October 8, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update, your daily on-chain report. It appears we are talking about ICE today? Oh, not that one.

Was there a prediction market on a prediction market raising money from the stock market?

We didn’t check. Anyway, from Polymarket:

“We are excited to announce that Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) — the parent company of @NYSE, is making a $2b strategic investment at a $9b post-money valuation. 

Together, we’re building the next evolution of markets.

A special thank you to all those who have supported us till now.”

We haven’t talked about prediction markets on the Meridian Update. What do prediction markets have to do with on-chain? Glad you asked. Prediction markets can be built on-chain. For example, Polymarket uses USDC, one of the stablecoins we’ve talked a lot about, for its transactions. Polymarket is built on an Ethereum network layer 2, which should benefit from the Fusaka upgrade we talked about last week.

There’s a theory that says more things happening on-chain might not be the best thing for existing off-chain things. For example, you might think that more assets, like tokenized stocks, trading on-chain would be a bad thing for exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) that dominate in trading of existing assets. But here you have a big off-chain player, NYSE’s parent company, investing in an on-chain player. Something to keep an eye on!

In any case, we’ll be watching what Polymarket does with this strategic investment.

Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs)

Speaking of platforms built on-chain, Grass announced it raised an additional $10M.

Grass is a decentralized bandwidth-sharing network. The idea is that just about everyone has home bandwidth from their internet service provider, but the vast majority do not use the maximum amount of that bandwidth. Grass says it is a way for users to earn rewards, which in this case are ultimately a token, GRASS, that trades on the Solana network. The GRASS token helps the system powering the Grass platform work.

Grass is an example of a company that exists off-chain, as in it is a company raising money from venture capital firms, to build something on-chain. That on-chain something includes a token used in the functionality of the company’s product. Grass is also an example of what many in the on-chain world call a DePIN, or a decentralized physical infrastructure network. That is, Grass works to pull together physical infrastructure, internet bandwidth, from many sources in many places. It is a decentralized physical infrastructure network.

There are other DePINs. We will talk about them as the news demands it.

That’s a wrap

It was a big day of fundraising for companies building on-chain, between a prediction market player and a decentralized physical infrastructure network.

October 7, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update, your daily on-chain report. Great Scott, it’s only Tuesday! Let’s dive in.

We haven’t talked about “Uptober…”

…and received some feedback about this. Sigh.

Yesterday we talked about Bitcoin’s ATH (all-time high). A lot of people are blaming it on…what is it exactly…a meme?...a thing?...called “Uptober.”

The idea is that there’s been an anomaly, historically, where Bitcoin’s price grows in October. There’s some sense where this doesn’t just apply to Bitcoin. Vibes matter, they say. So some people get excited for October. They think Bitcoin prices, and maybe also prices of other on-chain assets, will go up during the month.

Something to keep an eye on? Not financial advice. Do your own research. We were required to write about this.

We were not awake in time to write about this yesterday

From Grayscale Investments very early yesterday morning:

“Grayscale Investments…today announced a major industry first: Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETF (Ticker: ETHE) and Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust ETF (Ticker: ETH) have become the first U.S.-listed spot crypto ETPs to enable staking. Grayscale also revealed that Grayscale Solana Trust (OTCQX: GSOL) has activated staking, giving investors one of the only ways to access SOL staking through a traditional brokerage account. Pending regulatory approval of GSOL’s uplisting as an exchange-traded product, it is expected to become one of the first spot Solana ETPs with staking.”

We just did a quick command-F (control-F for our esteemed consultant, banker, and private equity readers) and we have never talked about staking on the Meridian Update. Until today.

If you are holding a $1 bill but you don’t want to hold it anymore, you might store it in a vault. Actually, you might ask a bank to store it in their vault, or do whatever a bank does with your $1 bill. According to bank heist movies, that is to store it in a vault. The bank might then promise to give you more than a $1 bill back. The longer you ask them keep the $1 bill, the more they might give you back when you come to retrieve your $1 bill. You already know this. You have seen all the high-yield savings accounts, we are sure. The ads are everywhere.

But what if instead of a $1 bill you have $1 of one of those US dollar stablecoins the media has been talking about so much of late? Well, you don’t have to worry about holding the $1 of US dollar stablecoins. It’s not a physical bill. It’s on-chain.

Does that mean you can’t put it in a vault somewhere to get more money back when you take it out? No, it doesn’t mean that. Of course, there is something called staking. Staking is kind of like putting an on-chain asset in a vault. In return for putting the money in the vault, you might get a reward. Specific forms of staking are like lending your money to someone who wants to borrow money through a platform, but they specifically want to borrow on-chain money and you specifically have on-chain money to lend. In that situation, the staking reward comes from the interest the borrower pays to lend that on-chain money.

So what’s the deal with this Grayscale Investments announcement? Well, GSOL is a way to buy an on-chain asset off-chain. It’s not a DAT, though. It is an exchange-traded fund (ETF). You actually can’t buy it on-chain. Of course, assuming no one tokenizes it. (That’s a joke. We think?) No, this is a thing you can buy, say, in your old-fashioned brokerage account, off-chain. But it is like holding SOL, the native token of the Solana network, on-chain. But it is not that. It is off-chain. And now you can stake that off-chain thing the way you might stake SOL on-chain to earn staking rewards. But you get to do this off-chain.

We tried. We failed. This was not simple enough. We will try and try again to do justice to staking and SOL ETFs.

That’s a wrap

The Meridian Update writers are not paid enough to explain the Grayscale SOL ETF and staking and how the Grayscale SOL ETF enables staking. Not at 6:30am ET, not ever. Also, it’s Uptober (or it isn’t, past performance does not…).

October 6, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update, your daily on-chain report. Hope you had a good weekend. It’s going to be a big week? Let’s dive in.

MetaDAO meta, how meta (unrelated to Meta)

Disclosure: some (all?) of our writers bought the META token over the weekend.

The price chart for META looked like :up-right-arrow: between when we last Meridian Updated you Friday morning and this Meridian Update. For those who haven’t figured it out, that is the arrow to the up and right emoji. Of course we don’t allow emojis in this esteemed publication.

Crypto Twitter was all over META this weekend. Not that Meta.This META, MetaDAO. MetaDAO says it is building a “fundraising and governance platform for high-quality founders and their communities.” MetaDAO is backed by Paradigm, a crypto investment firm that many people in the on-chain world know about.

Long-time readers have yet to hear us talk about the mechanics of a token going from nonexistent to tradable on-chain. This has been a major theme, and source of excitement, in the on-chain world in 2025. You may have heard of pump.fun, whose own token became tradable in July. We will have many opportunities to talk about token launches, token launchpads like pump.fun, and other elements of tokens becoming tradable in the coming months. But the key point is that there is a moment when a token starts trading.

MetaDAO is a way to get a token trading. People call pump.fun a launchpad because it is a way to get a token trading, aka launch a token. MetaDAO is a launchpad (probably). And it is a launchpad with rules. Not to say other launchpads don’t have rules. Just to call attention to MetaDAO having rules, which Crypto Twitter was all over.

Hopefully some day we can talk about Futarchy. But it is not this day! This day we fight talk about a more general idea! The idea is that a token being tradable doesn’t signal it is good…or, well, signal anything. It just means it is tradable. But in theory a token could become tradable in a way that signals something. In theory. You might say MetaDAO is trying to turn this theory into a reality. In theory, a token that becomes tradable through MetaDAO is a token launched subject to the MetaDAO launchpad rules. And in theory those rules apply. And in theory those rules mean something. And in theory that something is good.

We would never say something like “and it’s all true!” and you would never trust us if we did. Instead we’ll just state the obvious. This is something to keep an eye on.

ATH means all-time high, and Bitcoin did it

$125,000 BTC. Wow. That was an all-time high. That is, BItcoin had never hit $125,000 before. Crypto Twitter loved it. Solana and Ethereum did not hit ATHs. What does this mean for the on-chain world? Something to keep an eye on. Probably.

That’s a wrap

It’s Monday, and the weekend was interesting. MetaDAO caught Crypto Twitter buzz. So did Bitcoin ATH. Big week ahead?

Think we missed something today? Email ideas@meridianupdate.com.

October 3, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update, your daily on-chain report. The government is still shut down. We still aren’t. That’s stablecoin dependability. Let’s dive in.

Double news for DoubleZero

Longtime readers know that DoubleZero is building a global private fiber network to enhance blockchain data transmission efficiency. On Monday, a no-action letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Division of Corporation Finance caught Crypto Twitter’s attention. 2Z, the native token of DoubleZero Networks, is not going to be subject to security registration requirements.

The 2Z token started trading on the Solana network yesterday. Its market cap quickly settled in the billions according to our friends at Meridian Research. Crypto Twitter took notice.

The idea of DoubleZero is that blockchain networks like Solana are designed to be extremely fast, reliable infrastructure for financial markets. Something that can decrease the speed and reliability of infrastructure for financial markets is the infrastructure that the infrastructure is built on. So you can think of DoubleZero as an approach to infrastructure for the infrastructure. Infrastructure. Infrastructure. Infrastructure. Infrastructure. Infrastructure. Did you say it fast? If so, you said infrastructure five times fast.

Anyway, DoubleZero says it is building a network that will allow data to move in a more direct path than public Internet transmission paths allow. They say it will help the Solana network be more efficient. Seems like something to keep an eye on. But it will be moving really fast, and directly, so you’ll need to stay focused to catch it zooming by!

Time to CFTC what’s happening in regulatory

We did not talk at all about regulation yesterday. If you read a daily on-chain report that doesn’t talk about regulatory news for more than 3 days in a row, you know you aren’t reading the best daily on-chain report. We intend to be the best. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

So some regulatory news. On Wednesday, a Politico reporter quietly dropped that there is a lead contender for nomination to be Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Let’s take a step back. The Trump Administration pulled the nomination of its original pick, Brian Quintenz, a couple days ago. We’ll spare the history for now. Maybe we’ll revive it if, just maybe if, there is some news about a CFTC Chair nomination, or even confirmation, in the future. There were some tweets.

Let’s take another step back. The CFTC is currently led by Acting Chair Caroline Pham. The “Acting” part means Caroline Pham isn’t really the Chair of the CFTC, at least not exactly. It’s a position that requires the President’s nomination and the Senate’s confirmation. So the point is the appointed-and-confirmed CFTC Chair position has been unfilled since the Biden Administration’s confirmed pick left the role because, you know, well, it wasn’t the Biden Administration anymore.

Ok, two steps forward. Why exactly does it matter who gets picked for CFTC Chair? Look, it just does, people care. Why would you ask that?

No, no we’re kidding. Remember the whole “Z2 is not going to be subject to security registration requirements” thing? Scroll up if not. Securities, and the US’s securities regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission, aren’t the only game in town. There are also commodities and currencies. And the CFTC regulates them. If you don’t think you are a security, you might think you are a commodity. And if you think you are a commodity, you want to know who is calling the shots at the CFTC.

Maybe it will be Mike Selig! And Crypto Twitter was talking about it yesterday. Something to keep an eye on, just like a regulator keeps an eye on the things it regulates.

That’s a wrap

From regulation to token launch and back again. Not by Bilbo Baggins. Happy Friday. We might write this over the weekend, we might not. We’ll see you when we see you.

Think we missed something today? Email ideas@meridianupdate.com.

October 2, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update, your daily on-chain report. The government might be shut down, but we aren’t. That’s dependability. Let’s dive in.

GiveDirectly is giving, directly, stablecoins

If your friend asks you for $1, you can hand them a $1 bill. If your friend asks you for $1 but they want it on-chain, you cannot hand them a $1 bill. If Coinbase and GiveDirectly partner to give someone $12,000, they could hand that person $12,000 in $1 bills. But of course they want to give it to them on-chain, so they cannot hand them $12,000 in $1 bills.

Of course:

“The GiveDirectly-Coinbase collaboration promises to test something new. Instead of meting out recurring payments over a long period of time, the NYC pilot is giving participants one large $8,000 lump sum, along with five smaller deposits of $800.”

It will be doled out in USDC, a US dollar stablecoin. We talked about watching out for more stablecoins yesterday. Today, we talk about watching out for more things happening with stablecoins.

Don’t just sit there, do something!

Blockchain networks don’t just sit there. Sometimes people do something and the blockchain networks change.

We talk a lot about the Solana network here on the Meridian update, but it is not the only blockchain network (gasp!). Ethereum is older than Solana. Its native token, ETH, has a larger market cap than SOL, the Solana network’s native token.

The Ethereum network is in a multi-year process of major changes. Yesterday, it took a successful step toward one of those changes. Some of the on-chain world was buzzing from the news that a test of something called the Fusaka upgrade was a success. It was the first of three tests before the change goes live.

The idea behind the Fusaka upgrade is to make the Ethereum network able to handle more transaction volume, a common criticism of the network. Keep an eye on this. The founder of Ethereum is.

Also not on Solana…

…is Zcash. Its price surged during the day yesterday. Crypto Twitter took notice.

A common confusion from the early days of blockchain usage was around privacy. Back in the 2010s, there was an idea that blockchains like Bitcoin were good for doing crimes. People felt like the transactions were private because you didn’t have to go to a bank and say, “Hi, here is my name and home address and phone number, please send money to this person. They helped me do a crime. Here’s that person’s name and home address and phone number.”

That was only kind of right. It is true that with a blockchain like Solana you do not have to call a bank and give them your whole life story. However, every transaction that happens on blockchain networks is publicly visible. That is…kind of the point? And a great feature? Long story short, the US government eventually figured out they could trace transactions through blockchain networks just like anyone else.

Zcash is working on a new blockchain network that allows users to do private transactions. And its price surged yesterday. So every transaction that happens on blockchain networks won’t be visible, exactly, at least not if Zcash has anything to do with it. Worth keeping an eye on this…but how, the privacy!

That’s a wrap

The end of today’s update was written as a private Zcash transaction, so you cannot read it. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Think we missed something today? Email ideas@meridianupdate.com.

October 1, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update, your daily on-chain report. Let’s dive, something you really hope never happens to a stablecoin, in. That will make sense in a second.

How many stablecoins would a stablecoin chuck chuck if a…

…our sincerest apologies. We don’t get the joke either.

Anyway, Open Issuance:

“Open Issuance is a new platform that allows any business to launch and manage its own stablecoin. With its own stablecoin, a business can control its product experience, mint and burn without limits or unnecessary fees, and earn rewards from reserves. Businesses using Open Issuance plug into a shared liquidity network to reduce costs and get to market quickly—without depending on a handful of incumbent issuers.”

It’s been an absolutely huge year for stablecoins.

If your friend asks you for $1 you can hand them a $1 bill. If your friend asks you for $1 but they want it on-chain, you cannot hand them a one-dollar bill. To have something on-chain, it has to exist on-chain. People want a very important something on-chain: United States dollars (Euros too!). Enter US dollar stablecoins.

The idea is for something (a) on-chain to be (b) stably (c) equivalent in value to a US dollar. A way to do this is to hold some number of US dollars off-chain and only have an exactly equivalent number of US dollar tokens on-chain. If people want more US dollars on-chain than you have US dollar tokens, you can add dollars off-chain and increase the number of US dollar tokens on-chain. If people want fewer US dollars on-chain than you have US dollar tokens, you can decrease the number of US dollar tokens on-chain and remove dollars off-chain. The concept is one-to-one backing. This is how USDC works. On another day, we might talk about other ways people have tried to do this. Also it has happened that one-to-one backing may not have been one-to-one backing perfectly at all times.

Bridge is a Stripe company. Bridge is a company that some people in the on-chain world know about. In simple terms, Bridge offers products for interfacing between on-chain stablecoins and off-chain currencies. A lot of companies use it.

Bridge announced Open Issuance yesterday. The stablecoins will be supported on Solana and Ethereum networks.

So what does this really mean for the on-chain world? More stablecoin names to watch out for. Probably.

(Part 2) How many stablecoins would a stablecoin chuck chuck if a…

…our sincerest apologies (part 2). We really don’t get the joke either.

The difference between a phantom stablecoin and the Phantom stablecoin is that the first is a figment of your imagination, the second was announced today by a company called Phantom. It is one of the “more stablecoin names to watch out for” as famously predicted by the Meridian Update just a few sentences ago.

Phantom’s stablecoin is one of the famous Bridge Open Issuance stablecoins. Phantom is a company some people in the on-chain world know about. In simple terms, it is a crypto wallet. 10s of millions of dollars of on-chain trading volume originated on Phantom yesterday according to our friends at Meridian Research.

Crypto Twitter talked about this. More stablecoins? Probably.

Time to SEC what’s happening in regulatory…

The “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act” (GENIUS Act) became US law over the summer. It and stablecoins have been getting a lot of attention this year as you know.

Tokenized stocks are another thing getting a lot of attention this year. We think it is a reasonable bet (not financial advice, do your own research) that tokenized stocks will come up again. So no explainer today.

But the on-chain world was abuzz from a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner’s remarks to a summit audience. The Commissioner spoke during discussions about stock tokenization. The idea of the US government exploring a path to stocks trading on-chain seemed fanciful to Crypto Twitter a few years ago. That is no longer the case.

Anyway, do not ask SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce for gardening advice:

“I have an affinity for orchids because I managed to keep one alive for nearly fifteen years—an amazing feat given my complete lack of gardening skills. Plants that friends have entrusted to my care have not enjoyed similar good health…I look forward to hearing your comments and answering some questions, but—for your own sakes—please avoid asking me anything about gardening.”

That’s a wrap

Stablecoins, stablecoins, orchids. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Think we missed something today? Email ideas@meridianupdate.com.

September 30, 2025

Welcome to the Meridian Update, your daily on-chain report. Let’s dive in.

Time to SEC what’s happening in regulatory, again, again, again, again…

2025 has been a big one for regulatory news that impacts what can happen on-chain. We still have not figured out why this year has been so different from 2024…just kidding, obviously it’s the Trump Administration.

Crypto Twitter was buzzing from yesterday’s news out of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Division of Corporation Finance. DoubleZero is building a global private fiber network to enhance blockchain data transmission efficiency (we actually have not figured out what this means). People in blockchain know it for reasons including a founder who came from a long tenure in a communications role at the Solana Foundation (the Solana Foundation is important because Solana is one of the large blockchain networks).

So what was the news? All you have to do to find out is to read the no-action letter directly from…bahahahah of course not, we’re kidding, it is basically gibberish. No, no. Much better is to read some quotes from a DoubleZero founder’s tweet. “Today is a monumental day for crypto in America,” the tweet began. Specifically, the letter, “confirmed that the DoubleZero Networks’ native token (2Z) flows to contributors of the network are not subject to [securities registration].”

Why is this big news? Why was Crypto Twitter buzzing? Why was this a “monumental day”? Future longtime readers will understand it quite plainly. The on-chain world does not want the US government to say that blockchain network tokens are securities. If the US government says something is a security, that something comes with a wealth of restrictions, requirements, regulatory risks, etc. Broadly, the on-chain world believes these are worse than what comes with being something other than a security. A Very Official Letter said a Shares Similarity with Other Tokens token is not a security. Hence the buzz.

So what does this really mean for on-chain world? Absolutely not, it’s only Tuesday, you will need to read this every day for years and then and only then will we you understand.

Funny things happen with DATs

There is a thing called digital asset treasury (DAT) companies. We can’t promise much, but we really feel like we can promise that we will have many, many, many, many, many, many, many…ok sorry…many opportunities to explain what they are. For today, we will just say that DATs some times cause funny things to happen.

There is a company called Helius that some people in the on-chain world know about. In simple terms, Helius helps other companies tap into the Solana network. A lot of companies use it.

In 2019, Helius Medical Technologies, Inc. was a “neurotech company focused on neurological wellness...” As recently as early September of this year, Helius Medical Technologies, Inc.’s investor relations website still looked like an investor relations website for a publicly traded company building something in medicine. Then all of the sudden it didn’t. It was becoming a DAT.

So of course some people wondered whether this Helius DAT had anything to do with the other Helius. That would probably be pretty annoying if you ran Helius and then people asked you whether you run the new Helius.

Well, the nightmare is ending. Helius Medical Technologies, Inc. will become “Solana Company” now. What will this DAT do? It will be a DAT. It will focus on Solana. Its NASDAQ ticker is HSDT.

That’s a wrap

It was another run of regulatory and DAT in the on-chain world. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Think we missed something today? Email ideas@meridianupdate.com.