OVERVIEW
Chainlink, These Other Projects Have Mothers 🥺
Here’s What’s Happening 👇
NEWS
Chainlink Added KYC To A Bridge And Somewhere A Compliance Officer Wept 🤣
$LINK ( ▲ 8.65% ) shipped CCIP 2.0 today, and at this point it's the neighbor who wins the HOA Halloween lights contest every year and now lights up the garage just to be rude. 🎃
CCIP is Chainlink's cross-chain beast - it moves tokenized assets between chains without getting robbed in transit. Legacy bridges have lost billions at that job, putting them somewhere between a hotel room safe and a Beanie Baby collection as places to park institutional money.
Kind Of A Big Deal
$84 billion in cross-chain token value sits on CCIP, more than any competing protocol.
$15 billion of that arrived in the last four months. BitGo's WBTC ($7.4B), Coinbase's cbBTC ($6.1B), Kraken's kBTC, and Wyoming's stable token FRNT all migrated over.
Launch partners include AWS, Google Cloud, ANZ, Fidelity International, Infosys, and SBI Digital Markets. Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, and UBS have run pilots on it.
What CCIP 2.0 Is & Does
Doesn’t stand for Chainlink Controls Insitutional Plumbing.
Institutions can run their own Cross-Chain Verifier that has to co-sign every transaction alongside Chainlink's default 16-operator committee. It's your mom checking the stove after you already checked the stove.
KYC, AML, sanctions screening, and transaction limits enforced on every transfer through Chainlink's Automated Compliance Engine. Legacy bridges couldn't do this, which is why banks treated them like take-home sushi.
Configurable finality. Small transfers can clear in seconds while big ones wait for full source-chain finality.
Well done Chainlink, well done. 👍
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NEWS
Iran Launders Dollars. Tether Just Made It Searchable 🙄
Senate Democrats dropped a 28-page report Monday titled "Tethered to Terrorism," and the title tells you most of what you need to know about the other 27 pages. 📃
The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations minority staff traced 846 wallets sanctioned by OFAC and Israel's NBCTF for ties to Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis. The finding: 84% of them ran exclusively or nearly exclusively on $USDT ( ▼ 0.02% ).
So Iran uses dollars. Stop the presses.
Shock To No One: The Dollar Has Always Been the Terrorist's Currency
Iran's shadow banking ran on greenbacks for decades before anyone minted a stablecoin. Hawala desks, Dubai gold, Turkish shell companies, the usual.
HSBC paid $1.9 billion in 2012 for washing money for the Sinaloa cartel and Iranian clients. BNP Paribas paid $8.9 billion in 2014 for running dollars for Iran, Sudan, and Cuba. Standard Chartered paid up in 2012 and again in 2019. Nobody wrote a report called "Dollared to Terrorism."
The Fed's own research says most $100 bills live outside the United States, and roughly none of them are buying groceries in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Buuuut… USDT is the dollar with a block explorer. Iran picked it for the same reason everyone else does - it's the deepest dollar on earth that doesn't need a bank. Tether didn't invent that. The dollar's been doing it since Bretton Woods.
The Report Undercuts Itself
The Subcommittee's entire methodology is reading a public ledger. Staff pulled every transaction from 846 wallets, mapped the counterparties, and drew network graphs down to specific exchange deposit addresses. Try that with a duffel bag in the Dubai gold souk.
The report also concedes Iran could switch to Bitcoin or Ethereum, where nobody can freeze anything, and hasn't. Staff reads that as proof Tether isn't scaring anyone. The other read is that Iran's launderers are running their whole operation on the one asset with a kill switch, which is a bold choice if the kill switch worries you.
Tether's Response, Posted the Same Day
Roughly $550 million in Iran-linked USDT frozen in 2026, including $344 million across two Central Bank of Iran addresses in April - a day before OFAC formally listed them.
$4.9 billion frozen all-time, working with 340+ agencies across 67 countries on more than 2,800 investigations.
22 million USDT frozen across 40+ cases referred by Israel's NBCTF.
A running list of DOJ, FBI, and Secret Service seizures where the feds publicly thanked Tether for the assist.
Ardoino's line was that public blockchains give authorities visibility cash never will. He's not wrong. The Senate just spent 28 pages proving it. 🤦
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NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵
🕶️ Stellar Tests Privacy That Still Lets Issuers Do Their Job
OpenZeppelin built an open-source confidential token for Stellar that hides balances and transfer amounts with zero-knowledge proofs while leaving wallet addresses visible. Issuers can restrict accounts, apply screening rules and give designated auditors limited access to figures. Think payroll: the payment can be verified without posting everyone’s salary where the entire office can read it. Stellar.
🎬 Theta Adds ByteDance Models to EdgeCloud
Theta EdgeCloud now offers BytePlus models including Seedance 2.5 for video and Seedream 5.0 Pro for images in supported Asia-Pacific markets. Seedance can generate clips up to 30 seconds and use as many as 50 reference assets. Theta.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Real World Asset Tokenization (RWA) News 🪙
📊 Mantle’s Tokenized Asset Count Jumps Twentyfold
Mantle now counts 1,473 tokenized assets, up from 71 in January, while distributed asset value reached $476 million after a 110% jump in 30 days. Tokenized stocks and ETFs helped expand the selection. The next useful number is trading depth - a long menu tells you little about what anyone orders. Mantle.
🏦 Bybit Lets Institutions Trade Against Franklin Fund Shares
Eligible Bybit clients can now pledge Franklin Templeton tokenized money market fund shares for USDT or USDC trading credit. The shares remain with ByCustody, off the exchange, and continue earning fund yield while their value backs the credit line. Bybit.
🌐 Cosmos Connects Bank Ledgers To Swift’s Pilot
Cosmos says its Tokenization Suite can connect bank systems to environments like the one running Swift’s shared-ledger pilot. Deposits stay on the issuing bank’s ledger while Swift coordinates transfers around the clock and existing systems handle final settlement. Cosmos.
SPONSORED
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Metaverse, NFT, & Gaming News 🎮
🏈 Six College Programs Put Fan Rewards on Avalanche
Michigan, Penn State, LSU, Baylor, Memphis and Nevada have launched fan rewards programs through Uptop on Avalanche. Fans can earn points through activity and spending, then redeem them for tickets, merchandise or access; athletic departments get more ways to measure engagement and sell sponsorships. Avalanche.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, & Lending News 🏦
🎯 DeepBook Adds One-Minute BTC Markets to Sui
DeepBook’s new app offers direct spot trading on Sui’s order book, which has handled more than $20 billion in volume, plus BTC price and range markets as short as 1 minute. More than 150,000 traders joined the waitlist. The app is live; the one-minute market leaves approximately no time to pretend that last trade was a long-term investment. Sui.
🥄 SaucerSwap Plans Cross-Network Swaps and Stock Tokens
SaucerSwap is building with SODAX to bring cross-network swaps and Robinhood tokenized stocks into its Hedera trading experience. SODAX already supports more than 20 networks and has listed supported Robinhood stock tokens among the assets its Hedera partners can access. SODAX.
NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Protocol News 🏦
🧪 Tezos Puts Its Quantum Plan on a Testnet
Tezos launched Quantumnet to test post-quantum accounts alongside changes to consensus, baker selection and data availability. The experimental network uses ML-DSA-44 for tz5 account signatures and tests other replacements across the protocol. It is an engineering environment, not a mainnet upgrade; changing the keys is only useful if the rest of the house still locks. Tezos.
OLD NEWS
Other Stuff That Happened Today, But A Long Ass Time Ago ⌛
September 28
48 B.C. - Egyptian officials assassinated Pompey the Great moments after he stepped ashore, hoping his severed head would impress Julius Caesar. It did not.
1066 - William the Conqueror landed in England with thousands of troops, beginning the invasion that ended Anglo-Saxon rule.
1542 - Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo entered San Diego Bay, becoming the first European known to visit California’s coast.
1781 - American and French forces began the Siege of Yorktown, trapping Cornwallis and effectively deciding the American Revolution.
1867 - The United States formally took possession of Midway Atoll, its first annexation in the Pacific.
1918 - Philadelphia held a war-bond parade attended by roughly 200,000 people despite influenza warnings. Hospitals were overwhelmed within days.
1920 - Eight Chicago White Sox players were indicted for conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series.
1928 - Alexander Fleming noticed mold killing bacteria in a neglected laboratory dish, leading to the discovery of penicillin. Sometimes not cleaning the office works out.
1939 - Warsaw surrendered after weeks of German bombardment while Germany and the Soviet Union signed a treaty dividing occupied Poland.
1941 - Ted Williams finished the baseball season batting .406, becoming the last major-league player to clear .400.
1978 - Pope John Paul I died after only 33 days in office, producing one of the shortest papacies in history.
2008 - SpaceX’s Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach Earth orbit.
2018 - A magnitude 7.5 earthquake triggered a tsunami and liquefaction around Palu, Indonesia, killing at least 2,077 people and displacing more than 200,000.
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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in AVAX, ADA, PUDGY, WLD, NEAR, INJ, LTC, LINK, ZEC, XLM, and FET. 📋