A weekly research-driven brief tracking how onchain systems actually work — focused on structure, adoption, and what lasts beyond the hype.
About one in three shoppers has tried an AI agent. The rules for what happens when it buys the wrong thing are still being written, and a board seat where they’re taking shape costs $200,000 a year. Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Stripe each bought one. No consumer group did.
Crypto PACs spent about $130M in 2024 and $176M in 2026 to buy friendly rules. The president's family built a crypto business, the CLARITY Act died 49-50 over ethics.
On October 29 attackers took about $6.3 billion from Binance across ten blockchains in roughly twenty minutes, four times the Bybit record.
For twenty-five years the internet built CAPTCHAs to keep bots away from the checkout page. This week Visa and Mastercard started issuing bots a pass.
The average U.S. savings account paid 0.37% in September. Coinbase pays its members 3.75% on USDC, and starting the last week of October a USDC balance comes to Samsung Wallet in the U.S.
On October 6 OpenAI published 722 math manuscripts from an unreleased model. None touched cryptography, but Ethereum researcher Justin Drake told large holders to move funds to addresses that have never exposed a public key.