Latest Blockchain News: May 2025

May was a month of major changes and key updates. From the long-awaited Pectra upgrade on Ethereum’s mainnet to the release of Cosmos SDK v0.53 and the Lotus upgrade on Celestia’s Arabica testnet.

At Stakely, we bring you the most relevant highlights of the month, both from our work as validator and from the blockchain ecosystem in general.

Stakely donates 1.7 ETH to the Ethereum R1 project

We’re supporting the development of a public and decentralized L2 rollup on Ethereum with a direct donation of 1.7 ETH.

We launched our validator on Initia’s mainnet

We’ve joined this modular network that combines L1 and L2 to create interconnected apps with sovereign rollups. INIT staking is now available!

Blockchain security training in Madrid, Spain

Paco Ducha, co-founder and Head of Node Operations at Stakely, took part in the event: The Cryptocurrency Industry: Diverse Perspectives on Opportunities and Risks with the talk: “Blockchain Security: Fundamentals, Mechanisms, and Challenges”

Boosting the Spanish-speaking Injective community

How? By translating the Injective Hub app, Explorer, and website into Spanish to make the ecosystem more accessible for Spanish speakers.

Updates to our Load Balancer and Multicoin Faucet

We’ve added Sonic and Initia to our Load Balancer to enhance the performance and availability of your dApps. You’ll also find Initia in our Faucet to easily cover transaction fees in case of emergency.

Discover restaking with Stakely

We published a complete guide to restaking and how to maximize its potential. Learn how to make the most of restaking opportunities!

Strategic shift in the network: Agoric enters a new phase to simplify the DeFi experience with automated cross-chain orchestration and BLD replacing IST as the new gas token.

Fast USDC arrives to streamline interfaces and enable one-click cross-chain transactions. Apps like Noble Express are already integrating this solution, which eliminates friction, speeds up transfers, and enhances the DeFi user experience.

Stablecoin supply doubles: Aptos surpasses $1B, with Tether leading the market. Average transaction fees are just $0.00055 and latency is around 650 ms.

New Organizations feature on Aptos Build: a unified space for exploring projects with better UX and control.

Aptos is now supported on OKX for deposits and withdrawals, improving accessibility across the ecosystem.

FIFA launches its own blockchain on Avalanche to revolutionize digital fan engagement.

Codebase kicks off Season 4 to support Web3 startups on Avalanche, focusing on go-to-market strategy. You can apply until June 6.

Lotus v4 activated on Arabica: Lotus integrates Hyperlane, reduces inflation by 33%, and redefines staking management.

Four new chains activate Mammoth Mode on mainnet to boost performance and scalability: Blackbird, Gravity, Plume, and WINR.

Celo strengthens its Layer 2 with Forta: AI integration to prevent real-time attacks and offer “security by default” on blockchain.

Celo Support Streams: new incentive program with Aragon offering 100,000 CELO to support ecosystem projects. Apply until July 30!

Continued expansion: Celo integrates with AZZA and Farcaster, enabling native USDT and USDC use in WhatsApp and Mini Apps.

Concordium’s Protocol-Level Tokens: programmable assets aiming to go beyond smart contracts, bringing more security, efficiency, and regulatory compliance for stablecoins and payments.

2025 Governance Committee: nominations are open, with notable candidates like Niels H. Sørensen (Provenance Tags), Borja Burguillos (AEDX), Pedro Borges (Criptoloja), Jareau van den Heuvel (Hills), and Allan Pedersen (Eurodollar).

IBC celebrates 4 years with $24B annual volume and over 120 connected networks.

Cosmos SDK v0.53 released: the new version bundles the community’s most requested features into a single code line. According to Barry Plunkett, Co-CEO of Interchain Labs, upcoming IBC expansions include: integration with Base and Solana, native mint & burn, and smart contract calls.

“Find Your Cosmonaut” contest with $10K in USDC prizes: winners have been notified—check your inbox to see if you’re among the 100 lucky ones!

Proposal “Increase Max Stake for Operators” approved: raises the stake cap from 350K to 550K CXT and reduces emissions to 65,753.4 CXT per epoch, resulting in approx. 8% APY with 300M tokens staked.

Covalent launches GoldRush MCP: the first open-source server for real-time blockchain data access by AI apps.

Pectra successfully activated: The Pectra upgrade went live on Ethereum’s mainnet on May 7, alongside the Isthmus hard fork—marking the first global upgrade across multiple networks featuring Pectra EIPs.

SSV Network surpasses 100,000 ETH validators, securing over $8B in staking, with Stakely among the top validators.

Obol Network enables OBOL token transferability: tokens are now available for trading and staking.

Lido DAO initiates emergency vote to replace a compromised Oracle address after the theft of 1.46 ETH.

Vitalik Buterin proposes stateless partial nodes: a new node type that verifies the chain without storing the full state—only a portion of it.

New fee system activated, with staking tiers and account linking. Staking HYPE now gives you access to reduced transaction fees—up to 40% off—and distinguishes fees between spot and perps. All fees go directly back to the community.

HyperCore launches a referral program with staking: earn up to 40% in commissions and offer discounts to your referrals.

HyperFND X account is back online after a security incident.

Stake Initia with liquid staking on Drop using code STAKELY1 and earn deINIT. Boost your APR and earn more rewards in Drop’s Phase 2, where 5% of total DROP supply will be distributed.

Injective launches a native framework for tokenizing real-world assets and connecting them to Web3 in an interoperable and permissionless way. For the first time, tokenized shares of the “Magnificent 7” (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Google, Tesla) are available on-chain 24/7 via iAsset and Helix.

New ATH: Injective surpasses 7 million daily transactions and reaches about 38,000 active addresses, with steady organic growth.

Choice is the new unified DEX aggregator on Injective and is now live on testnet.

The attention economy evolves: introducing CLANS, a new era of digital tribes for builders, hodlers, and degens.

Elastic Scaling arrives on Kusama: rollups can now automatically scale their computing power without compromising security or decentralization.

Chainspect expands its support: now monitoring Kusama’s Relay Chain and rollups via its new Polkadot ecosystem dashboard.

Referendum 524 approved: disables V2 descriptors to address network finalization issues.

Universal Wallet updated: version V0.3.3 brings visual improvements and new Ownables alerts; now available on iOS and Android!

LTO Network updates its 2025 roadmap: with key progress on Solana bridge, EQTY, Ownables, and RWA tokenization.

Zcash integrated into NEAR Intents: enabling secure, permissionless, self-custodial swaps between multiple assets. Swap BTC for NEAR or SOL for ETH cross-chain—quickly and frictionlessly.

Aurora Blocks empowers founders to launch full EVM chains with NEAR’s performance and Ethereum tooling.

Hard fork at block 2,176,000: this upgrade kicks off Namada’s Phase 4, activating shielded set rewards for holding NAM and updating MASP indexers.

Protected Microgrants: a new quick-grant program for privacy-focused projects.

Namada expands support to 10 IBC tokens like Cosmos, Osmosis, and Celestia, and begins integration with Ethereum and Solana.

FrameFest update: Limited NFTs for top-ranked users: 37 hosts, 100 creators, and 250 viewers. Plus, FLIX rewards are now live on OmniFlix Market.

FLIX/ATOM pool #1896 on Osmosis is live with 60-day incentives.

Osmosis surpasses 350 million on-chain transactions since genesis.

Steps toward Bitcoin Secured Network (BSN) begin after governance proposal 919 passes and Babylon Genesis is integrated.

Osmosis Pay card using Cypher tech now works at over 40 million merchants in 140 countries.

Osmosis launches Dogemosis, its second-largest pool with $2.5M in daily volume, and prepares for XRP integration after success with DOGE.

Scam alert: “Osmosis_groupchat” on Telegram impersonates admins and adds users without permission—report and leave immediately!

Persistence DEX officially launches on Babylon Genesis, offering trading and liquidity mining incentives, positioning itself as the BTCFi liquidity hub.

New pools on Babylon Genesis: BABY/XPRT, WBTC/USDC, and BABY/WBTC with incentives on Persistence DEX.

Proposal #135 approved: These Persistence DEX pools will now receive incentives in stkXPRT:

• PSTAKE/XPRT: 5,300 stkXPRT
• USDC/USDT: 4,400 stkXPRT
• ATOM/XPRT: 61,100 stkXPRT
• USDT/XPRT: 14,000 stkXPRT
• stkXPRT/XPRT: 15,800 stkXPRT
• WBTC/XPRT: 32,800 stkXPRT

Polkadot 2.0 reaches 99% completion: enhanced performance, lower latency, and scalable rollups in 500 ms are just around the corner.

SCOUT is the new Substrate security tool, launched by Coinfabrik and backed by Polkadot DAO to protect developers.

Turtle v3 is live! Execute seamless cross-chain swaps from Hydration to any parachain in Polkadot.

Quasar shuts down its network after proposal 49 approval; at Stakely, we’ve disabled our validator accordingly. Quasar now offers automatic 1:1 conversion to TWR.

Volmex launches the Solana Volmex Prime Rate Index (SVPR): a transparent rate based on USD stablecoin lending and SOL perpetuals.

WBTC is now natively issued on Solana, joining cbBTC, zBTC, and tBTC.

Solana hits new ATH in Q1 2025: on-chain GDP grows by 20% and stablecoin issuance surges 145% to $12.5B, according to Messari.

Native USDC now available on Sonic via CCTP V2: Circle’s cross-chain protocol enables seamless transfers and direct minting in Sonic, avoiding liquidity fragmentation.

Jailbreak Hackathon: $15K+ bounty for discovering smart contract vulnerabilities.

FeeM surpasses $1.3M in developer rewards, a key milestone for ecosystem engagement.

.sonic domains are now available: mint and manage your domain directly on the Sonic blockchain, now open to the public.

Asset Runes: a new native way for bitcoiners to diversify and hedge risks with 1:1 assets on Bitcoin and Starknet.

Broly, new Starknet PoC, unlocks innovative Bitcoin use cases, enabling trust-minimized inscriptions directly from Starknet without needing BTC or interacting with Bitcoin.

Stablecoin payments via Copperx: send instant USDC to users, vendors, and partners, with fiat offramps and upcoming crypto cards.

Starknet Hackathon begins: Re{ignite} offers over $33K in prizes, up to $25K in funding, and the chance to join Startup House in Cannes.

Stride Swap debuts as the native DEX for Cosmos Hub, enabling cross-chain swaps and backed by Interchain Foundation investment.

Stride burns 300K STRD in the 8 weeks leading up to the DEX launch.

sBTC arrives on Sui: fast, scalable, and intermediary-free Bitcoin to earn yield and use in DeFi.

New ATH: Sui surpasses $1B in stablecoin supply, including USDC, FDUSD, AUSD, USDY, and BUCK.

Xociety and Adidas launch 2.6K playable and collectible NFTs on Sui, now available on TradePort.

Sui, Bitcoin, and Ethereum integrate with Microsoft Fabric via SpaceandTimeDB for instant access to full blockchain history for developers.

Pudgy Penguins joins Walrus and Sui to store stickers and GIFs on-chain with decentralized storage.

Walrus reaches over 600 TB of storage: an incredible volume of data!

Learn how to scale Walrus Aggregator with Caddy and Cloudflare efficiently in our step-by-step guide.

Conclusion

May made it clear that the blockchain ecosystem never stops evolving. At Stakely, we remain committed to innovation, open access to staking, and strengthening our infrastructure.

The best is yet to come! Follow us on X (Twitter) so you don’t miss any updates.