Kadena Shuts Down After 8 Years in ‘Unfavorable Market’

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🪓 Kadena calls it quits amid brutal market conditions

• 🧾 Ethereum Foundation shifts $654M — here’s why

• 🚀 Coinbase hints at privacy on Base, IRON token soars

• 💥 Ocean under fire for $120M Fetch.ai dump

• 🎙️ Laura Shin breaks down Unchained’s move to Pump.fun

• 🎧 Bitcoin vs gold: who wins the flight-to-safety trade?

Layer 1 Chain Kadena Shuts Down Citing ‘Unfavorable Market Conditions’

Layer 1 blockchain Kadena announced plans to immediately cease all operations and maintenance of the blockchain.

“We regret that because of market conditions we are unable to continue to promote and support the adoption of this unique decentralized offering,” said the Kadena team on X. 

Kadena’s native token KDA plunged 84% after the team announced it would be pulling the plug.

Over 566 million KDA still need to be distributed as mining rewards over 115 years, with 83.6 million KDA scheduled to be released from lockup by November 2029.

Kadena was founded in 2016 by former JPMorgan and SEC professionals Stuart Popejoy and Will Martino, marketed as a scalable "blockchain for business.”

Ethereum Foundation Transfers $654 Million in ETH, Calls It ‘Scheduled Wallet Migration’

The Ethereum Foundation has transferred 160,000 ETH, valued around $654 million, triggering widespread speculation and scrutiny across the crypto industry.

Blockchain analytics platform Arkham first flagged the transactions, noting that the wallet it was transferred to had previously only made significant transfers to ETH treasury firm SharpLink Gaming, crypto exchange Kraken, and a multisig wallet that sells ETH.

“The recent 160,000 ETH transfer was a scheduled Ethereum Foundation wallet migration,” clarified Hsiao-Wei Wang, the Foundation’s co-Executive Director.

“0xc06145782F31030dB1C40B203bE6B0fD53410B6d is the new main EF Treasury multisig wallet.”

The transfer comes days after Geth’s former lead developer Péter Szilágyi publicly shared a letter he had written to the Foundation calling out the relatively low compensation he received even as Ethereum’s market value grew substantially over the last six years.

IRON Token Jumps 160% After Coinbase CEO Teases ‘Private Transactions’ on Base

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that “private transactions” could soon be available on Base, the Ethereum layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase.

“We acquired the Iron Fish team back in Mar 2025 to start working on this. More to share soon,” said Armstrong on X.

Iron Fish is a privacy-focused proof-of-work project designed to enable private transactions by using zero-knowledge proofs, specifically zk-SNARKs.

At the time of the announcement, Base noted that it had acquired the team behind Iron Fish and not the network, token or technology itself. 

“The Iron Fish blockchain and its native token will remain independent and unaffiliated with Coinbase or Base, maintained by the Iron Fish Foundation,” said the Base team in March.

Still, Armstrong’s X post triggered a 160% spike in the value of Iron Fish’s native token IRON, which rallied to a one-year high of $0.72 on Tuesday.

Ocean Protocol Accused of Dumping $120 Million in Fetch.ai Tokens

Ocean Protocol has been hit with allegations of dumping around $120 million worth of Fetch.ai (FET) tokens after quietly exiting the Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance in October 2025.

Bubblemaps shared onchain data that suggests Ocean Protocol converted 661 million OCEAN tokens to about 286 million FET tokens valued at $191 million. 

After splitting the funds across different addresses, by Oct. 14 nearly 270 million FET tokens, worth $120 million, were sent to Binance or an OTC provider, said Bubblemaps. 

Fetch.ai CEO Humayun Sheikh publicly accused Ocean Protocol of unauthorized and opaque transfers, offering a $250,000 bounty to uncover OceanDAO's multisig wallet signatories. 

Ocean Protocol co-founder Bruce Pon denied the claims as baseless rumors and stated that a formal response and legal actions are underway.

8 Reasons Why Unchained Decided to Stream on Pump.Fun

By Laura Shin

When Unchained decided to stream on Pump.fun, it generated a fair amount of criticism. 

(For safety reasons, here’s the official Unchained contract address. It is the only one that exists. Please don’t get scammed.) 

Many people have particular issues with Pump.fun because memecoins are extremely risky — even for crypto — and have been prone to scams and sniping. And obviously, the platform has had problems in the past with streamers threatening self-harm or violence to others or animals.

We are not disregarding these valid concerns. 

So why did Unchained start streaming on Pump? 

The reasons are varied, with some more crypto-focused and others stemming from my nearly 30-year career in journalism, during which time I have witnessed the decimation of my industry alongside the rise of the internet. I’m open-minded to finding new solutions for a problem that has anguished me for decades. So here’s why we’re trying Pump.fun out.

Could BTC Outperform Gold? Plus, Ethereum’s Big Advantage: Bits + Bips

Binance charges millions to list tokens—while gold rallies and Bitcoin waits. Who’s really overvalued?

In this episode of Bits + Bips, hosts Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins tackle a packed agenda: from the fairness of Binance’s listing fees to the ways in which DeFi didn’t perform well during the “Black Friday” crash, why Tempo’s $500 million raise might have been a political ploy, and the growing war over stablecoin dominance.

The trio debates whether Bitcoin is undervalued compared to gold, why Ethereum’s 10-year track record gives it an edge, and whether today’s Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) are just froth, or the permanent backbone of institutional crypto.

Plus: Austin makes a bold prediction about the stablecoin that will dominate by 2040.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

• 🏦 Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller proposed a limited-access “skinny” version of master accounts for crypto companies, signaling a shift toward integrating digital assets into U.S. payment systems.

• 📱 Solana Mobile ended all software and security updates for its Saga phone just two years after launch, leaving users without long-term support and potentially more exposed to vulnerabilities despite the phone’s brief popularity during a memecoin airdrop frenzy.

• 🛡️ MetaMask and several major crypto wallet providers launched a global phishing defense system with real-time alerts to combat scammers who have already stolen over $400 million this year, creating a shared warning network that doesn’t rely on centralized control.

• ⛓️ Ethereum began final testing of its Fusaka upgrade, set for a Dec. 3 rollout, which introduces gas caps per transaction to prevent block overloads, boost efficiency, and pave the way for processing multiple transactions at once in future updates.

• 🔓 U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis called on regulators to fast-track open banking rules that let users link bank accounts to crypto apps, warning that large banks have blocked access for political reasons and that such behavior could harm both consumers and innovation.

• ⛏️ Crypto lender Arch launched “TaxShield,” a program letting wealthy bitcoin holders offset taxes by financing mining rigs through a legal depreciation rule, while earning BTC income and preserving their holdings.

• 🏦 Aave teamed up with Maple to integrate institutional-grade tokenized assets as collateral, a move designed to boost lending efficiency, steady borrowing demand, and tap into billions of dollars in capital.

• 💵🌍 Tether announced its USDT stablecoin surpassed 500 million users worldwide with nearly $182 billion in circulation, calling it a milestone in global financial inclusion.

• 🧱 YZi Labs, formerly known as Binance Labs, led a $25.5 million funding round for Sign, bringing the blockchain infrastructure startup’s total haul to over $55 million to expand its tech talent, global footprint, and national digital currency partnerships.

• 🐶 Printr, a Bybit-incubated token launchpad, raised $4.5 million to help creators deploy memecoins across multiple blockchains at once, aiming to merge fragmented liquidity and simplify token launches.

1. Bloomberg: BlackRock Is Pulling Bitcoin Whales Into Wall Street’s Orbit

2. Christine Kim on why she is “sick of ‘alignment´ being the goal of Ethereum projects”