Industry Reports

Standard Chartered predicts the stablecoin market could reach $2 trillion by 2028, driven by increased token velocity and greater adoption in traditional finance and AI payments, particularly with USDC. The bank envisions a more efficient circulation of stablecoins alongside market growth.

Stablecoins are undergoing an evolution into a foundational financial infrastructure. North America leads in development, focusing on regulated, compliant options. The market shows a shift with RLUSD gaining traction due to integration with Ripple, emphasizing real demand over exchange liquidity.

At the EthCC conference, Protocol Guild contributor cheeky-gorilla said that Ethereum L1 core developers are paid less than the market, and that high-performance projects lure them away with higher salaries, which could cause critical roadmaps to stall. To protect the Ethereum ecosystem, they urged project teams to give back to Protocol Guild with a "1% Pledge," emphasizing the necessity of maintaining L1 development.

In March 2026, total funding in the crypto primary market reached $2.58 billion, up sharply 286.3% from February. DeFi, CeFi, and infrastructure are the main funding areas. The predicted-market projects Kalshi and Polymarket together raised $1.6 billion, accounting for 64.3% of the total. M&A events pushed the broader total funding amount to $4.279 billion.

Grayscale research head Zach Pandl said that the current tokenization market is about $27 billion, and is expected to grow to nearly $190 trillion by 2033. Development will be rolled out in phases: early on, institution-led permissioned networks will lead, while in the long term, Ethereum will become the primary platform for decentralized finance.

A report from Google’s Quantum AI team indicates that Ethereum faces five major quantum computer attack risks, which could affect assets worth more than $10 billion. These include exposed “naked whale” wallets, vulnerable administrator keys, and staking systems, among others. Although research has begun on defensive measures, many smart contracts still have future risks.

At the EthCC conference, Nethermind founder Tomasz Stanczak said that Ethereum has shifted toward efficient execution and market integration, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between the protocol team and developers, and proposing three major technical directions. In addition, he revealed that he is working on a Taiko-based Rollup project to improve integration with traditional finance.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Jihoon Song presented FOCIL’s progress at the EthCC conference. The project aims to reduce Ethereum’s centralization risk by using a decentralized committee of validators. FOCIL improves blocks’ resistance to censorship by randomly selecting validators and encoding rules, lowers attack risk, and supports account abstraction and privacy protocols. This mechanism has been confirmed as a core feature of Ethereum’s future upgrades.

An Ethereum Foundation researcher presented the zkAttester client solution at the EthCC conference, addressing the computational burden of node re-execution, allowing validators to verify zero-knowledge proofs directly, lowering CPU performance requirements, shortening the time for new node synchronization, and helping enable Ethereum light verification and scaling.

An Ethereum Foundation researcher, Antonio Sanso, updated the progress on Ethereum’s post-quantum security at the EthCC conference, noting that quantum computing will threaten the ECDSA algorithm in the mid-2030s. Ethereum has completed about 20% of its post-quantum readiness and plans to fully implement quantum resistance from 2028 to 2032. The main challenge is signature size, and the research team will address it through account abstraction and the introduction of LeanVM.

Ethereum Foundation researcher CPerezz introduced the VOPS technology at the EthCC conference, aiming to solve Ethereum’s state bloat problem and reduce the storage requirements for full nodes. VOPS nodes only need to store basic fields, reducing storage requirements by 25x, enabling users to participate in transactions, and accelerating Ethereum’s move toward statelessness.

In March 2026, cryptocurrency hacking incidents increased sharply, with losses exceeding $52 million, significantly higher than February’s $26.5 million. The attack on Resolv Labs was especially severe, leading to the unauthorized minting of 80 million USR tokens and causing their price to plunge. Various hacking methods and social engineering attacks occurred frequently, increasing the security risks for holders of crypto assets. Experts are calling on investors to strengthen their security awareness and take stricter protective measures.

Pharos announced a partnership with Anvita at the RWA Summit in Cannes, France, to explore the fusion of AI and real-world assets. Anvita Flow, introduced by Anvita at ETHCC, will provide technical support for Pharos, enabling agent collaboration and value settlement.

A report from Standard Chartered Bank in the UK says stablecoin trading activity is growing rapidly and that the market size is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2028. The uses of stablecoins have expanded into areas such as AI payments and cross-border payments, strengthening their role in the market. The report emphasizes that innovative use cases will drive market growth, signaling that stablecoins will become an important catalyst for the convergence of digital currencies and traditional finance.

Anthropic accidentally leaked 512,000 lines of source code for Claude Code on March 31, triggering security risks and concerns about market valuation. After the leak, the code quickly spread to GitHub and prompted DMCA takedowns. The leaked content revealed internal functionality and unpublished details, exposing the security risks businesses face. The incident highlights that AI companies need to strengthen code security and permission management, and it could also affect Anthropic’s pre-IPO prospects.

The market cap of tokenized assets reached $24.6B in January, led by tokenized treasuries and commodities. Treasuries made up 39% of this, while commodities surged due to rising gold prices. Stablecoins contributed to liquidity, with a market cap of $308B.

Gate News message, on April 1, Nasdaq-listed digital asset treasury company Nano Labs released its 2025 second-half financial performance report. The data shows that the company’s net revenue for the 2025 second half was RMB 18.70 million. As of December 31, 2025, Nano Labs holds 126,662 BNB, with an additional 3,338 BNB as receivable collateral. The company said it will further enhance its crypto asset strategic reserves.

Chainalysis announced at a conference held in New York that it will roll out “blockchain intelligent agents” in stages during the summer, with the goal of improving investigation and compliance efficiency. Unlike general AI tools, this agent can proactively carry out investigative workflows, focusing on suspicious fund flows and customer risk screening. This move reflects the entry of the fight against crypto crime into the AI era, and shows that the entire industry is rapidly transforming to meet the growing need to respond to an increasing number of ransomware attacks.

Based on a mission and strategy for 2026 released on April 1, it focuses on building the global market, expanding payments and stablecoins, and becoming builders’ home, aiming to enhance the on-chain market infrastructure and support multi-asset 24/7 trading.

A Google quantum artificial intelligence white paper shows that a quantum computer with about 500,000 qubits could break Bitcoin’s ECDSA algorithm in 9 minutes, dramatically increasing the threat level. The risk is mainly concentrated in old addresses whose public keys have already been exposed, especially about 2.3 million bitcoins that face high risk. The industry is calling for an upgrade to post-quantum cryptography before 2029 to strengthen security, but implementation faces consensus challenges.