Network news
BITCOIN PROPOSAL THAT COULD FREEZE QUANTUM-RELATED COINS: Bitcoin was built on the promise that no one can touch your coins without your private key. No government, no bank, no one. That promise is now, for the first time in Bitcoin’s 16-year history, being questioned by the developer community itself as part of measures to build defenses against future quantum computers that could compromise the Bitcoin blockchain and steal its coins. Jameson Loop, one of bitcoin’s open contributors, and other cryptographers have proposed a measure that could force bitcoin holders to migrate their coins to new quantum-resistant addresses or face having them permanently frozen by the network itself. In that scenario, holders would technically still “own” the coins, but would lose the ability to move them. It is called Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-361 and was updated in the official Bitcoin proposals repository with the title “Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset.” This comes as a recently published Google report warned that a sufficiently powerful quantum machine could require significantly less firepower to compromise the Bitcoin blockchain than initially estimated. This led some observers to cite 2029 as the quantum deadline for bitcoin. — Omkar Goldbole Read more.
AI AGENTS BOOST PAYMENTS WITH CRYPTOGRAPHY: The cryptocurrency industry is racing toward a future where AI agents will handle everything from booking flights to executing transactions and making payments, but new research suggests the infrastructure supporting that shift may not be secure. McKinsey recently projected that AI agents could mediate between $3 and $5 trillion in global consumer commerce by 2030. The team found that so-called “LLM routers,” or services that sit between users and AI models, can serve as a powerful attack vector for malicious actors. These routers are designed to forward requests to models like OpenAI or Anthropic, but they also have full access to everything that passes through them, including sensitive data. “LLM agents have moved beyond conversational assistants to systems that book flights, run code, and manage infrastructure on behalf of users,” the researchers wrote, highlighting how quickly these tools are taking on real-world financial and operational tasks. LLM routers or attack points leave users extremely vulnerable, as they assume they are interacting directly with a trusted AI model, such as OpenAI, Grok or another, when in reality many requests pass through intermediary services that can view and modify that data, the researchers said. — Olivier Acuna Read more.
COW SWAP SECURITY BREACH: CoW Swap, a decentralized trading interface, said on Tuesday that it has temporarily stopped its services after detecting a domain name system (DNS) hijacking incident that affected its website, underscoring the current security risks at the front-end layer of DeFi platforms. In a post on X, the team said the attack occurred at 14:54 UTC and warned users to avoid interacting with its interface until further notice. While the protocol’s underlying infrastructure, including its backend and API, was not directly compromised, both were paused “as a precaution” while the team worked to resolve the issue. DNS hijacking allows attackers to redirect users from a legitimate domain to a malicious lookalike site, often to empty crypto wallets or collect private data. The attack vector has become a persistent weakness in decentralized finance, where users often rely on web-based interfaces to access otherwise secure smart contracts. CoW Swap operates as a decentralized exchange aggregator, sourcing liquidity between venues and using the “Wish Matching” mechanism to match transactions directly between users or pool them for more efficient execution. Orders are handled by competing “solvers” who optimize trading results, a design intended to reduce slippage and limit exposure to maximum extractable value (MEV). — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
ZK TESTS ON XRP LEDGER: XRP Ledger added native support for zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs by integrating with Boundless, a ZK testnet, in what the company says is the first such implementation on the ledger. The measure is designed to allow financial institutions to transact privately on the public blockchain while complying with regulatory requirements. It addresses a specific barrier to institutional adoption that has persisted across public blockchains. Transaction flows, treasury positions, and counterparty relationships are visible by default on public ledgers. For a bank that settles cross-border payments or a fund that manages OTC positions, that transparency creates competitive risk. Zero-knowledge proofs solve this by allowing one party to prove a claim is true without revealing the underlying data. It’s like passing a credit check, where the bank confirms that a person qualifies for a loan without revealing specific details about income, debts or account balances to the lender. In practice, in XRPL, this means that a payment can be verified as valid, properly funded, and compliant without exposing the amount, sender, or recipient to the public ledger. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
In other news
- World Liberty Financial, backed by the Trump family, proposed unlocking 62.3 billion WLFI governance tokens on Tuesday, less than a week after CoinDesk reported that the company had used 5 billion of its own tokens as collateral on lending platform Dolomite to borrow $75 million in stablecoins. The WLFI token was originally sold as a governance-only token, with no transferability and indefinite locks. A vesting schedule with a defined path to liquidity changes the economic profile of what holders purchased. The proposal would unlock liquidity for insiders who previously had no outlet, thus changing the economics of the token. The proposal divides the blocked supply into two groups. Early supporters holding 17 billion WLFI would receive a 2-year cliff followed by a 2-year linear vesting, retaining all tokens. Founders, team members, advisors and partners holding 45.2 billion WLFI would face a 2-year cliff and a 3-year vesting, but with 10% of their allocation, approximately 4.5 billion tokens, burned immediately upon approval. (Burns refer to permanently removing tokens from the supply, usually by sending them to an address that is not controlled by anyone.) In practice, it means that insiders would hand over 4.5 billion tokens in exchange for unlocking 40.7 billion previously locked indefinitely, with no vesting schedule attached. Those tokens had no path to liquidity before this proposal. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
- According to data from Arkham Intelligence, some 572 bitcoins worth $42.77 million moved from a Gemini hot wallet to wallets owned by Winklevoss Capital and custodial wallets in the past 24 hours, the first significant transfers to the fund’s addresses in more than a month. The transfers occurred in two batches. One for 372 BTC and another for 200 BTC, about 11 hours later. Both moved from addresses labeled by Arkham as belonging to the crypto exchange to addresses labeled Winklevoss Capital and Gemini Custody. Windows to approximately $853 million, Arkham data shows. On-chain data shows the direction of movement, not the intent. The transfers could reflect new purchases, an internal rebalancing between Gemini’s exchange and custody infrastructure, or a partial reversal of last month’s deposit. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
Regulation and policy
- Pakistan’s central bank notified all banks and financial institutions in the country that the ban on providing crypto services had been lifted. However, under new state banking rules, banks are prohibited from investing, trading or holding crypto assets using their own funds or customer deposits. The move by the State Bank of Pakistan follows the recent enactment of the Virtual Assets Act 2026, which establishes the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) to license, regulate and supervise the sector. The central bank replaced its 2018 cryptocurrency ban with new rules allowing regulated banks and other financial institutions to open accounts for cryptocurrency companies approved under the PVARA. Under the new state bank framework, banks can provide services to virtual asset service providers (VASPs) licensed under the new cryptocurrency law. as well as those seeking approval, subject to strict compliance with anti-money laundering (AML), know-your-customer (KYC) and other anti-terrorist financing regulations. Olivier Acuna Read more.
- Tom Duff Gordon, vice president of international policy at US-listed cryptocurrency platform Coinbase (COIN), has left the company in search of green pastures. Duff Gordon, who had been at Coinbase for almost 4 years, left the exchange to join OpenAI as Head of EMEA Policy, a Coinbase spokesperson said via email. Previously, Duff Gordon had worked for 8.5 years as a banker at Credit Suisse. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An expert in crypto regulations, Duff Gordon, recently noted that UK banks are preventing millions of customers from accessing legal and compliance services by failing to distinguish between Financial Conduct Authority-registered companies with low fraud rates and higher-risk operators. — Ian Allison Read more.
Calendar
- April 15-16, 2026: Paris Blockchain Week, Paris
- May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami
- September 29 to October 1, 2026: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
- October 7-8, 2026: Token2049, Singapore
- November 3-6, 2026: Devcon, Mumbai
- November 15-17, 2026: Solana Breakpoint, London
