RESEARCH & INSIGHTS
Industry Insight Reports
Deep insights, technical validations, and professional documents for business adoption in the Web3 and blockchain space.
Available Documents
Who Moves the Signing Key?
In February 2025, Bybit lost $1.46 billion. Yet no private key was ever exposed. What broke was the correspondence between what the signers saw on screen and what they actually signed. The ¥48.2 billion DMM Bitcoin theft followed the same pattern: a legitimate transaction instruction, altered inside a vendor's systems. Japan's Financial Services Agency now states plainly that cold storage no longer guarantees safety. This report decomposes key management into four layers — key material, authorization, intent verification, and continuity — and shows that losses occur almost entirely in the second and third. In H1 2026, infrastructure and operational compromises accounted for roughly 15% of incidents but 76% of losses. Attackers are not casting a wide net; they design attacks that need to succeed only once. The practical implication is uncomfortable for anyone who assumes outsourcing solves the problem. Delegating custody transfers first-layer risk but leaves authorization and intent verification with the client, who still decides when, how much, and where to send. Regulators are moving in the same direction. Japan's amended Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, enacted in July 2026 and taking effect in 2027, brings wallet software vendors under a notification regime and ties statutory reserve levels to security standards — translating key management maturity into a balance sheet figure for the first time. ESMA's supervisory action places key management, transaction controls, and third-party dependency side by side. Written for practitioners building key management from scratch, the report includes a layer-by-layer implementation checklist.
On-Chain Privacy - Whose Data to Conceal, from Whom — and What Must Remain Public
Between 2025 and 2026, on-chain privacy flipped from regulatory liability to a precondition for institutional capital. DTCC, J.P. Morgan, and Circle deployed onto confidentiality-enabled infrastructure even as the Tornado Cash and Samourai prosecutions fixed the legal fate of unconditional anonymity. This report dissects privacy requirements through four variables — whose data, which data, hidden from whom, for how long — showing that institutions demand auditable confidentiality, not anonymity, and that demand has split into three tracks: institutional, compliance-compatible, and unconditional. A dedicated chapter maps the full technology stack, from ZK proof systems and FHE to mixnets, oblivious synchronization, and the post-quantum transition. The market is converging on a third quadrant — individual data private, system rules public — with five falsifiable forecasts covering the ZEC ETF, EU technical standards, Ethereum's Hegotá fork, and the Storm retrial.
The Internet of Value — Can Blockchains Attain the Status of a Neutral Protocol?
This report tests the intuition that "blockchains are used for crime and therefore should not be used" against data and law. Illicit crypto flows hit a record $154 billion in 2025, yet remain under 1% of attributable on-chain volume, while fiat money laundering runs at $800 billion to $2 trillion a year and U.S. internet crime losses keep setting records. Abuse has never justified banning a base infrastructure. Just as the internet settled on a social contract of a neutral core with regulated edges, regulation of value is converging on a division of layers: the U.S. is shifting to edge regulation, the EU is reaching into the asset layer, and Japan is normalizing crypto as an investment product under its securities law. The question for executives is not ban-or-permit, but which layer to do business in.
What Do Validators Actually Do? - Anatomy of the Invisible Infrastructure Industry Behind Proof-of-Stake
Blockchains are assumed to run themselves; in reality, validators keep them alive—managing servers and keys around the clock. This report dissects the invisible infrastructure industry safeguarding ~$245 billion: protocol duties, key-management practice, break-even economics, and the finding that nearly every slashing incident stems from one operational error. It covers the fading new-chain premium, the U.S. regulatory reversal, staking ETFs, Japan's unresolved taxation, and five evidence-based forecasts.
Will Stablecoins Replace Payment Infrastructure? - Twelve Years of History, the Fragmentation Critique, and a 2026 PMF Verdict
Will stablecoins replace payment infrastructure? This report traces twelve years of history, dissects how $320 billion is actually used, compares regulation across the U.S., EU, Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.K., and tests the "fragmentation" critique against primary sources. It issues a three-layer PMF verdict for 2026 — currency substitution, B2B settlement, consumer payments — argues that replacement proceeds from the back office, examines privacy in the age of AI analytics and self-custody crypto cards, asks what remains of the chain after abstraction, and closes with six falsifiable forecasts.
Why IP Won't Go On-Chain - A Decade of IP x Blockchain Failures, the Two-Layer Confusion, and the Realistic Landing Zone
"IP and blockchain are a natural fit." This has been the prevailing narrative over the past decade. However, what has actually happened during these ten years? What insights have we gained? And how will they connect moving forward? Based on these three core pillars, this comprehensive report explores the intersection of IP (Intellectual Property & Copyright) and blockchain.