The first Casper X Space of 2026 took place on February 5, featuring Casper Association CEO Matt Schaffnit and President and CTO Michael Steuer.
We were joined by Casper Hackathon-winning teams, and the session covered new releases across the ecosystem, from CSPR.trade and liquid staking to the Parking MVP.
A detailed and informative live Q&A session concluded the discussion.
If you would like to listen to the recording of this session, you can do so here.
Here is a detailed recap of the session for those who prefer to read.
Enjoy!
Matt welcomed the community to the first Casper X Space of the year. He emphasized that 2025 marked a crucial operational and strategic turnaround for the Casper Network, driven by accelerated progress across protocol upgrades and ecosystem expansion.
Matt acknowledged the role the community played throughout this transformation and highlighted several major accomplishments:
Matt closed his remarks by recognizing the relentless efforts of the Casper team behind the scenes and offering a special note of appreciation for the leadership of Michael Steuer, who led the main product and ecosystem update for the evening.
Michael opened his section with a reflection on the volatility of the crypto markets and how, despite the turbulence, the Casper ecosystem has been making steady progress.
“Steel is forged in fire,” he said, setting the tone for a packed update with real-world use cases, DeFi, and more.
The first highlight of Michael’s update was the launch of the Parking MVP on Casper Mainnet. For the first time, real parking data from U.S. test facilities is being continuously streamed and recorded on-chain.
Thanks to this flow, operators can audit revenue and activity transparently, with the added benefit of blockchain that eliminates slow and error-prone manual reconciliation.
Michael hinted at what’s next, too.
Michael said these expansions are already drawing serious attention from the broader parking industry.
Casper’s DeFi stack is quickly maturing as an integrated suite where components work together.
Coming soon:
The Casper Hackathon 2026 was the most successful Hackathon to date. Over 450 developers signed up, 117 projects qualified, and 45 of those made it to the final round.
Voting was conducted on-chain via CSPR.fans and verified by tools like CSPR.vote, ensuring Sybil resistance and full transparency.
Winners included CasPay, Shroud Protocol, and CasperLink, with BridgeX taking top honor in the Interoperability track.
Michael also reiterated that the Casper Association will continue evaluating all participating projects for long-term support and Mainnet deployment. Developers were encouraged to stay in touch via the Casper Developer Telegram channel, which was active throughout the competition.
Before the spotlight turned to the winners, Michael extended thanks to the event sponsors:
Caspay is a subscription and payment infrastructure protocol designed for the Casper ecosystem, offering a smart contract-based solution for managing recurring payments. Built with security and developer experience in mind, CasPay standardizes subscription flows using wallet-based authentication and anti-replay protection.
The team already has a working prototype and plans pilot integrations with ecosystem projects ahead of a full Mainnet launch.
Shroud Protocol is a privacy mixer built on Casper, offering users improved anonymity for transactions using zero-knowledge cryptography. Users deposit fixed amounts into a smart contract, receive a secret JSON key, and later withdraw the same amount with no direct link between the deposit and withdrawal.
CasperLink is a cross-chain, intent-based execution platform that enables complex token swaps and DeFi strategies using natural language-style inputs. Soham, a solo developer and engineering student from India, built the platform using Odra, CSPR.trade, CSPR.click, and a custom price oracle sourced from CoinGecko.
Although the BridgeX team could not attend the session, they were announced as winners of the interoperability track. The project aims to deepen Casper’s cross-chain capabilities and was selected for its promise in expanding the network’s external connectivity.
The winner for the Liquid Staking track was still under final review during the live session and is expected to be announced shortly.
Lastly, Michael answered community questions.
Question: Are we closer to listings on major exchanges?
Answer: These processes are lengthy and complicated. We are dealing with what the Web3 world considers major exchanges, and they have a lot going on. If you think about the likes Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken, they are all large exchanges focused on very big initiatives, such as bringing equities on chain, launching in global markets, and building trading infrastructure.
It is a lengthy process, but we are definitely closer. There is one of those exchanges that we are working with closely toward a launch on their platform. However, I cannot give an ETA for reasons outside of our control. The timing is ultimately theirs, and even when we have indications, those things can change depending on their internal priorities.
The short version is that it is moving in the right direction, and progress is being made.
Question: When should we expect to see the final full version of the AmeriCorp parking industry MVP live on chain? At what point can we realistically expect a noticeable increase in on-chain transactions, and would we see an expansion in the number of parking sites processing these transactions?
Answer: The clarification here is important. This is not going to be a one-and-done process. It is an ongoing effort to bring an entire industry on chain in new and innovative ways. What we are doing right now, verifiable transactions, is only the beginning.
If you have been paying attention, you know that we are also looking at on-chain settlement between stakeholders and tokenization. We are seeing interest from many parties across the industry to participate. What I mean is that this will be an expanding process for years to come, and there is no final state. It will continue evolving rather than reaching a milestone and being declared complete. We are aiming for total industry onboarding.
Regarding an increase in on-chain transactions, yes, as more parking sites come online, transaction volume will increase. But it is also about broader implementations where the captured data serves additional purposes, not only auditability, but also as the basis for settlement between stakeholders. As tokenization develops, it can also become the basis on which token holders participate in or are rewarded through ownership of real-world assets. The sky is really the limit here. We are only scratching the surface, and we are not aiming for a checkbox moment where we say the MVP is finished and move on.
Question: Is Anthony Scaramucci still supporting the project, and could he potentially join an upcoming X Space?
Answer: The short answer is yes, he is still on our side, if that is the framing. We have engaged more with Anthony, with SkyBridge, and with SALT than ever before. I am in regular contact with Anthony and his team. We are active participants in the SALT conference, and I spoke at the most recent one in Wyoming in August.
Anthony has amplified a lot of our social media and continues to make introductions for us as an advisor. So he is very much on our side. Engagement has not gone down, it has increased. We are happy to explore doing something together in a future X Space, whether that means him joining ours or us participating in one of his podcasts.
The short answer is that Anthony remains a good friend of the project, we are in frequent contact, and he has been extremely helpful to the team.
Question: Has Casper pursued membership in the Global Markets Alliance, or is there any relationship between the two?
Answer: The Global Markets Alliance, or GMA, is an initiative launched by Ondo Finance together with wallets and infrastructure providers to set standards around real-world assets. We do not currently participate in the GMA, but we do participate in several other initiatives pursuing similar goals, specifically the standardization of RWAs and how they are represented on chain.
Two of those initiatives are ERC-7943 and ERC-3643, where Casper is one of the early founding members working with other industry stakeholders to define standards for real-world assets. So while we are not part of the GMA, we are participating in other forums. There is significant industry coordination around this topic, and we are actively involved in collaboration and discussion with industry stakeholders on how the industry approaches RWAs
Question: Is Casper Association actively pursuing partnerships across industries other than parking?
Answer: Parking itself is a subset of a larger industry, which is hospitality, including hotels, casinos, and related sectors. Many of the solutions we are building with our parking partners apply to those broader industries as well. We are putting the rails in place to expand gradually, crawl, walk, run.
So yes, we are absolutely looking beyond parking. We are also active in finance, structured finance, and DeFi. The short answer is yes.
Question: Is Casper in partnership or discussion with any governments?
Answer: Governments are actually prime stakeholders in the parking industry and one of the primary beneficiaries of the solution already live on Mainnet, which provides provably correct financial data for parking facilities. Each parking facility operates within a municipality or airport authority, and those entities tax each parking transaction. They therefore have the right to audit operators to ensure correct reporting.
These audits are costly, time-intensive, and labor-intensive, often resulting in payments being settled months later. With the solution we are putting in place, these audits effectively disappear. We are excited to demonstrate the effectiveness of the parking solution and then work with local governments on broader adoption across the industry. Once they see that auditors can be reassigned and revenue can be collected more accurately and faster, we expect strong alignment around adoption.
Question: Is Casper in communication with large financial institutions, banks, or asset management firms regarding solving their problems?
Answer: Yes. I alluded to this earlier. We are in touch with financial institutions, including through the industry initiatives we participate in. That includes the ERC-7943 and ERC-3643 working groups, as well as the ACTUS Foundation, where Matt Schaffnit plays an active role in advancing the rollout of algorithmic finance. So yes, absolutely.
Question: How does Casper comply with the GENIUS Act and MiCA regulations?
Answer: The GENIUS Act in the United States primarily relates to stablecoins, so it does not directly apply to a layer-one blockchain. There is no real overlap there. With MiCA, we are fully compliant. Our MiCA white paper is available on our website in the footer, and we have been compliant for over a year. We are registered with the European Union through the Central Bank of Ireland.
If you search for Casper MiCA Ireland, you will find publications from the Central Bank of Ireland confirming our registration. There is also an interesting sustainability statistic in the MiCA report. If you look at the sustainability index, Casper is one of the most sustainable, if not the most sustainable, layer-one blockchains registered under MiCA. There are several interesting data points available in that report for anyone who wants to look deeper.
Question: What happens if Michael or Matt receive an offer that is too good to refuse or take on a new challenge outside of Casper Network?
Answer: I will not speak on behalf of Matt, although I have a good sense of what he would say. I can speak for myself. I was literally the first check into this project. I have been dedicated to Casper and the community for the past seven and a half years in various capacities.
Through my company, MAKE, we have invested multi-million-dollar amounts into this project and continue to do so. When Casper approached me a year ago to help realign the project and focus on the future, I immediately stepped in. I will let the community judge the results, but I do not think my dedication has ever been in question. I can also say that I cannot be hired away, because that is simply not how I have been operating for quite a long time.
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