BTC $78,675.88 -0.41%
ETH $2,489.02 +1.08%
BNB $702.71 +0.85%
XRP $1.40 -2.34%
SOL $101.16 +4.32%
TRX $0.3350 -0.70%
DOGE $0.0867 +0.13%
ADA $0.2083 -1.53%
BCH $267.04 -0.70%
LINK $11.51 +0.83%
HYPE $81.01 -0.88%
AAVE $125.22 -1.70%
SUI $0.7486 -1.57%
XLM $0.1828 -0.82%
ZEC $782.10 +0.01%
BTC $78,675.88 -0.41%
ETH $2,489.02 +1.08%
BNB $702.71 +0.85%
XRP $1.40 -2.34%
SOL $101.16 +4.32%
TRX $0.3350 -0.70%
DOGE $0.0867 +0.13%
ADA $0.2083 -1.53%
BCH $267.04 -0.70%
LINK $11.51 +0.83%
HYPE $81.01 -0.88%
AAVE $125.22 -1.70%
SUI $0.7486 -1.57%
XLM $0.1828 -0.82%
ZEC $782.10 +0.01%

gene

All
Article
Flash

first_img Stanford professor releases venture capital firm rankings: 5% of VCs generate 90% of industry profits, 21 new firms enter the top 100

Stanford Business School Professor Ilya Strebulaev, in collaboration with Blake Jackson, released the 2026 Strebulaev-Jackson Venture Capital Firm Rankings, based on nearly 30 years of data from over 230,000 investments and nearly 13,000 VCs. The research estimates that about 5% of VCs generate approximately 90% of the industry's profits. The top five are Sequoia Capital (10,158 points), Andreessen Horowitz (8,292 points), Accel, DST Global, and Tiger Global. Among them, Parkway Venture Capital (19th place) and Notable (20th place) made it into the top 20, but are not well-known leading brands.The rankings are based on six major factors: discount valuation, dilution adjustment, net profit (after costs), value added (lead investments and board seats), human capital decay (three-and-a-half-year half-life), and credit allocation between institutions and individuals (25% for the investing institution and 75% for the current institution). Of the top 100, 62 are located in California, 19 in New York, and 6 each in Massachusetts and Texas. 21 were established in 2015 or later, and 23 of the best investments are in frontier AI or AI infrastructure companies, with OpenAI listed as the best investment by 4 firms, xAI by 3, and Anthropic and Perplexity by 2 each. The ranking methodology has a correlation of only about 0.27 with the Midas List, with SV Angel investing in about 139 unicorns ranked 31st, and Thrive with only 47 unicorns ranked 8th. This ranking is the result of research by Stanford professors and does not constitute investment advice.

Vitalik releases research on "local mixing" cryptography: exploring next-generation obfuscation techniques, which may become a new foundational primitive in cryptography

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a new article titled "Obfuscation (Part 3): Local Mixing," which delves into a cryptographic obfuscation technique being explored—"Local Mixing." He claims it may become a new foundational cryptographic tool following elliptic curves, RSA, and lattice-based cryptography.Vitalik states that current mainstream obfuscation techniques mainly rely on complex mathematical assumptions, often resulting in extremely high computational overhead. In contrast, Local Mixing adopts a completely different approach, not relying on elliptic curves, large integer factorization, or lattice cryptography. Instead, it draws on experiences from symmetric cryptography and hash function design, continuously shuffling, reconstructing, and hiding circuit structures to eliminate information leakage while maintaining functionality.The Local Mixing technique primarily includes steps such as reversibility, hardening, mixing, splitting, crossing walk, and "gadgetization." By introducing random structures into the circuit, rearranging logic gates, and employing nonlinear hiding mechanisms, it makes it difficult for attackers to recover the original computational logic.Vitalik points out that this technology is still in its early stages, with security not yet validated over the long term and facing challenges such as random attacks and linear analysis. However, he believes that Local Mixing represents a completely new path for cryptographic exploration, aiming to construct more efficient indistinguishable obfuscation (iO) schemes.If breakthroughs in Local Mixing technology are achieved, it could lead to new quantum-resistant public key encryption schemes and promote the development of general obfuscation techniques. The field still requires years of cryptanalysis and optimization validation, but AI-assisted research may significantly accelerate this maturation process. Vitalik states that obfuscation technology is seen as the "final frontier" of cryptography because, theoretically, other cryptographic primitives can be constructed based on obfuscation and one-way functions. Local Mixing may not only reduce the costs of traditional obfuscation schemes but could also become an important direction for future cryptographic infrastructure.

Coldcard releases new firmware to enhance security; affected users need to regenerate their mnemonic phrases and migrate their assets

Coldcard has released the latest firmware 5.6.1 (Mk4/Mk5) and 1.5.1Q (Q). This update is based on a three-week security review following an emergency fix, focusing on addressing the security risks posed by previous mnemonic phrase generation attacks. Each newly generated mnemonic phrase must include at least one user entropy source, such as irregular key presses at least 65 times, physical dice rolls 50 times, or physical coin tosses 128 times, combined with fresh entropy provided by STM32 TRNG, SE1, and SE2.The new firmware also adds pre-signing phased PSBT verification, strengthens USB connection and firmware update boundaries, improves Delta Mode isolation mechanisms, fixes active wallet backup issues, enhances random number generator initialization and fault checking, adjusts SIGHASH default settings, and includes multiple security and correctness improvements. Coldcard states that this update aims to further reduce the risk of the device being attacked.The official reminder is that updating the firmware cannot fix existing mnemonic phrases generated by previously affected firmware. If a user's mnemonic phrase falls within the scope of this security announcement, they should first update the device, then generate and verify a brand new mnemonic phrase, and migrate funds to the new wallet. Coldcard recommends that all Mk4, Mk5, and Q users update their devices promptly and verify the signatures of the downloaded firmware.

hot_img Cerebras releases the fourth generation AI inference system CS-4: performance doubled, power consumption doubled, more flexible deployment

Cerebras released its fourth-generation AI inference system CS-4 this week, based on the same 5nm WSE-3 wafer, achieving double the performance by doubling the clock frequency and power consumption. A single CS-4 cabinet accommodates 3 wafers (CS-3 has 2), featuring a modular "backpack" design that simplifies manufacturing and deployment, with a TDP of approximately 125 to 135kW. The CS-4 can provide an inference speed of nearly 4000 tokens/second/user, about twice that of the CS-3, and supports decomposed inference with heterogeneous systems such as AMD and AWS Trainium.Cerebras claims that the CS-4 offers about 2000 times the on-chip memory bandwidth of NVIDIA's Rubin (43PB/s), but the 44GB SRAM capacity remains unchanged, and long-context inference still requires multi-wafer stacking. For example, with the DeepSeek V4 Pro (1.6T parameters), approximately 20 systems are needed for a 1M context window, and about 40 systems are required for 256 concurrent users, corresponding to a CAPEX exceeding 20 million USD. Cerebras is collaborating with clients such as OpenAI and plans to achieve approximately double performance improvements each year, aiming for a 20-fold throughput increase by 2027. The "backpack" cabinet design of the CS-4 will continue into the next-generation "Nexus" platform.
app_icon
ChainCatcher Building the Web3 world with innovations.