April 2025 was a key month in the evolution of the blockchain industry, and at Stakely, we’ve kept pace. This month, we’ve contributed to the ecosystem with major milestones, from our restaking vault with Gauntlet to the launch of WalTransfer.

Here’s everything that stood out this month and how we’re making an impact!

This month’s highlights at Stakely

We’ve partnered with Gauntlet to launch a restaking vault on Mellow Protocol. This vault is built with security and efficiency in mind and is designed to support the arrival of Lido V3. The goal? Maximize yields without compromising on safety.

Do you use WeTransfer? Now imagine doing it without centralized servers, with full privacy, and powered by blockchain. That’s WalTransfer: simple, free, and backed by Walrus, a decentralized protocol built on Sui.
Give it a try and let us know what you think!

After sponsoring the Bangkok edition, we’re back as sponsors for the event organized by Staking Rewards, this time in Dubai.

Top ecosystem news

Agoric launches Orchestration: smart contracts for a frictionless multichain DeFi experience, with unified user journeys and no manual bridging.

Aptos cuts blocktime from 220 ms to 130 ms in just 2.5 months
A 40% improvement in speed and performance.

Community proposes AIP-119: reduce staking rewards from 7% to 3% over 3 months
Goal: enhance capital efficiency and accelerate development.

Archway now lets you easily create, manage, and deploy your multisig. Try their public tool and see for yourself.

Avalanche surges in April. With +86.1% monthly growth, more active users, and burned fees not seen since May 2022. NFT momentum with Avaissance and the Evergreen Subnets played a key role in this surge.

New bug bounty on Celestia. Earn up to $750,000 in TIA for reporting critical security vulnerabilities.

Celo turns 5 and migrates to L2. Its transition aims for a $1 trillion onchain economy by 2030.

Boost for the PayFi ecosystem
Concordium adds four new stablecoins: Agant, Noon, Deep Blue, and AEDX.

Concordium launches DevNet
A new platform for developers, speeding up PayFi and stablecoin protocol-level innovations.

Guardians Wanted for Concordium!
Take part in the 2025 Governance Committee elections, protect Web3 democracy, and earn CCD.

Cosmos launches [IBC Eureka](https://stakely.io/blog/ibc-eureka-cosmos-upgrade-connects-ethereum-and-ibc), an upgrade that removes the need for traditional bridges and enables native connection with Ethereum — and soon, Bitcoin. Transfer faster and cheaper, starting from $1 with just one click. Over $1M in volume during Eureka’s first 9 hours!

Covalent proposes increasing the staking cap and reducing emissions. Emissions will drop to 65,753.4 CXT per epoch, resulting in a floating APY of around 8% for 300 million staked tokens. The proposal boosts security, adapts to operator consolidation, and prepares light client rewards.

Hoodi activated the Pectra fork on testnet
The update will hit Ethereum mainnet on May 7, 2025, at 10:05 UTC — and we at Stakely are already preparing for it.

Privacy Pools is now live on Ethereum
Deposit between 0.1 and 1 ETH into the onchain privacy protocol. Each deposit passes a wallet filter before becoming eligible for private withdrawals.

Vitalik proposes RISC-V for Ethereum
A move that could boost prover efficiency by up to 100x, cutting ZK costs and simplifying the execution layer.

Additionally, EIP-7935 proposes raising Ethereum’s gas limit to 150 million via the Fusaka hard fork.

Hyperliquid implements on-chain voting for asset removal
Once quorum is reached, the action is automatically executed, ensuring transparency and efficiency.

New staking levels based on delegated HYPE
Starting April 30, users will benefit from reduced trading fees as a first perk.

New testnet update
New precompiles improve gas efficiency and asset management for spot and perps.

Injective joins The Blockchain Association. The platform has been selected to join the leading pro-crypto policy coalition in the U.S.

Tokenomics Adjustment Proposal #38 Approved
The KILT Foundation will update the token contract on the Polkadot-Ethereum-BASE bridge as part of a multichannel future.

The Polkadot Scalability Hackathon begins! Over four weeks, developers will compete in categories like ZK Runtime Development for prizes and Fast Grant opportunities.

BETA phase begins for EQTY Finance, LTO Network’s RWA platform. Active testers who provide feedback can share a $1,000 LTO reward.

NEAR OmniBridge expands multichain transfers on Near Protocol
Going beyond NEAR <> Ethereum, it improves chain abstraction flexibility and scalability.

NEAR to launch version 77 with optimistic blocks on May 8
The upgrade reduces latency and enables up to 17 million blocks, 8 million more than the current performance.

Namada prepares a hard fork before moving to phases 4 and 5. Key improvements were identified, and the hard fork will launch on the Campfire testnet, removing technical barriers to progress.

OmniFlix celebrates FLIX’s second anniversary with three launches:

• FrameFest: an incentivized testnet to showcase the OmniFlix Media Node.
• Proposal 56: vote to deploy the new Channels v2 contracts.
• OmniFlix Super App: the app to access the entire OmniFlix ecosystem from your mobile.

Osmosis v25 update has already generated over $100,000. The new Top-of-Block auction mechanism has boosted earnings since its release.

Persistence One launches incentives for Liquidity Pools
The WBTC/XPRT pool offers roughly 39,900 stkXPRT in incentives, encouraging Wrapped Bitcoin holders to trade or provide liquidity on the Persistence DEX.

Governance Proposal #135 approved for XPRT
With 94.83% support, stkXPRT incentives were allocated to several DEX pools including PSTAKE/XPRT, USDC/USDT, and ATOM/XPRT.

Polkabot goes live with the new Eliza framework
You can now chat with PolkabotAI directly from the website and also on X.

New Snowbridge active
Snowbridge enables DOT transfers between Polkadot and Ethereum, boosting multichain connectivity.

Polkadot Assurance Legion strengthens open-source security
A new initiative offering reimbursements and support for audits to enhance security in open-source projects.

Tower Rush testnet is now live — the path to Tower begins!
The Quasar network will be deactivated and QSR tokens migrated to TWR as part of the transition.

ShentuChain launches a 200 CTK airdrop campaign. Up to 5 winners received 200 CTK tokens by participating through retweets, tagging, and following the post instructions.

Kast’s Solana Card enables stablecoin payments at 140M merchants. The new Kast card makes it easy to pay with stablecoins at a wide global network of merchants.

Sonic disables S-to-FTM migration
Now only FTM-to-S conversions are allowed, making migration one-way.

SonicCS 2.0: a new, faster, and more efficient consensus protocol
It doubles consensus speed and cuts memory usage by 68%. Coming soon to mainnet!

FeeM Vault to boost the ecosystem via Fee Monetization
If you’re a Sonic builder, you can earn 90% of FeeM — that’s 90% of fee monetization.

Argent Card users have spent over $500k to date
The card allows users to spend Starknet assets for real-world purchases.

A major Perp DEX migrates from StarkEx to Starknet L2
The move brings powerful new use cases to Starknet: 50+ pairs (crypto + TradFi), a community vault for LPs, and soon spot, lending, and more.

Stride Swap, the new DEX for Cosmos Hub backed by the Interchain Foundation, will handle bridge swaps for IBC Eureka and provide core liquidity for Cosmos Hub DeFi.

Sui now available via “Wallet in Telegram” with over 100M users
Buy and sell SUI directly within Telegram, leveraging its huge user base.

DeepBook 3.1 is live with new enhancements!
Now featuring permissionless pools, fee payment with input tokens, improved liquidity, and lower trading fees.

Sui revolutionizes digital payments with a new virtual Mastercard
With a personalized wallet and partnerships with xPortal and xMoney.com, Sui transforms the digital payment experience.

The Walrus Foundation launches its RFP program to support builders developing tools, integrations, and new use cases within the ecosystem.

And that wraps up this month’s roundup. We’re excited to continue exploring the latest innovations and opportunities the blockchain ecosystem has to offer. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the May report, where we’ll dive deeper into the most important updates and developments.