By Laily UPN 
The global cryptocurrency and blockchain landscape saw significant developments across multiple fronts as national policy, technical execution, and industrial pivots collided. In Asia, Beijing formally established a concrete timeline for its sweeping national blockchain initiative, signaling a long-term commitment to distributed ledger technology within state-managed economic frameworks. Meanwhile, technical hurdles struck the Ethereum ecosystem, forcing core developers to hit the brakes on an upcoming testnet upgrade due to underlying security vulnerabilities associated with gas mechanics. At the same time, the Bitcoin mining sector demonstrated unexpected resilience and surging computational intensity, pushing network metrics to multi-month highs even as leading institutional miners aggressively pivot their infrastructure toward the lucrative artificial intelligence sector.
China Targets 2030 for its National Blockchain Network Buildout
China has formally established a 2030 target for largely completing a sprawling national blockchain network, laying out its ambitious vision within a newly published five-year digital development framework. The directive outlines a strategic roadmap that integrates distributed ledger technology deeper into the country’s economic apparatus, targeting specific regional industrial clusters to drive large-scale implementation.
The overarching blueprint, titled the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Informatization, was officially issued by the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission. As a senior policy-making body operating directly within the ruling Communist Party, the Commission wields significant authority in coordinating digital development and technology policy across governmental and industrial sectors.
According to the newly released framework, the government is calling for a much deeper integration of blockchain technology into trade and finance operations within the Yangtze River Delta, a premier economic powerhouse on China’s eastern coast. Further inland, the blueprint mandates the deployment of blockchain systems at scale within the manufacturing and agricultural sectors across the Chengdu-Chongqing region in southwestern China, illustrating a concerted push to modernize industrial supply chains through decentralized architecture.
The Friday release formally operationalizes a target that has been steadily moving through China’s highest legislative and administrative pipelines. The project’s completion timeline had previously been outlined in broad strokes within the broader national development plan released by the government in March. Momentum for the initiative further solidified when a joint policy document from the Communist Party’s central leadership and the State Council was published on October 9, explicitly calling for the construction of the national network.
By cementing these directives into an official framework with a clear decade-end horizon, Chinese policymakers are signaling that blockchain remains a critical cornerstone of the nation’s long-term digital infrastructure strategy, distinct from the country’s strict prohibitions on speculative cryptocurrency trading and public token issuance.
Ethereum Delays Glamsterdam Hoodi Testnet Launch Over Security Risks
In the decentralized application sphere, Ethereum developers have chosen caution over speed, officially postponing the deployment of the highly anticipated Glamsterdam hard fork on the Hoodi testnet. The delay comes in the wake of critical security discoveries by independent researchers, who identified sophisticated gas-related vulnerabilities that could fundamentally alter how existing smart contracts process failed transactions.
The Ethereum Foundation announced that the network upgrade, which had been originally scheduled to go live on October 26, would be pushed back indefinitely. This pause provides core developers and security auditors with the necessary time to thoroughly investigate how specific improvement proposals interact with the vast web of smart contracts already deployed across the Ethereum network.
The security concerns first came to light on October 13, when prominent blockchain security firm ChainSecurity published a detailed advisory warning the community. The security audit revealed that two specific improvement proposals included in the Glamsterdam package—designated as EIP-8037 and EIP-8038—could inadvertently weaken established safeguards against a specific attack vector known as insufficient gas griefing. This vulnerability, if left unmitigated, could expose decentralized applications and users to unpredictable execution failures and economic exploits.
The unexpected postponement inevitably casts a shadow of uncertainty over the broader timeline for Glamsterdam’s eventual rollout on the Ethereum mainnet. Prior to the discovery of the gas-related vulnerabilities, Ethereum developers had been actively considering an early December target for the mainnet activation, contingent upon a smooth and successful testing phase on the Hoodi network. With the testnet launch now delayed while engineers re-evaluate the code, a revised schedule will only be determined after the underlying security risks have been fully resolved and re-tested.
Bitcoin Mining Competition Heats Up Despite AI Exodus
In the proof-of-work sector, Bitcoin’s network hashrate has surged to a seven-month high, defying prevailing market expectations and outperforming an ongoing structural shift where major mining corporations redirect their electrical capacity toward artificial intelligence operations. According to data compiled by BlocksBridge Consulting, the unexpected metric points to intensifying competition and a resilient global mining ecosystem.
Bitcoin’s crucial seven-day average hashrate climbed above the milestone of 1 zettahash per second for the first time since March 3. This substantial threshold crossing indicates that the immense computational power leaving the network as corporate players exit is being rapidly replaced by fresh hardware brought online by other market participants.
Hashrate serves as the primary metric for measuring the total computational power actively securing the Bitcoin blockchain, while mining difficulty dynamically adjusts to maintain predictable block times regardless of fluctuations in network participation. The surging hashrate has triggered corresponding upward adjustments in mining difficulty. Network difficulty climbed by 5.92% on October 16, and industry projections from BlocksBridge indicate another anticipated increase of 5.16% at the subsequent adjustment window. Combined, these consecutive upward adjustments represent an aggregate difficulty increase of roughly 11.4% over a short span, compounding the operational challenges miners face when attempting to earn newly minted Bitcoin rewards.
This aggressive rise in network security metrics arrives against a backdrop of significant institutional reallocation. Publicly traded Bitcoin mining enterprises have reported a collective 23% decline in realized hashrate as they pivot their heavy infrastructure toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers. Financial reports indicate that these firms saw their AI-related revenues surge by 52% quarter-over-quarter, validating the economic rationale behind their strategic diversification.
Industry estimates suggest that approximately $1.5 billion worth of specialized application-specific integrated circuit mining equipment has been displaced by this corporate migration away from pure-play Bitcoin mining. However, rather than sitting idle, much of this decommissioned hardware is finding a second life. Smaller, more agile mining operators—frequently possessing localized access to lower-cost electricity sources—are acquiring the discounted machinery. This secondary market activity has allowed smaller entities to expand their operational footprints and absorb the market share vacated by larger institutional players transitioning into the AI space, ensuring that the global Bitcoin network remains robust, highly competitive, and decentralized.
Jia Lissa 
Siti Muinah 
Evan Lee Salim