What Happened

The incident began at 16:03 UTC on June 25, 2026, when Base engineers detected unhealthy block production on the network’s mainnet. By 16:52 UTC, the team had identified the root cause: a consensus problem caused the sequencer to produce an invalid block, specifically block #47,806,542, which then interfered with all subsequent block building.

In OP Stack terminology, the event is classified as an “unsafe head stall.” That means the sequencer stopped advancing new blocks entirely. The unsafe head refers to the latest sequencer-produced blocks that have not yet been posted to Ethereum’s layer one (L1) for finalization.

Timeline:

16:03 UTC: Block production flagged as unhealthy; investigation begins. 16:52 UTC: Engineers identify block #47,806,542 as the problematic source. 17:21 UTC: Consensus issue isolated; internal sequencer and nodes show preliminary recovery. 17:51 UTC: Block sequencing resumes; internal nodes begin syncing correctly. 17:58 UTC: Blockbuilding confirmed healthy; network enters monitoring phase.

What It Means for Users

Deposits, withdrawals, and transactions on Base were delayed during the roughly two-hour stall. Node operators running Base infrastructure will need to restart their nodes to fully recover syncing.

Funds are not at risk. Unsafe head stalls occur before blocks are batched and submitted to Ethereum L1, so there is no exposure to permanent loss or meaningful chain reorganizations.

Beryl Upgrade Still on Track

The incident coincided with the scheduled Beryl hard fork, planned for an 18:00 UTC activation window on the same day. Base confirmed the stall is unrelated to the upgrade.

Beryl introduces B20, a native token standard built directly into node software rather than deployed as a smart contract, making token issuance more efficient for stablecoins and real-world asset projects. The upgrade also reduces withdrawal delays and ships Reth V2 improvements. Node operators must run base/ node v1.1.1 or later. Most users and existing contracts require no action.

What Comes Next

Base engineers are continuing to investigate the root cause of the invalid block and plan to publish a full post-mortem once the review concludes. The status page at status.base.org and block explorer basescan.org remain the primary monitoring resources.

Unsafe head stalls of this type have occurred previously on other layer two networks and Optimism mainnet, often tied to internal infrastructure conditions, L1 node issues, or load-related factors. This incident lasted roughly 115 minutes before sequencing resumed.

Japan’s SBI Holdings has signed agreements to acquire full control of crypto exchange Bitbank through a 46.7 billion Japanese yen ($289 million) transaction, advancing a deal first disclosed in May that would create the country’s biggest crypto exchange.

On Thursday, SBI said that its wholly owned subsidiary SBICAH will acquire shares from Bitbank CEO Noriyuki Hirosue and other shareholders before subscribing to a third-party share allotment. The exchange will then buy back shares held by MIXI and Ceres, leaving SBI with 100% indirect ownership. SBI expects the transaction to close around October, subject to regulatory clearance.

The acquisition would expand SBI’s regulated crypto exchange footprint and customer base, giving it another potential distribution channel for the stablecoins, tokenized assets and onchain financial products.

Bitbank’s daily trading volume has hovered below $50 million for most of the last four months, CoinGecko data showed. Volume is dominated by the BTC/JPY pair (39.5%), followed by XRP/JPY and ETH/JPY (both at 19.7%).

SBI said combining Bitbank with SBI VC Trade would give the group about 1.1 trillion yen in assets under custody and roughly 2.92 million crypto accounts, based on figures from the end of April. The company said the combined business would rank first among Japanese crypto exchanges by assets under custody and among the largest by account numbers.

Bitbank trading volume has hovered below $50 million for most of the last four months. Source: CoinGecko

SBI builds broader digital asset ecosystem

The Bitbank deal is the latest in a series of moves by SBI to build infrastructure, including crypto trading, stablecoins and tokenized financial markets. 

In February, SBI and Startale Group unveiled Strium, a layer-1 blockchain designed to support around-the-clock trading and settlement of tokenized equities and real-world assets. 

Related: Circle, Nomura eye Japan corporate FX with stablecoin settlement: Report

On Wednesday, SBI and Startale launched the yen-pegged stablecoin, JPYSC. The token is issued by SBI Shinsei Trust Bank and distributed by SBI VC Trade. The stablecoin is initially limited to transfers within SBI VC Trade accounts, while public blockchain circulation will roll out after resolving outstanding legal and tax conditions, according to SBI. 

The same day, Ripple and SBI Group launched the dollar-backed Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in Japan also through SBI VC Trade. At launch, RLUSD became available to institutional and retail customers after receiving approval under Japan’s regulatory framework for foreign-issued stablecoins. 

Magazine: Japanese pension fund tips 1% in crypto, G7 urges action on NK hackers: Asia Express

Consensus guarantees today, focus on two properties: Consistency and Liveness. Consistency requires that all nodes eventually agree on the same set and sequence of transactions, while liveness ensures the system continues to process new transactions. What they do not address is whether the agreed-upon transaction order totally reflects fairness.

In public blockchains, transaction ordering has direct economic consequences. The order in which transactions execute determines who captures value and who pays the cost, particularly as validators, block builders, or sequencers can exploit their privileged role in block construction for financial gain. This practice is known as maximal extractable value (MEV) and includes the profitable frontrunning, backrunning, and sandwiching of transactions. Prima facie, there is no obvious way to prevent MEV extracting practices because block proposers hold unilateral power over transaction ordering, and no protocol rule inherently constrains how they exercise that power.

To address this, transaction order-fairness has been proposed as a third essential consensus property. A protocol is transaction order-fair if no participant can systematically bias transaction ordering beyond what objective network conditions and protocol rules imply. By limiting how much power a block proposer has to reorder transactions, fair-ordering protocols move blockchains closer to being transparent, predictable, and MEV-resistant.

However, even this intuitive idea of fairness encounters a structural limit. In an asynchronous distributed system, there is no globally defined reception order because each node observes messages at different times, and no shared clock exists. Therefore, no protocol can guarantee execution strictly according to a single universal arrival sequence. This limitation follows from the basic constraints of distributed consensus under asynchronous communication, not from any particular design choice.

The Condorcet Paradox and the Impossibility of Perfect Fairness

The most intuitive and strongest notion of fairness is called Receive-Order-Fairness (ROF). It simply means “first-come, first-served.” ROF dictates that if most nodes receive transaction A before transaction B, then A should be processed before B.

That sounds simple and fair. However, the problem is that nodes do not all see transactions at the exact same time. Messages travel at different speeds. Some computers might receive A first. Others might receive B first. Because of this, it is impossible to guarantee perfect “first-come, first-served” fairness unless every node can communicate instantly with no delays. In real networks, that never happens.

There is also a deeper problem called the Condorcet paradox. This idea comes from voting theory. It shows that even when each person (or node in this case) has a clear and consistent order in their own mind, the group as a whole can end up with a loop that makes no sense.

For example:

Most nodes see A before BMost nodes see B before CMost nodes see C before A

This produces a majority preference cycle (A→B→C→A), meaning no single ordering satisfies the majority view across all pairs. The network cannot construct one sequence that matches what most nodes observed first.

Because perfect ROF is unachievable under these conditions, practical systems adopt some weaker fairness guarantees as outlined in the sections below.

Hashgraph’s Fairness Model: Graph of Hashes,  Median Timestamps, and aBFT Consensus

Hedera, which employs the hashgraph algorithm, approaches the fairness problem through a directed acyclic graph (DAG) of cryptographically linked events. It is a leaderless consensus algorithm that operates in a fully asynchronous setting and achieves Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT). Under this model, honest nodes eventually reach agreement on the same transaction log even under unbounded message delays. Consensus ordering emerges from network-wide observation through a virtual voting process: the order is calculated collectively by nodes rather than assigned by a designated block producer.

When a node receives a transaction, it packages it into a message called an event and gossips it to peers. When another node creates a subsequent event, it records the hash of the events it has already seen and digitally signs the new event. This provides cryptographic proof that the node had seen prior events before signing the new one. The hashgraph, therefore, enforces causal order: once a node publishes an event, the ancestry embedded in that event proves which transactions preceded it.

This linkage can be represented as an edge in the DAG. If one event is a direct or indirect ancestor of another, a downward path exists between them in the graph, and the protocol provides a cryptographic guarantee that the ancestor event was created first. Transactions connected by such paths are ordered according to their causal relationships in the graph. When two events have no ancestor relationship, they are concurrent, and the protocol resolves their relative order through the round-received mechanism. Each event is assigned a round based on when a supermajority of nodes, defined as more than two-thirds, can be shown to have strongly seen it through the DAG structure. Events assigned to earlier rounds are ordered first.

For events that share the same round-received, the protocol uses median timestamps to determine ordering. Each node records a local timestamp when it first receives an event. The consensus timestamp assigned to an event is the median of the timestamps reported across the node set. This timestamp is not derived from arbitrary local clocks in isolation. It is constrained by the gossip ancestry preserved in the hashgraph: a node cannot claim to have received an event before its causal predecessors without producing a detectable inconsistency in the DAG.

Under the standard aBFT assumption that fewer than one-third of nodes are Byzantine, the median falls on an honest timestamp or between two honest timestamps, which prevents adversarial nodes from shifting the median beyond a bounded range.

The Condorcet paradox can still apply to concurrent events, specifically those with no ancestor relationship in the DAG, where different nodes may observe them in different orders. The DAG structure eliminates this ambiguity for causally linked events: no contradictory causal paths can exist because each event’s ancestry is cryptographically fixed at creation. Because gossip propagation typically causes new events to become descendants of prior events within fractions of a second, most transactions fall into clear causal chains. The remaining concurrent events are resolved through round-received assignment and median timestamps as described above.

However, the hashgraph’s fairness guarantees have a bounded adversarial surface. A node still determines when to gossip an event, which events to relay first, and how long to delay relaying. These choices reshape the first-seen patterns that feed into median timestamp computation. The DAG cannot misrepresent the causal order it records, but it can be strategically shaped by gossip behavior before that order is recorded.

BOF Protocols: Fairness Through Batch Aggregation

BOF protocols define a “block” as the set of transactions forming a single Condorcet cycle, and then order these blocks fairly while ignoring the ordering inside the block. The BOF criterion was first introduced by Mahimna Kelkar et al. (2020) in “Order-Fairness for Byzantine Consensus,” which formalized the Aequitas family of protocols. In Aequitas, BOF requires that if a γ-fraction of nodes observe block (b) before block (b′), then no honest node may output (b) after (b′). The γ-fraction is the proportion of nodes that must agree on a block ordering for that ordering to be considered “fair” and enforced by the consensus protocol.

For BOF, if the fairness predicate indicates that a transaction tx should precede tx′, then tx cannot appear in a later block than tx′. When the fairness relation becomes cyclic, the protocol collapses the entire strongly connected component into a single block, because BOF treats that block, not the individual transaction, as the atomic fairness unit. Under γ-BOF, the only forbidden outcome is placing tx′ in a strictly earlier block than tx when a directed constraint tx→tx′ exists. The protocol permits both transactions to appear in the same block and places no restrictions on their ordering inside that block.

For example, Figure 2 below, is a Condorcet cycle of 30 transactions, so they would be in a single block. Sorting by hash might place 30 before 1 in the final ordering. However, a γ-fraction of nodes observed transaction 1 before transaction 30, yet placing 30 before 1 is still considered “fair” under γ-BOF. Because 1 and 30 are in the same block, and this notion of fairness only considers the order of the blocks, not the order of the transactions within a block.

When no cycles exist, BOF coincides with the strong form of ROF. When Condorcet cycles emerge, all transactions participating in the cycle are placed into a single block, and a deterministic method, such as a hash-based rule, orders events within that batch.

The protocol proceeds through three coordinated stages to ensure consistent transaction ordering across the network: the Gossip stage, the Agreement stage, and the Finalization stage.

In the gossip stage, nodes use FIFO broadcast to disseminate transactions in the order they were locally received per sender, preserving per-sender sequence so that each peer maintains a comparable transaction view. Once gossiping stabilizes, the agreement stage begins, where nodes execute a Set Byzantine Agreement (Set-BA) protocol to reach consensus on a unified set of local orderings that will serve as the foundation for the global order. In the finalization stage, nodes construct a dependency graph that captures transaction ordering relationships. Any transactions forming a cycle within this graph are grouped into the same strongly connected component and finalized together within a block.

However, Aequitas suffers from weak liveness, as its high communication cost and strict fairness constraints require the protocol to wait for the entire Condorcet cycle before finalizing the collapsed SCC. Because Condorcet cycles can chain indefinitely, this waiting period can grow without bound. Thus, transaction delivery can be delayed for an arbitrarily long time, and creates the “freeze” risk that defines Aequitas’ weak-liveness guarantee.

Themis was introduced to solve this. It preserves the same γ-BOF property while resolving these liveness and communication issues. Like Aequitas, Themis also constructs a dependency graph and collapses SCCs during its “FairFinalize” stage. The SCCs represent the same non-transitive Condorcet cycles underlying the γ-BOF relaxation, and Themis uses the condensation graph to derive the batch structure of the final output. The key difference is that Themis does not wait for a full cycle to complete. Instead, it uses deferred ordering and batch unspooling to output SCCs incrementally while allowing new transactions to continue flowing. This preserves γ-BOF but upgrades Aequitas’ weak liveness to standard liveness, and guarantees delivery within a delay bound.

In its standard form, Themis requires each participant to exchange messages with most other nodes in the network. As the number of participants increases, the amount of communication grows rapidly, roughly proportional to the square of the network size. However, in its optimized version, SNARK-Themis, nodes use succinct cryptographic proofs to verify fairness without needing to communicate directly with every other participant. This reduces the communication load so that it grows only in direct proportion to the number of nodes, thus allowing Themis to scale efficiently even in large networks.

If a malicious proposer attempts to exploit the situation by proposing an empty block, Themis employs deferred ordering, where the partially ordered batch (B₁) is still accepted, and the final, precise order of its transactions is determined later by the next honest proposer. That proposer finalizes the order based on verifiable transaction relationships, not personal discretion. This design ensures finalization depends only on bounded network delay, not on the arbitrary behavior of the current proposer, thus closing a key liveness gap that Aequitas could not guarantee.

This structure guarantees that every transaction is both included and executed deterministically, even in the presence of conflicting arrival orders. Because Themis leverages the internal dependency graph and SCC condensation to extract a final ordering, it is resilient to adversarial manipulation. Attackers cannot simply reorder or front-run other users’ transactions once they are included in the batch. Any attempt to alter dependencies would break the verified graph consistency.

In an empirical analysis by Mahimna Kelkar et al., γ-BOF resists adversarial reordering more strongly than timestamp-based approaches in geo-distributed networks. However, it requires significantly more computational and protocol complexity, which can also be seen as a downside.

Conclusion:

Perfect fairness in transaction ordering is structurally unattainable in distributed systems that lack synchronized clocks and instantaneous communication. The Condorcet paradox ensures that majority preferences can conflict in ways no single linear order can satisfy. The real question is how to find the most realistic and useful trade-offs.

Hashgraph and BOF represent two coherent answers. Neither approach is inherently superior. Both embed fairness directly into the consensus mechanism rather than relying on trust or authority. Both approaches demonstrate that fairness is not a binary property but a spectrum of trade-offs defined by formal impossibility results. Where synchrony is unavailable, and clocks are untrusted, the choice between median-timestamp aggregation and batch-order collapsing reflects different but equally principled responses to the same underlying constraint.

The Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has signaled that the country is ready to accommodate the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs).

Speaking onstage at the Philippine Blockchain Week 2026, SEC Commissioner Rogelio Quevedo said the agency was “now fully convinced that we have the proper law [and] the proper regulatory mind and background” to accept asset tokenization. He said the technology could spur innovation in the capital markets and “revolutionize” stock exchanges. 

In a follow-up interview with Cointelegraph, Quevedo said tokenized investment products could provide overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) with more legitimate investment options.

“Our OFWs, they have the capital. They do not know where to place their money. They do not know how to make their money earn,” he said, pointing to investment scams that have targeted Filipinos seeking returns,” Quevedo said.

“We are also using artificial intelligence to go after these unscrupulous scams,” he added, stressing that the SEC was working with Google, TikTok and other online platforms to remove illegal investment offerings. 

The remarks framed regulated tokenization as both a capital-markets innovation and a potential investor-protection tool in the Philippines, where authorities have taken action against unregistered investment platforms.

Philippine SEC Commissioner Rogelio Quevedo (left) and Cointelegraph’s Ezra Reguerra (right) at the Philippine Blockchain Week 2026. Photo: Cointelegraph

Philippine SEC tests tokenized assets under regulatory sandbox

The position aligns with the SEC’s Strategic Sandbox, or StratBox, which allows fintech companies to test new products and business models in a live but controlled environment under regulatory supervision.

The framework allows the SEC, within the scope of its legal authority, to waive or modify certain legal and regulatory requirements for individual sandbox participants. However, participation does not automatically exempt a company from existing laws, and the sandbox cannot be used to circumvent legal or regulatory requirements.

Related: Meta rolls out stablecoin payouts for creators in Philippines, Colombia

In November 2025, the SEC said four companies had been admitted to the sandbox, including one testing a tokenized real estate offering. Two participants were testing access to United States equities, while BlockShoals Technologies received in-principle approval to test crypto-related products and services. 

Magazine: China’s 107 Bitcoin memory thief, Bithumb CEO booked: Asia Express

Switzerland-based Web3 development platform Enso has launched a real-world asset (RWA) application offering access to more than 500 tokenized assets through integrations with xStocks, Ondo Finance and Anchorage Digital’s Porto.

Through Enso’s execution layer, users can access tokenized stocks, ETFs, Treasurys, commodities and stablecoins. Ondo will provide tokenized equities, treasury products and capital markets infrastructure, while xStocks will enable access to tokenized equities and ETFs, according to a Monday announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

Available assets include major US companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla and SpaceX.

Enso said bringing these assets under a unified distribution and execution layer would simplify access to tokenized assets across multiple venues and improve the user experience.

The launch adds Enso to a growing field of European crypto firms expanding into tokenized traditional assets. Earlier this year, Austria-based Bitpanda expanded its offering to roughly 10,000 stocks and ETFs, while a number of European digital asset firms have moved to capitalize on growing demand for tokenized securities.

Enso expands access to tokenized assets. Source: Enso

Tokenized US equities have attracted significant demand from investors outside the US, particularly in Europe, Enso co-founder and CEO Connor Howe told Cointelegraph:

The demand concentrates in two places: tokenized access to US markets, with the around-the-clock trading traditional venues can’t match, and yield-bearing dollar assets.”

Tokenized asset holders rise 13% amid growing demand

The launch comes amid growing demand for tokenized assets. The number of tokenized asset holders rose 13.4% over the past 30 days to 930,612, according to data from RWA.xyz. The total value of tokenized assets, however, fell 0.9% during the same period.

Total RWA value onchain, all-time chart. Source: RWA.xyz 

US Treasury debt was the largest tokenized asset category with $15 billion in onchain value, followed by tokenized commodities at $4.6 billion and asset-backed credit at $2.2 billion. Tokenized stocks accounted for $1.6 billion in total onchain value, ranking fifth among tokenized asset categories.

Related: Franklin Templeton, BNP Paribas see tokenization boosting EU’s capital efficiency

Tokenized stocks first crossed $1 billion in total onchain value on March 10, when Ondo accounted for about 58% of the market and xStocks about 24%.

Magazine: Can Robinhood or Kraken’s tokenized stocks ever be truly decentralized?

Dash is exploring the Philippines as a potential market for crypto payments, citing demand for lower-cost transactions and the country’s openness to digital finance tools. 

In an interview with Cointelegraph at the Philippine Blockchain Week 2026, Daria Chernozub, global adoption lead at Dash Blockchain, said the project focuses on emerging markets where users face high fees and need simpler payment options. 

“We believe that Dash brings the technology and the payment solutions for people who are suffering from high commissions [and] who need something easy to use,” Chernozub said, adding that the Philippines fits that profile because consumers are open to learning about new technologies.

She said Dash is still assessing the local market and prioritizing legal compliance before any launch. She said Dash had begun communicating with major market participants and had prepared a legal opinion letter for discussions with regulatory and financial industry bodies.

Dash’s assessment comes as the Philippines seeks to attract foreign technology companies, though industry participants say the regulatory process for crypto firms remains significantly more demanding than basic corporate registration. 

Daria Chernozub (left) with Cointelegraph’s Ezra Reguerra (right) at the Philippine Blockchain Week. Source: Daria Chernozub

Corporate registration takes minutes, crypto compliance can take years 

Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner (SEC) Rogelio Quevedo told Cointelegraph during an interview at Philippine Blockchain Week 2026 that foreign investors can register a corporation online from anywhere in the world in about 20 to 30 minutes.

Quevedo said the government is ready to assist foreign investors and described the SEC’s online registration system as part of the agency’s broader push toward digitization and innovation. His comments suggest that formally setting up a local entity has become easier, though crypto companies may still face additional licensing and compliance requirements before operating. 

Related: Dash Evolution chain integrates Zcash Orchard privacy pool

Marie Antonette Quiogue, BlockShoals’ head of legal and CEO of Arden Consult, told Cointelegraph in a separate interview at the event that the SEC has created a framework for foreign crypto exchanges willing to enter a regulated environment.

Quiogue said the regulated path comes with significant obligations and pointed to the roughly two years BlockShoals spent developing its arrangement with Binance.

Beyond regulation, Quiogue said the Philippines’ young population, high mobile usage and widespread English proficiency could help attract overseas crypto companies.

Magazine: China’s 107 Bitcoin memory thief, Bithumb CEO booked: Asia Express

Non-fungible token (NFT) project Pudgy Penguins has expanded the retail reach of its trading card game through a nationwide rollout at Target stores in the US. 

According to a press release shared with Cointelegraph, the launch of Vibes Series 3 marks the game’s biggest retail expansion to date and brings the total number of circulated cards to 15 million. The new set includes additional gameplay mechanics, original artwork, and appearances by characters from the Moonbirds collection. 

Pudgy Penguins developed Vibes in partnership with Orange Cap Games, with Series 3 following two earlier releases. The digital collectible project is the fourth-largest NFT collection by market capitalization, according to data tracker NFT Price Floor.

Top five NFT collections by market capitalization. Source: NFT Price Floor

The rollout shows how Pudgy Penguins is extending its NFT-born intellectual property into mainstream consumer products as it aims to build a broader entertainment franchise beyond digital assets.

Pudgy Penguins builds beyond NFTs

Pudgy Penguins has spent years turning its Ethereum-based NFT collection into a broader consumer brand, with ventures spanning toys, licensing and other consumer products.

Its physical toys entered more than 2,000 Walmart stores in 2023. CEO Luca Netz said in May 2024 that more than 1 million toys had been sold over the preceding 12 months.

The project’s licensing model also allows NFT holders to receive 5% of net revenue from physical products featuring their individual penguins.

Related: Binance to end NFT support on exchange, shift service to wallet

The franchise has also expanded into gaming. In 2025, Pudgy Penguins launched Pengu Clash, a game on The Open Network. At the time, Netz described gaming as a vehicle for bringing the project’s intellectual property to wider audiences.

It also launched a mobile game called Pudgy Party in August 2025. According to Pudgy Penguins, the game’s downloads exceeded 1 million. However, the project said on Monday that it would halt further development of the game and focus its resources on a browser-based game called Pudgy World. 

Magazine: Vietnam preps crypto pilot, HK pushes tokenization: Asia Express

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Group of Seven (G7) leaders have renewed their call for joint action against North Korean cryptocurrency thefts and cybercrime.

In a statement adopted at this week’s G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, the leaders expressed “deep concern” over North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The United Nations and security researchers have linked North Korea’s crypto thefts to funding for the country’s weapons programs.

The G7 leaders did not specify how members should act on the call, making no mention of measures such as exchange screening, sanctions or actions against mixing services often discussed in connection with North Korean crypto laundering.

The G7 also referenced North Korean cryptocurrency thefts after its June 2025 summit in Canada, when the group’s chair called for members to jointly address “DPRK cryptocurrency thefts fueling” the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The renewed call comes amid a series of high-profile exploits with suspected links to North Korean actors, including the roughly $285 million Drift Protocol exploit in April and the $36 million Humanity Protocol breach in June.

DPRK hack activities from 2016 to 2025. Source: Chainalysis

North Korean hackers stole $2 billion in 2025

North Korean hackers stole at least $2 billion in crypto in 2025, according to Chainalysis, pushing the all-time total attributed to DPRK-affiliated actors to at least $6.75 billion.

Chainalysis said the hackers generated bigger returns last year, despite carrying out fewer confirmed attacks, often by embedding information technology workers inside crypto companies or impersonating recruiters and investors to obtain access to internal systems. 

Related: North Korea ‘industrialized’ crypto theft, laundered billions: CertiK

On May 15, a CrowdStrike report described North Korean actors as the largest threat group targeting crypto users by value stolen. The cybersecurity company said the campaigns prioritized high-value targets, with proceeds “almost certainly laundered to fund the regime’s military programs.”

Meanwhile, North Korea has rejected the allegations that it poses a cyber threat. In a May 3 statement published by state news agency KCNA, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson accused the US of spreading false information and described claims of a North Korean cyber threat as politically motivated “slander.”

Magazine: The end of anon? AI could unmask crypto’s hidden identities

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

[/key_takeaways]

Key Takeaways:

Clawbank and Shodai executed the first AI-to-AI Ricardian contract, binding legal prose to Ethereum code. Shodai’s smart contract paid out automatically when 1 milestone condition was accepted by the AI counterparty. Clawbank’s Manfred agent, which filed a US LLC autonomously in May 2025, can now negotiate, sign, and settle binding legal deals.

The First AI-to-AI Ricardian Contract

Clawbank and Shodai announced the milestone in a release shared with Bitcoin.com News on June 18, describing it as the first Ricardian agreement signed between autonomous agents.

The two AI entities, operating through Clawbank’s institutional infrastructure, selected their own transaction terms, settled on a logo deal with a single milestone, and signed through a standard e-signature flow. Payment fired automatically when the conditions were met.

A Ricardian contract is one document that serves two functions at once. A human or a judge reads the prose and sees an enforceable legal agreement. A machine reads the same document and executes it. Legal meaning and computational behavior live in the same object, not in separate documents held together by interpretation.

Thirty Years in the Making

The concept traces back to two papers from the mid-1990s. Nick Szabo coined the smart contract in 1994 and expanded the idea in his 1996 paper, “Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Free Markets.” Ian Grigg introduced the Ricardian contract the same year as part of the Ricardo payment system, binding a legal document to its machine-readable data so intent and execution stay aligned.

The theory existed for three decades. A substrate to run both layers together did not.

How It Works

Clawbank provides the institutional rails: US legal entity formation, identity, treasury, and agent-to-agent communication. Shodai provides the execution layer: structured commitments, milestone logic, deterministic state transitions, and a verifiable history both parties can audit.

When the agents reached agreement, the signed legal document embedded the deployed Shodai contract address and terms, binding the legal artifact to its on-chain execution at signature. Every step left machine-verifiable evidence throughout performance, not just after a dispute.

What the Founders Said

Justice Conder, founder of Clawbank, said the demo was not scripted. “I gave them one goal: find another legal entity, and buy or sell something,” Conder said. “They decided to transact over a logo and defaulted to a single milestone. The agreement was not just drafted by AI. It was selected, negotiated, signed, and performed by agent-operated legal entities.”

Joe Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Consensys, said the deal reflects a shift in how economic coordination works. “Agreements are becoming the basic unit of coordination for an economy where humans and AI agents act as peers,” Lubin said.

Bryan Peters, co-founder of Shodai, said the concept was waiting on the right counterparties. “For thirty years the Ricardian contract was a good idea waiting on worthy counterparties,” Peters said.

The Shodai co-founder added:

“Clawbank’s agents are those counterparties.”

What Changes When the Agreement Is the Code

When a legal agreement and its execution are the same object, certain friction disappears. An invoice becomes a state transition. An escrow becomes autonomous. Compliance runs continuously rather than being assembled after a dispute.

Clawbank’s AI agent, called Manfred, previously made news in May when it autonomously filed a U.S. LLC and retrieved its own EIN from the IRS. Wednesday’s announcement, the team explained, extends that arc: agents that can form legal entities can now sign binding deals and settle them without human intermediaries.

Shodai’s execution layer is already live for human counterparties at app.shodai.network. The agent-to-agent Ricardian contract runs on the same infrastructure with no structural changes to how commitments are tracked, judged, or recorded.

Crypto exchange CoinMENA has entered a banking agreement with Standard Chartered to strengthen fiat payment infrastructure for customers in the United Arab Emirates.

Under the agreement, CoinMENA will use Standard Chartered to support fiat on- and off-ramps, client money accounts and virtual account-based transaction management, according to a press release shared to Cointelegraph. The exchange said the arrangement would improve transparency and liquidity settlement with approved global counterparties. 

In the announcement, Standard Chartered UAE, Middle East and Pakistan CEO Rola Abu Manneh said the UAE had established itself as a leading regulatory environment for digital assets, creating opportunities for financial institutions and regulated firms to collaborate. 

The agreement reflects growing efforts by crypto firms in the UAE to secure access to regulated banking infrastructure as the country’s digital asset sector matures and attracts greater institutional participation. Banking partnerships have increasingly become a priority for exchanges seeking reliable fiat payment rails and settlement services.

“We believe the industry’s future depends on strong banking, regulatory, and operational foundations, not just technology,” CoinMENA co-founders Dina Sam’an and Talal Tabbaa said in a joint statement.

Source: CoinMENA

Revolut moves closer to UAE launch

Separately, the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) approved Revolut’s applications for Stored Value Facilities and Retail Payment Services licenses, according to Bloomberg.

Revolut reportedly plans to build out its technology, operations and local capabilities before making its services available in the country. UAE customers are expected to gain access to multi-currency accounts, physical and virtual cards, and domestic and international transfers through the company’s app.

Related: UAE-linked ADI Chain gains Ledger support amid stablecoin growth

The London-headquartered fintech is also reportedly considering expansion across the Middle East and North Africa, including Turkey and Morocco.

However, Revolut has not publicly confirmed whether its local offering will include digital asset trading, transfers, staking or access to its Revolut X exchange. The reported licenses cover stored-value and retail payment services rather than explicit authorization for virtual asset activities.

Cointelegraph reached out to Revolut for comment but did not receive a response before publication.

Magazine: China’s 107 Bitcoin memory thief, Bithumb CEO booked: Asia Express