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Ethena officially announced the launch of the Monad blockchain on platform X. USDe and sUSDe are now available throughout the Monad ecosystem, including integration with Monad's Aave instance, allowing Ethena users to borrow stablecoin liquidity at scale.In addition, the parallelized EVM USDe has now been launched.

According to The Block, crypto infrastructure and capital markets company Keyrock has completed the acquisition of BlockFills' institutional trading and brokerage business. This transaction brings Keyrock BlockFills' trading technology, institutional client relationships, and a team of experienced derivatives traders.The announcement stated that this acquisition also expands Keyrock's regulatory footprint, establishing a CIMA-registered entity in the Cayman Islands and planning to obtain FCA authorization in the UK. Keyrock's announcement did not disclose the acquisition price. According to previous court documents and reports, Keyrock was selected for $3.25 million in BlockFills' bankruptcy restructuring process. Chicago-based BlockFills filed for bankruptcy protection in early 2026 after suffering significant losses due to the cryptocurrency market crash in February.

According to Cointelegraph, ARK Invest's research director Lorenzo Valente published a rebuttal to a16z crypto's view that "traditional finance will adopt blockchain rather than DeFi," arguing that institutions will increasingly rely on DeFi infrastructure in the future.Valente stated that public chains are leading private chain projects in actual development, with the growth of tokenized assets on open networks like Ethereum as an example. He also believes that crypto-native companies like Circle and Coinbase are better positioned than traditional financial institutions to build the next generation of financial infrastructure.a16z crypto previously stated that banks and asset management institutions would not directly adopt DeFi but would choose blockchain technologies that comply with existing regulatory, governance, and operational requirements, including features like tokenization and atomic settlement, while continuing to maintain licensing and institutional control.Sentora co-founder Jesus Rodriguez also disagreed with a16z's viewpoint, suggesting that institutions might adopt the underlying infrastructure of DeFi and overlay compliance, custody, and other enterprise-level controls on top of it.

Digital asset prime broker FalconX will acquire blockchain infrastructure company bloXroute.By combining bloXroute's network technology with FalconX's institutional trading platform, FalconX will accelerate the development of new trading, financing, and prime brokerage capabilities.

Celestia Labs announced that it has acquired the high-performance blockchain framework developer Sovereign Labs. The latter has been deeply engaged in the Celestia ecosystem since 2021, and its framework has provided underlying support for projects such as the cross-chain bridge Relay Protocol and the high-performance perpetual contract trading platform Bullet.After this acquisition, Celestia Labs' technical capabilities will extend from Layer 1 to the execution layer and application layer, becoming a full-stack custom blockchain development partner for enterprises. As projects like Hyperliquid, Polymarket, and Robinhood choose to build their own chains, the demand for full-stack blockchain infrastructure among enterprises is accelerating.

According to The Block, Cathie Wood's Ark Invest increased its holdings by approximately $13.9 million in Circle stock and $1.5 million in Block Inc. stock, while reducing its holdings by approximately $3.2 million in Robinhood stock.

According to Jinshi reports, the U.S. Central Command announced that the U.S. military has restored the maritime blockade on vessels traveling to and from Iranian ports and coastal areas at 4 PM Eastern Time today.Currently, there are more than 20 U.S. Navy warships and hundreds of military aircraft deployed in the Middle East. The U.S. military remains on high alert, possesses lethal strike capabilities, and is ready for action at any time.

a16z published a blog post stating that as traditional financial institutions accelerate their exploration of blockchain technology, the market generally believes that the future will see a comprehensive integration of DeFi (Decentralized Finance) and TradFi (Traditional Finance), forming a new financial model through the combination of decentralized finance and institutional distribution systems.However, the reality may not be so. The core motivation for traditional financial institutions to adopt blockchain is not to embrace decentralization, but to value its commercial benefits in reducing costs, improving settlement efficiency, expanding distribution channels, and optimizing customer relationship management.What is more likely to emerge in the future is a new type of "programmable financial infrastructure" based on underlying blockchain technology, optimized for institutional needs, rather than a simple integration of traditional finance and DeFi. Institutions are selectively absorbing certain technological capabilities from DeFi and modifying them according to their own regulatory, risk management, and operational requirements.For example, atomic settlement can reduce counterparty risk, shared ledgers can lower back-office reconciliation costs, programmable funds can automatically execute processes such as interest payments, margin management, and corporate actions, and automated market-making models are also being applied to on-chain foreign exchange and tokenized asset pricing.At the same time, the native DeFi features of open access, anonymity, and trustless execution often conflict with institutional requirements for compliance, control, and accountability. Therefore, cases such as JPMorgan's institutional blockchain project, BlackRock's and Franklin Templeton's tokenized funds, are essentially not traditional finance entering DeFi, but rather using blockchain technology to improve existing financial business processes.In the future, the blockchain industry will have two development paths: on one hand, enterprises and financial institutions will continue to promote the implementation of blockchain infrastructure that meets regulatory requirements, expanding the industry scale through applications such as stablecoins, tokenized assets, and on-chain settlements; on the other hand, open networks will continue to play the role of a source of innovation, continuously generating new financial primitives and market mechanisms, providing technical reserves for future institutional infrastructure.TradFi and DeFi are not in competition but are developing together in different directions. Traditional finance may not fully adopt the DeFi model but will gradually adopt parts that suit its own needs. The true integration may ultimately occur at the underlying blockchain network level, rather than one side replacing the other.For developers, the key is not to chase all markets simultaneously but to clarify the target audience: for institutions, products need to be built around compliance, risk control, and long-term business processes; for open networks, there is a need to continue exploring innovation, liquidity, and network effects. The future financial system may operate on blockchain infrastructure, but the most important innovations may still come first from open networks.

According to Gate Ventures' latest weekly report, the global market continued to be influenced by high interest rate expectations and geopolitical factors last week, with the cryptocurrency market overall maintaining volatility. BTC rose 0.2% over the week, ETH increased by 1.2%, and market sentiment saw a slight recovery. Meanwhile, BTC spot ETFs ended eight consecutive weeks of net outflows, recording a net inflow of approximately $197 million, and ETH spot ETFs also resumed net inflows, with institutional allocation demand showing marginal improvement.On the industry front, traditional financial institutions are continuing to accelerate the construction of on-chain infrastructure. Swift officially launched a blockchain-based shared ledger and partnered with 17 global banks to initiate a tokenized deposit pilot; fintech platform Toss is collaborating with Optimism to advance the infrastructure development for the Korean won stablecoin; Robinhood Chain, which launched only two weeks ago, has surpassed a total locked value (TVL) of $132 million.In terms of investment and financing, a total of 8 financing deals were disclosed last week, amounting to $381 million, with the infrastructure (Infra) sector dominating. Prime Intellect completed a $130 million financing round to accelerate the construction of enterprise-level AI infrastructure; Gauntlet received a $125 million strategic investment from Japan's SBI Holdings to further expand its institutional-level DeFi treasury business. Gate Ventures believes that stablecoins, on-chain finance, and institutional-level infrastructure are continuing to become important development directions for the industry, with institutional capital further increasing its investment in digital asset infrastructure.

Cathie Wood's Ark Invest increased its holdings of 153,249 shares of SpaceX stock, valued at approximately $21.32 million, and increased its holdings of 71,618 shares of Block stock, valued at approximately $5.63 million.

According to International Cyber Digest (@IntCyberDigest), the core domain name t[.]me of Telegram has been set to serverHold status by the .me registry, causing the domain to go offline from the global DNS, making all t.me links inaccessible. Currently, Telegram, the .me registry, and the backend operator Identity Digital have not provided any public explanation.Analysts have pointed out that .me is the country code top-level domain for Montenegro, which is currently in the process of negotiating EU membership. This blockade may be related to the advancement of EU regulatory matters.

New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte signed HB 639 into law last week. The bill is known as The Blockchain Basic Laws, which provides protection for cryptocurrency innovation and use in the state, and allows for the establishment of special blockchain dispute case files in the superior court.New Hampshire passed a strategic Bitcoin reserve bill last year, allowing the state treasurer to invest up to 5% of public funds in Bitcoin, as well as precious metals like gold and silver. The state's executive council rejected a proposal last week that would have allowed the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority to promote Bitcoin-supported municipal bonds.

According to Jinshi reports, the Joint Maritime Information Center led by the U.S. Navy stated that the maritime blockade implemented by the U.S. covers the entire coastline of Iran, including but not limited to various ports and oil terminals in Iran.

According to The Information, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) plans to showcase a real-time stock trading settlement process based on blockchain technology this Wednesday, focusing on verifying the feasibility of this technology in the clearing, settlement, and recording stages to enhance the operational efficiency of capital market infrastructure.

According to crypto KOL @amathxbt and others, Circle's public blockchain Arc may have been launched privately. The cross-chain protocols LayerZero and LI.FI have been deployed to the Arc network, but have not been publicly tested by the community.According to public information, Arc is a public Layer 1 blockchain, positioned as the "Economic Operating System of the Internet," providing shared and composable infrastructure to support economic contracts, stablecoins, tokenized assets, and global market operations. In May of this year, Circle officially released the ARC white paper, outlining the design framework for ARC as the native coordinating asset of the Arc blockchain network. The Arc public testnet is set to launch in October 2025. The mainnet is expected to go live in the summer of 2026.

An independent home miner mined Bitcoin block 957382 using a portable Bitaxe device through Public Pool, receiving a total block reward of 3.1382 BTC, which includes a block subsidy of 3.125 BTC and approximately 0.0132 BTC in transaction fees, valued at around $200,000 at the time.The device has an average hash rate of 995.2 GH/s and submitted the winning share after running for about 8 hours. Bitaxe is an open-source single-chip Bitcoin miner based on the Bitmain BM1370 chip, with the Gamma series having a default hash rate of about 1 to 1.3 TH/s, a power consumption of 15 to 21 watts, and typically sells for $60 to $150.

According to Bitcoin News, a Bitaxe ASIC miner equipped with a single chip mined Bitcoin block number 957,382, earning the full block reward of 3.1382 Bitcoins, valued at approximately $200,580. This miner has a hash rate of about 1 TH/s and is the only device at that address.Since mining was done through a public mining pool (with a fee of 0%), the miner's owner retained 100% of the block reward and transaction fees. The mining difficulty of this block reached 294.14T, which is more than 2.2 times the required difficulty of 133.87T. With a hash rate of 1 TH/s, the average probability of mining a block is about once every 16,000 years, making this an extremely rare event.