Crypto regulation moved forward in the US as the CLARITY Act gained new momentum and the SEC outlined a path toward always-on, blockchain-ready markets. Security remained the week’s biggest concern, with the Notional Finance exploit, the Tectonic attack and the expanding Trezor data breach dominating headlines. Ethereum developers delayed Glamsterdam’s Sepolia activation to October 6 while pushing for another stable devnet transition. Across global markets, tokenized equities, institutional crypto trading and Bitcoin-focused treasury strategies continued to expand.

Catch up on last week's edition here.

This Week at a Glance

A. Regulation

• National Sheriffs’ Association Shifts to Neutral on CLARITY Act: The National Sheriffs’ Association withdrew its opposition, easing a major source of law-enforcement resistance as US senators move the crypto market-structure bill closer to a vote.
• Two SEC Moves Point Toward Always-On, On-Chain Markets: The SEC is preparing for 24-hour equity trading and blockchain-ready transfer-agent rules, signalling a broader shift toward continuous markets and on-chain settlement.
• India Records $19B in Taxable Crypto Activity: India recorded an estimated $19 billion in potentially taxable crypto activity during 2025, spanning payments, trading gains and crypto-denominated income.
• Grayscale Responds to SEC’s Crypto ETF Review: Grayscale submitted comments to the SEC concerning novel exchange-traded products, urging the regulator to maintain consistent standards when reviewing crypto ETFs.

B. Security

• Notional Finance Exploit Drains $1.7M: An attacker exploited an accounting flaw in Notional Finance’s V1 escrow contract, reportedly using an extreme fCash liability and an unsafe numerical conversion to withdraw DAI and USDC.
• August 2026 Among Worst Months for DeFi Hacks: Repeated exploits across Tectonic, More Markets, Maya Protocol, Harmony and Cosmos EVM networks made August another damaging month for DeFi security.
• $9.3M Initially Reported Drained from More Markets: Early analysis of the More Markets incident suggested that 15.5 million WFLOW had been drained from the protocol’s lending reserve.
• More Markets Loss Impact Revised to $410K: Blockaid later revised the estimated financial impact from $9.3 million to approximately $410,000 after Flow traced the incident to unbacked tokens created through Ankr’s ankrFLOW contract.
• Cronos Halts After $75M Tectonic Exploit: Cronos halted block production after an attacker reportedly manipulated TONIC’s price by roughly 100 times and borrowed against the inflated collateral.

C. Privacy

• Trezor Breach Expands as 67K More Users Are Exposed: Trezor disclosed that another 67,000 US customers were affected after historical order records from 2019 to 2021 were found in ShipMonk’s systems, increasing phishing and impersonation risks for hardware-wallet buyers.

D. Global

• Multicoin Capital HYPE Holdings Fall to $90.5M: Multicoin Capital sold another 10% of its HYPE position while Hyperliquid continued to report growth in revenue, open interest and HIP-4 activity.
• Standard Chartered Launches BTC & ETH Trading in UAE: Standard Chartered introduced institutional Bitcoin and Ether spot trading through the Dubai International Financial Centre, combining regulated execution with flexible custody.
• Remixpoint Dumps Altcoins for Bitcoin-Only Treasury Strategy: Japan’s Remixpoint sold its ETH, SOL, XRP and DOGE holdings, leaving 1,506 BTC as its only crypto treasury asset.
• LSE Partners with Kraken to Tokenize Top 100 UK Stocks: The London Stock Exchange and Kraken parent Payward are exploring tokenized access to the UK’s 100 largest listed companies and potential round-the-clock trading through LSE 24.
• Post-Tokenization: What Comes Next?: Tokenized stocks can become programmable building blocks whose demand, liquidity and collateral uses may diverge from their off-chain reference assets.
• ECB Pushes Central Bank Money On-Chain: ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel argued that central bank money should move on-chain, highlighting faster settlement, programmable finance and the ECB’s Pontes and Appia initiatives.
• AMC CEO Blasts Robinhood Over Unregistered Stock Tokens: AMC CEO Adam Aron challenges Robinhood’s unregistered Stock Tokens, citing ownership, voting and U.S. securities law concerns.

Ethereum Protocol

1. AllCoreDevs Consensus #186

• The Glamsterdam activation on Sepolia was scheduled for October 6, 2026, replacing the previously proposed September 28 date.
• The proposed Hoodi activation date was deferred until developers have more confidence from Sepolia and devnet testing.
• Client teams agreed to adopt the proposed EIP-8037 cross-frame state-gas refill fix.
• Client teams will submit their Hegotá EIP rankings and supporting rationale for the upcoming prioritization process.

2. PQ Transaction Signatures #014

• Post-quantum transaction-signature research will continue prioritizing hash-based, stateless signature schemes over lattice-based signature schemes.
• The group maintained its preference for avoiding a dedicated post-quantum precompile unless future implementation evidence demonstrates that one is necessary.
• Ethereum’s post-quantum migration should remain compatible with account abstraction instead of introducing an entirely separate transaction framework.
• Post-quantum readiness will be treated as a gradual migration process rather than an immediate replacement of Ethereum’s existing ECDSA transaction signatures.

3. FOCIL Breakout #041

• The FOCIL gossip-size limit will be increased to approximately 40 KB, and consensus was reached to merge the corresponding specification change.
• FOCIL Devnet 0 will initially focus on happy-path functionality, while unhappy-path testing will be deferred to later devnets.
• Discussion and Q&A for EIP-8369, covering interactions between FOCIL and Frame Transactions, was moved to the next FOCIL breakout.

4. Native Account Abstraction #003

• Frame Devnet 0 will target launch within approximately one week.
• The devnet launch will proceed once the ready clients can interoperate and will not wait for Besu.
• Nethermind and ethrex were considered ready, while Geth was expected to join the devnet the following week.
• The initial 100,000 verified-gas limit was retained as a conservative starting point for Frame Transactions.

Ethereum Standards Updates

Ethereum standards saw three new Draft proposals and two ERCs advance to Last Call this week. EIP-8037 remained a major focus, receiving multiple specification updates around state-gas accounting and execution behavior. Protocol coordination also continued through ACDC #186, FOCIL Breakout #41 and Post Quantum Transaction Signature Breakout #14. Next week, attention shifts to the Last Call deadlines for EIP-7945, ERC-8153 and ERC-8167.

Read the full update on EIPsInsight.

Clients Latest Releases

• Execution Layer:

  • Nethermind 1.39.3
  • Geth 1.17.5
  • Erigon 3.6.0
  • Besu 26.8.1 - NEW RELEASE
  • Reth 2.5.2 - NEW RELEASE
  • EthereumJS 10.1.3

• Consensus Layer:

  • Teku 26.8.0
  • Nimbus 26.7.0
  • Prysm 7.1.8
  • Lodestar 1.47.0 - NEW RELEASE
  • Lighthouse 8.2.2

Podcasts

1. “We Want to Be Bigger Than the CME” | Kalshi's John Wang | Bankless | John Wang: Kalshi’s John Wang discusses the company’s crypto business, regulated perpetual futures, international expansion and its ambition to compete with major derivatives venues such as CME.
2. How Cory Klippsten Would Decide How to Secure Bitcoin Post-Coldcard | Unchained | Cory Klippsten: Swan CEO Cory Klippsten discusses Bitcoin’s recovery, ETF demand, self-custody risks and how holders should evaluate custody options after the Coldcard incident.
3. The Chopping Block: Robinhood Chain’s Memecoin Mania and Tokenized Stocks | The Chopping Block | Laura Shin, Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt & Tarun Chitra: The panel explores Robinhood Chain’s surge, stock-backed tokens paired with memecoins, retail speculation and how regulated tokenized markets may evolve across jurisdictions.
4. Uneasy Money: Inside the AI Agent Scandal That Cheated, Then Covered Its Tracks | Uneasy Money | Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan & Austin Griffith: The episode examines an AI security experiment in which coding agents reportedly went beyond solving challenges, raising questions about autonomous systems interacting with production-grade code.

Upcoming Events

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• Pragma Tokyo 2026: Sep 26
• TOKEN2049 Singapore: Oct 7–8
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• Pragma Mumbai: Nov 5
• ETHGlobal Mumbai: Nov 6–8

Jobs

• Ondo Finance: Senior Backend Engineer, Trading Infrastructure
• FalconX: Engineering Manager
• Ethena Labs: Engineering Manager / Tech Lead, Ethena Pay
• Perena: Frontend Engineer
• Trojan Trading: Backend Engineer, EVM
• OKX: Senior Channel Operations Manager
• Rain: Engineering Manager

Community Spotlight

Ethereum celebrated 35 ecosystem launches, upgrades and announcements from August, offering a community-built snapshot of just how much shipped across the network in one month. The collection spans protocol work, wallets, privacy, developer tooling, infrastructure and applications, giving builders an accessible map of recent progress and new projects worth exploring.

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