TL;DR:

Sompolinsky references the “OP_CAT++ Bitcoin” timeline in the Grayscale exchange: Kaspa co-founder Yonatan Sompolinsky responded to a prompt from digital asset manager Grayscale, suggesting the firm consider offering a KAS investment product, adding a remark referencing “Kaspa OP_CAT++ Bitcoin” and a possible mid-June timeframe tied to covenant-related functionality being explored for the network.
SEC signals shift toward fraud-focused crypto enforcement: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission acknowledged that its prior crypto enforcement strategy required a “course correction,” stating it will prioritize cases involving fraud and investor harm rather than pursuing registration-only violations.
Script pricing rules merged ahead of Toccata upgrade: Developer Ori Newman merged changes that establish how Kaspa will price the execution of scripts powering covenant logic and define how much block resources programmable transactions may consume.
KIP-21 lane limits move toward implementation: Developers outlined an implementation approach for lane-limited block selection designed to prevent any single application from monopolizing block space as Kaspa’s programmability expands.
Hyperlane bridge launches on Igra Layer-2: Cross-chain interoperability protocol Hyperlane went live on the Igra Network, enabling assets including USDC, iKAS, cbBTC, and wstETH to move between Igra and more than 150 supported blockchain networks.

Sompolinsky Mentions “OP_CAT++ Bitcoin” Timeline in Grayscale Thread

Kaspa co-founder Yonatan Sompolinsky responded to a social media prompt from Grayscale Investments asking which crypto accounts the firm should follow. Grayscale is one of the largest digital asset managers, known for investment products such as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust that trade on U.S. public markets. Yonatan posted:

“If Kaspa's army showed up here, think how they'll show up when you provide a KAS digital asset. By mid -June, Kaspa OP_CAT++ Bitcoin. Worth the attention.”

Sompolinsky’s remark referenced Kaspa in the context of potential institutional attention and included a brief note suggesting a mid-June timeframe related to “OP_CAT++ Bitcoin.” Following the exchange, Grayscale acknowledged the response and indicated that it had followed Sompolinsky’s account.

The phrase “OP_CAT++ Bitcoin” is shorthand for a long-running debate in the Bitcoin ecosystem about enabling more expressive transaction logic through script opcodes such as OP_CAT, which stands for “operation concatenate,” meaning to join two pieces of data.

Such opcodes allow transactions to enforce more complex spending rules, often referred to as covenants. Sompolinsky’s remark suggested that Kaspa could implement similar or expanded capabilities, potentially enabling programmable transaction constraints at the protocol level.

Kaspa Commons described the shorthand in a follow-up post, writing that “OP_CAT++” signals “not an incremental extension of scripting, but a shift toward transaction logic that can express and enforce outcomes directly at the L1, at the level of the ledger itself.”

Other community members also weighed in on the comment and its potential implications. Community member Recon posted:

“That would be a technical quantum leap. While Bitcoin has been stalling the covenant debate for years, Kaspa, as the first scalable L1, could enable true programmable digital assets and thus attract precisely the institutional assets Grayscale is currently discussing.”

The discussion frames covenant functionality as a potential step toward programmable digital assets on Kaspa. No formal announcement or activation timeline for such functionality has been released by the core development team.

SEC Enforcement Report Signals Shift in Crypto Strategy

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its annual enforcement report, acknowledging that its previous approach to cryptocurrency enforcement required a “necessary course correction.” The agency indicated it will now prioritize cases involving clear investor harm, including fraud, scams, and market manipulation, rather than pursuing enforcement actions based primarily on registration violations.

In practice, this means the SEC intends to focus on fraud and misconduct rather than pursuing lawsuits based solely on registration issues.

The SEC also highlighted several structural changes already implemented, including the replacement of its former Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit with the new Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit (CETU).

The report notes that a number of earlier crypto-related cases have been dropped as part of this shift, including actions involving companies such as Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Consensys, Cumberland DRW, and Dragonchain. The change reflects a broader recalibration in how U.S. regulators are overseeing digital asset markets.

The SEC released a press release describing its enforcement actions during the 2025 fiscal year, which ended on September 30, 2025. Right out of the gate, they mentioned the missteps the administration has taken in the past, in relation to crypto, stating: “Regrettably, such resources have been misapplied in prior years to pursue media headlines and run up numbers, and in turn, led to misguided expectations on what constitutes effective enforcement.”

The Commission reviewed 95 enforcement actions totaling $2.3 billion in penalties, including cases related to crypto firm registration and disputes over the legal “definition of a dealer.” The SEC clarified:

“Together with seven crypto firm registration-related and six ‘definition of a dealer’ cases, these cases identified no direct investor harm from those violations, produced no investor benefit or protection, and demonstrate what the current Commission views as a misinterpretation of the federal securities laws, a misallocation of Commission resources, and a bias for volume of cases brought versus matters of investor protection. “

The report emphasizes a renewed focus on the SEC’s original mandate: combating fraud and protecting investors. SEC Chairman, Paul S. Atkins, stressed:

“Over the past year, the Commission has put a stop to regulation by enforcement and recentered its enforcement program on the Commission’s core mission by prioritizing cases that provide meaningful investor protection and strengthen market integrity,”

He continued:

“We have redirected resources toward the types of misconduct that inflict the greatest harm—particularly fraud, market manipulation, and abuses of trust—and away from approaches that prioritized volume and record-setting penalties over true investor protection. A key part of this course correction is a renewed emphasis on holding individual wrongdoers accountable, which promotes stronger deterrence and better safeguards for investors. I am proud of the staff’s work in advancing an enforcement program grounded in sound judgment, clear legal authority, and the real-world needs of the investing public.”

And:

““I fully support the move away from using enforcement as a tool for policymaking and the return to the Commission’s historical norms,” said SEC Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda. “We will remain focused on coherent and transparent policymaking, as well as meaningful engagement with market participants to promote compliance, and wield the authority of enforcement in a more appropriate manner, guided by investor protection above all.”

In line with this motion to focus the efforts of the SEC’s mission to combat fraud, since late February 2025, the SEC has dismissed its previous lawsuits related to crypto assets, including:

SEC v. Coinbase (Feb. 27, 2025)

SEC v. Cumberland DRW (Mar. 27, 2025)

SEC v. Consensys Software (Mar. 27, 2025)

SEC v. Payward/Kraken (Mar. 27, 2025)

SEC v. Dragonchain (Apr. 30, 2025)

SEC v. Balina (May 2, 2025)

SEC v. Binance Holdings (dismissed later in 2025)

Beyond the official seven, the SEC also closed investigations into which it had previously issued Wells notices, such as Gemini, Uniswap Labs, OpenSea, Robinhood, Crypto.com, and Ondo Finance.

Emphatically, the press release had an entire section almost entirely dedicated to crypto, titled: Deploying Resources Judiciously as to Emerging Technologies. In this section, the Commission references the rebranding of the Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit to the Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit (CETU), a group of roughly 30 fraud specialists and attorneys led by appointed chief, Laura D’Allaird, “to focus on combating cyber-related misconduct and to protect retail investors from bad actors in the emerging technologies space”. This unit was organized to assist the Crypto Task Force, led by Hester Peirce, also created during the 2025 fiscal year, in developing crypto regulatory policy. In addition to these committees, the SEC also announced the Cross-Border Task Force to Combat Fraud, with one goal of protecting investors from “pump-and-dump" and "ramp-and-dump" schemes. The efforts are, in part, aimed at bringing the SEC's focus back to fraud prevention and investor protection.

During this time, the SEC charged Unicoin, Inc. and its executives with offering “certificates” for Unicoin tokens in connection with Unicoin stock. Ramil Palafox, founder of PGI Global, was charged with running a nearly $100M crypto fraud related to the sale of “membership packages” in exchange for high returns.

The shift signals a broader recalibration of how U.S. regulators approach digital asset oversight. While cryptocurrency was originally conceived to operate largely outside traditional regulatory frameworks, the industry has increasingly sought to engage with existing legal structures. While Kaspa is not directly referenced in any of the enforcement actions, greater regulatory clarity in the United States could benefit the broader digital asset ecosystem.

Key Kaspian Technical Updates

CoinAthlete summarized several recent discussions from the Kaspa R&D Telegram channel in an April 12, 2026, update. The full recap can be read here:

Some highlights are below:

Script Pricing Rules Merged Ahead of Toccata

Developer Ori Newman merged PR #884, establishing pricing rules for Kaspa script execution. Scripts power covenants and smart contract-like functionality expected to expand with the Toccata upgrade.

The update defines how much computational and block resources complex transactions can consume. Clear pricing rules help ensure advanced transaction logic remains usable while preventing resource abuse.

Sutton described the change as delicate and emphasized the need for extensive testing before taking any additional steps. He also suggested formalizing the pricing model as a Kaspa Improvement Proposal (KIP) so the community can review it transparently.

KIP-21 Lane Limits Move Toward Implementation

As Kaspa adds more programmability, the network needs a way to prevent any single application or use case from monopolizing block space. KIP-21 addresses this by grouping transactions into "lanes," essentially giving different types of activity their own lane on the highway so everything keeps moving.

Developer zlnck shared the first concrete implementation plan this week, proposing a system that groups mempool transactions by lane, evaluates each lane based on fee rate, and then selects up to 50 lanes before filling a block.

Kaspa core developer Michael Sutton pushed for a conservative rollout, arguing that lane-selection logic should only activate when the number of active lanes exceeds 50. Below that threshold, Sutton's position was clear: "If N < 50, I see no reason to touch anything. There's no notion of fairness or equality between lanes. It should be totally up to the fee market."

The final algorithm is still under debate, but the near-term goal is clear: implement a simple, reviewable version suitable for the upcoming Toccata upgrade rather than building a perfectly tuned fairness engine from the start.

ZK SDK Opens for Review on Kaspa

A new pull request from developer saefstroem proposes a Zero-Knowledge SDK for Kaspa to make it easier to build ZK-based applications on the network. An SDK, or software development kit, is a packaged set of tools that allows developers to build on a platform without starting from scratch.

As Saefstroem described it, the goal is to "reduce the knowledge requirement factor when an actor needs to deal with UTXO-based ZK systems," which remain relatively unexplored compared with other blockchain models.

In practical terms, the SDK would allow developers to convert ZK proofs directly into native Kaspa scripts, lowering the barrier for protocols looking to build on or migrate to the network. The initial implementation supports two proof formats used in the RISC Zero proving system (SuccinctReceipt and Groth16Receipt). The pull request is currently open for review and must pass its testing pipeline before moving forward.

Silverscript Updates Improve Developer Experience

Two recent updates to Silverscript, Kaspa's covenant programming language, aim to reduce small usability hurdles developers encounter when writing covenant logic. The changes were merged by Ori Newman and focus on improving day-to-day developer ergonomics.

One update allows helper functions to call other helper functions regardless of the order they are declared in a file, while explicitly preventing recursion and disallowing calls into entrypoint functions. A second update simplifies syntax for single-return functions, allowing developers to omit parentheses in signatures and return statements and use helper function calls directly within expressions.

While neither change alters Kaspa's underlying programmability model, they reduce the friction involved in writing and refactoring covenant code, making the platform easier for developers to work with as the ecosystem grows.

Hyperlane Bridge Goes Live on Igra Network

Hyperlane, a cross-chain interoperability protocol that enables blockchains to communicate and transfer assets, went live on the Igra Labs network on April 10. The integration enables users to bridge assets, including USD Coin, iKAS, cbBTC, and wstETH, from seven supported chains into the Igra environment. Through Hyperlane’s broader interoperability network, the integration connects Kaspa-related infrastructure to more than 150 blockchain networks.

The launch follows a partnership announced on January 30 in which the Igra Association signed an integration agreement with Hyperlane alongside several Kaspa ecosystem projects, including Kaskad, ZealousSwap, KaspaCom, and Kaspa KAT.

Initial plans for the bridge included bringing assets such as USDC.e, USDT.e, and wETH.e to Igra, with additional tokens expected to be selected through a community poll.

XXIM Podcast Discusses Kaskad Development and Kaspa Ecosystem Growth

Podcast host Ankit featured Kaskad contributors Eliot and Jack in a recent episode of the XXIM podcast to discuss developments around the Kaskad lending and borrowing protocol and the broader Kaspa ecosystem.

During the discussion, the team shared that Kaskad's application has been deployed on the Igra testnet and that a version-1 white paper outlining the project's technical design and tokenomics has been released publicly. The team also reported that a security audit with Sherlock DeFi is underway, with the final report expected soon.

On the current development timeline, Jack noted that an April mainnet launch is the target, adding: "We are still depending on external factors, which are having good liquidity assets being deployed on IGRA mainnet."

Additional updates included securing Fibonacci Capital as the project's first market maker and confirming a partnership with the cryptocurrency exchange MEXC, with further details expected closer to Kaskad's anticipated mainnet launch.

The conversation also explored oracle infrastructure and its importance to the ecosystem. Eliot noted, "It's a single point of failure for DeFi," when discussing how price-oracle reliability remains an unsolved challenge across the industry, including for established protocols like Aave.

XXIM Podcast Examines the Role of Market Makers in the Kaspa Ecosystem

In a recent episode of the XXIM podcast hosted by Ankit and Shivam, Abhimanyu (AB) from BitStreet Capital joined to discuss the role of market makers in cryptocurrency markets and their involvement in providing liquidity for Kaspa and KRC-20 projects.

The guests described market making as a process that ensures consistent liquidity on both sides of an order book, acting as a counterparty for buy and sell orders on centralized exchanges. As AB explained, "Market making is basically making the markets efficient for all the participants involved in it. So we basically help out to make the order books optimized."

The conversation covered the two main models projects encounter: the retainer model, where the project retains custody of funds and the market maker operates against them, and the loan-option model, where the market maker deploys their own capital against loaned tokens at a strike price. This structure typically only applies at higher market caps.

The episode also got candid on the industry's less transparent side, including wash trading, spoofing, and the black-box culture that defines most legacy firms, with the guests noting that 80 to 90% of market makers won't disclose how they operate. Shivam also offered a rare look at the monopolistic market-making model used for smaller projects, where being the sole market maker renders Delta-neutral hedging essentially irrelevant.

Crypto Odie Publishes Explainers on Early Kaspa History

Crypto Odie (@PoW_Odie) published two detailed explainers examining aspects of Kaspa’s early network history, including the issue of missing transaction browsing on early block explorers and the network’s no-premine launch design.

One post revisits a software bug affecting early node indexing that prevented explorers from retrieving some historical transaction data during the network’s first months after launch. While balances and total supply were always preserved through the network’s UTXO set, the indexing issue created gaps in explorer-level transaction browsing. According to the post, 100% of data after February 2022 has been recovered, while roughly 75% of the November 2021 to February 2022 window has been reconstructed from community node backups.

In a separate walkthrough, Odie also explains how Kaspa’s launch can be independently verified as having started with zero coins, based on a cryptographic proof originally developed by Shai Wyborski and Michael Sutton. The guide outlines several checks, including verifying that the genesis UTXO commitment corresponds to an empty coin set and confirming that the network’s November 2021 restart did not introduce any additional coins.

Honorius Publishes Two Essays Exploring Kaspa as a Coordination Layer

Kaspa community member Honorius (@OrangutanElder) published two posts this week exploring the broader implications of Kaspa's design beyond its role as a digital currency.

In the first post, Honorius describes Kaspa as "anarchic infrastructure" and frames it as a structural discovery in how humans can coordinate at scale without hierarchical enforcement, covering domains including value, contracts, identity, data, reputation, and truth. The post compares its potential impact to electricity as an infrastructure technology that unlocked entirely new ways of living, building, and organizing, rather than merely improving what already existed.

In the second post, Honorius explores how Kaspa could serve as a global economic trust layer or "TrustNet," arguing that "there is no widely adopted, trustless, network-wide consensus ordering layer." The post highlights energy markets as one potential application, where flows and pricing could be negotiated and settled in real time without intermediaries.

Both posts reflect philosophical commentary from a community participant rather than formal proposals or development announcements from the Kaspa core team.

ZealousSwap TVL Reaches 1M USD on Igra Network

The decentralized exchange ZealousSwap has reached approximately 1 million USD in total value locked (TVL) on the Igra Network, according to community updates shared this week. The milestone follows a rapid increase in liquidity shortly after the protocol’s launch, with TVL reportedly surpassing 850,000 UDF within roughly 48 hours before continuing to climb.

ZealousSwap operates as a decentralized trading platform within the Kaspa ecosystem, supporting liquidity pools and token swaps tied to assets such as KAS, IGRA, and the platform’s native token ZEAL. The growth in locked capital reflects early participation from users experimenting with DeFi infrastructure being built on the Igra Layer-2 environment.

KaspaCom DeFi Launches on Igra Layer-2

KaspaCom announced that its DeFi platform went live on the Igra Network on March 30.

The platform includes a launchpad, decentralized exchange, and staking features, allowing users to launch tokens, trade assets, and participate in liquidity and reward mechanisms within the Igra ecosystem.

Draft Kaspa Builder Documentation Shared in Kaspa R&D Telegram

Kaspa contributor @IzioDev shared a draft of the new builder documentation in the Kaspa R&D Telegram channel, offering early access to developers and inviting community feedback.

The guide focuses on practical development workflows rather than listing protocol primitives. It walks developers through common tasks such as connecting to a node over RPC, moving funds, attaching transaction payload data, and running backend infrastructure. The documentation also introduces Kaspa’s emerging programmability model, outlining development approaches including covenants, based applications, and inline zero-knowledge proofs depending on the needs of a given project.

London Kaspa Meetup Opens Registration

Registration is now open for the meetup “Industry Adoption: Kaspa’s Unstoppable Scalability – Part 2,” scheduled for May 7 at 6:00 PM at Wolfy's Bar in London.

The event is sponsored by the Kaspa Ecosystem Foundation and Kastle Wallet, with production by Blockchain Banter. Attendees can receive up to 40% off food and drinks when paying with KAS through Kastle Wallet, continuing the point-of-sale payment demonstrations featured at previous meetups at the venue.

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