Mantle, the high-performance distribution and liquidity layer for real-world assets, announced the official deployment of the ERC-8004 standard on mainnet. This milestone introduces a specialized trust and identity layer designed to transform AI agents from isolated scripts into sovereign economic participants capable of operating across RWAs, TradFi bridges, and DeFi.

The Trust Gap: Why AI Agents Were Problematic

Until now, on-chain AI agents have faced a “visibility crisis.” Despite their ability to execute code, agents remained invisible to the broader financial system. They lacked a way to build a reputation across different platforms, approve their historical performance, or be discovered outside of the specific ecosystem where they were created.

This gap has prevented autonomous agents from participating in high-stakes financial markets where verifiable records are non-negotiable.

ERC-8004: The Three Components of Agent Autonomy

By deploying ERC-8004, Mantle provides the foundational infrastructure for a trustless “Internet of Agents.” The standard introduces three critical on-chain registries:

• Identity Registry: Provides a verifiable, NFT-based on-chain identity for every agent, making them discoverable and unique.
• Reputation Registry: Establishes a portable track record. An agent’s “credit score” or performance history now follows it across platforms, ending the need to start from zero.
• Validation Registry: Offers cryptographic proof of work completed, allowing agents to verify the accuracy of each other’s outputs through stake-secured or ZK-based mechanisms.

“At Mantle, we are building the liquid layer for the future of finance, where RWAs and DeFi converge.” said by Joshua Cheong, Head of Product at Mantle. “By bringing ERC-8004 to our ecosystem, we are providing AI agents with the ‘credentials’ they need to manage real capital. This isn’t just about automation; it’s about creating a verifiable workforce that can navigate compliance, liquidity, and settlement at scale.”

Bridging the Gap in TradFi and RWAs with ERC-8004

On Mantle, where institutional-grade assets flow seamlessly, these agents serve as the “connective tissue.” With ERC-8004, agents can now discover one another, verify credentials, and transact autonomously without being locked into a single platform. This enables three primary categories of autonomous building:

1. Financial Strategy Agents: Executing complex yield or trading strategies with a performance history that anyone can audit.
2. RWA Coordination Agents: Managing the heavy lifting of compliance, custody, and settlement for tokenized assets.
3. Cross-Market Bridges: Bridging liquidity between traditional legacy systems and on-chain protocols by acting as verifiable intermediaries.

A Unified Ecosystem Is Now Powered by Mantle

ERC-8004 is designed to be backwards-compatible and works in tandem with the protocols agents already use, including the Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent-to-Agent (A2A) communication, and the x402 payment standard.

By combining these communication and payment standards with Mantle’s massive distribution layer and $4B+ treasury, the network is uniquely positioned to lead the “DeFAI” (Decentralized AI Finance) revolution.

Ethereum is the settlement layer for AI, and with ERC-8004, the future of autonomous finance is officially live on Mantle.

About Mantle

Mantle positions itself as the premier distribution layer and gateway for institutions and TradFi to connect with on-chain liquidity and access real-world assets, powering how real-world finance flows.

With over $4B+ in community-owned assets, Mantle combines credibility, liquidity and scalability with institutional-grade infrastructure to support large-scale adoption. The ecosystem is anchored by $MNT within Bybit, and built out through core ecosystem projects like mETH, fBTC, MI4 and more. This is complemented by Mantle Network’s partnerships with leading issuers and protocols such as Ethena USDe, Ondo USDY, and OP-Succinct.

For more information about Mantle, please visit: mantle.xyz

Ault Capital Group today announced the public testnet launch of Ault Blockchain, a Layer 1 network designed for trading, settlement, and institutional-grade onchain infrastructure. This launch marks the first public release of the protocol and opens access to developers, infrastructure operators, and early network participants.

Ault Blockchain is built as a Cosmos-based Layer 1 with full Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility, enabling Ethereum-native smart contracts and tooling to run without modification. The network is governed by Ault DAO, which oversees protocol rules, economic parameters, and long-term upgrades through onchain governance.

The public testnet provides a live environment for evaluating core network functionality, validator performance, and infrastructure design. This early access seeks community engagement and feedback by contributors who add value to the network’s development and stability.

In contrast to typical launch models, Ault Blockchain will not conduct a public token sale. Instead, the native AULT token will be distributed exclusively through a protocol-controlled emissions schedule tied to measurable network participation, including consensus security and licensed infrastructure operations rather than speculative activity.

Milton “Todd” Ault III, founder and executive chairman of Ault Capital Group, said: “Ault Blockchain was built the opposite way most networks are built. We started with real financial use cases and then designed the blockchain to support them. Participation is based on defined roles and verifiable work, not speculation, with transparent economics that are meant to support long-term network health from day one.”

The network launch is supported by a group of established infrastructure and development partners. B-Harvest serves as Ault Blockchain’s primary development partner, contributing to protocol engineering and core network architecture. Xangle focuses on development of Ault’s official explorers and relevant hubs.QuickNode provides RPC infrastructure to support network access and reliability. Finally Protofire supports Safe-related tooling across EVM environments.

Ault Blockchain introduces a licensed participation framework for infrastructure operators. Licensed Mining Nodes are authorized to perform defined off-chain services, beginning with cryptographic randomness at launch. In parallel, Proof-of-Stake validators and delegators secure network consensus and collect transaction fees under transparent, DAO-governed economics. After launch, the core team will shift its focus to the core team’s roadmap including spot trading on decentralized exchanges, lending services, perps trading, and other advanced workloads are being explored and may deploy over time as the network evolves.

Ault Blockchain’s testnet launch follows the completion of an initial protocol security audit and precedes further validator onboarding and ecosystem testing. Ault Blockchain’s mainnet launch will occur after additional testing milestones are met. At genesis, the chain will launch with its core protocol modules, EVM compatibility, an initial validator set, and onchain governance in place, marking a new era for institutional finance.

To learn more about Ault Blockchain, visit https://Aultblockchain.com and read project documentation to view the testnet scanner go to the following link https://ault-evm-testnet.explorer.xangle.io/home

About Ault Blockchain

Ault Blockchain is a finance-first, institutional-grade Layer-1 blockchain designed to support trading, settlement, and data-driven workloads. Built on the Cosmos SDK with full Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility, the network enables unmodified Ethereum smart contracts while providing fast finality and native cross-chain interoperability.

Governed onchain by Ault DAO and supported by a licensed infrastructure framework, Ault Blockchain aligns network economics with verifiable participation rather than speculative token distribution. With real-world financial and analytics applications launching from day one, Ault Blockchain is optimized for next-generation onchain finance.

About Ault DAO

Ault DAO is the decentralized governance body responsible for overseeing the Ault Blockchain protocol. The DAO was created by and is overseen by Ault DAO, LLC, a Wyoming DAO LLC. Through onchain governance, the DAO manages protocol parameters, validator participation, and network upgrades, ensuring transparent and community-driven decision-making aligned with the network’s long-term objectives.

About Ault Capital Group

Ault Capital Group is a diversified investment and holding company focused on technology-driven businesses, digital assets, and financial infrastructure. Through its operating companies and strategic investments, Ault Capital Group supports platforms across blockchain, data infrastructure, and emerging technologies. The firm emphasizes disciplined capital allocation and long-term value creation.

As Ethereum’s market presence expands, so do the risks that keep investors awake at night. Today, ID-Bound officially announces the launch of TRIO, a Crypto Safe designed to eliminate the three greatest existential threats to digital wealth: user error, sophisticated theft, and the “Q-Day” quantum brute-force timeline.

The current crypto landscape is littered with “permanent” losses. As of mid-2025, data suggests that over $3 billion worth of Ethereum has been rendered inaccessible due to forgotten seed phrases or hardware failures. Unlike traditional finance, a lost key in crypto usually means the assets are gone forever. ID-Bound is ending this era of digital fragility.

The TRIO Solution: Solving the “Impossible Trinity” of Crypto Risk

The TRIO solution—comprised of a proprietary Identity layer, a self-custodial, “hot” Wallet, and utility Tokens—addresses the three primary vectors of asset loss:

1. Immunity to User Error: For the first time, losing your private keys doesn’t mean losing your fortune. If a user loses access, the TRIO platform can replace the tokens via verified identity protocols. Your ETH is no longer a “use it or lose it” asset.
2. Theft-Proof Architecture: Phishing scams and malware are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from legitimate services, as evidenced by massive platform breaches like the $1.2 billion ByBit hack. Even if a user’s hardware or software is compromised, TRIO tokens are protected by a guarantee against theft, ensuring that hackers cannot drain the “Identity-Bound” safe.
3. Quantum-Resistant Brute-Force Protection: With Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin noting a non-trivial (20%) chance that quantum computers could break modern cryptography by 2030, the “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” threat is real. TRIO is designed to withstand brute-force attacks, ensuring assets remain intact even if the private key is compromised.

From Passive Security to Active Yield and Institutional DeFi.

ID-Bound believes that high security shouldn’t mean low utility. While traditional “cold storage” leaves assets unproductive, TRIO allows users to generate a solid yield through a unique collateralization model https://id-bound.com/investments . This setup maximizes the benefits of blockchain technology non-custodial holding and the traditional legal system’s enforceability.

Users can leverage their protected TRIO tokens as risk-free collateral in Fractional Real Estate & Real-World Asset (RWA) Acquisition . In the 2026 market landscape, “RWA Tokenization” has moved from a buzzword to the primary driver of institutional and retail crypto adoption. By combining this with ID-Bound’s unique “Unstealable” architecture, we solve the single biggest barrier to entry: the Trust Gap.

“We are moving past the ‘Seed Phrase Era,’ which was always a stopgap for secure digital ownership,” says Dr. Eli Talmor, Co-Founder of ID-Bound. “With TRIO, we’ve built a safety net that is both quantum-ready and human-error-proof. The use of risk-free TRIO token collateral will form the foundation of Institutional DeFi.”

About ID-Bound

ID-Bound is a blockchain security leader dedicated to making digital asset ownership as safe and intuitive as a traditional bank account, without sacrificing decentralization. Through the TRIO platform, ID-Bound provides the infrastructure for the next billion users to enter the Ethereum ecosystem with total confidence. Join TRIO Public Demonstrator now: https://www.id-bound.com/get-on-board

For more information, visit: www.id-bound.com/newsroom

In today’s trading environment, access to capital has become one of the most decisive factors separating consistent traders from those who remain stuck at the retail level. While trading strategy, discipline, and risk management are essential, even highly skilled traders face real limitations when operating under capital constraints. Platforms such as QuickFund AI (powered by TruTrade) reflect this shift toward more structured capital access models for qualified traders. This evolution has fundamentally changed how professional traders think about scalability, consistency, and long-term performance.

According to Danny Rebello , CEO and Co-Founder of TruTrade, many traders underestimate how deeply capital availability impacts execution quality. “Strategy matters,” Rebello explains, “but capital determines how effectively that strategy can actually be deployed. Limited capital forces traders into over-leveraging, under-diversifying, or missing high-probability opportunities altogether.”

Capital Constraints Are the Silent Performance Killer

Retail traders often place unrealistic pressure on a single trading account to perform. This creates emotional decision-making, poor risk distribution, and inconsistent results, even when the underlying strategy is sound. By contrast, professional and institutional traders rarely rely on one account, one setup, or one position size.

This is the gap QuickFund AI was built to address.

QuickFund AI enables qualified traders to access funded trading capital without requiring them to risk substantial personal funds. Rather than trying to maximize returns from a single account, traders can operate across multiple accounts, diversify execution, and normalize performance over time—similar to institutional trading models.

How Funded Capital Supports Consistent Execution

Brian Nutt , COO and Co-Founder of TruTrade, notes that capital limitations are often the hidden reason traders abandon otherwise effective systems. “When traders don’t have sufficient capital, they’re forced to trade smaller than their strategy requires or take excessive risk to compensate. Both scenarios undermine long-term consistency.”

By removing survival pressure, funded capital allows traders to:

• Maintain predefined risk parameters
• Manage drawdowns responsibly
• Execute multiple strategies simultaneously
• Stay disciplined across changing market conditions

It’s important to note that QuickFund AI is not an investment product. It does not manage funds, provide trading advice, or guarantee outcomes. Instead, it provides a capital access framework designed to support disciplined, self-directed trading.

As markets continue to evolve, the ability to operate with sufficient capital will remain a defining competitive advantage. For traders looking to transition from constrained retail execution to a more professional trading model, capital access may matter more than any single trading strategy.

About QuickFund AI

QuickFund AI (Powered by TruTrade) is a funding facilitation service for qualified traders using TruTrade-compatible software, providing access to funded trading accounts while maintaining strict compliance boundaries. For more information, visit https://quickfund.ai

• First actively managed tokenized equity fund extending tokenization beyond single assets to professionally managed public equity strategies
• Tokenized on Ethereum and distributed via DigiFT, providing eligible investors a regulated on-chain way to invest
• Advances institutional adoption of tokenization, building on BNY’s deep investment expertise and DigiFT’s track record of bringing Tier-1 asset manager strategies on-chain

DigiFT, a regulated on-chain exchange for institutional real-world assets, today announced the introduction of DigiFT U.S. Equity Income Fund (“bEQTY”), the first actively managed tokenized U.S. equity income fund on the Ethereum public blockchain.

The launch of bEQTY, which is eligible for accredited investors, represents a significant milestone in the evolution of tokenization—marking a shift from early experimentation with blockchain-based financial instruments toward enabling investors to construct more complete, portfolio-relevant strategies on-chain.

BNY serves as the investment manager for the underlying traditional U.S. equity income strategy which extends tokenization into actively managed public equities. This launch demonstrates how regulated on-chain infrastructure is advancing beyond initial applications to address more sophisticated areas of the capital markets.

Tokenization as institutional portfolio infrastructure

Public equities remain a core component of institutional portfolios. Tokenization introduces a digitally native form factor that enables programmable settlement, enhanced transparency, and more streamlined lifecycle management—without changing the underlying investment strategy or governance framework.

By representing equity income strategies on regulated on-chain infrastructure, eligible investors gain greater flexibility in how sophisticated financial instruments are held, transferred, and integrated into portfolios, supporting more agile capital management.

For Web3-native allocators, as on-chain treasuries and funds mature, there is growing interest in incorporating assets that introduce exposure to the real-economy and are less correlated with crypto-native market cycles.

The launch also illustrates how regulated on-chain marketplaces can support wider institutional participation by enabling eligible investors to access the strategy through DigiFT’s regulated framework.

Henry Zhang, Founder and Group CEO of DigiFT, said: “For years, tokenization has been about proving the technology. This launch proves its use case. By bringing an actively managed equity income strategy on-chain within a regulated market, we’re demonstrating how blockchain infrastructure is becoming part of mainstream institutional finance.”

Doni Shamsuddin, Head of Asia Pacific, BNY Investments, said: “We are thrilled to work with DigiFT in bridging traditional finance and emerging on-chain solutions for institutional investors. Leveraging BNY’s deep investment capabilities, we enable a professionally managed portfolio on blockchain — anchored in established trust, scale, and governance.”

From experimentation to portfolio-relevant strategies

Tokenization has gained early traction in short-duration and cash-like instruments, demonstrating the operational benefits of blockchain within regulated frameworks.

As tokenization matures, extending its capabilities into actively managed public equities represents a natural next phase—moving beyond single assets toward actively managed strategies within regulated market infrastructure.

About DigiFT

DigiFT is a next-generation exchange for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC). The platform offers end-to-end digital asset services—including tokenization, issuance, distribution, trading, and instant liquidity provision—purpose-built for institutional RWAs. Trusted by global financial institutions, DigiFT is the on-chain tokenization and distribution partner for leading asset managers such as Invesco, UBS Asset Management, and Wellington Management. For more information, visit https://digift.io

About BNY

BNY is a global financial services platforms company at the heart of the world’s capital markets. For more than 240 years BNY has partnered alongside clients, using its expertise and platforms to help them operate more efficiently and accelerate growth. Today BNY serves over 90% of Fortune 100 companies and nearly all the top 100 banks globally. BNY supports governments in funding local projects and works with over 90% of the top 100 pension plans to safeguard investments for millions of individuals. As of December 31, 2025, BNY oversees $59.3 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration and $2.2 trillion in assets under management.

BNY is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. Headquartered in New York City, BNY has been named among Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies and Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators. Additional information is available on www.bny.com.

Traders Shift Focus From Strategy Alone to Scalable Capital Infrastructure

As global financial markets grow increasingly competitive, professional and independent traders alike are recognizing a critical shift: success is no longer defined by strategy alone, but by access to scalable capital and disciplined infrastructure. Addressing this evolution, QuickFund AI, a service offered through TruTrade, enables qualified traders to operate with funded capital while maintaining full control over their trading decisions.

For years, retail traders focused almost exclusively on indicators, setups, and technical strategies, often while operating under severe capital constraints. These limitations frequently forced traders into over-leveraging, emotional decision-making, and inconsistent execution. Industry leaders increasingly point to capital structure—not strategy quality—as one of the primary barriers preventing traders from scaling responsibly.

“Capital determines how effectively a strategy can be deployed,” said Danny Rebello, CEO and Co-Founder of TruTrade. “Without adequate capital, traders are forced to compromise risk management, timing, and diversification. That’s where most breakdowns occur.”

QuickFund AI was developed to address this structural imbalance. Rather than requiring traders to risk significant personal funds, the service provides access to funded accounts designed to support disciplined, rules-based execution. This approach mirrors institutional trading environments, where exposure is distributed across multiple accounts and systems rather than concentrated into a single position.

Importantly, TruTrade does not trade on behalf of users, manage client funds, provide investment advice, or guarantee results. All trading decisions remain entirely under the trader’s control. QuickFund AI functions strictly as a capital-access and operational framework for qualified traders using TruTrade-compatible software.

“Funding is not a shortcut,” said Brian Nutt, COO and Co-Founder of TruTrade. “Capital amplifies whatever habits a trader already has. Discipline, structure, and risk control are still the deciding factors.”

The rapid adoption of funded trading models reflects a broader maturation of the retail trading ecosystem. Traders are shifting away from speculation-driven approaches and toward professional standards built on accountability, consistency, and infrastructure.

As market volatility persists and competition intensifies, capital efficiency—not hype—is emerging as the true competitive edge.

For more information, visit https://trutrade.io.

About TruTrade

TruTrade is a trading software company providing data-driven tools, analytics, and AI-supported automation designed to assist self-directed traders. TruTrade does not manage funds, execute trades, or provide investment advice.

About QuickFund AI

QuickFund AI is a funding facilitation service for qualified traders using TruTrade-compatible software, providing access to funded trading accounts while maintaining strict compliance boundaries.

The DDC Group Transforms the Customer Experience Through DDC Evora Platform

The DDC Group, an AI-first operations partner, today announces the launch of the new DDC Evora agentic AI platform. This new offering introduces a new class of intelligent automation to the market, designed to transform customer engagement and operational efficiency for enterprises globally.

The platform is built to autonomously handle complex customer interactions with human-like empathy and reasoning. Its inaugural solutions include DDC Evora Voice and DDC Evora Sentiment.

The DDC Evora Voice transforms traditional contact centres into intelligent, outcome-driven engagement hubs—where every conversation is natural, contextual, and human-like. It listens, understands, and acts in real-time to deliver faster resolutions, higher satisfaction, and measurable business impact.

The DDC Evora Sentiment combines acoustic intelligence—tone, pitch, and stress—with linguistic sentiment and intent detection to reveal the emotional and contextual truth inside every interaction. It enables sharper decisions and more empathetic customer conversations by helping businesses listen, interpret, and act in real-time.

“This technology transforms the business landscape by moving beyond scripted bots to deploy truly agentic systems,” said Nimesh Akhauri, CEO of The DDC Group. “These predictive intelligent agents can understand complex intent, reason through context, and perform real actions. This creates a collaborative environment where automation, AI, and human expertise work in tandem for optimal results in a single operational system.”

The platform also provides powerful analytics and agent-assist features, offering live insights that drive performance coaching and improve the overall customer experience. By combining these functionalities, the platform delivers a consistent and contextual experience across all voice and digital channels.

About The DDC Group:

The DDC Group is an AI-first operations partner, redefining operations for the digital era, serving clients in the shipping and logistics, energy and utilities, retail and e-commerce, automotive, banking and finance, healthcare, and insurance industries. The DDC Group runs complex and high-stakes operations using intelligent automation, disciplined execution, and end-to-end accountability to deliver real-world impact at scale. Most providers promise efficiency. We promise results. To learn more about The DDC Group, visit theddcgroup.com.

AIxCrypto Inc. (“AIxC”), a pioneer in Embodied AI (EAI) infrastructure, today announced that its flagship platform, AIxC Hub has surpassed 500,000 registered wallets and 200,000 daily active participants (DAU) within seven days of its launch.

High-Frequency Engagement & Behavioral Intelligence

The platform has processed millions of directional predictions on the Company’s proprietary C10 Index. Beyond simple engagement, AIxC Hub serves as a massive behavioral data engine, capturing real-time human decision-making patterns to train the Company’s Embodied AI models.

• Zero-Capital Arena: A zero capital participation model that removes financial barriers, allowing for authentic analytical instincts
• C10 Index Forecasting: Users perform high-frequency predictions on top digital assets, updated every 10 seconds
• Merit-Based Recognition: A unified Points system rewards accuracy and community participation, creating a highly engaging skill-building environment

“Reaching 500,000 accounts in a week validates our strategy of using zero-capital environments to collect high-quality behavioral intelligence,” said Jerry Wang, Co-CEO of AIxC. “These datasets are the foundational inputs our EAI systems need to optimize decision-making in real-world asset (RWA) contexts.”

Global Community Network & Data Integrity

AIxC has built a robust global user network through multi-channel outreach. The Company maintains approximately 42,000 followers across social media platforms (AIxC Twitter 23,000 + Foundation Twitter 19,000), with core communities concentrated in Discord (27,000 members) and Telegram (17,000 members), totaling approximately 44,500 community members. This multi-tiered community architecture provides a solid foundation for the platform’s rapid growth.

To ensure the integrity of this training data, AIxC utilizes advanced AI-driven quality assurance to filter automated bot activity, ensuring the dataset reflects genuine human cognition. With users distributed across multiple countries and regions, the platform is building a globally diverse behavioral library essential for training adaptable AI systems.

Deep Community Engagement Initiatives

The Company will host its first Twitter Space next week, themed “Futurist Dialogue: Where Are the Opportunities for Ordinary People in the AI Era?” The event will feature industry guests discussing the convergence of AI and Crypto, alongside the launch of the Company’s first community AMA to address questions about the product roadmap.

Concurrently, the platform will launch an interactive AI Agent that uses gamified dialogue to help users understand their decision-making styles. After users provide basic information such as birth details and professional background, the AI generates personalized behavioral analysis.

To explore AIxC Hub, visit:
https://hub.aixcrypto.ai

To explore AIxC S1 Arena gameplay and season rules, visit:
https://aixc.gitbook.io/aixc-hub-docs-en/

About AIxCrypto

AIxCrypto is a U.S.-Nasdaq listed company dedicated to building a world-leading ecosystem that integrates AI and blockchain while bridging Web2 and Web3. Its core products include the BesTrade DeAI Agent and the AIxC ecosystem products.  

Strategic investment set to scale the largest network for accessing digital assets and stablecoins, connecting over 150 fiat currencies with crypto

Meld, the largest network for accessing digital assets and stablecoins, today announced the close of a $7 million strategic funding round led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from F-Prime, Yolo Investments, and Scytale Digital. This financing advances Meld’s mission to enable stablecoin driven use cases and will accelerate the company’s go-to-market efforts, expansion of the Meld Network, and continued development of customer success and operational support capabilities.

“Stablecoins are becoming the rails for global commerce, but accessing them remains unnecessarily complex for developers and end users alike,” said Pankaj Bengani, Founder & CEO of Meld. “This strategic funding allows us to expand the Meld Network and make digital assets as accessible as traditional payment methods, while enabling product managers and developers to build the next generation of financial applications.”

Meld offers seamless access and conversion between over 150 fiat currencies and any stablecoin or token through an app integration on the Meld Network. By enabling stablecoin-driven use cases like global payouts, remittances, and cross-border trade settlement, Meld provides powerful tools for product managers and developers to deliver pay-out and pay-in use cases in over 180 countries, and across local payment methods, as well as virtual account enabled bank rails.

Additionally, Meld supports onboarding onto native blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana to power trading and investment for crypto-native users. Meld partners with industry innovators, including Uniswap, Phantom and Metamask, to deliver instant, cross-border access that is secure and compliant.

“Meld is solving the fundamental challenge of moving seamlessly between fiat and crypto, which is increasingly essential as stablecoins become a preferred rail in global payments,” said Will Leas, Deal Partner at Lightspeed Faction. “We believe Meld has the ability to scale to meet demand from developers and merchants who need simple, compliant access to digital currencies across every major market.”

This strategic investment will enable Meld to grow its sales department, expand the network globally, and further develop its customer success infrastructure to support a growing base of clients. With over 50 partners across the world and $15 million raised to date, Meld is positioned to become an essential infrastructure layer connecting traditional finance with the digital asset ecosystem.

For more information, please visit meld.io.

About Meld

Meld is the largest network to access digital assets and stablecoins. Through the Meld Network, fintechs, developers, and merchants can convert over 150 fiat currencies and any stablecoin or token within their app. Meld powers global payouts, remittances, cross-border trade settlement, and native blockchain onboarding for trading and investment activity. Product managers and developers trust Meld to drive pay-out and pay-in use cases in over 180 countries and across card, local, and virtual account enabled local bank rails.

Noctura is introducing a new standard for on-chain confidentiality: a compliant privacy protocol on Solana built for speed, security, and institutional confidence. In today’s transparent blockchain environment, every transfer can expose balances, counterparties, strategy, and treasury movements forever. For individuals that can mean safety risks and doxxing exposure; for traders it can mean front-run and inference; for enterprises it can mean leaking confidential operations. Noctura’s mission is simple: make privacy usable and verifiable without forcing the market to abandon compliance.

At the center of Noctura is a shielded privacy layer on Solana paired with a wallet-first experience. Instead of asking users to move to a new chain or accept complicated workflows, Noctura is designed as a privacy overlay that anchors a shielded state directly on Solana. The protocol maintains cryptographic commitments, a nullifier set, and a Merkle root on-chain, while heavy proof generation happens off-chain and is verified on-chain by lightweight programs that update shielded state deterministically. The result is privacy with finality, plus the composability advantages of Solana.

Noctura’s dual-mode wallet is engineered for clarity and control. Transparent Mode behaves like a standard Solana wallet for full DeFi and NFT compatibility. Shielded Mode enables private transfers where sender, receiver, and amounts are hidden, with correctness enforced by zero-knowledge proofs. Users can move between modes through cross-mode transfers designed to break linkability at the proof boundary, making “public to private” and “private to public” flows practical without exposing a complete transaction graph. Noctura also plans developer SDK hooks so applications can integrate shielded transfers, cross-mode flows, and disclosure requests in a consistent way.

Privacy, however, is not enough if it cannot survive the real world of listings, counterparties, and regulated access. That is why Noctura is “compliance-first” by design. The wallet supports selective disclosure mechanisms intended to prove legitimacy without bulk deanonymization. View Keys provide scoped, read-only access (for example: a single transaction, a time window, or proof-of-funds) without granting spend authority, and can be revoked. Audit Tokens are consent-bound, expiring credentials that can validate specific facts (such as a KYC pointer assertion or proof-of-funds) without revealing raw transaction history. This approach is built to reduce friction with exchanges and partners while preserving strong confidentiality for everyday users.

Noctura’s performance posture is deliberately conservative and credibility-driven. The project targets hundreds of shielded transactions per second at launch, with staged scalability via batching, aggregation, and GPU prover lanes. The whitepaper explicitly avoids unrealistic claims about fully shielded throughput and frames scaling as an engineering roadmap, not marketing theater. Noctura’s operational design also includes a prover/relayer participation model with incentives and guardrails, including staking-based registration and slashing hooks for misbehavior, aligning service quality with protocol economics.

Security is treated as a process, not a slogan. Noctura outlines a staged audit approach covering presale/token programs, verifier and state logic, wallet cryptography and SDK flows, and the zero-knowledge circuits themselves, alongside bug bounty planning, anomaly detection signals, and incident response controls. The protocol’s compliance posture is reinforced by transparent-by-default onboarding, opt-in shielded mode, geo-fencing where required, and optional Travel-Rule/KYC integration patterns designed to minimize data exposure while meeting partner requirements.

$NOC is designed as functional infrastructure within the Noctura ecosystem. The total supply is fixed at 256,000,000 tokens, with allocations outlined for community presale, staking rewards, liquidity, marketing, community rewards, team, and reserve. $NOC is intended to power shielded transaction fees and incentivize prover/relayer lanes, while also supporting staking and governance over key parameters, including optional fee-burn settings. Post-TGE staking tiers are described with lock-based APR targets, aligning long-term participation with network growth and operator reliability.

Noctura’s presale is structured as an on-chain, multi-stage distribution with transparent pricing mechanics and broad access, including support for multiple networks and payment methods as described in the whitepaper. The Noctura team has announced that the $NOC presale is scheduled to begin on January 20. Participation details, eligibility requirements, and regional availability will be communicated through official Noctura channels, with an emphasis on verifiability, audit readiness, and responsible onboarding.

More information: https://noc-tura.io/