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According to The Block, Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin stated that Ethereum is expected to evolve into a protocol fully based on zero-knowledge proofs (ZK Proof) within the next 3 to 5 years, which will not only optimize the main chain but also enhance Ethereum's compatibility with Layer 2.Joseph Lubin mentioned that he supports the "Rollup-centric roadmap," believing that by strengthening Layer 1, introducing the "Lean Ethereum" initiative, and promoting ZK proofs, the foundational layer of Ethereum can be significantly upgraded. Lean Ethereum aims to achieve over 10,000 transactions per second while maintaining a high level of decentralization on the mainnet, and supports privacy and quantum-resistant solutions.Regarding Layer 2, Joseph Lubin pointed out that ZK technology has already achieved real-time proofs in some L2 networks and plans to extend this capability to Layer 1, ultimately transitioning to a fully ZK foundational protocol supported by multiple provers. For example, projects like the Linea chain developed by Consensys and Gnosis are utilizing zero-knowledge proofs to achieve cross-network synchronized transactions, potentially eliminating the need for bridging and unifying fragmented liquidity.Joseph Lubin emphasized that the initial "differentiation phase" of the Rollup roadmap aims to provide experimental space for Layer 2 technologies. Although it may temporarily disperse liquidity, it lays the groundwork for Ethereum's future limitless scalability and technological iteration. He believes that some L2 technologies will become systemically important components, and this exploratory process is necessary.Additionally, Joseph Lubin responded to rumors regarding recent personnel changes at the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the "second foundation," stating that there will not be a second foundation. The EF will continue to focus on core protocol development, usability and scalability, as well as institutional collaboration, while supporting at least three independent teams to spin off from the EF, focusing on protocol, user experience, and institutional expansion efforts.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced on Tuesday that it has jointly filed a motion with Gemini Trust Company LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, requesting the dismissal of a previous judgment against Gemini.The case was originally filed in June 2022, and the parties reached a consent order in January 2025. After a comprehensive review, the CFTC concluded that the lawsuit should not have been filed and would not be filed under current enforcement standards.The review identified six major issues: the complaint was primarily based on statements from a whistleblower of questionable credibility; the investigation targeted Gemini as a victim of fraud rather than the alleged fraudster; there were serious doubts about the strength of the evidence against Gemini; relevant supporting materials were concealed and not submitted to the commissioners during the CFTC's vote on the complaint; the litigation team invoked deliberative process privilege to prevent Gemini from obtaining evidence necessary for its defense; and personnel improperly used CFTC regulatory power to create leverage for settlement.The CFTC determined that continuing to enforce the forward-looking provisions of the consent order is neither consistent with its mission nor in the public interest, and that the non-forward-looking provisions of the consent order (such as civil penalties) have been fulfilled. The parties jointly request the court to vacate the remaining forward-looking provisions.

JUST 6th Anniversary × GasFree Super Carnival Month is in full swing, the "GasFree Knowledge Challenge" beginner challenge has now begun, with a massive prize pool of up to 10,000 USDT continuously being offered. We sincerely invite all community members to participate in answering questions, with the first wave sharing 200 USDT in incentives.To participate, simply follow @DeFi_JUST, like and retweet this post, provide the correct answer to the poster question in the comments, tag 3 friends, and include the #JUSTGASFREE topic along with your GasFree wallet address for a chance to be one of the 20 lucky winners. Once the comments on the Chinese and English tweets exceed 300 each, the second phase advanced challenge and a 400 USDT doubled prize pool will be unlocked immediately! The event runs from May 19 to 25, and opportunities are fleeting, so take the first step of "0" Gas transfer now and win big with your strength.

At the Tencent shareholder meeting, Chairman and CEO Ma Huateng gave the most candid response to date regarding doubts about whether Tencent is falling behind in AI. He stated, "A year ago, we thought we were on board, but later found that the boat was leaking. Now it feels like we are on board, but we can't sit down yet. We hope the speed of the boat can be a bit faster." Ma Huateng acknowledged the company's bumpy journey in the field of artificial intelligence and humorously illustrated the current situation: on the boat, but not yet stable.Ma Huateng also emphasized that Tencent may not be the fastest in the industry to seize opportunities, but it insists on following the right path, combining its unique advantages to proceed steadily. "We can't just look at others doing things and casually jump in to take over their territory. We have done that in the past but mostly failed."

The Ethereum Layer 2 network Starknet developed by StarkWare officially launched strkBTC, a new type of asset based on Bitcoin, designed to achieve privacy balances and anonymous transfers through zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology, while maintaining composability with DeFi applications.After the launch of strkBTC, it supports "re-anonymization," allowing assets to be bridged back to a new, unassociated Bitcoin address, and provides compliance auditing and asset screening functions.

According to Jinshi reports, Federal Reserve official Kashkari disagreed at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting, believing that the uncertainty in the Strait of Hormuz means the Federal Reserve should acknowledge the risks of interest rate hikes in its statement.

According to Cointelegraph, Aptos recently launched the privacy token Confidential APT on its mainnet, which is pegged to APT at a 1:1 ratio. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to hide token balances and transfer amounts while maintaining wallet address visibility and transaction verifiability.Sherry Xiao, founding engineer of Aptos Labs, stated that the token aims to address the long-standing contradiction between blockchain privacy and compliance transparency, and can solve issues related to the public exposure of sensitive information such as on-chain salaries, treasury operations, and trading strategies. On the compliance front, the activation of the audit key must be approved through on-chain governance voting. The launch of Confidential APT stemmed from a governance proposal that was nearly unanimously passed. Xiao expects individual user adoption to be faster than that of enterprises, and if the mainnet operates stably for six months with good transaction volume, it will help shorten the sales cycle for enterprises.

SOL Strategies Inc. has signed a final agreement to acquire the assets of Solana native zero-knowledge technology company Darklake Labs for $1.2 million, with the transaction price consisting of $200,000 in cash and $1 million in equivalent common stock of the company.Darklake's core product Zyga is a dynamic zero-knowledge proof system native to Solana, which can achieve privacy protection at the transaction execution level and eliminate front-running and sandwich attacks. After the closing, Darklake's core team will join SOL Strategies, including CEO Vitor Py Braga (formerly of Meta and IBM), COO Amber Hales (formerly of Coinbase, with nearly a decade of compliance experience), and zero-knowledge research lead Tiago Alves.

The decentralized zero-knowledge proof verification layer Aligned updates the ALIGN token economics, with a total supply of 10 billion tokens and an initial circulation of approximately 16%.Of this, 23.5% will be allocated to the team (40% cliff unlock after 12 months, with the remaining portion unlocking linearly over 18 months), 19.71% will be allocated to investors, 18% will be allocated for the ecosystem (3.23% unlock at TGE, 6 months cliff unlock, with the remaining portion unlocking linearly over 24 months), 16.61% will be used for future reserves (40.24% unlock at TGE, 6 months cliff unlock, with the remaining portion unlocking linearly over 24 months), 11.4% will be allocated to the foundation (37.83% unlock at TGE, with the remaining portion unlocking linearly over 30 months), 8.74% will be used for airdrops (44.36% unlock at TGE), and 2.04% will be used for community sales (32.72% unlock at TGE).

a16z partner Andrew Chen pointed out that AI code generation will fundamentally replace spreadsheets—spreadsheets are essentially "business logic trapped in a grid," lacking version control, testing, and modularity.AI code generation will compress the marginal cost from "spreadsheets" to "software" to nearly zero, and approximately 1 billion spreadsheet users worldwide are expected to migrate to real software applications.

A bill has been proposed in New York State, USA, aiming to prohibit AI from answering questions in professional fields such as medicine, law, dentistry, nursing, psychology, and engineering.According to relevant interpretations, this action is essentially not about protecting the public, but rather "an industry that charges $500/hour is using politicians to protect its knowledge monopoly." Lawyers do not want users to know that AI can draft contracts in 30 seconds, doctors do not want users to know that AI can interpret blood reports better than residents, and engineers do not want users to know that AI can review your design sketches overnight. The intention behind New York State's proposed ban on AI answering professional questions is not to protect users, but to protect their businesses.

According to The Block, a16z Crypto criticized the colloquial use of the term "ZK" in certain developer environments in a blog post about its Jolt zkVM. The article pointed out that most zkVMs do not actually possess zero-knowledge properties unless expensive "wrapping" programs are applied. The author also mentioned that "zk" often becomes synonymous with "conciseness," meaning "short proofs that verify quickly," rather than true zero-knowledge privacy.As the community's focus on privacy grows, the misuse of this terminology is becoming a real issue. a16z's open-source Jolt zkVM launched a major upgrade on Tuesday, natively supporting zero-knowledge proofs. Jolt employs the NovaBlindFold folding scheme to create blinded proofs to prevent information leakage, making it suitable for privacy applications, with the zero-knowledge proofs generated after the upgrade only increasing by about 3 KB compared to the original non-ZK proofs.

StarkWare posted on the X platform that the zero-knowledge privacy protocol Nightfall developed by Ernst & Young has been deployed on Starknet.

According to CoinDesk, Hsiao-Wei Wang, co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, stated in an interview with CoinDesk that Ethereum is steadily moving towards making zero-knowledge cryptography a core component of the network in the future. Hsiao-Wei Wang described zero-knowledge as part of Ethereum's mid-term roadmap and noted that several breakthroughs have been achieved in the past year or two.While the current upgrade focus remains on improving Layer 2 network execution and Blob space, zero-knowledge as a protocol-level feature has become increasingly feasible. Ethereum researchers have released a native zkEVM plan that allows the network to use zero-knowledge proofs to validate transactions by default. This technology can significantly reduce the workload required to secure Ethereum, achieving scalability without sacrificing decentralization or reliability. Hsiao-Wei Wang emphasized that even as the network continues to evolve, resilience, security, censorship resistance, and neutrality remain core to Ethereum.

The cryptocurrency industry expresses regret over U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis, a supporter of cryptocurrency, announcing that she will not seek re-election in 2026. Cynthia Lummis stated that although she is a devoted legislator, she feels that her energy cannot support another six-year term. Collin McCune, head of government affairs at a16z, remarked that without Cynthia Lummis's efforts in Congress, the crypto industry would not have achieved its current success. David Sacks, the White House's AI and cryptocurrency director, described her as a great ally in the crypto space.Previously, Cynthia Lummis had strongly advocated for the Responsible Financial Innovation Act and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, aimed at providing regulatory clarity for digital assets. Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin, stated that although Cynthia Lummis has decided to step down, the work on policy-making is not yet complete, and there is still legislation to be passed in 2026.

OpenAI has launched GPT-5.2, focusing on professional knowledge work and long-process AI agent design. GPT-5.2 offers three versions: Instant, Thinking, and Pro. Instant is suitable for writing and information search; Thinking excels in deep work such as program development and planning; Pro provides the most accurate responses for complex problems.OpenAI states that the core goal of GPT-5.2 is to make AI more "economically valuable" in real work scenarios. Additionally, in multiple benchmark tests, GPT-5.2 outperformed industry professionals in various aspects.

According to Decrypt, the anonymous phone service provider Phreeli has launched in the United States, allowing users to register using only their postal code, without the need for personal information or payment data.Zcash co-founder Zooko Wilcox serves as an advisor, recommending the use of zero-knowledge access passes. Phreeli implements a zero-knowledge proof encryption system called Double-Blind Armadillo, which can verify billing without storing payment information. Users can pay with credit cards or Zcash, Monero.Phreeli founder Nicholas Merrill stated that the company aims to address the issue of excessive data collection by mainstream carriers. Phreeli was founded in 2019 and has raised $5 million in funding over the past year, utilizing T-Mobile's infrastructure.

According to market news, the zero-knowledge identity and human proof protocol Self announced the completion of a $9 million seed round financing, with investors including Greenfield Capital, a SoftBank subsidiary fund, and several well-known angel investors in the industry.Self also launched a points-based reward program aimed at promoting the widespread adoption of on-chain identity verification.