Congress gave agencies one year to write stablecoin rules. They missed it by four months and counting. The OCC expects a final rule by November, Tether still lacks a reciprocity determination, and the effective date keeps sliding.

Congress wrote a law. Regulators missed the deadline to implement it. Now they are writing the rules anyway, on their own timeline, with their own interpretations. The GENIUS Act was supposed to create certainty for stablecoin issuers by July 2026. Instead it created a gap: a signed statute without implementing regulations, leaving every issuer in the United States operating under a law whose specific requirements have not been defined.

The delay is not a failure of political will. The agencies agree on the law’s goals. The complexity of writing rules for an asset class that did not exist when most banking statutes were drafted consumed the full year and more. Reserve requirements that sound simple in legislation become complicated when applied to non bank issuers, foreign stablecoins, and tokens that cross multiple regulatory jurisdictions.

What the GENIUS Act requires

The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for United States Stablecoins Act defines who can issue payment stablecoins, what those tokens must be backed by, and how holders can redeem them. The law applies to any entity issuing a stablecoin to United States users, whether that entity is a national bank, a state chartered institution, or a non bank company seeking federal licensing. Every token in circulation must be backed dollar for dollar by United States dollars, Treasury bills, insured bank deposits, or Treasury repurchase agreements. The law does not permit backing by corporate bonds, money market funds with credit exposure, or other assets that carry default risk. This is stricter than what some issuers currently hold. Circle’s USDC reserves include Treasury bills and money market funds, but the GENIUS Act framework may require Circle to restructure the money market fund component depending on how the OCC defines “qualifying reserves” in the final rule. Issuers above $50 billion in market capitalization must submit to annual audits. All issuers must report weekly to their primary regulator and publish monthly disclosures. The disclosure requirements go beyond what any stablecoin issuer currently provides voluntarily, creating a transparency standard that matches or exceeds what the SEC requires of money market funds. The law takes effect on either January 18, 2027 (18 months after signing), or 120 days after final rules are issued, whichever comes first. Since no agency has finalized its rules, the 120 day clock has not started. If the OCC finalizes in November 2026, the effective date slides to approximately March 2027. If finalization extends into 2027, the entire timeline shifts further.

Why the deadline was missed

Congress set a one year implementation timeline because it expected the rules to be straightforward. They were not. Three agencies needed to coordinate on overlapping requirements, each operating under different statutory authorities and different rulemaking procedures. The OCC handles prudential standards for national banks and federally licensed non bank issuers. Its proposed rule covers reserve backing requirements, risk management frameworks, capital and liquidity standards, custody requirements, and regulatory examination procedures. The draft mirrors obligations placed on traditional depository institutions but adapts them for entities that hold crypto assets and issue tokens on public blockchains. FinCEN and OFAC handle anti money laundering and sanctions compliance under a separate rulemaking coordinated with the Treasury Department. Their proposed rule requires stablecoin issuers to implement Bank Secrecy Act programs, file suspicious activity reports, and screen transactions against OFAC sanctions lists. The complexity here involves applying traditional banking compliance frameworks to blockchain transactions, where pseudonymous addresses and cross chain bridges create monitoring challenges that do not exist in wire transfer systems. The FDIC and NCUA are advancing parallel proposals for state chartered banks and credit unions under their respective supervision. Each agency must align its rules with the OCC framework while accounting for institutional differences in capital requirements and supervisory approaches. The coordination problem explains the delay more than any single technical challenge. Each agency published its proposed rule on a different timeline, accepted comments on different schedules, and is finalizing at different speeds. The OCC leads. The FDIC follows. FinCEN’s AML rules may not finalize until early 2027. The result is a staggered implementation where different requirements take effect at different times, creating compliance uncertainty that the law was designed to eliminate. The staggering creates a specific operational problem. A stablecoin issuer that receives its federal license under the OCC rule may begin operations while the FinCEN AML rule is still in proposed form. That issuer must decide whether to build its compliance program against the proposed AML rule, which may change in the final version, or wait until both rules are final and operate with a compressed implementation window. Neither option is attractive, and both carry risk that a simultaneous finalization would have avoided. The OCC has publicly acknowledged the issue. Acting Comptroller Michael Hsu stated the agency is “very intent on moving quickly and getting a final rule out by November so that we will be able to start processing applications within the new year.” The explicit commitment to processing applications by January 2027 is more operationally meaningful than the November finalization date alone, because it signals that the OCC will not wait for FinCEN to finish before beginning to license issuers. The practical effect is a two track system where prudential licensing proceeds ahead of AML rule finalization.

The Tether problem

Tether presents the most consequential unresolved question in the GENIUS Act implementation. USDT is the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, with roughly $140 billion in circulation as of August 2026. Tether Limited is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and has never been licensed as a financial institution in the United States. The GENIUS Act creates a foreign issuer pathway that allows non United States companies to serve American businesses, but only if the Treasury Department issues a “reciprocity determination” confirming that the issuer’s home jurisdiction provides comparable regulatory oversight. As of August 2026, that determination has not been issued for any jurisdiction, including the BVI. Without a reciprocity determination, Tether cannot legally offer USDT to United States businesses once the GENIUS Act takes effect. The practical enforcement of that prohibition is complex because USDT trades on global markets accessible to anyone with an internet connection, but the legal prohibition would prevent United States exchanges, custodians, and financial institutions from supporting USDT directly. Tether has responded with two strategies. First, it announced plans to register USDT under the foreign issuer pathway, which requires the reciprocity determination it does not yet have. Second, it launched USAT, a new United States focused stablecoin designed for GENIUS Act compliance from day one, with reserves held in Treasury bills at a United States custodian. The dual strategy hedges against both outcomes: reciprocity granted (USDT stays) or reciprocity denied (USAT replaces it for US markets). The market has noticed. USDT’s share of United States exchange trading volume has declined from 72 percent in January 2026 to approximately 64 percent in August, while USDC’s share has grown from 18 percent to 26 percent over the same period. The shift is gradual but directional, and the GENIUS Act timeline is the primary driver. The timeline matters because digital asset service providers have until July 2028, three years after the law’s signing, before they are prohibited from offering non compliant stablecoins. That grace period gives Tether time but creates a two class market where compliant stablecoins like USDC and RLUSD operate under full regulatory oversight while USDT continues serving United States users under the transitional provision.

Who is already compliant

Circle’s USDC is the closest to full compliance. The company holds reserves primarily in Treasury bills and is regulated as a money transmitter in multiple states. The GENIUS Act framework may require Circle to restructure its reserve portfolio to eliminate any money market fund exposure that does not meet the “qualifying reserves” definition, but the adjustment is incremental rather than structural. Ripple’s RLUSD, which crossed $2 billion in market capitalization during August 2026, is designed for GENIUS Act compliance. Its reserves are held in United States denominated assets with a regulated custodian. RLUSD’s growth on the XRP Ledger has positioned it as the institutional stablecoin for cross border settlement, with nearly $1 billion of supply on XRPL directly. PayPal’s PYUSD, issued through Paxos Trust, operates under New York Department of Financial Services oversight and holds reserves in Treasury bills and cash deposits. The transition to GENIUS Act compliance involves obtaining federal licensing on top of existing state authorization, a process that requires additional capital and compliance infrastructure but no fundamental restructuring. The common thread is that issuers who designed their products with regulatory compliance in mind face incremental adjustments. Issuers who designed for speed and market share face structural changes or market exit. The GENIUS Act is a filter, and the compliance cost is the price of remaining in the United States market.

The institutional pipeline waiting on final rules

The delay in finalization has created a bottleneck for institutional products that depend on regulatory certainty. The Clearing House tokenized deposit network, which includes JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi, and Wells Fargo, is targeting a launch in the first half of 2027. That timeline assumes GENIUS Act rules are final and the effective date is known. If finalization slips past November, the launch date slips with it. FASB’s August 18 proposal to treat qualifying stablecoins as cash equivalents on corporate balance sheets is directly connected to the GENIUS Act timeline. The accounting treatment requires stablecoins to carry an on demand redemption right and segregated one to one reserves, requirements that overlap almost exactly with the GENIUS Act framework. If both the GENIUS Act rules and the FASB standard finalize on schedule, corporate treasurers will have simultaneous regulatory certainty and accounting clarity for holding stablecoins. If either slips, the institutional adoption timeline extends. The OUSD revenue sharing stablecoin consortium, which includes Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and BlackRock among its 140 plus partners, has positioned itself to capitalize on this convergence. A stablecoin that qualifies as a cash equivalent under FASB and meets GENIUS Act reserve requirements becomes functionally equivalent to a Treasury bill on a corporate balance sheet, with the added benefit of programmable settlement on blockchain rails. The pipeline is real and the capital is committed. What is missing is the final rule that converts proposed requirements into enforceable standards. Every month of delay is a month of stalled product launches, deferred treasury allocations, and competitive advantage flowing to jurisdictions where the rules are already final.

Solana price traded near $97.50 on Aug. 26 after gaining about 14% over seven days, as improving risk appetite, short liquidations, ETF inflows, and network developments pushed SOL above several resistance levels.

Solana price breaks out but stalls below $100

Solana (SOL) price rose from an Aug. 20 opening price of $85.37 to an intraday high above $102.59 on Aug. 25. The move represented an increase of more than 20% at its peak, although profit-taking later pulled SOL back toward $97.50.

SOL was still up about 14% over the seven-day period at the time of writing. The rally allowed the token to break above the $87.50 and $93.75 Murrey Math levels, both of which had previously acted as important resistance zones.

The daily chart shows that the price briefly crossed the $100 “ultimate resistance” level before sellers forced it lower. SOL also tested the $102–$103 area twice, but buyers were unable to secure a daily close above that range.

The pullback has not yet reversed the broader breakout. Solana remains above $93.75, while its recent candles show buyers returning whenever the price approaches $95.

However, the daily Relative Strength Index has climbed to 79.32, well above the commonly used overbought threshold of 70. Its moving average stands at 68.71, confirming that momentum accelerated rapidly during the latest rally.

An overbought RSI does not automatically signal an immediate decline, but it shows that SOL may need to consolidate before attempting another sustained move above $100.

Macro shift and short squeeze drive the rally

Solana’s advance occurred alongside a broader crypto market rally after liquidity actions by the U.S. Treasury pushed government bond yields lower and weakened the U.S. dollar.

Lower yields reduced pressure on risk assets and forced traders who had positioned for another market decline to close bearish bets. More than $4 billion in crypto short positions were reportedly liquidated over several days, creating forced buying across major digital assets.

Solana benefited from that market-wide squeeze because of its higher volatility relative to Bitcoin. Once SOL broke through the upper-$80 range, short covering and momentum buying helped carry the token through the psychological $100 barrier.

Improving U.S. regulatory expectations added to the change in sentiment. Investors responded to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed crypto framework and renewed congressional attention on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.

Solana-specific developments also supported the move. The network community opened voting on a Resource Fee Proposal that would separate inclusion fees from compute resource fees and burn the latter in full.

Supporters expect the proposal to connect periods of high network use with higher SOL burns, although its final effect on supply would depend on adoption and future activity.

Institutional demand also strengthened during the week. Spot Solana exchange-traded funds recorded approximately $65.74 million in net inflows so far this week, their highest weekly inflows in 2026.

Network activity provided another source of support after Solana overtook Base in daily x402 micropayment transactions. Ramp’s integration of AI-agent wallet support on Solana also expanded the network’s potential role in automated payments.

4-hour chart shows buyers defending $96.67

Solana’s 4-hour Bollinger Bands show the price consolidating after a sharp expansion in volatility. SOL traded at $97.53, above the 20-period middle band at $96.67.

Remaining above the middle band keeps the short-term structure tilted toward buyers. The upper band at $101.04 represents the immediate technical barrier, closely matching the psychological $100 level and the recent rejection zone.

A 4-hour close above $101.04 could strengthen the case for another test of $102.59–$103.08. Clearing that area would leave $106.25, the next Murrey Math overshoot level, as a possible upside target.

The Chaikin Money Flow indicator stood at 0.14 on the 4-hour chart. A reading above zero suggests that buying pressure continues to exceed selling pressure despite SOL’s pullback from its weekly high.

The lower Bollinger Band at $92.30 forms the main short-term downside level. A break below the middle band could initially expose $93.75, followed by $92.30.

The daily chart places the next stronger support at $87.50. Losing that level would weaken the breakout and reopen the possibility of a move toward $81.25, which marked the top of SOL’s previous trading range.

Liquidation heatmap points to liquidity near $99

CoinGlass’ 24-hour liquidation heatmap shows dense leveraged positions immediately above Solana’s current price.

The strongest nearby concentration appears around $98.90–$99.10, with additional liquidity visible near $99.50 and $100. Such clusters can attract price because a move into them forces leveraged short positions to close.

If SOL crosses $99, liquidations could help accelerate another push toward $100–$103. However, the previous rejection above $102 shows that sellers are also active within that range.

Liquidity is visible below the market near $96, $95, and $94. A failure to break through the overhead cluster could therefore send SOL back toward lower-leveraged positions.

The heatmap supports a two-sided short-term setup: a break above $99 could generate another squeeze, while a rejection leaves $96 and $94 exposed.

Analysts split on $120 rally and $88 correction

Pseudonymous trader Altcoin Sherpa expects Solana’s advance to continue if conditions across the wider crypto market remain supportive.

“This goes to $120+ in the coming weeks as long as BTC is still stable/strong. Inflation going down, risk conditions going up, etc.”

A move to $120 from $97.50 would represent an increase of about 23%. Before reaching that target, SOL would need to clear resistance at $100, $103.08, $106.25, and $112.50.

Crypto analyst Haris offered a more cautious assessment, describing the current structure as a possible bull trap because of repeated resistance between $98 and $102.

“Price bounced hard, but $98–$102 is still rejecting. If SOL comes back there and gets rejected again, I will open a short.”

Haris identified $92 as the first downside target. According to the analyst, failure to hold that level could lead to a deeper decline toward $80–$88.

Solana’s immediate direction therefore depends on whether buyers can turn $100–$103 into support. Holding above $96.67 preserves the short-term bullish structure, while a drop through $92.30 would favor a broader retest of the breakout.

Digital asset infrastructure provider Taurus has connected its tokenization and custody platforms to Swift’s blockchain-based shared ledger, giving financial institutions a route to use bank-issued tokenized deposits for round-the-clock cross-border payments.

Taurus said Wednesday that the integration connects Swift smart contracts with Taurus-CAPITAL and Taurus-PROTECT on clients’ permissioned blockchain infrastructure, with the first client connections expected within days and initial distributed ledger transactions planned within weeks.

Existing Taurus clients can add the connection to infrastructure already running in production, while banks without their own blockchain systems can use managed Hyperledger Besu infrastructure and Ethereum Virtual Machine connectivity supplied by Taurus. The company also supports institutions that already operate Besu or another EVM-compatible system by connecting its tokenization and wallet tools to their existing nodes.

Taurus gives banks a route into Swift’s tokenized deposit ledger

Under the integration, Taurus-PROTECT provides programmable wallet and key-management functions, including governance rules, approval workflows and API-based automation. Taurus-CAPITAL handles the issuance and management of bank-issued tokenized money while allowing deposits to remain on the issuing bank’s balance sheet.

For banks that do not already operate blockchain infrastructure, Taurus said it can deploy and manage the permissioned Hyperledger Besu environment required to connect with Swift’s system. Existing Taurus customers can have their infrastructure extended for ledger connectivity within a matter of days.

The arrangement gives financial institutions another way to access a network that Swift moved into initial deployment in July after about nine months of development. As crypto.news previously reported, 17 banks across six continents were preparing to test tokenized deposit payments when the ledger entered its first controlled rollout on July 9. Participants included HSBC, Citi, BNP Paribas, UBS, ANZ, DBS and Standard Chartered.

More than 40 financial institutions were involved in designing the system, according to Taurus, while Swift’s existing network connects more than 11,500 financial institutions and companies across more than 200 markets.

Taurus co-founder and managing partner Lamine Brahimi said financial institutions need digital asset infrastructure that can work securely with systems they already operate. He said the Swift connectivity allows banks to extend their digital asset capabilities into tokenized deposits and cross-border payments while retaining control over their infrastructure.

Swift’s ledger keeps tokenized deposits on bank balance sheets

Swift’s shared ledger is designed as an orchestration layer between participating institutions, coordinating transfers of tokenized deposits before final settlement takes place through established payment arrangements.

Bank-issued deposits remain on each institution’s own ledger, while Swift coordinates their movement between participants. Payments can operate overnight and on weekends, extending availability beyond the overlapping business hours that can restrict traditional cross-border transfers.

Final settlement still takes place through existing mechanisms, including real-time gross settlement systems, meaning participating banks do not need to replace their current settlement arrangements to use the blockchain-based layer.

A July tokenized deposit explainer detailed how such instruments represent commercial bank deposits on a blockchain while retaining a one-to-one relationship with money held on the issuing bank’s balance sheet. The structure differs from stablecoins because the underlying money remains within the commercial banking system and under the banking regulatory framework.

Swift’s ledger applies that model across multiple institutions. Each participating bank can issue or operate its own tokenized deposits, while the shared infrastructure provides a common layer for coordinating payments between otherwise separate systems.

The model has already moved past its initial development stage. Standard Chartered and HSBC have completed the ledger’s first live cross-border transaction, connecting separate tokenized deposit systems through Swift’s infrastructure.

Taurus expands infrastructure already used by financial institutions

The Swift connection adds another institutional function to Taurus’ digital asset stack, which already combines custody, tokenization, blockchain connectivity and staking services for financial institutions.

During June, Taurus added institutional staking through an integration with P2P.org. The arrangement gave banks using Taurus-PROTECT access to validator infrastructure while allowing them to keep custody and control of their assets within existing workflows.

Ethereum staking was included at launch, while connectivity also covered proof-of-stake networks including Solana, Polkadot, Cosmos, NEAR, Cardano and Tezos. P2P.org reported more than $10 billion in delegated assets across over 50 networks at the time.

Taurus has said its institutional client base includes State Street, Deutsche Bank, Santander and CACEIS. The company also opened a New York office in October 2025 as it expanded its presence in the U.S. market.

Its relationship with Deutsche Bank extends into the German lender’s digital asset plans. Deutsche Bank backed Taurus in a $65 million funding round and has continued working with the Swiss company as part of its institutional crypto custody infrastructure.

Taurus has also built its products across multiple blockchain environments. Taurus-CAPITAL was expanded to Solana in February 2025, allowing banks and financial institutions to issue programmable tokenized assets while Taurus-PROTECT provided custody and staking support.

Banks continue testing tokenized financial infrastructure

Swift’s ledger is entering use as major financial institutions continue experimenting with blockchain-based deposits, securities, and settlement systems.

HSBC completed its first blockchain issuance of a digitally native structured product in July, using tokenized U.S. dollar-denominated notes through a private placement for institutional investors in Hong Kong. The HSBC tokenization pilot used Marketnode to issue the notes on blockchain and manage digital payment flows between the bank and the investor.

Swift’s July rollout placed tokenized deposits specifically at the payment layer. The system was developed to preserve existing compliance, credit, risk, and control standards while making cross-border payments available around the clock, including outside normal banking hours.

Taurus now offers three routes into that infrastructure. Banks without Besu infrastructure can use a managed service operated by Taurus, institutions with their own compatible nodes can connect those systems directly, and existing Taurus-PROTECT customers can extend infrastructure already in production.

The company said Swift smart contracts are integrated with its custody and tokenization products across those configurations, with programmable wallets and compliance controls running above the underlying blockchain infrastructure.

For institutions already using Taurus, connectivity can be established within days. The company expects the first clients to connect shortly, followed by the first DLT transactions using its Swift ledger integration within weeks.

DeFi Development Corp. has launched State of Solana, a public real-time research platform that tracks Solana market, network, staking, validator, yield and ecosystem data through a single dashboard.

According to a Wednesday press release from the Nasdaq-listed company, State of Solana was built to give investors, builders and ecosystem participants access to network-level data alongside SOL price information, with more datasets, visualizations and research tools planned over time.

The platform currently tracks SOL returns across several periods, including 24 hours, three months, year to date, one year and five years. It also provides interactive price history, daily and year-to-date network snapshots, cross-chain comparisons and yield opportunities available across Solana.

Live network information includes epoch progress, slot times, block height and throughput, while users can also monitor current and historical transactions per second. Staking yield, inflation, validator distribution, the Nakamoto coefficient, network uptime and upcoming Solana upgrades are included in the dashboard.

DeFi Development Chief Marketing Officer Pete Humiston said the company’s case for Solana goes beyond the market value of SOL.

“We have spent a lot of time explaining why we believe Solana is one of the most important networks in crypto, but that thesis extends far beyond the price of SOL,” Humiston said.

“State of Solana gives investors and ecosystem participants a way to see the underlying data for themselves,” he added.

State of Solana tracks network activity beyond SOL price

DeFi Development said the platform will continue to expand with more datasets, visualizations, research tools and ecosystem information.

Network activity is particularly relevant to the company because its Solana strategy covers more than holding the token on its balance sheet. DeFi Development also operates validator infrastructure, stakes SOL and deploys part of its treasury across onchain protocols.

Recent network data has provided additional context for that strategy. A May Solana network report covered by crypto.news showed that Solana generated $342.2 million in Chain GDP during the first quarter of 2026, according to Messari.

PumpFun remained the network’s largest revenue-generating application during the quarter with $124.7 million in revenue. Solana’s real-world asset market capitalization also increased 43% quarter over quarter to $2.01 billion.

Real economic value, a measure of transaction fees and maximum extractable value tips paid to validators, fell 1% during the quarter to $89.5 million. Messari ranked Solana second among blockchain networks by the metric, behind Hyperliquid.

Development work on Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade was also progressing during the period. In May, Anza said the new consensus system had entered community validator testing, with the proposed design targeting transaction finality of roughly 150 milliseconds.

DeFi Development holds more than 2.29 million SOL

DeFi Development held 2,294,576 SOL and SOL equivalents as of Aug. 10, according to company figures cited in the announcement. At current prices, the holdings are worth about $208 million.

The company has built the position since adopting a treasury strategy centered on accumulating and compounding SOL, while management has used SOL per share as one of its main measurements for assessing the program.

During a May financial update, DeFi Development reported fully converted SOL per share of 0.0670 as of May 13, up 108% from 0.0322 a year earlier.

Fully converted shares outstanding stood at about 34.2 million at the time, while the company kept its December 2028 target of reaching 1.0 SOL per fully converted share.

Validator operations also remain part of the treasury structure. DeFi Development said in May that its validators were producing about a 7.5% yield, compared with roughly 3.9% from staking SOL on Coinbase.

More than 25% of the company’s treasury had also been deployed across onchain protocols at the time.

Chief Executive Joseph Onorati said during the May update that the company did not view its strategy as a direct copy of the corporate Bitcoin treasury model.

“The MSTR playbook is a starting point, not a ceiling,” Onorati said, adding that “SOL is a different asset than BTC.”

Alongside its own validators, DeFi Development has used validator partnerships and its Treasury Accelerator program as part of its Solana strategy.

Equity sales have funded further SOL purchases

Capital raising has supported much of DeFi Development’s SOL accumulation.

The company established a $200 million equity program in May, giving it the ability to sell common shares through an at-the-market offering.

DeFi Development said proceeds from the program would primarily be used to support its Solana treasury strategy. Management also said it planned to issue shares when doing so increased SOL per share for existing shareholders.

The company has used that metric to assess whether equity financing improves the amount of SOL backing each fully converted share.

Its treasury growth has occurred while reported earnings remain heavily affected by changes in digital asset valuations.

Unaudited first-quarter financial results released in May showed total revenue of $2.66 million, up from $287,000 during the same quarter a year earlier.

Digital asset treasury revenue accounted for $2.40 million of that total.

Net loss widened to $83.4 million from $778,000 a year earlier as lower digital asset valuations affected the company’s holdings. Diluted earnings per share came to negative $3.18, compared with negative $0.08 during the same period in 2025.

During the same update, DeFi Development said it had repurchased about $4.4 million of convertible notes due in July 2030 for approximately $2.6 million in cash, representing a 41% discount to par.

Solana treasury companies have continued accumulating SOL

Other publicly traded companies have also built large Solana positions, with Forward Industries holding one of the largest corporate SOL treasuries.

Forward Industries said in July that it had expanded its treasury by purchasing more than 500,000 SOL during its fiscal third quarter.

The purchases took its holdings to 7.55 million SOL as of June 30. Forward said the newly acquired tokens had been purchased at an average price of about $79 per SOL during the quarter.

SOL per fully diluted share increased to 0.0729 from 0.0669 at the end of the previous quarter, according to the company.

A month earlier, Forward had transferred 455,784 SOL worth about $31.9 million to Coinbase Prime after roughly one month of wallet inactivity.

Forward did not say the transfer represented a sale. Coinbase Prime can be used by institutional clients for custody, liquidity management, collateral and trading.

The company began its Solana treasury strategy in September 2025 after receiving backing from investors and partners including Galaxy Digital, Jump Crypto and Multicoin Capital.

Forward has also used staking and validator operations to generate income from its holdings. Its treasury strategy covers buying, holding, staking, trading and investing in SOL-related assets and projects.

DeFi Development shares currently trade near $4.50, giving the company a market capitalization of about $140 million. DFDV has fallen roughly 16% year to date and more than 70% over the past 12 months.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has sent a proposed overhaul of crypto custody rules for investment advisers and investment companies to the White House for review.

The White House Office of Management and Budget received the proposal on Aug. 25, placing the planned rule changes under executive review before the SEC can release the full text and seek a commission vote.

The proposal would clarify how investment advisers and investment companies can hold crypto assets for clients while complying with existing SEC custody requirements. The agency said firms have raised questions about how digital assets can be held under rules written before crypto became part of regulated investment products and advisory portfolios.

Alongside the provisions covering digital assets, the SEC is considering removing some existing custody requirements it considers outdated because of changes in financial markets and current trading and asset-holding practices.

Full details of the proposal will remain unavailable until the Office of Management and Budget completes its review. Once the proposal is returned to the SEC, potentially with revisions, the commission’s three current Republican members would vote on whether to publish it for public comment.

SEC crypto custody rule would modernize existing requirements

The proposed amendments would apply to rules under both the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and the Investment Company Act of 1940, according to the SEC’s regulatory agenda.

Under the existing investment adviser custody framework, registered advisers with custody of client funds or securities generally must keep the assets with a qualified custodian unless an exception applies. Crypto has raised additional questions over how those requirements work when ownership and control can depend on private keys and blockchain-based custody systems.

The SEC said its planned rule would clarify the custody framework for crypto assets while making other changes to regulations covering advisory client and fund assets. Some existing requirements could also be eliminated where the agency determines that changes in markets and current asset-holding practices have made them unnecessary.

The commission has already considered a different approach to the issue. In June 2025, crypto.news reported that the SEC had withdrawn its safeguarding proposal introduced during former Chair Gary Gensler’s tenure.

First proposed in March 2023, the Safeguarding Advisory Client Assets rule would have expanded custody requirements for registered investment advisers to cover a larger range of client assets, including cryptocurrencies. It would also have required those assets to be maintained with qualified custodians in most circumstances.

Crypto custody providers faced uncertainty under the plan because many did not meet the proposed definition of a qualified custodian. Industry participants had warned that the requirements could leave investment advisers with fewer options for holding digital assets on behalf of clients.

When the SEC withdrew the safeguarding proposal and several other unfinished Biden-era rules in June 2025, the agency said any future regulatory action in the affected areas would require a new proposal.

The custody amendments now moving through the White House review process constitute a separate rulemaking effort under Chair Paul Atkins. Specific requirements covering qualified custodians, custody arrangements and the treatment of crypto assets will not be known until the SEC publishes the proposal.

Atkins has put crypto rules on the SEC agenda

Custody is one of several digital asset issues the SEC has moved into formal rulemaking under Atkins.

In July, the commission placed three crypto rule proposals on its 2026 regulatory agenda, covering crypto assets, broker-dealers and market structure.

One proposal would consider exemptions and safe harbors for crypto assets, while another would examine how broker-dealer rules should apply to companies dealing with digital assets. A separate market structure proposal covers the trading of crypto assets through alternative trading systems and national securities exchanges.

The agenda placed the projects within a regulatory program running alongside congressional work on digital asset legislation. Atkins has said the SEC can address issues falling within its existing statutory powers while lawmakers work on legislation covering areas that require congressional action.

Crypto also received a dedicated place in the SEC’s 2026 to 2030 strategy released in June. The draft plan identified digital assets, blockchain infrastructure and tokenized financial products among areas the agency intends to address under its regulatory mandate.

The plan also called for clearer treatment of digital assets under federal securities laws and continued coordination between the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Congress has separately been considering legislation that would formally divide responsibilities between the two regulators.

Regulatory work has already moved beyond planning in some areas. The SEC has issued guidance and pursued proposed rules covering crypto asset classifications and transactions while considering additional rules governing issuance, custody and trading.

Custody proposal moves forward as Congress debates market structure

The custody proposal reached the White House while the Senate continues work on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, legislation designed to establish a statutory structure for U.S. crypto markets.

The House passed its version of the CLARITY Act in 2025, while Senate lawmakers have spent 2026 negotiating their approach to issues including the division of authority between the SEC and CFTC.

Atkins has said the SEC does not need to stop all crypto rulemaking while the legislation remains unresolved. In July, the chairman said the commission was prepared to use its existing powers if Congress failed to finish the market structure bill.

As Atkins discussed the CLARITY Act, he said the SEC was “ready, willing and able” to act in areas under its authority while maintaining that legislation would provide a more durable framework for issues requiring action from Congress.

Certain parts of crypto regulation cannot be settled by the SEC alone. Giving the CFTC authority over digital commodity spot markets, for example, requires legislation because the SEC cannot grant another federal regulator jurisdiction through its own rules.

Rules covering registered investment advisers and investment companies fall directly within the SEC’s existing responsibilities. The custody proposal can therefore move through the agency’s rulemaking process separately from congressional negotiations over market structure legislation.

White House review comes before public comment

The Office of Management and Budget must complete its review before the custody proposal can return to the SEC for the next stage of the process.

Once returned, commissioners would vote on whether to issue the proposal. The SEC currently has three Republican commissioners, and approval would make the full text available to the public for the first time.

A proposed rule would then normally remain open for public comment for at least 60 days, allowing investment advisers, investment companies, custodians, crypto firms and other interested parties to submit responses.

SEC staff would review those comments and could change parts of the proposal before preparing a final version. Any completed rule would then have to return to the commission for another vote before it could take effect.

The process follows the commission’s decision to discard several unfinished crypto-related proposals inherited from the previous administration and restart rulemaking where it wants to pursue new requirements.

Among the measures withdrawn in 2025 was an attempt to expand the definition of securities exchanges, alongside the safeguarding proposal covering investment advisers. The SEC said at the time that new regulatory action in the abandoned areas would begin through fresh proposals instead of continuing the earlier proceedings.

The custody proposal is classified as economically significant on the federal regulatory agenda. The SEC said it would evaluate the expected costs, benefits, and other economic effects while developing the rule, with its provisions set to address both advisory client assets and assets held by investment companies.

Blockstream CEO Adam Back may have long played down the immediacy of quantum threats, but the company he leads is moving forward with concrete work on how Bitcoin could upgrade if sufficiently powerful quantum computers ever become a practical reality. That progress just received a fresh milestone: a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) for the company’s experimental post-quantum signature scheme, SHRINCS, was published on the project’s GitHub repository.

The development matters because Bitcoin’s current elliptic-curve signature system (used for spending authorization) is widely understood to be vulnerable to the key-recovery capabilities of future quantum machines. While the exact timeline remains debated, cryptographers agree the worst-case scenario would allow attackers to derive private keys from public keys and steal funds—making migration planning an industry priority rather than a reactive scramble.

Key takeaways

• Blockstream published a BIP for SHRINCS, positioning it as an actionable candidate for Bitcoin’s post-quantum signature upgrade path.
• SHRINCS is designed to be “Bitcoin-native” and smaller than many NIST-aligned post-quantum signature alternatives, helping it fit Bitcoin’s block and witness constraints.
• The proposal’s approach is more “stateful,” which can reduce on-chain size but introduces wallet/device recovery and interoperability risks.
• Blockstream’s ongoing research explores complementary ideas—like signature-size reduction and potential ZK proof aggregation—while keeping governance and deployment decisions separate.

From quantum skepticism to BIP-level implementation

Adam Back has been associated with a cautious stance toward quantum timelines—arguing in earlier comments that the threat may not materialize for decades. Yet, Blockstream’s work shows how even a “farther away” threat can justify engineering now: building, testing, and documenting cryptographic changes before the political and technical window closes.

Blockstream Research has previously demonstrated SHRINCS as an experimental post-quantum signature scheme operating in production on Liquid, a Bitcoin sidechain. The new BIP—published earlier today in the SHRINCS repository—takes that experimental work and frames it explicitly for Bitcoin improvement discussions.

Jonas Nick, a Blockstream Research researcher, characterized the BIP as “the first concrete proposal” for a post-quantum signature scheme built specifically around Bitcoin’s needs. He also cautioned that SHRINCS is not presented as Bitcoin’s “final” signature design and is not optimal on every dimension—an important distinction for investors and builders trying to evaluate how close a proposal is to consensus-level readiness.

Why signature size is the core Bitcoin constraint

In most post-quantum signature designs, public parameters and signature payloads are substantially larger than Bitcoin’s current elliptic-curve signatures. According to the article’s cited comparison, NIST-endorsed post-quantum hash- and lattice-based signature schemes are between 38 and 123 times larger than Bitcoin’s ECDSA and Schnorr signatures. The practical consequence is straightforward: larger signatures mean more data per transaction, which can reduce throughput.

The same reporting notes that deploying those larger NIST-style signatures directly in Bitcoin could push performance down to a fraction of a transaction per second. Ethereum’s post-quantum team, as referenced in the article, has discussed addressing the blockspace problem by aggregating signatures using a small zero-knowledge proof per block—an approach that, if feasible, can reduce on-chain footprint. Bitcoin, however, would face a different social and technical hurdle: adding ZK proof aggregation would represent a major change to the system’s validation and activation politics.

Blockstream’s alternative is to shrink the signature payload itself. The approach discussed here aims to reduce Bitcoin-relevant signature sizes by about 13.23 times compared with baseline NIST-aligned hash-based post-quantum signatures, while retaining enough compatibility with Bitcoin’s operational constraints to keep the upgrade conversation realistic.

What SHRINCS targets—and what trade-offs it makes

The SHRINCS design was unveiled by Blockstream researchers in December 2025, with an opcode proposal published in May. It is a hash-based post-quantum signature scheme built to work within Bitcoin’s signature-size realities. The scheme is reported as having a minimum size of 548 bytes plus a 48-byte public key, with maximum sizes that can reach 4,619 bytes.

A key selling point is “Bitcoin-native” construction: one cited explainer describes the scheme as real code signing real transactions on Liquid mainnet and as an attempt to address post-quantum migration without breaking Bitcoin’s block economics. That said, it remains early-stage research. The article references a warning embedded in the BIP text that a formal security proof is “TODO,” indicating the cryptography is promising but not yet fully validated at the level Bitcoin-style upgrades normally demand.

Even with SHRINCS’s improvements, the scheme is still described as significantly larger than current Bitcoin signatures—about nine times larger than Schnorr signatures (64 bytes). The report also emphasizes that the impact is not as simple as a “9x blocksize increase,” because Bitcoin’s Segregated Witness changes how signature bytes are accounted for in block weight.

Where SHRINCS makes a more controversial engineering choice is in its state management. Traditional stateless designs can store everything required to verify and update signatures in the public structure, but they often require large signature artifacts. The article describes SHRINCS as intentionally reducing those artifacts by using one-time keys and keeping track of “used keys” on the device—meaning the scheme behaves in a stateful way.

This can affect users in concrete ways. Each time a signature is used, it adds roughly 16 bytes to the signature. More importantly, if a device is lost, the fallback mechanism can require a very large transaction (the article cites about 5,777 bytes) to recover. Additionally, the BIP warning cited in the article notes that different SHRINCS implementations may not interoperate safely if they use incompatible stateless-component settings—raising the risk of lost funds during key import.

That tension—smaller signatures in exchange for operational fragility—is likely to shape governance debates more than raw cryptographic novelty. Bitcoin’s consensus rules are permanent maintenance obligations, and wallet-side assumptions can become user failure modes.

Iterating for deployment: hardware wallets, SHRIMPS, and options for aggregation

Blockstream says it has continued refining SHRINCS through 2026 and recently demonstrated that SHRINCS and other post-quantum signature schemes can run on common hardware wallets. That is not a trivial detail: even well-designed cryptography can stall adoption if it cannot fit the performance and memory constraints of real wallet environments.

The article also references work on a companion backup/derivation concept. Earlier in March, Blockstream introduced “SHRIMPS” to support signing by backup devices initialized from the same seed in a way that aligns with SHRINCS signing behavior. In the BIP update described here, the SHRIMPS naming is dropped and the scheme is incorporated as a built-in stateless path under the same 48-byte public key, optimized with a non-standard parameter set to be about 26% smaller.

Beyond hash-based signatures, Blockstream’s research also experiments with lattice-based signature approaches, which are often smaller but described as less proven and less reliable than hash-based designs in the current literature. The article further notes Blockstream’s consideration of zero-knowledge proof aggregation. According to its estimates, pairing ZK aggregation with SHRINCS could potentially double Bitcoin’s speed in this modeled scenario.

Notably, Blockstream is reported to have separated signature-choice work from the separate, more contentious questions of block size increases and ZK aggregation. That decision reflects a pragmatic recognition: pairing multiple disruptive changes at once can make it harder to build consensus. If Bitcoin is to migrate to post-quantum security, the pathway likely needs modular governance milestones rather than one all-at-once overhaul.

As one explained perspective cited here puts it, the “binding constraint” may not be cryptography alone but governance—how Bitcoin chooses among a growing menu of engineering options (including references to other proposals like BIP-360, BIP-361, and STARKs) before an upgrade clock runs out.

For readers, the next signal to watch is whether the SHRINCS BIP gains traction in the broader Bitcoin development and review ecosystem—particularly around its stateful design risks, key recovery/fallback behavior, and interoperability guarantees between wallet implementations. The proposal’s publication is a meaningful step from experimentation toward deployment planning, but the hard part will be convincing the network that the trade-offs are acceptable and the security path is complete enough for consensus.

Pump.fun has added trading for any HyperEVM token through USDC as Hyperliquid L1 records about $503 million in decentralized exchange volume over 24 hours.

Pump.fun said on Aug. 26 that its application now supports tokens issued on HyperEVM, giving users a new route to buy and sell the assets with USDC.

The company described itself as the first application to introduce HyperEVM assets into this type of trading interface. Pump.fun did not provide independent evidence supporting the claim, which could not be verified at the time of publication.

Alongside token swaps, users can earn rewards when people trade through their referral links. Pump.fun also described transaction costs as close to zero, although its announcement did not publish an exact fee schedule or explain whether network gas charges are included.

At least one HyperEVM asset is already visible through the application. Pump.fun’s market page for EGG states that users can trade the token on Hyperliquid through Pump, confirming that the service was active when the page was checked.

Pump.fun has expanded beyond its Solana token market

Created as a Solana-based token launchpad, Pump.fun allows users to issue and trade tokens without setting up a conventional liquidity pool at launch. Its application became closely associated with meme coins, many of which trade on an automated bonding curve before moving to an external decentralized exchange.

HyperEVM support adds assets from another blockchain environment to the same interface. The announcement refers only to trading existing HyperEVM tokens and does not say whether users will be able to create HyperEVM assets through Pump.fun.

Trading support also extends Pump.fun’s business beyond the Solana market, which produced most of its activity and fee income. As crypto.news reported on Aug. 10, the platform generated $10.03 million in fees during the previous seven-day reporting period as trading volume reached $2.97 billion.

During that period, Pump.fun used $5.02 million to buy and burn approximately 2.15 billion PUMP tokens. The company said it directs 50% of revenue to automated repurchases and burns through a locked smart contract, with the mechanism having removed the equivalent of 15.7% of the token’s original supply by Aug. 10.

The platform’s token economics have also faced supply pressure. On-chain tracking in July showed 57.279 billion PUMP, worth approximately $86.49 million at the time, moving to 121 team and investor wallets after a one-year lockup ended. The transfers began a three-year vesting period, although movements to recipient wallets did not establish that the tokens had been sold.

HyperEVM connects applications with Hyperliquid liquidity

According to Hyperliquid’s documentation, HyperEVM is the Ethereum-compatible smart-contract environment built into the Hyperliquid blockchain. It is not a separate chain and shares the network with HyperCore, the system that handles Hyperliquid’s spot and perpetual order books.

Because HyperEVM supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine, developers can deploy applications written for Ethereum-compatible networks. HYPE serves as the gas token for transactions, while precompiled contracts and other network tools allow applications to read information from HyperCore.

Spot assets can also move between HyperCore and HyperEVM through Hyperliquid’s transfer system. Once deposited into the smart-contract environment, the assets can interact with decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, and other applications built on HyperEVM.

For users entering through Hyperliquid, the network’s onboarding documentation says they can buy HYPE with USDC and then transfer the HYPE from HyperCore to HyperEVM to cover gas costs. Pump.fun has not explained whether its interface handles that process automatically or whether users must maintain HYPE separately.

HyperEVM initially reached the testnet in February 2025, when Hyperliquid introduced support for Ethereum-compatible smart contracts. Since then, wallet providers, custodians, and decentralized finance projects have integrated the network.

Circle launched native USDC on HyperEVM in September 2025 alongside Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol V2. The system lets eligible users move USDC between supported networks without relying on conventional wrapped tokens.

Circle later became a stakeholder in the Hyperliquid ecosystem by purchasing HYPE. In May 2026, the stablecoin issuer said it had also extended USDC support to HyperCore and increased liquidity between HyperCore, HyperEVM and other supported blockchains.

Hyperliquid activity gives Pump.fun a larger token pool

Data from DeFiLlama shows that Hyperliquid L1 currently holds about $1.59 billion in decentralized finance value. Stablecoins on the network have a market value of roughly $6.79 billion, with USDC accounting for nearly 98% of the total.

Hyperliquid L1 processed around $503 million in decentralized exchange volume over the latest 24-hour period and approximately $3.75 billion over seven days. Perpetual trading volume reached about $12.43 billion over 24 hours and $82.47 billion for the week.

Network activity included roughly 612,000 transactions, 21,900 active addresses, and 5,400 new addresses during the latest daily period tracked by DeFiLlama. Protocols listed on the network include Kinetiq, HyperLend, Project X, HyperSwap, and Felix.

Rising activity has also supported HYPE’s recent price performance. An Aug. 25 market report said the token had reached a record high near $83.27 before trading around $80.50. HYPE had opened the preceding seven-day period near $69.60, leaving it with a double-digit gain after some traders took profits.

Pump.fun has not disclosed which decentralized exchanges or liquidity sources execute HyperEVM orders through its interface. Its announcement also did not specify whether every token becomes available automatically or whether contracts must pass technical or security checks first.

US users receive limited federal protection for meme coins

For American users, access to HyperEVM assets does not establish that every listed token has the same regulatory status. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a February 2025 staff statement that transactions involving the types of meme coins described in the document generally do not constitute securities offerings.

SEC staff compared typical meme coins with collectibles whose prices depend mainly on trading and market sentiment rather than rights to business income, profits, or assets. Under that view, issuers of qualifying meme coins would not need to register the transactions under the Securities Act of 1933.

The SEC staff statement also said buyers and holders of qualifying meme coins are not protected by federal securities laws. Staff warned that the position does not cover tokens labeled as meme coins to avoid securities requirements or assets whose economic structure otherwise meets the definition of a security.

A March 2026 SEC interpretation reiterated that staff statements have no legal force, do not change applicable law, and have neither been approved nor rejected by the Commission. The agency said regulatory analysis depends on the economic facts surrounding each crypto asset and transaction.

Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back has a reputation as a quantum computer skeptic who believes the technology is so immature the threat won’t materialize for decades.

Which makes it all the more fascinating that his company is one of the leaders in researching practical solutions to the issue. Back told Cointelegraph earlier this year “the safe thing” is to prepare for the threat well in advance.

Blockstream has already proven its experimental post-quantum signature scheme called SHRINCS works in production on its Liquid sidechain and a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal for SHRINCS was published earlier today.

Blockstream Research’s Jonas Nick called it “the first concrete proposal for a post-quantum signature scheme designed specifically for Bitcoin.” But he added that “SHRINCS is not intended to be Bitcoin’s ‘final’ signature scheme, and it is not optimal along every axis.

”I do think it is a very good trade-off among the options we have now,” he said.

Source: Jonas Nick

While the timeline is hotly debated, scientists agree that sufficiently advanced quantum computers will be able to reverse engineer private keys from public keys, thereby undermining Bitcoin’s security and enabling the theft of billions. That’s why the race is on to develop ways to upgrade Bitcoin to make it safe from attack. 

Shrinking the size of post quantum signatures

One of Blockstream’s most promising areas of study has been in optimizing post-quantum signature schemes for Bitcoin’s requirements to enable the blockchain to keep more of the existing properties Bitcoiners hold dear.

The current crop of post-quantum secure hash and lattice-based signature schemes endorsed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology are between 38 and 123 times larger than Bitcoin’s existing ECDSA and Schnorr signatures.

Deploying any of them in Bitcoin could slow the blockchain down to a fraction of 1 TPS. Ethereum’s post-quantum team plans to deal with this issue by aggregating signatures using a tiny zero-knowledge proof for each block. That’s under consideration for Bitcoin too, and if implemented, it would see Bitcoin actually run faster than it does today, as a single proof takes less blockspace than a bunch of signatures. But in the Bitcoin world, adding zero-knowledge proofs would be a fairly radical change and face a steep uphill battle to garner enough support for activation. 

Blockstream is considering that option too, but has wisely separated the proposal from the much more palatable option of figuring out how to shrink the size of NIST-approved hash based post-quantum signatures by around 13.23 times.

Related: Bitcoin’s quantum dilemma — Bigger blocks or STARK proofs?

Bitcoin optimized small(er) signatures

In December 2025, Blockstream researchers Jonas Nick and Mikhail Kudinov unveiled the SHRINCS signature scheme, and the opcode proposal was published in May. It’s a hash-based post-quantum signature scheme that has a minimum size of 548 bytes (plus the 48 byte public key) but can grow as large as 4,619 bytes.

“SHRINCS is the most Bitcoin-native post-quantum signature design anyone has produced,” explains Marin Ivezic, author of PostQuantum.com and founder of Applied Quantum.

“[It has] full BIP-39 seed recovery, and security resting on the same SHA-256 assumptions Bitcoin mining already depends on.” 

He tells Magazine the scheme is still at an early stage and hasn’t been audited, nor has it benefited from the years of public cryptanalysis the NIST signatures have weathered.

But he says even at this early stage, it’s a serious contender.

“It is real code that has signed real transactions on Liquid mainnet, and I rate it the strongest answer yet to going post-quantum without wrecking Bitcoin’s block economics.”

Despite being much smaller than most post-quantum signatures, SHRINCS will still be around nine times larger than Bitcoin’s existing Schnorr signatures, which are 64 bytes, or the older ECDSA signatures, which are 70 bytes. 

It might seem logical to assume that a signature nine times larger than the current ones would require Bitcoin’s block size to increase nine times to compensate, but Ivezic explains that’s not the case due to Bitcoin’s Segregated Witness.

“Under SegWit, signature bytes fit in the witness and take a quarter as much as other transaction data,” he says. 

According to estimates published in Blockstream’s earlier research (using slightly different parameters), Bitcoin could run at 6.5 transactions per second if everyone used Taproot’s Schnorr signatures (about 80% of people don’t). The blockchain’s speed would drop to 0.5 TPS if Bitcoin used the NIST-approved lattice-based signature ML-DSA and to just 0.36 TPS using the NIST-approved hash-based signature SPHINCS+.

But employing SHRINCS, the blockchain could run at 3 TPS, which is similar to today.

SHRINCS was tested in production on the Liquid sidechain in March this year — they even included a copy of the Bitcoin white paper. So if it works in production, everything is fine and Bitcoin’s quantum problems are solved, right?

Source: Blockstream

SHRINCS sounds great: What’s the catch?

As the BIP warns, “a security proof is TODO” meaning that the research is promising but it is not yet a cryptographically mature proposal that has been fully validated.

It also introduces additional complexity to Bitcoin.

Every signature uses a new one-time key, and one of the reasons SPHINCS+ is so large is because it wraps all of those one-time keys in a multi-layer hash tree structure that makes the scheme stateless. 

SHRINCS does away with all of that to save on space, and just stores used keys on your device (which is known as stateful) so it can quickly check keys aren’t being reused. The drawback is that signatures get larger by 16 bytes each time they are used, and if you lose your device, it requires a very large “stateless fallback” transaction around 5,777 bytes to recover.  

Yoon Auh, founder of BOLTS Technologies, says in reducing the size, SHRINCS’ designers added “statefulness, compact signing paths, fallbacks, assumptions about how many times a seed is initialized, and rules for when devices must switch to larger stateless signatures.”

“That may be pragmatic engineering, but it is also complexity and fragility introduced largely to maximize throughput and minimize computation cycles. In Bitcoin, every new consensus rule becomes a permanent maintenance obligation, and every wallet-side assumption becomes a possible user failure mode.”  

Refining SHRINCS and adding SHRIMPS

Blockstream has been researching and optimizing the scheme throughout 2026. Just last week it demonstrated that SHRINCS, and a range of other post quantum signature schemes, can effectively run on common hardware wallets. The BIP carries the warning however that this is not without risk:

SHRINCS keys generated using hypertree pruning for the stateless component are not compatible with SHRINCS implementations which do not support hypertree pruning. In fact, importing a key across such incompatible implementations may result in lost funds.

In March, the lab published a companion scheme called SHRIMPS, which was to be used in conjunction with SHRINCS to enable backup devices initialized from the same seed to be able to sign transactions. The SHRIMPS names has now been dropped for the BIP, and the scheme has been incorporated as a built in stateless path under the same 48 byte public key. It has been optimized with a non standard parameter set to be around 26% smaller than otherwise.

Blockstream has also been experimenting with lattice-based signature schemes, which are generally smaller than hash-based schemes but are seen as less proven and less reliable. It’s also considering the use of ZK proof aggregation of signatures. It estimates that if ZK proofs are used in conjunction with SHRINCS, Bitcoin’s speed could double to 6.7 TPS.

Blockstream has wisely separated the choice of signatures from questions around increasing the block size or adding ZK proof aggregation, as considering them together could sink the adoption of SHRINCS. Every post quantum upgrade to Bitcoin will be controversial and hard to gather enough support to activate.

“The binding constraint in Bitcoin’s quantum migration isn’t cryptography, it’s governance,” says Ivezic. “Between BIP-360, BIP-361, SHRINCS and STARKs, the engineering menu is filling up fast. What Bitcoin lacks is a mechanism for choosing from it before the clock runs out.”

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