Pre-market news roundup for US stocks: Elon Musk's Optimus robot expected to be delivered next year, SK Hynix accelerating deployment of iHBM technology.

DFINITY, the developer behind the Internet Computer project, its founder Dominic Williams published a statement revealing that after further investigation, the key enabling components of NEAR Intents are actually stolen proprietary technology from DFINITY, adding that the relevant actions involve legal issues. Williams alleged that NEAR utilized personnel who were fired by DFINITY in the summer of 2021 and had been linked to multiple attempts that harmed the project, integrating DFINITY’s inventions into an open-source threshold cryptography library to quickly deploy its ECDSA-related work. This solution originates from the team’s research on integrating chain-key cryptography with Ethereum; the associated paper outlines an algorithm where collaborative nodes generate ECDSA public keys and signatures, enabling a roughly three-fold increase in signing speed without compromising security—serving as the threshold signature foundation required for Chain Abstraction and Intents. Williams pointed out that Internet Computer runs this algorithm on highly decentralized subnetworks, while NEAR is reportedly operating it on only around 8 servers, leaving the public with limited access to additional details. He argued that NEAR leveraged this technology to launch Chain Abstraction and Intents ahead of schedule, falsely claiming they were self-developed, decentralized, and secure—none of these assertions hold up. Williams also noted that GitHub data shows NEAR is now urgently attempting to downgrade to a slower algorithm after using the technology for approximately two and a half years, adding that if NEAR had sought cooperation under fair terms, DFINITY would have shared the technology and required proper attribution. To date, NEAR has not issued a public response to these allegations.

Uniswap Labs announced that Aggregator Hooks is now live, enabling Uniswap v4’s aggregation functionality. The mechanism wraps external liquidity sources into v4 pools via Hooks, allowing any routing to treat these as standard Uniswap pools. The feature is now available on Uniswap’s web interface and API, supporting Ethereum Mainnet, Base, and Robinhood Chain, with additional networks set to be added later. On launch day, seven external liquidity sources are supported, including Curve, Fluid, and PancakeSwap. Per block, routing pulls the latest quotes from integrated sources, constructs the optimal path between Uniswap pools and external sources for swaps, and settles trades in a single transaction—no additional approvals required. Uniswap noted that while most on-chain liquidity resides on its platform, new liquidity may still emerge elsewhere. After integrating external sources into v4, swaps routed through these sources will incur protocol fees, which contribute to UNI token burns.

According to BIT (bit.com) market data, Meta’s shares fell more than 6% in early trading, erasing $100 billion in market capitalization. Meta disclosed its future payment commitments as of the end of September stood at approximately $825 billion, a sharp jump from $700 billion in July, covering $355.7 billion in data center leases and $454.5 billion in cloud computing and other contracts. On Thursday, its 5-year CDS price climbed to around 119.3 basis points, hitting the highest level since its listing, with its bonds significantly underperforming U.S. Treasuries. CDSs of Oracle, Microsoft, and Broadcom also rose in tandem, as caution over debt risks in the tech sector continues to spread.

Crypto custody and stablecoin infrastructure firm Fireblocks has denied a prior Axios report claiming Visa was in late-stage talks to acquire the company for roughly $2.5 billion, stating "This is news to us and is not true at this time." Visa declined to comment on rumors or speculation. Earlier reports had alleged that Visa was in acquisition discussions with crypto asset custody infrastructure provider Fireblocks, with a deal valued at approximately $2.5 billion. If completed, the transaction would further expand Visa’s presence in digital asset custody and blockchain payment infrastructure.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), US stocks opened lower, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.13%, the S&P 500 index falling 0.88%, and the Nasdaq down 1.5%. Leading tech stocks saw broad declines, with SpaceX dropping 4%, Tesla down 2.87%, Meta Platforms down 4%, IBM down 2.5%, Nvidia down 2.1%, SK Hynix down 4.5%, SanDisk down 4.8%, and Micron down 3.8%.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), all sectors including semiconductors and storage, crypto-related stocks, and optical communications declined at the opening of U.S. stock trading. Semiconductors and storage: Seagate (STX) down 4.69%; Western Digital (WDC) down 5.77%; SanDisk (SNDK) down 4.79%; Micron (MU) down 3.05%; NVIDIA (NVDA) down 2.08%; Intel (INTC) down 5.83%; AMD (AMD) down 5.82%. Crypto-related stocks: Strategy (MSTR) down 5.00%; Coinbase (COIN) down 3.83%; Circle (CRCL) down 5.08%; BitMine (BMNR) down 4.20%; SharpLink (SBET) down 4.85%. Optical communications sector: FOTO (FOTO) down 6.30%; Marvell Technology (MRVL) down 6.04%; Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) down 7.73%; Lumentum (LITE) down 6.95%; Coherent (COHR) down 7.33%; Ciena (CIEN) down 6.32%; Fabrinet (FN) down 6.09%; AXT (AXTI) down 8.97%.