The Daily: Standard Chartered sees major RWA growth on Ethereum, CZ challenges Sen. Warren, and more

Standard Chartered sees tokenized real-world assets reaching $2 trillion by 2028 — 'vast majority' on Ethereum

• Standard Chartered predicts the market cap for onchain real-world assets could increase roughly 5,600% by 2028 to $2 trillion, up from about $35 billion today, according to an analyst note. Moreover, the majority of those assets will be tokenized on Ethereum.
• Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets research, said tokenized money market funds and listed equities alone could each grow to $750 billion markets, with onchain private equity, commodities, and corporate debt also growing in size.
• "Stablecoins have created several necessary pre-conditions for a broader expansion of DeFi via the three pillars of increased public awareness, onchain liquidity, and onchain lending/borrowing activity in fiat-pegged product," Kendrick said.
• The main risk, Kendrick cautioned, would be if regulatory clarity in the U.S. fails to materialize — a possibility if the administration cannot push through changes before the November 2026 midterm elections — "but not our base case."
• While other chains will also likely see growth, Kendrick predicts most real-world assets will find a home on Ethereum due to the network's historical reliability and network effects.

Ex-Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao's lawyer demands 'immediate retraction' from Sen. Warren over post-pardon remarks

• The lawyer for Changpeng Zhao is demanding that Sen. Elizabeth Warren retract "defamatory statements" she made about the former Binance CEO following his pardon by President Donald Trump.
• Last week, Warren criticized the president's move, saying on X that Zhao pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge, and circulated a resolution urging Congress to block "this blatant corruption."
• Zhao's lawyer, Teresa Goody Guillén, sent a letter to the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee this week, requesting an apology over her statements related to CZ's 2023 guilty plea for failing to maintain adequate money-laundering controls and subsequent pardon.
• Earlier this week, Fox News' Charles Gasparino reported that Zhao is weighing whether to bring a libel suit against Warren.
• Although Zhao has denied lobbying the Trump administration for a pardon, ties between the Trump-backed DeFi project World Liberty Financial and Binance have raised questions among several observers.

Canaan’s Japan deal marks first state-linked bitcoin mining project in the country

• Canaan is reportedly supplying bitcoin mining rigs to a major Japanese utility for a grid-stability research project, marking the country’s first publicly disclosed state-linked mining initiative.
• While Canaan did not identify the partner, the move follows earlier reports that a subsidiary of Japan’s largest utility, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), had studied using surplus energy generated by solar and wind to mine bitcoin.
• Canaan said in its Thursday release that its hydro-cooled Avalon A1566HA servers will be used to “stabilize regional power-grid load through controlled overclocking and underclocking,” dynamically adjusting hashrate and voltage to balance energy use in real time.

Ether.fi DAO proposes $50 million ETHFI buyback as DeFi’s repurchase wave tops $1.4 billion

• Ether.fi DAO has introduced a proposal to allocate up to $50 million from its treasury on token buybacks, which, if approved, would enable the Ether.fi Foundation to execute open-market purchases of ETHFI if the token dips below $3.
• With ETHFI down over 89% from its 2024 high to trade around $0.93 on Oct. 31, the program would activate immediately upon approval.
• Ether.fi is not the first to execute token buybacks, which have reached $1.4 billion alone this year, led by projects such as Hyperliquid and Pump.fun, Aave, and Uniswap.

Ethereum devs officially target Dec. 3 for Fusaka upgrade

• In an All Core Devs call on Thursday, Ethereum researchers officially selected Dec. 3 as the date to push out the mainnet activation of the much-anticipated Fusaka upgrade.
• Fusaka went live on the Hoodi testnet on Tuesday in its final step towards mainnet activation following successful deployments on the Holesky and Sepolia testnets earlier this month.
• The backward-compatible Fusaka hard fork will implement about a dozen Ethereum Improvement Proposals to improve the sustainability, security, and scalability of the basechain and surrounding Layer 2 ecosystem, including the introduction of the PeerDAS streamlined data sampling technique.

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