South Korean blockchain infrastructure company DSRV has joined $XDC Network as an institutional masternode validator. The company has been running a node on the network’s mainnet for about a month and will now take part in its consensus layer. $XDC Network is a blockchain focused on trade finance and enterprise use cases. Its validator set already includes companies such as HashKey, Deutsche Telekom, Clear Street, and CertiK.
DSRV provides blockchain infrastructure and digital asset services. The company manages close to KRW 4 trillion in digital assets and operates validator nodes across more than 70 networks. It is also registered as a Virtual Asset Service Provider with South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit.
In July, DSRV and SBI $XDC Network APAC agreed to jointly explore blockchain applications for businesses in Japan and South Korea. DSRV’s addition as an $XDC Network validator is the first result of their cooperation. The companies will also explore blockchain applications in trade finance, supply chain management, and asset tokenization.
The British auditor, who had moved to Malawi from Leicester, was snatched from her home last week (Picture: Handout)
A British woman taken from her home by a gang in Malawi has been rescued following a deadly shootout.
Nusrat Osman, 47, was snatched from her home in the southern city of Blantyre a week ago when masked men forced their way in.
She was traced to the outskirts of the city, and a rescue operation was launched yesterday after a days-long search that saw a reward of £12,800 being offered for any credible information.
The suspected kidnappers were armed with an AK-47 and a pistol, according to the police.
Officers exchanged fire with those inside the building, killing four men who are yet to be identified.
Osman was reunited with her family, and taken to hospital for treatment and mental and physical check-ups after the ordeal.
The kidnapping happened in Blantyre, Malawi (file image) (Picture: Universal Images Group Editorial)
Malawi Police Service said in a statement: ‘The criminals got shot and were rushed to the hospital where they succumbed to the injuries.’
Deputy Inspector General of Police Noel Kayira was also shot and injured during the rescue, and was taken to the hospital, where he remains in stable condition.
The 47-year-old, who works as an auditor, had moved to the southern African country with her family from Leicester after her husband set up a business there.
Authorities have not publicly revealed how they found out where the woman was kept.
The motive for the abduction has also not been publicly shared at this stage.
Atupele Muluzi, a Malawi politician, said in a statement: ‘It is with great relief and gratitude that I share the news that Mrs. Nusrat Jiwa Osman, who was reported missing, has been found.
‘It is understood that the rescue operation was extremely dangerous
‘The family has expressed profound appreciation for the professionalism, dedication, and incredible bravery of the Malawi Police Service throughout this ordeal, particularly Deputy Inspector General of Police Dr. Noel Kayira.’
Muluzi, the President of the United Democratic Front, has said that kidnappings and abductions are becoming more common in Malawi, where the incidents were previously ‘largely unheard of.’
Her husband told local media in the aftermath of the kidnapping he doesn’t know where she is or how she is.’
‘‘My wife is an auditor and I have no issues with anyone,’ he told Nyasa Times.
A spokesperson for UK Foreign Office told Metro: ‘We are pleased that a British woman who was abducted in Malawi has been released and reunited with her family.
‘We thank the Malawian authorities for their efforts to secure her release.
‘We continue to provide support to her and her family.’
Crypto asset management company Grayscale assessed that the impact of the US Federal Reserve’s (Fed) recent interest rate hike on the cryptocurrency market may be limited. The company viewed this move as an interim adjustment within the current economic cycle, noting that it does not signify the beginning of a new interest rate cycle.
Grayscale pointed out that a similar interest rate hike occurred in 1997. According to the company, the 1997 interest rate increase had a limited impact on asset markets. Based on this historical example, it was stated that the latest interest rate increase is not expected to lead to a large-scale change in the cryptocurrency market.
However, the company stated that investors should focus more closely on stablecoin issuers. Grayscale’s assessment highlighted companies like Circle and Tether, primarily because interest income from reserve assets constitutes a significant portion of their revenue structure.
Rising interest rates can contribute to increased interest income earned by stablecoin issuers from the assets they hold in their reserves. Therefore, there can be a direct correlation between the profitability of these companies and interest rates.
Grayscale’s assessment indicates that the Fed’s monetary policy decisions do not affect all actors in the crypto market in the same way. While changes in interest rates can affect the pricing of Bitcoin and other risky assets, stablecoin companies managing large reserves may have a different revenue dynamic.
The company stated that in assessing the impact of the recent interest rate hike on crypto assets, macroeconomic conditions as well as developments in the stablecoin sector should be monitored.
Avalanche’s Helicon upgrade is scheduled to give validators shorter, auto-renewing commitments while raising the uptime cutoff for rewards and reducing returns at the shortest durations.
The network upgrade is set to activate on Avalanche Mainnet on Sept. 22 at 15:00 UTC. Validators must install AvalancheGo v1.15.0 beforehand to remain compatible with the upgraded chain.
Infographic shows Helicon reducing validator commitments from 14 days to 48 hours, raising reward uptime to 90%, and lowering short-duration ARR by 1.3 points.
What changes for validators
Helicon will cut the minimum Primary Network validation period from 336 hours to 48 hours. It will also let eligible validators automatically begin another cycle when the current one ends, reducing manual signing work and potential reward gaps from repeatedly leaving and rejoining the validator set.
Operators can choose how much of each cycle’s reward to compound into the next one and can update the configuration for a future cycle. That creates a way to combine brief capital commitments with continuous validation, instead of choosing between a long lockup and repeated manual restaking.
The feature applies only to the validator’s own stake. Delegations will not auto-renew, and each delegation must fit inside one validator cycle because the validator is not guaranteed to continue beyond that boundary.
Validation periods that start on or after Helicon activation must achieve at least 90% uptime to earn rewards, up from 80%. The rule is not retroactive: periods that began before activation remain subject to the existing 80% requirement even if they extend beyond Sept. 22.
Avalanche’s uptime measurement will not change, and rewards will remain all or nothing. Falling below the applicable threshold forfeits the full reward for that period, though the validator’s principal is not slashed.
For a validator using auto-renewal, missing the threshold has an additional consequence. The position will not roll into another cycle, and the validator will exit. Its principal and rewards accrued in earlier cycles are returned, but the failed cycle’s reward is lost.
Short cycles reduce how long capital is committed, while the higher threshold raises the operational reliability required to collect each cycle’s reward and continue automatically. For operators, that links continuity to cycle-by-cycle performance without changing how Avalanche measures peer responsiveness or adding a partial-reward buffer.
How short-duration Avalanche rewards change
Helicon will also begin a 90-day adjustment to Avalanche’s reward curve. The protocol’s minimum consumption rate, an input that helps determine staking rewards, is scheduled to decline linearly from 10% to 7.5%. The maximum rate at the one-year duration will remain unchanged.
Avalanche’s modeling estimates that this adjustment will reduce the annualized reward rate at the shortest duration by about 1.3% after the phase-in. The exact realized yield will remain variable because it depends on factors including $AVAX supply, duration, and compounding choices.
The same modeling projects annual $AVAX inflation falling by roughly 0.5% to 1% and the stake-weighted average duration increasing by about two months. Those outcomes are estimates depending on how validators and delegators respond.
The mechanical trade-off is more certain: Helicon makes short, renewable validator commitments easier to use, but sets a lower reward at the short end while preserving the one-year rate and demands more reliable uptime for new validation periods.
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Scientists are perplexed by the discovery of what looks like footprints on the surface of Mars.
Images captured by the Curiosity Rover show an unusual feature on the Red Planet’s surface – broad, shallow pits unlike anything researchers have previously spotted.
The discovery was made as Curiosity explored Mount Sharp, a vast mountain rising from the floor of Gale Crater.
The rover has been exploring Mars since landing in 2012, and despite more than a decade on the planet, it continues to find things that puzzle scientists back on Earth.
These mysterious markings on Mars’ surface were found by the Curiosity Rover (Picture: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Cover Images)
Small pits and depressions are relatively common on Mars. They can form when harder nodules or pebbles embedded in rock gradually weather away, leaving a hollow behind.
But the newly observed features are different. They are much wider and shallower than similar pits seen previously, and researchers could not identify obvious objects that might once have occupied them.
The Curiosity team used the rover’s cameras and instruments to examine the features in detail.
MAHLI and the Mastcam instrument captured overlapping images that can be combined to produce three-dimensional models of the pits and their structure.
Nasa’s Perseverance rover previously captured what appeared to be a boulder field on the Red Planet (Picture: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS / SWNS)
The team does not believe the marks are actual footprints, but the unusual formations provide a new clue about the geological processes that have shaped this part of Mount Sharp.
The surrounding bedrock also provided plenty for Curiosity’s instruments to investigate. Mastcam images and measurements from the ChemCam instrument revealed layers whose texture and structure changed over relatively short distances.
People think they spotted a mushroom on Mars in previous images released by Nasa (Picture: Nasa/UFO Sightings Daily)
Scientists say these variations could indicate changes in the conditions under which the sediments were deposited.
The rover also examined rough, grey layers that were more resistant to erosion than the surrounding rock. ChemCam, MAHLI and the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) analysed the material, which may have a different chemical composition from the bedrock around it.
After almost 14 years on Mars, Curiosity continues to provide scientists with new glimpses of the planet’s geological history – and, occasionally, features they have never seen before.
Ripple has expanded its $XRP Ledger developer kit to support a payments standard created by Stripe and Tempo, giving builders another way to make AI agents pay for data, computing and other online services using crypto.
Version 1.1 of the XRPL AI Starter Kit adds support for the Machine Payments Protocol, or MPP, and the Open Wallet Standard, which lets software manage wallets across multiple blockchains through a common interface, according to a RippleX developer post.
“Our job is to make $XRP and $RLUSD first-class options wherever developers are building,” RippleX head of product Jazzi Cooper wrote on X. $RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin.
Ripple added support for x402, another standard for web payments, in June and MPP now, backing both rather than betting on either.
MPP gives an AI agent, software that can carry out tasks on a user’s behalf, a way to pay as it works. A service responds to a request with a price, the agent authorizes payment, and the service delivers the requested resource. Payments company Stripe and Tempo, a blockchain built for payments, co-authored the standard.
Why the release matters
An AI agent buying data or computing power needs a currency the seller accepts and software that can send it. Ripple wants $XRP and $RLUSD among those choices as developers build services that charge machines for each request.
Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan stated that the upward trend in Bitcoin’s price could continue as long as debt-related concerns do not ease. Hougan supported his assessment with a chart he shared on social media platform X, highlighting the relationship between market developments and Bitcoin’s performance.
According to Hougan’s chart, between July 1st and September 15th, the probability of the US Clarity Act being passed this year dropped from 39% to 18% in the Polymarket. During the same period, the price of Bitcoin increased by 38%.
The data reveals that expectations regarding regulatory developments in the cryptocurrency market are not aligning with Bitcoin’s price movement. Hougan stated that, based on this picture, concerns about the US debt outlook have become a significant factor in market pricing.
The Clarity Act is one of the legislative proposals aimed at clarifying the regulatory framework for crypto assets in the United States. Its progress through the legislative process is influenced by procedural votes in the Senate.
A previous cloture vote in the US Senate failed to secure the necessary support to move the bill to the next stage. The cloture procedure aims to end discussions on a bill, paving the way for it to be considered in the Senate General Assembly.
Hougan’s assessment suggests that Bitcoin’s recent performance is linked not only to developments specific to the crypto sector, but also to broader macroeconomic factors such as the US fiscal outlook and investor debt concerns. However, the future trajectory of Bitcoin’s price depends on numerous different market conditions.
Following the initial March 2022 hike, bitcoin rallied roughly 18% over the following 12 days before subsequently falling around 50%. That raises the possibility that another relief rally could give way to a prolonged bear market. However, one comparable cycle offers limited evidence, and bitcoin’s decline in 2022 coincided with losses across equities, bonds and metals, alongside turmoil within the crypto industry.
The reasons the Fed hiked rates on Wednesday was due to inflation, annual headline inflation has remained above 2% for over five years, although core inflation, which excludes food and energy, has eased to 2.4%, its lowest level in five years. So progress is being made.
However, that progress has now been faced with an energy shock. Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have pushed both WTI and Brent crude well above $100 a barrel, threatening to reignite inflation and squeeze growth. Global bond yields have also climbed, with the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield reaching 5%, adding further pressure to financial conditions and risk assets.
Bitcoin’s bear market is approaching the one-year mark. Could a new rate-hiking cycle prolong the downturn?
