Tron uses a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism. Under this system, TRX holders stake their tokens to gain voting power and use that power to elect 27 Super Representatives, the validators responsible for producing blocks and maintaining the network. Because block production is concentrated among a limited, elected set of validators rather than distributed across a broad network of participants, Tron can achieve fast confirmation times and low computational overhead.

Stablecoins and the payments use case

The single most important development in Tron’s evolution has been its emergence as the leading settlement network for stablecoins. A substantial share of global USDT circulation now resides on Tron, and this characteristic separates Tron from many of its layer-1 peers: rather than competing primarily on DeFi innovation or consumer applications, Tron has positioned itself as digital payment rails for dollars.

That positioning shows up clearly in the network’s usage data. According to Tron’s blockchain explorer, weekly transaction counts on Tron have climbed to record highs, recently approaching 100 million transactions per week, even as the average onchain transaction fee has fallen to around seven cents, a multiyear low.

Weekly active addresses, a measure of unique wallets transacting on the network over a seven-day period, have also been climbing toward record levels, reflecting broad and sustained usage rather than a narrow base of activity. Stablecoin transfer volume on Tron has grown alongside this activity, recently running at roughly $150 billion to $190 billion per week.

“Boy, did I have impostor syndrome,” she says. “Here I was in this room full of eminences, and I had been reading their work, I’d been citing them, I’d been learning from them.” She also had some hard lessons to learn as a northeastern hippie in a majority-Black school district. “I just couldn’t believe the state of affairs in these schools,” says Moats. “Libraries with no books, no doors on the lavatory, no running water in the sinks.” She labored to get the teachers to trust her. Eventually, one of her assistants took her aside. “She said, ‘You’re the director, you’ve got to look like the director,’” recalls Moats, who favors denim and heavy glasses. “I said, ‘You have any advice?’ She said, ‘Go to Ann Taylor.’” The project was a success, her nine schools’ reading rates soared, and local politicians started to drop by for photo opportunities. 

Then national politicians took notice too. The No Child Left Behind Act that President George W. Bush signed in 2002 enshrined the work of Lyon’s team and the National Reading Panel. Moats was tapped to write the teacher-training component of the act’s Reading First initiative, which became LETRS. 

The world’s largest private debt offering, a bond series for one of Meta’s AI data centers, has slumped to its worst level since the deal priced at par last October.

As the Nasdaq composite closed at an all-time high on Tuesday in an AI-led rally, unease rose in the credit market for the industry.

The $27.3 billion bond financing Meta’s Hyperion AI data center traded down to a disconcerting 94.4 cents on the dollar, a record low. Worse, the loss coincided with Meta’s largest intraday stock rally in a year: 9%.

The bond series was the largest private debt offering ever sold. Corporate notes, backed by Mark Zuckerberg’s massive AI division at Meta, boasted a 6.581% coupon and a long-dated 2049 maturity.

PIMCO, the world’s largest bond manager, anchored the deal with about $18 billion. Funds by the world’s largest asset manager, Blackrock, bought upward of $3 billion. 

Although the symposium is not secret, it has received little media attention. Its public footprint consists largely of occasional posts from attendees rather than prominent FBI announcements or the publicity campaigns typical of commercial crypto conferences.

A LinkedIn post published by Token Recovery executive Roman Bieda confirms that the 2024 symposium took place in Austin.

Bieda, attending for a third time, said it convened an international group of public and private-sector specialists to discuss threats including money laundering, ransomware, human trafficking and crypto-related scams. He did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

From government gathering to industry forum

The gathering was once weighted more heavily toward government agencies and public sector officials, according to one of the people who spoke to CoinDesk.

It has since expanded to include more representatives from the crypto industry, they added.

The focus is practical, aimed at informing attendees about emerging attack methods, what techniques are proving effective, and how North Korean operatives are targeting crypto companies.

A detailed presentation covered the Drift exploit, in which hackers gained administrative control and used a manipulated token as collateral to steal more than $270 million from the Solana-based decentralized exchange in April, the person added.

Sharing intelligence on crypto threats

Unlike the polished venues and promotional atmosphere of major crypto gatherings, the FBI symposium is deliberately low-key, one of the attendees said. Its growing industry presence, however, reflects how closely law enforcement now depends on crypto companies, blockchain analysts and security researchers to identify attackers and trace stolen funds.

Quick Read

• Duke Energy (DUK) beats Southern Company (SO) on yield (3.62% vs. 3.49%), dividend coverage, and 20-plus consecutive years of annual raises.

• Duke’s $103 billion capital plan and 7.8 GW of data center contracts give its dividend a cleaner, faster-growing funding engine than Southern’s.

• Southern’s wind repowering charges and Nicor disallowances drain roughly $325 million in cash through 2027, actively competing with its dividend.

• Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Southern Company didn’t make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat SO. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.

For a retirement investor building an income sleeve from regulated utilities, the choice between Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) and Southern Company (NYSE:SO) matters for income construction. Here is how they compare. Both benefit from data center load growth in the SERC region, but their dividends, balance sheets, and growth engines move at different speeds. Here is the head-to-head across the three dimensions that matter for income holders.

Dividend Yield, Coverage, and Raise History

Start with the check-writing math. Duke pays a $4.34 annualized forward dividend against a share price of $115.20, for a trailing yield of 3.62%. Southern pays a $3.04 annualized forward dividend at $84.40, yielding 3.49%. Duke also covers its payout more comfortably: TTM EPS of $6.64 against a $4.26 per-share payout, versus Southern’s $4.15 EPS against $2.98.

Both are long-tenured raisers, but Duke has been more generous. CFO Brian Savoy noted on the Q2 call that the July hike marked “over 20 years of consecutive annual dividend increases”. Duke’s quarterly went from 1.065 to 1.085 at the August 14, 2026 ex-date. Southern’s most recent bump took the payout from $0.74 to $0.76 at the May 18, 2026 ex-date, in line with its once-a-year cadence. Winner: DUK. Higher yield, better coverage, faster recent raise.

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What Actually Funds the Dividend

Story Continues

Duke is executing the largest regulated capital plan in the industry, a $103 billion, five-year program targeting 9.6% earnings base growth through 2030, deploying more than $1 billion per month. It has locked in 7.8 gigawatts of electric service agreements with data center customers and settled its DEC North Carolina case with a 9.8% ROE and 53% equity capital structure. FFO-to-debt is guided to 14.5% for 2026, moving toward 15%.

Southern’s regulatory relationships are constructive. Georgia Power secured a three-year rate freeze while committing to lower rates in future rate proceedings due to charging data centers more so that families and small businesses pay less. But Southern carries cash drag: roughly $205 million of accelerated depreciation remaining in 2026 and $120 million in 2027 tied to Southern Power wind repowering, plus Nicor Gas capital investment disallowances by the Illinois Commerce Commission. Winner: DUK. Bigger rate-base engine, cleaner near-term story.

Growth Trajectory vs. Starting Income

Duke reaffirmed 2026 adjusted EPS guidance of $6.55 to $6.80 and a 5% to 7% long-term EPS growth target through 2030, with confidence in the top half of that range beginning 2028. Management flagged $5 to $10 billion of upside to the current five-year capital plan if pending large-load contracts convert. Duke trades at a forward P/E of about 16 versus Southern’s 17. Southern’s strength is lower beta (0.316 vs. Duke’s 0.364) and stronger long-run price performance (137.68% over ten years vs. Duke’s 109.27%). Winner: DUK on growth per dollar of price.

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Verdict

Duke Energy screens stronger on income fundamentals for a retirement-focused portfolio today. You get the higher yield, the better-covered payout, the larger capital plan, the more constructive recent rate order, and the cheaper forward multiple, all wrapped in the same low-beta regulated utility profile. Southern still screens well, and its 9 million regulated customer base and Georgia Power franchise are among the best in the country, but the wind repowering charges and Nicor disallowances are actively competing with the dividend for cash through 2027. What flips this call: a materially adverse ruling in a Duke jurisdiction, or Southern accelerating its raise cadence past the penny-a-year pace. Until then, DUK screens as the stronger income name.

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Cosmos Hub validators halted block production on Tuesday, following a governance attack on Neutron which initially led to losses of $9.5 million.

Of that sum, the attacker was only able to extract around 20%, with the remainder stuck on halted networks.

With block production having resumed since 12:00 UTC on Wednesday, Cosmos Hub was ultimately offline for over 24 hours after halting at block height 33086740.

This latest incident marks the third security scare in recent months for the wider Cosmos ecosystem.

Read more: Cosmos Labs under fire over disclosure of bug affecting four blockchains

The governance attack

A malicious “AI Agent Takeover” governance proposal was passed on Neutron, a Cosmos-ecosystem chain which entered its “long-term maintenance phase” earlier this year.

The proposal allowed the attacker to take control of two Neutron-based applications, Astroport and Drop, and drain contracts of assets worth $4.9 million and $4.4 million, respectively.

The attacker reportedly spent just $20,199 to acquire the NTRN tokens needed to pass the vote.

The response

In response to the attack, Neutron was paused, trapping an estimated $5 million worth of assets.

In turn, Cosmos Hub validators also decided to halt, securing a further 1.2 million ATOM (over $2.2 million) held in the attacker’s address. The scheduled restart is set to include a queued refund of the trapped ATOM balance.

The hacker’s Ethereum address holds $1.8 million, with a further transaction worth over $300,000 pending on THORChain, though this is set to be refunded to the Cosmos Hub address upon restart.

Read more: Osmosis took 74 days to discover 40-BTC Nomic exploit

Chaos in the Cosmos ecosystem

In late August, a bug in Cosmos Labs’ Cosmos EVM module led to protocol-level exploits on four blockchains.

The disclosure procedure was heavily criticised by one of the affected projects, KiiChain, which dubbed the loss of $9 million worth of its KII tokens “avoidable.”

Earlier this month, Cosmos-based exchange Osmosis revealed that a June 25 exploit of Nomic’s bridge had minted 40 nBTC (worth $3.6 million at the time) out of thin air, which left Osmosis’ allBTC partially (36%) unbacked.

Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

What areas are affected?

Open interest distribution

The $70,000 strike has more open contracts than any other, and the calls there are now deep in the money.

Strijers said 55% of the $9.4 billion in call bets due for expiry are in the money. Puts, meanwhile, are mostly worthless right now. Put it together, and about a third of the entire $15.9 billion book is currently in the money.

Being in the money means being in profit – an option has intrinsic value because the market price is on the favorable side of its strike. For a call, the underlying trades above the strike; for a put, it trades below the strike.

Deribit’s Chief Commercial Officer Jean-David Péquignot said the distribution of open interest across strike prices suggests a price floor around $75,000.

“Open interest is heavily concentrated at the $85k, $90k, $95k, and $100k call strikes, underscoring the ongoing influence of large 85k/90k/95k/100k call condor blocks that are now coming directly into play as spot trades near $86k,” Péquignot said. “On the put side, defensive structures are firmly anchored at $60k, $70k, and $75k, creating a multi-layered support floor.”

What happens on the expiry day?

Friday’s expiry could breed some market turbulence, eventually resetting the trading range for BTC’s spot price.

That’s because, as per Strijers, the expiry will clear out dealer-related hedging.