On December 18, 2025, Chainlink announced a partnership with 24 major financial institutions to deploy an infrastructure aimed at improving corporate actions processing. The system uses the Chainlink oracle network, blockchains, and AI to extract, validate, and distribute corporate actions data across multiple chains. The initiative builds on a prior Phase 1 project and is moving into Phase 2, which targets faster, more accurate, and standardized delivery of corporate actions information for asset managers.

Forward Industries has tokenized its SEC-registered FWDI shares on Solana via Superstate’s Opening Bell platform, making them usable as collateral in decentralized finance. Ex-US shareholders can move their NASDAQ-listed equity into allowlisted Solana wallets and post it on Kamino to borrow stablecoins while retaining exposure to the underlying stock.

On December 18, Intuit said it partnered with Circle to enable USDC payments across TurboTax and QuickBooks. The collaboration aims to deliver faster, lower‑cost settlement for users, but a launch timeline and user‑flow specifics were not disclosed. The news was met with a positive market reaction.

On December 18, 2025, DPRK-linked hackers were reported to have taken more than $2.02 billion in crypto since January, lifting their lifetime haul above $6 billion. Total crypto theft in 2025 exceeded $3.4 billion across 158,000 incidents, with at least 80,000 unique victims. A March $1.4 billion Bybit breach underscored the shift to fewer, larger attacks.

According to Delovoy Peterburg this week, St. Petersburg‑based Rozetki SPb filed a patent for an EV charging station with a built‑in crypto mining module. The company estimates mining could cover 7,200 rubles while 300 kWh of monthly charging costs about 2,600 rubles at 6.2 rubles per kWh, though experts cited by RBC note public network tariffs can reach 18–19 rubles per kWh.

On December 17, E‑Estate said it integrated AI to guide property selection and risk checks, and on December 18 it released a Tokenized Property Disclosure & Asset Report. The firm cites $18.4 million invested and 11 properties tokenized, and plans a January 31, 2026 Miami summit to outline its Vision 2034 roadmap and tokenization plans.

On 18 December 2025, after the ECB's latest rate decision, Christine Lagarde outlined the bank's focus on stability, digital payments and stablecoins. She said a digital euro remains under review and must be simple, affordable, privacy‑respecting and usable offline, while noting MiCA enables oversight but reserve exposure in stablecoins could pose risks requiring vigilance by regulators.

Researchers from the Ethereum Foundation's Stateless Consensus team have warned that the protocol's ever-growing state is making it harder and more costly for nodes to store, serve, and sync data. They outlined three paths — State Expiry, State Archive, and Partial Statelessness — aimed at containing state growth, reducing node bottlenecks, and preserving decentralization while longer-term stateless validation is developed.