Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

PANews reported on January 19th that Huobi HTX launched DUSK/USDT perpetual contracts on January 19th, with a maximum leverage of 20x. Simultaneously, Huobi HTX is hosting a DUSK contract trading party from 17:00 on January 19th to 17:00 on January 26th (UTC+8), with a total prize pool of $10,000. During the event, users who register and participate in DUSK/USDT contract trading, accumulating a total valid trading volume of ≥10,000 USDT, will be ranked and share the prize pool. New contract users who complete DUSK/USDT contract trading will also receive exclusive benefits.

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Market Sentiment: Current sentiment among smart money and retail funds in the market is at a neutral level.

According to the latest data from SentimenTrader, as of June 24, the Smart Money Confidence Index stands at 0.56, while the Dumb Money Confidence Index is at 0.49. Both smart money and retail investor sentiment are currently in the neutral range, with no clear optimistic or pessimistic bias emerging in the market.

10 minutes ago

Sandisk's tokenized stock SNDK is now live on the Solana network.

According to official announcements, Sandisk’s tokenized stock SNDK has officially launched on Solana via Sunrise. SNDK is the tokenized stock representing SanDisk, the storage chip manufacturer. Users can now trade SNDK 24/7 through various wallets and applications within the Solana ecosystem, even when traditional stock markets are closed.

10 minutes ago

Jiang Zhuoer: This round of Bitcoin bear market may bottom out in Q4 2026, with a target range of $42,000 to $44,000.

BTC.TOP founder Jiang Zhuoer wrote in a post that Strategy’s modified net asset value (mNAV) has fallen to 0.72, near the 0.7 low hit in May 2022 during the last bear market. Citing recent market sentiment events including STRC’s depegging, he noted that mNAV is now in the bottom zone of this cycle. mNAV usually bottoms roughly six months before Bitcoin’s price. Using the "four-year cycle" and volatility decay model, Jiang projected that this Bitcoin bear market will likely bottom between October and December 2026, with a target price range of $42,000 to $44,000. He added that his recent medium-short term strategy remains focused on selling spot assets and holding short positions, and will switch to buying spot and going long once the expected bottom arrives.

10 minutes ago

The VIX Fear Index for the US stock market stands at 18.63 today, with fear sentiment intensifying in the crypto market.

According to Cboe data, the U.S. stock market's VIX Fear Index stands at 18.63 as of today, down 0.86 points from the prior reading of 19.49, marking a decline of approximately 4.41%. Separately, per Alternative data, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index is at 12 today (compared to 17 yesterday), indicating intensifying extreme fear sentiment.

10 minutes ago

Bank of Japan Board Member: Should Accelerate Pace of Interest Rate Hikes If Upside Inflation Risks Intensify

Bank of Japan (BOJ) Policy Board member Naoki Tamura stated that if upside risks to price growth intensify further, the BOJ should not hesitate to accelerate the pace of interest rate hikes or raise rates by a larger margin. He projected that the BOJ will implement interest rate hikes every few months until its policy rate reaches the neutral level of around 2%. (Golden Ten)

10 minutes ago

Crypto token M plunged over 80% in a short period, hitting a low near $0.5.

According to HTX market data, the token M saw a sharp short-term price plunge, with its decline once exceeding 80% and hitting a low of around $0.5, and is now trading at $0.54.

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3 Privacy Coins Crypto Whales are Buying and Selling Ahead of February 2026

AEGIS shipped fixes for 39 findings from our internal audit, 7 of which were classified as critical. It was the largest and most consequential hard fork we've shipped since mainnet launch. The critical findings came down to 4 root causes: VM sandbox aliasing, unsafe host-side deserialization, Phoenix fee and refund binding failures, and BLS forgery.

Together, these issues affected deterministic execution, host-process memory safety, consensus authentication, supply integrity, and chain availability. We've been investigating whether any of the critical findings were exploited prior to AEGIS, and so far we've found no evidence of exploitation.

At a Glance39 fixes shipped in the AEGIS remediation wave7 critical findings plus 1 related high-severity finding from the same root cause31 additional hardening fixes across runtime, serialization, networking, consensus, cryptography, and wallet/client code4 critical root causes affecting execution, memory safety, fees, and signaturesSeveral critical findings shared the same root cause, so there were fewer unique failure modes than the raw finding count suggests.

The finding IDs are audit-local. P1 refers to Phase 1, the first audit pass of this kind across the Dusk stack. In P1.x-y, x identifies the subsystem group (such as Rusk or Plonk), and -y identifies the specific finding within that group.

The rest of this analysis breaks down each cluster: what broke, how it could be exploited, and what AEGIS changed.

Part I: Critical Findings in Depth1. VM Sandbox Aliasing: P1.1-1, P1.1-8Our findings

Two of the revised critical findings lived in piecrust, the VM sandbox layer that underpins contract execution, and both came from unsound ownership rather than business logic.

Mutation-capable session and instance state could be aliased in ways Rust is explicitly designed to prevent. The audit identified two critical manifestations of the same problem:

P1.1-1: session aliasing combined with Send/SyncP1.1-8: unconstrained lifetimes on instance references, allowing multiple simultaneous mutable referencesIn a blockchain runtime, this class of defect is worse than a normal crash. Crashes are visible. Undefined behavior can stay latent, appear only on certain paths, or surface as silently wrong computation. In a deterministic system, that means two honest nodes can execute the same code and still derive different internal outcomes. The execution boundary itself could no longer be trusted to behave deterministically.

How exploitation worked

This was not a simple one-shot remote exploit. Exploitability came from pushing the runtime into states where the code relied on ownership guarantees the type system was no longer actually providing.

A malicious contract, or just the wrong nested execution pattern, could push execution through alias-prone paths that Rust would normally rule out.

The audit also showed how hard this class of defect is to observe operationally. Without dedicated tooling, it can look fine right up until it stops being fine.

What changed in AEGIS

AEGIS reworked the affected session and instance ownership model in piecrust so the aliasing patterns the audit confirmed could no longer arise. This was a runtime correction rather than a narrow guard that only papers over one manifestation.

The same wave also shipped related runtime hardening:

Explicit call depth limits (P1.1-9)Fixes around instance reuse and reentrancy (P1.1-4)Cleanup of related aliasing-adjacent runtime behavior (P1.1-13)Once the ownership model is wrong, fixing one symptom is not enough. The remaining code still inherits the same invalid assumptions.

2. Host-Side Unsafe Deserialization: P1.2-1Our findings

The dusk-vm layer exposed host queries to contracts. Before AEGIS, those host queries deserialized contract-controlled arguments using unchecked rkyv::archived_root on bytes sourced directly from WASM linear memory. The bytes were controlled by the contract, but the deserialization ran in the host node process, not inside the sandboxed guest.

All 11 registered host queries inherited the same wrapper pattern. 8 of them deserialized types containing relative pointers and were directly exploitable via out-of-bounds reads. Once the node process is in scope, this stops being a contract-level bug and becomes a node-integrity bug.

How exploitation worked

Exploitation only required the ability to deploy a contract that called one of the affected host queries with malformed archived input.

Because archived data was interpreted without validation, crafted relative pointers could point outside the intended buffer.

The exact query was secondary. The real issue was the shared boundary assumption: untrusted bytes were being treated as structured data before validation.

What changed in AEGIS

AEGIS fixed the trust boundary, not just one query.

The host-query wrapper now validates archived input before deserializing it. In practice, that means using check_archived_root and returning a safe fallback if the archive is malformed, rather than invoking the host query on invalid data. For this boundary, validate first, deserialize second, execute last is the only defensible order.

AEGIS also used the same release wave to push related deserialization hardening across adjacent layers. The critical host-side issue was the priority, but it was treated as part of a broader unsafe-deserialization family rather than a one-off anomaly.

3. Phoenix Fee / Refund Chain: P1.5-1, P1.5-2, P1.6-1, P1.6-2Our findings

The Phoenix fee cluster mattered most because one root cause led to multiple catastrophic outcomes. The root cause was P1.5-1: the Phoenix Fee structure was not properly bound across proof generation, signing, and refund execution. The system proved one set of fee-related semantics while the execution path still trusted fee data that was not fully bound into the same security story. That gap enabled two separate critical exploit paths and a closely related high-severity attack:

P1.6-1: fee overflow in the Phoenix refund path could halt the chainP1.6-2: unvalidated fee data in the refund path could inflate supplyP1.5-2: fee malleability enabled gas refund redirection via man-in-the-middleThe cluster hit supply integrity, chain availability, and transaction authenticity at the same time. One missing invariant, three ways to break the protocol. That is why this issue sat at the center of the audit.

How exploitation worked

The exploit chain worked because the transaction skeleton and the fee semantics were not bound tightly enough across proof generation, signing, and refund execution.

In practice, an attacker could:

Commit to a legitimate max_fee in the proven part of the transactionProvide inconsistent or hostile fee parameters in the execution-facing partRely on the refund path to compute against the untrusted valuesFrom there, the attacker had three choices.

Silent inflation path (P1.6-2) Choose fee parameters that stay inside u64. Cause the refund logic to create far more value than the transaction legitimately committed to.

Chain-halt path (P1.6-1) Choose fee parameters that drive overflow in the refund arithmetic. Push validators into a deterministic failure path during block processing.

Refund theft path (P1.5-2) Intercept a Phoenix transaction on the P2P network. Replace Fee.stealth_address with an attacker-controlled address. Choose any factorization of max_fee for gas_limit and gas_price that still passes the consistency check. The gas refund note is minted to the attacker instead of the original sender.

These were three exploit outcomes of one broken invariant chain, not unrelated bugs that happened to land in the same subsystem.

What changed in AEGIS

AEGIS closed the exploitable critical paths first.

The shipped defense addressed the cluster from two directions.

For the inflation and chain-halt paths, AEGIS introduced a fee consistency check that enforced checked multiplication on gas_limit * gas_price and equality between that product and the transaction's proven max_fee. The check was enforced at two layers: mempool admission and VM execution. The split was deliberate. Mempool-only enforcement would not have been enough once a malicious proposer can bypass mempool assumptions. VM-side enforcement made the mitigation protocol-relevant rather than merely operational.

For the refund theft path, AEGIS bound the Fee.stealth_address into the transaction's security story so that modifying it would invalidate the transaction, closing the man-in-the-middle redirection vector.

AEGIS also shipped regression coverage for all three exploit classes, including tests for:

Refund inflation attemptsRefund overflow / halt attemptsFee tampering and redirection behavior4. BLS Forgery: P1.13-1Our findings

The BLS critical was a broken cryptographic construction choice, not a routine implementation bug.

The old h0 mapping used in the BLS signature path was not a secure hash-to-curve construction. That created a setting in which observing a valid signature was enough to enable forgery on arbitrary messages under the same key. BLS signatures sit directly on consensus authentication and every other trust path that treats BLS verification as reliable, so a break here doesn't stay contained inside one crate.

The severity was revised upward after deeper review because the exploit cost was low enough, and the authentication impact broad enough, that the issue crossed into critical territory.

How exploitation worked

The insecure h0 mapping reduced the message-to-curve story to something algebraically manipulable. That made signature forgery possible from a single observed valid signature.

The exact algebra matters less here than the location of the weakness: it lived in the construction itself, not in a length check or a bad conditional. The system was relying on security properties the design did not actually provide.

What changed in AEGIS

AEGIS moved the secure BLS v2 path onto a proper RFC 9380-style hash-to-curve construction with explicit domain separation. It also separated the multisig coefficient domain from the message hash domain, addressing the related collision issue (P1.13-2).

In practical terms, the secure path now uses:

RFC 9380-style hash-to-curve for h0Dedicated domain separation tags for the secure pathA legacy insecure path retained only where historical compatibility still mattersThe migration had to follow the same rule as the cryptography itself: use a correct construction for the secure path, handle older behavior explicitly, and don't assume that old and new verification semantics are interchangeable.

Part II: What Else AEGIS FixedAEGIS shipped 31 additional fixes beyond the criticals. The rest of the merged fixes mattered because they narrowed attack surface in adjacent areas even where the underlying findings were not critical.

Serialization and deserialization hardeningAEGIS removed or constrained multiple cases where untrusted bytes were being deserialized with too much trust and too little validation. That included P1.1-5, P1.3-3, P1.3-4, P1.4-3, P1.5-3, P1.12-3, P1.15-10, and P1.15-14.

The effect was broad: tighter trust boundaries across the VM, transaction parsing, prover-facing code, contract-returned data, and cross-layer serialization. Materially harder for malformed or adversarial data to trigger crashes, invalid parsing, or unsafe zero-copy assumptions.

Transaction and payload validation hardeningAEGIS tightened how transactions and execution envelopes are validated before and during execution. Around the VM/runtime boundary, AEGIS shipped execution-safety fixes (P1.1-4, P1.1-9), reducing the space for dangerous nested execution and runtime misuse.

The practical effect: more of the protocol's assumptions became explicit checks instead of implicit expectations.

Consensus correctness fixesOn the consensus side, AEGIS shipped fixes for P1.8-1, P1.8-2, and P1.8-5.

These were not catastrophic in the same way as the criticals, but consensus code has almost no room for ambiguity. The fixes tightened fault validation, corrected message behavior in open-consensus mode, and restored missing validation-result checks in ratification handling.

Net effect: a stricter definition of what the protocol accepts as a valid consensus transition.

Node and network input-bounds hardeningAEGIS closed a broad set of node-facing input issues: P1.9-1, P1.9-2, P1.9-3, P1.9-4, P1.9-5, P1.15-1, P1.15-2, and P1.15-12.

These findings were about unbounded allocation, malformed input handling, and amplification behavior across the node and networking surface.

The release made it harder to turn oversized or weakly validated network inputs into crashes, memory blowups, or avoidable propagation and amplification behavior.

Cryptographic correctness hardeningBeyond the BLS critical, AEGIS shipped a broader set of cryptographic correctness fixes in plonk, jubjub, jubjub-elgamal, and the BLS stack: P1.4-1, P1.12-1, P1.12-4, and P1.13-2. These covered transcript correctness, subgroup handling, malleability behavior, and domain separation. The same wave also included lower-severity cleanups in the same crates (P1.4-2, P1.4-4).

AEGIS tightened places where "close enough" cryptographic behavior is not acceptable.

Wallet and client-side untrusted-data hardeningAEGIS shipped client-side untrusted-data hardening through P1.16-4, which addressed unsafe handling of untrusted serialized node responses in the wallet stack.

The same trust-boundary discipline that mattered on the node side also had to be applied to clients.

The appendix includes the full AEGIS merged set, including lower-severity runtime cleanups (P1.1-13, P1.1-15, P1.1-16).

Cross-Cutting Lessons1. Unsafe code at trust boundaries needs a different review bar. The audit repeatedly found the same pattern: code near VM, serialization, or cryptographic boundaries carried more trust than it should have. In ordinary application code that may produce a local defect. In protocol code it becomes systemic risk.

2. Protocol invariants need to be enforced in multiple layers. The Phoenix fee cluster made this especially clear. It's not enough for one layer to "implicitly" constrain a value if another layer can still consume a divergent version of that value. If something matters to safety or economics, it needs to be checked at every boundary where it can be reintroduced or transformed.

3. Shared low-level patterns replicate across crates. The deserialization findings were a good example. One unsafe pattern at one boundary was bad enough, but similar assumptions also existed elsewhere in the stack. Patterns like that spread unless there's a clear default policy against them.

4. Cryptographic migrations are operational migrations. The BLS critical was not just about choosing a better formula. It was about safely moving a live protocol from one trust assumption to another: versioning, compatibility handling, rollout discipline, and explicit activation planning.

5. Mitigation and root-cause removal are not the same thing. The Phoenix fee cluster forced us to be explicit about this. AEGIS blocked the critical exploit paths, but that doesn't erase the difference between a robust mitigation and a deeper protocol-level redesign. Both matter. They're not the same thing.

What Changed in Our Engineering ProcessWe now treat serialization and deserialization boundaries as security boundaries by defaultunsafe in VM, cryptography, and host-boundary code gets a higher review bar and a narrower acceptable-use envelopeCritical remediation work is tracked as both exploit closure and root-cause closure so the two don't get conflatedSecurity fixes that change protocol behavior or verification semantics are treated as migration work, not just code patchesRegression coverage for critical findings now includes exploit-shaped tests, not just happy-path correctness testsAudit follow-up work is grouped by root cause where appropriate, because many seemingly separate findings are one systemic failure showing up in multiple placesAEGIS was the biggest release we've shipped. The protocol is stronger for it.

AppendixCritical Finding ClustersVM sandbox aliasing (P1.1-1, P1.1-8) Components: piecrust 
Remediation: Reworked session/instance ownership and alias-prone runtime behavior

Host-side unsafe deserialization (P1.2-1) Components: dusk-vm / rusk 
Remediation: Replaced unchecked host-query archive handling with validated deserialization

Phoenix fee / refund chain  (P1.5-1, P1.5-2, P1.6-1, P1.6-2) Components: phoenix, transfer contract, VM integration 
Remediation: Fee consistency checks at mempool and execution boundaries, plus regression tests

BLS forgery (P1.13-1) Components: bls12_381-bls, rusk integration 
Remediation: RFC 9380-style hash-to-curve with explicit domain separation

Other Merged AEGIS FixesVM/runtime safety (P1.1-4, P1.1-9, P1.1-13, P1.1-15, P1.1-16) Components: piecrust 
Effect: Hardened execution lifecycle, call-depth handling, and VM/runtime correctness

Serialization hardening (P1.1-5, P1.3-3, P1.3-4, P1.4-3, P1.5-3, P1.12-3, P1.15-10, P1.15-14) Components: piecrust, dusk-core, plonk, phoenix, jubjub-elgamal, rusk 
Effect: Reduced panic, OOB, and unsafe zero-copy risks at trust boundaries

Consensus correctness (P1.8-1, P1.8-2, P1.8-5) Components: consensus, rusk 
Effect: Tightened fault validation and message-handling correctness

Node/network input-bounds (P1.9-1, P1.9-2, P1.9-3, P1.9-4, P1.9-5, P1.15-1, P1.15-2, P1.15-12) Components: node-data, rusk 
Effect: Reduced remote OOM, malformed-input crash, and amplification exposure

Cryptographic correctness (P1.4-1, P1.4-2, P1.4-4, P1.12-1, P1.12-4, P1.13-2) Components: plonk, jubjub, jubjub-elgamal, bls12_381-bls 
Effect: Tightened transcript, subgroup, malleability, and domain-separation behavior

Wallet/client hardening (P1.16-4) Components: rusk-wallet 
Effect: Hardened client handling of untrusted serialized node responses

We've taken a major step towards simplifying how developers build dApps on DuskDS.

Until now, users had the Dusk web wallet to interact with the network directly. But it was designed as a standalone web application, not something dApps could integrate with to discover wallets, request accounts, or sign transactions.

Today we're opening two new repositories for developer preview that change this:

Dusk Connect - a lightweight SDK that gives dApps a standard way to discover and connect to any compatible wallet on DuskDS.The new Dusk Wallet - a first-party wallet for browser extensions, desktop, and mobile.Together they provide the missing front-end pieces for DuskDS applications: build contracts with Forge, and use Dusk Connect to communicate with wallets from multiple platforms.

Dusk ConnectDusk Connect is the standard wallet connection SDK for DuskDS dApps.

It lets applications discover compatible wallets and communicate with them through a shared provider interface. Developers no longer need to build around one specific wallet or invent custom integration code.

The SDK includes:

wallet discovery based on the EIP-6963 patternaccount access, signing, transactions, and network helpersnamespaced RPC methods such as dusk_requestAccounts and dusk_signMessagezero runtime dependenciesconformance tests for wallet buildersRepository: github.com/dusk-network/connect

The New Dusk WalletAlongside Connect, we're also opening the new Dusk Wallet.

This is different from the existing web wallet. The new Dusk Wallet is a first-party wallet for browser extensions, desktop, and mobile, built around Dusk Connect from the start.

That means dApps can talk to it directly: request accounts, ask users to sign, submit transactions, and handle permissions through a familiar wallet flow.

The wallet supports core Dusk flows: public and private transfers, shield/unshield, staking, reward claiming, DRC-20 and DRC-721 asset flows, dApp permissions, and local key storage.

Key material stays local. Extension builds use PBKDF2 and AES-GCM. Native builds use Stronghold with Argon2 for strong security. The wallet also includes auto-lock, failed-unlock backoff, and per-origin permissions.

Repository: github.com/dusk-network/wallet

Why it mattersForge helps developers build Dusk smart contracts. Dusk Connect helps dApps communicate with wallets. The new Dusk Wallet gives users a first-party wallet that supports that flow.

Together, they make DuskDS dApp development much more practical: write the contract, build the interface, connect a wallet, and let users interact.

Both repositories are open for developer preview. Try them, build against them, and share feedback through GitHub Issues or the Dusk Discord.

Market Sentiment: Current sentiment among smart money and retail funds in the market is at a neutral level.

According to the latest data from SentimenTrader, as of June 24, the Smart Money Confidence Index stands at 0.56, while the Dumb Money Confidence Index is at 0.49. Both smart money and retail investor sentiment are currently in the neutral range, with no clear optimistic or pessimistic bias emerging in the market.

10 minutes ago

Sandisk's tokenized stock SNDK is now live on the Solana network.

According to official announcements, Sandisk’s tokenized stock SNDK has officially launched on Solana via Sunrise. SNDK is the tokenized stock representing SanDisk, the storage chip manufacturer. Users can now trade SNDK 24/7 through various wallets and applications within the Solana ecosystem, even when traditional stock markets are closed.

10 minutes ago

Jiang Zhuoer: This round of Bitcoin bear market may bottom out in Q4 2026, with a target range of $42,000 to $44,000.

BTC.TOP founder Jiang Zhuoer wrote in a post that Strategy’s modified net asset value (mNAV) has fallen to 0.72, near the 0.7 low hit in May 2022 during the last bear market. Citing recent market sentiment events including STRC’s depegging, he noted that mNAV is now in the bottom zone of this cycle. mNAV usually bottoms roughly six months before Bitcoin’s price. Using the "four-year cycle" and volatility decay model, Jiang projected that this Bitcoin bear market will likely bottom between October and December 2026, with a target price range of $42,000 to $44,000. He added that his recent medium-short term strategy remains focused on selling spot assets and holding short positions, and will switch to buying spot and going long once the expected bottom arrives.

10 minutes ago

The VIX Fear Index for the US stock market stands at 18.63 today, with fear sentiment intensifying in the crypto market.

According to Cboe data, the U.S. stock market's VIX Fear Index stands at 18.63 as of today, down 0.86 points from the prior reading of 19.49, marking a decline of approximately 4.41%. Separately, per Alternative data, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index is at 12 today (compared to 17 yesterday), indicating intensifying extreme fear sentiment.

10 minutes ago

Bank of Japan Board Member: Should Accelerate Pace of Interest Rate Hikes If Upside Inflation Risks Intensify

Bank of Japan (BOJ) Policy Board member Naoki Tamura stated that if upside risks to price growth intensify further, the BOJ should not hesitate to accelerate the pace of interest rate hikes or raise rates by a larger margin. He projected that the BOJ will implement interest rate hikes every few months until its policy rate reaches the neutral level of around 2%. (Golden Ten)

10 minutes ago

Crypto token M plunged over 80% in a short period, hitting a low near $0.5.

According to HTX market data, the token M saw a sharp short-term price plunge, with its decline once exceeding 80% and hitting a low of around $0.5, and is now trading at $0.54.

10 minutes ago

Crypto markets holding on to weekend gains; Bitcoin still dominating, XRP moving up, ETH retreating slowly. Market Wrap Crypto markets have held on to weekend gains and there has been no typical ‘Red Monday’ reaction so far. Bitcoin’s surge to new 2019 highs has buoyed up markets and several altcoins have also gained. A number have fallen however, but in general total market capitalization is high and holding above $280 billion.

Bitcoin traded above $9,300 twice yesterday marking a new high for thirteen months. A pullback dropped BTC price back to high $8,000s but it quickly recovered during Asian trading today to reach $9,200 again at the time of writing. Technical indicators and historical highs show a lot of resistance at $9,600 which will need to be broken for BTC to hit five figures.

Ethereum got a weekend boost reaching $278 but it has not been able to follow Bitcoin and hold those gains. ETH is down 2 percent since yesterday dropping prices back below $270. The longer term trend for ETH is still up though so more momentum could take it to $280 this week.

The top ten is pretty mixed during Asian trading on Monday morning. XRP is showing a little progress with a further 2 percent added taking it to $0.429. Litecoin has remained flat following its epic rise last week and is still at $135 and the rest are level with yesterday’s prices.

Top twenty movements are also mixed with Cosmos and Tezos getting the best performance adding over 4 percent each to reach $6.54 and $1.33 respectively. NEO has added almost 3 percent and NEM is back in the big twenty with a 5 percent gain. As above, the rest are pretty flat this morning.

FOMO: A Smiles For Grin Entering the crypto top one hundred with a 12 percent push is Grin, a private lightweight blockchain based on mimblewimble. The only thing that could be driving momentum is an approaching hard fork next month. Bytom is the only other double digit altcoin today with 11 percent added, BitTorrent token is third gaining over 8 percent.

There are no big dumps going on as markets remain flat on the day. At the bottom of the pile right now is Dent, MaidSafeCoin, and KuCoin Shares dropping 5-6 percent.

Total market cap 24 hours. Coinmarketcap.com Total crypto market capitalization is at $284 billion, holding gains but remaining flat over the past 24 hours. Since last Monday crypto markets have gained a solid 16 percent, driven largely by Bitcoin. Over the same period daily volume has jumped from $60 to $75 billion. Bitcoin dominance is also up to 57.3 percent as it continues to eat into lack luster altcoins.

Market Wrap is a section that takes a daily look at the top cryptocurrencies during the current trading session and analyses the best-performing ones, looking for trends and possible fundamentals.

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Jun 23, 2026 10 min

In 2017, China dominated cryptocurrency headlines – but to many observers, it’s now all quiet on the eastern front. But don’t let the diminished focus fool you – Chinese blockchain projects continue to innovate and build; and some are moving ever-closer to major global adoption.

On Thursday, September 6th, NEO organized a press event entitled “Symposium: Blockchain in China” which involved seven Chinese and Southeast Asian blockchain projects – NEO, Bytom, PlatON, Ontology, Vechain, Conflux, and TomoChain.

NEO Global Development (NGD)’s head of marketing, Gao Yuan, moderated the event. Discussions focused primarily on the Asian blockchain industry through 2020; driving mass adoption in China; and the Chinese regulatory environment.

Last February, NEO’s leadership outlined the roadmap to NEO3 at the second DevCon in Seattle.  Since then, many of their goals have been achieved. NEO has successfully  expanded the NGD Seattle team, updated NEO’s consensus algorithm, partnered with second layer solution providers, and launched a digital identity solution.

Source: NEO The project leaders discussed collaborative efforts towards building Web3 solutions, or what NEO founder Da Hongfei referred to as the next-generation internet (NGI) initiative, launched by the European Commission.

The future of blockchain in China The symposium began with a discussion of stablecoins and their potential impact on the future of Chinese exchanges. Most participants at the round table believed fiat-backed stablecoin assets could be viewed similarly to traditional currencies, which regulators may see as a replacement for conventional fiat.

Notably, the traditional industry seeks stable assets, because Bitcoin’s price volatility reduces institutional interest in using cryptocurrency for lending or settling trades. When regulators can view fiat-backed stablecoins as currency alternatives, cryptocurrency may become acceptable assets for management.

But TomoChain’s CBDO, Kyn Chaturvedi, challenges the need for banks to accept crypto-backed assets.

As centralized exchanges such as KuCoin and Binance offer “soft staking,” Chaturvedi  pointed out,  these platforms have become bank-like entities that manage retail investor’s assets. With staking benefits, retail investors may choose to park assets in an exchange, as opposed to a bank.

Further, the outlook through 2020 is “all about enterprise,” according to Chaturvedi. He expects decentralized finance applications to begin entering the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian markets.

Da Advocates For Blockchain Trade Organization NEO’s Da added that interoperability (or cross-chain atomic swaps) will have a more significant role moving forward. 

With the digitization of assets, he pointed out, retail investors can use physical assets (i.e., mortgaging a home) for collateral. Digitizing assets also allows for user transaction history to act as a form of credit history, which may increase access to assets or settlement characteristics for users.

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Further, Da believes the conversation could begin around a type of world trade organization (WTO) between blockchain-based companies. A WTO might help to create a broader overlap across chains, much like the overlap between economies of varying countries. He went on to say that a free-trade zone among public blockchains could create a better division of labor.

For example, European and U.S.-based projects seem ever more likely to register in Switzerland, and Asian projects are often primarily interested in registering in Singapore. Something like a blockchain-WTO is necessary to consider activities allowed in specific jurisdictions.

Looking forward, Jun Li, founder of Ontology, believes changes in the coming year will meld developing countries with the internet. This could allow smaller to medium-sized platforms the opportunity to increase data points, use cases, and credibility.

Source: NEO Driving mass adoption in China Before mass commercialization of blockchain can occur, current technologies and product offerings must reach a level of maturation, which reduces friction for onboarding new users. Reducing friction for end-users is a prerequisite.

Developers and companies should make it simple for the less technologically savvy portions of the population to purchase cryptocurrencies and use decentralized applications. Further, tokens need to be integrated into current traditional platforms to replace current offerings.

Kevin Fang, founder of VeChain, is integrating the company’s blockchain technology into the existing technology of the company’s enterprise partners. As a service, VeChain outsources provider solutions that are customized for specific industry-based pain points.

For example, VeChain offers traceability to Walmart China’s supply chain for food safety. To hammer home the point of interoperability, Fang said, “enterprise partners don’t care which chain they’ll use, or if it’s a public or private chain, they just care that a traceability solution will work.”

John Wang, head of NEO Ecosystem Growth department, believes there are two areas of focus for driving mass adoption: complete ecosystems and interoperability.

First, he said, complete ecosystems are required to grow user bases and integrate blockchains. The integrity of a public blockchain is critical for the success of a project as is its ability to offer support for ecosystem partners.

Second, a single blockchain cannot serve real enterprises, just as systems, applications, and products (SAP) solutions can not address all of an industries problems. In addition to software, he said,  implementation teams are also necessary to coordinate and assist enterprise partners in meeting their needs.

Ultimately, blockchain-based entities require further regulation, so they understand the limitations within which they can operate and where they stand. Without defined regulations, existing companies can get shut down when new regulations come down the pipeline.

With a clearly defined regulatory framework, blockchain can more easily integrate with current financial products and traditional industries.

China’s regulatory environment The final discussion of the symposium focused on China’s current and potential future regulatory environment.

Yuanjie Zhang, CFA of Conflux, highlighted that “blockchain and regulation aren’t incompatible.” Activities on blockchain architecture require regulation, he said, whether it’s activity through the exchanges or private wallets.

For example, U.S. projects require digital currency exchanges to submit know your customer (KYC) data. If a user gains returns from their assets through an exchange and doesn’t file taxes, authorities will soon be able to to catch tax evaders.

“If the Chinese government wants to tighten regulation,” he said, “then it just needs to look at the regulations around the world.”

Chaturvedi noted that, “In the West, we think China is strict, but there is clarity on what regulations actually are. In the US, there’s the SEC, the CFTC, FinCEN… each look at cryptocurrencies in different ways. As a result, regulation is very confusing.”

 “Permissionless doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be non-compliant,” said Ontology’s Li, noting that ICOs are banned in China because of illegal fundraising strategies. Li went on to say, “Fraud is illegal everywhere; China isn’t an exception.”

“Chinese regulation is among the strictest in the world,” added Da Hongfei. “China knows very well what can be done and what can’t be done, which is different from many regulators.” He went on to highlight that Chinese blockchain projects spend more on legal costs than blockchain companies in other countries.

With only three regulators in China that usually issue joint guidelines, Chinese-based projects like NEO better understand what can and can’t be done.

Interoperability Demonstrates Blockchain Advances NEO hosted the symposium to highlight the importance in the industry to build relationships across projects and establish interoperability protocols in the future.

Perhaps price isn’t the best indicator to measure blockchain projects’ successes and their potential moving forward.

Rather, it may be more telling to pay attention to coordination efforts between blockchain projects that have remained in the industry through the 2018 bear market.

If multiple blockchains are to succeed in the future, it is interoperability that will likely be paramount to their success – and that of the broader industry.

This article has been amended to correct a mispelling of Kyn Chaturvedi’s last name. 

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

It’s no secret that the decentralized oracle network Chainlink (LINK) has been one of the best performing digital assets of 2019, despite crypto winter and the absence of an altcoin rally.

And a large part of that success may be down to one word: partnership.

The ultimate irony? It may have been a mistake.

The word is over-used in blockchain circles. And a Chainlink representative was quick to contact Crypto Briefing when we reported ‘partnerships’ with companies such as IoTeX and Matic (even when one of the companies used the term itself) to request that we change the term to the more accurate ‘integration’.

In fact, the Google ‘partnership‘ reported by CoinDesk referenced a post by Google that never used the word ‘partnership’ at all.

CoinDesk never updated that headline, despite updating the article itself on September 11th, 2019.

John Biggs opened his article by claiming that “Google has tapped a startup token project, Chainlink, as an official Cloud Partner and the relationship suggests a deep and detailed interest in blockchain technology by the Mountain View giant.”

And CoinDesk wasn’t even the first: Forbes pre-dated their article, suggesting on June 13th that “Google software will be able to integrate data from sources outside the blockchain through a partnership with Chainlink…” (Emphasis ours.)

Chainlink themselves did not advertise the Google integration as a partnership either – founder Sergei Nazarov called it an ‘implementation’, and the Google Cloud Partners Twitter account did not mention it.

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Chainlink has been clear on the matter: on their website, they explain that “We work with top companies like Google…, providing them the secure oracles needed for next generation smart contracts.”

We contacted Chainlink and they neither confirmed nor denied that the company was an official Cloud Partner. Multiple searches for ‘blockchain’, ‘oracle’, ‘chainlink’ and so on did not return a result on the Google Cloud Partner Directory (which, incidentally, does not appear to work on Brave).

Yet those headlines made a big impression. On June 13th, the day before CoinDesk’s article, Chainlink’s market capitalization was at ~$400M. By June 29th, it stood at over $1.54bn.

We don’t know precisely how Forbes and CoinDesk found the Google blog post. Or whether it was sent to them with the word ‘partnership’ included or not.

But setting aside the discussion over whether the CoinDesk headline and Forbes characterization was incorrect (and if it was, the purpose of this article is not to assign blame – as previously noted, we have made the same mistake), the multiple integrations announced this year by Chainlink and other companies have clearly had a major impact on its price.

Chainlink Integrations And Price Action Chainlink has inked more than seventy integrations since it launched in late 2017. Although initially these had a limited impact on the LINK token price, the market’s reaction has grown in step with the rise in the project’s profile.

LINK has climbed steadily, moving from 38th to 15th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, since the beginning of the year. Even though the coin has been pared back from its ATH in late June, if an investor bought a dollar’s worth of LINK tokens on January 1st, they would still be worth more than $9 today, as a longer-term overview from CoinMarketCap illustrates.

Tokens have surged 800% since the beginning of the year. Source: CoinMarketCap. By Crypto Briefing’s calculations, each new integration/partnership has led to a 10% increase in the LINK price, on average. That figure falls to 7.7% if you exclude that crucial Google announcement.

The news in mid-June that BigQuery – Google’s search engine’s data warehousing and business intelligence solution – was “integrating Chainlink into their approach to smart contract adoption” sent the LINK token price skyrocketing.

In the space of six hours, the LINK price soared by more than 70% and the market cap surged by $300M. Analysis from TheTIE shows this had a significant effect on long-term sentiment – turning an already bullish market to very bullish in the space of a few weeks.

Source: TheTIE This clearly had a discernible effect on other announcements in the ensuing weeks. LINK surged by 20% on the IoTeX (IOTX) integration on July 12 and 15% on the Elrond (ERD) July 18 announcement, all of which happened within a month or so of the Google news, causing an above-average 10% surge in the LINK price.

Interestingly, LINK rose just by 4% following the announcement with INT Chain (INT) on July 23 , fell by 1% on the Akropolis (AKRO) integration on July 25, rose slightly by 1% on QuarkChain (QKC) on July 26, and finally dropped 13% on Bytom (BTM) in July 27.

This second grouping of integrations had below-average and even negative effects on the LINK price. As the graph below shows, it coincided with a precipitous drop in tweet volumes and 30-day average daily sentiment: the first instance of a move into the ‘bearish’ camp since the Google BigQuery announcement.

Source: TheTIE What this shows is that significant announcements – the sort of development that creates surging prices and a volte-face in sentiment – can have a longer-term influence on other positive news.

Like a new version of the ‘Coinbase Effect’, which could exert a strong influence on trading behavior, integrations a month after BigQuery led to higher average increases in the LINK prices, something that quickly subsided as sentiment began to pare back.

That might explain why integrations at the end of July received below-average price increases.

Cryptocurrencies are driven by sentiment much more than any other asset-class.

Using Chainlink announcements as an example, traders can see just how long sentiment’s reach really is, and how much it can be driven by one headline.

Even if the headline that drives the sentiment may not be entirely accurate.

Jon Rice contributed additional research and analysis to this article.

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

This weekend has been one of the best in recent history in terms of crypto asset performance. Bitcoin’s epic rally to retouch five figures has given its brethren a boost but there appears to be a pattern emerging. Chinese crypto assets are leading the way resulting in speculation that the red dragon may have just ignited another altseason.

Chinese Crypto Bulls Awaken Most altcoins have remained on the floor this year. A brief move in summer renewed hope that an altseason may be about to begin again but that was quashed when all gains evaporated over the past few months.

Only a tiny handful of altcoins have made serious progress this year, the majority are still over 80% down from their all-time highs.

As Bitcoin got a major boost late last week from the Chinese president, crypto asset markets increased by 25%, or over $50 billion in just a day or two. Many of those low lying altcoins started to surge and Chinese ones were leading the pack as the fomo builds.

Tron has been explosive over the past day with a 30% surge to reach $0.021 or 215 satoshis. Daily volume is almost $2 billion which has push market capitalization up to $1.9 billion. Chinese entrepreneur and project CEO Justin Sun has been a marketing machine and he didn’t miss the opportunity to post that TRX was now a top ten crypto asset again.

Back to TOP 10. #TRON #TRX $TRX $BTT pic.twitter.com/kTMIof3PIT

— H.E. Justin Sun 👨‍🚀 🌞 (@justinsuntron) October 28, 2019

There has also been a lot of Tether printing recently for chain swaps to the TRC-20 standard which Poloniex, Huobi and Bitfinex are now supporting.

VeChain is another Chinese crypto project and it is no surprise that this token is also surging 30% at the moment. VET has spiked to 44 satoshis in under 24 hours as the fomo intensifies in the People’s Republic. Bytom, another Chinese dominated crypto platform, has pumped over 100% in 24 hours as BTM topped $0.18.

NEO is another solid performer as this ‘Chinese Ethereum’ has cranked 35% on the day. Late last week NEO was trading below $7 and by Monday morning it had topped $12. Daily volume has surged from around $225 million late last week to $1.3 billion at the moment which equals that during the January 2018 peak.

There have been continual updates and development on the blockchain and network but until this weekend NEO has not performed at all. When NEO does perform well, its sibling tokens also get a lift and GAS and Ontology are cranking higher today.

Not So Fast … Not all are so optimistic however and the Chinese fomo should be taken with caution according to some crypto analysts. Alex Krüger noted that China will not allow public decentralized crypto assets and is all about control;

“Odds of China supporting public blockchains with tradeable tokens that can be used for speculation and moving money out of China bypassing capital controls … are close to zero. China is not interested in decentralization but in control. Private blockchains don’t need tokens.”

This may be the case but it does seem that the China effect has caused more fomo than Bakkt, Libra and any crypto ETF promises combined.

Image from Shutterstock

China Wants Communist Party Members to Pledge Loyalty on Blockchain

Why China’s Interest in Blockchain Will Ultimately Be Bad For Crypto

Chinese Interest in Bitcoin Remains High Post Crypto Rally According to Data

Recent developments in the People’s Republic have not just excited Bitcoin holders. A bullish wave of momentum has flooded back into the blockchain and crypto scene as venture capitalists return to take a second look at what’s hot in the fledgling industry.

Chinese Crypto Projects Get a Boost The 2018 bear market was pretty brutal and as much as 90% of China’s venture capital fled the scene. This year has seen a solid recovery in the industry as total crypto market capitalization has gained almost 100% since the beginning of the year.

Recent bullish comments from president Xi Jinping had added to the momentum when he said that China needs to embrace the technology in order to innovate. Bitcoin surged 40% over night and related technology firms saw large increases in stock prices. Additionally Chinese cryptos such as NEO, VeChain, Tron and Bytom surged on the developments.

According to Chinese financial data tracker 01Caijing, Chinese blockchain and crypto startups raised $368 million via 71 funding deals, during the first six months of 2019. Reports indicate that funding is flowing back into the sector and this could be good news for home grown crypto projects.

NEO backed Neo Global Capital announced that they would be raising a second fund of about $50 million. The first fund, founded in late 2017, had returns of 7-8 times according to Neo Global Capital partner Tony Gu.

According to CB Insights mining hardware giant Bitmain is China’s most well-funded crypto company with Hyperchain coming in second. The firm develops a host of enterprise blockchain products and distributed ledger technologies. Last month it was reported that Hyperchain has plans to bring blockchain to China’s national power grid.

Other notable VC investments include the $500 million Fundamental Labs fund which backed industry giants such as Coinbase, Canaan Creative and Binance. Earlier this year the fund invested $44 million into Bitcoin mining that could increase the bitcoin network’s total hash rate. VC firm Parallel Ventures also invested around $15 million in Bitcoin mining hardware this year.

Managing partner of Fundamental Labs, Howard Yuan, estimated that there were thousands of VC funds following the 2018 crypto market peak but just a handful left today. The scene has matured somewhat though and the funds that do remain have evolved to find more sustainable investments.

Xin Jiang, investment manager at one of China’s largest firms, Fenbushi Capital, told Coindesk;

“Before the market crash, investors didn’t evaluate projects carefully because token prices kept going up. Now investors need to truly find value through more vigorous research and due diligence.”

The passing of new cryptography regulations will also add to the bullish sentiment in China as the country strives to remain ahead of its competitors. Its home grown blockchain projects are likely to reap the rewards from this new wave of investment and positive sentiment from the government.

Image from Shutterstock

China Bringing Bank-Grade Regulation to Blockchain But It Is Not Ready to Embrace Crypto

Since the turn of the new year, the crypto space has witnessed numerous innovations, with many protocols showcasing their unique use cases. As such, so many platforms have caught the eye, including Verasity, a blockchain-based video infrastructure platform. 2025 has been exciting for the protocol given its progress in the blockchain industry. 

From strategic partnerships to groundbreaking launches and tokenomic adjustments, the “1st patented adtech protocol” has positioned itself as a key player in the advertising and gaming sectors. 

With this in mind, we want to explore Verasity’s biggest updates in 2025, based on its X posts and related announcements from January until publication (the first six months). With a focus on transparency, adoption, and innovation, these developments highlight the platform’s commitment to transforming digital ecosystems.

Verasity’s 2025 Roadmap Sets the StageVerasity’s first noteworthy move was in February when it released its highly anticipated 2025 Roadmap, outlining its strategic plans for the year. The roadmap emphasized advancements in https://veraviews.com/, VeraWallet, and the dual-token ecosystem, with a notable shift to the TRON mainnet in the second quarter. This move aims to enhance scalability and flexibility, aligning with market trends. 

The roadmap serves as a foundation for Verasity’s subsequent achievements, offering stakeholders a glimpse into its long-term vision. While not a direct update, it contextualizes the company’s focus on expanding its video infrastructure and fostering community engagement throughout the year.

Partnership with DeGuard VPN Enhances Web3 Video InfrastructureOn April 8, 2025, Verasity partnered with DeGuard VPN, the largest Web3-native VPN service provider. This collaboration integrates Verasity’s VeraPlayer into DeGuard’s platform to deliver video infrastructure, enhancing how the VPN communicates its privacy-first solutions. The partnership explores synergies such as free user access passes, broadening Verasity’s reach into the privacy-focused Web3 space.

Generally, the collaboration underscores Verasity’s versatility, extending its technology beyond traditional advertising into secure digital communication. The community’s positive response suggests growing trust in Verasity’s ability to serve diverse sectors, marking a significant step in its 2025 expansion.

Major Token Burn Reduces Circulating SupplyOne of the year’s most impactful updates came on April 22, 2025, when BSCNews reported that Verasity burned 174 million $VRA tokens, the largest burn to date. Valued at approximately $230,000, this action reduced the circulating supply to 9,624,357,318 $VRA, a move aimed at increasing token scarcity and potential value. 

The token burn, detailed in Verasity’s Q1 2025 Recap on April 21, 2025, was part of a broader strategy that included new exchange listings on BTSE, LCX, OKX Singapore, ChangeHero, Exolix, and Guarda, as well as an extended staking program. However, the update sparked mixed reactions, with some users questioning its immediate impact on $VRA’s price, highlighting ongoing debates around Verasity’s tokenomics.

Collaboration with Turbo Boosts Memecoin IntegrationSimilar to its partnership with DeGuardVPN, Verasity collaborated with Turbo, a top-150 memecoin project known for its community-driven creativity. The partnership integrates VeraPlayer into TurboToadToken’s platform, enhancing its video content capabilities.

Verasity aims to use the partnership to tap into niche markets, leveraging the popularity of memecoins to expand its user base. Further, the high engagement following the announcement on X suggests strong community support, positioning the development as a key milestone in Verasity’s 2025 growth.

A landmark achievement occurred in the first week of June, when Verasity launched the UAE’s first home-grown Ad Exchange and Supply-Side Platform (SSP) under its VeraViews brand. Supported by the Ministry of Economy’s NextGenFDI initiative, the platform connects advertisers directly with verified UAE publishers, prioritizing security and fraud-free programmatic advertising. Khaleej Times, the UAE’s largest publisher, became the first to onboard, using VeraPlayer to serve premium, verified inventory.

“Khaleej Times onboarding as the first premium publisher partner signals — both to the market and to Centennial 2071 ambitions — that the UAE intends to lead, not follow, in creating a trust-first advertising ecosystem,” Olena Buyan, Chief Product Officer at VeraViews, emphasized the platform’s role in setting a global standard for transparent media technology. 

This launch addresses national transparency, trust, and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance priorities. The move has been hailed as a turning point for UAE advertisers and publishers, reducing reliance on international platforms with high fraud rates.

Partnership with WORLD3 Expands into AI Autonomous WorldsMost recently, Verasity partnered with WORLD3, a next-generation AI and blockchain platform focused on AI Autonomous Worlds. The collaboration integrates VeraPlayer infrastructure to power WORLD3’s video assets, including tutorials and real-time AI demonstrations. 

The unique partnership aligns with Verasity’s goal of combating ad fraud through its Proof of View (PoV) technology, which will later enable WORLD3 publishers to monetize content with confidence. This development positions Verasity at the forefront of immersive, blockchain-powered video distribution.

Looking Ahead: What’s Next for Verasity?Verasity’s 2025 milestones demonstrate its commitment to growth and innovation. The UAE Ad Exchange launch and AI partnerships signal a strong trajectory, while the token burn addresses supply concerns. With ongoing integrations and a focus on fraud-free advertising, Verasity is well-positioned to influence the future of digital ecosystems.

Industry observers will watch how Verasity capitalizes on these developments, particularly as it navigates the TRON mainnet transition. The company’s next steps, potentially detailed in a Q2 recap, will provide further clarity on its 2025 goals.

Verasity announced a partnership with Funton, a rising Tap-to-Earn (T2E) gaming platform boasting over 500,000 monthly active users. The collaboration will see Funton adopt Verasity’s VeraPlayer infrastructure, giving its users access to seamless in-game video content, gameplay demos, and promotional media—all delivered with Verasity’s proprietary anti-fraud layer.

This partnership is part of a broader push by Verasity to embed its Proof of View (PoV) and Proof of Traffic (PoT) systems across high-growth digital verticals. With the T2E gaming market gaining steam, Verasity’s tech offers a secure and transparent way to monetize video at scale.

Image: VerasityFunton Taps VeraPlayer for Game Video DeliveryFunton’s decision to implement VeraPlayer marks an evolution for its ecosystem, which is primarily hosted on Telegram and Line. These platforms thrive on fast, frictionless content—short game clips, demo previews, and real-time updates. By adopting VeraPlayer, Funton can now deliver these media assets using a system built for scale, speed, and verification.

More importantly, the integration lays the groundwork for monetization. While PoV-powered fraud detection and revenue tools will be enabled at a later stage, the foundation is already in place. That means every view, click, and watch time metric can eventually be trusted, audited, and monetized, giving both Funton and its players an edge in a saturated space.

A Strong H2, 2025 for VerasityThis partnership comes on the back of an eventful second half of 2025 for Verasity. One of its most notable achievements was the global expansion of its VeraViews ad platform through the launch of a UAE-based Ad Exchange. Developed under the UAE Ministry of Economy’s NextGen FDI initiative, Verasity became the first to deploy a domestic Supply-Side Platform (SSP) and ad exchange in the region.

At its core, the exchange runs on Verasity’s PoV and PoT technology. These tools are integrated into both VeraPlayer and AdTrace, allowing advertisers to verify real traffic, eliminate fraud, and improve the return on ad spend.

The rollout marked a cultural shift in Gulf-region advertising. Khaleej Times, the largest media outlet in the UAE, became the first to adopt VeraViews, delivering premium campaigns directly to verified users. 

Product Updates That Strengthen the StackVerasity’s technology stack also received major upgrades in Q2. VeraPlayer, the centerpiece of its video infrastructure, introduced two powerful features that enhance user tracking and ad performance analysis.

Extended Ad Metrics: This update gives advertisers more than just view counts. It delivers in-depth insights into ad placement performance, engagement levels, and viewability metrics. For a publisher, this means more control over where and how ads are placed.

Playback Metrics for VCMS: Verasity’s proprietary Video Content Management System (VCMS) now includes detailed playback reports. This provides content owners with transparency—how often videos are watched, how long viewers stay engaged, and what content performs best.

These features are designed to give digital publishers the tools they need to thrive in a competitive media landscape. 

AI Meets MonetizationAnother notable development is Verasity’s Text-to-Video MVP, which reached the client testing phase this quarter. This AI-powered tool converts written content into engaging, ad-ready videos using avatars, voice synthesis, and auto-scripted narration.

By turning articles, guides, and social posts into monetizable video, the tool allows any publisher—regardless of size—to tap into video ad revenue. In a content economy where attention spans are short, this tool helps non-video creators get a seat at the table.

The product’s core value lies in its automation. No editing, no production crew, no voiceover talent. Just content transformed into video that is ready to be monetized from the first view.

Growing the Partner EcosystemPartnerships remain a central pillar in Verasity’s strategy. In Q2, the firm added eight new partners to its VeraPlayer and Proof of View ecosystem, including:

Turbo: A memecoin project making waves in the crypto community.Paal AI: An enterprise-grade AI solution backed by IBM.WebX: Asia’s largest Web3 conference.MAIV, Astrena AI, GPTVerse, SoonChain, WORLD3: Each of these integrations brings a unique use case and audience to Verasity’s expanding network.

PANews reported on July 27 that according to Binance’s announcement, Verasity (VRA) is now available on Binance Alpha. Users with at least 200 Binance Alpha points can claim an airdrop of 32,238 VRA tokens on a first-come, first-served basis. If the rewards are not fully distributed, the points threshold will automatically decrease by 15 points per hour. Claiming the airdrop will consume 15 Binance Alpha points. Users must confirm the claim on the Alpha event page within 24 hours, otherwise it will be deemed as giving up the claim.

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Cwallet, a prominent cryptocurrency wallet, has unveiled a groundbreaking partnership with Verasity ($VRA), a blockchain and AI-powered advertising infrastructure. This alliance aims to re-modify the way digital advertisements, payments, and user engagement are accessible and secure on a global scale. Both platforms are built on Web3 technology and aimed at elevating the Web3 utility.

🌍 Cwallet Announces Strategic Integration with Verasity ($VRA)

Cwallet is pleased to unveil a strategic alliance with @verasitytech ($VRA)—a pioneering blockchain-powered platform advancing the future of digital advertising, payments, and user engagement on a global scale.

As… pic.twitter.com/RrjZhvLCP7

— Cwallet (@CwalletOfficial) July 28, 2025 This landmark partnership will provide users with a unique and efficient way to access and trade. Simultaneously, Verasity ($VRA) is already interested in online transparency of content and ads monetization, which is the ultimate goal of Cwallet to make decentralized finance (DeFi) more user-centric. Cwallet has released this news through its official X account.

Cwallet and Verasity to Unlock the Future of Advertising and Wallet Technology Both FinTech platforms are intentionally doing all these things, providing ease and facilitating their users.  Apart from this, both platforms are giving special reliefs for their users in terms of zero fees, no approval delay, and secure storage with the help of the integrated wallet of Cwallet. Concurrently, Verasity swaps across 60+ chains to make one of the best platforms for monetization and advertisement.

Another one of the best features of Verasity is its Proof of View (PoV) technology, which helps in tapping into and combating ad fraud. On the other hand, this feature boosts its user engagement all over the world and makes it a trustworthy platform for users. So, this will provide an open gate for users to experience the full power of Verasity through Cwallet.

Experience the Future of Seamless Digital Transactions The collaboration of Cwallet with Verasity is more than just listing of ($VRA), as said by Cwallet. Ultimately, this will reflect the dedication of both platforms to their users’ Web3 innovation while making connections on a global scale. Both platforms will work on security, privacy, and seamless services.

This is a golden opportunity for users all over the world to get them updated. With the advanced features of both platforms, users will enjoy frictionless and error-free transactions worldwide. Consequently, this will save the time of users and invite others to take advantage of this opportunity.

AUTHOR

Crypto journalist with years of experience providing in-depth analysis and news on blockchain and decentralized finance. With a keen eye for detail, Shahzaib delivers insightful articles that explore the latest trends, market movements, and innovations within the crypto and blockchain ecosystem. His work focuses on educating readers while offering expert commentary on the evolving landscape of digital assets, DeFi protocols, and the broader impact of blockchain technology.

Verasity’s Proof of View (PoV) is a patented fraud detection system that verifies whether a video view is real or fake. It does this by using a combination of blockchain technology, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Once verified, each view is recorded on a public blockchain so that advertisers, content creators, and buyers can trust the view counts.

This technology is part of Verasity’s wider ecosystem and is embedded directly into VeraPlayer, the company’s proprietary video player. Proof of View is built to stop bots, fake traffic, and ad fraud—an issue that affects over 65% of video ad views, according to industry estimates.

Why Verasity Built Proof of ViewThe online advertising industry has long struggled with inflated view counts. Platforms like Google and Facebook rely on views to determine how much advertisers should pay. But most views go unverified, making them easy to fake or manipulate. This undermines the trust advertisers place in platforms and distorts the value of content creators.

Verasity saw this problem and responded with a system that ensures:

Verified views based on strict criteriaTransparent and auditable records on-chainAutomated fraud detection before views are countedThe goal is to make every view count by making every view verifiable.

How Proof of View WorksAt the heart of Proof of View is a verification module that operates alongside Verasity’s video tools. The system uses a multi-step process to validate views:

Key ComponentsVerification Module: Runs computer-executable code stored in non-volatile memory.Processor: Receives requests, records data, and communicates with the blockchain.Verification StepsA viewer requests to watch content.The system captures metadata: device info, session behavior, viewing duration, and other data points.The data is hashed into a “database chunk.”That chunk is added to a public blockchain block.The hashed data is compared with the blockchain for consistency.Only after completing these steps does the system log the view as valid.

Auditable and Tamper-ProofTo make the system auditable and efficient, Verasity uses a Merkle Hash Tree. Each individual view is hashed, then combined with others to create a top hash. This method ensures the data can’t be changed without detection.

Use Cases of Proof of View

Proof of View is not limited to ad views. Verasity has extended the technology to cover:

NFT authenticity checks: Buyers can verify view counts of video-based NFTs.Channel valuation: When a content creator wants to sell a stake in their channel, Proof of View verifies how many real views their content has received.Content Marketplaces: Views influence pricing. Proof of View ensures prices reflect actual engagement.Patent and Legal BackingVerasity’s Proof of View has been granted patents in:

United StatesChinaEuropean UnionSouth KoreaThe company first secured its U.S. and China patents in 2021 and continues to expand its IP portfolio. This gives Verasity legal protection and reinforces its claim as the originator of this system.

Key Technical ConceptsBlockchain UseBy appending hashed view data to the blockchain, Verasity ensures:

Public visibilityTamper resistancePermanent record-keepingMachine Learning & User BehaviorThe system monitors:

Viewing durationPause/play activityMouse movementsSession lengthThese patterns help detect bot-like behavior.

While the system offers high accuracy (99.9% in internal tests), it relies on data points that may evolve with user behavior and tech changes. However, the flexible architecture of Proof of View means it can adapt and integrate with evolving platforms and standards.

ConclusionVerasity’s Proof of View is a comprehensive solution designed to solve a real and persistent problem: view fraud. By using blockchain, hashing, and behavioral data, it ensures advertisers and publishers know which views are real. The technology forms a core part of Verasity’s VeraPlayer and VeraViews products and is backed by patents in several regions.

Resources:

Verasity Proof of View Document: https://verasity.io/static/documents/verasity_pov.pdfProof of view patent documents: US https://verasity.io/static/documents/verasity_pov.pdfEU https://register.epo.org/application?number=EP21713762China https://verasity.io/pov/china/The%20Notification%20of%20Passing%20Prelimi.pdfSouth Korea https://verasity.io/static/documents/Proof_of_View_KR.pdfVerasity Medium: https://medium.com/verasity

Verasity Recent Updates: VeraWallet Off-Ramp, Binance Alpha Airdrop, and New Partnerships

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Advertising technology platform, Verasity, has entered a new partnership with Fraction AI, the first decentralized auto-training platform of AI agents. The announcement marks a new milestone in connecting blockchain infrastructure with next-generation artificial intelligence ecosystems. 

📢 PARTNERSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT 📢

We're teaming up with @FractionAI_xyz, the first decentralized auto-training platform for AI agents 🤖

With 320K+ users and 32M+ agent sessions, Fraction AI will adopt Verasity's advertising infra to power its video library — supporting onboarding… pic.twitter.com/EShtbPZkQF

— Verasity (2025 ⏩) (@verasitytech) August 22, 2025 The objective of both companies is to establish a strong force of safe adverts, decentralized education, and scalable monetization.

Fraction AI Adopts Verasity’s Advertising Infrastructure With more than 32 million agent sessions and over 320,000 users, Fraction AI is already proving to be successful. As a result of the collaboration, the company will incorporate the advanced technology of Verasity, which allows it to enhance its video library that plays a key role in user onboarding and education. 

The partnership means that educational materials, community resources, and training materials will be provided with efficiency and convenience, and transparency.

With the integration of the Verasity infrastructure, Fraction AI can be viewed as more than a training site for AI agents, as it will be a platform that will expand the levels of user interaction and generate steady monetization.

Proof of View Technology Brings Transparency The key to the integration is the Verasity Proof of View (PoV) anti-fraud technology. With this system, this eliminates the possibility of having fraudulent and bot-driven views of the ads, which is one of the biggest issues of digital advertising.

In the case of Fraction AI, this implies new ways of monetization, which are supported by verifiable demonstrations of exercises of human activity. By integrating PoV with its decentralized AI training platform, Fraction AI can provide advertisers and users with the guarantee that revenues are generated on the basis of genuine and trusting engagement.

Blockchain Meets AI for Scalable Growth The alliance signals how blockchain and artificial intelligence are becoming more overlapping. 

The role established by Verasity during these recent years in battling ad fraud and ensuring the adoption of advertising transparency makes it a logical addition to the Fraction AI philosophy of creating decentralized, autonomous learning environments to train AI agents.

This partnership highlights the rising possibilities of blockchain being used as a layer of verification in AI-powered ecosystems, as transparency and trust are two of the primary areas of concern in adopting such an environment over the long term.

Industry Significance and Future Prospects It is envisaged that the integration will bring benefits to both sides. With more widespread adoption of AI agents, authentic interaction and a lack of fraudulent interactions will be critical.

Both companies stressed that a rollout announcement will come in the near future, paving the way to broader adoption of blockchain-based ad monetization in AI ecosystems. Such cooperation would be a new benchmark in the partnership between the blockchain and artificial intelligence sectors, provided that it becomes successful.

AUTHOR

With over five years of experience in crypto, blockchain, and tech content, Ishtiyaq makes complex topics easy to understand. He simplifies blockchain and digital currency concepts for a wide audience, ensuring that beginners and experts alike can grasp key ideas. His clear and engaging writing helps readers stay informed about the latest trends, developments, and innovations in the crypto space. Whether explaining blockchain technology, digital assets, or DeFi, Ishtiyaq breaks down complicated ideas into simple, digestible content. His goal is to help people navigate the fast-changing world of cryptocurrency with confidence, clarity, and a deeper understanding.