October 2, 2025
Welcome to the Meridian Update, your daily on-chain report. The government might be shut down, but we aren’t. That’s dependability. Let’s dive in.
GiveDirectly is giving, directly, stablecoins
If your friend asks you for $1, you can hand them a $1 bill. If your friend asks you for $1 but they want it on-chain, you cannot hand them a $1 bill. If Coinbase and GiveDirectly partner to give someone $12,000, they could hand that person $12,000 in $1 bills. But of course they want to give it to them on-chain, so they cannot hand them $12,000 in $1 bills.
“The GiveDirectly-Coinbase collaboration promises to test something new. Instead of meting out recurring payments over a long period of time, the NYC pilot is giving participants one large $8,000 lump sum, along with five smaller deposits of $800.”
It will be doled out in USDC, a US dollar stablecoin. We talked about watching out for more stablecoins yesterday. Today, we talk about watching out for more things happening with stablecoins.
Don’t just sit there, do something!
Blockchain networks don’t just sit there. Sometimes people do something and the blockchain networks change.
We talk a lot about the Solana network here on the Meridian update, but it is not the only blockchain network (gasp!). Ethereum is older than Solana. Its native token, ETH, has a larger market cap than SOL, the Solana network’s native token.
The Ethereum network is in a multi-year process of major changes. Yesterday, it took a successful step toward one of those changes. Some of the on-chain world was buzzing from the news that a test of something called the Fusaka upgrade was a success. It was the first of three tests before the change goes live.
The idea behind the Fusaka upgrade is to make the Ethereum network able to handle more transaction volume, a common criticism of the network. Keep an eye on this. The founder of Ethereum is.
Also not on Solana…
…is Zcash. Its price surged during the day yesterday. Crypto Twitter took notice.
A common confusion from the early days of blockchain usage was around privacy. Back in the 2010s, there was an idea that blockchains like Bitcoin were good for doing crimes. People felt like the transactions were private because you didn’t have to go to a bank and say, “Hi, here is my name and home address and phone number, please send money to this person. They helped me do a crime. Here’s that person’s name and home address and phone number.”
That was only kind of right. It is true that with a blockchain like Solana you do not have to call a bank and give them your whole life story. However, every transaction that happens on blockchain networks is publicly visible. That is…kind of the point? And a great feature? Long story short, the US government eventually figured out they could trace transactions through blockchain networks just like anyone else.
Zcash is working on a new blockchain network that allows users to do private transactions. And its price surged yesterday. So every transaction that happens on blockchain networks won’t be visible, exactly, at least not if Zcash has anything to do with it. Worth keeping an eye on this…but how, the privacy!
That’s a wrap
The end of today’s update was written as a private Zcash transaction, so you cannot read it. We’ll see you tomorrow.
Think we missed something today? Email ideas@meridianupdate.com.