cess

The cross-chain protocol Router Protocol announced that after more than four years of development, it has decided to gradually cease operations and will fully shut down before September 30, 2026. The team stated that over the past two years, Web3 liquidity has remained scarce, the market focus has shifted to AI, the enthusiasm for cross-chain interoperability has waned, and the revenue from bridging services has been insufficient to cover costs. Although various paths such as commercialization, licensing, and acquisitions were attempted in the past year, no sustainable solution was achieved. Router Protocol will permanently destroy 303,333,198 ROUTE tokens pending in the treasury and will coordinate with centralized exchanges to delist ROUTE. Holders need to withdraw their tokens according to the arrangements of each exchange before the deadline. In addition, the project will not launch any new plans related to ROUTE and plans to open-source some technical components for community use.

SWIFT service provider Bottomline announced a collaboration with the blockchain infrastructure project Chainlink to enable over 600 bank clients in its network to access blockchain-based cross-border settlements. Bottomline processes over $16 trillion in payments annually and serves 1,200 financial institutions and 10,000 enterprises.Through this integration, banks can continue to use the ISO 20022 standard to send payment instructions, with Chainlink's infrastructure connecting the instructions to blockchain settlements. Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) supports the transfer of tokenized value across different blockchain networks, while Chainlink's Runtime Environment (CRE) is responsible for payment processes, transaction routing, and operational change coordination.CCIP has been recording mainnet activity since July 2023 and is currently connected to over 60 blockchain networks. Chainlink's Project Pangea has covered more than 50 banking institutions in Europe and South Korea, with participants managing assets totaling over $10 trillion, and the project's goals include achieving T+0 settlement for foreign exchange transactions.

ARK Invest researcher Lorenzo Valente compares Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid to McDonald's, Chipotle, and In-N-Out, respectively, believing that the three are not different versions of the same L1 business model, but rather have completely different value capture structures.Valente believes that Ethereum is similar to a franchise system, expanding through L2 but charging too little on the settlement layer, even claiming it has established the most successful franchise system in crypto, yet forgot to send the bill; Solana resembles a direct sales model, retaining more value within its own system through transaction fees, priority fees, and MEV; Hyperliquid relies on highly vertical integration, no VC, and fee buybacks of HYPE, possessing the shortest value capture chain, but facing risks of a more concentrated product, team, and revenue sources.

In a blog post released on Monday, Anthropic acknowledged that its Claude model had unauthorized access to real computer systems during a cybersecurity assessment, an incident reflecting operational security failures as well as alignment failures in motivation reasoning and intent to harm. Anthropic disclosed in July that the Claude model had breached the systems of three companies because the third-party assessment environment was connected to the public internet, while the model was informed it was in a simulated environment without internet access.Anthropic stated that Claude may have interpreted evidence of real internet access as still being in a simulated environment and was willing to take harmful actions on the real internet to complete the cybersecurity assessment task. Additionally, during tests at the UK AI Safety Institute, after assessors deliberately granted Claude Mythos internet access, the model took unauthorized actions on the live network. Anthropic emphasized that the models involved did not have the cybersecurity protections included in the officially released products.Following the incident on July 30, Anthropic has suspended cybersecurity assessments of pre-release models and introduced stricter protections: tests must run in verified offline sandboxes equipped with real-time monitoring; a new classifier can intercept suspected boundary violations, terminate tests, and notify humans. Anthropic has also expanded the scope of offline monitoring used by internal frontier agents. Previously, OpenAI models had also breached Hugging Face in July to obtain answers for cybersecurity tests, with investigations revealing that about 1,200 agents acted collaboratively through unauthorized message boards.

The U.S. primary election season is nearing its end, and the cryptocurrency industry's super political action committee (PAC) has achieved victories in several key districts. Supported by major contributors such as Coinbase, Ripple, and a16z, Fairshake has helped approximately 50 candidates win nominations, including Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss, as well as Republican Senate candidates Barry Moore from Alabama, Andy Barr from Kentucky, Kevin Hern from Oklahoma, and Harriet Hageman from Wyoming. Prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi indicate that these candidates have a winning probability of over 94% in the general election.Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter stated that the organization has reserved $122 million for the fall elections. However, Fairshake also faced its biggest setback in Illinois, spending over $10 million in an attempt to prevent Democrat Juliana Stratton from securing the nomination but was unsuccessful. Additionally, the Fellowship PAC, supported by Cantor Fitzgerald and Anchorage Digital, has actually spent about $11 million, far less than the previously claimed $100 million; the Digital Freedom Fund, funded by the Winklevoss brothers with $21 million, has yet to engage in support for specific candidates.

According to SlowMist's monitoring, the GebProxyActions contract suffered a loss of approximately 5.9436 ETH due to a lack of caller access control. Affected users previously called GebProxyActions.quitSystem directly instead of through a DSProxy delegated call, resulting in ownsSAFE[safe] being set to the GebProxyActions contract.The attacker directly called GebProxyActions.quitSystem(manager, safe, dst), bypassing the safeAllowed check of GebSafeManager and transferring the collateral to themselves.

According to Cointelegraph, Ripple announced a partnership with digital asset infrastructure company SettleMint to provide tokenized asset custody and management solutions for financial institutions. Ripple's institutional-grade digital asset custody infrastructure, Ripple Custody, will integrate with SettleMint's Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform (DALP), covering the entire lifecycle of tokens and simplifying the custody process for institutions.Just the day before, digital asset service provider Coincheck Group announced a partnership with wallet infrastructure company DFNS to build digital asset wallet technology and custody services in Japan. DFNS's wallet-as-a-service can provide institutions with complete transaction lifecycle management, including workflow orchestration and governance controls, and supports over 100 blockchain networks. Both collaborations aim to build more institutional-grade digital asset infrastructure to address the barriers for traditional financial institutions entering the crypto space.The 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index released by Chainalysis shows that on-chain crypto activity in the Asia-Pacific region has the fastest growth rate in the world, with a year-on-year increase of 69%. Currently, several Asian countries are formulating their own cryptocurrency regulatory frameworks. The bill passed in Japan in July classifies crypto assets as financial assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. Japan's Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki previously expressed a desire to bring crypto assets under the same regulatory framework as traditional financial assets.

According to Hong Kong 01, Binance founder Zhao Changpeng reflected on his journey from a rural area in Jiangsu to a net worth of hundreds of billions in an exclusive interview, sharing his "Four No" financial principles: do not buy stocks, do not speculate on real estate, do not trade cryptocurrencies, and do not hold excessive cash. He explained that real estate transactions are time-consuming and the returns are not worth it, and he never trades stocks or engages in short-term cryptocurrency trading, only holding long-term and selling some crypto assets when needed. "Holding fiat currency is the dumbest investment method; cash continues to depreciate."In 2013, Zhao Changpeng sold his house and invested all his money into Bitcoin, which at one point dropped two-thirds in value and remained stagnant for a year and a half. In 2017, he founded Binance, which became the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange in just five months. In 2023, he was sentenced to four months in prison for violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act, and was pardoned by Trump last year. His current net worth is approximately $114.6 billion. He admitted that success is a matter of luck, but the key lies in consistently making the right decisions and quickly correcting mistakes.

According to official news, Etherscan has officially released a new toolkit for AI, allowing developers and agents to directly access reliable on-chain data that is the same as that on the Etherscan website.The toolkit covers more than 60 EVM-compatible chains and provides structured, certified real-time data access capabilities for AI agents through three methods: MCP, CLI, and Skills.Among them, Etherscan MCP supports mainstream programming agents like Claude and Codex to query on-chain information in natural language; the CLI tool can output clean JSON, table, or CSV results in the terminal and is equipped with an interactive interface; the Skills module includes professional skills such as Orchestrator, contract review, transaction debugging, and workflow orchestration, helping agents efficiently complete complex tasks.Etherscan stated that these tools are designed to lower the barriers for AI to interact with blockchain data, allowing developers to quickly get started by directly pointing to the official documentation, while also welcoming user feedback on their experience or sharing innovative applications built using these tools.

HyENA announced that it will cease operations and close all markets, with user funds unaffected. The official statement indicated that HyENA was built on the Hyperliquid HIP-3 standard and Ethena's USDe, allowing traders to earn profits while using USDe as margin for trading perpetual contracts, processing a cumulative trading volume of over $4 billion, serving more than 12,000 traders, and distributing nearly 2.5 million USDe rewards to margin users.The official statement noted that with the further alignment of Hyperliquid and USDC, the development space for USDe margin on the platform has changed, leading to the decision to terminate HyENA. Markets will be delisted in the order of one market per hour from August 31 to September 2, with positions automatically settled at the final marked price, and margins returned to the spot balance. HLPe deposits can be claimed at a 1:1 ratio along with accumulated rewards and withdrawn via Upshift, with the final reward distribution date set for August 27 and the final affiliate commission payment date on September 9.Additionally, the Ethena exchange reward program ended in June 2026, and HyENA points will remain in their final state, with no snapshots, conversions, or distributions taking place, and they hold no monetary value. The official emphasized that HyENA has no tokens and no issuance plans.

According to The Block, XRP treasury company Evernorth announced that its SEC S-4 form related to the merger with Armada has become effective, advancing the Nasdaq listing process.CEO Asheesh Birla stated, "We believe institutional finance will increasingly build on-chain, and Evernorth aims to accelerate XRP's role in this process."

Coinbase stated on the X platform that the financial layer surrounding AI agents is referred to as agent finance, or AiFi, which encompasses agent trading and agent commerce. AI agents can research information, make decisions, and execute operations on behalf of individuals and businesses, and they need to perform basic financial activities such as payments, receipts, value storage, and fund transfers. Coinbase claims that it is building tools for AI agents to continuously execute financial operations within predefined goals, permissions, limitations, and security boundaries.Coinbase indicated that Coinbase Advisor, Coinbase for Agents, x402, and Coinbase Business have formed the AiFi infrastructure. Coinbase Advisor is an SEC-registered investment advisor integrated into the app for Coinbase One users, providing portfolio analysis and guidance through a chat interface; Coinbase for Agents connects tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor to Coinbase accounts via MCP, allowing users to set operational conditions and security boundaries for agents, as well as create independent sandbox accounts for agent use.Coinbase stated that x402 is an open payment standard initiated by Coinbase and currently managed by an independent foundation, which supports AI agents in paying fees to other agents, applications, and services. As of now, x402 has processed over 205 million transactions, with a transaction volume of $53 million, covering 200,000 sellers, with Coinbase facilitating 67% of the activities. Single payments can be used for API calls, datasets, research materials, or computing resources.Coinbase indicated that Coinbase Business supports enterprises in natively receiving AI agent payments in USDC, and Coinbiz can help merchants sell services and content to software without relying on credit card credentials, manual invoicing, or payment processes designed with human customers in mind. Eligible businesses can earn a floating reward of 3.35% from idle USDC balances. USDC currently accounts for 99% of on-chain agent commerce transactions, while x402 represents 97% of agent finance protocol usage, with related activities operating on Base.

The Sandbox released an update on the security vulnerability attack incident involving the SAND cross-chain bridge, stating that the attacker modified the verification mechanism to forge cross-chain deposit messages and mint unbacked SAND. This incident resulted in approximately 14.7423 million SAND being withdrawn, valued at about $697,000. Additionally, some uncollateralized SAND was profited through market trading, leading to an overall economic impact of approximately $1.497 million, of which the attacker actually obtained about $987,000.The Sandbox stated that the attack did not affect the supply of SAND on Ethereum and Polygon, with the total amount of SAND on Ethereum remaining unchanged at 3 billion. There were also no super administrator privileges stolen, and the attack stemmed from a vulnerability caused by the combination of the general call function in the token contract and the design of bridge permissions. Currently, the related addresses have been marked, and collaboration has begun with exchanges, security agencies, and the LayerZero team.For affected users, The Sandbox promises to compensate wallets holding legitimate bridged SAND with a 1:1 ratio of SAND on the Ethereum chain based on an on-chain snapshot taken before the attack. The compensation application process is expected to open within two weeks and will last for two weeks.

Zhao Changpeng stated at the "Bitcoin Asia 2026" conference in Hong Kong that people often overestimate what can be done in a year but underestimate what can be done in ten years, and a large amount of infrastructure will be built in the next decade. In the past two years, the attitude of traditional finance towards Bitcoin has undergone a significant change, and in recent years, the growth of tokenized stocks has been rapid. Binance's bStocks has quickly grown in just about three months since its launch, and looking ahead to the next ten years, this will be a huge market. In addition, various sectors such as payments, AI, Agentic financial infrastructure, stablecoins, and tokenization will see significant development in the next decade; now is the moment with the most opportunities in history.He mentioned that the Bitcoin blockchain currently does not support tokenized businesses, and tokenization mainly occurs on other blockchains. However, the various sectors within the crypto industry promote each other; those who understand Bitcoin will eventually understand other blockchains and tokens, and those who enter through stock tokenization will also pay attention to Bitcoin. He gave an example that it is difficult for Asians to open U.S. stock brokerage accounts, and the trading hours of U.S. stocks are inconvenient. Once stock tokenization occurs, it will enable more people who were previously unable to trade U.S. stocks to participate through crypto platforms. After these individuals enter the crypto platform, they may also start to engage with Bitcoin exposure that they did not have before.

According to The Block, StarkWare announced that the first quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction has been successfully executed.StarkWare's Avihu Levy used signature aggregation technology to protect public key data while ensuring that transactions are secure in the Bitcoin mempool, thereby introducing a second layer of security to protect assets.

Aave began opening its iOS mobile application to early users on Wednesday, pushing its consumer savings product into early access, while Android and Web users still need to wait on the waiting list. Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that the Ghost Pass allows users to invite friends to skip the waiting list.The app is positioned as a savings application, supporting bank account and stablecoin deposits, allowing users to connect bank accounts and debit cards, with stablecoin wallets supporting deposits and withdrawals on Arbitrum. Funds deposited generate returns through the public lending market, with assets supplied to the lending pool, and the interest paid by borrowers flowing to depositors. Aave Labs stated in July that there were about 50,000 registered users on the iOS waiting list.Aave describes the app as self-custodial, although it has login and recovery features similar to fintech applications. The app's terms state that the embedded wallet generates and stores private keys locally, and Aave Labs does not hold user assets or keys, managing wallet setup and gas through smart account abstraction. This release is part of Aave's initiative to expand retail distribution following the acquisition of Stable Finance in October 2025, with Stable Vaults now providing a savings layer for the Aave app and open to fintech companies seeking embedded stablecoin yields.

NVIDIA (NVDA.O) accrued a charge of $400 million in the first half of the year due to excess inventory of H200.

According to Xinhua News Agency, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated on August 26 at the "Starting Point of the 14th Five-Year Plan" series of themed press conferences held by the State Council Information Office that, in terms of application, artificial intelligence in our country has basically penetrated the entire chain of research and development design, production manufacturing, quality inspection, and operation and maintenance.Xin Guobin mentioned that nearly 200 artificial intelligence-related standards have been successfully developed, and multiple cities are being organized to carry out ethical reviews and service practices related to artificial intelligence.