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EY announced the launch of the Blockchain Privacy Sandbox, a web-based development environment designed to help businesses and developers experiment with privacy-preserving smart contracts on public chains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. It is reported that this sandbox environment is based on the open-source technology Starlight, allowing developers to convert standard Solidity smart contracts into applications with privacy protection features while retaining the original contract logic, and providing exploratory, replicable, and modifiable sample projects to accelerate proof of concept development.Currently, the Blockchain Privacy Sandbox is mainly used for experimentation and validation, supporting businesses in assessing the feasibility of privacy smart contracts, testing functionalities, and validating application scenarios before officially integrating Starlight. EY stated that this tool lowers the technical barrier for conducting privacy experiments on public chains by providing an easy-to-use web environment. Starlight, as the underlying ZKP compiler, has been open-sourced, allowing developers to integrate privacy features through its GitHub repository. As businesses' demand for data privacy protection on public chains increases, the attention on zero-knowledge proof technology continues to rise. Relevant reports indicate that the global ZKP market is expected to reach approximately $7.6 billion by 2033.

Cointelegraph Research's latest report shows that the United Nations Development Programme is applying blockchain technology to the construction of public digital infrastructure, focusing on addressing issues of transparency, collaborative efficiency, and trustworthy data sharing in government systems.The report "New Tech, New Partners" outlines 42 practical cases covering areas such as digital payments, financial inclusion, climate funding, data governance, and community investment, among which 7 focus on digital identity and data systems, primarily distributed in developing economies in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe. The research points out that UNDP adopts a "pilot---validate---scale" approach, collaborating with governments, developers, and local businesses to first implement small-scale projects and then gradually promote them based on actual results. It also emphasizes a "platform-agnostic" architecture to maintain system openness and interoperability. Furthermore, the report highlights the importance of governance and risk control, stating that the application of blockchain in public systems requires accompanying privacy protection, regulatory frameworks, and audit mechanisms to prevent data misuse and smart contract risks. Overall, blockchain is extending from financial scenarios to public governance infrastructure, becoming one of the important technological options for digital transformation in various countries.

According to CoinDesk, Brett Guynn, a legal official at the Federal Reserve, stated that there are currently no ongoing central bank digital currency (CBDC) development plans.

According to market news, the Solana core development team Anza has launched the Constellation protocol, a multi-concurrent proposer protocol that shortens Solana's block cycle to 50 milliseconds, making it the fastest blockchain in terms of economic rhythm at the protocol level.This protocol replaces the single leader model, eliminating exclusive control over transaction inclusion and ordering through concurrent proposers, enforcing fairness at the protocol level without relying on trusted third parties or modifying clients, while the validator economic model remains largely unchanged.

According to The Block, Brad Jones, Assistant Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), stated in a speech that the advancement of asset tokenization has shifted from "whether" to "how" to implement it.Research from Project Acacia shows that tokenization technology can bring about AUD 16.7 billion in efficiency gains to the Australian economy each year. Jones pointed out that stablecoins and bank deposit tokens can play complementary roles—the former is suitable for small emerging tokenization markets, while the latter, with prudent regulation and central bank liquidity support, will play a more important role in larger markets. The RBA also announced the establishment of a digital financial market infrastructure sandbox, the formation of a regulatory-industry tokenization advisory group, and the expansion of the deposit token working group to promote interbank interoperability.

According to CoinDesk, Amy Oldenburg, the head of digital asset strategy at Morgan Stanley, stated at the New York Digital Assets Summit that the entry of large Wall Street banks into the cryptocurrency space is not driven by concerns over missed opportunities, but rather the result of years of advancing the modernization of financial infrastructure.Oldenburg pointed out that Morgan Stanley's digital asset strategy covers multiple aspects including trading, asset management, and infrastructure. The bank plans to launch support for tokenized stock trading on its alternative trading system in the second half of 2026, which currently handles stocks, ETFs, and American Depositary Receipts.Internally, the bank is overhauling its decades-old core systems to support faster settlement and continuous trading. Oldenburg emphasized that the complexity of financial institutions' systems far exceeds the expectations of startups, and no single institution can complete the modernization transformation alone; it requires the collaborative effort of the entire global financial network.

According to Jinshi reports, Fed's Daly stated that the economy has at least two potential development paths. Prolonged conflicts may exacerbate the trade-offs in monetary policy.

U.S. Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis stated that we have come too far to return to a state of regulatory uncertainty. Digital assets represent the future, and now is the time for the U.S. to provide the necessary development environment for them.

The Algorand Foundation and Algorand Technologies announced an agreement to integrate the intellectual property of Algorand Technologies and the development and support activities of the Algorand protocol into the Algorand Foundation.In addition, to support the resource needs of Algorand Technologies, Silvio Micali, and the Algorand Foundation in ensuring the ongoing maintenance and support of the Algorand protocol, the Algorand Foundation will commit to investing at least $15 million for the technical maintenance, enhancement, and support of the Algorand protocol.

According to PR Newswire, the tokenized securities infrastructure development company Ironlight Group announced the completion of a $21 million Series A financing, with participation from former TD Bank President and CEO Greg Braca, the Sei Development Foundation, and Laidlaw Private Equity, among others.The new funds will be used to expand the scale of Ironlight Markets' alternative trading system (ATS) and accelerate the construction of a market that unifies core capital market functions within the U.S. regulatory framework, supporting tokenized securities covering areas such as private equity, structured products, fixed income, private credit, and real estate.

a16z partner Noah Levine posted on the X platform, stating that a previous Bloomberg article cited data from x402.org claiming that AI agents completed $24 million in payments within 30 days, but Allium Labs data shows that the actual transaction volume for AI agents during the same period was about $3 million, and after excluding wash trading, it was approximately $1.6 million.Levine noted that current AI payment activities are mainly concentrated in the developer tools sector, including web scraping platform Firecrawl, AI browser Browserbase, and AI image platform Freepik. Companies like Stripe, Cloudflare, and Vercel have integrated the payment standard x402 developed by Coinbase, and Google has also embedded this system into its agent payment protocol. Levine stated that the $1.6 million transaction volume is not large, but the scale of the infrastructure built around it is considerable, as these companies are betting on the market prospects after AI agents become the default buyers.Additionally, Coinbase announced that its x402 Facilitator has added support for Polygon, allowing developers to accept USDC payments on Polygon, Base, and Solana. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that the transaction volume of AI agents will soon surpass that of humans.

According to Bloomberg, Bridge Data Centres (BDC) plans to invest up to SGD 5 billion (approximately USD 3.9 billion) in its home market of Singapore for the development of artificial intelligence technologies, aiming to accelerate its business growth in Asia.BDC CEO Eric Fan stated that the private company will invest in research projects and facilities, focusing on advanced power architecture, next-generation cooling systems, AI-driven operations, and energy optimization for high-density computing environments.

The main development branch of the Bitcoin client Bitcoin Core has merged the Cluster Mempool update (PR #34616), which is expected to be included in the upcoming Bitcoin Core 31 release.This upgrade will redesign the way nodes manage pending transactions (mempool) by grouping related transactions for processing, aiming to improve block packing efficiency and optimize fee calculations for RBF and CPFP transactions. Bitcoin Core 31 is expected to be released in the second half of 2026.

The two major financial regulatory agencies in the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), committing to enhance collaboration in the regulation of crypto assets and the launch of new digital asset products to support legitimate innovation and protect investors.According to the statements from both parties, the MOU aims to "guide coordination and cooperation between the two agencies," focusing on supporting legitimate innovation, maintaining market integrity, and ensuring investor and customer protection. The two agencies also plan to jointly promote the development of a federal-level policy framework to establish a "fit-for-purpose regulatory framework" for emerging technologies such as crypto assets. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins stated that the long-standing disputes over regulatory authority, redundant registration requirements, and differing regulatory rules between the SEC and CFTC have somewhat stifled innovation and prompted some market participants to turn to other jurisdictions.Under the MOU, the two agencies will also coordinate to address regulatory barriers that hinder the legitimate launch of new financial products, including those related to crypto assets. While MOUs typically do not have legal binding force, the market generally views the formal commitment of the SEC and CFTC to enhance policy coordination as a positive signal for the digital asset industry. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig stated that the reason the U.S. financial markets lead globally is their ability to continuously adapt to investor needs, and the regulatory system must evolve in tandem to achieve more unified and comprehensive market oversight.

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.

Hangzhou Xiaoshan District issued the "Several Measures to Support the Development of OpenClaw & OPC-STC in Hangzhou Xiaoshan District (Draft for Comments)." It encourages the establishment of market-oriented and professional innovation platform carriers to set up "OpenClaw-like Intelligent Agent Service Areas," providing free deployment of OpenClaw-like intelligent agents and offering one-stop services such as technical guidance and market promotion. Certain subsidies will be granted to eligible innovation platform carriers.For eligible OPC-STC enterprises, a subsidy of 30% will be provided for the actual model invocation fees paid for using OpenClaw-like intelligent agents to call domestic multimodal large models for AIGC creation and production, with a maximum annual subsidy of 100,000 yuan per enterprise.

According to Bloomberg, Amazon is returning to the bond market with a massive cross-border issuance, which has intensified the corporate borrowing wave driven by the AI boom.Insiders revealed that the company plans to issue up to 11 tranches in the form of U.S. investment-grade bonds, with maturities ranging from 2 to 50 years. The sources added that preliminary pricing discussions for the longest bond (maturing in 2076) indicate a premium of about 1.55 percentage points over U.S. Treasuries. The individuals requested anonymity due to the private nature of the information.HSBC Holdings, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan will be responsible for underwriting this bond issuance. This is the latest in a series of large bond issuances by major cloud computing companies, which are preparing to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in building AI infrastructure. So far, investor demand remains strong, with recent bond offerings being oversubscribed multiple times.

Recently, with the launch of Sui ETF ($SUIS) on Nasdaq and the release of the USDsui stablecoin, the financial infrastructure of the Sui public chain is continuously improving. The traditional funding channels and the on-chain liquidity system are being enhanced in tandem, leading to a sustained increase in ecological activity. Meanwhile, the Sui DeFi sector has also seen frequent new developments, such as the NAVI Protocol and other core protocols continuously driving the growth of lending and liquidity markets, further enhancing the efficiency of ecological funds. Against this backdrop, the Premium Exchange (PRE DEX), incubated by the NAVI Protocol Foundation, is also steadily advancing its ecological layout. As the Sui financial system gradually takes shape, DeFi projects like PRE DEX are expected to play a more significant role in ecological trading and value discovery.