Higher-for-longer returns to the center of the macro trade
TRON’s weekly industry report said the core tension in global asset pricing during Sept. 21-27, 2026 became even more concentrated around three points: a resilient U.S. economy, elevated inflation pressure and the Federal Reserve’s return to a hiking cycle. After the Fed delivered its first rate increase since 2023 in the prior week, several officials continued to signal that more tightening could still be needed, while incoming U.S. data did little to support a cooling-growth narrative.
The report pointed to initial jobless claims of 197,000 for the week ended Sept. 19, a labor market that remained tight, stronger-than-expected core capital goods orders for August and a September business activity survey showing a pickup in economic activity. In TRON’s reading, those data points pushed markets to raise expectations for another hike in October. Pressure was clearest in bonds. On Sept. 25, the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield rose to about 5.20%, while the 30-year yield climbed to about 5.51%, a level the report described as the highest in more than 20 years, signaling materially tighter financial conditions.
TRON also noted that the U.S. current account deficit widened to $246 billion in the second quarter, or about 3.0% of GDP. Taken together, the report argued that the dominant trade during the week was not recession leading to easing. It was persistent economic strength making inflation harder to bring down, reinforcing expectations that higher rates and higher Treasury yields could stay in place for longer. Even with support from large-cap U.S. technology names and AI shares, the rate burden on richly valued risk assets has become more visible, according to the report.
Next week’s focus: jobs, inflation and the 5% Treasury threshold
For Sept. 28 through Oct. 4, TRON said the market focus will shift further from Fed messaging to whether labor-market and inflation readings can validate the case for more tightening. The Oct. 2 U.S. nonfarm payrolls report was identified as the key event, with markets also watching inflation data and JOLTS job openings.
The report said the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield has already moved above the sensitive 5% zone, leaving two sharply different trading paths for the week ahead. If jobs remain strong, wage pressure stays elevated and inflation data show little sign of cooling, markets could strengthen expectations for another October hike. In that case, long-end Treasury yields could remain above 5% or push higher, the dollar could stay firm, and equities, gold and crypto assets that are sensitive to real rates could face deeper valuation pressure.
If jobs cool meaningfully, job openings decline or inflation comes in weaker than expected, the recent rise in hike expectations could ease for a period. That, in turn, could pull Treasury yields and the dollar lower and relieve some pressure on risk assets. TRON said the bigger risk for Sept. 28 to Oct. 4 is not simply weaker growth. It is the chain of events in which overheating growth feeds sticky inflation, which leads to further Fed hikes and another leg up in Treasury yields. The behavior of the 10-year yield around and above 5% was described as a critical gauge of whether global financial conditions keep tightening.
BTC jumped early in the week, then gave some back
In crypto markets, TRON described the week as an early surge followed by a pullback. Bitcoin rose quickly from around $81,200 on Sept. 21 and touched an intraday high near $87,400, with a single-day gain of more than 6%, before retreating on profit-taking and derivatives expiry effects. It briefly fell to about $83,500 on Sept. 23 and was trading around $83,900 to $84,100 by Sept. 26.
Ether followed a similar pattern, climbing from roughly $2,645 to near $2,805 before slipping back to around $2,690. TRON said the rebound was driven by a pullback in Treasury yields, a recovery in risk appetite, inflows into U.S. spot BTC ETFs and short covering. But the move did not develop into a sustained one-way trend, and quarterly options expiry around Sept. 25 amplified volatility.
Bitcoin clearly outperformed Ether during the week, the report said, with capital continuing to favor core assets. Follow-through in altcoins was described as limited.
Price levels to watch in the coming week
TRON said the next set of U.S. data carries the main risk for crypto because it could reset rate expectations. The report highlighted PCE, ADP, JOLTS and the Oct. 2 payrolls print, noting that the Sept. 30 PCE release is one of the Fed’s most closely watched inflation gauges. If inflation remains elevated and employment stays strong, higher-rate expectations could rebuild and weigh on BTC and ETH.
On price levels, the report said Bitcoin’s near-term support sits in the $83,000-$84,000 range. A clear break below that zone could open the way for a retest of roughly $80,000. On the upside, BTC would need to reclaim $86,000-$87,500 to restore stronger upward momentum. For Ether, TRON flagged $2,630-$2,650 as the key support area. A break lower could send ETH back toward $2,500-$2,550, while $2,780-$2,800 remains the main resistance band.
TRON said the core risk is not that the broader trend has already reversed. It is that leverage and sentiment heated up again after the fast early-week rally, leaving markets more vulnerable to large two-way swings ahead of a dense macro calendar.
Funding was concentrated in stablecoin payments, RWA and on-chain finance infrastructure
The report said venture activity during Sept. 21-27 was heavily concentrated in stablecoin payment infrastructure, real-world assets, DeFi yield protocols and on-chain financial rails.
- HIFI completed a $37 million Series A on Sept. 24, led by Left Lane Capital with participation from Tether and others, focused on stablecoin payments and tokenized capital market infrastructure.
- Stablecoin financial infrastructure project Limited raised an $18.5 million seed round on Sept. 24.
- Open payment network Atum raised $13.5 million on Sept. 22, with backing from Variant, PayPal Ventures and others.
- TRON ecosystem self-custodial wallet MeshWallet disclosed a $10 million private financing round on Sept. 24.
- RWA collectibles platform CatchBack closed an $8 million seed round on Sept. 21, led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Robinhood Ventures and Solana Foundation.
- AI-plus-stablecoin finance platform Infini raised $6 million in a seed round on Sept. 22.
- DeFi yield protocol InfiniFi completed a $3 million seed round on Sept. 23, led by Electric Capital.
- Prediction market protocol functionSPACE raised $1.7 million in a pre-seed round on Sept. 24.
- Brazilian digital finance platform NG.CASH received a $15 million strategic investment from Blockchain Capital on Sept. 23.
ZeroDelta: an RWA-focused clearing layer
TRON devoted the project section of the report to ZeroDelta, saying the company has raised a total of $8.9 million from Lightspeed Faction, Arrington Capital and Paper as lead investors, with Coinbase and Franklin Templeton also participating.
The project is described as clearing infrastructure for real-world assets. Its stated purpose is to match institutional RWA order flow and provide compliant, zero-slippage execution for large capital movements. TRON said ZeroDelta is designed to stay neutral: it does not issue a token and does not favor any route. A user submits one request and receives a deterministic, institution-grade settlement, even for large transactions.
According to the report, ZeroDelta’s smart contracts have been audited by Halborn and all major security issues have been fixed. The platform has already processed more than $1 billion in asset clearing volume. Instead of relying on an unproven proprietary bridge, ZeroDelta uses Circle CCTP V2 and LayerZero V2 OFT as its underlying cross-chain rails. It also uses a non-custodial design, with funds moving only through audited smart contracts and under predefined contract conditions rather than direct platform custody.
Three main components behind ZeroDelta
TRON broke the system into three main pieces: Users / Integrators, Escrow Contracts, and Clearing and Settlement.
Users / Integrators
Users and integration partners initiate on-chain orders and receive the target asset at the end of the process. Individual users can submit requests directly, while application integrators can do so on behalf of users and embed ZeroDelta’s clearing capabilities into wallets, financial apps or other trading entry points.
Escrow Contracts
Escrow Contracts are deployed across supported chains and serve as the asset security layer. They hold user funds from order submission through final settlement and enforce user-defined conditions, including destination chain, minimum output amount and deadline. TRON said these contracts are permissionless to call, meaning any qualifying transaction can trigger execution, while an isSupportedToken mechanism limits the asset set to verified tokens only.
Clearing and Settlement
The clearing and settlement layer is currently operated by Glacis and is expected to open up over time. It matches incoming order flow, handles net settlement and delivers the target asset to the user. Orders clear on a central Hub Chain. Because equivalent assets on different chains can be mapped through standardized cross-chain mechanisms, with USDC using Circle CCTP’s burn-and-mint model and USDT and USDe using LayerZero OFT, ZeroDelta can match and settle equal-value assets across chains without requiring them to sit on the same network, while still delivering to a user’s chosen destination chain.
Quotes, settlement and cancellation
Each order on ZeroDelta is a cross-asset swap, the report said, giving USDC-to-USDT as an example. Since those two stablecoins are not perfectly identical assets, the system requires a defined price. ZeroDelta handles this by having users request a quote through an API before they submit an order. Users do not need to calculate the price themselves or choose a route. The system returns a fixed quote and settles the trade on that basis.
TRON said the quote includes two main fields: askTokenAmount, the minimum fill amount the solver must satisfy on-chain, and finalAmount, the amount ultimately sent to the recipient wallet.
The clearing flow itself is described in four steps: Quote, Approve & Submit, Settle and Deliver. The process is built on the Glacis Core messaging system and Glacis AirLift for cross-chain asset transfer, covering order submission, asset lockup, cross-chain clearing and final delivery.
User funds remain under Escrow contract control throughout the process. If an order cannot be settled, the user must actively trigger cancellation. The system does not refund automatically, and the Hub Chain does not proactively return funds. Any recovery action has to be executed on the Hub Chain, meaning users bear Hub Chain gas costs for cancellations regardless of which chain the order originated from.
TRON said this structure gives ZeroDelta three defining features: deterministic execution, non-custodial security and full traceability. Assets never move into a centralized custody layer. They are locked, cleared and delivered under smart-contract rules, a setup the report said is suited to institutional RWA transactions and large stablecoin flows.
AirLift and its unified API model
TRON also outlined AirLift, describing it as a universal token registry that uses a unified API to help burn-and-mint cross-chain tokens integrate quickly and move assets more efficiently across networks.
The report said the current environment often requires separate configuration and maintenance for each token standard. Even where protocols provide standardized verification and transfer tools, each asset still needs its own security settings, payload format and receiving logic. That forces any protocol that wants to support these assets into repeated manual integrations, testing and updates. AirLift is designed to solve that problem through a unified registry and standardized interfaces, allowing aggregators such as LiFi and Jumper to add thousands of new cross-chain asset routes faster.
Integration is simple, according to TRON. Developers contact AirLift for API access, receive the relevant specification and can then use it for front-end route estimation. The smart-contract interface has two core functions only: quote and send. If a project is already integrated with LiFi, it can automatically gain access to AirLift’s higher-efficiency routes without additional development work.
In practice, Glacis has partnered with LiFi to distribute AirLift to all LiFi integrators. Developers that want direct use can integrate the AirLift API themselves. When a user initiates a cross-chain transfer, the system chooses AirLift as the preferred route based on asset type, destination chain, available routes and execution efficiency. Funds then move through the AirLift transfer flow from the source chain to the destination chain, where the user receives the target asset.
Glacis Core and cross-chain risk management
TRON framed Glacis Core as a response to rising complexity, fragmentation and security risk in cross-chain infrastructure. Its goal is to separate applications from the transport layer underneath them, reducing dependence on any single provider and giving developers more flexibility in managing cross-chain risk.
Abstraction
With Glacis, developers can choose or switch the underlying general message passing, or GMP, service without changing the application interface. TRON said that flexibility matters if a GMP service fails, develops a security issue or changes its terms of use.
Access control
All Glacis-based smart contracts are required to use access controls, allowing developers to define which contracts can call into the system, which chains are trusted and which GMP services may be used. The report said Glacis provides a base contract called GlacisClient to help developers add these controls more quickly.
Redundancy
Through redundancy and quorum design, Glacis allows the same cross-chain message to be sent through multiple GMP services at once. A 1-of-n model, where any one of n GMPs validates the message, can improve speed and availability. A stricter x-of-n approach, where at least x of n providers must agree, can improve security and reduce the risk tied to a single provider failing or being compromised.
Retry management
The report said cross-chain workflows can fail at several points, including oracles, GMP consensus, relayers and message transmission. Glacis introduces a message retry mechanism that lets the original contract resend the exact same message while keeping the same Message ID. TRON said this is safer than simply sending a fresh message, because an older lost message could later reappear and be abused in a replay attack. Under the Message ID design, a successfully resent message invalidates the old one, and if the old one is later executed it will also invalidate duplicates.
Protocol architecture
TRON described Glacis as a pure on-chain protocol whose core components are all smart contracts. Those components are divided into infrastructure components and client components.
Infrastructure components are maintained by Glacis and deployed on every supported blockchain. They include the Router, Adapters and Mediators. The Router handles overall cross-chain message routing and scheduling, selects transfer paths based on configuration and coordinates message sending and receipt. Adapters connect different GMP protocols and standardize them inside the Glacis architecture so developers do not need separate integrations for each one. Mediators handle intermediate logic around asset transfers and message delivery, including token conversion, message verification and coordination of data across chains.
Client components are maintained by Glacis and distributed as packages that developers can deploy into their own smart contracts through inheritance. These Clients are the entry point for applications to use cross-chain messaging, access control and security checks.
The report also distinguished between source-chain and destination-chain behavior. Source-chain components initiate cross-chain messages, process user requests and send messages to the destination network. Destination-chain components receive messages, verify them and execute the target-chain action.
TRON’s view of ZeroDelta’s strengths and weaknesses
TRON said ZeroDelta’s advantage lies in its role as an on-chain clearing layer for RWAs. By combining order matching, zero-slippage execution, non-custodial escrow contracts and a Hub Chain clearing mechanism, it is positioned to offer efficient and compliant cross-chain trading and settlement for institutional real-world assets. TRON also highlighted the project’s neutral design, no token issuance, no preferred routes and use of established infrastructure including Circle CCTP V2, LayerZero V2 OFT and Glacis Core.
At the same time, the report said the business remains highly dependent on the size of the RWA market, the pace of institutional adoption and the maturity of the wider cross-chain ecosystem. Its current use cases are also more institution-focused, with fewer obvious scenarios for retail users. TRON added that cross-chain clearing still faces challenges around bridge-layer protocols, liquidity depth, quote stability and multi-chain security, and said ZeroDelta will need to expand both its liquidity network and partner ecosystem over time.
U.S. data this week was lighter, but next week is much more important
In its macro data review, TRON said U.S. releases during the week were relatively light and centered on housing, manufacturing orders, jobs and consumer sentiment. August new home sales came in at an annualized 684,000, up 6.4% month over month, suggesting some resilience in housing demand. Initial jobless claims for the week ended Sept. 19 were 197,000, down by 1,000 from the prior week, pointing to no clear deterioration in labor conditions. August durable goods orders were broadly flat, while orders excluding transportation rose 0.3%, which the report said reflected modest corporate demand. The final September University of Michigan consumer sentiment reading came in at 48.1, down from 51.7 in August, indicating weaker household expectations.
TRON summed that mix up as stable employment and improved housing, but softer consumer confidence and weaker manufacturing momentum.
The calendar for Sept. 28 to Oct. 4 is heavier. The report said Aug. JOLTS job openings and September consumer confidence are due on Sept. 29. On Sept. 30, markets will get September ADP employment, the final second-quarter U.S. GDP reading, August personal income and spending, and PCE inflation. September ISM manufacturing PMI follows on Oct. 1. Then on Oct. 2 comes the week’s most important release: the September nonfarm payrolls report, unemployment rate and wage growth. TRON said the market’s trading focus is likely to shift quickly from growth to the inflation-plus-employment mix, with particular attention on whether PCE and payrolls together alter expectations for the Fed’s future easing path.
Regulatory developments in the U.S., UK, EU and South Korea
United States
On Sept. 22, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission provided temporary regulatory relief for on-chain trading of tokenized U.S. equities, according to the report. The exemption order was published in the Federal Register on Sept. 22 and allows eligible Tokenized Securities Venues to trade tokenized NMS stocks through permissioned AMM and liquidity-pool structures. It also grants partial dealer-registration relief to qualifying liquidity providers. The exemption runs through Sept. 17, 2031 and includes restrictions covering participant access, trade records and a ban on leverage. TRON said the move amounts to the first clearer pilot pathway for regulated on-chain trading of tokenized public securities in the U.S.
On Sept. 24, the Federal Reserve opened consultation on implementing rules under the GENIUS Act for stablecoins. TRON said the Fed proposed two payment stablecoin oversight frameworks: one would require issuers under its supervision to maintain full reserves in highly liquid assets such as short-dated Treasuries, along with capital, risk-management and custody rules for reserves; the other would establish a dedicated approval process for banks seeking to issue payment stablecoins. The report said this shows U.S. federal stablecoin oversight moving from legislation into specific execution rules around capital, reserves and licensing.
On Sept. 24-25, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission provided more clarity on the boundary between crypto assets and tokenized assets. The CFTC updated its FAQ on Sept. 24 to explain how regulated entities can use tokenized qualifying investments to manage client funds and use blockchain for recordkeeping while still meeting existing requirements. On Sept. 25, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance issued a new crypto asset FAQ covering how federal securities law applies to network upgrades, token buybacks and marketing claims.
United Kingdom
On Sept. 22, the Bank of England’s consultation on its Code of Practice for sterling-denominated systemic stablecoins formally closed. TRON said the framework focuses on reserve assets, redemption, liquidity, operational resilience and oversight requirements for systemically important stablecoin issuers. The Bank of England plans to complete final rules by the end of 2026, ahead of a regulated stablecoin regime expected to go live in 2027.
European Union
On Sept. 22, the European System of Central Banks formally responded to consultation on revisions to MiCA, submitting feedback to the European Commission on further improvements to the stablecoin and crypto-asset regulatory framework. TRON said the regulatory focus in Europe is now moving from early MiCA implementation toward reserve structures for stablecoins, financial stability risks and more detailed oversight of tokenization.
On Sept. 21, the European Central Bank said it would push ahead with settlement links between central bank money and tokenized financial markets and continue advancing DLT settlement systems such as Pontes. TRON noted that this is more a piece of financial market infrastructure policy than a MiCA rule change, but said it carries significant policy importance for European RWA, tokenized securities and institutional on-chain settlement.
South Korea
On Sept. 23, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission and Financial Supervisory Service decided to refer four cases of unfair trading in virtual assets to investigative authorities. Those included three ultra-short-term price manipulation cases and one case involving management of a virtual asset operator suspected of unfair trading and market manipulation. TRON said the move suggests South Korea’s regulatory focus under the Virtual Asset User Protection Act is shifting further from framework building to substantive enforcement against manipulation and insider-style misconduct.
