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Inaugural ZENCON a resounding success

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Over 200 participants and attendees of the 68-Hour-Hackathon produced 24 projects across 5 categories on the newly introduced ZENIQ Smartchain. Conference to return next year.

It wasn’t only the views that were breathtaking. Once the virtual dust had settled, so were the results of the inaugural “ZENCON Technology Conference and Innovation Awards Hackathon” at the Grand Hyatt Hotel conference location in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Under a strict time limit of just 68 hours the attendees of the Hackathon event produced stunning results that made the high-caliber jury of Shahin Kamran (Vice President Blockchain Product Development & Innovation at Mastercard), Oderli Ferriani (CEO TUPAN.io a S.E.C regulated token), Rodrigo Espinosa (DIRECTOR at Greentech cluster & International Cleantech network), Mag. Erwin Dokter (CEO of ZENIQ(R) Technologies Ltd.) and Fernando Unzue (Business Technical Director in Data Loyalty) wonder if it would be fair to declare winners.

“We knew we arguably had some of the brightest minds in blockchain development on site here in Mexico. But then these hackers came storming out of the gates and the results were nothing short of spectacular,” said Dokter, co-founder of ZENIQ, the company behind ZENCON. “It’s exactly what we hoped for – an in-person event that would spark creativity and showcase what the ZENIQ Blockchain and Smartchain really are capable of.”

It is fair to say that the conference checked both boxes. In total, 200 developers and innovators attended the conference, making the inaugural event a resounding success. 24 projects were created across five categories. Eventually, the jury had to make a call and awarded these projects prizes ranging between 10,000 and 20,000 USD.

The second inaugural “ZENCON Technology Conference and Innovation Awards Hackathon” will be held in June 2023. The location will be announced at a later point in time.

CATEGORIES & WINNING PROJECTS

  • In the “Metaverse/Gaming” challenge, contrary to expectations, two extraordinarily exciting projects will share the $20,000 with $10,000 per project.
    • TeMe – An easier and more fun way to manage the information of the company’s employees (10.000$)
    • Netverse (A metaverse-project where the players can challenge each other for an amount of ZENIQ tokens) (10.000$)
  • In the “NFTs/Tokenization” challenge, the $20,000 prize money will be distributed to the N Farm project. N Farm is an NFT platform for the certification of food of animal origin that facilitates normative export.
  • In the Challenge “Decentralised Finance (DeFi) & Defi 2.0”, the $20,000 prize money goes to the True Commit project. The team builds accountability into finance and links investments directly to final purchases.
  • The $20,000 of “The world of Web 3.0/Tools & Infrastructure” Challenge was won by the team “Data Link”. The team focuses on incentives for data sharing and credential verification in the chain.
  • The category “B2B/B2C solutions on the ecosystem” presented a particularly exciting picture for all participants. The top prize of $20,000 went to DemeterGift. Their project focuses on fundraising as a service on the web3.

In addition, there were two special prizes that no one had expected. One was the Huitzil project, which simplifies the creation of smart contracts. The other was the FiDora project, which specialises in the decentralisation of real assets. Both projects were accepted into the ZENIQ Incubator Programme.

QUOTES

“ZENCON was a wonderful experience and I cannot wait to be a part of the next edition”, Damiany Rosales, Durango-Mexico

“I learned a lot about blockchain in general and how to interact and meet a lot of people from a lot of countries”, Salvador Gutierrez, Durango

“We came here with no expectations and were very pleasantly surprised to find so many motivated talents from all over the world. We are convinced that ZENIQ is creating a platform that will change the world for good. ZENIQ to the moon!”, Balint Tatai, Austria

“A fantastic hotel and a great opportunity to meet wonderful people and very well organised.

My team and I are already looking forward to next year’s event!” Vitali Kromine, London UK

About ZENCON

Introduced in 2022, ZENCON by ZENIQ is an annual technology conference and event to unleash the power of the ZENIQ blockchain technology. With more than 11,000 applicants for only 200 coveted spots, the ZENCON Hackathon will feature some of the world’s finest blockchain developers and innovation leaders. ZENCON 2022 is being held in Playa del Carmen, Mexico from June 3-8, 2022. More information about ZENCON can be found by visiting www.zencon.io.

About ZENIQ Technologies Ltd.

The blockchain project was launched in 2018 and ZENIQ Technologies Ltd. was officially established in May 2021. It is a research and development company that develops customised, proprietary software and hardware solutions based on blockchain technology. Based in Dubai, UAE, the company has quickly made a name for itself with the ZENIQ Hub, a unique hardware device for fully integrated decentralised usage of blockchain applications. Learn more about the ZENIQ ecosystem at www.zeniq.com.

Media Contact:

pr@zeniq.com

Eric Heinemann

CMO of ZENIQ Technologies

PR Contact:

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Blockchain

Orochi Network (ON) Builds the Verifiable Data Layer for Web3 as zkPass Partnership and 49-Chain Expansion Signal Growing Infrastructure Reach

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Orochi Network has been doing one of the harder things in crypto: building serious cryptographic infrastructure and waiting for the market to care. The wait is beginning to pay off. ON is currently trading around $0.119, up 96.24% from its all-time low of $0.06074 reached on February 10, 2026, with a market cap of approximately $17.2 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $6.7 million. The token sits 72.6% below its all-time high of $0.416 from October 2025 — but the direction of travel over the past five months has been consistently upward from the February floor.

Orochi Network operates as a blockchain-agnostic and proof-system-agnostic Verifiable Data Infrastructure, using three core cryptographic primitives — Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Fully Homomorphic Encryption, and Trusted Execution Environments — to make data operations trustless, provable, and private. That three-layer cryptographic stack is what separates Orochi from single-mechanism privacy protocols — it doesn’t bet on one cryptographic approach, it deploys all three depending on what each specific use case requires.

The Product Suite That’s Already Running

Orochi’s flagship product, zkDatabase, is the world’s first provable NoSQL database. Every data query generates a Zero-Knowledge Proof automatically, enabling auditors, regulators, and smart contracts to verify data correctness without ever accessing sensitive content. For enterprise and institutional use cases — financial compliance, healthcare data, government records — the ability to prove data integrity without revealing the underlying data is the precise capability that has prevented blockchain adoption in regulated industries. zkDatabase solves that at the infrastructure level.

Orand provides a Verifiable Random Function for trustless randomness, while Orocle delivers verifiable oracle feeds without relying on trusted nodes. The oracle market is dominated by Chainlink, but Orochi’s verifiable oracle approach — where every feed is accompanied by a cryptographic proof of origin rather than relying on a reputation-based trusted node network — offers a technically differentiated alternative that’s gaining traction in ZK-native ecosystems where proof composability matters.

Orand and Orocle services are integrated across 49-plus blockchains, while zkDatabase has been adopted by 20-plus blockchains. Cross-chain infrastructure that runs on 49 networks without being tied to any single chain’s success or failure is a meaningful structural advantage — especially as the multi-chain landscape continues to fragment.

The zkPass Partnership and Verifiable Identity

The collaboration with zkPass — building a new foundation for verifiable, privacy-protected data in Web3 — is among the more strategically aligned partnerships in Orochi’s ecosystem. zkPass handles identity verification through zero-knowledge proofs, allowing users to prove attributes about themselves without revealing underlying credentials. Orochi’s verifiable data infrastructure is the natural complement — once identity is verified, every subsequent data interaction that user has on-chain can be provably correct through Orochi’s zkDatabase layer.

That combination of verifiable identity and verifiable data integrity represents the foundational stack that regulated Web3 applications — particularly in RWA tokenization, DeFi compliance, and institutional finance — have been waiting for.

Backed by over $20 million in funding from the Ethereum Foundation, Mina Protocol, Web3 Foundation, and BNB Chain alongside leading venture capital firms, Orochi has grown to support 145-plus partners with more than 160 million transactions processed to date. Grants from protocol foundations rather than purely venture capital is a meaningful signal — it indicates that other blockchain ecosystems view Orochi’s infrastructure as genuinely valuable to their own development rather than simply making a financial bet.

The Supply Structure Worth Understanding

Only 14.4% of the 1 billion maximum ON supply is currently circulating — 144.28 million tokens — with a fully diluted valuation of approximately $81.3 million against the current $17.2 million market cap. With 85.6% of total supply still locked, ON is operating in a very early distribution phase. The gap between FDV and market cap implies either that the market believes the supply will create significant dilution pressure as it unlocks, or that adoption hasn’t yet reached the scale needed to justify the full supply value.

The Binance Alpha and Binance Alpha Airdrops tags on CoinMarketCap reflect a listing pathway that has brought broader retail attention to ON beyond its core technical audience. A trading call citing 25x leverage entry zones on KCEX reflects the speculative layer that sits above the infrastructure fundamentals — ON attracts both audiences simultaneously, which amplifies volatility in both directions.

Orochi’s 2026 goal is to solidify its position as the foundational verifiable data layer for Web3 and institutional finance, scaling zkDatabase, zkDA Layer, Orocle, and Orand modules across global markets to enable secure, auditable data infrastructure for RWA, stablecoins, AI, DeFi, and more. That ambition is coherent and directionally aligned with where institutional Web3 capital is flowing. A $17 million market cap for infrastructure already running on 49 chains with Ethereum Foundation backing is either a significant market oversight or a fair reflection of how early the verifiable data layer category still is.

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Blockchain

Mira Network (MIRA) Searches for a Floor as AI Verification Infrastructure Battles Relentless Supply Pressure

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Mira Network launched on September 26, 2025, with a genuinely differentiated mission — building a decentralized verification layer for AI outputs, solving the hallucination and reliability problem that prevents truly autonomous AI deployment at scale. MIRA’s debut proved well received, starting at $1.25 before quickly doubling to around $1.40. Ten months later, the token is trading around $0.039 — down 97% from its launch price — with a market cap of approximately $7.53 million against a total supply of 1 billion tokens.

MIRA traded down 4% in the most recent 24-hour period with approximately $4.03 million in 24-hour volume — a volume-to-market-cap ratio that reflects still-active trading despite the dramatic price decline. The July 4 surge of 31.2% in a single day on $58 million volume showed the token retains the capacity for sharp moves when sentiment shifts — volume that day was five times the market cap, reflecting intense speculative activity on a thin float.

What Mira Network Actually Solves

Current AI systems produce hallucinations and unreliable outputs, requiring constant human oversight that prevents their deployment as truly autonomous agents. Mira’s verification layer addresses this at the infrastructure level — providing cryptographic verification of AI-generated outputs that allows applications to trust AI results without requiring a human to double-check every response.

The practical implication is significant. Every AI agent deployment in DeFi, enterprise workflows, or autonomous systems today requires a trust assumption about the AI’s output accuracy. Mira’s network creates a decentralized verification mechanism where multiple nodes independently validate AI outputs, enabling applications to deploy AI agents with mathematical confidence in their reliability rather than probabilistic hope.

The platform also allows apps built on its infrastructure to issue their own tokens, using MIRA to unify and convert liquidity — a tokenomics design that creates ecosystem demand for MIRA as the base liquidity layer for all applications built on the network.

The Backing That Validates the Thesis

Prior to launch, Mira Network raised about $10 million. Early angel investors included Balaji Srinivasan, Sandeep Nailwal, and Alex Svanevik, later joined by Framework Ventures, Bitkraft Ventures, and others. That investor roster is notable — Balaji Srinivasan and Sandeep Nailwal are two of the most respected technical investors in the crypto space, and Framework Ventures has a track record of backing protocols that achieve genuine adoption rather than pure speculation.

The Kaito AI Season 2 community campaign distributing $600,000 in MIRA tokens for completing tasks reflects the team’s continued investment in community building — though as CoinMarketCap’s analysis notes, the campaign introduces additional sellable tokens into a market where demand is already weak, making it a short-term supply headwind even as a long-term community growth initiative.

The Supply Structure Governing Everything

The tokenomics model includes a total supply of 1 billion tokens, with more than 191 million currently in circulation. Over the coming years, vested tokens held by early investors, the team, contributors, node operators, and others will gradually be released. Meanwhile, more than 40% of tokens are reserved by the DAO for ecosystem development, partner incentives, governance initiatives, and research efforts.

With only 19% to 28% of tokens currently circulating depending on the data source, MIRA faces one of the most challenging supply dynamics in the AI infrastructure category. Recurring monthly unlocks landing into a market with $4 million in daily volume creates structural downward pressure that product development alone struggles to offset at this stage.

MIRA formed a technical double bottom at $0.041 at the end of June, with trading volume increasing significantly and bullish momentum strengthening. That technical structure was the foundation for the July 4 surge before giving back gains in subsequent sessions. The Nigeria ecosystem expansion and enhanced developer SDK planned for 2026 represent the geographic and technical growth levers the team is pulling to drive organic demand — but adoption in emerging markets moves at a different pace than the unlock schedule.

The AI verification infrastructure thesis that Mira is built on is arguably more relevant in July 2026 than it was at the September 2025 launch — autonomous AI agents are now a mainstream topic rather than a niche discussion. Whether MIRA can attract enough developer adoption to generate genuine network activity before the remaining 80% of supply enters circulation is the question that will define the protocol’s trajectory through the rest of the year.

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Crypto

Radiant Capital Shuts Down After 18-Month Struggle to Recover From $50M Lazarus Group Hack

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This one doesn’t have a silver lining. On June 1, 2026, the Radiant Capital DAO announced it was winding down operations — ceasing all active development after failing to recover stolen funds or secure new capital following the October 2024 exploit that drained roughly $50 million from the protocol. The shutdown marks the end of what was once one of the more ambitious cross-chain lending projects in DeFi.

RDNT is currently trading at approximately $0.00168, down 3.45% in the past 24 hours — a shadow of its former self. The token peaked near $0.50 in 2023. The collapse from there to effectively zero is one of the starkest examples of what a single catastrophic exploit can do to a protocol’s trajectory.

How the Attack Unfolded

In October 2024, attackers compromised Radiant Capital through a highly advanced malware injection that breached multiple developers’ hardware wallets simultaneously — a sophisticated supply-chain style attack that bypassed the protocol’s multisig security assumptions.

The hack was later attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and on-chain analysis revealed the group had turned the stolen $53 million into over $102 million by the time the shutdown was announced — a grim detail that underscores both the sophistication of state-sponsored crypto theft and the near-impossibility of recovering from it through legal or on-chain means.

The tactics used in the attack subsequently appeared in other major crypto incidents. In April 2026, Drift Protocol said it had medium-high confidence that the same actors behind the Radiant breach were responsible for a separate exploit against its platform — with the group spending months building trust with contributors through conference meetings and professional contacts before deploying malicious tools.

18 Months of Failed Recovery

What makes Radiant’s story particularly difficult is that the team genuinely tried. For a year and a half after the exploit, the DAO explored paths to recovery — new capital raises, restructuring options, community governance mechanisms. None of it worked.

The protocol had once ranked among the largest cross-chain lending platforms in DeFi, with TVL reaching $386.8 million in December 2023. By early June 2026, TVL had fallen to approximately $1.4 million across chains, with active loans near $866,000 — effectively an empty shell of what the protocol had been.

The DAO’s announcement confirmed there was no viable path forward. Borrowing and incentives have been stopped, and the protocol has entered a maintenance state rather than a full decommission — meaning users can still withdraw funds and manage existing positions, but no new activity is possible.

What Existing Users Need to Do

Radiant Capital has stated it will continue attempts to recover the funds stolen in the 2024 exploit, and affected users can access a remediation portal to seek those funds. That process is likely to be slow and uncertain, but it represents the only remaining avenue for users who suffered losses in the original attack.

For anyone still holding positions in the protocol, the priority is straightforward: existing positions can still be managed, but withdrawal conditions depend on current utilization and market dynamics — and with liquidity declining and yields at zero, waiting carries its own risks. Getting out now rather than hoping for improved conditions is the more prudent approach.

The Radiant shutdown is a case study in what the DeFi industry has been grappling with since the Lazarus Group began targeting protocols systematically — that technical security alone isn’t enough when attackers are willing to spend months infiltrating teams at the human level. Hardware wallet compromises across multiple developers simultaneously suggest an operational security failure that no smart contract audit could have prevented.

RDNT’s price tells the rest of the story.

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