Zcash token holders backed cutting the network’s target block time to 25 seconds from 75 seconds and preserving its existing halving schedule in a poll on the next major upgrade.

The faster-block proposal received 99.9% of the Zcash (ZEC)-weighted vote, while 98.9% supported keeping halvings, according to results published Monday. Voting power reflected eligible ZEC holdings, with both percentages including abstentions.

The shorter interval would reduce the expected wait for a transaction’s first confirmation, according to the proposal. The amount of new ZEC issued per block would fall to keep scheduled daily issuance unchanged.

The changes are proposed for NU7, a Zcash network upgrade whose activation date remains undetermined. Token holders also favored excluding features not implemented by Sept. 30.

Results of the NU7 sentiment poll. Source: forum.zcashcommunity.com 

The coinholder vote was separate from polls of ZecHub, the Zcash Community Advisory Panel and other community groups. Eligibility was limited to spendable ZEC in the Ironwood shielded pool at the voting snapshot. Developers plan to ship the final items for the upgrade by the Sept. 30 cut-off deadline, with testnet and mainnet activation not yet determined.

Halvings are scheduled cuts that reduce the issuance of new ZEC by half. The winning coinholder option would preserve that schedule while allowing funds removed from circulation under a separate proposal to be returned through future block rewards.

The advisory-panel results showed a closer split, with 57 members favoring a gradual issuance curve that would replace halvings and 54 favoring keeping them.

Related: Anthropic’s Mythos AI finds no more ‘serious’ bugs in Zcash: Wilcox

Zcash coinholders favor delaying reissuance

Another major feature considered for NU7 inclusion was the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), a proposed upgrade to Zcash’s economic model that aims to recycle a portion of transaction fees back into a pool, rather than relying solely on block rewards.

About 97% of token holders voted to delay NSM reissuance until February 2031, with 2.3 million ZEC tokens voting to delay the motion, while only about 70,239 tokens voted to start it as soon as possible.

NSM was proposed in January in response to the network’s long-term security budget concerns, as the declining block rewards may eventually be insufficient to incentivize miners to validate transactions. The model’s three-part mechanism seeks to burn and recycle 60% of ZEC transaction fees into future block rewards, without exceeding the token’s 21 million maximum supply.

ZEC rose 3.8% in the past 24 hours, extending its 132% rally seen during the past month, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Magazine: The legal battle over who can claim DeFi’s stolen millions 

USDC issuer Circle has launched the mainnet of Arc, a layer-1 (L1) blockchain targeting stablecoin payments and financial markets, particularly agentic transactions.

Arc uses USDC as its native gas asset and offers Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility and deterministic sub-second settlement finality, according to an Arc blog post on Wednesday.

The network supports more than 20 fiat stablecoins, including USDC, EURC, JPYC, KRW1 and TRYB, while tokenized assets including BlackRock’s BUIDL and Circle’s USYC are available natively on Arc. Arc also offers interoperability with more than 20 blockchains through Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) and Gateway.

CEO Jeremy Allaire called Arc “the single most significant launch in Circle’s history since USDC itself.”  Separately, Circle said in a post on X that Arc was built for “programmable money, global markets, and agentic economic activity,” describing the network as stablecoin-native infrastructure for developers and institutions.

The launch follows Arc’s public testnet debut in October 2025, when Circle said more than 100 companies were participating, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard and Visa.

Circle said in August that more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders had participated in Arc’s private mainnet ahead of the public launch.

Arc said it ultimately plans to broaden participation in network operations and explore a transition from Proof of Authority to Proof of Stake in 2027. Circle also completed the genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens this week but said the mint does not represent a commitment to launch the token publicly.

Related: Crypto stocks slide after CLARITY Act fails to advance in Senate

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The US dollar is consolidating against the yen and Canadian dollar ahead of the key event of the week — the Federal Reserve meeting. The Fed is widely expected to raise its policy rate by 25 basis points to a range of 3.75–4.00%. As this move is already largely priced in, attention will focus on the updated economic projections, dot plot and press conference. Investors will assess whether the September rate hike marks the beginning of a new phase of monetary tightening or whether the central bank will prefer to adopt a wait-and-see approach.

Expectations of a more hawkish Fed are supported by persistent inflationary pressures, recent employment data and rising oil prices. US retail sales data will provide an additional reference point ahead of the meeting. Strong figures could provide further support for the dollar, although the market reaction is likely to remain limited ahead of the Fed decision.

USD/JPY

The decline in USD/JPY over the past two weeks has slowed around the key support area of 152.90–153.20. At the start of the week, the price tested this area several times, while buyers managed to establish a foothold above the psychological 155.00 level yesterday. Hawkish Fed rhetoric could support a corrective rise in USD/JPY towards 156.20–157.00. More cautious signals regarding further policy tightening, by contrast, could put renewed pressure on the dollar and lead to another test of the 152.90–153.20 area.

Key events for USD/JPY:

• today at 15:30 (GMT+3): US core retail sales;
• today at 21:00 (GMT+3): US Federal Reserve interest rate decision;
• today at 21:30 (GMT+3): Federal Open Market Committee press conference.

USD/CAD

USD/CAD has recovered from its recent lows and is testing the 1.3895–1.3940 resistance area, despite support for the Canadian dollar from elevated oil prices. A firm move above 1.3940, followed by the level turning into support, could pave the way for a rise towards 1.4000–1.4030. A failed attempt to establish itself above the current resistance area, by contrast, could trigger a renewed decline towards the 1.3760 support level.

Key events for USD/CAD:

• today at 15:30 (GMT+3): Canadian building permits;
• today at 17:30 (GMT+3): US crude oil inventories;
• today at 18:30 (GMT+3): Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta GDPNow indicator.

Overall, USD/JPY and USD/CAD remain in consolidation ahead of the key Fed decision. As a 25-basis-point rate hike is already largely priced in, the dollar’s subsequent reaction will depend primarily on the central bank’s projections and rhetoric. Signals pointing to further tightening could support gains in both pairs, while a more cautious Fed stance could put renewed pressure on the US currency.

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Two central banks are heading in genuinely opposite directions this week, and the tension is unmistakable. The Bank of Canada held rates steady at 2.25% on September 2, with a mildly hawkish tilt as policymakers acknowledged a broadening economic recovery alongside rising inflation risks. Since then, Canadian data has stayed firm, August CPI held at 3.0% year-on-year, and elevated oil prices, boosted by Middle East tensions, continue to provide the loonie with structural support given Canada’s status as a major crude exporter.

The yen, meanwhile, is the real story of the week. The Bank of Japan is widely expected to hike its policy rate to 1.25% on Friday, its highest level since April 1995, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s public pressure campaign pushed markets to price in an 80% probability of the move. The yen has already surged to seven-month highs in anticipation, with August export data beating forecasts on strong AI-chip demand, even as Bloomberg warns the scale of tightening now expected risks disrupting markets should the BOJ fail to deliver.

The result: a resilient, oil-backed loonie facing off against a yen riding its most significant policy shift in three decades, leaving CAD/JPY’s next move to hinge almost entirely on Friday’s BOJ decision.

Technical Analysis of CAD/JPY

As the CAD/JPY daily chart shows, the pair has broken below its long-term ascending trendline from last November’s lows, with price now trading well below the 100-period EMA at 114.02, inside the 110.50–112.00 support zone that has held since early August. The descending trendline from May’s highs near 117.50 now sits below current price, positioning it as a potential support level should the pair extend lower.

Bullish Scenario

Should buyers defend the 110.50–111.00 support and stage a recovery, the first real test becomes the 112.00–112.50 resistance zone, with a stronger push potentially reaching the 113.50–113.75 area, where the broken long-term ascending trendline and the 100-period EMA converge.

Bearish Scenario

Conversely, a break below the 110.50–111.00 support would bring the descending trendline from May’s highs into play as a possible support level, with a confirmed break below that also exposing the 108.00–108.50 zone, the level that anchored the entire late-2025 recovery.

With price trading beneath both its EMA and its former long-term uptrend, and the old descending trendline now positioned as potential support below, CAD/JPY’s next move looks set to hinge on Friday’s BOJ decision. Will the yen’s historic tightening push the pair into fresh multi-month lows, or does support finally hold?

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With those correlations weaker, protective positions that worked recently, notably hedging bitcoin against S&P 500 index futures on the assumption it would keep tracking risk assets, are less reliable for now. (If bitcoin usually tracks U.S. stocks, a long-bitcoin book can be faded, or hedged, by shorting the index futures.)

“That means the beta hedge that would have worked Monday is unreliable today, and today’s FOMC reaction may be swamped by regulatory follow-through,” Liu said.

That sets up the decision, due at 2 p.m. ET, as a test of whether bitcoin re-establishes the relationship with the dollar and stock market or keeps trading off regulatory news.

The Fed is widely expected to raise interest rates by 25 basis points. That move is largely priced in, and most investment banks are still forecasting additional hikes by year-end.

Unless Chair Kevin Warsh delivers a larger increase or unexpectedly hawkish guidance, some observers say the Dollar Index could slide. A weaker dollar would, in isolation, be a tailwind for bitcoin.

Traders should also watch Treasury yields. A sharp rise in yield volatility can tighten financial conditions and revive risk-off flows across crypto.

“The market lull can easily be attributed to expectations of signals from the Fed later on Wednesday, which have greater potential to influence volatility than the 25-basis-point rate hike already priced in,” Alex Kuptsikevich, the chief market analyst at The FxPro, said in an email. Stay alert!

Digital asset financial services firm Two Prime unveiled a bitcoin lending vault on Pareto, targeting annual yields of 1.5% to 2% by lending to institutional borrowers.

The Axiom WBTC Yield Vault accepts wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), a token representing bitcoin that can be used on other blockchain networks.

The vault requires a minimum deposit of $250,000 in WBTC and has an initial capacity of 1,350 BTC ($104 million). Returns are subject to market conditions and are not guaranteed.

Two Prime is expanding its lending business into onchain finance, connecting bitcoin holders seeking income with institutions seeking access to bitcoin funding.

The firm, which provides institutional investment strategies and bitcoin-backed lending, has committed roughly $10 million of its own capital to absorb initial losses. The strategy targets borrowers including public companies, credit-rated entities and diversified financial institutions.

Pareto supplies the blockchain-based private credit infrastructure underpinning the vault. ICE Digital Trust and Copper Technologies will hold its assets in custody.

Read More: Ditching bonds for bitcoin: How crypto can tackle the AI-heavy portfolio dilemma