On February 9, 2026, leading U.S. banking trade groups filed a joint comment urging the Federal Reserve to tighten its skinny master accounts plan. The proposal would let qualified fintech and crypto firms access FedNow and FedWire with strict limits, including no interest or emergency lending and daily caps of $500 million or 10% of assets.

Coinbase’s Base app will discontinue Creator Rewards on Feb 18 and wind down its Farcaster social feed to concentrate on trading. Base-linked DEXs handled $15.2B over the past 30 days and the network has accrued $190.6M in fees, suggesting a native Base token may be unnecessary for growth.

Following a White House meeting on 11 February 2026, negotiations on the U.S. Clarity Act concluded without a definitive accord, with stablecoin yield remaining unresolved. Banks and crypto firms stayed engaged and some technical gaps narrowed, while discussions proceed privately. Markets are watching for incremental progress rather than a headline breakthrough.

On Feb 10, 2026, William M. Peaster outlined how newcomers can start playing games on the MegaETH mainnet, from wallet setup to funding. Players are advised to add the L2 to their EVM wallet, bridge ETH for gas, acquire MegaUSD (USDM), and use NFTs for in-game assets. The piece also highlights a range of early MegaETH titles, including Ave Forge, Crypts AI, MegaCube, Offshore Protocol, Showdown, Smasher, Stomp, and TopStrike.

LayerZero said it is launching a Layer 1 blockchain named Zero and has secured strategic backing from Citadel Securities and Ark Invest, which both acquired the protocol's native ZRO token, with Ark also taking an equity stake. The firm additionally announced partnerships with Google Cloud and DTCC, while Intercontinental Exchange plans to evaluate how the Zero chain could support 24/7 trading. LayerZero claims Zero introduces a heterogeneous architecture capable of handling up to 2 million transactions per second with performance far exceeding Ethereum and Solana.

The Bank of England has set up a six-month Synchronisation Lab to test synchronized settlement of tokenized assets in British pounds using its next-generation RTGS core ledger, RT2. Starting in spring 2026, 18 firms from market infrastructure, banking, fintech and decentralized technology will explore delivery-versus-payment and payment-versus-payment use cases across tokenized securities, collateral, foreign exchange and digital money.

Apple and Google have agreed to modify their UK mobile app stores after the UK regulator classified them as holding strategic market status in October last year. The companies plan to introduce clearer and more transparent rules for developers, with changes due to start as soon as April this year. Apple also faces a separate antitrust lawsuit in a Dutch court, linked to alleged unfair practices in its app store.

Ripple has introduced Ethereum and Solana staking within its institutional custody platform through an integration with staking provider Figment, allowing clients to access protocol rewards without running validator infrastructure. The move underscores that XRP itself does not currently offer protocol-level staking, even as XRP-focused products recently recorded larger weekly inflows than comparable Ethereum and Solana products.