Key events preview:
CME will launch Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Uniswap (UNI) futures on October 19;
The Zcash development team plans to finalize the mainnet upgrade and activation block height on October 20 after evaluating NU7 testnet performance;
Fables, a trading platform in the Robinhood Chain ecosystem, plans to conduct its TGE on October 20;
LayerZero (ZRO) will unlock approximately 23.28 million tokens at 7 PM Beijing time on October 20, equivalent to about 3.83% of circulating supply, valued at approximately $43.3 million;
The Solana Alpenglow upgrade will go live on mainnet on October 21, shortening final confirmation time to about 150 milliseconds;
Decentralized exchanges Velodrome and Aerodrome are scheduled to upgrade and merge into Aero on October 21;
SpaceX will release its Q3 2026 results and hold a webcast on October 20
October 19
Exchanges:
CME will launch Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Uniswap (UNI) futures on October 19
According to an official CME announcement, CME will launch Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Uniswap (UNI) futures on October 19, both including standard and micro contracts. The BCH standard contract is 250 tokens and the micro contract is 25 tokens; the UNI standard contract is 10,000 tokens and the micro contract is 1,000 tokens. This is CME's new round of crypto futures expansion this year, after it previously listed futures for bitcoin, ether, XRP, SOL and other major tokens.
Upbit will delist the ICX trading pair on October 19, with withdrawals open until November 18
South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit announced that it will terminate ICX/KRW trading support at 15:00 KST on October 19, 2026. Unfilled orders will be uniformly canceled, and withdrawals will be supported until November 18. Upbit said it had designated ICX as an investment warning item on August 28 and, after further review, determined that the designated reasons had not been resolved, so it decided to terminate trading support. The ICON network suffered a replay attack on August 27, in which two signed withdrawal messages were reused 1,492 times, releasing 119.9 million ICX and 531,600 bnUSD, and the network was down for about 25 hours. Following the announcement, the exchange will no longer support ICX airdrops, wallet upgrades, migrations, or hard forks.
Binance will suspend FIL deposits and withdrawals on October 19 to support the Filecoin network upgrade and hard fork
According to an official Binance announcement, Binance will suspend deposits and withdrawals of Filecoin (FIL) network tokens from 19:59 (UTC+8) on October 19, 2026, to support the network upgrade and hard fork. The upgrade and hard fork will be executed at block height 6,470,279, expected at 20:59 (UTC+8) on October 19. The announcement said that trading of the above network tokens will not be affected, and Binance will handle all technical aspects for users; deposits and withdrawals will reopen once the network is stable after the upgrade, with no further announcement at that time.
Binance will support the IoTeX (IOTX) network upgrade and hard fork
Binance is expected to suspend token deposits and withdrawals on the IoTeX (IOTX) network from 09:00 (UTC+8) on October 19, 2026, to support its network upgrade and hard fork. The project team will carry out the network upgrade and hard fork at block height 53,533,081 (expected at 10:00 UTC+8 on October 19, 2026).
Special attention:
The 2026 Financial Street Forum Annual Meeting opens on October 19; during the event, the central bank's digital renminbi system and the digital renminbi smart contract ecosystem service framework are expected to be released
The 2026 Financial Street Forum Annual Meeting will be held in Beijing Financial Street from October 19 to 22, with more than 400 guests from over 40 countries and regions attending. This is the 15th edition and, with State Council approval, is themed "Openness · Cooperation · Inclusiveness — Building a New Ecosystem for Global Financial Development." The annual meeting plans to hold 21 topic events, including the main forum and parallel forums, as well as 3 special conferences. Among them, the insurance conference will be hosted by the National Financial Regulatory Administration for the first time, and the investment conference will debut, forming a special conference matrix together with the fintech conference. More than 100 achievements will be released for the first time, including a credit risk control strategy sandbox intelligent agent and a quantum fusion algorithm intelligent evolution platform. The annual meeting will expand to an African sub-venue for the first time and will for the first time hold a three-location linkup among Beijing, Hong Kong, and London, hosting 7 events at 5 overseas sub-venues in Hong Kong, London, Paris, Toronto, and Nairobi.
The Fintech Conference 2026 will further innovate its format and expand its scale, setting up 13 topic events around frontier issues such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and digital-intelligent finance. Under the framework of the conference, the People's Bank of China will host the Chengfang Fintech Forum, hold a seminar on AI financial applications and risk prevention and control, and continue to hold series activities such as the fintech application scenario competition. It plans to release related achievements such as the central bank's digital renminbi system and the digital renminbi smart contract ecosystem service framework.
Project developments:
U.S.-listed company Universal Safety will change its name to DeFi Capital Markets on October 19, pivoting to blockchain financial markets
U.S.-listed company Universal Safety Products (UUU) announced that it will change its name to DeFi Capital Markets on October 19 and trade under the new ticker "DCM." It will gradually cease its original product business and focus on asset tokenization, digital assets, market making, and quantitative trading and blockchain financial markets.
October 20
Policy and regulation:
South Korea will discuss virtual asset taxation with the five major crypto exchanges on October 20
The South Korean government will convene representatives from the five major virtual asset exchanges Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Digital X, and GOPAX, as well as executives from the Digital Asset Exchange Association DAXA, on October 20 to hear their views on the virtual asset taxation planned to take effect starting next year. The current proposal plans to levy other income tax and local income tax at a 22% rate on gains from virtual asset transfers and lending after deducting the basic exemption of 2.5 million won. The tax policy has been postponed three times since it was proposed in 2020. The industry believes that taxation standards and tax infrastructure for transactions such as staking, airdrops, and DeFi are not yet complete and calls for another postponement. The government is currently still advancing preparations according to the original timetable.
Exchanges:
Binance will delist EPIC and QUICK on October 28 and prohibit opening new positions from October 20
Binance will stop trading and delist all spot trading pairs for EpicChain (EPIC) and QuickSwap (QUICK) at 03:00 (UTC) on October 28, 2026. In addition, Binance Futures will close the contract positions for the above tokens and automatically settle them at 09:00 (UTC) on October 20, and will prohibit opening new positions from 08:30 (UTC) on October 20. Withdrawal services will stop being supported at 03:00 (UTC) on December 28.
Project developments:
Fables plans to conduct the FABLES token TGE on October 20
Fables, a trading platform in the Robinhood Chain ecosystem, announced that the FABLES token is planned for a TGE on October 20, and the ve(3,3) mechanism will launch at the same time. The points campaign has been extended to October 19; the project will publish claim guidelines on October 12, and points participants must choose between claiming liquid tokens or locking veFABLES during October 12-19. A snapshot of PROLOGUE holders is planned for October 17-18, and the final exchange ratio will be confirmed after the snapshot. The official statement said that every 40 eligible PROLOGUE can be exchanged for at least 1 liquid FABLES. At TGE, the maximum circulating FABLES will be 75 million tokens, and the team allocation will not circulate at that time.
The Zcash development team plans to finalize the mainnet upgrade and activation block height on October 20 after evaluating NU7 testnet performanceAccording to the Zcash community forum, Zcash development organizations and engineering teams have reached consensus on the content and timeline of the NU7 network upgrade. Code is planned to be completed by September 30, activated on the official testnet on October 6, and a final mainnet activation decision will be made on October 20 based on test results, with the mainnet tentatively scheduled to go live on November 5. NU7 mainly includes shortening the block interval to 25 seconds (ZIP-218), disabling v4 transactions, and integrating new issuance mechanism-related proposals in accordance with voting results (ZIP-234 alternative and ZIP-235): retaining the halving mechanism and starting re-issuance from February 2031. This upgrade does not include a new transaction format and is not expected to have a major impact on wallets, but infrastructure such as full nodes, indexers, and block explorers may need adjustments.
Strive plans to increase the size of its SATS preferred stock IPO to 7 million shares and raise $630 million, with closing expected on October 20
Bitcoin treasury company Strive will increase the size of its SATS 15% Series A perpetual preferred stock IPO by 2 million shares to 7 million shares, at a public offering price of $90 per share. Subject to customary closing conditions, the issuance and sale of SATS shares is expected to close on October 20, 2026. Strive expects gross proceeds from the offering to be approximately $630 million, before deducting underwriting discounts, commissions, and estimated offering expenses.
Osmosis community proposes to terminate OSMO inflationary issuance, with the proposal planned to be submitted on-chain on October 20
The Osmosis community has initiated a proposal to terminate OSMO inflationary issuance, stop new token creation for staking rewards and community pool allocations, make staking rewards come entirely from protocol revenue, and suspend the daily vesting release of developer tokens. The remaining approximately 51.9 million developer tokens will remain in the module account, and future releases will require separate governance decisions. The proposal is planned to be submitted on-chain on October 20 and, if passed, will take effect from the next daily cycle; it is currently still in the forum discussion stage.
Mint Blockchain announces cessation of operations, users must withdraw assets before October 20
Mint Blockchain has announced that it officially ceased operations on April 17, 2026. Users must withdraw the four assets ETH, WBTC, USDC, and USDT from Mint Chain to Ethereum mainnet before October 20, 2026; assets not withdrawn by the deadline will not be processed.
StandX announces gradual cessation of operations and no token issuance, perpetual contracts from October 20 will only allow position reduction
StandX has announced a gradual cessation of operations and has decided not to issue a token, and will conduct a one-time, no-lock-up DUSD airdrop using remaining project revenue and additional team funding. The platform stopped all yield today, and from October 20 perpetual contracts will only allow position reduction; on January 15, 2027, all open positions will be closed at the mark price, and on January 31 DUSD redemption and withdrawals will be closed. Airdrop claims will open at 08:00 Beijing time on November 1 and close at 16:00 on December 31.
Key Focus:
SpaceX will release its Q3 2026 results and hold a webcast on October 20
SpaceX (SPCX.O) will release its Q3 2026 results and hold a webcast on October 20, 2026.
Token Unlocks:
LayerZero (ZRO) will unlock approximately 23.28 million tokens at 7 PM Beijing time on October 20, representing about 3.83% of circulating supply, valued at approximately $43.3 million
Kaito (KAITO) will unlock approximately 17.6 million tokens at 8 PM Beijing time on October 20, representing about 3.69% of circulating supply, valued at approximately $5 million
October 21
Project Updates:
Lighter announces Q3 investor call on October 21
According to Lighter's official X account, the project will hold a Q3 investor conference call on October 21 (Wednesday) at 1:30 PM Eastern Time. Founder Vladimir Novakovski (@vnovakovski) will share the latest project progress at the meeting, followed by a Q&A session.
Velodrome and Aerodrome scheduled to upgrade and merge into Aero on October 21, with each VELO convertible to approximately 0.044 AERO
Aero, the merged project of decentralized exchanges Aerodrome and Velodrome, has announced token conversion terms and deadlines. The merger will launch at 8 PM Eastern Time on October 21, at which point token emissions from both legacy platforms will stop. Existing AERO will be exchanged 1:1 for new AERO, and each VELO will be exchanged for approximately 0.044 AERO, with the same ratio applying to liquid and locked tokens. Of the new token supply, Aerodrome holders will receive 94.5% and Velodrome holders will receive 5.5%. As of October 9, the combined total value locked across the two exchanges was approximately $422 million. Existing veAERO and veVELO locks will convert to the new sAERO, with remaining lock durations carried over, but migration must be completed manually through the official website portal; self-custodied assets will not convert automatically. The merger was announced by Dromos Labs in November 2025.
Solana Alpenglow upgrade to go live on mainnet on October 21, with finality reduced to approximately 150 milliseconds
The Solana development team Anza has announced that the Alpenglow upgrade will go live on the mainnet-beta test environment on the evening of October 21 Beijing time (around 14:50 UTC). Anza said the Alpenglow upgrade underwent 18 months of development, and the mainnet migration will be completed within a single slot. After the upgrade, Solana network finality is expected to be significantly reduced from the current several seconds to approximately 150 milliseconds. Alpenglow aims to further optimize Solana's consensus mechanism and improve network confirmation speed and performance, and is one of the important upgrades in the evolution of Solana's infrastructure.
Extended to migrate settlement network from Starknet to Arc, holders of USDT and other assets must swap or withdraw by October 21
On-chain perpetual futures trading platform Extended posted on X that it will migrate its settlement network from Starknet to Arc next week. Trading will continue during the migration, and deposits and withdrawals may be suspended for about 2 hours. After the migration, the platform will use USDC to pay gas fees and plans to expand perpetual contract trading coverage for stocks, commodities, and crypto assets. Because Arc does not support USDT and wBTC, users holding related assets worth more than $1 must complete swaps or withdrawals before 20:00 on October 21, otherwise accounts may be restricted and related positions may be forcibly liquidated.
October 22
Project Updates:
Starknet community launches intent vote on transitioning to an independent quantum-resistant L1, voting ends October 22
According to the Starknet community forum, the community has initiated a 7-day non-binding vote to solicit STRK holders' opinions on exploring a transition to an independent quantum-resistant L1. If supported, research will begin and follow-up proposals will be made; if opposed, work on L2 quantum resistance will continue. Regardless of the final path, STRK will continue to be used, no new token will be issued, and the Ethereum cross-chain bridge will remain open. There is no timetable for the transition yet.
As of October 18, in the research proposal on whether Starknet should continue transitioning to an L1, more than 345 million votes are currently in support, accounting for 99.95%, while only about 157,700 votes are opposed, accounting for 0.05%. Voting on the proposal will end on October 22.
Bitwise's Dogecoin spot ETF BWOW will be liquidated and closed, with investors to receive net asset value in cash on October 22
According to an official Bitwise announcement, the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF (BWOW) will be liquidated and closed. October 14 will be its last trading day on NYSE Arca, and investors will receive net asset value in cash on October 22. Bitwise said the move is part of ongoing efforts to optimize its product line to meet changing investor needs.
October 23
Project Updates:
Venus will stop supporting opBNB, Optimism, and Unichain on October 23Venus Protocol posted that Venus will stop supporting opBNB, Optimism, and Unichain on October 23. Users holding open positions on the above three chains are advised to close their positions and withdraw funds before October 23.
Metis will terminate support for Stargate on October 23
According to Metis's official X account, Metis Andromeda will have two changes this month: support for Stargate will be terminated on October 23, and LayerZero V1 routing must be shut down before then; on October 30, LayerZero Labs' DVN and Executor will stop providing services to Metis. Users who provide liquidity to Stargate pools on Metis need to withdraw before October 23; those who have staked must first unstake, then select Metis Andromeda in the Stargate app to withdraw. Users holding m.USDC, m.USDT, WETH, and METIS are unaffected; these assets are issued by the Metis official cross-chain bridge, and minting, redemption, and the official cross-chain bridge between Ethereum and Metis will continue to operate as usual. In addition, Stargate V1 pools will be closed on all chains on December 15.
Nvidia-backed AI company Firmus plans to IPO in Australia on October 23 at a valuation of about $30.6 billion
Firmus, an AI infrastructure company transformed from a Bitcoin mining company, plans to raise up to $5.5 billion through an IPO at a valuation of about $30.6 billion, with investor demand already exceeding the offering size. Firmus plans to allocate about half of the offered shares (including the over-allotment option) to selected existing strategic and financial investors. The company's previously disclosed investors include Nvidia, Coatue, Blackstone, and Jane Street. This offering will become the second-largest IPO in Australian history. Underwriting banks expect institutional subscriptions to close on Thursday, one day earlier than originally planned; a prospectus is expected to be filed on October 12, and trading on the Australian Securities Exchange is expected to begin on October 23.
After completing a $2 billion strategic equity financing in August, Firmus was valued at about $10.5 billion; based on the proposed offering price, the company's valuation has nearly tripled in two months. Firmus develops and operates modular AI factories, currently operating data centers in Melbourne and Singapore, and continues to expand in the Asia-Pacific market.
REX Shares and Osprey Funds update SEI staking ETF application, with an effective date set for October 23
Sei Network posted on the X platform that REX Shares and Osprey Funds have updated their SEI staking ETF application filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and set October 23 as the effective date. The ETF is intended to provide spot SEI exposure and support staking yield. REX Shares and Osprey Funds have previously also submitted similar ETF applications for assets such as NEAR, HYPE, SUI, and AVAX.
Token unlocks:
SOON (SOON) will unlock about 20.24 million tokens at 4:30 p.m. Beijing time on October 23, representing about 3.50% of circulating supply, valued at about $6.3 million
October 24
Token unlocks:
SoSoValue (SOSO) will unlock about 23.46 million tokens at 5 p.m. Beijing time on October 24, representing about 5.63% of circulating supply, valued at about $6.9 million
October 25
Token unlocks:
Plasma (XPL) will unlock about 227 million tokens at 8 p.m. Beijing time on October 25, representing about 5.02% of circulating supply, valued at about $17.9 million
Humanity (H) will unlock about 266 million tokens at 8 a.m. Beijing time on October 25, representing about 6.84% of circulating supply, valued at about $15 million
ChainOpera AI (COAI) will unlock about 19.55 million tokens at 3 p.m. Beijing time on October 25, representing about 6.36% of circulating supply, valued at about $5 million