of the situation could have serious implications for international peace and security, the global energy market, food security, and the economies of multiple countries. The United Nations calls on all parties to exercise restraint and to promote a political solution to the Yemen issue through dialogue.