sea

According to Cointelegraph, the Ethereum Foundation has recently faced criticism from the community for selling ETH, unstaking, and having limited public communication. However, blockchain researcher and investor William Mougayar defended it in a post, stating that the outside world has long misunderstood the Foundation's positioning. ETH, the Ethereum network, and the Ethereum Foundation itself are three different aspects: ETH is an asset, Ethereum is a shared computing infrastructure, and the Foundation is a non-profit organization responsible for promoting protocol development, one of its goals even being "to make the founders gradually less important." The Ethereum Foundation is currently on a "subtraction path," strengthening the network by promoting protocol upgrades, funding underlying research, and reducing its own centralized influence.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission and seven other departments jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for Comprehensive Rectification of Illegal Cross-Border Securities, Futures, and Fund Operating Activities."It is reported that the overall requirement of the "Rectification Plan" is to carry out concentrated rectification for two years, completely banning the illegal cross-border operating activities of foreign securities, futures, and fund operating institutions, and achieving the rectification goal of "resolutely banning the illegal and steadily cleaning up the existing stock."The targets of rectification include foreign institutions engaged in illegal cross-border securities, futures, and fund business, domestic related or cooperative entities assisting foreign institutions in illegal cross-border operations, illegal intermediaries soliciting domestic investors, internet platforms and online self-media that illegally publish information, and so on. Illegal cross-border operating activities of foreign institutions will be banned in accordance with the law, and behaviors of relevant entities that violate laws and regulations related to foreign exchange management, anti-money laundering, cybersecurity and information management, personal information protection, etc., will also be included in the scope of rectification.

According to The Block, former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist posted on the X platform, proposing the establishment of a new organization aligned with the Ethereum economy to "save" Ethereum. He believes that the Ethereum Foundation currently holds less than 0.1% of ETH, with no staking or fee income flowing in, so the new organization needs to raise at least $1 billion in funding, managed by competent leaders, with part of the funds coming from staking income, and driven by a more responsible board to boost Ethereum's price.Feist left the foundation last year to join Layer 1 network Tempo. He co-created the Danksharding shard design in the Ethereum community to enhance Layer 2 scalability, was appointed as a strategic advisor in areas such as L1 scaling and user experience during the restructuring of the foundation's leadership, and proposed EIP-9698, which would increase the Gas limit by 100 times.

Sentient announced the latest season of the hackathon event "Challenge 0" will be held from May 20 to June 22, with a total prize pool of over $6,000 and MiniMax points.It is reported that this challenge focuses on reasoning based on real financial data, using Databricks' OfficeQA benchmark. Participating teams are required to build an AI Agent that reads and reasons financial statements based on historical documents from the U.S. Treasury (1939-2025) to answer 246 financial questions.The official statement indicates that developers do not need to write code and can directly use pre-built coding Agents to participate, optimizing through prompt engineering, MCP servers, and other methods. The system will evaluate and rank based on dimensions such as accuracy, latency, and cost.

According to Bloomberg, AI search startup Exa Labs has completed a new round of financing of $250 million, led by a16z, with a post-investment valuation rising to $2.2 billion.The company focuses on building the infrastructure for search engines in the AI era. After this round of financing, its valuation has increased more than three times compared to about $700 million last fall. Industry insiders believe that with the accelerated popularization of artificial intelligence, the traditional search industry landscape dominated by Google may undergo a reshaping.

According to Coin Desk, former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Timothy Massad stated that despite Trump's public commitment to oppose central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and government-backed stablecoins, the U.S. may ultimately launch a government-supported on-chain digital dollar scheme driven by the global development of tokenized finance.Massad mentioned that the White House is conducting closed-door research on the relevant infrastructure, and the U.S. has also participated in the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Project Agora. Mark Gould, head of payment services at the Federal Reserve, stated that a digital dollar is currently not within the Federal Reserve's responsibilities, but if a government-supported digital dollar is launched, it will be the responsibility of the Federal Reserve.

According to CoinDesk, former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner has increased his disclosed investment size from $5.5 billion to $13.67 billion as of March 31, 2026, and has significantly bought shares in Bitcoin mining companies and AI infrastructure companies.His key holdings include mining companies such as IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, Bitfarms, Bitdeer, and Hive Digital, betting that their power resources and data center capabilities will benefit from the growing demand for AI computing power.At the same time, he has also established a short position of approximately $7.46 billion in semiconductors, including large put option positions on the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, NVIDIA, Oracle, and Broadcom.

According to Jinshi News, the technology company Hangzhou Yunshen Technology Co., Ltd., which focuses on embodied intelligent robots and their supporting products and solutions, has released a prospectus. It shows that the revenue from the embodied intelligent robot project for the year 2025 is expected to reach 322.3773 million yuan; the revenue from product components is expected to reach 11.9501 million yuan; and the revenue from supporting services is expected to reach 2.573 million yuan.According to the resolutions from the company's first extraordinary general meeting of shareholders in 2026 and the ninth meeting of the first board of directors, this issuance aims to raise 2,502.511 million yuan. After deducting issuance costs, the funds will be invested in the research and development projects for embodied algorithms and models, the research and development projects for robot bodies and solutions, the industrialization projects for embodied intelligent robots, and the construction projects for embodied intelligent robot bases.

According to the official announcement, Websea officially opened withdrawals on May 18 at 16:00 (UTC+8), marking the platform's entry into a substantial and comprehensive recovery phase. The resumption of withdrawals is being carried out in an orderly manner with the support of strategic investors. According to previous news, the platform has reached a strategic cooperation intention with a Middle Eastern family fund to fully support the platform's long-term operation and development.At the same time, the platform will advance the Proof of Reserves (PoR) process construction and plans to conduct regular disclosures, enhancing the transparency and verifiability of the platform's assets through a combination of on-chain verification and third-party audits. The platform has also publicly disclosed reserve funds and hot wallet addresses for user inquiry and supervision.Websea CMO Herbert R. Sim stated that the opening of withdrawals is an important milestone in the full restoration of operational order. In the future, the platform will promote withdrawals to be fully and completely open based on business recovery and market conditions, and will continue to improve the risk control and asset protection system, pushing the platform into a more robust development phase.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the "San Diego Padres vs. Seattle Mariners" event on the prediction market Polymarket, the win probability for the "San Diego Padres" option in the sub-market "Spread -1.5" has experienced significant fluctuations, soaring from 50.5% an hour ago to the current 96.5% (a fluctuation of 46%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.

Galaxy Research Director Alex Thorn posted on the X platform that the U.S. Senate Banking Committee has voted 15-9 this week to advance the CLARITY Act to the full Senate voting stage, with time running short, and it is expected to take about nine weeks.The subsequent timeline may be: June 1: Begin coordinating the bill versions between the Senate Banking Committee and the Agriculture Committee; June 15: Full Senate begins debate; June 22: The Senate may complete the final vote; July 13: Coordination between the Senate and the House of Representatives is completed; early August: President Trump signs it into law (if it proceeds as planned).Alex Thorn's analysis suggests that the Democrats are focusing on "ethical provisions" aimed at limiting the digital asset holdings and profits of senior officials and their family members, while DeFi regulation and the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA) are still under negotiation. The CLARITY Act will lay the foundation for innovation in the U.S. digital asset market and investor protection.

Binance Research released a report stating that cryptocurrencies are not a haven for illegal finance. In 2025, approximately 11% of illegal cryptocurrency transaction volume was seized, which is about 55 times the recovery rate of fiat currency. This data comes from public reports by organizations such as Tether, Interpol, and T3 Financial Crime Unit, rather than estimates from a single entity.For reference, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that less than 1% of illegal fiat currency transaction volume is seized globally each year. Even excluding the Prince Group case (involving approximately $15 billion in Bitcoin), the remaining cryptocurrency seizures in 2025 are still about 10 times that of the traditional financial system. Additionally, SlowMist and PeckShield tracked that the proportion of stolen funds recovered or frozen in 2025 was between 8.3% and 13.2%. This reflects the rapid event response and close coordination among exchanges, issuers, and law enforcement agencies.The report concludes that cryptocurrency crime has not been resolved. However, the view that cryptocurrencies are particularly prone to fostering illegal activities is gradually being misunderstood.

Binance Research released a report stating that crypto assets are not a "safe haven for illegal funds." In 2025, approximately 11% of illegal fund flows in the global crypto sector have been seized or frozen, which is about 55 times the recovery rate of traditional fiat currency systems.The report pointed out that this data is derived from public law enforcement and freezing actions by institutions such as Tether, Interpol, and T3 Financial Crime Unit, rather than statistics from a single regulatory agency. At the same time, compared to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated recovery rate of less than 1% for illegal funds in the traditional financial system, the tracking and recovery efficiency in the crypto sector is significantly higher.The research also mentioned that even after excluding a single large case (involving about $15 billion in Bitcoin related to the Prince Group), the remaining crypto asset recovery rate in 2025 is still about 10 times that of the traditional financial system. Additionally, data from SlowMist and PeckShield shows that in 2025, approximately 8.3% to 13.2% of stolen crypto assets were successfully recovered or frozen, reflecting improved efficiency in security response and collaboration among exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and law enforcement agencies.The report concluded that while the issue of crypto crime still exists, the view that "crypto assets are inherently more suitable for illegal activities" is being weakened by on-chain transparency and regulatory collaboration capabilities.

According to the official announcement, the second phase of the Gate contract points lottery has officially started, with two major prize pools set up.Among them, users holding Gate contract points ≥50 can consume 20 points to participate in the 20 GUSD lottery, with a total of 5,000 winning spots; users holding points ≥40 can consume 20 points to receive a 100 USDT position experience voucher, with a total of 3,000 spots available.In addition, participants must upgrade the Gate App to version 8.18.0 or above to participate, and the web version is also open. The GUSD lottery time is from May 15, 18:00 to May 18, 18:00 (UTC+8), and the voucher prize pool redemption time is from May 18, 18:00 to 23:59 (UTC+8). Rewards are expected to be distributed to user accounts within 1 hour after the event ends.