On October 23rd, 2025, President Donald Trump pardoned convicted founder of Binance Changpeng Zhao. Janet Yellen, former Treasury Secretary said of CZ and Binance, "Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit… Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform." When CZ stepped down from Binance, he stated, "I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility.” He paid a $50million dollar fine and spent four months in prison, though he was allowed to keep his stake in Binance.

The Rocket Pool community got spooky! In the month of October, community members changed their profile pictures to Halloween-themed avatars and earned a POAP for participating.

Ken hosted the founders of RockSolid to chat about how their partnership with Rocket Pool will supercharge rETH. Join the Rocket Pool community calls on Discord at discord.gg/rocketpool, and on X at x.com/rocket_pool

Smart Node v1.17.0 is now live, bringing major client updates—most of which raise the default block gas limit to 45M—and a new pruning feature that allows node operators to reduce storage needs by enabling partial history expiry. This is a recommended update for all Node Operators. Full details and upgrade instructions: https://github.com/rocket-pool/smartnode/releases/tag/v1.17.0.