Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Table of contents

July rattled crypto from multiple directions. Coldcard hardware wallet security fears, Strategy’s Bitcoin liquidations, Robinhood Chain’s network growth, and the CLARITY Act all landed in the same monthly window, hitting trust assumptions across retail and institutional participants alike. The latest Santiment insights frame these events alongside two other developments that are quietly redrawing market structure: BlackRock pushing tokenized equities onto Solana, and Thailand waiving capital gains tax on qualifying crypto gains for five years.

While on-chain activity in July often felt reactive, the bigger signal may be how capital allocators are starting to reposition around infrastructure that can actually settle institutional flows. Solana’s deepening role in real-world asset tokenization and Thailand’s deliberate lunge for digital-asset hub status are not isolated. They sit inside a broader competition where network throughput, regulatory clarity, and tax incentives determine where the next wave of liquidity gets parked.

Tokenized Equities Move to Solana’s Rails BlackRock’s expanding tokenization efforts are no longer confined to Ethereum rollups or private permissioned venues. The asset manager is now putting Solana deeper into the conversation around institutional finance, with tokenized stocks and funds beginning to surface on the network. This follows months of groundwork around Solana Pay, stablecoin settlement, and proposed SOL tokenomics adjustments that collectively reshape what a layer-1 can offer large issuers. The tokenization sector is accelerating fast, with real-world assets crossing $20 billion on-chain and traditional settlement infrastructure getting carved up.

For Solana, the implication is a dual-track identity: a chain that hosts retail meme-coin mania one week and BlackRock tokenized securities the next. That split has consequences. It forces validators, custody providers, and compliance teams to support both high-frequency degenerate markets and regulated asset issuance under the same consensus. Whether that hybrid model can hold up under sustained institutional load remains an open question, but the direction of travel is clear.

A Regulatory Vacuum That Thailand Is Exploiting Thailand’s five-year capital gains exemption on qualifying crypto gains landed as a direct policy maneuver to siphon talent and volume away from jurisdictions that are still tangled in legislative gridlock. While the United States debates bills like the GENIUS Act amid heavy bank lobbying, smaller countries are placing onshore tax incentives at the center of their playbook. The frustration among U.S. traders is predictable, but the market impact goes deeper: a growing share of active trading desks may route through jurisdictions that treat digital assets with fiscal consistency rather than constant regulatory whiplash.

Thailand’s move pairs a retail-friendly tax break with an institutional invitation. The policy does not cover every token or every trade, and qualification details matter for anyone structuring operations. Still, it creates a template that other Southeast Asian jurisdictions will now have to match or risk losing their own liquidity pools. The intersection of tax policy and market structure is no longer a footnote—it is becoming a primary driver of where volume concentrates.

AUTHOR

Nicholas Otieno is a fintech writer specializing in cryptocurrency markets. Since 2019, he has written articles to educate readers about cryptocurrency and its substantial positive impact on global prosperity. Nicholas is a Bitcoin holder, believing firmly in its fundamentals. His work has been featured in publications such as Finance Magnates, Blockchain.News, Bitcoin Magazine, Coincub, and among others. When he's not writing, Nicholas enjoys performing domestic tasks, spending time with friends, listening to music, and watching football.

A wallet linked to the Aztec Private Rollup Bridge exploit deposited another 300 ETH into Tornado Cash, bringing its total transfers to the mixer to 500 ETH.

Summary

The exploiter sent another 300 ETH, worth about $572,000, to Tornado Cash. Total deposits linked to the wallet have now reached 500 ETH, worth about $953,000 at the reported price. The Private Rollup Bridge lost approximately $2.165 million in a June exploit. Aztec said the affected legacy product was separate from its current network and AZTEC token. Aztec exploiter deposits 300 ETH into Tornado Cash Blockchain security firm PeckShield reported on Aug. 8 that an address labeled as the Aztec Private Rollup Bridge exploiter deposited 300 Ether into Tornado Cash.

The ETH was worth approximately $572,000 when PeckShield issued the alert. On-chain data included in the firm’s report showed three separate deposits of 100 ETH each.

PeckShield said the latest transactions raised the wallet’s cumulative Tornado Cash deposits to 500 ETH. Based on the valuation attached to its alert, the total was worth roughly $953,000 at press time.

Tornado Cash pools deposits and allows users to withdraw funds through different addresses. This process can obscure the direct connection between the original sending wallet and subsequent recipients, making asset tracking and recovery more difficult.

PeckShield did not identify the person or group controlling the address. There was also no immediate indication that any of the transferred funds had been recovered.

Private Rollup Bridge lost $2.165 million The latest transfers relate to an exploit that affected Aztec’s Private Rollup Bridge in June. Reports at the time placed the loss at approximately $2.165 million.

The stolen assets reportedly included 1,158 ETH, 150,000 DAI and 0.47 renBTC. Aztec said the affected bridge was a legacy product with no connection to the current Aztec network or its AZTEC token.

The Private Rollup Bridge incident followed a separate attack on Aztec Connect, another discontinued part of the project’s earlier infrastructure.

As crypto.news previously reported, an attacker drained around $2.1 million from Aztec Connect’s old RollupProcessor contract on June 14. The affected system had been discontinued about three years earlier and was no longer used by Aztec’s active network.

Security researchers said that the exploit involved a mismatch between the transactions covered by a zero-knowledge proof and those processed during settlement. The weakness allowed the attacker to create unbacked balances and withdraw assets from the contract.

Aztec Labs could not pause or upgrade the deprecated contract because it had surrendered its administrative keys. The design made the contract immutable but also removed the team’s ability to intervene after the flaw was exploited.

Tornado Cash transfers follow wider exploit surge The two Aztec incidents formed part of a wider increase in crypto security breaches during June.

Crypto.news reported that DefiLlama recorded $74.9 million in losses across 29 exploits during the month. Its data included two separate Aztec incidents valued at approximately $2.1 million each.

Other exploiters have also used Tornado Cash to move stolen assets. In July, a wallet associated with the Drift Protocol exploit deposited 23,095 ETH, then worth around $44.4 million, into the mixer after months of inactivity.

A wallet linked to the Radiant Capital attack previously transferred 2,834 ETH into Tornado Cash, while the Cork Protocol exploiter routed approximately 4,520 ETH through the service.

The latest Aztec deposits therefore follow an established pattern in which attackers convert stolen assets into ETH before sending them through mixing protocols.

Tornado Cash remains under US scrutiny The U.S. Treasury removed Tornado Cash and associated smart-contract addresses from its sanctions list in March 2025. The decision followed a federal appeals court ruling that the Treasury exceeded its authority by sanctioning immutable smart contracts.

However, U.S. authorities have continued to examine the use of crypto mixers in money laundering, sanctions evasion and cybercrime cases. Treasury officials have also maintained concerns about their use by North Korea-linked hacking groups.

The 500 ETH transferred by the Aztec exploiter represents less than half of the value reportedly taken from the Private Rollup Bridge. Further activity from the labeled address could show whether the remaining assets will also be routed through Tornado Cash or moved to other services.

Updated 1 hr agoPublished 1 hr ago

2 min read

Another bitcoin infrastructure exploit hits, this time draining merchant Lightning nodes. (Max Bender/Unsplash)Summary

Attackers exploited a critical vulnerability in BTCPay Server to steal funds from Lightning nodes running LND, prompting urgent calls to update to version 2.4.2 or take servers offline.The flaw allowed unauthenticated access to LND “.macaroon” credential files, enabling attackers to seize control of affected Lightning nodes and drain their channels, though BTCPay’s standard on-chain wallets were not impacted.Victims including hardware-wallet maker Foundation and bitcoin publication Citadel21 reported their Lightning nodes were swept, as BTCPay and the Bitcoin Red Team investigate and prepare a full postmortem on the incident.A rough week for bitcoin's software is getting worse, this time hitting merchants who accept bitcoin BTC$64,987.55 payments through Lightning, a separate network built on top of bitcoin for instant, low-cost transfers.

Attackers drained Lightning nodes running behind BTCPay Server late on Friday after exploiting a critical vulnerability that exposed the credentials protecting them, the team said in an X post.

BTCPay confirmed funds were stolen and told anyone running LND, the most widely used software for operating a Lightning node, to update immediately to version 2.4.2 or take the server offline.

The project has not disclosed how many users were hit or how much bitcoin was taken.

The flaw allowed an unauthenticated remote attacker to obtain “.macaroon” files, or credentials that give software permission to interact with an LND Lightning node. BTCPay said the attacks it reviewed targeted those files, which could then be used to take control of the node and move funds.

Hardware-wallet maker Foundation was among the victims. Chief Executive Zach Herbert said attackers drained the company's BTCPay Lightning node overnight, closing its channels and sweeping the funds. Its BTCPay on-chain hot wallet was untouched.

Citadel21, the bitcoin publication run by pseudonymous commentator hodlonaut, also reported that its Lightning node had been swept, though it said little money was held there.

The vulnerability had already been reported to BTCPay by members of the Bitcoin Red Team — a group of developers that began pointing AI models at bitcoin codebases this week and has filed thousands of findings across hundreds of projects since.

Read More: Bitcoin developers flag 85 critical bugs in an "extremely bad" situation.

BTCPay credited Red Team members Craig Raw, Rob Hamilton, Calle and Evan Kaloudis with responsibly disclosing the issue and helping analyze it.

The group's stated reason for publishing findings quickly was that people outside it would arrive at the same bugs, and by the time BTCPay's public warning went out, attackers were already exploiting this one against live servers.

Meanwhile, BTCPay narrowed the scope after its initial alert, saying its standard on-chain wallets, including hot wallets generated inside BTCPay, are not affected by the credential flaw.

The exposure applies specifically to deployments using LND, and funds held inside LND's own on-chain wallet can still be at risk because they sit under the compromised Lightning node.

BTCPay has not yet published technical details of the vulnerability, saying operators need time to patch. A full postmortem is due in the coming days.

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Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Jun 30, 2026

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Why it matters:

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

11h05 ▪ 5 min read ▪ by Luc Jose A.

Summarize this article with:

Institutional capital continues to flow into cryptos despite volatility that keeps retail investors on the defensive. On Thursday, ETFs backed by bitcoin and Ether recorded more than $220 million in net flows, confirming the intact appetite of traditional finance for these assets. Once again, BlackRock concentrates the bulk of subscriptions and strengthens its role as the main driver of this momentum in the crypto ETF market.

In brief More than $220 million jointly injected into Bitcoin and Ether ETFs during Thursday’s session. A fourth consecutive day of net inflows (+$128.69 million), bringing the four-session total to $755 million. The IBIT fund crushes the competition on Bitcoin with +$128.33 million, while ETHA largely dominates Ether (+$81.14 million). Despite falling prices, the number of shares outstanding remains stable, reflecting a long-term accumulation strategy rather than immediate speculation. Bitcoin ETF : a fourth consecutive day of gains driven by BlackRock The Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net inflow of $128.69 million across six distinct vehicles, extending the current positive streak to four consecutive sessions for a total of $755 million. Once again, the capital allocation among the various funds shows a marked disparity :

BlackRock (IBIT) : a dominating presence with +$128.33 million captured alone ; Morgan Stanley (MSBT) : an additional inflow of +$14.94 million ; Fidelity (FBTC) : a positive flow of +$11.20 million ; Grayscale : an inflow of +$7.48 million on GBTC and +$6.83 million on the Bitcoin Mini Trust ; Bitwise (BITB) : a modest subscription of +$1.75 million ; VanEck (HODL) & Valkyrie (BRRR) : capital outflows of -$32.77 million for VanEck and -$9.07 million for Valkyrie. Despite these conflicting reallocations among managers, overall activity remained particularly strong in the spot derivatives secondary market. The total daily trading volume for all Bitcoin ETFs reached $1.36 billion on Thursday, while the combined net assets under management closed at $78.77 billion.

Thus, the massive concentration of volumes towards IBIT confirms BlackRock’s dominant position as the primary access channel for institutional investors. These figures reflect the persistence of a solid working capital demand among major players, maintaining a regular liquidity floor despite sometimes hesitant short-term price fluctuations.

The Ether surge and selective altcoin momentum On the side of the market’s second-largest asset, the trajectory was even more explicit with a total net subscription of $92.15 million spread across five funds, with no Ether ETF recording any capital outflow during the session. BlackRock’s ETHA product also dominated by collecting $81.14 million. The remaining amounts were subscribed through Grayscale’s Ether Mini Trust fund at $4.55 million, its historic ETHE fund for $3.07 million, BlackRock’s ETHB vehicle for $1.96 million, and Fidelity’s FETH for $1.42 million. With a traded volume of $435.46 million and net assets reaching $10.64 billion for Ether ETFs, this segment confirms a significant resurgence.

By contrast, the landscape was much more mixed regarding other cryptos. XRP-backed ETFs returned to positive territory thanks to an injection of $3.45 million, mostly driven by Bitwise’s fund at $2.89 million and Franklin Templeton’s (XRPZ) at about $562,000, bringing the sector’s net assets to $964.21 million.

The HYPE ETFs continued their recovery trajectory by attracting $2.84 million via Bitwise’s BHYP product, raising the daily volume to $5.10 million and net assets to $265.04 million. Conversely, Solana ETFs took an opposite course, with Fidelity’s FSOL fund registering a net outflow of $859,450, leaving total combined net assets at $857.24 million.

Lawrence Lepard’s insight on holder maturity Beyond daily cash flows, the ownership structure of these vehicles offers a fundamental reading grid on institutional investor attitudes toward price fluctuations. Commenting on the firmness of subscribers amid recent volatility, Austrian economist and investment manager Lawrence Lepard highlighted the remarkable stability of shares held: “although the value of Bitcoin ETFs has dropped significantly from its peak, the total number of shares outstanding has decreased by a much smaller proportion, indicating very limited net sales from holders”.

This observation reveals a marked divergence between spot market volatility and the long-term commitment of ETF holders. As asset management giants centralize most incoming flows, asset data indicate that a significant fraction of institutional investors view these vehicles as strategic allocation instruments rather than mere short-term speculation tools.

While this financial foundation provides valuable structural support to the ecosystem, it also raises questions about capital concentration in the hands of a limited number of financial conglomerates. Upcoming regulatory developments and evolving demand in altcoin-specific derivatives products will determine whether this selective appetite extends to the broader market or continues to primarily benefit the sector leaders.

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Luc Jose A.

Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019. Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

Regulators across the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and Hong Kong are preparing to implement major new policies designed to give authorities the power to identify, freeze, or, in some cases, redirect cross-border stablecoin transfers. Stablecoins—digital assets pegged to currencies such as the US dollar or British pound—are now moving under stricter oversight, aligning more closely with rules applied to traditional financial institutions.

Regulatory push spans global jurisdictionsThese changes will have a broad impact on individuals and businesses sending or receiving payments through stablecoins across borders. Whether for remittances or corporate treasury operations, users of tokens tied to fiat currencies will see increased regulatory scrutiny. Although transactions on the blockchain occur quickly, the entry and exit points—often managed by exchanges—present an opportunity for authorities to monitor and intervene.

A number of major jurisdictions have advanced regulatory frameworks in recent months, with authorities moving from consultation to concrete rulemaking in a relatively short time.

US Treasury focuses on traceability and sanctionsThe US Treasury recently submitted proposed regulations via the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, targeting stablecoin intermediaries and issuers for more comprehensive traceability. The proposals are a part of the implementation of the GENIUS Act, the federal stablecoin legislation, with a particular focus on reducing anonymity in transactions.

The Treasury illustrated the aim of these rules by announcing, on August 7, 2026, sanctions against crypto exchanges accused of supporting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Another enforcement effort targeted networks allegedly connected to the Iranian regime’s secret currencies. The message emphasized that stablecoins held at exchanges remain subject to sanctions requirements similar to those faced by traditional correspondent banks.

Mini dictionary: GENIUS Act, a US federal law introduced to govern stablecoin issuance and enforcement related to anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance.

UK applies dual-layer regulatory frameworkThe United Kingdom is set to implement a two-tiered approach to stablecoin regulation. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published its final rules on June 30, 2026, bringing fiat-backed stablecoin issuance and custody under the Financial Services and Markets Act. Stablecoins used for retail payments, meanwhile, will fall under the Payment Services Regulations, affecting firms authorized on or after October 25, 2027.

In addition, the Bank of England and the FCA, in a collaborative letter, set out criteria for overseeing “systemic” stablecoin issuers—those designated as systemically important by the Treasury under the Banking Act of 2009. The assessment will include factors such as scale, use, ease of substitutability, and future growth projections, expanding regulatory supervision over systemically relevant payment systems.

Mini dictionary: Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK’s main financial regulatory body responsible for overseeing financial markets and protecting consumers.

MiCA drives change in EuropeThe European Union has already put its landmark MiCA law into effect, prompting changes among exchanges operating in the region. Under MiCA, major exchanges were required to remove USDT trading pairs for users in the European Economic Area, while USDC was allowed to remain available to customers. This regulatory approach has resulted in market share changes for these stablecoins.

Researchers Nicola Borri and Kirill Shakhnov found that USDC’s market share moved by 0.82 standard deviations and its relative trading volume grew by 0.54, as USDT volumes dropped in affected markets. Their findings, published in July 2026, concluded that gateway restrictions can significantly influence token usage without disrupting the broader network. The European Commission is reviewing MiCA’s effectiveness and is continuing consultations until at least August 31, 2026.

JurisdictionKey RegulationsMain ObjectiveBrazilDelays on suspicious transfers, tracks cross-border crypto flowsControl transaction speed and dataUSAnti-money laundering, sanctions, customer identification for issuersIdentify and monitor participantsEUMiCA defines which stablecoins are allowedRegulate token accessUKStablecoins fully enter payments regulationTreat as payment infrastructureHong KongLicenses issuers and manages cross-border risksBuild regulated payment railsSouth KoreaPrepares stablecoins for on-chain settlementIntegrates with broader financial marketsThe table shows varied approaches, ranging from controlling transaction speed in Brazil to full payments regulation in the UK. The US is emphasizing identification and sanctions controls, while the EU is focused on setting access rules through MiCA.

Asia eyes capital movementHong Kong enacted its Stablecoins Ordinance in August 2025, following up in April 2026 by approving two bank-backed issuers through its Monetary Authority. Regulated stablecoins are slated for launch before the year’s end.

Officials in Hong Kong have expressed concern that stablecoins could drain deposits from traditional banks and are working on measures to manage cross-border transfers and unregistered digital assets. Christopher Hui, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, said the city’s approach is to apply equal regulation for similar activities and risks. Meanwhile, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission confirmed work is underway on a new digital-asset framework that will also cover stablecoins.

Mini dictionary: Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the central banking institution of Hong Kong, regulates and supervises financial institutions and issues banking licenses.

On-ramps and control pointsOfficials point to the role of on-ramps and off-ramps—where users exchange fiat for stablecoins or vice versa—as the main points for regulation. In a test by Italy’s central bank, Banca d’Italia, 200 USDC transfers were sent across 10 global remittance routes. Fees ranged from 0.30% to 8.96%, and transaction times varied from under 20 minutes to two days, with the blockchain itself contributing only a small portion of total costs.

The bulk of transaction friction and expense is found at these fiat-token conversion points. Exchanges, as on- and off-ramps, operate much like correspondent banks and exercise substantial control over access, pricing, and liquidity. Mastercard’s blockchain chief Raj Dhamodharan likened stablecoins to “rails,” describing each coin as similar to a global automated clearing house.

A payment system with clearly identifiable participants presents opportunities for regulatory oversight.

As stablecoins evolve from crypto-market instruments into payment infrastructure, regulators are moving oversight closer to the transaction itself.

While stablecoins initially drew interest for their speed and efficiency, the ongoing shift toward use in mainstream payments is prompting policymakers worldwide to build stricter, more comprehensive frameworks around their operation.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

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StatusCore contributors identified a critical vulnerability affecting the V5 Alpha proving system on 27 July 2026 through internal AI-assisted auditing.

V5 remains Alpha software. Critical findings can arise during this phase, and the audit process exists to identify them before broader deployment. This finding places V5 funds, applications, and contract state at risk.

Treat funds and applications on V5 as exposed to a protocol-level failure until contributors complete incident response work and operators carry out the required network actions.

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What we are disclosingAn attacker may be able to exploit a flaw in the current V5 proving system by constructing a proof that passes verification for a transaction the network should reject. If accepted, that transaction could produce a state transition outside the rules V5 intends to enforce.

Contributors cannot determine whether anyone exploited the flaw before this finding. The affected system lacks the information needed to distinguish ordinary accepted transactions from transactions accepted through the flawed proving path. Historical chain activity cannot establish whether exploitation occurred or quantify its impact.

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Application safeguardsWe expect application teams to prepare safeguards in the coming weeks.

Those safeguards may include changes to application controls, deployment procedures, user flows, and migration plans. We expect each team to assess its contracts and determine which protections fit its architecture and users.

We expect teams planning a V5 deployment to pause that work until contributors publish further guidance. We expect teams with live contracts to review their ability to limit user exposure, isolate affected functionality, and move users to fresh deployments if needed.

We expect applications that maintain administrative or emergency controls to assess whether those controls can reduce user risk during the incident timeframe.

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Next stepsCore contributors are working with operators, application teams, and bridge operators as applications add security guards around affected flows.

The findings from this incident will inform the V6 release, including circuit updates that prevent the network from accepting proofs tied to an affected proving system.

V5 launched as Alpha software, with V6 planned for later in 2026. Contributors will publish a security roadmap covering the remaining work and release path.

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Known vulnerability statusReviewers have not identified other high-severity or critical V5 Alpha vulnerabilities at this time.

Internal and external human audits have completed, and contributors continue AI-assisted auditing. Alpha is the period for identifying faults before production deployment.

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Read more

Community

Community

4 Aug

•

xx min read

Dark Forest Aztec Game Goes LiveDark Forest is a real-time strategy game played across a procedurally generated universe where most of the map is hidden. You cannot see rival players, their planets, or their fleets. You only know what you have explored. Everyone shares one universe, and nobody has the full picture.

In most onchain games, every position and every move is public, because the chain is public. Dark Forest used zero-knowledge proofs to break that assumption: players prove their moves are valid without revealing where those moves came from. The result is a game of hidden information running on a public network.

Dark Forest Aztec ports the original Dark Forest 0.6 to Aztec. It keeps the gameplay from the original and rebuilds the privacy layer on Aztec's programmable privacy.

A note before diving in: this is early, experimental software on Aztec Alpha V5. Treat it as an alpha and play accordingly.

The universe you cannot seeYou start on a single home planet with almost the entire map dark. To find anything you mine the universe, running a client that explores coordinates and reveals what sits there: unclaimed planets, resources, and eventually the edges of other players' territory.

You are never handed a view of the board. You earn it one region at a time, and everyone else works under the same fog.

What is hidden on AztecYour home coordinates and your fleet movements are private state, expressed as first-class private notes on Aztec. Your location and where you send energy stay hidden, enforced in the contracts by zero-knowledge cryptography.

What sits onchain is a set of cryptographic commitments. Instead of storing every planet's full details in the open, the contracts store Poseidon2 hashes of entity state. When you make a move, your client supplies the full state, the contract checks it against the stored hash, applies the change under zero-knowledge constraints, and writes a new hash back. Full game state lives offchain and gets rebuilt from public logs by an indexer, which is what renders your map without exposing every player's position.

So you can prove you made a legal move from a planet you own without revealing where that planet is. Aztec applies the same principle to private payments and private contracts.

How you playFour actions carry the game.

Explore. Your explorer sits in the bottom left. Set it running and it uncovers the map around you, surfacing planets, resources, and other players.

Send energy. Most planets produce energy. Click and drag from a planet you own toward a target to capture or weaken it.

Route silver. Asteroid fields produce silver. Move it to your planets and spend it on upgrades, or send it to a Spacetime Rip to convert it into score.

Hunt artifacts. Some planets hold artifacts. Your Gear ship discovers them. Once harvested, you deposit them on planets to boost stats.

Four stats drive most decisions.

Energy is the core resource. Planets generate it over time up to a capacity, and you spend it on everything: claiming planets, reinforcing your own, attacking rivals. Two details matter. Moves are taxed, so a flat percentage of a planet's total capacity burns every time you send energy, which discourages small frequent moves. And energy decays over distance, so send it too far and almost nothing arrives. A common rule of thumb is to let a planet fill to about 75%, then send it down to about 25%.

Defense reduces the damage incoming energy does when it lands. Higher-level planets often have lower defense, but they hold much more energy, so they still take more to capture. Defense matters most on front lines.

Range sets how far a planet can send energy. It governs how fast you expand and how efficiently you move energy inside your own empire, since shorter relative distances mean less decay. Good range also lets you strike deep into an opponent's territory.

Speed sets how quickly a move arrives. Usually secondary, though a fast strike can land before a rival reacts, and some playstyles reward capturing many nearby planets quickly.

Planets can also be upgraded with silver and enhanced with artifacts. Space types carry different multipliers, from mild Nebula to punishing Dead Space, so where a planet sits changes how it plays.

How scoring worksThere is a scoreboard, and territory alone does not win it. This round scores two activities: discovering artifacts with your Gear ship, and withdrawing silver through Spacetime Rips.

Point values from the in-game help page:

Each unit of silver withdrawn: 1Common artifact: 2,000Rare: 10,000Epic: 200,000Legendary: 3,000,000Mythic: 20,000,000Silver accrues one point at a time. A single Mythic artifact is worth twenty million of them, so artifact hunting decides rounds and silver withdrawal sets your floor.

Silver has two competing uses. Spend it on upgrades and your planets get stronger, extending range and hardening defense. Withdraw it through a Spacetime Rip and it becomes scored points, but it is gone. Every unit is a choice between building the empire and banking points.

Upgrades tend to win early, since a stronger empire reaches more asteroid fields and finds more artifacts. Late in a round that calculation flips, because a planet you never use is worth less than points already scored.

Artifacts do both jobs at once. They score on discovery, and once deposited they boost a planet's stats, which makes the next expedition easier.

Why you exploreNothing happens until you find something to act on. Your explorer turns dark space into planets you can capture, asteroid fields you can mine, and artifact-bearing planets you can raid. Sitting still means no new energy, no silver, no score.

Exploring also buys information. The map you have uncovered is an advantage nobody else holds. Knowing where high-level planets sit, which asteroid fields are unclaimed, and where space types shift lets you plan further ahead than someone still working through their starting region.

You find other players as a byproduct. There is no player list. You explore outward until your revealed region touches territory someone already owns: a planet in another player's colors, sitting where you were about to expand. Their home coordinates stay private, so you learn something narrow. Someone is here, roughly this direction, holding this much. You infer the rest, and you have no way of knowing whether they found you first.

What happens when you run into someoneYou have three broad options.

Stay quiet and keep growing. Nothing forces you to engage. Keep exploring elsewhere, keep routing silver, keep upgrading. Your positions stay private, so silence costs you only time, which is what you want if they are stronger. The risk is that they are doing the same thing faster.

Fortify the border. If the contact sits somewhere you cannot lose, spend energy hardening the planets facing them. Defense is worth most where an attack will actually land. This keeps the option to fight without committing to one.

Attack. Send enough energy to overwhelm the target's defense and the planet becomes yours, along with its production and its position as a staging post. Higher-level planets are the prize and take proportionally more to crack.

Attacking costs more than energy. A move that lands tells your rival where you strike from, and that you are close enough to be worth answering. Retaliation can then come from directions you have not explored, launched from planets you cannot see.

Multiplayer in practiceEveryone plays one shared universe in real time. No turns, no lobbies. Energy regenerates whether you are watching or not, moves stay in flight while you sleep, and rivals expand while you are away from the screen.

Most strategy games let you watch a threat approach. Here you tend to see the consequences: a planet you owned this morning in someone else's colors, an incoming move you notice once it is already close.

That produces a particular kind of paranoia. You are trying to find everyone else while avoiding being found, and every expansion is a strategic bet that the space ahead is empty.

Information becomes tradeable, because it is scarce. Players compare notes, warn each other about aggressive neighbors, and agree who expands where, then break those agreements when the scoreboard makes it worth breaking.

Why it matters beyond the gameA fully onchain game where players cannot see each other's positions is hard to build, and building it well says something about the platform underneath.

Hidden state, private notes, and client-side proving are the same building blocks behind private applications across Aztec. Dark Forest is a way to watch them work.

Getting startedDark Forest Aztec is playable now as an alpha. Expect a learning curve; the original was famous for it. DFArchon maintains onboarding material and a community for new players. Round One is live. The universe is dark, and everyone else is out there somewhere. Go find them, quietly.

Play Now‍

Follow the BuildersDFArchon on X‍

Source and docs

Aztec Network

Aztec Network

22 Jul

•

xx min read

How Gas Works on AztecGas on AztecGas on Aztec is known as Fee Juice and is used to pay for transaction costs. This is the same as $ETH on Ethereum. Some apps will handle transaction costs for you under the hood, but if you are using a browser extension wallet, you will not be able to send transactions without it. Fee Juice can be obtained by bridging the $AZTEC token on Ethereum to the Aztec Network L2. This means that under the hood, all activity that happens on Aztec is underpinned by the $AZTEC token bridged into the network. Some bridges like Shield (by human.tech) handle this for you, allowing you to allocate a portion of your bridged transaction to convert into Fee Juice and land in your wallet automatically.

Public vs Private AssetsAssets and transactions on the Aztec Network can be either public or private. If you bridge publicly, your tokens will arrive as public, traceable tokens visible to all. Privately bridging, on the other hand, will give you private assets that are visible only to you. These assets can then be sent privately to another user or wallet without ever revealing who you are, what tokens were sent, how many, or who the recipient is.

Public vs Private GasLike tokens on the Aztec Network, Fee Juice (gas) can also be public or private. The reason for this is that even if what you are sending is private, the gas you spend to execute that transaction could still be visible if you are using public Fee Juice, potentially revealing transaction patterns and activity. Private Fee Juice keeps your entire transaction footprint hidden. When you send a private transaction, you can use private Fee Juice, and when you send a public transaction, you can use public Fee Juice, which means your transaction costs are always aligned with the type of transaction you're making.

Fee Juice in AppsAztec has native fee abstraction, which means apps could let you pay for transactions in any token you want, or cover your fees entirely. Apps like Nyx may choose to cover part or all of a user's transaction costs, or allow you to pay in tokens that are convenient for you. This means you will most likely never see Fee Juice in an app; instead, you'll pay in whatever makes sense for what you're doing, on your terms. Similarly, you might never even see an Aztec wallet at all, because the app itself becomes your interface that you connect to using your MetaMask wallet.

Fee Juice in Browser WalletsIf you're using a browser extension like Azguard, you'll manage Fee Juice directly in your wallet alongside your private and public balances, converting between tokens as needed to cover transaction costs.

When you bridge tokens in, you'll need enough Fee Juice to cover the cost of your first transaction, then you'll need to monitor how much Fee Juice you have available to make transactions. Browser wallets will allow you to send either publicly or privately to other users and will default to using either public or private Fee Juice depending on the type of transaction. Both private Fee Juice and public Fee Juice will appear by default in your token list.

Wrapping upHow you handle Fee Juice depends on where you're transacting: apps can abstract it away entirely and let you pay in any token, while a browser wallet like Azguard puts it in your hands to manage across public and private balances. Match your gas to your transaction, keep private activity private down to the fee, and you move on your terms.

Aztec Network

Aztec Network

21 Jul

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xx min read

Introducing Alpha V5The Aztec Network today activated Alpha V5, a major protocol upgrade passed by token-holder governance and executed onchain. Alpha V5 reduces private-transaction proving times by more than 2x compared to the previous version, lowers the cost of a fully private transaction by roughly 50%, resolves the critical issues found in V4, and sees the first wave of apps go live. Users can now send private transactions and earn yield on Aave simply by connecting their Ethereum wallets on Nyx, bridge from Ethereum to Aztec using Shield or TRAIN, privately collect NFTs on RavenHouse, or play Dark Forest Aztec, a hidden-information strategy game in a universe that lives entirely onchain. 

"Alpha V5 continues Aztec's work at the frontier of client-side proving, with cryptographic breakthroughs that cut proving times by more than half this release," said Zac Williamson, Co-founder, Aztec Foundation. "We believe Aztec is now the fastest system in the world for proving a fully private transaction entirely on a user's own device, and every release moves the industry closer to private transactions at public transaction speeds."

As the only decentralized privacy L2, Aztec is the credibly neutral privacy layer for Ethereum. Aztec allows anyone to write smart contracts that include both private and public aspects – every private transaction is proven on the user's own device, so no operator, sequencer, or intermediary can see the data. The Alpha V5 proving improvements come from cryptographic advances that make this client-side proving faster than any prior release. The network remains in alpha, but with V5 it is ready for teams to begin building and deploying applications.

Performance - 2.5 second fully private transactions Making private transactions practical comes down to how quickly a proof can be generated on a user's own device, without offloading that work to a server that would learn what the user is doing. On Alpha V5, proving a private token transfer natively now takes approximately 2.5 seconds on a consumer laptop, down from 5.2 seconds on V4, and about 6.8 seconds in a browser, down from 12.5 seconds. Across every measured transaction flow, client-side proving times improved by approximately 2x compared with V4.

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Bench machine: an M2 MacBook (12 cores, throttled to 8). "Native" runs Aztec's C++ proving binary; "WASM" runs the same prover in a browser engine (Node on V8).‍

Alpha V5 lowers ECDSA signature-verification cost by approximately 2x, speeds up Poseidon2 hashing by approximately 3x, and reduces the protocol circuit gate count by approximately 50% (gate count is the number of individual operations a proving circuit must perform, and it is the main driver of how long a proof takes to generate). Each of these lowers the amount of work a device performs to prove a transaction, and the reduction in gate count in particular compounds across every proof the network generates.

Apps - send, receive, and earn privately on EthereumAlpha V5 launches the first wave of apps on a network where privacy is built into the protocol rather than managed by an operator. On other networks that claim privacy, transactions still pass through an operator or node that reads them in plaintext, or depend on a viewing key that a third party holds, so users rely on someone else to protect their data and to decide when it gets disclosed. On Aztec, every private transaction is proven on the user's own device, so the app, the sequencer, and any operator never need to see the underlying data. Nyx is one of these apps, allowing users to privately send transactions and privately earn yield on Aave. 

"On Ethereum, everything you do is public. That's why we built Nyx: a private account governed by your Ethereum wallet", said Nikhil, Co-founder of Nyx. "Now you can send, receive and earn in private. Nyx was the first app live on the Aztec Alpha, and we're excited to expand participation to more users with the added stability of Alpha V5."

Other apps on Alpha V5 include Azguard and Nethermind (wallets), Shield, TRAIN, and RavenHouse (bridges), and the Aztecscan block explorers. Also launching is Dark Forest Aztec, a game where users explore a universe, control planets, manage planetary energy, expand territory, and launch attacks through strategic play with private state and hidden actions.

Dark Forest Aztec private universe-building gameplayLower costs, higher security Transaction fees on Aztec come from two main sources: the cost of proving a transaction and the cost of verifying the rollup proof on Ethereum. Alpha V5 reduces both. It lowers the network's proving-cost parameter by 50%, and it reduces the L1 gas required to verify a rollup proof by approximately 40%. Because rollup proofs are verified on Ethereum and that cost is shared across all transactions in a batch, the L1 reduction lowers fees for every user, while the lower proving-cost parameter reduces the per-transaction proving fee directly. Together, these bring the average cost of a fully private token transfer to under a $0.05 transaction cost.

Alpha V5 also hardens the network on several fronts. It resolves critical vulnerabilities found in Alpha V4 along with additional bugs discovered since launch. Aztec's bug bounty program on Cantina also drew more than 234 security researchers to participate. The network remains in alpha, and further bugs may surface as usage grows, but each release has closed the issues found in the last and strengthened the protocol against new ones. With the critical V4 issues resolved and these safeguards in place, Alpha V5 is stable enough for teams to begin building and deploying applications.

AvailabilityAlpha V5 is live now, view the Alpha V5 landing page for a full list of features, performance updates, and live apps to explore. 

About AztecAztec is the only decentralized, privacy-first Layer 2 on Ethereum. Developers write private and public logic in the same smart contract, and private functions are executed and proven on the user's own device, so no operator sees the underlying data. The protocol is upgraded through onchain governance, and the network settles to Ethereum. For more information, visit aztec.network.

Aztec Network

Aztec Network

30 Jun

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xx min read

Inside an Aztec TransactionOn Ethereum today, each transaction reveals everything publicly. The token you moved, the size, the timing, the wallet it came from, every action you take. Given the limitations of this type of transparent network, the industry is now focusing on bringing privacy onchain as a top priority. The response to this has mostly been to enable private transactions that shield transfers in various ways. But when we look at how privacy works on Web2, it’s clear that users and developers need granular privacy controls: the ability to decide what is public or private and who is able to see different types of data.

Aztec was built so that one transaction can carry two halves. A private half that runs on your own device and never leaves it, and a public half that the network runs in the open. Apps can choose which aspects are private or public, and users can choose what they want to reveal and when.

This article will follow an example transaction on Aztec: a vote in an onchain election built on Aztec, where who you are and which candidate you chose stay private, while the running tally for each candidate stays public for anyone to verify.

Public and private in one movePicture the vote you cast in our example as two aspects that seamlessly weave together. In the first step, you act in private: an app records your vote on your device and hands the network a proof that the vote is valid without revealing it. In the second, the network acts in public: it checks that proof, then adds one to the chosen candidate's public tally. It is one transaction: one part stays with you, one part goes to the network. Both parts end up recorded onchain, in two separate state trees, one private and one public. The walkthrough below follows how these two aspects work together and what this means for how your transaction lands onchain. 

It starts on your deviceYou open the voting app and connect an Aztec wallet. That first step looks like any onchain app. The difference is inside the wallet. An Aztec wallet carries a private execution environment, the PXE, pronounced "pixie", which runs on your phone or in your browser. The PXE is where the private half of your transaction executes, and where the proof of that work gets made, on your hardware, under your exclusive control.

Every account on Aztec is a smart contract rather than a bare key. That design, account abstraction, allows a wallet to authorize a transaction however its owner chooses without writing an identity onto the network for everyone to read. The wallet is the front door, and on Aztec you can decide if the door is open or closed, who you share your information with. 

The private half runs on your deviceThe voting app is a smart contract with two kinds of functions. The private functions run first, and they run inside your PXE. Your identity and the candidate you picked are the private inputs, and they stay on your device.

The only thing to leave your device is a proof confirming the legitimacy of your vote. Aztec's client-side proving system, Chonk, takes the private execution and produces a zero-knowledge proof: a compact cryptographic receipt that your vote followed the rules, that you are eligible, and have not voted before, while revealing nothing about who you are or who you voted for. Think of it as a sealed ballot the network can confirm is valid without opening it. The network learns only that a legitimate vote happened. It does not learn how you voted, or even which account voted. 

This is the part that used to be too slow to be practical. Generating a proof on a phone was the bottleneck every privacy app hit. Aztec’s Chonk is purpose-built for fast proving on low-memory devices, both natively and in the browser, so the private half runs on the device in your hand instead of on someone else's server.

The public half runs in the openSome elements of a vote should be public. The tally is shared infrastructure, the number everyone relies on to trust the result. Thanks to programmable privacy on Aztec, the app marks that part public. Public functions live on the network and run in the open, the way functions do on Ethereum.

On Aztec, private and public logic live in the same contract, and the developer decides which is which, function by function and variable by variable. Programmable privacy is a dimmer, not a switch. The voting app turns it up on the individual ballot and turns it down on the running tally. That boundary is a design decision written into the contract, and it is the thing no transparent chain and no fixed-privacy chain can offer.

The network checks the proof and runs the public partYour vote leaves your device as a bundle: the zero-knowledge proof of the private half, plus the call to the public function that updates the count. It goes to Aztec's sequencers, a decentralized set of thousands of independent operators, with more than 3,500 of them running the network today.

The sequencers do two jobs at once. They verify the proof of your private vote, confirming it is valid and eligible without seeing the choice behind it, and they run the public function that adds one to the chosen candidate and updates the public tally. Your ballot stays sealed. The count goes up by one for everyone to see. The same proof guarantees you cannot vote twice, even though no one learns which ballot is yours.

Two state trees, both onchainAztec has two main state trees, and both live onchain. One holds private state, the other holds public state, so the full record of what happened sits on the network rather than on any one person's laptop. The two trees store each record in two different ways depending on if it needs to be private or public. 

The private tree uses a UTXO model, the same note-based design used by Zcash. In this model, state is written as commitments: each entry is a sealed record that a valid vote was cast, with the voter and the choice kept private. Just like with Zcash or Bitcoin, you do not edit a private entry in place. You write a new one, and the design stops the same vote from being cast twice (old state is nullified). The vote stays private, and the record of a legitimate vote happening is onchain for the network to check.

The public tree uses an account-based model, the same shape Ethereum uses: values that update in place, readable by anyone. This is where each candidate's tally lives.

One transaction wrote information to both trees. The private tree recorded that you voted, sealed. The public tree recorded the new totals, in the open. Everything is onchain. The difference between the two trees is how much each one reveals.

Every private app on Aztec writes into that same private tree. A vote, a payment, and a payroll run all land in one shared record of activity, so each user's privacy grows stronger as the network grows, instead of splitting into a separate pool for every app.

A block is proposed, and Ethereum records itAztec is an L2 on Ethereum, so everything settles to Ethereum L1. A sequencer on Aztec gathers transactions into a proposed block. Other sequencers validate it before it goes to Ethereum's pending chain. At that point the block sits on Ethereum, ordered and recorded, waiting for its proof. The network has agreed on what happened and the proposed block is just waiting a final proof. 

Anyone can prove itProving a block is its own job, and on Aztec, it belongs to no one in particular. A decentralized, permissionless set of provers competes to take a full epoch, a 32-block stretch of the chain, and compresses it into a single zero-knowledge proof of the entire epoch. Anyone with the hardware can run a prover and bid for the work. There is no privileged operator, no committee you have to trust, no outside network holding a key.

That openness is the whole point of a privacy layer. A system that protects your data but routes it through one trusted server has only moved the exposure rather than removed it. Aztec keeps proving permissionless and your private inputs on your device, thereby avoiding any exposure.

The economics land in the voter's favor too. As an L2 network, Aztec spreads the cost of that one L1 proof across thousands of transactions in the rollup, so a vote costs pennies, not the millions of gas a private proof would cost verified alone on Ethereum.

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Settled on Ethereum, verifiable by anyoneA prover then posts the epoch proof to Ethereum's proven chain, and the Aztec state is final. Ethereum verifies one proof and inherits the correctness of everything inside it. Aztec extends Ethereum and settles to Ethereum, so your hybrid transaction carries Ethereum's security without carrying Ethereum's enforced transparency.

Anyone can now verify that the result is valid and that every counted vote was legitimate. No one can see how any individual voted. The tally is on the shared ledger where it belongs, and your ballot stayed yours the whole way through.

What this unlocksFor the voter, their ballot was never a broadcast. The candidate you chose stayed yours, with no record tying your wallet to a name for anyone to read later, and you can still check that your vote was counted and the result is honest. You took part without your choice becoming data for systems built to act on it.

For a founder, the election app in this walkthrough is easy to implement without needing to build extensive custom code. Secret ballots with a public, verifiable count, in one contract, is a product category that opens up only because the boundary is programmable. You can build governance, elections, and polls where people vote without fear and the result still proves itself. And of course you can build anything that requires both public and private state to work seamlessly together. 

For an infrastructure provider, the same machinery serves clients who need a result they can stand behind without exposing the people who produced it. Selective disclosure lets a client prove exactly what a counterparty needs to see, the count and the integrity of the process, and protect everything else, on their own terms. That is a guarantee a transparent chain cannot make.

A real vote needs two things at once: a secret ballot and a count anyone can check. A transparent chain makes you give up the first to get the second. On Aztec, you get both. The tally settled on Ethereum for anyone to verify, and how you voted stayed yours. The infrastructure is in place, what will you create with it? 
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->Review the Aztec Basics ->Head to the docs and start building today
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Blockchain

7 August 2026 | 18:20 Hyperliquid’s policy arm is pushing regulators to consider whether perpetual futures, best known for crypto trading, could also work as hedging tools for businesses exposed to commodity prices.

Key Takeaways Its proposal centers on giving businesses additional hedging options alongside traditional futures contracts. Agricultural markets provide a demanding test because farmers and merchants use derivatives to manage real operating risks. Public blockchains could streamline collateral and settlement, but liquidity and market protections would still determine whether the products are useful. In an August 7 submission connected to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s July 29 Agricultural Advisory Committee meeting, the Hyperliquid Policy Center focused on product choice, the CFTC’s gradual approach to perpetual futures and the potential role of public blockchains in derivatives markets.

The committee represents agricultural producers, merchants and other businesses that use derivatives to manage costs and revenues tied to their operations. Its July meeting examined risk-management tools for agricultural users alongside 24-hour trading and newer derivatives products.

Bringing perpetual futures into that discussion puts the structure in front of businesses with very different needs from crypto traders. The question for regulators is whether it can offer a useful hedging alternative in markets where derivatives protect operating margins.

Hyperliquid Policy Center CFTC submission letter. Why Would a Farmer Need a Perpetual Future? Traditional futures contracts expire. A farmer, commodity merchant or food producer that wants to remain protected against price changes beyond the life of a contract has to close or roll the position into another maturity.

A perpetual future removes the fixed expiry date. The position can remain open while a funding mechanism helps keep its price aligned with the underlying market.

That could suit companies with continuous exposure to commodities. A business that regularly buys energy, grain or another input may want to maintain protection for an extended period without repeatedly moving into a new contract.

Traditional futures remain useful when their expiration dates align with a harvest, shipment or scheduled purchase. A December contract, for example, may suit an exposure that also ends in December.

Perpetuals would give businesses another option when the risk they are managing does not fit neatly into a fixed maturity.

24-Hour Trading Is Useful Only If Liquidity Follows The CFTC is also examining longer trading schedules. In his remarks to the Agricultural Advisory Committee, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig focused on giving farmers and producers efficient tools for managing price uncertainty.

Commodity prices can move while US exchanges are closed. Weather events, geopolitical developments, energy shocks and overseas trading can all affect markets outside normal domestic sessions.

Longer trading hours could allow companies to adjust hedges sooner when those events occur.

Liquidity remains the complication. Thin overnight trading can mean fewer counterparties, wider spreads and larger price moves from relatively small orders. Under those conditions, a 24-hour perpetual contract could offer worse execution than a traditional future during its most active trading hours.

Keeping a market open around the clock only helps if enough participants are there to trade. Commercial users, market makers and other counterparties still need to provide sufficient depth.

Public Blockchains Could Change the Market Infrastructure Derivatives markets require collateral transfers, position reconciliation and settlement of gains and losses between participants. Public blockchains could handle some of those processes on infrastructure that operates continuously and can be independently verified.

Faster collateral movement and systems that remain available outside traditional banking hours could be useful to commercial participants. This may be especially relevant for perpetual contracts, where positions stay open and collateral requirements can change as prices move.

The Hyperliquid Policy Center has also argued that regulators should distinguish public blockchain infrastructure from financial businesses that take custody of customer assets or intermediate transactions.

Agricultural derivatives offer a practical setting for that argument to be tested. Any advantage would need to appear in areas businesses already care about, including collateral efficiency, settlement speed and access during volatile market periods.

The Policy Push Also Serves Hyperliquid’s Broader Strategy Hyperliquid has its own stake in how regulators treat perpetual futures and onchain derivatives.

Hyperliquid Policy Center describes itself as an independent research and advocacy organisation focused on creating a regulated US path for onchain finance. When it launched, the Hyper Foundation committed 1 million HYPE tokens to support its work, according to the organisation’s official launch announcement.

A regulatory framework that accommodates perpetual futures and public blockchain infrastructure could give platforms built around those markets more opportunities to compete with established derivatives venues.

The campaign also comes as Hyperliquid faces growing competitive pressure. JPMorgan has recently argued that regulated US perpetual products could narrow the platform’s advantage, while HYPE ETF demand has weakened. Our earlier analysis explains why JPMorgan sees growing competition as a test for Hyperliquid and HYPE.

That gives the policy effort a broader strategic importance. Expanding the regulatory role of perpetual futures could increase the number of markets where onchain derivatives platforms are able to compete.

The Real Test Is Whether Businesses Actually Use Them Perpetual futures already have a long trading history in crypto. What remains uncertain is whether companies managing commodity and other commercial exposures would find the same structure worthwhile.

Farmers, merchants and producers will judge these products on hedging costs, liquidity, collateral requirements and their ability to respond when markets move.

If perpetual futures improve those areas, they could earn a place alongside established derivatives products.

If they do not, regulatory approval may expand where the contracts can trade without creating much demand from the businesses the CFTC’s agricultural committee represents.

Methodology: This article uses the Hyperliquid Policy Center’s August 7 submission relating to the CFTC Agricultural Advisory Committee’s July 29 meeting, official CFTC meeting materials and Hyperliquid Policy Center disclosures. The analysis focuses on the practical implications of perpetual futures, continuous markets and public blockchain infrastructure. Disclaimer: The article is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal or investment advice. Regulatory policy and derivatives-market rules may change as the CFTC considers new products and public comments. Author

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.

Movement has announced a partnership with New Jersey-based Mexico remittance expert El Vecino and on-chain wallet provider RISE to power a digital-dollar service that lets customers hold their own money and send it home in seconds through WhatsApp.

Leveraging El Vecino’s 19 years of experience in US-to-Mexico physical remittances, RISE’s wallet capabilities and LATAM network, and Movement’s access to regulated, sub-second payment rails, the partnership enables stablecoin-settled transfers to be sent to Mexico almost instantly, giving customers a simple way to initiate transfers without opening a bank account or downloading an app.

Rather than having to visit a physical location to initiate every cash transfer, El Vecino customers can now begin the process through the familiar WhatsApp messenger. Funds settle in seconds before recipients cash out through Mexico's extensive OXXO and Circle K retail networks, or receive funds directly via the country's SPEI banking system. 

The partnership aims to simplify sending money home along one of the world's most important remittance corridors. Funds settle in seconds and can be received via SPEI or withdrawn as cash through physical networks like OXXO and Circle K.

In a corridor where over $62 billion moved in 2024, speed matters—but so does trust. The initiative combines El Vecino’s long-standing relationship with the community, RISE’s product expertise, and Movement’s access to regulated payment infrastructure.

Transforming the Remittance ExperienceFor years, many remittances to Mexico have followed a similar pattern: cash handling, visits to physical locations, intermediaries, waiting periods, and settlement times spanning several days.

With this new route, the user initiates the transfer via WhatsApp, funds settle in seconds, and the recipient can receive the money via SPEI or withdraw cash at OXXO and Circle K locations.

The goal isn't to sell a tech narrative; it is to reduce friction regarding a financial need that already exists for thousands of Mexican families.

Discussing stablecoin remittances only makes sense if the infrastructure actually improves the user experience. In this case, the improvement lies in fewer steps, reduced reliance on manual processes, and much faster settlement.

The U.S.-Mexico corridor is the largest in the world and remains vital for families relying on recurring transfers. Being able to initiate a transfer using a familiar tool like WhatsApp—without opening a U.S. bank account—addresses a practical need rather than a passing product trend.

Who manages the customer relationship also matters. El Vecino has spent 19 years building trust regarding remittances to Mexico from New Jersey. That trust is central to the model.

How it WorksEach party brings something unique to this new remittance route to Mexico.

El Vecino contributes 19 years of experience in physical remittance services to Mexico and an active user base already familiar with its operations. It currently processes approximately 25,000 transactions per month—amounting to $70 million annually—across remittances, domestic and international payments, check cashing, and other services. Around 85% of these transactions are destined for Mexico.

RISE provides the wallet and regional network that enable the digital user experience.

Movement contributes regulated payment infrastructure and stablecoin settlement within seconds, as well as compliant fiat on-ramps and off-ramps—services that have historically been difficult for community-based remittance operators to secure.

Operating the new route via WhatsAppInstead of having to visit a physical location to initiate each transfer, El Vecino users will be able to start the process via WhatsApp.

Funds are then settled almost instantly. The recipient in Mexico can receive them directly via SPEI or withdraw cash through a wide, well-known commercial network.

The new service will first be piloted with El Vecino’s 20,000 users. In a second phase, it will expand through the RISE network to reach an estimated 800,000 users. Looking ahead, the model also targets other corridors in Latin America, including Guatemala and El Salvador.

Crucially, this collaboration demonstrates that a community-based operator does not need to build its own blockchain infrastructure to modernize its remittance services to Mexico. It also shows that stablecoin-based remittances can function within a regulated model, offering real local payouts and an experience designed for users who already have established habits, trusted channels, and recurring needs. 

From a broader perspective, the case is significant because it combines local distribution, a digital product, and regulated settlement in one of the world's most active remittance corridors.

Voices From The AllianceTorab Torabi, CEO of Movement, said: “For too long, many Mexicans have struggled to send their hard-earned money home. The partnership with El Vecino and RISE helps correct this imbalance and demonstrates that stablecoins can function as a reliable settlement mechanism. 

It also allows us to show that regulated blockchain infrastructure can modernize one of the world’s most active remittance corridors.”

Mike Burns, founder of El Vecino, said: “El Vecino was built on the trust that comes from face-to-face interaction. Families trust us because they know we help them support their loved ones. Partnering with RISE and Movement allows us to bring that trust to a remote digital channel, with the same security and certainty that the money will arrive.”

Richard Mas, founder and CEO of RISE, said: “Every year, tens of billions of dollars flow from the United States to Mexico—money largely earned far from home by people whom the banking system has left behind. El Vecino spent 19 years building trust at the counter, household by household, and we are proud to join forces with them and Movement to give those users access to new, secure, and regulatory-compliant digital solutions.”

We at Movement are confident that this pathway will not only improve the experience for El Vecino users but can also serve as a model for other remittance providers serving migrant communities who are seeking a more efficient way to move money between the United States and Mexico.

This is where stablecoin-based remittances move beyond being an abstract idea and become practical infrastructure for solving real-world problems.

The XRP Ledger has released xrpld 3.3.0, its reference server software update, marking what many observers consider one of the most consequential upgrades to the network in recent years. The release bundles five amendments: Confidential MPT, Batch, Permission Delegation, Sponsored Fees and Reserves, and Dynamic MPT. RippleX Head of Product Jazzi Cooper framed the update as a leap forward for tokenized asset use cases including global transfers, trading, collateralization, and settlement.

Two of the five proposed amendments are revised versions of features that were previously withdrawn after researchers found bugs that could have allowed unauthorized transactions or fee draining. The team has since addressed the vulnerability and refined the implementations to ensure stability and safety.

What Each Amendment DoesConfidential MPT introduces zero-knowledge proofs to Multi-Purpose Token transactions, allowing transfers to be verified as valid without revealing the underlying amounts or details to everyone on the network. This gives the XRP Ledger its first native privacy feature for tokenized assets, a capability that institutional participants have long required.

Batch would allow up to eight cross-account transactions to execute atomically, while Permission Delegation would let institutions grant narrowly scoped signing authority without exposing full control. In the case of Batch, either all transactions succeed together, or they all fail, helping reduce costs and improve network efficiency.

Sponsored Fees and Reserves allows companies to pay network fees on behalf of their users, meaning customers may no longer need to hold XRP just to use applications built on the XRP Ledger. This directly lowers onboarding friction for both institutions and retail users. Dynamic MPT will let token issuers update certain token settings after launch without creating a new token, making it easier for businesses to adjust to changing regulations.

Activation Depends on Validator ConsensusThe software release does not automatically switch on any of these features. Under the decentralized governance architecture of the XRP Ledger, each amendment must achieve and maintain at least 80% support from trusted network validators for a mandatory duration of 14 consecutive days. Validators need to upgrade their nodes to 3.3.0 and then signal support for each amendment individually. The Batch amendment already failed once due to a security flaw, and while the fix appears to be in place, validators may be more cautious this time around.

Ripple Head of Engineering Ayo Akinyele said the update improves the XRP Ledger's privacy, payments, account management, and token features as more financial assets move on-chain. By introducing structured batch processing, secure permission delegation, confidential token architectures, dynamic settings, and sponsored fee models, the network is directly tailoring its infrastructure for widespread institutional adoption and real-world asset tokenization.

The 3.3.0 release is the first since version 3.2.0 to introduce new functional capabilities rather than maintenance patches. Attention now turns to validator signaling in the weeks ahead, which will determine whether these proposals cross the 80% threshold and go live on mainnet.

Sources:
CoinDesk: XRP Ledger upgrade brings back features once pulled over critical bugs
Crypto Briefing: XRP Ledger 3.3.0 to launch with five amendments including revived Batch feature
The Crypto Basic: XRP Ledger rolls out major 3.3.0 upgrade

19h05 ▪ 5 min read ▪ by Lydie M.

Summarize this article with:

BlackRock’s ETFs linked to Bitcoin and Ethereum experienced a sharp reversal in the second quarter of 2026. Their activity on shares changed from a net increase of $13.9 billion a year earlier to a decrease of $3.5 billion. An annual gap of $17.4 billion that mainly reveals the scale of redemptions.

In brief IBIT and ETHA show a combined net decline of $3.5 billion. The gap with the 2025 increase reaches $17.4 billion. The 106,148 BTC declared do not necessarily correspond to direct sales. The IBIT Bitcoin ETF incurs $2.9 billion in net outflows BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust concentrates most of the reversal. This evolution continues a sequence during which BlackRock had already sold over a billion dollars of Bitcoin via IBIT, due to redemption requests presented by investors. Between April and June 2026, IBIT recorded $4.3 billion in contributions linked to the issuance of new shares.

At the same time, distributions associated with the redeemed shares reached $7.2 billion. The balance thus stands at -$2.9 billion. The Ethereum fund ETHA also shows a decrease. Its share creations amounted to $943.3 million, against about $1.5 billion distributed in redemptions. Its net contraction thus reaches $583.4 million. Together, the two BlackRock crypto ETFs lose $3.5 billion on this accounting line.

The $17.4 billion shock comes from the annual comparison. In Q2 2025, IBIT and ETHA had recorded a combined increase of $13.9 billion thanks to share creations. One year later, their balance becomes negative $3.5 billion. The gap between these two periods thus reaches $17.4 billion.

The 106,148 bitcoins do not all represent exchange sales Regulatory documents show 106,148 BTC in a category dedicated to assets used during share redemptions. This impressive volume can give the image of a massive Bitcoin sale. However, the technical reality requires more caution.

Since 2025, authorized participants can perform certain creations and redemptions in kind. They can therefore receive bitcoins directly when IBIT shares are canceled. Not all 106,148 BTC concerned have necessarily been sold for dollars on a platform. Part of it may have been transferred directly to intermediaries.

Fund notes notably mention $3.85 billion in in-kind distributions for Bitcoin. They do not provide the exact breakdown between BTC transferred directly and those actually sold. They also do not identify the investors behind the redemptions.

This distinction prevents an exaggerated interpretation. The figure of $17.4 billion does not measure a loss suffered by Bitcoin holders. It also does not prove that BlackRock has liquidated this amount on the market. It reflects the shift from strong share creation to a period dominated by redemptions.

The movement nevertheless confirms a change in institutional behavior. Several major players have already reduced their positions in crypto funds, as illustrated by the massive retreat of institutional exposures to Bitcoin and Ethereum. The market no longer benefits from the almost automatic accumulation observed after the launch of spot ETFs.

Bitcoin must now confirm the return of buyers The first sessions of August offer a beginning of stabilization. Between August 3 and 5, IBIT attracted $478.5 million. ETHA received $83.8 million. These $562.3 million however represent only 15.9% of the net contraction of $3.5 billion recorded in the second quarter.

At this rate, nearly 19 sessions would be necessary to compensate an equivalent amount. Still, entries would have to remain constant. A handful of positive days is therefore not enough to confirm the end of redemptions.

The true indicator will be the duration. Regular flows over several weeks would show that institutional demand is returning. An alternation of inflows and outflows would rather signal a cautious market, in which investors use Bitcoin ETFs to quickly adjust their exposure.

SEC documents ultimately reveal less a Bitcoin collapse than a change of cycle for BlackRock products. The massive creations of 2025 have given way to arbitrage and redemptions. The recent recovery, when American ETFs attracted capital despite Bitcoin’s decline, will have to continue to erase this accounting shock of $17.4 billion.

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Lydie M.

Enseignante et ingénieure IT, Lydie découvre le Bitcoin en 2022 et plonge dans l’univers des cryptomonnaies. Elle vulgarise des sujets complexes, décrypte les enjeux du Web3 et défend une vision d’un futur numérique ouvert, inclusif et décentralisé.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

Joseph Chalom argues the draft would strip the base rate out from under roughly $35 billion in liquid staking token collateral and could push institutions to sell ETH as they unstake.

Joseph Chalom said SharpLink opposes EIP-8363, a draft Ethereum proposal that would burn part of validator rewards as the staking ratio climbs, in an article published on X on Friday. "Sharplink opposes it," he wrote.

Chalom described the proposal, titled "Tapered Issuance Burn," as phasing in a reduced issuance schedule over about a year and a half, burning a growing share of validator yield as more ETH is staked.

"A growing share of that yield will be burned as more ETH is staked, until roughly half of all ETH staked, at which point yield goes down to 0%," he wrote. At that point, he said, validators would be "living on transaction tips alone that today account for only 15% of staking yields." That account of the mechanism comes from Chalom, a declared opponent, rather than from the proposal text.

His central objection is that staking yield net of costs and inflation functions as "the de facto base rate" underneath decentralized finance. Liquid staking tokens, which he put at roughly $35 billion in total value locked, are "core collateral across onchain lending," he wrote. Removing the yield, in his argument, does not redirect the value that currently funds the ecosystem but destroys it.

Threat to Institutional ETHChalom also framed the change as a threat to the institutional case for ETH, saying it would erase the distinction that makes the asset "natively productive" relative to bitcoin. "In fact, it could lead to institutions selling ETH as they unstake it," he wrote.

He said SharpLink's ETH is staked with validators including Coinbase, Anchorage, Figment and Galaxy Digital, and backs protocols including ether.fi, Linea and EigenCloud.

He argued Ethereum already has a mechanism for making ETH scarcer in the base fee burn, which he said makes the asset deflationary whenever network usage passes a threshold, and called EIP-8363 "an economic and business challenge, not a technical one."

The proposal remains at the discussion stage. The authors opened a topic on Ethereum Magicians with an initial draft dated Aug. 4, describing it as implementing "a modification to the ETH issuance curve by way of a partial burn of validator rewards."

Chalom acknowledged the draft faces a difficult path. "Its odds for passing are long," he wrote. "Its implications are not."

Grayscale moves to stake nearly all idle ETH in its mini fund@Grayscale has filed an amendment to the trust agreement governing its Ethereum Staking Mini ETF, making staking the default treatment for virtually all $ETH held by the fund. The amendment, effective on or around August 7, 2026, covers the Third Amended and Restated Declaration of Trust and Trust Agreement for the fund. The only carve-outs are for fees, redemptions, and network emergencies.

Some 161,000 ETH sit idle in the fund, which manages roughly $1.6 billion in assets. The new trust agreement aims to shrink that idle pile toward zero by making staking the default for nearly every coin the fund holds. That idle tranche represents approximately 19% of total holdings.

IRS deadline and shareholder payouts drive the timingThe timing of the amendment was not accidental. An IRS deadline for funds to qualify for the staking safe harbor expired on August 10, just four days after the amendment was signed. The IRS rules, published last November, allow crypto funds to stake without triggering fund-level tax, but rewards must flow out to shareholders at least quarterly.

The guidance, published on November 10 as Revenue Procedure 2025-31, removed a key barrier that had previously prevented regulated investment products from earning on-chain yield from proof-of-stake networks such as Ethereum.

The proposed amendment requires the trust to reduce staking consideration held by the fund to cash no less often than quarterly and to promptly distribute the cash proceeds, net of any trust expenses not assumed by the sponsor, to shareholders. Grayscale plans to make those distributions monthly in practice. The fund has earned $27.3 million in net staking rewards since activating staking in October 2025, according to SEC filings.

Grayscale's Ethereum trust was among the first U.S. spot crypto exchange-traded products to enable staking, and this latest amendment signals an effort to maximise that capability before the regulatory window closed.

Sources:
Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF Form 8-K, SEC EDGAR
161,000 Idle ETH May Soon Be Staked: What Grayscale Just Changed, Yahoo Finance
Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF Form 424B3 Prospectus Supplement, SEC EDGAR

The recently released proposal to cap Ethereum staking rewards, EIP-8361, continues to elicit unanimous pushback. According to ETHVA data, out of the 83K staked ETH amongst validators, 99.7% were signaling ‘No’ on the proposal.

Although this is a non-binding check, it’s a community sentiment gauge that tracks the proposal support amongst key stakeholders. The overwhelming 99.7% ‘No’ is a clear indication that the proposal may stall due to limited support. 

Source: ETH VA The proposal is currently at EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) or draft phase. For it to be included in the upcoming Hegota network upgrade, it must clear the PFI (Proposal for Inclusion).

At the PFI level, community and developer evaluation must tick off everything, including economic impact, before approval. 

However, with massive opposition from a section of solo stakers and top developers, the proposal could stall. Notably, the proposal (tapered issuance reduction) seeks to cap staking rewards at zero if the staking ratio crosses 50%. 

Ethereum Foundation under fire for divisive proposal For critics, led by Aave, the move would kill ETH credit markets and push DeFi to other chains. According to Aave CEO Stani Kulechov, the proposal will not make ETH a “less viable asset” or help solo stakers. These are the two main objectives the proposal sought to achieve. 

But the criticism has gone beyond the proposal to the Ethereum Foundation (EF), as two of the authors of the proposal are from the organization. Kulechov slammed the EF, adding that, 

 The EF’s ivory tower academic approach will not solve those challenges. It’s disconnected from the builders in the trenches who choose to build on Ethereum every day. We should not take them for granted.

Source: X Rhett Shipp, CEO of Avant Protocol, also echoed a similar stance, noting that the proposal showed EF’s “huge lack of focus on the things that will actually have impact.”

Amid the ongoing debate, Ethereum [ETH] market sentiment has slightly dropped into negative territory, and the price remained below $2K.  

Source: Santiment Overall, the community sentiment is against the proposal as some urge the EF to find new ways to deal with inflation without touching staking rewards.

This may be a setback for the proposal’s likely progress into the next network upgrade. But ETH is currently not deflationary to be considered a store of value (SoV).

Final Summary EIP-8861 proposal critics now shift the blame to the Ethereum Foundation for disconnecting from the community.  ETH market sentiment has briefly turned negative in the past two days amid intense debate over the inflation proposal

A Settlement Design Overhaul@Polymarket has moved its 5- and 15-minute crypto prediction markets to @chainlink TWAP (time-weighted average price) Data Streams, replacing the single-timestamp price snapshot that sat at the centre of a settlement manipulation controversy. Under the new setup, five-minute markets settle on a 30-second average and 15-minute markets on a 60-second window, making last-second spot pushes significantly more expensive to execute profitably.

The structural change follows a joint study by researchers at Stanford University and Singapore Management University, which found that Polymarket's five-minute $BTC prediction contracts exhibited trading patterns consistent with settlement-price manipulation, with concentrated order-flow spikes on Binance in the seconds before contract expiration, followed by rapid price reversals. Researchers estimated that flagged traders generated roughly $8.2 million in profits, primarily at the expense of retail participants.

What the Research Found, and How Polymarket RespondedThe core vulnerability was structural. Because settlement relied on Chainlink price feeds tied to the end-of-window spot price, traders had a window of opportunity to influence the reference price immediately before contracts expired. Researchers flagged 821 likely manipulators, estimating they collectively profited around $8.2 million, largely at the expense of retail participants. Researchers found little evidence of similar trading behaviour in Polymarket's 15-minute contracts, suggesting that longer settlement windows make it significantly more expensive and difficult to profitably influence prices.

@Polymarket has denied that manipulation occurred. Alongside the pricing upgrade, the platform is adding $1 million in liquidity rewards through August. @chainlink, for its part, notes that the markets have cleared over $9 billion in volume to date.

The authors of the Stanford study had already recommended replacing single-point settlement prices with time-weighted average prices, arguing it would reduce the impact of short-lived price spikes during the final seconds before contract expiration. The switch to TWAP Data Streams is, in effect, Polymarket acting on that recommendation ahead of any regulatory requirement to do so.

Legal scrutiny around prediction markets continues to intensify in the US, with multiple states challenging platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket earlier this year. The pricing overhaul gives the platform a stronger technical and integrity argument at a moment when regulators are paying close attention to how short-dated event contracts are settled.

Sources:
Yahoo Finance: Stanford Study Finds Signs of Bitcoin Market Manipulation on Polymarket
Coinpedia: Stanford Study Flags Bitcoin Market Manipulation on Polymarket
Pew Research Center: Trading Volume on Prediction Markets Has Soared

Moonwell, the decentralized lending protocol, saw USDC borrowing on its Ethereum mainnet markets jump 135% week-over-week, with USDT borrowing climbing 87% over the same stretch. The catalyst: a governance-approved overhaul of the protocol’s interest rate model curves for both stablecoins.

The numbers are striking on their own, but they’re actually a step down from even larger spikes in earlier weeks, when USDC borrowing surged 148% and USDT borrowing rocketed 236%.

What changed under the hood On July 29, 2026, Moonwell’s community passed a governance proposal that adjusted the interest rate model (IRM) curves for its USDC and USDT markets. The proposal also introduced borrowing rewards, meaning users now earn WELL tokens for taking out loans.

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Moonwell currently supports supply, borrowing, and incentive distribution across several assets on Ethereum, including USDC, USDT, ETH, and cbBTC. WELL token incentives are active across both sides of those markets, rewarding lenders and borrowers alike.

Moonwell’s multi-chain footprint The protocol isn’t operating exclusively on Ethereum. Moonwell runs across Ethereum, Base, and Optimism, giving it a presence on three of the more active networks in DeFi today.

One of its more notable tools is USDC Anywhere, which enables cross-network lending. The idea is to let users access USDC liquidity regardless of which chain they’re sitting on, reducing the friction that comes with having capital siloed across multiple Layer 1s and Layer 2s.

The Ethereum expansion itself is relatively recent. Moonwell launched its Ethereum mainnet lending markets in 2026, adding to its existing Base and Optimism deployments.

What this signals for DeFi lending The fact that borrowing increases have been sustained across multiple weeks, even if the percentage gains are moderating from 236% down to 87% for USDT, suggests something beyond pure mercenary capital chasing yield.

The governance mechanism Moonwell used to implement these changes is worth noting. Rather than a core team unilaterally adjusting rate parameters, the IRM curve modifications went through a community proposal and vote.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Circle just built a financial system where the customers aren’t human. The stablecoin issuer launched its Circle Agent Stack on May 11, a suite of tools that lets autonomous AI agents hold assets, discover services, and settle payments using USDC, all without a person clicking “confirm.”

What the Agent Stack actually does The stack has four main components, each solving a different piece of the autonomous-finance puzzle.

First, there’s the Circle CLI, a command-line interface that gives developers (and eventually agents themselves) a way to interact with Circle’s infrastructure programmatically.

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Second, Agent Wallets provide each AI agent with its own USDC-holding account. These wallets come with programmable guardrails, meaning developers can set spending policies, transaction limits, and approval rules before letting an agent loose.

Third, an Agent Marketplace acts as a discovery layer where agents can find services offered by other agents. If one AI needs data cleaning and another AI offers it, the marketplace handles matchmaking while USDC handles settlement.

Fourth, Nanopayments. These are near-instant, gas-free transactions processed through Circle Gateway that can be as small as $0.000001. Six decimal places of a dollar.

The ARC token and a new Layer-1 Circle also announced a successful presale of its ARC token, raising $222 million at a $3 billion valuation.

The ARC token powers Circle’s new Arc blockchain, described as a stablecoin-native Layer-1. Transaction fees on Arc are denominated in USDC rather than a volatile native token, removing the friction of users having to hold one asset to pay fees while transacting in another.

CEO Jeremy Allaire has framed AI agents not as tools that assist human customers but as customers themselves. The Agent Stack makes that framing concrete, with Circle treating software entities as first-class economic participants, complete with wallets, spending rules, and marketplace access.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

FTX, the exchange that became crypto’s most spectacular cautionary tale in 2022, keeps finding ways to stay relevant. The FTX Recovery Trust is preparing to distribute approximately $900 million to creditors on July 31, 2026, the latest in a series of payouts that have exceeded most expectations. Meanwhile, an updated text of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, better known as the CLARITY Act, landed in the Senate on July 22, 2026.

From rubble to recovery FTX Trading Ltd. and its affiliated debtors officially emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 3, 2025. The reorganization plan, confirmed by the court in October 2024, valued recoverable assets between $14 billion and $16 billion. The plan promised more than 100% recovery for many non-governmental creditors, a rarity in any bankruptcy proceeding and essentially unheard of in crypto.

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The CLARITY Act takes shape First introduced on May 29, 2025, the bipartisan CLARITY Act aims to build the regulatory infrastructure that was conspicuously absent when Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire imploded. The bill tackles custody rules, disclosure requirements, and market practices.

The updated Senate text released on July 22, 2026, sharpens several key provisions. It includes risk disclosures designed to give retail investors a clearer picture of what they’re buying. It establishes insider safeguards, the kind that might have flagged Alameda Research’s relationship with FTX before billions went missing. And it introduces enforcement tools that would give regulators more precise authority to act when things go sideways.

One of the bill’s central goals is drawing a clear line between SEC and CFTC jurisdiction over digital assets. Senate Banking Committee materials from January 2026 affirm the legislation’s focus on consumer protections.

Why FTX’s ghost haunts the debate The exchange’s collapse exposed every gap in the existing regulatory framework simultaneously: commingled customer funds, opaque corporate structures, no meaningful disclosure requirements, and regulators who lacked clear authority to intervene. The fact that FTX’s estate ultimately recovered $14 billion to $16 billion in assets doesn’t erase the damage — it underscores that the money was recoverable, but the guardrails that should have prevented its misuse in the first place simply didn’t exist.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Morgan Stanley has significantly increased its Bitcoin holdings, now totaling approximately $400 million. The banking giant’s recent moves have attracted considerable attention from both institutional investors and the broader crypto community, especially as market volatility continues to challenge investor sentiment.

Continuous Bitcoin PurchasesData from Arkham Intelligence reveals that Morgan Stanley has purchased Bitcoin for three consecutive days. This sustained accumulation comes just months after the launch of the firm’s MSTU Bitcoin ETF in April, demonstrating an ongoing strategic focus on crypto assets.

The purchases highlight Morgan Stanley’s determination to strengthen its exposure to Bitcoin at a time when the price has fluctuated around $64,000, with market sentiment wavering between positive and negative territory.

These actions suggest that regardless of the short-term price direction, the bank continues to view Bitcoin as an essential component of its broader digital asset strategy. Market analysts are closely monitoring whether these acquisitions point to long-term conviction or are positioned as tactical moves aimed at managing liquidity.

Expanding Crypto ETF OfferingsMorgan Stanley’s focus extends beyond just Bitcoin. The company has introduced what it describes as the lowest-cost Ethereum and Solana exchange-traded funds, seeking to provide institutional clients with a broader suite of crypto investment vehicles.

With these developments, Morgan Stanley is reinforcing its position as a key issuer in the crypto ETF landscape. The firm aims to offer institutional customers seamless, cost-efficient access to cryptocurrencies, expanding beyond traditional products to meet growing client interest in digital assets.

Following its steady Bitcoin accumulation, further data showed that the banking giant now holds about $400 million worth of Bitcoin, signaling its conviction in the asset despite the market downturn.

Market Dynamics and Investor DebateThe timing of these purchases has fueled discussions among market watchers. Some analysts propose that the moves reflect a strong, long-term belief in Bitcoin’s future potential from one of Wall Street’s largest players, while others question whether Morgan Stanley is primarily responding to short-term liquidity needs.

Given Bitcoin’s unpredictable price action and ongoing fluctuations around key resistance levels, close monitoring of institutional activity remains crucial for market participants. Investors are watching for signals that could either confirm Morgan Stanley’s conviction or reveal more complex motivations behind the bank’s strategy.

As the landscape for digital and traditional assets continues to converge, platforms like 1stepSwap are also gaining traction. By enabling direct wallet access to shares of major US companies and commodities such as gold and silver, 1stepSwap exemplifies new models for integrating real-world assets with blockchain technology. The platform’s standout feature—locating the best market price at any moment—allows users to seamlessly diversify their portfolios and execute trades on some of the largest stocks in seconds, without complex middlemen or procedures.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Morpheus, a decentralised marketplace for AI inference, has announced a partnership with Secret Network to enable private, secure execution of AI models using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs).

The collaboration introduces a new TEE Provider developed by Morpheus, capable of running confidential AI models within Trusted Execution Environments. Through this integration, Secret Network’s Confidential AI models will be accessible to Morpheus users, allowing AI inference to be performed without exposing sensitive data or model interactions.

AI inference, the stage at which trained models process new inputs to generate outputs, represents the primary point of interaction between users and AI systems. It is also where data privacy risks are most acute, particularly in decentralised environments where compute is distributed across multiple nodes. Any industry edge? No longer secret. No longer yours.

By combining Morpheus’s decentralised infrastructure with Secret Network’s privacy-preserving technology, the partnership aims to address this challenge directly.

“This is about making decentralised AI usable at an enterprise level,” said David Johnston of Morpheus. “Inference is where real-world value happens, but it is also where trust breaks down. By enabling confidential execution through TEEs, we are ensuring that users no longer have to choose between openness and privacy.”

Secret Network’s technology ensures that data remains encrypted not only in storage and transit, but also during computation. Within a TEE, inputs are processed securely, with neither the node operator nor external parties able to access the underlying data or outputs.

“Privacy cannot be an afterthought in AI,” said Luke B, COO at Secret Network Foundation. “As inference becomes the dominant mode of interaction with AI systems, protecting that layer is essential. This partnership brings confidential AI into a decentralised marketplace, which is a significant step forward for both adoption and trust.”

The integration reflects a broader shift towards confidential computing in AI, where sensitive data can be processed securely even in distributed environments. It also signals growing demand for infrastructure that supports both scalability and privacy, particularly as AI applications expand across finance, healthcare and enterprise systems.

Through this partnership, developers and enterprises using Morpheus will be able to access Secret Network’s Confidential AI models with full privacy guarantees, enabling new use cases that require secure, decentralised intelligence.

Stop theft. Stop worrying.

About Morpheus
Morpheus is a decentralised marketplace for AI inference, connecting users and developers with distributed compute resources to run AI models at scale.

About Secret Network
Secret Network is a blockchain platform focused on privacy-preserving computation, enabling confidential smart contracts and secure data processing through Trusted Execution Environments.

PANews August 7 news, THENA released “The ARK Initiative” proposal, proposing integrated adjustments to protocol fee distribution, token emissions and resource framework. According to the plan, spot trading fees are proposed to be distributed 40% to veTHE voters, 60% to the protocol treasury, and the distribution of trading fees to theNFT under the original structure will be suspended.

THE emissions are proposed to be adjusted to: 77.5% for LP incentives (previously 67.5%), 15% for veTHE rebase (previously 30%), 2.5% to developer wallets, and 5% to the protocol treasury. The protocol treasury, under the supervision of the foundation, will be used for product development, security, ecosystem activities, TVL growth, marketing, partnerships, and potential protocol value accumulation initiatives.

THENA stated that the foundation previously assessed funding the transformation through an additional 10% THE issuance, but after further review, it believed this could cause unnecessary dilution and affect community alignment, so it decided not to proceed. This proposal has not minted any tokens, and the ARK initiative will not introduce this additional supply. The initiative is currently in the community discussion phase and will later enter governance voting.

Upbit and Bithumb, two leading cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea, have announced differing decisions regarding the popular meme coin Bonk (BONK). Upbit announced it will end support for BONK trading on its platform, while Bithumb announced it has removed the token from its delist watchlist.

According to an announcement by Upbit, BONK will be delisted from the exchange on September 7th at 09:00. Following this decision, users will need to follow the processes related to BONK transactions and asset transfers. Delisting means that the trading pairs for the cryptocurrency are removed from the platform, and users will no longer be able to trade with that asset.

Cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea regularly evaluate the digital assets they list based on specific criteria. Factors such as trading volume, liquidity, project activity, investor protection, technical developments, and market conditions can influence listing and delisting decisions.

On the other hand, Bithumb took a more positive step regarding BONK, unlike Upbit. The exchange announced that it had removed BONK from its delisted watchlist. This marks a step towards ending the trading warning previously applied to BONK on Bithumb.

The fact that two major South Korean exchanges made different decisions about the same asset reveals that cryptocurrency projects are evaluated individually by exchanges. A delisting decision by one exchange does not automatically mean that the token will be removed from other platforms.

BONK, as one of the leading meme coins in the Solana ecosystem, particularly attracts the attention of individual investors. Since meme coins generally exhibit high volatility in price movements, listing or delisting decisions on major exchanges can have significant effects on token price and trading volume.

As Upbit’s delisting decision on September 7th approaches, market participants are expected to closely monitor BONK’s trading status on other South Korean exchanges and any potential new announcements. Bithumb’s decision to remove it from its watchlist indicates that the token’s current trading support on that platform continues.

*This is not investment advice.

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Table of contents

For the first time on Aevo, traders can hold, trade, and hedge tokenized real-world assets from the same account as their options and perps.

Until today, a trader running options and perps on Aevo and an investor holding tokenized real-world assets on mainnet were in different places, different venues, different balances, different mental models for what each account was for.

That separation ended with spot markets for six tokenized real-world assets now live on Aevo, powered by Ondo Finance.

NVDAon (NVIDIA), TSLAon (Tesla), SPYon (SPDR S&P 500 ETF), QQQon (Invesco QQQ), HOODon (Robinhood), and GOOGLon (Alphabet) are now buyable, holdable, and tradeable on Aevo Chain, sitting inside the same account where traders already run their perpetuals and options.

The account, extended The launch is built on a single premise: a portfolio holds assets and trades from the same place. A trader who runs NVDA perps on Aevo can now hold NVDAon in the same account. A holder whose Ondo assets have been sitting idle on mainnet now has somewhere those assets have a job.

The six assets bridge to Aevo Chain with zero gas, and swaps run on Aevo’s L2 in either direction, stables to Ondo assets and back. The bridge runs both ways, and positions open and close around the clock.

The strategy, day one Every launch asset has its matching perpetual futures market already live on Aevo, so from the first hour, traders can go long NVDAon and short the NVDA perp from the same account, running a delta-neutral position on a real-world asset entirely onchain.

The perp leg earns rewards across Aevo’s trading reward streams, while the spot leg earns nothing. The capability is there across all six launch assets. The strategy is shown as intent and outcome: hedge the stock with its perp, one account, both legs.

The assets, stated precisely The six assets are issued by Ondo Finance, the RWA category leader, and backed one-to-one by the underlying. 

The relationship is an ecosystem integration: Ondo assets, powered by Ondo, on Aevo. The assets are cleared through Ondo’s full review and compliance process while Aevo is an approved venue.

What comes next Today’s launch is the foundation layer of a longer story; the assets arrived now, and what they unlock comes next: buy them now, use them soon.

[QUOTE PLACEHOLDER: Getting spot RWA assets on the exchange now enables more trading strategies; users are now able to edge their spot RWA positions with the corresponding perp (and vice versa).]

The direction is capital efficiency, as most tokenized assets sit in wallets with nothing to do, no venue to trade against, no strategy to run, no way to make the holding work.

The account Aevo is building moves in a different direction: assets you hold and derivatives you control, in one place, with each side working alongside the other rather than sitting separately.

AUTHOR

Simeon is a detail-driven editor who sharpens every piece with clarity and precision, ensuring clean, consistent, and professional content throughout.

The divestiture requirement Democrats demanded as the price of their Clarity Act votes could hand Trump a years-long deferral on capital gains, Bloomberg reported.

Original Image Credits: noamgalai / Shutterstock.com

Posted August 7, 2026 at 6:36 am EST.

The bipartisan ethics proposal senators have offered President Donald Trump to unlock the Clarity Act could produce a substantial tax benefit for him, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The provision would require the president to divest from crypto-related businesses, and that forced sale is expected to let him defer federal taxes on the resulting gains for years, and possibly indefinitely, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

The proposed ethics addendum has not been made public and remains under negotiation between the White House and lawmakers.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

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Trump reported more than $1.4 billion in crypto income for last year in a financial disclosure released in June, including roughly $636 million in memecoin royalties, about $594 million tied to World Liberty Financial, and close to $197 million from a stablecoin venture. Those figures make crypto the dominant source of his personal income.

The ethics fight has been the central obstacle to the bill for months. Trump had accepted language brokered by Senator Cynthia Lummis, but Democrats and Republicans including Senators Thom Tillis and Ruben Gallego, who sent the counter-proposal to the White House in late July. Senate Democrats have separately demanded hearings into the president’s crypto earnings. These disputes have fueled delays that have now pushed a Clarity vote to September.

Related Listen: Kristin Smith on Why the Clarity Act Comes Down to a Memecoin

AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.

HYPE price climbed above $56.80 as strong quarterly revenue, token buybacks, and rising RWA trading activity helped it rebound from the $51 support area.

Summary

HYPE price gained 2.5% in 24 hours and traded about 3.7% higher over the past week. Hyperliquid generated $169 million in Q2 revenue, allocating $141 million to HYPE buybacks. The daily chart shows a potential breakout from a descending channel, but momentum is nearing overbought levels. Liquidation clusters at $57.20 and $55 could determine HYPE’s next short-term move. HYPE price rebounds from $51 support According to data from crypto.news, Hyperliquid (HYPE) price traded near $56.80 on Aug. 7, gaining about 2.5% over 24 hours after recovering from an early-August low around $51.20. The token reached an intraday high near $57.04 before buyers and sellers began competing around the $57 level.

The rebound has lifted HYPE roughly 11% from its weekly low, although its net seven-day gain remained closer to 3.7%. Trading volume stood near $250 million over the previous 24 hours.

The 4-hour chart shows HYPE establishing a sequence of higher lows after defending the $51–$52 region. Price has also moved above the Supertrend indicator, which currently provides dynamic support near $54.44.

Hyperliquid price 4-hour chart — Aug. 7 | Source: crypto.news The 4-hour relative strength index stood at 60.08, slightly above its signal average of 59.49. This reading points to improving buying pressure without placing HYPE in overbought territory on the shorter timeframe.

However, the token remains about 26% below its June record near $76.70. The broader chart therefore shows a recovery within a larger correction rather than a confirmed return to its previous uptrend.

Hyperliquid buybacks support the recovery The latest move followed the release of Hyperliquid’s second-quarter performance figures. The protocol reported $169 million in quarterly revenue and said $141 million was directed toward HYPE buybacks.

Hyperliquid also passed $1 billion in cumulative protocol revenue during the quarter. HIP-3 real-world asset perpetual contracts generated $213 billion in trading volume and represented 32.2% of activity in the category covered by the report.

RWA trading contributed 6.6% of total quarterly revenue, according to the Q2 figures. The data strengthened the view that Hyperliquid is expanding beyond crypto perpetual futures into tokenized commodities, equities and other traditional-market products.

Buybacks can support HYPE by creating recurring demand using protocol revenue. Still, their effect depends on whether platform trading activity and fee generation remain high enough to offset token sales and future supply growth.

HYPE’s fully diluted valuation stood near $54 billion, compared with a circulating market capitalization of approximately $12.6 billion. That gap remains a longer-term risk because only part of the maximum token supply currently circulates.

HYPE price faces $57.30 liquidation wall The daily chart shows HYPE attempting to move above the upper boundary of a descending channel that has guided price lower since early July. A sustained daily close above $57 would strengthen the breakout case.

Hyperliquid price daily chart — Aug. 7 | Source: crypto.news The Awesome Oscillator remained negative at -5.39, showing that the broader momentum structure has not fully turned bullish. Its histogram bars have nevertheless shifted higher, indicating that bearish momentum is weakening.

The Stochastic RSI presents a more immediate warning. Its two lines stood at 95.80 and 88.35, placing the indicator deep in overbought territory. That setup does not guarantee a decline, but it raises the chance of consolidation or a short pullback before another advance.

CoinGlass’ 24-hour liquidation heatmap shows the largest nearby liquidity concentration above the market at approximately $57.20–$57.35. A move through that zone could force leveraged short positions to close and push HYPE toward $58 and $60.

Hyperliquid liquidation chart | Source: CoinGlass Below the current price, another major liquidation cluster sits around $54.90–$55. Losing that area could accelerate a decline toward the 4-hour Supertrend support at $54.44. The next lower zones are $52 and the recent low near $51.

Analysts Split Over HYPE’s Next Target Crypto trader Altcoin Sherpa said HYPE may be building a bottom near its current range, although he expected the outcome to depend on wider market conditions.

“The level to watch is still $50; lose that and I think we see low/mid $40s in a slow fashion,” he wrote in an Aug. 6 post.

The analyst added that he remained constructive on HYPE over the longer term. His chart placed a broader demand zone across the low-to-mid-$40 region if the $50 floor fails.

HypeDojo offered a more bullish scenario, comparing the latest $51.50 bottom with the token’s earlier rebound from $52.50 to its June record. The trader projected a possible move toward $80 by the end of August.

Can we expect a $HYPE ATH in August??

In early and mid-June, we saw two $HYPE ATHs, and although there was a profile of an ATH in July, it ended with a Monthly High with the BTC Market Crash.

In early August, that means we are currently in a Bottom. After the first ATH in June,… pic.twitter.com/5bnrCMiibP

— HypeDojo (@HypeDojo) August 7, 2026 That target would require HYPE to clear several resistance areas, including $60, $64, $68 and the previous record around $76.70. The overbought daily Stochastic RSI also suggests that such a move may not develop in a straight line.

US competition adds risk to HYPE outlook JPMorgan analysts have warned that momentum in HYPE-linked investment products weakened after strong inflows during May and June. A reported 12-session outflow streak reached approximately $29.8 million through Aug. 3.

The bank also pointed to competition from regulated derivatives and prediction-market platforms, according to Blockhead. That risk is particularly relevant in the United States, where regulated venues are expanding access to perpetual-style contracts.

For now, the HYPE price outlook depends on whether buyers can convert the rebound into a confirmed daily channel breakout. A close above $57.30 would open a path toward $60, while rejection and a break below $54.40 would bring $52 and $50 back into focus.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

Bhutan Breaks a 30-Day Silence With Fresh Bitcoin TransferThe Royal Government of Bhutan has returned to the market, transferring 434.87 $BTC worth approximately $27.93 million to exchange-linked addresses, according to on-chain data flagged by Lookonchain. The move ends a 30-day period of inactivity from the kingdom's tracked wallets and signals that Bhutan's steady monetization of its sovereign Bitcoin reserves remains ongoing.

The transfer fits a well-established pattern. Transfers to trading firms appear to reflect a planned treasury drawdown and liquidity management strategy rather than panic selling, with every sale effectively pure profit given Bhutan's near-zero mining costs. Bhutan has typically broken sales into smaller batches rather than executing large single transactions.

A Sovereign Reserve in Steady DeclineThe state-owned investment arm Druk Holding and Investments (DHI) accumulated Bitcoin through mining operations powered by the country's abundant hydroelectric resources, but holdings have fallen sharply from a peak of roughly 13,000 BTC. At its peak in late 2024, the country's holdings were estimated at nearly 13,000 BTC. Since then, more than 70% of that balance has been moved out through repeated transfers.

Bhutan has sold more than $200 million worth of Bitcoin since the start of 2026. Bhutan's realized profit from Bitcoin is estimated at more than $750 million, and because the coins were mined using domestic hydropower, the cost basis may be far lower than open-market purchases.

The April 2024 block reward halving doubled the cost of producing each coin, and Bhutan's mining output experienced a significant drop compared to 2023, a period when the country mined an estimated 8,200 BTC. It has now been over a year since Bhutan registered a mining inflow exceeding $100,000 to its identified addresses. Without fresh production replacing sold coins, the reserve continues to shrink with each transfer.

The government previously pledged up to 10,000 BTC for its Gelephu Mindfulness City project, but current reserve levels have dropped to a point where achieving that target appears increasingly difficult. At the current pace, analysts estimate that Bhutan's remaining Bitcoin could be exhausted by around October 2026, assuming the government continues selling at recent rates and does not restart major mining operations.

Sources:
CoinDesk: Bhutan moves another 500 Bitcoin to exchanges as 2026 outflows top $150 million
CoinPaper: When Will the Royal Government of Bhutan Stop Selling Bitcoin?
Cryptopolitan: Bhutan sells another 100 BTC as sovereign reserve heads toward zero