Zcash developers are targeting November 5 for the NU7 upgrade, which would reduce block times from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, making private payments up to three times faster. The upgrade also includes changes to mining rewards.
Balancer, a major DeFi protocol, proposed winding down operations and distributing its approximately $9 million treasury to BAL token holders starting May 2027. The proposal would pause pools in October and cancel approved buybacks after the protocol failed to achieve sustainable revenue despite restructuring efforts.
Solana plans to implement Transaction v1 on September 9, raising the maximum serialized transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes. The upgrade will enable applications to execute more complex trades and operations on the blockchain.
Solana's Agave 4.2 upgrade began activating on mainnet the week of August 17, 2026, introducing a 90% reduction in on-chain storage rent, 3.3x larger maximum transaction size, and phased implementation of faster slot times targeting 200ms blocks. The upgrade coincided with Solana ETF inflows hitting a 3-month high of $8.8 million.
Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, has proposed creating a protocol sovereign fund seeded with approximately 30 million NEAR tokens (valued between $57-450 million) to generate yield for network operations and potentially reduce token inflation. The fund would consolidate treasury assets and use protocol revenue to support validators, security, and public goods.
Pi Network has begun deploying Protocol 26, the ninth and penultimate upgrade to its Mainnet, with node operators required to complete the update by August 11, 2026. The upgrade is part of a two-step process leading to the final Protocol 27.
Pi Network has begun deploying Protocol 26, the ninth and penultimate upgrade to its Mainnet, with node operators required to complete the update by August 11, 2026. The upgrade is part of a two-step process leading to the final Protocol 27.
S&P Dow Jones Indices and Pantera Capital have launched the S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index, an 18-constituent benchmark that screens digital assets based on protocol revenue, market size, and liquidity. The index notably excludes Bitcoin, which does not generate protocol revenue, and includes Ethereum, BNB, Solana, Tron, and Hyperliquid as major holdings.
Cardano successfully activated its Van Rossem hard fork on July 18, 2026, upgrading to Protocol Version 11 in what marks the blockchain's first upgrade approved entirely through on-chain governance without Input Output (IOHK) control. The upgrade reduces smart contract execution costs and adds Plutus enhancements.
Curve Finance has deployed the second version of its isolated lending protocol, Llamalend v2, on the Optimism network, supported by a 250,000 OP token grant. The launch marks the initial phase before a planned Ethereum mainnet deployment.
Privacy coin Zcash experienced a dramatic rally, adding between $1-2.5 billion to its market capitalization after founder Zooko Wilcox unveiled the 'Ironwood' upgrade proposal designed to address long-standing concerns about the cryptocurrency's supply verification.
Pi Network announced May 11 as the activation date for Protocol 23, which introduces full smart contract functionality to the Pi blockchain, transitioning the network from mobile mining to programmable DeFi infrastructure.
