Latest blockchain news: October 2025

October was a key month for multichain staking infrastructure: new integrations, technical progress, and institutional adoption. At Stakely, we continue supporting this growth with new networks, technical upgrades, and certifications. We’ll break it all down in this blog!

This month, we were not only Silver Sponsors of Merge Madrid 2025 for the second year in a row, but we also co-organized the Warm-Up by Stakely alongside Crypto Days and the Algorand Foundation. We brought together over 120 attendees to kick off MERGE Madrid with real networking and new business opportunities.

One lucky community member got to attend the event for free thanks to our general ticket giveaway for MERGE Madrid. Continuing our tour through Spain, we also attended EBC Barcelona, where we connected with both new and existing partners in the space.

Algorand is here to solve the infamous blockchain trilemma—decentralization, security, and scalability. It tackles this with its Pure Proof-of-Stake (PPoS) model, aiming for fast finality, low fees, open participation, and transaction costs as low as 0.001 ALGO. Stake ALGO to our Stakely.algo pool to secure the network.

We’ve made strategic adjustments to the validator fees on some networks. These changes reflect our long-term vision of maintaining a secure, high-performance infrastructure while continuing to bring value to our stakers. Here are the changes:

🔻Sui: from 8% → 7%
🔺Starknet: from 5% → 10%
🔺Shentu: from 8% → 9%

We’re no longer part of the active set on Injective due to external and Foundation-led changes. As for Stride, the network now reaches consensus with just 7 validators following recent updates. We’ll continue as a Governor and deeply appreciate your support and understanding during our time as partners on both networks.

It was a delicate process, but it went flawlessly—zero slashes and less than 30 minutes of downtime. This boosts Lido’s APR thanks to OBOL tokens and further strengthens our infrastructure. Want more details? Learn more about the Obol integration with Lido.

We successfully renewed our ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification for the second year in a row. Along with SOC 2 Type II, this reinforces and validates our commitment to our clients’ security.

At Stakely, we keep leveling up. We’ve unified our tools, services, and products into a single, more intuitive and accessible interface—one gateway to the Stakely universe. Try it now!

We’ve added U from Union and SOMI from Somnia, so you can continue exploring both ecosystems without barriers.

Aleo expands its global presence with training sessions in Africa and Asia, as well as community meetups in Lisbon and Paris, to promote privacy adoption in Web3 and attract new developers to its ecosystem.

Aleo launches its official developer faucet, offering 20 test tokens per day with no KYC required to accelerate the creation of private applications in its ecosystem. It also announced a partnership with Paxos to launch USAD, the first private and regulated stablecoin in the sector.

Algorand opens xGov to retroactive proposals, encouraging open-source developers to submit their tools for recognition and ecosystem support.

Algorand releases its Q3 2025 Transparency Report, highlighting strong growth in transaction volume, TVL, and RWA, and a record number of open-source developers, surpassing 1.9B ALGO staked and over 3,700 nodes.

Algorand joins the Agent Payments Protocol by Google Cloud, enabling secure, low-cost, and instant-finality transactions to support automated payments between platforms.

Aptos Assembly is a new program connecting founders, developers, and mentors, backed by expert support and grants of up to $50,000.

Aptos introduces its Encrypted Mempool, securing the Global Trading Engine against MEV without compromising speed or performance—a technical breakthrough led by its research team.

StableFlow adds support for Aptos, enabling large-scale stablecoin transfers with fast, low-cost, and secure transactions—strengthening Aptos’ role as a payment infrastructure network.

Archway Connect enters the Cosmos ecosystem, offering the best rates for ATOM swaps and avoiding the usual high costs found on other DEXs.

It also enables zero-slippage AKT swaps to optimize staking in Akash and improve the Cosmos trading experience.

Avail launches incentives of up to $10,000 to support cross-chain app development, integrating users and liquidity across more than 10 ecosystems.

Avail enables Unified Balances on Hyperliquid and HyperEVM, allowing USDC/USDT deposits across 10+ chains without bridges and with gas abstraction, offering frictionless app access.

Finally, Avail accelerates its multichain expansion with new integrations: StationX, TRON, and Scroll, and enhances token security with AVAIL support in the Cypherock X1 hardware wallet.

Avalanche Treasury Co. is born, a regulated gateway for AVAX exposure aiming to attract institutional capital, fund builders, and accelerate ecosystem growth.

The Baseball Copa América adopts Avalanche, while CruTrade tokenizes over $60M in premium wine assets on the network.

BTC.b gears up for a key transition: Ava Labs partners with Lombard Finance to upgrade its infrastructure and operations, strengthening the use of tokenized Bitcoin on Avalanche.

The AVAX Card is introduced as a new global payment symbol, offering a borderless financial experience from Tokyo to Paris.

128MB blocks are now live on the Arabica testnet, with further increases expected on mainnet—boosting performance and scalability.

Celestia also enables on-chain HFT with 2 ms latency and 200k orders per second, thanks to its modular architecture and speed.

Celo has surpassed 1 billion transactions this month, accumulated over five years!

It also continues expanding: Uniswap v4 brings a more customizable and efficient DEX; RubyScore introduces on-chain reputation scoring; QuestPanda boosts global stablecoin payments and creator monetization; and Zodiac Cards allow users to mint multi-zone horoscopes with privacy and eligibility for future CELO distribution.

Concordium powers PayFi with Verify & Pay, reducing friction in identity checks, improving conversion rates, and enabling ZK-private and traceable stablecoin payments for regulated sectors.

New partnership with Ledger to lead the next wave of digital payments: starting with integration in the Browser Wallet for staking and cold storage transactions, and a roadmap toward private, verified, and programmable payments.

Over 300 developers and 19 projects participated in the 2025 Encode Club Hackathon with Concordium, where solutions like Proctora, VeriLoan, and Blockbet stood out for their creativity and use of digital identity.

Cosmos Labs presents Cosmos EVM as the solution for institutions to access Ethereum’s open, permissionless ecosystem—without its major limitations, according to senior engineer Vlad Jidkovk.

Cosmoverse 2025 kicks off with key updates on the future of Cosmos, the roadmap for the Cosmos Stack, the Hub’s role, and the evolution of ATOM—live on the official X account: Cosmoverse | Cosmos Conference

SpeedRun returns! After upgrading the platform with its OG cohort, Covalent opens the second round and officially launches on Base with a new model for on-chain apps as live, composable content—open to creators beyond traditional systems.

Covalent introduces a Strategic Reserve for CXT, locking ~10% of the supply and converting both on- and off-chain revenue into structural value—reinforcing a deflationary, community-governed model.

The Fusaka upgrade was successfully activated on the Hoodi testnet, completing testing ahead of its mainnet deployment on December 3.

Offramp launches a self-custody wallet on Ethereum, enabling users to receive stablecoins, invest on-chain, and instantly withdraw funds. The team will showcase it at Devcon this November.

Ethereum reinforces its digital freedom efforts with the launch of the Privacy Cluster—47 experts driving privacy-focused solutions across the ecosystem.

Kusama successfully completes its historic migration to the Asset Hub: more than 348,000 accounts, 17.1M KSM, and 25 pallets—including governance and staking—were migrated in just 3 hours and 13 minutes. This paves the way for Polkadot’s upcoming migration on November 4.

Monad asks which apps should receive incentives from its Momentum program, encouraging developers and users to submit projects and tag their favorites. Join in:

The official portal to claim Monad’s airdrop is now live: claim your MON before November 3.

Heliax deploys the entire production infrastructure for Namada’s mainnet, including RPCs, indexers, and interfaces—now fully operational. It also launches Namadillo v1.32.1 with improvements to the namada.world explorer, now available in four instances.

Namada moves toward one-click IBC integrations, with internal testing already underway for transfers between Ethereum and Namada—both transparent and shielded—and prepares SDKs and front-end support following the next v201.0.6 upgrade.

NEAR completes its mainnet ‘halving’ and reduces annual inflation from 5% to 2.5%, marking a new era of sustainable tokenomics and greater alignment of incentives across the ecosystem.

The NEAR Foundation strengthens its leadership with executives from Bloomberg, DCG, Flipside, and dYdX, boosting global growth of private and decentralized AI products.

House of Stake launches a new governance system on NEAR—you can now stake NEAR, stNEAR, or liNEAR to obtain veNEAR, increasing voting power and rewards over time. The first 250 users to reach 10 veNEAR will receive an exclusive soul-bound token.

Osmosis surpasses 45 million blocks and expands its reach with over 400 supported assets, including native Bitcoin deposits with zero fees, strengthening its position in the DeFi ecosystem.

Version 31 is live, focusing on tokenomics, introducing an automated buyback & burn system for OSMO, greater stability in staking rewards, and other key improvements to the protocol’s economic model.

Persistence begins its gradual Core-1 upgrade with Cosmos SDK v0.53.x and Babylon, after approving Proposal #145 for a safe and smooth transition. Meanwhile, Proposal #151 was approved with 92% support to activate stkXPRT incentives from November, boosting DEX liquidity.

Persistence DEX V2 takes a step toward “Unified Bitcoin DeFi” with its cross-chain swap vision, allowing BTC to move freely across networks and expanding ecosystem reach. Listen here:

Polkadot 2.0 is here! Elastic Scaling is the final piece—delivering rollups 3x faster and improvements in performance and flexibility.

New tokenomics for Polkadot: a 2.1B DOT supply cap and biannual emission reduction starting each March 14 (Pi Day), marking an era of lower inflation and greater scarcity.

Polkadot launches its Community Feedback Program, an initiative rewarding users with DOT for reporting issues and contributing to ecosystem improvements.

Over 850 participants have registered for the Polkadot Builder Party Hackathon, which will award $40,000 in prizes.

Shentu successfully completes its mainnet upgrade to v2.16.0 at block 26,267,300, incorporating improvements in OpenMath and Cosmos SDK v0.50.14 after a coordinated validator rollout.

Uniswap arrives on Solana—now available on the official web app, expanding access to new users across the ecosystem.

Solana Foundation launches CommerceKit, featuring an interactive token payment playground, new open-source tools, and improvements via Launch.solana.com.

The first Solana ETF approved by the SEC goes live: Bitwise launches BSOL, offering direct exposure to SOL and staking rewards exceeding 7%.

Solana and Colosseum hosted the Cypherpunk Hackathon, a global developer event where top projects compete for prizes in USDC and up to $250,000 in funding and mentorship through its acceleration program.

Get ready for the launch of Data Streams, the technology that will give dApps Web2-level performance with real-time on-chain updates, lower user friction, and scalability to millions.

Join the Somnia Liquidity Points (SLP) Program, where users can earn part of 1M SOMI plus fees from the SOMI/USDC.e pool. Epoch 3 is now live, with over 48,000 users providing liquidity.

Season 2 of the S airdrop and the Kaito program has ended—claims will open once point calculations and reward allocations are finalized.

Sonic completes its v2.1.2 upgrade, introducing key security improvements and fee subsidies, paving the way for its upcoming transition to Pectra on mainnet.

Stader completes its fifth SD token buyback, purchasing 76,145 SD on the open market—reinforcing its long-term sustainability strategy.

LayerZero’s integration with Starknet enters open audit phase, offering 100,000 USDC in rewards through November 8 for developers and security experts.

New integrations arrive on Starknet: Dfns offers automated, scalable enterprise wallets, and BlockRooms—the first fully on-chain FPS—delivers a seamless Web2-like gaming experience.

Starknet prepares to receive native USDC and CCTP v2 using a mint-and-burn model—a milestone that promises to reshape its DeFi landscape amid record stablecoin adoption.

A new bridge to Solana launches on StarkGate, powered by Hyperlane, enabling transfers of assets like SOL, JUP, and BONK on Starknet.

ARIAIP arrives to the Story ecosystem, the first RWA-native intellectual property token.

Story launches its community executive structure with IP Leads and new Ambassadors, driving leadership, cohesion, and growth across its global ecosystem.

Story Protocol brings the Programmable IP License (PIL) on-chain, a legal and automated framework that removes intermediaries and makes the use, remixing, and royalty flows of any work fully traceable.

Registrations are now open for “Surreal World Assets” Season 2, the buildathon that merges AI, blockchain, and the physical world—from November 11 to December 4—organized with Encode Club and several ecosystem partners.

Sui Foundation launches the Sui Stack Messaging SDK in alpha, a toolkit for integrating private, verifiable, and programmable communication in Web3 apps—combining Sui blockchain, Walrus storage, and Seal secret management.

The ‘RFP Idea Challenge’ at SuiFest awarded up to 100 SUI for the best community-submitted ideas during October.

SUI Group partners with Ethena and Sui Foundation to launch suiUSDe and USDi, the first native stablecoins on the Sui network.

BCNL Foundation welcomes Union as a new strategic partner, highlighting its ZK-powered L1 network for trustless interoperability and a new blockchain settlement infrastructure.

As for events, the Walrus RFP Idea Challenge gathered 280 global proposals, with the top five set to win up to 1,000 WAL each. Walrus Haulout 2025 is now live!

Among recent updates, Walrus has been integrated into Dune, offering real-time metrics dashboards.

Check out our new tutorial on how to do liquid staking of WAL on Haedal:

Aztec’s testnet surpasses 18,600 nodes, with over 23,000 operators, offering a unique opportunity to launch validators or sequencers in minutes.

They also introduced a prototype to bring OTC trading to the private world computer, allowing institutions to execute large transactions confidentially and end-to-end.

Finally, Aztec is preparing a new Rabbit Hole exploring how bridges are bringing privacy to Ethereum L2s, featuring collaborations with Wormhole and Substance Labs.

Canopy launches its new Templates, language-adapted versions that drastically reduce time-to-market for building on its ecosystem.

Did you know about Plentifully? It’s Canopy’s bartering marketplace that enables urban farmers and communities to trade food using smart contracts and local governance.

GenLayer launches its Incentivized Builders Program, where everyone can earn points and enter a $1,000 prize draw by referring developers—earning 10% of their points for life.

The GenLayer Hackathon kicks off in Argentina on November 8–9, focused on building and launching on-chain projects with $500 in prizes, mentorship, and funding opportunities.

SNAP DEX unveils its “DeFi Command Center” for TAC users, offering swaps with better rates, more liquidity, and up to 400% APR rewards—plus a campaign distributing 8.3M TAC.

The AC Summoning reward claim period has ended, and 23M unclaimed TAC will be burned due to lack of vesting—a move that reduces total supply and strengthens its deflationary policy.

This final quarter is shaping up to deliver more real-world adoption. We’ll continue selecting and breaking down the most relevant developments from every network we operate on, so stakers and institutions can stay informed from both a technical and practical perspective.

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