Lighter LIT stayed rangebound for six weeks and slipped 6 percent in 24 hours as it struggled below 2.70. Arkham data shows an Ethereum OG wallet raised holdings to 4.277 million LIT worth about 10 million, while Onchain Lens reported a 1.87 million LIT internal transfer. Token Terminal shows holders rose to 6.50K YTD.

A routing bug brought Solana close to a loss of finality, taking the network 86% of the way to that threshold.

Ethereum's longest-held wallets are showing signs of activity, with millions worth of ETH moving out of deep cold storage and back into circulation.

Solana came close to a network-wide freeze early Wednesday, CoinDesk reported. Staking platform Marinade said a routing failure at Teraswitch's Miami data center cascaded across facilities in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Singapore, and Tokyo, pushing about 29% of the network's staked tokens offline. The outage left the network just 20 million SOL shy of the one-third threshold that would have stopped finality confirmations. Roughly 90 validator nodes were impacted, with an estimated 333 SOL in rewards lost. Teraswitch fixed the routing issue about 10 minutes after it began, and traffic resumed at 4:16 UTC. Several major validators, including Helius, stayed offline for around 33 minutes after their backup systems failed to automatically switch over.

Key takeaways • ONDO: Expanding institutional tokenization pipeline, TVL near $3.5 billion, and a planned 10% supply burn. • SUI: Mubadala's $75 million tokenized fund reinforces Sui's push into institutional finance. • XLM: DTCC connectivity plans, new major validators, and rising tokenized asset activity bolster Stellar's institutional outlook. With the crypto market moving into a consolidation phase, investors are getting a pause to reassess altcoins building real-world utility while prices trade sideways. In that backdrop, Ondo Finance, Sui Network and Stellar are drawing attention as institutional adoption continues to add depth to their ecosystems and points to growing demand for blockchain-based financial products. Ondo Finance (ONDO) Ondo Finance has emerged as one of the more institutionally oriented projects among large-cap altcoins. A DTCC-linked tokenization initiative went live in July 2026, with BlackRock, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs participating. The effort targets tokenized Russell 1000 equities and Treasury bills. Ondo also ran a cross-border settlement pilot using J.P. Morgan's Kinexys platform. Mastercard and Ripple took part, and the pilot settled transactions within five seconds. On the product side, Ondo expanded tokenized securities on Solana, adding 24/7 minting and redemption. It also introduced perpetual futures tied to equities and commodities. Total value locked is near a record at roughly $3.5 billion. The project has additionally signaled a planned 10% supply burn. Sui Network (SUI) Sui posted a notable institutional milestone on July 23, when Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala tokenized a $75 million private-markets fund launched directly on the Sui blockchain. Around the same time, Hashi rolled out a Bitcoin lending testnet aimed at institutional credit markets collateralized by Bitcoin. Together, the developments strengthen Sui's positioning in regulated financial use cases and underscore interest beyond retail-focused DeFi. Despite broader market softness, SUI price action has held up comparatively well. The token reclaimed a key technical level in late July, and rising on-chain activity may add support if momentum builds. Stellar (XLM) Stellar continues to deepen its footprint in institutional markets through partnerships and network upgrades. MoneyGram, Figure Markets and Range joined as Tier 1 validators. Tradable has also outlined plans to bring up to $1 billion in private credit to the network via tokenized assets. The DTCC has confirmed plans to connect with Stellar's platform, a step that could position XLM as a settlement asset for tokenized securities. Stellar activated Protocol 27 following an approval vote on July 8, introducing authentication delegation across the network. The network reported more than $2 billion in real-world asset (RWA) issuance during Q1 2026, while stablecoin supply has nearly tripled over the past two years. Bottom line Consolidation periods can offer time to evaluate projects with stronger fundamentals. Ondo is benefiting from high-profile tokenization and settlement initiatives, Sui is attracting regulated institutional activity, and Stellar pairs established financial relationships with accelerating tokenized-asset adoption.

UPDATE: Wintermute said it plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years in high-frequency trading (HFT) and AI infrastructure, as it moves to broaden its business beyond crypto markets.

Solana narrowly avoided a network freeze early Wednesday after a routing malfunction at a major data center provider pushed nearly 29% of the network's staked tokens offline, according to staking platform Marinade. On Solana, transaction "finality"—the point when transfers become irreversible—stops if more than one-third of staked tokens drop off the network. Marinade said the disruption left Solana within roughly 20 million tokens of that cutoff. About 90 validators were affected, collectively missing out on 333 SOL in staking rewards. Marinade said the shortfall will be covered through "validator bonds." The firm warned that if delinquency had exceeded one-third, finality would have halted for all SOL holders, and there is no comparable bond mechanism to address that scenario. Marinade also pointed to the February 2024 halt, which took about five hours to restart. Solana is a leading smart-contract blockchain with about $4.3 billion in assets locked across DeFi protocols. It has marketed itself as a faster, lower-cost alternative to Ethereum, though it has experienced multiple outages in prior years. Marinade said the latest incident began with a faulty internet route from Teraswitch's Miami facility that propagated to data centers in Europe and Asia, disconnecting validators in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Singapore and Tokyo. North America remained online. Teraswitch resolved the issue in about 10 minutes, with traffic restored by 4:16 a.m. UTC. The episode also highlighted concentration risk. A single network operator, identified as AS2032, controlled more than a quarter of all staked tokens securing Solana—above the safety limit prescribed by the network. Nearly all of those tokens went offline at the same time, while other operators lost an additional 14 million tokens over the same brief window. Most impacted validators, including major operator Helius, stayed offline for the full 33 minutes because their failover systems did not activate. Marinade said the event underscores a key vulnerability: if more than one-third of staked tokens were to go offline simultaneously, the blockchain would freeze for all SOL holders, and the fallout would not have a quick fix.

Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands and HKT have unveiled Hong Kong's first regulated Hong Kong dollar (HKD) stablecoin, designed to support faster settlement and cross-border transactions. The initial rollout targets institutional clients and corporate treasury teams, positioning the token as a bridge between traditional finance and the on-chain economy. The partners said additional retail-focused use cases are planned for late 2026, with work already underway on retail-friendly guardrails.

Hong Kong\u0027s stablecoin rollout has moved into the implementation stage. Anchorpoint Financial said on Tuesday it has started a phased launch of its Hong Kong dollar-pegged stablecoin, \u0022HKDAP\u0022. The token will be available to institutional distributors and professional investors for use across commercial and financial applications.