5 min read · 12 sources

The Sixth Circuit just made Kalshi’s legal path a lot steeper. A unanimous panel ruled the company hasn’t shown its sports event contracts qualify as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, upholding Ohio’s win and vacating its injunction against Tennessee. That leaves the prediction market operator 1-for-3 across circuit courts, with a win in the Third Circuit against New Jersey but losses in the Ninth and now the Sixth. The panel leaned on Kalshi’s own concession that its sports contracts have “no inherent economic significance,” and New Jersey has already asked the Supreme Court to review the Third Circuit ruling. The jurisdictional fight over whether prediction markets are regulated futures or just betting is now squarely headed for the highest court.

Kalshi’s own concession that its sports contracts have “no inherent economic significance” came back to haunt it in the Sixth Circuit.

Bitcoin ETFs Flip 2026 Positive on $2.4 Billion Week

Source: theblock.co ↗

The flow of money into US spot bitcoin ETFs just turned a corner. For the week ending September 25, the funds pulled in $2.4 billion, their largest weekly haul since October 2025. That flipped 2026 net flows positive after the sector sat $5.8 billion in the red as recently as mid-July. BlackRock’s IBIT led with $1.2 billion, Fidelity’s FBTC added $701.7 million, and Monday alone drew $999 million. Ether ETFs rebounded with $689.9 million for the week (BlackRock’s ETHA leading at $326.2 million), and Solana funds set a daily inflow record of $86.7 million on Friday. The numbers suggest institutional demand is back, not just retail noise.

Paradigm's Solar Beats Solady Without Assembly

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Paradigm has open-sourced Solar, an in-house Solidity compiler now generating assembly-free bytecode that surpasses Solady’s gas benchmarks. Solady is a hand-crafted, assembly-heavy library that has set the ceiling for gas efficiency in Solidity for years, so exceeding its output without manual assembly is a concrete advance for EVM compiler tooling. Solar also targets unsafe Solidity patterns at the compiler level, shifting security guarantees into the toolchain rather than deferring them to audits. Broad adoption would let developers write standard Solidity and receive better security properties and lower on-chain execution costs without manual optimization. For teams shipping contracts, that’s a meaningful change in what “optimized” means.

Paxos Launches PAXGy, a Yield-Bearing Gold Token

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Paxos is adding yield to gold. The company launched PAXGy, a yield-bearing variant of its PAXG gold token, with OKX, ether.fi, Uniswap, 0x Protocol, XLayer, and Chainlink as launch partners. Unlike standard PAXG, PAXGy accrues additional PAXG over time while remaining gold-denominated, giving holders yield without leaving the gold unit of account. The product targets treasuries, asset managers, exchanges, wallets, and neobanks seeking a single-integration gold product with active yield, as well as institutional credit desks that want gold as productive collateral. Paxos is in active conversations across those verticals, positioning PAXGy as settlement infrastructure for gold-denominated capital markets.

PeerDAS Runs Nearly a Year Without Incident

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Ethereum’s client developers have run PeerDAS for nearly a year without incident, a milestone Vitalik Buterin called underappreciated. PeerDAS is the first large-scale blockchain implementation of data availability sampling, allowing the network to reach consensus on data availability without any single node downloading full blocks. This decouples data availability from full replication, a prerequisite for scaling blob throughput to support higher L2 transaction volumes at lower cost. The successful deployment validates a core architectural assumption behind Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap. For node operators, it means the path to cheaper L2 scaling is real, not just theoretical.

Aero Merges Aerodrome and Velodrome Across Seven Chains

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Aero, a unified liquidity layer merging Aerodrome and Velodrome, will launch October 21 simultaneously on seven chains: Base, Ethereum mainnet, Optimism, Arc, Ink, Robinhood Chain, and Arbitrum. Aerodrome and Velodrome together currently account for roughly 17% of EVM spot trading volume, and the merged platform projects approximately tripling that share. Three core features will ship at launch: Metaswaps for cross-chain token swaps routed through onchain liquidity, Slipstream concentrated liquidity pools with dynamic fees, and Predictive Allocation where sAERO holders direct reward distribution across the network. The cross-chain unification is the headline, but the launch mechanism for the Syndicate token - 1% of supply deposited as voting incentives for an unpriced pool - lets market forces set token prices rather than a fixed listing.

KelpDAO Sues LayerZero Over rsETH Bridge Exploit

Source: x.com ↗

KelpDAO is taking the rsETH bridge exploit to court. The DAO filed suit against LayerZero and co-founder Bryan Pellegrino over the exploit that caused losses to rsETH, its restaked ETH token, earlier in 2026. The lawsuit alleges LayerZero bears legal responsibility for the exploit, framing the breach as developer liability rather than accepted protocol risk. By pursuing traditional litigation instead of on-chain governance or negotiation, KelpDAO is testing whether US courts will assign accountability to bridge protocol teams for security failures. The case names a prominent founder personally, which could set a precedent for DeFi teams seeking recourse against infrastructure providers after exploits.

Coinbase Asks IRS to Allow Digital Assets in Trump Accounts

Source: threadreaderapp.com ↗

Coinbase is trying to get crypto into a new tax-advantaged savings vehicle. Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad submitted a formal response to the IRS requesting guidance on Trump Accounts, a new tax-advantaged savings account category for American children created under the One Big Beautiful Bill. Coinbase is asking the IRS to allow beneficiaries to invest in widely traded digital assets or in funds with digital asset exposure, which would route federally subsidized long-term savings into crypto markets for the first time. The submission is the first major industry move to shape the asset eligibility rules for these accounts before IRS implementation guidance is finalized.

Quick Links

Source: theblock.co ↗

• The US Attorney’s Office in Missouri charged Trung Nguyen Van, 37, of Vietnam, with money laundering after a victim transferred roughly $16 million in crypto in summer 2024, believing they were investing in a platform called Triangle.
• September marks the third consecutive month of $1 billion-plus in monthly stablecoin card spend and the 28th straight month of growth.
• Disposable virtual cards should be standard so users aren’t exposed to risk from using a primary card on every random website.
• As of September 20, most of Aave’s outstanding debt sits in “Very Safe” (2.00+ health factor) and “Safe” (1.50 - 2.00) bands rather than higher-risk positions.