NamadaFlow Weekly Update
Sept 8 - Oct 15, 2025
This week’s Namada Validator Discussions highlight a major milestone — the upcoming launch of Borderless Private USDC, marking a move from theory to production for privacy-first DeFi. Alongside it, validators tackled mainnet upgrade coordination, ecosystem integrations, and the transition from experimentation to real traction. From governance clarity to UX refinements, Namada’s community is clearly gearing up for its next phase of growth.
Summary of Namada Validators’ Discussions
Borderless Private USDC: Production Launch Strategy & Technical Implementation
There was a detailed breakdown of the steps needed to launch private USDC transfers on Namada in production. Gavin confirmed that the UI is not yet finalized, but Heliax is expected to polish it. The infrastructure is now available to support mainnet traffic. The protocol will charge transaction-level fees until protocol-level fee capture is available, ensuring early signals of product-market fit. The Noble CCTP v2 upgrade is not part of the upcoming release, but a workaround via Polygon as a CCTP v1–v2 router is under consideration. A mainnet demo is prioritized before initiating conversations with Circle or Base. A direct-to-znam deposit mechanism is in development to improve UX by removing the need for post-bridge shielding, being worked on by Sugo and expected by the end of October. Gavin explained that USDC was chosen as the first focus due to its high transaction volume, multi-chain reach, and strong fee revenue potential from frequent shielded pool interactions.
Mainnet Upgrade Coordination & Governance Communications
There was confusion over who is leading coordination for the upcoming mainnet upgrade. While Fraccaman had proposed next week in Housefire chat, some participants emphasized the need for official announcements, upgrade guides, and leadership visibility. Gavin agreed and mentioned he’d check in with Fraccaman and see how Knowable might assist. Gavin shared a draft slide deck outlining Namada’s strategy for USDC and partner engagement. The deck is meant to articulate a clear path to traction, especially for potential partners such as bridges, aggregators, and apps seeking privacy for cross-chain asset flows. Community members were encouraged to leave comments on anything missing or unclear.
Ecosystem Integration & Partnership Development
Gavin revealed that early discussions are happening with bridge teams and aggregators interested in integrating Namada’s shielded pool. These entities prioritize speed and scale, while Namada offers privacy at the cost of latency. The community discussed potential UX tradeoffs and how game theory around linkability might shape design decisions. Gavin emphasized that the community is transitioning from exploratory ideation to execution and delivery. The focus now is on traction, product-market fit, and real usage, not theoretical alignment.
Ecosystem Updates & Community Observations
Several participants noted that ZEC was trending and privacy projects like Railgun were gaining traction again. Noble’s mainnet upgrade has been pushed to October 22 due to audit delays. Gavin shared a live testnet demo app and discussed limitations around gasless infra on testnets. Concerns were raised about Namada’s Twitter presence, with some suggesting it feels “doomed.” There were requests to make Housefire roles taggable without emojis in names.
Housefire Upgrade Coordination (v201.0.6)
The main activity this week was preparing and executing the Housefire testnet upgrade to v201.0.6. Multiple validators confirmed readiness, but confusion arose due to referencing the wrong block explorer. The team re-coordinated around the correct block height (3138057) and issued updated upgrade instructions.
Public Seed Node Setup
In preparation for the upgrade and better network stability, a public seed node was introduced to improve peer discovery and reduce reliance on persistent peers. Validators were encouraged to update their config and remove custom peers.
Epoch-Based Block Misses Every 6 Hours
A recurring issue was reported by multiple operators where validators miss blocks every 6 hours, suspected to align with epoch changes. Despite robust hardware, this pointed to possible peer discovery or network routing issues.
Validator Exit Announcement: ContributionDAO
ContributionDAO officially announced that it will shut down its validator operations on November 14, 2025, and requested delegators to undelegate their tokens before the deadline to avoid slashing.