ADI Chain has partnered with Shipfinex, a Dubai-based firm focused on ship tokenization, with plans to bring the roughly $680 billion ship finance market to a wider range of institutional capital through blockchain. Ramana Kumar, president of the stablecoin ecosystem at ADI Foundation, said maritime finance has the scale, physical assets and commercial activity to become a significant real-world asset class. The collaboration signals that tokenization is no longer limited to financial instruments such as government bonds; it is now reaching physical infrastructure like vessels. Shipfinex has identified around 35 ships with a total value of $500 million as candidates for tokenization. However, the company has only received preliminary regulatory approval from Dubai's VARA. It has not yet obtained a full operating license, and it has not issued any maritime asset tokens.

Laser Digital, Nomura Group’s digital-assets arm, has taken a position in ZIGChain’s ZIG token and will help structure and supervise risk for a pipeline of onchain private-credit products built by ZIG Markets. The partnership places a Nomura subsidiary in an underwriting role tied to emerging-market private credit, a tokenized RWA segment that RWA.xyz values at $7.12 billion out of a $37.64 billion market. According to ZIGChain co-founder and chief commercial officer Abdul Rafay Gadit, ZIG Markets has originated more than $50 million so far and recorded zero defaults over the past 10 months, while cautioning that the period does not cover a full cycle. The firms are targeting at least $100 million in total value locked across vault products, with internal milestones of $25 million by September and $100 million by the end of November, though Gadit said neither date is a hard deadline. The products are expected to be distributed through exchanges, neobanks, wallets and DeFi protocols, with access open to both institutional and retail investors. Exclusions apply to UN- and OFAC-sanctioned jurisdictions as well as residents of the United States and Russia. The first product is expected in about three weeks to a month.

Grvt is building a different kind of onchain exchange on ZKsync. Rather than chasing trading volume alone, the platform is combining perpetual futures with yield-bearing collateral, tokenized stocks, credit products, and treasury-linked instruments in an effort to give retail users a single venue for trading and wealth storage. The article, written by Joel John and Vaidik Mandloi and translated by TechFlow, places Grvt in a broader shift in market structure: exchange commissions have been driven toward zero over time, pushing platforms to look beyond fees and toward interest income, float economics, and product distribution. Against that backdrop, Grvt is presented as an experiment in rebuilding broker and bank functions with tokenized assets. The piece says Grvt processes a little over $1 billion in daily trading volume, has about $46 million in TVL, and roughly $348 million in open interest. It also notes that the company had nearly 90,000 users at the time of writing and had raised about $33.3 million across all rounds, including a $19 million Series A led by ZKsync in September 2025. More broadly, the article argues that crypto’s next battleground may shift from raw infrastructure to distribution, retention, and products that let users earn yield, keep liquidity, and trade without giving up self-custody.

ChainFeeds published its July 26 edition of “VC Says,” a roundup of recent discussions and research from crypto venture investors. The issue centers on two discussion tracks: reported plans by Donald Trump to take stakes in AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and whether crypto is being priced with excessive long-term pessimism. The report also highlights three recent research topics from major firms: Blockchain Capital’s question over whether developers should favor distribution from large platforms or remain neutral as major companies launch their own chains; an a16z partner’s call to pass the CLARITY Act; and Bitwise’s view that the next bull-market opportunity may sit at the intersection of onchain finance and traditional finance. ChainFeeds further lists 21 publicly disclosed funding deals from July 13 to July 19 with total financing of more than $752 million. Companies named in that section include Crypto.com, Alpaca, Flex, ADI Chain, Velocity, Cyclops, Pascal, Pact Labs, Glacis Labs, Alsa, Credible Finance, AXON Finance, Trasia, ILITY, Universe Pro, NOBI, Glide, Coinhako, bloXroute, MasterDEX, and Sovereign Labs.

New 13F filings show Abu Dhabi-backed Mubadala and Al Warda Investments held a combined 20.9 million shares of BlackRock’s IBIT worth about $1.139 billion at the end of 2025.

Digital asset law in 2026 is moving into execution. The US is advancing the Clarity Act, China is tightening control over yuan stablecoins and RWA tokenization, and the UAE is refining licensing and stablecoin rules.

BNY Mellon is expanding its crypto custody business into Abu Dhabi’s ADGM through a partnership with Finstreet and ADI Foundation, starting with institutional custody for BTC and ETH.

Chainlink reported 26 new integrations across 17 blockchain networks, including Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Solana, with projects such as Venus Protocol and Spiko Finance also listed.