May kicked off with high-impact developments across the ecosystem. Solana unveiled its Alpenglow proposal—its most transformative upgrade to date—promising real-time performance for a new wave of decentralized apps. Coinbase became the first-ever crypto company to join the S&P 500, underscoring crypto’s deepening integration into traditional finance. Meanwhile, a growing list of corporates are following MicroStrategy’s lead by adopting Bitcoin and Ethereum as treasury assets, cementing crypto’s role in macro strategy.
Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade proposal was introduced this month, and is said to be the most significant change to Solana’s architecture since its launch. The proposal was designed by Anza, a Solana Labs spinoff company focused on developing core protocol innovations for the Solana blockchain. Unlike Ethereum’s 2022 Merge upgrade, which focused on energy efficiency, Alpenglow is centered on performance and boosting network throughput. Alpenglow introduces a completely new consensus protocol aimed to significantly reduce block finality latency from ~13 seconds to ~0,1 seconds. This upgrade could enable real-time applications such as instant payments, responsive gaming, and social apps. If the proposal is approved, the testnet could come within the next few months, but a mainnet upgrade requires a SIMD (Solana Improvement Document) and is expected to happen in 2026. On the other side of the aisle, Ethereum developers activated the Pectra upgrade which introduces important changes aimed at enhancing user experience, validator operations, and Layer 2 scalability. Key improvements include EIP-7702, which advances account abstraction for smarter wallet functionality, and EIP-7251, which raises the maximum number of ETH validators per entity, while EIP-7691 doubles blob throughput, significantly boosting data capacity for Layer 2 rollups, and EIP-6110 shortens validator activation time from 12 hours to just 13 minutes.
Following MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin balance sheet strategy, many companies are piling in to do the same, including Metaplanet, GameStop, TwentyOne Capital, Blockchain Group, Strive, and many more are adopting Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset, indicating a clear institutional interest for Bitcoin as a macro hedge. The first Ethereum treasury strategy was announced by SharpLink Gaming, who announced a $425 million private placement led by Consensys to fund this. Additionally, with Bitcoin’s institutional appeal growing, New Hampshire became the first U.S. state to pass a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill, quickly followed by Arizona enacting a similar crypto reserve law. We expect that these types of investment decisions, vehicles, and bills will continue to be prominent headlines coming out of our industry for the foreseeable future.
Another sign of clear growth was seen in stablecoins, as the supply of Tether’s USDT surpassed $150 billion. With maturity comes regulation, and thus the stablecoin-oriented GENIUS bill was updated, additionally now trying to bring Tether under U.S. jurisdiction. Furthermore, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi, and Wells Fargo are reportedly in early discussions to form a joint stablecoin issuance platform. The effort is intended to streamline interbank settlements and modernize payment infrastructure. Stablecoin issuer Circle, formally filed for an IPO on the NYSE. Its CCTP (Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol) now leads all cross-chain bridge volume, handling nearly 50% of stablecoin transfers. Notably, BlackRock is reportedly seeking to acquire 10% of the IPO, signaling strong conviction in stablecoins and Circle’s role to play here. In parallel, BlackRock’s tokenized fund BUIDL achieved its first direct money-market integration, with sBUIDL now live as collateral on Euler’s Avalanche deployment, a long awaited milestone for institutional adoption. Lastly, Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus Rift and Anduril, is backing a stealth-mode stablecoin startup called Atticus, aiming to build a compliant, institutional-grade stablecoin infrastructure, and rumored to soon be valued at up to $2 billion, further underlying the landgrab that is currently taking place in the stablecoin domain.
Coinbase had a headline-heavy month as it was the first ever crypto company to have joined the S&P 500, marking a major milestone for crypto’s integration into traditional finance. Additionally, Coinbase also reportedly acquired Deribit for $2.9 billion to offer more extensive derivatives, as well as launching 24/7 Bitcoin and Ethereum futures to meet global demand. However, Coinbase also came under slight scrutiny as the DOJ opened an investigation into a December 2024 data breach that affected over 69.000 users. Further progress from the major crypto CEX’s came through Kraken, which has furthered its global expansion by obtaining a Cypriot license to offer derivatives trading throughout the European Union. Additionally, they announced intentions to launch tokenized U.S. equities on Solana, thereby integrating traditional assets into a fast and composable blockchain framework. Meanwhile, exchange Robinhood is reportedly building a blockchain-based platform to enable trading of U.S. assets in Europe in the hopes of expanding their territory. Crypto services are also gaining momentum amongst institutions, as evidenced by the Charles Schwab CEO saying that financial institution is working on launching spot crypto trading within 12 months. Similarly, Morgan Stanley is preparing to offer crypto trading services to E*Trade clients. Additionally, JPMorgan settled its first public transaction of tokenized U.S. treasuries on the Ondo public ledger, signaling institutional momentum behind on-chain RWA’s. On the fintech front, Stripe unveiled a new stablecoin payments feature following its $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge earlier this year, and also launched Stablecoin Financial Accounts to support businesses in over 100 countries. In line with this, Revolut partnered with Lightspark to integrate the Lightning Network, streamlining global Bitcoin payments for its users.
A major record was broken as trader James Wynn entered the largest to date on-chain perpetual position of $1.25 billion on Hyperliquid. The trader was later liquidated in a highly publicized cascade, prompting backlash and claims of manipulation from the community. This event was great marketing for the Hyperliquid platform, as it showcased the depth and efficiency of its order books by absorbing a $1.25 billion position without any disruption. Hyperliquid is currently facilitating more than 60% of all perpetual volume on-chain, and its EVM is continuously growing, showcased by recently also having integrated Ethena’s USDe stablecoin. Coinbase and Binance finally decided to list perpetual contracts for the HYPE token, and Binance US even announced a spot listing is in the works.
Web3 expansion continued across multiple fronts. The Worldcoin project announced its U.S. launch alongside plans for a Visa card and a pilot integration with Tinder, aiming to blend identity and financial infrastructure. MetaMask added native support for Solana, an important expansion beyond its traditional EVM-only scope. This integration allows users to interact with Solana dApps, manage SOL and SPL tokens, and sign Solana transactions directly within MetaMask, without needing a separate wallet like Phantom. And lastly, Cobie’s public token sale platform Sonar launched under Echo. Echo handles private fundraising deals, while Sonar is built for public token sales. Its first launch was Plasma, a Bitcoin-anchored, EVM-compatible chain.
Portfolio company Sophon completed its mainnet launch, officially launching its long-awaited SOPH token, which will be used as the main utility token for the Sophon network like gas and staking. Furthermore, Lagrange introduced its new LA token as part of its zero-knowledge proof coordination layer. Lagrange enables efficient, verifiable computations across rollups and modular blockchains and the token will be used to incentivize provers, manage proof generation workloads, and coordinate ZK-based data availability and state proofs. Portfolio company Redstone expanded to Solana, making its modular oracle system available to one of the fastest-growing chains. Camp Network launched the testnet for its IP-focused blockchain, following a $30 million fundraise which was co-led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx. Lastly, financial stalwart Cantor Fitzgerald closed its first Bitcoin-backed financing deals through Maple and FalconX, signaling growing institutional participation in on-chain credit markets.
