The XDC Weekly is a short weekly video and written description of the previous week's highlights and happenings on XDC Network.

XDC Accelerator Cohort 4
Plug and Play has announced 12 startups selected for Cohort 4 of the XDC Accelerator, focused on AI agents and blockchain. The cohort will work alongside Plug and Play and the XDC Foundation on business development, mentorship, investor connections, and opportunities to integrate their solutions with the XDC Network ecosystem.

https://x.com/PlugandPlayTC/status/2095898494708170763?s=20

AI and the People Problem 
A new article from XDC Foundation Executive Director Billy Sebell explores how AI could help close the gap between blockchain infrastructure and the people and institutions it is designed to serve. Rather than treating AI as a replacement for existing blockchain use cases, the article examines its potential as an adoption layer that can simplify access to trade finance, tokenized assets, DeFi, and payments while emphasizing the trust and controls required as agents gain greater autonomy.

https://x.com/XDCFoundation/status/2092990841463718107?s=20

XDC Pulse - August 2026
The August edition of XDC Pulse recaps a month of expanding infrastructure and ecosystem activity across XDC Network. Highlights include continued validator growth, the launch of the QAIX Quantum Computing and AI Alliance, XDC integration with OrbitX Corporate Cards, new market access through KuCoin Futures, and global ecosystem engagement across Singapore, Paraguay, Brazil, Australia, and other markets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0y69029shc

XDC Weekly August 30th, 2026 - September 5th, 2026

The RWA and trade finance blockchain is steadily building for lasting success

June 1 marked the sixth anniversary of the XDC Network mainnet. Six fruitful years of live mainnet and secure transactions have led to a fast-growing community and a sought-after destination for trade finance and RWA tokenization. At the time of writing, RWA.xyz ranks XDC Network #13 in RWA chains, and CoinMarketCap consistently ranks the network well within the top 100 in the cryptocurrency market. Beyond rankings and recognition, the XDC community remains as lively as ever. Builders and network advocates have focused relentlessly on building for lasting success through protocol upgrades, impactful integrations, infrastructure additions, and successful relationships with industry leaders across the globe.

In just the past year, the network has seen significant developments, including:

Deutsche Telekom MMS launched a masternode on the XDC Network, reinforcing enterprise-grade infrastructure support for network users.

Archax, the UK’s first Financial Conduct Authority-regulated digital securities exchange, broker, and custodian, integrated XDC Network. Within months, money market funds were live on chain, bringing tokenized funds from giants like BlackRock, Fidelity, and State Street into the XDC ecosystem.

SBI XDC Network APAC and SBI R3 Japan successfully launched a proof-of-concept demonstrating enhanced payment efficiency and inter-business trade settlements across different distributed ledger technologies. 

The network witnessed major upgrades, including:

In Q3 2024, at block number 80,370,000, the XDC 2.0 protocol update was successfully implemented on XDC Network, the most significant upgrade to date. This upgrade introduced state-of-the-art security, employing forensic detection not yet seen in the blockchain industry. XDC 2.0 requires only three-block finality, and new blocks are generated every two seconds. It also brings advanced Byzantine Fault Tolerance. 

Etherscan integrated XDC Network to create the XDCScan explorer, an industry-wide standard for block explorers now available to XDC Network users.

This hard work, often in the background, leads to newsworthy accomplishments. Despite the headlines, for all of its years, XDC Network has been—in many ways—hidden in plain sight.

The rankings, integrations, and awards it has received over the years place the network firmly in the upper echelon of the blockchain space—though not quite yet in the mainstream crypto consciousness. Visibility aside, XDC Network keeps moving forward. Consider the following:

In May alone, XDC Network completed integrations with global liquidity layer Stargate, compliance leader Elliptic, institutional digital asset platform Utila, and regulated tokenization infrastructure provider Libre. Finally, LatAm payments infrastructure provider Bitso integrated XDC Network to deliver fast, low-cost cross-border payments along the world’s largest remittance corridor between the United States and Mexico.

Also in May, the network joined the MiCA Crypto Alliance, an initiative established by the DLT Science Foundation to coordinate and enhance compliance with EU Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

In March, XSwap Protocol launched Circle’s Bridged USDC on XDC Network. Seamless USDC transfers are now live on the network. In unison, XDC Foundation became a member of the Circle Alliance.

Trade finance is also hidden in plain sight.

Like the XDC Network, trade finance and global trade, as a whole, are often hidden in plain sight. Most of us only see the end result of trade—the products on shelves, so to speak. But global trade is a massive, complex, $33 trillion operation with untold nuances and intricacies. Not always apparent to the average person, industry insiders and business owners worldwide know that trade finance is particularly antiquated and in serious need of tokenization.

Blockchain has the potential to revolutionize trade finance—and not only has it begun, but the process is accelerating. Much progress has been made in the last two years with the adoption of electronic negotiable instruments (UK’s ETDA) and the tokenization of trade instruments, such as bills of lading and other trade transaction documents (SBI). In June 2024, France officially adopted the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR), providing a framework for the legal use of electronic transferable records. Japan followed shortly thereafter, joining the UK and Singapore in recognizing electronic bills of lading. The gears are in motion.

Bringing liquidity to web3 trade finance will enable easier tokenization of trade finance assets and entry for secondary market investors. London-based Tradeteq is a pioneer in redeploying trade finance assets to a secondary investor market. In fact, they were the first project ever to tokenize a trade finance asset—on the XDC Network—demonstrating a feasible digitization process.

Now acquired by the working capital advisory firm Silver Birch, Tradeteq will continue to deliver efficient, scalable trade finance products to Silver Birch's broad client base. These acquisitions and alliances herald trade finance’s acceleration into web3, underpinned by blockchain technology, and more specifically, the XDC Network.

XDC Network associates continue to figure prominently in the trade finance narrative, taking leadership roles in key discussions surrounding the transformation of trade finance and its regulations. These include: 

TFDI Connect in Dubai, led by André Casterman and co-hosted by the XDC Network and the Trade Finance Distribution Initiative (TFDi). Multiple panels, including leaders from XDC Foundation, Ripple, and McKinsey and Company, discussed relevant topics such as stablecoin usage in global trade finance.

Trade Finance Investor Day in the UK, where XDC Foundation Executive Director Billy Sebell was the keynote speaker. 

UK Parliament’s House of Lords Global Stratelogues event, where Head of Enterprise Alliance & Ventures Saloi Benbaha represented XDC Network. Benbaha highlighted the XDC Network and blockchain technology’s potential to modernize trade finance and streamline inefficient processes.

As tokenization establishes a foothold in trade finance and other real world applications, XDC Network saw significant integrations and growth in the RWA sector last year. Mercado Bitcoin, one of the largest digital assets platforms in Latin America and the largest crypto exchange in Brazil, issued an initial $12M in fixed income RWA tokens, backed by Brazilian corporate debt, on XDC Network.

In November, XDC Foundation and Plug and Play Tech Center launched the first-ever XDC Enterprise RWA Accelerator, bringing multiple new RWA projects onto the network. The inaugural cohort was established through a competitive process, where finalists from 100 RWA and enterprise-focused applicants showcased their projects and were judged by top industry professionals. This distinguished class of tokenization projects brings name recognition, capital, and utility to the XDC ecosystem.

Phase two of the accelerator begins this summer and will focus on RWA capital resource entities.

As briefly mentioned above, other notable integrations with the network include:

Enterprise-grade digital asset operations platform, Utila, integrated XDC Network, enabling banks and financial institutions to securely custody tokenized assets using non-custodial, MPC-based wallets with role-based access, automated treasury workflows, and seamless EVM RPC connectivity.

The Elliptic integration brought industry-standard AML solutions to XDC Network, allowing real-time transaction screening and risk monitoring for institutions. This compliance tool paves the way for further institutional adoption and support. 

Libre integrated with XDC Network to enable compliant on-chain issuance of tokenized funds for institutional and accredited investors.

Through its collective efforts, the XDC community plays an integral role in advancing and campaigning for the XDC Network. A global force, the community has roots in Australia, Brazil, Singapore, UAE, UK, US, Singapore, and many other countries and regions. From meeting with policymakers to conducting RWA hackathons, the community is servicing the network and is at the heart of its growth.

Podcasts have become increasingly important educational platforms that highlight ecosystem updates, regulatory conversations, developer initiatives, and more. Find several here:

XDC MENA Podcast. From DeFi to RWA tokenization and everything in between, the XDC MENA Podcast explores the cutting-edge projects and developments shaping the XDC Network, with a frequent focus on the MENA region. 

XDC APAC Podcast. The Asia-Pacific region is well-covered in the XDC APAC Podcast, with broader XDC Network and blockchain technology discussions as well.

Genfinity’s Crypto Enclaves. The Crypto Enclave podcast features top industry experts and often spotlights XDC Network developments with a focus on helping listeners do their own research.

Inside XDC. Hosted by the XDC Network X account, Inside XDC is a regularly scheduled space that covers updates and developments from participants across the ecosystem. 

With its upgraded infrastructure and expanding integrations, the XDC Network has also maintained a presence across key industry events, staying current with emerging trends, innovations, and key developments shaping the industry. These events attract many industry experts and innovators and create opportunities to make strategic connections that will develop and sustain the XDC ecosystem.  

Australian Lead for Ecosystem and Business Development Sean White represented the network at the Digital Economy Council of Australia’s Annual Policy Forum, held at the Parliament House in Sydney. 

At the RWA London Summit, ecosystem members joined institutional leaders from Fidelity, State Street, BNY Mellon, and LSEG to discuss RWA tokenization and institutional adoption

ETHDubai saw XDC team members engaging with developers, enterprises, and blockchain enthusiasts around RWA tokenization, DePIN, and decentralized finance.

At the RWA Gulf Summit 2025, aligned with TOKEN2049 Dubai, XDC Network teams joined regional banking leaders, sovereign wealth funds, and institutional investors to explore how RWA innovations are transforming finance across the Middle East.

The XDC Foundation represented the network on-site at Consensus 2025 Toronto and hosted the Institutional RWA Mixer, a networking event bringing together issuers, allocators, banks, builders, and other key decision-makers across digital assets and finance.

The Crypto Hub meetup brought Hedera and XDC Network together at the XDC Innovation Labs in Dubai - fostering ecosystem collaboration in one of the world’s most active Web3 hubs.

Last year, the XDC Foundation successfully completed a XDC Network-branded sponsorship with D.C. United, one of the founding teams of Major League Soccer. This sponsorship was particularly timely, as the regulatory landscape in the U.S. was beginning to change. It helped introduce the XDC Network to key agencies in Washington, D.C., creating opportunities and establishing connections with influential forces in the area.

Positive momentum carries XDC Network forward. 

The milestones of the past year are a reflection of the foundational work laid in XDC Network’s early years. That work made the many integrations, project launches, and affiliations in year six and beyond possible. Consider the following:

While network privacy wasn’t much of a priority elsewhere, XinFin foresaw the need to provide enterprise users with privacy features via a proof of concept: a bridge to R3’s Corda in 2021. Today, now that the UI/UX, minting process, security, and general architecture are in place, the use of XDC sovereign custom networks can happen at-scale. Users can easily develop and launch their own blockchains for privacy and other needs, while taking advantage of the security, speed, and efficiency of the XDC mainnet.

When memes and NFT art were raging in the crypto space, XDC Network hosted the world’s first trade finance NFT, issued by Tradeteq.

During a time when so many were focused on hype, XDC Network was  quietly establishing alliances with global trade associations like the Trade Finance Distribution Initiative, International Trade & Forfaiting Association, and Digital Negotiable Instruments Initiative.

As regulatory progress stalled in parts of the world, XDC Network associates increased their leadership and participation in significant regulatory victories in other areas of the world.

In Q2 2024, XDC became one of only four blockchains at the time to be supported by Securitize, the leader in end-to-end tokenization of real-world assets.

As XDC Network enters its 7th year, it does so with purpose-built infrastructure, growing regulatory clarity, and expanding institutional alignment. The cryptocurrency industry evolves ever faster in areas like stablecoin regulations, which are rapidly coming to fruition. XDC Network will see growth in stablecoin support and usage, a necessary advancement to enable cross-border transaction volume at scale. The network’s infrastructure is stronger than ever, and its place in the RWA tokenization space is more clearly defined. The journey ahead looks promising – perhaps no longer hidden in plain sight. 

Read more XDC stories on our Medium page!

XDC Network Caps Six Years of Live Mainnet

Blockchain has spent years building the channels for tokenized trade. Now, Artificial Intelligence promises to bring people to them. Blockchain today is missing its most important element: the people.

AI and The People Problem

Blockchain has spent years building the channels for tokenized trade. Now, Artificial Intelligence promises to bring people to them.

Blockchain today is missing its most important element: the people.

For every friend, family member, or colleague who has ventured into crypto, many more have deliberately avoided it. Their reasoning is understandable. Wallets remain intimidating. Bridges, exchanges, and protocols introduce unfamiliar risks. Hacks and industry blowups have repeatedly reminded newcomers that a mistake can be expensive and even irreversible.

Real problems are being solved through blockchain technology. But our industry has seldom made those solutions easily accessible to those hesitant to navigate the learning curve.  That may be where AI matters most: it could become the layer between the infrastructure the industry has spent years building and the people who still do not know how—or why—to use it, rather than it giving blockchain simply another narrative to chase.

That distinction is worth making now, because predictions about AI are advancing beyond reasonable expectations.

Those predictions promise: Billions of agents. Millions of transactions per second. Autonomous software buying goods, managing portfolios, negotiating contracts, and moving money without human intervention.

Perhaps. But we can only work with the facts and experiences we have today.

And today, we must acknowledge that blockchain has yet to fulfill many of its largest promises. The industry has spent years pontificating about onboarding trillions of dollars in tokenized assets. The amount of real-world value moving on-chain continues to grow, but adoption remains far short of the scale envisioned. And while the technology has advanced considerably, the user experience has not always kept pace.

In other words, a lot has changed—and one stubborn problem has not. People still have to show up.

Technology and crypto cycles are unusually good at producing distractions. In blockchain, the focus has shifted from ICOs to NFTs, gaming, DePIN, real-world assets, and now AI. Each new cycle arrives with a prediction that this will finally be the use case that brings the next billion users on-chain.

The mistake is treating those developments as replacements for what came before, and abandoning long-term progress in lieu of the next hot trend. Gaming can be a route to adoption. DePIN can be a route to adoption. Tokenized assets can be a route to adoption. AI can be one too.

What matters is whether a network bends its entire strategy toward each new narrative or uses new technology to strengthen the work of the many distributed participants who have shepherded the growth of a fully functioning ecosystem.

For XDC Network, that distinction matters. XDC leadership and its global community, enterprise and otherwise, have spent years focused on trade finance and the infrastructure required to move real-world value on-chain. The ambition is substantial: help modernize a market still burdened by paper, fragmented systems, limited access to financing, and a trade finance gap measured in trillions of dollars.

That work has naturally expanded into real-world asset tokenization, stablecoins, DeFi, digital asset infrastructure, and the broader convergence between traditional and decentralized finance. AI will not require abandoning any of it.

The more useful question is, what can AI do for the systems already being built? How does it improve trade finance? How does it make tokenized assets easier to access? How does it help people navigate DeFi without requiring them to understand every protocol underneath it?

And if autonomous agents eventually manage real money, how do we know which agents deserve that authority?

Those questions are less dramatic than predictions about billions of autonomous machines transacting with one another. They also ask us to contemplate ideas related to work and execution to deliver on the promises of this technology.

Before Agents May Act, They Have to Be Trusted

The AI industry contains people who have been building for years and others who arrived months ago. The same is true of companies now attaching AI to financial products. That makes trust the first real problem. An agent capable of trading, spending, or moving assets may be useful. An agent capable of doing those things without meaningful controls is a liability.

This is why the emerging idea of Know Your Agent, or KYA, requires serious attention.

The concept is straightforward. Before people or institutions give software meaningful economic authority, they need ways to understand what that software is permitted to do, who created it, how it behaves, what risks it can take, and how its access can be limited or revoked.

We already understand this principle when people participate in financial markets. Identity, permissions, risk controls, and accountability matter. Software will not make those requirements disappear. If anything, autonomy makes them more important.

There are promising examples of AI systems outperforming humans at specific financial or analytical tasks. There are also demonstrations in which agents identify threats or avoid mistakes a person might miss. But a controlled proof of concept is very different from deploying autonomous systems at institutional scale. Before an agent is trusted with meaningful capital, the question will not simply be whether it can make money.

The question will be whether it can be trusted not to lose control of it.

The Adoption Layer—where AI could make its most immediate contribution

Crypto still asks too much of the average user. A newcomer who wants to put ordinary currency on-chain may have to choose an exchange, open an account, move money, buy an asset, select a network, create a wallet, secure a recovery phrase, understand gas, evaluate protocols, compare yields, assess smart-contract risk, and determine whether any of the opportunities in front of them are legitimate.

Blockchain has created an extraordinary range of choices. It has also created paralysis by analysis. AI can compress that decision set. Every additional decision creates another opportunity to stop progressing. Instead of asking a person to understand every network, tokenization platform, staking product, lending market, and DeFi protocol, an agent can begin with a much simpler question:

A user might want to earn a reasonable return without taking substantial risk. They might want to move money internationally or gain exposure to a tokenized asset. They may want to finance an invoice, purchase a product, or compare a group of investment opportunities.

The user does not necessarily need to know which blockchain, protocol, stablecoin, bridge, wallet, or application sits underneath the answer. The agent can search the available options, evaluate them against the user's constraints, explain the tradeoffs, and eventually execute within permissions established in advance.

Some people are research-oriented and take on risks. Some institutions are innovators and trailblazers. But those are the participants who got involved in crypto years ago. 

We need to bring in those participants, who have yet to invest intellectually, as well as conservative enterprises that can’t ignore the opportunity.  

There’s another dimension to why these participants may be reluctant to enter this space. In order to self-custody crypto assets, users must not only make informed decisions but also  assume responsibilities, such as managing seed words, passphrases, and device security. The consequences of misplacing or improperly storing them can be dire.

Crypto has always treated that responsibility as a feature, and it’s what originally attracted people to the space. The ability to “be your own bank” defined the industry. But today, most people don’t actually want the responsibility of being their own bank. They want control over their money, but without the risk associated with self-custody. Traditional finance has been built around people and businesses delegating those responsibilities to the institutions they trust. For the masses, handing off some responsibility to a trusted party may not be a compromise, but a necessity. In a way, AI can bridge that gap.

AI can provide a fundamentally different user experience for these participants and a clear outline of the risks, which may not be as intimidating as imagined. With the right system in place, a person or enterprise can interact with their goal. The agent will deal with the machinery.

If blockchain is going to reach a wide range of participants who have no interest in becoming crypto experts, that separation may prove essential.

Trade finance offers a useful example here because its complexity is not theoretical.

A single trade finance transaction can involve invoices, certificates, shipping documents, compliance records, banks, exporters, importers, insurers, logistics companies, and counterparties that may never have worked together before. Blockchain provides a common settlement and verification layer. AI helps people and institutions actually navigate it.

An intelligent system can read documents, reconcile information, identify inconsistencies, and flag unusual activity across a volume of paperwork that would be difficult to review manually. Connected to XDC's settlement infrastructure, those capabilities can shorten the path from a traditional paper workflow to a verifiable on-chain transaction.

The same logic extends to enterprises that have never developed a blockchain department. AI tools can help review smart contracts, identify vulnerabilities, convert business requirements into EVM-compatible code, and monitor live applications for behavior that deviates from their intended design. Again, the underlying value is not that AI replaces blockchain. Instead, it makes blockchain easier to use.

As the network expands, that function becomes more valuable. More tokenized assets, applications, liquidity pools, validators, and financial products create more opportunity—but also more complexity. AI will help participants make sense of that complexity.

AI will help users find relevant opportunities and help developers locate infrastructure and liquidity. It will help institutions monitor activity across a network they may otherwise find difficult to navigate. Eventually, agents may do more than make recommendations.

They may negotiate transactions, rebalance portfolios, execute settlements, secure financing, and transfer funds when authenticated information indicates that certain conditions have been met. A network built around trade finance, real-world assets, fast settlement, and predictable costs gives those agents something useful to do.

But the order is important. First, we require trustworthy infrastructure. Then, we need intelligence capable of navigating it. If both work, adoption becomes easier.

AI does not solve blockchain's problems simply by adding a layer of functionality. It does not convert insufficient infrastructure into a quality system. It does not make an unsafe protocol trustworthy. AI does not remove the need for security, compliance, privacy, or reliable settlement. Blockchain still has to do what it was designed to do.

What AI will change is the distance between that infrastructure and the person trying to use it. That may prove more consequential than many of the dramatic predictions being made today. The crypto industry has spent years asking people to come to blockchain: learn the terminology, download the wallet, understand the network, compare the protocols, and accept the risk.

AI renegotiates that relationship, making it much easier to onboard. Blockchain can now present itself to the user. An agent can understand the objective, navigate the infrastructure, assess the available choices, and act within boundaries the user has already established.

For XDC Network, that does not mean leaving trade finance, real-world assets, or enterprise settlement behind in pursuit of the newest technology cycle. It means continuing to build on a solid foundation and carry forward years of momentum in established fields. 

It’s a call to the entire ecosystem to continue developing purposeful infrastructure. It’s a call to those in trade finance to keep expanding the markets blockchain can serve. It’s a call to the innovators to keep reducing the friction between traditional and decentralized finance.

With AI, we can make it easier to reach all of our key participants. The blockchain industry may not need AI to fulfill its next promise. It may benefit from AI by helping to deliver on the promises already made.

About the Author: Billy Sebell is the Executive Director of XDC Foundation, an organization he helped form in 2021 to support the growth, development, and adoption of the XDC Network. Follow Billy on his X account - https://x.com/XinfinUSA.

AI and the People Problem

In episode 7 of XDC The Stream, hosts Lance Lilly and Dave Marcus speak with Dr. Martin Hiesboeck, the Head of Research at Uphold. In this conversation, they discuss Martin’s interesting backstory as a linguistics major, a tech business owner, and a diplomat – and, of course, the state of blockchain and its future.