Latest blockchain news: January 2026

2026 kicks off strong: Lido makes strides with Lido V3, enhancing the staking experience on Ethereum; Solana speeds up its adoption with new use cases in DeFi, payments, and tokenized assets; Sonic continues sustainable on-chain growth while strengthening its institutional strategy; and these are just a few of the many updates.

Also, after an especially intense 2025, at Stakely we begin 2026 with a clear goal: simplify staking and unify the experience into a 1-click flow, expand our validator set, and continue strengthening our infrastructure.

We’ve integrated 1-click staking on our website so you can stake and manage your positions non-custodially and without switching tools. A single widget integrated into Monad and Ethereum, and coming soon to more networks, allows you to stake with Stakely seamlessly...

On Avail, we increased the commission from 10% to 20%, while on Celestia, we raised it from 10% to 14% following the Foundation’s delegation adjustment.

Pharos Network is a high-performance chain designed to scale dApps and RWA use cases. Try the testnet, claim tokens, and start building for free.

Meanwhile, Lit Protocol is key infrastructure for more secure and private Web3 apps. Join LITKEY staking with Stakely.

We shut down our validator on OmniFlix following proposal #68, which mandates the permanent closure of the network as part of its migration to Base.
For Archway and Persistence, we shut down the validators with enough time to meet the 21-day unbonding period, setting the final node shutdown date for February 28. We recommend redelegate your stake or initiating the unstake process before that date to avoid any issues.

Request ETH from our Multicoin Faucet to cover mainnet gas fees and keep building without interruptions.

Staking.xyz ceases operations and Aleo confirms that user funds are safe, publishing a guide to recover staked tokens. Staking.xyz was a third-party provider offering a native staking and liquid staking app on Aleo.

Ambassador and Supporter programs are now closed, aimed at boosting community growth and participation.

Aleo launches USDCx on mainnet with Circle xReserve, bringing private stablecoins into production.

Kraken integrates USDC on Algorand and strengthens the network by running its own node, enabling fast and low-cost transactions.

Brale platform comes to Algorand to enable the issuance of regulated stablecoins, expanding its digital asset infrastructure.

Algorand strengthens its privacy focus with ZKPs through AlgoPlonk, enabling private transactions via HermesVault.

Largest VRF raffle ever on Algorand, with 79,000 participating wallets, enhancing its verifiable randomness system.

Allbridge integrates with Algorand, enabling cross-chain stablecoin usage through its SDK for developers.

Algorand establishes its first Ecosystem Advisory Council, promoting governance, transparency, and collaboration in the ecosystem.

Aptos records consecutive weekly revenue highs, surpassing $1.7M from apps and solidifying its growth in the DeFi ecosystem.

Goblin Fi drives new yield opportunities on Aptos, boosting activity and development in its decentralized financial ecosystem.

Network reduces gas fees and improves composability with Lazy Loading for Move now live on mainnet.

Aptos establishes itself as the go-to blockchain for stablecoins, integrating USDT, USDC, and new issues from PayPal and Paxos.

Bitnomial launches the first regulated Aptos futures in the U.S., paving the way for a potential spot ETF.

Over 70 teams are already building with Avail DA, now supporting 13 chains through Nexus.

The community held another edition of the “Spot the Wrong Word” contest about Avail Nexus, with 15 winners selected.

Galaxy launches the first tokenized CLO in the market on Avalanche, with an initial allocation of $50M.

Stablecoin transfer volume on Avalanche grows 250% year-over-year, doubling its previous record.

Avalanche boosts its ecosystem with: a $10,000 Mini Grant for The Grotto; the Build Games competition with $1M in prizes; the Retro9000 activation, offering up to 3,000 AVAX in referral rewards; and a $40M fund for developers.

Aztec Network approves the launch proposal for the AZTEC token and calls the community to vote. Make your vote count!

Celestia unveils its Vision 2.0, aiming to bring all global markets on-chain with open, high-speed infrastructure.

Celestia introduces Fibre and Private Blockspace: Fibre delivers 1 terabit per second of blockspace, reaching new levels of scalability, while Private Blockspace enables confidential on-chain finance without losing public verifiability.

Concordium Pay introduces a new digital payments alternative, offering instant stablecoin settlements with lower fees than Apple or Google.

Concordium strengthens its institutional infrastructure by integrating DFNS into its wallet platform.

London and Barcelona receive Concordium’s vision: protocol-level identity as the key to institutional adoption, compliance, and scalable KYC.

The annual stablecoin volume surpasses $27 trillion!

Institutional staking gains traction in Cosmos, with players like Colossus Digital helping traditional capital enter the space.

Fetch.ai launches FetchCoder V2, with native Cosmos support, aimed at accelerating development of inter-chain autonomous agents.

Stargaze 2.0 is coming to Cosmos Hub in February, bringing a refreshed experience and NFTs powered by ATOM.

The amount of ETH in staking hits a new all-time high, with nearly 36 million locked — over 29% of the total supply.

Ethereum’s validator exit queue is empty, while over 1 million ETH wait to enter staking, reflecting renewed confidence in the network.

Security incidents shake the ecosystem: Trust Wallet suffers a $6M hack due to a browser extension vulnerability; Gnosis executes a hard fork to recover $9M stolen from Balancer and compensate affected users; meanwhile, Ledger warns of a data breach from a payment provider, alerting users of possible phishing campaigns.

Ethereum advances toward censorship resistance: FOCIL is set to be included in the Hegotá upgrade, after being excluded from Glamsterdam.

Uniswap is now running on Ethereum, showcasing the power of open, code-based markets via a fully decentralized exchange.

Grayscale to offer staking dividends through its Ethereum ETF, marking a historic milestone for crypto funds in the U.S.

Ethereum activates the second BPO fork to boost blob data capacity, further improving scalability.

ethOS enables eSIM without KYC on the Ethereum Phone, and introduces AI features for direct on-chain operations via mobile.

Devcon 8 will be held in Mumbai, from November 3–6, 2026, at the JIO World Convention Centre.

Lido V3 moves into its stVaults phase 2: this stage begins with a vote on proposal #198, after passing security audits by ConsenSys Diligence, Certora, MixBytes, and Sigma Prime, focusing on critical areas.

GenLayer surpasses 3,000 GitHub stars and advances toward dynamic smart contracts with LLM integration.

RallyOnChain reaches 100,000 users, driven by AI validators and trustless decision-making powered by GenLayer.

TLS Notary is implemented on GenLayer, enabling authenticated private API data to be brought on-chain while eliminating single points of failure.

InfoFi joins the GenLayer ecosystem, featuring curated debates, USDC-based wagers, and AI validator-powered resolution; the first debate awarded 254 USDC to the winning side.

Kusama moves ahead of Polkadot 2.0 with EVM contracts and Elastic Scaling. A parachain will be able to scale its performance on demand. The network reduces block times to under 2 seconds and launches Revive, a unified platform for PVM and EVM smart contracts.

Lit Protocol introduces Swarms: on-chain automation without custody, keeping full control of funds in users’ hands.

New record: $100M in weekly processing volume, driven by a decentralized network of signing and encryption.

Lit Protocol launches v1 with decentralized ECDSA signatures, supporting multiple signature schemes — developed in record time.

Monad launches Monad Mill with 250,000 MON in incentives and a competitive rewards distribution model.

Monad and OpenBuild launch the “Rebel in Paradise” hackathon, focused on AI with over $40,000 in prizes.

New Korean treasury bonds are tokenized on Monad, in collaboration with Etherfuse.

New integrations on Monad: PingMe enables crypto transfers via SMS or email, while KINETK protects 50 million pieces of content in its first month on Monad, using AI-powered protection.

earnMON launches on Monad via Upshift, offering MON/WMON deposits and new rewards for users.

NEAR Intents surpasses $10B in historical volume and gains visibility at the Open Source AI Summit in Lisbon. It’s also integrated into VDEX, improving cross-chain swaps through intent-based routing.

Starknet’s STRK token arrives on Solana via NEAR Intents, enabling one-click multichain swaps and unified liquidity.

NEAR AI joins NVIDIA’s Inception program to scale verifiable AI and confidential computing.

dewNEAR opens public access, offering up to 6.95% APY for NEAR holders on a fully on-chain platform.

NEARCON 2026 presents Innovation Sandbox, with prizes up to $15,000 and a focus on AI, privacy, and the open web, taking place on February 23–24 in San Francisco.

New speed record on NEAR: average block time drops to 1.13 seconds, marking its fastest performance yet.

New veNEAR rewards campaign incentivizes staking and governance participation.

Faroo to launch as a liquid staking protocol alongside Pharos mainnet, offering automatic rewards and instant liquidity.

FuFuture debuts as a decentralized perpetual options platform, with no slippage or liquidations, to drive Pharos’ RealFi ecosystem.

Polkadot fully revamps its documentation to ease onboarding for Ethereum and Solidity developers.

Proposal #1816 approved and executed, closing the UX Bounty and returning unused funds to the Treasury, following criticism of low impact and inefficient spending.

Secret Network reveals its 2026 roadmap, featuring enhanced security, optimized virtual machines, and MPC-based encryption for proprietary hardware.

The market cap of real-world tokenized assets on Solana surpasses $1B, with annual growth of nearly 560%.

Privacy Hackathon kicks off with $70,000 in prizes; five new bounties are added to build private payments and apps on Solana.

Solana launches Kora, a fee relayer and signing node that enables fee-less transactions and payments in stablecoins or SPL tokens.

.com domains arrive on Solana, with a hybrid Web2 + Web3 model bridging traditional compatibility and blockchain utility.

STRK, FUN, LIT, FBTC, and FIGHT are now live on Solana, expanding token diversity within the ecosystem.

Solana launches SKR, the native token of its mobile ecosystem, now available on compatible apps and exchanges.

Solana gains institutional traction: Wyoming launches FRNT, the first state-backed stablecoin in the U.S.; Avici unveils “Named” virtual accounts as a global banking alternative; and Ondo Global Markets launches with over 200 tokenized stocks and ETFs, quadrupling the available RWAs — including Apple, Tesla, and Amazon.

Sonic solidifies its on-chain growth, surpassing 170 million transactions and over $45B in total volume.

Sonic fund allocation: $40M to fuel its institutional strategy and bring Sonic Strategy to Nasdaq, along with over $2M for legal action in support of victims of the Multichain collapse on Fantom.

Sonic burns over 16M unclaimed S tokens from airdrop season 1 and consolidates 92.2M remaining tokens into a multisig wallet, reinforcing its controlled supply model and transparency policy.

Sonic Labs completes fund reimbursement after the Beets exploit, fully compensating all affected users.

A new version of Cairo optimizes hash maps and refactors structures, significantly improving performance on Starknet.

On January 5, Starknet experiences an outage due to a sequencer bug, reverting 18 minutes of activity. The issue was mitigated thanks to its testing layer.

StarkWare powers 20% of the perpetuals market, with over $180B in monthly volume.

New assets on Starknet: BTCFi shows early traction three months after launch; mRe7BTC arrives as a BTC yield token with optimized DeFi strategies; and STRK is now available on Solana via NEAR Intents, enabling cross-chain trading and liquidity.

New challenges and rewards: Loot Survivor launches a Referral Sprint with 70,000 STRK in prizes. Blitz debuts with an on-chain tournament styled after Age of Empires, featuring live predictions and token rewards. The Re{define} Hackathon will award $21,500 for trustless apps from February 1–28.

Interoperability expands: Starknet integrates with Hyperlane, enabling connections with over 140 chains and custom permissionless bridges. It also adds integration with Stargate Finance, LayerZero’s bridge, which moved over $50B in 2026.

New integrations: Story integrates with Genobank to allow breast cancer patients to license their DNA for personalized medicine; with ZenO to monetize robotic AI data; and with Halliday to enhance access to IP tokens and improve onboarding for new users and creators.

New active proposals: SIP-00009 aims to adjust emissions and incentives to improve staking dynamics; SIP-00010 will lower the participation threshold from 1,024 to 32 IP, making staking more accessible.

Story paused its mainnet due to a protocol update (Fusaka/story-geth v1.2.0) on January 14 at 23:30 UTC, for 48 hours.

Sui publishes the Seal whitepaper, a programmable access control system for encrypted data, opening new possibilities for secure information management.

New integrations on Sui: Inodra becomes a native gateway for its dev stack, facilitating app development on the network. River enables “teleportation” of liquidity, attracting capital from other on-chain ecosystems.

Ember Protocol and Bluefin launch vaults on Sui using Polymarket. Ember, managed by Thirdeye Fund, is already live and focused on on-chain prediction.

Private Payroll, Union’s new on-chain payroll system, enables private salary payments via confidential bridges.

Sui integrates into Union’s testnet: try the ZK trustless connection that links crypto ecosystems by connecting your Leap wallet or Slush wallet.

Walrus celebrates Haulout Hackathon winners with recognition badges for achievements in DeepSurge and hosts a live showcase.

New call for developers interested in building a decentralized video platform for builders.

New projects join Walrus: Team Liquid migrates 250TB of content, hosting the largest decentralized dataset on the protocol. Realtbook permanently stores its NFT Bookie collection on Walrus. Unchained Podcast protects its media library with Walrus’s secure, decentralized storage.

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