On 6 January 2026, leading Chinese financial industry associations issued a joint notice classifying real-world asset tokenization as illegal financial activity rather than a regulated innovation. The document states that no RWA projects, platforms, or services have regulatory approval in mainland China, and that token-based fundraising, trading, and yield distribution fall under existing bans on unauthorized securities and financing.

Fred Wilson expects crypto to become more accessible in 2026, with blockchains effectively hidden behind improved consumer interfaces that simplify spending, trading, and transfers. On January 3, 2026, Vitalik Buterin said recent upgrades combining PeerDAS and ZK‑EVMs move Ethereum toward resolving its security, decentralization, and scalability trilemma.

Neo SPCC has released NeoGo v0.115.0 as a backwards-compatible update that improves Notary service concurrency, refines NeoFS state synchronization, and adds operational enhancements. The new version also adjusts the default MainNet MaxBlockSystemFee to 150,000,000,000 datoshi and introduces several features gated behind the future Faun hard fork, including a native Treasury contract and fee whitelists. The release remains compatible with NeoGo v0.114.0 and does not require a full resync unless nodes are upgraded mid-sync with the NeoFS state sync extension active.

An FEC filing shows two large crypto companies sent more than $21 million to the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. Super PAC. Gemini contributed $1.5 million in USDC converted to dollars, while Foris Dax, parent of Crypto.com, made two $10 million gifts. The funds could influence competitive 2026 midterm races shaping U.S. crypto policy.

On January 5, Polymarket announced a partnership with Parcl to introduce real estate prediction markets that track daily housing price indices for major U.S. cities. The new category lets users bet on future home price movements over set periods using Parcl's transparent index data, expanding Polymarket's coverage of real-world markets beyond elections, sports, and macro trends.

Polymarket and Parcl have entered a partnership to create real estate prediction markets that settle using Parcl's daily housing price indexes. Following the announcement, Parcl's PRCL token gained roughly 120% over 24 hours as the firms outlined a phased rollout focused on major US cities and onchain settlement via Solana.

On January 5, 2026, Starknet's mainnet experienced a halt that paused block production and froze transactions for over two hours, as developers said they were investigating. The block explorer later indicated block production had resumed, while prior incidents in September 2025 and April 2024 highlight ongoing reliability challenges.

On 05 Jan 2026, MetaMask users were warned about a new phishing campaign that mimics two-factor authentication checks to steal seed phrases. Attackers use typosquatted domains and countdown-style warnings to pressure victims into entering full wallet recovery phrases. Once obtained, the scammers import the wallets and rapidly drain user funds.