Jump Crypto Pushes Solana to Go Bigger Blocks After Alpenglow

Hi! In today’s edition:

• ⚡ Jump Crypto wants Solana to scale without limits

• 🐱 Hypurr NFTs + new spot quotes launch on Hyperliquid

• 💸 Aster fee revenue outpaces Circle and Uniswap

• 🔍 Regulators probe trading ahead of crypto treasury buys

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Jump Crypto Proposes Removing Solana Block Size Limit After Alpenglow Upgrade

Jump Crypto's Firedancer team has proposed uncapping Solana's block compute unit limit following the upcoming Alpenglow upgrade that is set to begin testing later in the year.

The proposal, known as SIMD-0370, aims to remove the fixed block capacity limit to allow block sizes to scale dynamically based on validator performance.

Validators would be able to skip blocks they cannot process within the allotted time, enabling higher-performance validators to produce larger blocks with more transactions. 

Essentially, it would create incentives for validators to upgrade their hardware and software and allow network transaction capacity to grow along with hardware improvements and market demand.

However, some members of the Solana developer community warned that removing the compute unit cap could introduce centralization risks and stability challenges.

They argued that higher-performing validators with expensive hardware might dominate the network, potentially marginalizing smaller validators.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko also questioned validator incentives “to increase hardware to support some crazy leaders big block.” He argued that they were more likely to “fail it and steal all the MEV [maximal extractable value].”

Hyperliquid Launches Permissionless Spot Quote Assets, Deploys Hypurr NFTs

Decentralized exchange Hyperliquid has launched its permissionless spot quote asset feature on the mainnet. 

Essentially, this means any asset that meets onchain requirements can be used as a quote asset for trading pairs without requiring centralized approval.

The Hyperliquid team noted that any quote asset can be specified as the quote asset in the first spot pair of an HIP-1 deployment. Subsequent quote asset launches will be subject to a Dutch auction to determine a fair starting price.

In trading terms, the "quote asset” is the stable currency used to price other assets. USDH, Hyperliquid’s newly launched stablecoin from Native Markets, has already been deployed as the first permissionless quote asset.

Hyperliquid also distributed 4,600 Hypurr NFTs on the HyperEVM earlier in the day, as a reward to early ecosystem participants. Some rare NFTs from the collection have seen extraordinary sales, such as Hypurr #21, which sold for 9,999 HYPE or $467,000.

Data from NFT marketplace OpenSea shows that the Hypurr NFT collections generated more than $36 million worth of trading volume. 

Aster Rakes in More Weekly Fees Than Circle, Uniswap

In the past seven days, decentralized exchange Aster has generated $69.5 million in fees, according to DeFiLlama. That puts the DEX’s fee capture higher than Circle’s $53.9 million for the week and Uniswap’s $32 million.

Aster’s performance can be attributed to a surge in perpetual trading volume, large whale trades, active order books, and a private order book design on the chains where it operates.

The platform’s fee-to-TVL ratio was about 0.55%, roughly 14 times higher than competitors like Hyperliquid, although some data suggests some of this activity might not be driven by organic volume.

Onchain analyst @dethective on X suggested that $2.5 billion of Aster’s $42 billion in volume came from wash trading.

“The total wash trading volume is roughly 6% of the exchange’s total volume, peaking in the BTC market, the most traded pair,” noted @dethective.

“Honestly, the situation is not as bad as I expected. Percentages are lower than I thought and most of this may actually come from airdrop farmers.”

SEC and FINRA Scrutinize 200 Crypto-Treasury Firms: Report

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) are reportedly investigating unusual trading activity in the stocks of over 200 publicly listed companies that announced plans for crypto treasury initiatives this year.

A report from The Wall Street Journal last week revealed that some of the companies under scrutiny include Trump Media & Technology Group, GameStop and ETH treasury firm SharpLink Gaming.

Several firms experienced stock price surges ranging from 20% to 40% or more in the days or weeks preceding the announcement of crypto treasury deals, with some stocks surging by over 400% intraday.

FINRA is reviewing broker-dealer communications for possible information leaks, while the SEC is tracking trades potentially linked to insider tips.

The WSJ report comes as crypto treasury firms have slowed down the pace at which they have been acquiring digital assets. 

Data from CryptoQuant shows that bitcoin treasury buys dipped to 15,500 BTC in September — less than half the amount acquired in July. 

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• 🌐 Swift will build a blockchain-based ledger with JPMorgan, HSBC, and other global banks to enable real-time cross-border payments and digital asset transactions using technology from Consensys, the developer of Ethereum layer 2 Linea.

• 🤝 SoftBank and Ark Investment Management entered talks to buy a roughly 3% stake in Tether for $15–$20 billion, a deal that could value the world’s largest stablecoin issuer at up to $500 billion and expand its mainstream reach.

• 🔓 A lending app on the Hyperliquid blockchain called Hyperdrive lost about $782,000 in tokens after a hacker exploited a smart contract flaw, prompting the team to pause operations and promise a compensation plan.

• 🏙️ New York City Mayor Eric Adams ended his reelection campaign citing financial setbacks from a dropped bribery case and loss of public funding, casting doubt on the city’s pro-crypto agenda he had championed since taking office in 2022.

• 💷 Six of Britain’s biggest banks began testing tokenized sterling deposits to move customer money onto programmable payment systems through mid-2026, following the Bank of England’s call to prioritize tokenization over bank-issued stablecoins.

• 💰 Kraken secured $500 million from investors, including its co-CEO Arjun Sethi, valuing the crypto exchange at $15 billion and setting it up for a long-anticipated public listing next year after a year of major acquisitions.

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