S&P Global has announced an agreement to acquire OpenZeppelin, a blockchain security firm known for its open-source smart contract tooling and security review services. The move is designed to broaden S&P Global’s ability to evaluate risk across the digital asset ecosystem, particularly where smart contracts and onchain infrastructure are central to financial activity.

The companies did not disclose financial terms. S&P Global said the transaction is still subject to customary closing conditions.

Key takeaways

• S&P Global’s planned acquisition of OpenZeppelin targets stronger smart contract and onchain technology risk assessment capabilities.
• The deal does not include publicly disclosed pricing; the agreement remains subject to closing conditions.
• OpenZeppelin’s software and contracts library will remain free and publicly maintained on GitHub.
• OpenZeppelin will operate as a separate business unit within S&P Global, with its CEO continuing in a leadership role.
• The acquisition follows S&P Global’s earlier investment activity in crypto market infrastructure, including a strategic investment in Kaiko.

Why the acquisition matters for digital asset risk

In a statement accompanying the announcement, S&P Global’s ratings president Yann Le Pallec said the company’s digital assets strategy focuses on bringing “trusted data, benchmarks and transparent risk assessment” as markets increasingly move onchain. According to the company, OpenZeppelin will deepen its ability to analyze smart contract and other onchain technology risks—an area that has become more important as tokenized products, stablecoin-based rails, and decentralized applications extend into regulated financial contexts.

Smart contract security is often treated as a technical specialty, but for mainstream finance players it can become part of broader credit and operational risk frameworks. By adding OpenZeppelin’s capabilities to its ratings and ecosystem development efforts, S&P Global is positioning itself to assess not only market-related factors, but also the underlying code-related risks that can affect asset safety and system reliability.

OpenZeppelin’s role and what will stay open-source

Founded in 2015, OpenZeppelin develops open-source smart contract software and performs security assessments for blockchain projects and financial institutions. The announcement states that OpenZeppelin’s smart contracts have supported more than $37 trillion in value transferred and that it has completed over 900 security engagements.

Importantly for developers and auditing teams, OpenZeppelin says its contracts library and other open-source applications will remain free and publicly maintained on GitHub. This helps address a common concern when security tooling moves under corporate ownership: whether developers will still be able to rely on transparent, community-auditable code.

Under the proposed structure, OpenZeppelin will operate as a separate S&P Global business unit. The company also stated that OpenZeppelin’s CEO, Demian Brener, will continue to lead and will report to Le Pallec.

How this fits S&P Global’s broader move into crypto infrastructure

S&P Global’s acquisition announcement comes shortly after the company took another step into crypto data infrastructure. Earlier this week, S&P Global led a strategic investment in Kaiko, the Paris-based crypto market data provider. The investment extended Kaiko’s Series B funding to $110 million as the firm expands data infrastructure for tokenized financial markets, according to the prior coverage referenced by Cointelegraph: S&P Global leads $110M Kaiko funding round as Wall Street eyes tokenized markets.

Taken together, the two moves suggest a consistent theme: building a stack around digital asset markets that includes both data and security/risk assessment. Kaiko focuses on market data and related infrastructure for crypto trading and tokenized environments, while OpenZeppelin’s value proposition centers on smart contract security and the evaluation of onchain technology risk.

That pairing may be particularly relevant as more financial products and services attempt to connect legacy risk frameworks with blockchain systems. Market data without security assurance can leave a gap, while security expertise without dependable market benchmarks and transparency can limit how effectively risk is communicated to investors and institutions.

What to watch before the deal closes

With no financial terms disclosed and the transaction still pending closing conditions, the near-term focus for market participants is likely to be procedural rather than operational. OpenZeppelin’s continued open-source maintenance on GitHub is already a meaningful signal for developers, but investors and institutions will also want to monitor how S&P Global integrates the security team into its ratings and ecosystem development processes after closing.

Readers should keep an eye on the final deal timeline and any updates on how OpenZeppelin’s security engagement workflow—especially for financial institutions and blockchain teams—will be maintained or expanded within S&P Global’s broader digital assets strategy.

Iran has spent this year charging tankers between $1 million and $2 million to cross the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. Treasury said that since June, part of that money has moved through a cryptocurrency exchange in Tehran.

A Thursday release shows The Office of Foreign Assets Control has designated BitBank, a Tehran crypto exchange set up in 2024, alongwith Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, the software firm that built it.

“Today’s designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC’s reach,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

The OFAC alleged BitBank moved hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the branch of Iran’s armed forces that controls much of the country’s economy and is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.

Over the same period, Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority — the outfit Tehran uses to sell ships “safe passage” insurance, itself sanctioned on July 29 — began using BitBank to pass what it collected on to regime entities.

Spot XRP ETFs, Source: Spot XRP ETFs

Solana cut its target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds earlier Friday, blockchain data shows, making the network’s clock run nearly 17% faster without producing an equivalent increase in total transaction capacity.

A slot is the short window in which a designated validator can add a block. At 250 milliseconds, Solana will target four slots each second, up from about 3.3, giving wallets, exchanges and trading applications a more current view of the network.

Validators, or entities that supply computing power to maintain any blockchain network, will remain leaders for four consecutive slots. The faster clock therefore reduces each leader’s control window from 1.2 seconds to one second, handing transaction-ordering power to the next validator sooner.

That matters for applications such as oracle-powered markets and automated market makers, where stale prices or a few hundred milliseconds of uncertainty can affect whether a transaction executes as intended.

Users should see transaction updates sooner, while swaps have a smaller window in which the market can move before they reach the network. That can mean fewer failed trades and less chance of receiving a materially different price than expected.

Such an attack would not endanger mainnet funds. Any potential attack would only target “Sepolia,” where test ether has no meaningful cost, but could leave blocks without transaction payloads and derail the infrastructure testing needed before Glamsterdam reaches Ethereum itself.

What is Glamsterdam?

Glamsterdam is Ethereum’s next major upgrade, designed to fit more activity into each block without overwhelming the computers that verify it. Together with changes to gas pricing, the upgrade is intended to support a block gas limit of about 200 million, creating room for more payments and trades before users begin bidding fees higher.

The upgrade moves the relationship between validators and specialized block builders into Ethereum’s protocol. Builders assemble transaction blocks and compete to supply them. Once a validator accepts the winning bid, the builder is expected to reveal the underlying transactions.

And that process becomes easy to abuse on a free test network. A malicious operator can submit bids far above every legitimate builder, win repeatedly and then withhold the promised payload.

Developers said existing safeguards typically fall back to locally built blocks only after several payloads go missing.

Potuz added that clients also need to identify and reject individual builders so an attacker cannot return under a new identity and continue winning.

“Corporate treasuries were a big buyer through 2025, and they have stepped back,” Glassnode said. “Their average entry, the Corporate Treasury Cost Basis, sits at $80.5K, about 6% above spot, so the group as a whole is under water.”

Bitcoin topped that level recently but failed to keep gains.

Data source Bitcoin Treasuries now puts public-company holdings at about 1.22 million BTC across 181 listed firms. Strategy remains the dominant buyer and holder, with about 845,050 BTC. Tokyo-listed Metaplanet is among the next-largest corporate stacks. As a group, those treasuries are still underwater at current prices.

“A reclaim of $80.5K would put the treasuries back in profit and remove one layer of overhead supply; until then their entry is one more ceiling,” Glassnode added.

Other demand indicators paint a mixed picture

U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs have attracted billions of dollars since early August, signaling a rebound in institutional demand for the cryptocurrency. However, they remain roughly $1 billion short of turning positive on a year-to-date basis, according to data source SoSoValue.

The Coinbase premium indicator has remained mostly negative since May, aside from a brief move into positive territory on Sept. 5, according to data from CoinGlass. A negative reading means bitcoin is trading at a discount on Coinbase relative to prices on offshore exchange Binance, suggesting that U.S. buyers are showing weaker demand than traders elsewhere.