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Adam McCauley

Adam McCauley is the Blockchain Technology Editor at The Chain Journal, focusing on blockchain architecture, protocol design, and the infrastructure layer of digital assets. His coverage explores consensus mechanisms, network security, Layer-2 scaling solutions, and smart contract frameworks — prioritising mechanics over narratives. Adam holds a background in computer science and open-source software development, and writes to bridge the gap between technical detail and practical understanding.

Tokenization Opens Doors, Not Liquidity

Tokenization doesn’t ‘magically’ fix illiquid assets: PBW 2026

The Myth of Automatic Liquidity Tokenization has become one of crypto’s most overused promises, and Paris Blockchain Week offered a useful correction. The industry is now far past the stage where every asset-on-chain pitch can be sold as a liquidity…

Bitcoin’s squeeze met a wall above $75K

Bitcoin liquidations top $283M after short squeeze sends BTC price above $75K

The Rally That Exposed Fragile Positioning Bitcoin’s move above the $75,000 area did more than punish bearish traders. It revealed how dependent the market still is on leveraged positioning rather than broad conviction. A liquidation event of roughly $283 million…

Ethereum’s mempool gets a privacy upgrade

EIP-8105: A new design for Ethereum’s encrypted mempool

Why This Proposal Matters Ethereum has spent years treating the public mempool like a necessary inconvenience. It is transparent, efficient, and brutally easy to exploit. EIP-8105 proposes a different bargain: encrypt pending transactions until inclusion, then reveal them after the…

AI didn’t break Zerion. People did.

North Korean hackers used AI-enabled social engineering in Zerion attack

The Real Breach Was Human The Zerion incident matters because it confirms a pattern crypto teams can no longer treat as fringe: the most effective attacks are increasingly social, not purely technical. According to the company’s post-mortem, attackers tied to…

Phishing beat code, and Web3 paid

Web3 hacks cost $464M in Q1 as phishing drives majority of losses: Hacken

The Human Layer Became the Weakest Link The most expensive attacks in Web3 are no longer always the most elegant. They are often the most ordinary: a fake login, a compromised device, a poisoned workflow, a trust decision made too…