Chainlink launches Fulcrum — blockchain infrastructure moves into institutional repo markets Chainlink Fulcrum turns tokenized collateral from chain-bound assets into potentially mobile institutional financing collateral. W3 Meteor ID: FULCRUM-2026100154084 Date & Time: October 1, 2026 — 15:01:24 UTC Origin: Chainlink created Fulcrum to address fragmented institutional financing and collateral management across public and private blockchains. Visibility: Banks, asset managers, funds, custodians, prime brokers, and other institutions operating with tokenized assets and blockchain-based settlement. Trajectory: Tokenization has created digital versions of financial assets, but those assets often remain confined to separate blockchain environments.

Two contrasting stories define the current state of Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchain ecosystems. NEAR Intents halted operations after a $3.8 million exploit, committing to full user compensation, while Robinhood Wallet announced integration of the Arcus RFQ system to enable stock token swaps. The pairing captures the dual reality facing blockchain infrastructure builders: security vulnerabilities remain a serious liability, while mainstream fintech integration represents a meaningful adoption signal.

Walapay Inc., a global payments infrastructure firm that uses stablecoins for account issuance and payouts, today announced it raised $4.6 million in a seed round led by Generative Ventures to bring global payments to local businesses. Commerce Ventures, Polygon, Verda Ventures, NGC Ventures, FGV Capital, Digital Finance Group, Jsquare, Knollwood and Big Brain Holdings also participated in the round. Founded by brothers Tom and Dimitri Borgers, Walapay uses blockchain technology and a single application programming interface to move money across currencies and geographies. It provides direct integrations in regions including Latin America, Africa and Asia, helping businesses quickly settle accounts, receive collections and make payouts. “We believe next-generation payment rails will become first-class financial infrastructure, but the banking system isn’t going away anytime soon,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Tom Borgers. According to the company, most global payment platforms focus only on the correspondent bank, never reaching the last mile where money ends up in a local account, in local currency through a local bank. Walapay seeks to close this gap, which is ordinarily filled by a third-party payment processor, licenses, numerous aggregators and other systems that extract fees and add time to the settlement and money movement across borders...

The Monad Foundation has announced a strategic collaboration with StraitsX, a leading digital asset payment infrastructure provider in Southeast Asia, to natively deploy two major stablecoins on the Monad blockchain. Acc…

MetaMask is exiting affected Ethereum validators after an infrastructure security incident. The company says wallets face no immediate threat.

With the rise of NFT and token apps, developers require reliable APIs to access blockchain data without building complex infrastructure from scratch. In this article I will take a look at the Top Reservoir Rivals for NFT and Token APIs. I will cover platforms that provide NFT metadata, token data, ownership, transfers, marketplace data, supported chains and real-time features. We’ll review top providers based on their core features, use cases and how they stack up against Reservoir to help developers understand the API options that may best suit their particular Web3 application needs.

Robinhood, known for its brokerage and crypto trading platforms, has officially entered the blockchain infrastructure arena. On July 1, 2026, the company launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum-compatible Layer 2 solution built on Arbitrum. The network is designed to handle tokenized real-world assets, decentralized finance, and other on-chain financial applications. Robinhood Chain […]

Nebius has locked up 50 megawatts at a decommissioned South Carolina Bitcoin mining site, and AIB Data Centers is financing most of the build without leaning heavily on new stock. AIB Data Centers, until June 2026 known as BlockchAIn Digital Infrastructure, announced on September 30 that it has signed a binding 12-year agreement to lease 50 megawatts of critical IT capacity to Nebius. Nebius is the AI cloud provider that has spent the past year locking up power wherever it can find it. The capacity will run across two data halls at AIB's CLT-01 campus in South Carolina. Revenue won't start flowing until the second half of 2027, with rent stepping up each year by 3% or the rate of inflation, whichever applies. The company mined Bitcoin at this same site as recently as this spring. Then it shut the rigs down, rebranded, and went looking for an AI tenant instead. That pivot is not rare anymore. What's notable here is how AIB is paying for it. Data center buildouts at this scale usually mean a company either takes on heavy debt or issues a pile of new stock, and often both. AIB says it's leaning on a third option:...

The choice of API provider you make when building a Solana Web3 app can have a direct impact on how easy it is to access blockchain data and scale your project. Shyft is a popular option but may not meet API coverage, real-time data, RPC performance, pricing, or multi-chain infrastructure requirements for all developers. Here, I’ll go over the best Shyft alternatives for Solana Web3 APIs, contrasting their features, data capabilities, scalability, and key risks to help you get a handle on your choices.

Newswise — Climate change is intensifying pressure on economies to decouple growth from carbon emissions, and green development has become a strategic response. Digital payments, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and mobile banking are transforming finance, while the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, has expanded infrastructure, trade and investment links across Asia, Europe and Africa. Yet many Belt and Road economies still face weak regulatory frameworks, limited financial literacy, infrastructure gaps and low bank-account access, raising questions about whether fintech automatically delivers greener growth. These challenges point to a need for systematic research into how disruptive financial technology (DFT) and MBR spillovers can be aligned with green development (GD) across Asia, Europe and Africa. The study was led by researchers from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, China, with collaborators from Wenhua College, and was published in Financial Innovation on 14 May 2026 (DOI: 10.1186/s40854-026-00931-y). It analyzes 148 Belt and Road economies from 2004 to 2023, with regional panels for Asia (49 economies), Africa (49 economies) and a Europe panel (50 economies, including Latin America and the Caribbean). The team used linear and nonlinear two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) models, Bayesian regression,...

Sony-backed blockchain, Soneium, has partnered with entertainment firm Dayonedream to tokenize K-pop intellectual property and introduce its revenue streams to the blockchain. Bridging Entertainment IP and Financial Infrastructure Soneium, the Sony-backed blockchain network focused on building an onchain entertainment ecosystem, has partnered with entertainment company Dayonedream to tokenize K-pop intellectual property and bring its revenue […]

A smart lock that talks to a cloud server somewhere on the other side of the country always makes me a strange trade. You can unlock your door from the app, sure, but you've also given the company a permanent record of when you come and go, sitting on an infrastructure that's only as secure as the system that protects it.

A smart lock that talks to a cloud server somewhere on the other side of the country always makes me a strange trade. You can unlock your door from the app, sure, but you've also given the company a permanent record of when you come and go, sitting on an infrastructure that's only as secure as the system that protects it.

A smart lock that talks to a cloud server somewhere on the other side of the country always makes me a strange trade. You can unlock your door from the app, sure, but you've also given the company a permanent record of when you come and go, sitting on an infrastructure that's only as secure as the system that protects it.

A smart lock that talks to a cloud server somewhere on the other side of the country always makes me a strange trade. You can unlock your door from the app, sure, but you've also given the company a permanent record of when you come and go, sitting on an infrastructure that's only as secure as the system that protects it.