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Router Protocol, a cross-chain infrastructure project supported by Coinbase Ventures, announced that it will cease all operations by September 30 and plans to permanently destroy 303,333,198 ROUTE tokens held in its treasury, accounting for about 30% of the total supply of nearly 1 billion tokens. The team released a statement on X, stating that over the past year, they attempted commercialization, licensing, and acquisition negotiations, but failed to achieve sustainable operational results.Router identified the flow of funds from the cryptocurrency sector to artificial intelligence and the decline in cross-chain asset transfer fees as core challenges facing its operations. As activities concentrated on fewer networks and standardized infrastructure, the demand for its services has decreased. The team noted that bridging economic profits are thin, fees have been compressed, and costs have never stopped. As part of the closure, Router will negotiate with centralized exchanges to stop supporting ROUTE tokens, and the delisting arrangements and withdrawal processes may vary across exchanges.Router raised $4.1 million from investors including Coinbase Ventures and Polygon in 2021 and launched the proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain Router Chain in July 2024, but it was shut down in September 2025 due to infrastructure costs, validator expansion, and security risks. The team also disclosed two security incidents in 2025: in February, approximately 80% of the value was recovered through negotiations after a vulnerability incident, while losses from a chain-level vulnerability in July could not be recovered.

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.

Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has suspended its Black Sea route service to Russia due to a drone attack.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the TRUMP token team's address (2RH...FSK) transferred 3.837 million SOL one hour ago, worth 9.33 million USD, and entered OKX after being routed through BitGo.

The decentralized exchange protocol atomiq announced that it has made the difficult decision to temporarily take all atomiq swap routes offline. The project stated that, as a small team, it is currently unable to withstand a large number of complex AI-assisted attacks targeting its infrastructure.atomiq emphasized that, due to the trustless nature of the exchange protocol, user funds are not at risk. The related web application remains accessible, and users can request refunds for past swaps at any time. For any questions, users can contact through their support channels. The team thanks its loyal users and states that it will strive to return with a stronger presence.

According to Axios, payment giant Stripe stated in a letter to investors that January 1 marks "the beginning of a singularity," viewing it as a significant turning point in a long-term trend, and believes that maintaining a private structure is best suited for this critical moment, with the IPO likely to remain on hold. The company reported a 41% year-on-year revenue growth in the first half of the year and a 43% increase in free cash flow; 88% of the companies in Forbes AI 50 (including OpenAI and Anthropic) are building on its platform, with revenue from AI and crypto companies more than doubling year-on-year.Stripe also confirmed the acquisition of the AI routing platform OpenRouter, with the transaction amount not publicly disclosed; Axios learned that the amount exceeds $8 billion and is primarily paid in stock. Stripe stated that remaining private helps advance mergers and acquisitions and long-term investments without diluting shareholders, with its equity count now lower than three years ago, and a compound annual return of about 31% since the D round. The company stated that the total payment volume on its platform is expected to reach $1.9 trillion by 2025, a year-on-year growth of 34%; in February this year, the employee stock purchase valuation was approximately $159 billion. There are also reports that Stripe is in discussions with Advent International to acquire PayPal for about $53 billion.

The U.S. military has established a shipping corridor in the Strait of Hormuz, transporting about 10 million barrels of oil daily, which is about half of the pre-war shipping volume. This move alleviates the impact of the war on oil supplies and has a significant effect on the global energy market.

According to Business Insider, Stripe is in talks to acquire the AI model marketplace startup OpenRouter for over $8 billion.If the deal goes through, the more than 17% stake held by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) will be worth nearly $1.5 billion, while it initially invested about $20 million; Menlo Ventures holds over 6% of the stake, having invested less than $50 million, and its current value has exceeded $500 million. The total return for the two institutions is close to $2 billion.

Market news indicates that Stripe is about to acquire the artificial intelligence company OpenRouter for over $7 billion. The final price of the acquisition may still fluctuate.It is reported that OpenRouter was established in 2023 and is positioned as an AI infrastructure platform that connects users with various large language models, allowing developers to call AI models from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google through a unified interface, and choose different models based on performance, price, and availability.If the deal is completed, it will become one of Stripe's significant moves in the AI field in recent years. Stripe has previously focused mainly on payment infrastructure, financial services, and enterprise software, and the acquisition of OpenRouter may further drive its expansion into the AI developer infrastructure sector.Additionally, the tokenized asset data platform RootData shows that OpenRouter co-founder Alex Atallah is also a co-founder and CTO of OpenSea.

Iran and Oman have reached an agreement on the shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, and both sides are gradually reaching an agreement on the management of this waterway.The spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry stated that the finalized "shipping map" is part of a broader agreement that will ensure the safe passage of vessels.

Justin Drake posted on the X platform that Ethereum L1 will no longer use the SNARK-friendly hash function Poseidon, which has dominated since 2019, and will instead turn to traditional hash functions such as SHA2 or BLAKE2s.This adjustment is based on advancements in the field of SNARK design, shifting the focus from "SNARK-friendly hashing" to "hash-friendly SNARK." By aligning Boolean operations in traditional hashing with binary field native, the proof performance of traditional hashing in SNARK has reached 1 million per second, with an overhead of about 100 times.Research from Binius and Flock has driven relevant progress. The Ethereum Foundation's post-quantum team is advancing this route, with a roadmap that includes deploying production-level leanVM in 2027, and deploying in the consensus layer, execution layer, and data processing layer in 2028.Justin Drake also stated that the enhanced capabilities of AI in cryptanalysis have recently led to setbacks for the lattice-based scheme HAWK and the homomorphic scheme SQIsign, with hash-based schemes being used for post-quantum signatures on the blockchain. The trend of open-source automated research is also accelerating, with SNARK.fast achieving 1.8 million BLAKE3 proofs per second.

According to The Information, fintech company Stripe is in exclusive acquisition talks with AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter, with a deal valuation of approximately $10 billion. Sources reveal that OpenRouter had previously received acquisition interest from several large tech companies, but Stripe has now entered exclusive negotiation stages. The related deal has not yet been finalized, and specific terms may still change.OpenRouter was founded in 2023 and is positioned as an AI infrastructure platform that connects users with various large language models, allowing developers to call AI models from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google through a unified interface, and choose different models based on performance, price, and availability. As enterprises accelerate the adoption of generative AI, the importance of AI model calling infrastructure and model routing services continues to rise. OpenRouter has become a key intermediary in the AI application development ecosystem by providing model aggregation, traffic allocation, and cost optimization capabilities.If the deal is completed, it will become one of Stripe's significant moves in the AI field in recent years. Stripe has primarily focused on payment infrastructure, financial services, and enterprise software, and acquiring OpenRouter may further drive its expansion into the AI developer infrastructure space. Market participants believe that as the number of AI models rapidly increases, infrastructure companies that connect different models, optimize calling costs, and manage AI workflows are gaining more attention, and OpenRouter's potential high valuation also reflects investors' optimism about growth opportunities in the AI application layer and infrastructure layer.

According to the Iranian Fars News Agency, informed sources revealed that the northern and southern channels of the Strait of Hormuz will be canceled, and all traffic will subsequently be transferred to the Central Corridor, managed by Iran at the entrance and jointly managed by Iran and Oman at the exit.

According to Jinshi reports, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister stated that Iran demands a change in the current navigation routes in the Strait of Hormuz, as these routes are no longer suitable under the current security situation.

According to Jinshi reports, on August 3 local time, the U.S. Central Command stated that the U.S. military continues to strictly enforce the maritime blockade against Iran. As of that day, the U.S. military has altered the navigation routes of 44 commercial vessels, rendered 2 vessels incapacitated, and boarded and inspected 2 vessels.

According to Jinshi reports, Russia stated on Monday that it is strengthening the protection of vessels in the Sea of Azov - Black Sea region while developing alternative shipping routes.Due to hostile drone attacks on maritime vessels leading to heightened tensions in the Sea of Azov, Russia has established a special working group to study new transportation routes and will shift some cargo to other transportation methods.The Russian Ministry of Transport stated that it will implement additional measures in conjunction with the Ministry of Defense to ensure navigation safety and protect commercial vessels in the Sea of Azov - Black Sea area.

According to Jinshi reports, the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry stated that the United States is cooperating with certain regional forces to forcibly open a southern route in the Strait of Hormuz, which is not safe.