RaaS #542: Kraken Locks In Fresh $200M!

Circle Launches xReserve, OpenLedger Mainnet Goes Live, and Moar!

Phantom just launched Phantom Terminal, a new trading dashboard that turns your browser into a full trading setup. It includes real-time charts, sub-second execution, and sync across your devices, so you can start a trade on your computer and manage it on your phone.

MegaETH introduced Frontier, its non-incentivized Mainnet Beta, launching in December for one month. With multiple apps live on day one, users will finally get to try what a “real-time L1” feels like. If MegaETH cooks it well, it could be one of the most interesting mainnet tests this year.

USDAi is increasing its minting cap by $250M, raising the total to $830M. New USDAi and sUSDAi will be issued on Base, while minting continues on Ethereum. This is part of its broader plan to fund AI-focused infrastructure and bring more stablecoin activity into Base’s growing ecosystem.

Matt Fairchild (Director, Founders Community at Polygon), Natasha Hoskins, and Deana Burke (Co-founders of Boys Club) sit down to talk about money rails: what’s broken, what’s outdated, and how we can rebuild money to work the way it was originally supposed to. Catch the full stream here.

Kraken secured a fresh $200M from Citadel Securities at a $20B valuation, pushing its 2025 raise to $800M. The funding strengthens its balance sheet ahead of a planned IPO next year, with TradFi giants backing it all the way. Better to keep an eye on them.

Intern is getting brutal these days.

The OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) confirmed that U.S. banks can now hold crypto to pay network fees (a.k.a gas fees). It’s a tiny rule change with a huge unlock, finally giving banks a clean, legal way to interact with blockchains instead of tiptoeing around a gray area that’s been there for years.

Obex just raised $37M from Framework, Sky, and LayerZero, and that’s not even the big number. Sky also committed a massive $2.5B to fund new stablecoins built inside the Obex ecosystem. Think of it as a giant launchpad for stablecoin teams, except this one comes pre-loaded with enough capital to fund a small country.

Your daily dose of bite-sized crypto news.

1. Hyperliquid unveils HIP-3 growth mode to help slash fees by 90% to boost new markets.

2. Movement Network Foundation updated its buy-back plan for the MOVE token.

3. Pharos Network announced a global community-building initiative, opening doors for contributors and developers around the world.

4. Oxbow raised $3.5M, led by Starloom Capital, including Coinbase Ventures, Boost VC, and Status.

5. Extended App, a new Perp Dex built by the ex-Revolut team, is coming to Nomina this week.

BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF saw $513M in outflows, the biggest since launch. No, it’s not the end of the world, it’s just big institutions taking profit after the recent market swings. A classic “thanks for the gains” moment.

OpenLedger’s mainnet is officially live, giving builders a full toolkit to launch the next wave of on-chain apps, especially those focused on AI, automation, and digital economies. It’s open, modular, and ready for teams who want faster rails than traditional L1 setups.

Go big or go home.

Top Gainers: BITPEPE, BULLISH, EDEL, GIGA, REKT.

High-signal reads are worth your time, all in one place.

1. cyber•Fund’s Konstantin Lomashuk says the Supercycle is here, just not the “everything pumps forever” version from 2021. Useless tokens are fading out while stablecoins, real-yield DeFi, and AI-native blockchain rails get adopted by giants like Visa and Mastercard.

2. YQ argues that the Stream Finance collapse wasn’t a one-off mistake; it exposed deep, repeated structural flaws across DeFi stablecoins, with xUSD, deUSD, and earlier stables following the same death-spiral playbook as UST and IRON.

3. Hyperliquid’s DAT merger vote fell short of the required 50% quorum, forcing a two-week delay, even though 95% of votes submitted so far are in favor of the $1B HYPE treasury plan.

4. Stable’s first newsletter issue covers what’s new at Stable: public testnet, ecosystem momentum, new integrations, and their work toward USDT-native settlement.

5. Balancer released a full post-mortem that led to the recent $121M exploit, with $45.7M recovered through ecosystem action. Balancer is now pushing users to migrate to V3, which wasn’t affected.

Circle dropped xReserve, a new system that lets developers launch USDC-backed stablecoins across multiple blockchains. It supports 1:1 transfers, shared liquidity, and secure cross-chain messaging, basically USDC but with teleportation. Early adopters include Canton and Stacks.

Filecoin just launched the Onchain Cloud, turning the network into a real on-chain storage-and-compute layer. The first feature, Filecoin Pin, connects IPFS files directly to Filecoin in one click. It’s a normal cloud, just decentralized, verifiable, and live today.

That’s all for today!