Latest blockchain news: October 2026

October brought together several aspects of our work at Stakely: running infrastructure for new ecosystems, expanding staking options and bringing that experience to businesses and users. We joined the Shinzō testnet, announced our collaboration with Faroo and took part in programmes and events focused on growth and institutional adoption.

Across the networks we follow, this month's developments also raised practical questions: how to introduce protocol changes without compromising compatibility, how to bring payments into everyday apps, and what information financial infrastructure needs to protect.

Verifiable data with Shinzō

On October 6, we announced that we had joined the Shinzō testnet as a Generator operator. This infrastructure reads data from an execution node and produces structured datasets with cryptographic signatures.

The work focuses on the layer applications use to query blockchain information. Identifying who produces that data and checking its integrity helps reduce reliance on responses whose origin cannot be verified. We explain how it works and the scope of our participation in our Stakely and Shinzō announcement.

Faroo expands staking options on Pharos

On October 26, we announced our collaboration with Faroo to support liquid staking on Pharos, where we already operate as a validator.

With stPROS, users receive a transferable token representing their staking position, which they can use in compatible applications. That flexibility comes with a need to understand withdrawal mechanisms and the protocol's additional risks: holding a liquid token does not guarantee that it can always be converted immediately into PROS.

The development adds another component to the Pharos ecosystem. Our collaboration also does not mean that every deposit into Faroo is automatically allocated to Stakely's validator.

La Nave and MERGE Madrid

Stakely is one of five companies selected for the fifth edition of La Nave's Scale-Up programme, which began on October 20. The programme combines training, mentoring and business connections to help companies work through their next growth challenges.

We also participated in MERGE Madrid, held from October 27 to 29. Our CEO, Jose Antonio Hernández, joined the discussion on institutional yield products at the intersection of TradFi and DeFi.

For Stakely, these activities connect with a practical priority: helping teams considering staking integrations understand the infrastructure they need, how responsibilities are allocated and how to explain service conditions to their users.

Greater clarity on Ethereum withdrawals

This month, we also published a guide to Ethereum withdrawal types, exit queues and waiting times. Distinguishing a validator's exit from the moment ETH reaches its destination helps explain the liquidity of a staking position and set realistic expectations.

Glamsterdam activated on Sepolia on October 6. Hoodi was the next planned step, but on October 22, the Ethereum Foundation announced that its activation had been postponed from the original October 26 date.

The decision allows further investigation into interactions between EIP-8037 and mainnet contracts. Hoodi's planned gas limit increase to 200 million was also removed from the schedule. At the time of this review, no replacement date has been set for Hoodi, and the announcement does not set a mainnet activation date for Glamsterdam.

For operators, a postponement still involves work: checking clients and configurations to ensure they no longer use the previous schedule. For ETH holders on mainnet, this scheduling change requires no action.

We explore the technical context in our analysis of what Glamsterdam could bring to Ethereum and its validators. October's development underlines the importance of checking compatibility and behaviour before extending a rollout.

The Solana and Samsung Wallet announcement on October 7 and the Sui and Samsung Wallet announcement on October 8 share a common idea: bringing USDC transfers into an app people already use.

Solana announced plans for the service to begin in the United States during the final week of October. Sui also outlined an initial US rollout, with USDC transfers that do not require users to hold SUI to pay network fees.

Both announcements point to a potential reach of 82 million Galaxy devices in the United States. That figure describes potential distribution, not active users or completed transfers. It should not be added together as though the announcements represented two separate audiences.

From our perspective, the significant change is in access: users can encounter a payment function within their familiar wallet, while the network and its providers support the operation. The experience becomes simpler, but availability, currency conversion and each service's conditions still matter.

On October 12, Aptos announced that its encrypted mempool was live on mainnet. It is optional for each transaction: the payload is encrypted before submission and decrypted after consensus has finalised the block.

This limits early exposure of instructions that other participants could exploit to get ahead of a transaction. The sender's address and gas fields remain visible, and data is recorded on-chain after finalisation. Protecting a transaction before execution does not make it permanently private.

Monad presented a proposal with a different scope. On October 6, Category Labs introduced Monad Private Settlement: a design for private execution environments connected to the public network, with their own access policies and operator selection.

The proposal aims to address needs such as protecting customer records or treasury movements while maintaining access to network liquidity. It is a published design and is not yet live.

For teams evaluating these technologies, the comparison starts with defining what they want to protect, for how long and from whom. Deployment status and the trust model matter as much as the announced functionality.

On October 8, Cosmos introduced Ledger Security 2026.1, adding post-quantum signature options, validator key rotation and remote signing through key management services and hardware security modules.

Key rotation allows validators to change their consensus key while retaining their identity and delegations on networks that adopt these capabilities. It is a useful improvement for managing keys throughout their lifecycle without turning every change into a full operational migration.

These features are part of the software available to networks in the ecosystem. Their release does not mean that Cosmos Hub or every Cosmos-based chain has activated them. Each deployment requires a review of versions, configuration and compatibility with the networks it communicates with.

This month's developments show that bringing blockchain to more use cases requires solving practical problems: verifying the data an application consumes, explaining when a staking position can be withdrawn, protecting sensitive information and coordinating infrastructure changes.

At Stakely, we continue working at the intersection of operations and use. New capabilities become valuable when they can be understood, integrated and maintained under clear conditions. That is the perspective we will continue to bring to our own progress and developments across the ecosystems in which we participate.