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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 market news, the security platform OX Security has disclosed that the developers of the AI agent project OpenClaw are becoming targets of cryptocurrency phishing activities.Attackers create fake GitHub accounts, initiate topics in repositories controlled by them, and @ dozens of developers, claiming they have won a $5000 CLAW token reward, leading them to a clone website that is almost identical to openclaw.ai. This phishing site includes a "Connect Wallet" button, aimed at stealing the assets of connected wallets. Malicious code is hidden in deeply obfuscated JavaScript files, featuring a "nuke" function that clears browser local storage data to hinder forensic analysis, and encodes information such as wallet addresses and transaction values to send back to the C2 server. Researchers identified a suspected cryptocurrency wallet address used to receive stolen funds. The related accounts were created last week and deleted within hours, with no confirmed victims at this time. OpenClaw has become a target for scammers due to its high visibility, and its Discord community has previously encountered a large amount of cryptocurrency spam. Earlier reports indicated that OpenClaw's founder warned to be cautious of cryptocurrency scam emails sent in the name of OpenClaw.

ZKsync announced a collaboration with five regional banks in the United States to develop a tokenized deposit network called Cari Network. This network is built on Matter Labs' Prividium platform, utilizing privacy-preserving permissioned blockchain infrastructure. The partner banks include Huntington Bank, First Horizon, M&T Bank, KeyBank, and Old National.Cari Network is positioned as a secure, private, and regulatory-compliant infrastructure, with tokenized deposits existing directly as bank liabilities and qualifying for FDIC insurance. It aims to connect the $8.3 trillion in assets held by regional banks to the blockchain, providing around-the-clock programmable digital currency services.

The Coinbase developer platform states that x402 now supports all ERC-20 tokens. Developers can receive payments using the following methods: → EIP-3009 (authorized transfer) → Permit2. This means that USDC, EURC, or any ERC-20 token supported by Permit2 can be used for on-chain payments with x402.In addition, x402 has added support for Sign-in-with-X (SIWX), addressing the issue of repeated access to purchased content; the x402 MCP software package can monetize any MCP tool and integrate it directly into AI workflows.

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.

Cryptocurrency proprietary trading firm Velotrade, founded by former derivatives traders from JPMorgan, Dresdner Kleinwort, and Bank of America, announced the launch of a cryptocurrency proprietary trading platform that allows traders to operate trading accounts ranging from $5,000 to $200,000 without the need for their own capital, sharing profits instead.Velotrade stated that its team has previously operated a fintech trade finance platform that has cumulatively paid out $2.5 billion to clients since 2016. The new platform will only support cryptocurrency trading and will use AI hedging and institutional liquidity bridging to replicate positions in the real market when traders are profitable, creating a business model tied to trader earnings. The platform offers up to 6x leverage on BTC and ETH.

The Chief Information Security Officer of Slow Fog Technology, 23pds, issued a reminder stating that ClawHub developers should be aware of phishing and credential leakage risks. Currently, ClawHub relies on developers' GitHub one-click login. Previously, the Sha1-Hulud worm stole a large number of developers' GitHub credentials, and attackers may take the opportunity to attack Skills.The attack path is: credential theft → attacker gains GitHub permissions → logs into ClawHub as a developer → publishes malicious Skills to implant backdoors → users download and install, executing malicious code leading to system intrusion.

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.

The infrastructure developer behind Optimism, OP Labs, announced the layoff of 20 employees, accounting for approximately 19.6% of the total team. Jing Wang, co-founder of Optimism and CEO of OP Labs, stated in an internal letter that the layoffs are not due to financial pressure, as the company currently has sufficient funds and years of cash flow reserves. This move aims to "streamline operations, accelerate decision-making, and reduce collaboration costs."Currently, Optimism is undergoing a transformation. Last month, Base, the largest chain in the OP Stack ecosystem, announced a shift to a self-developed unified tech stack, which raised market concerns about Optimism's long-term sustainability, leading to a roughly 37% drop in the price of OP tokens over the past 30 days. Despite the challenges, OP Labs has established a roadmap for 2026, focusing on faster block times, native interoperability, custom compliance controls, and a zero-knowledge proof (ZK Proof) system aligned with the Ethereum roadmap. Additionally, OP token holders had previously voted to allocate 50% of Superchain sequencer revenue for token buybacks.

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.

Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett posted on the X platform, stating that a review of the trial case of Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm revealed that Judge Failla used a self-driving car analogy in the lawsuit against Uniswap by user Nessa Risle, and seemed to show more sympathy towards the developers behind Uniswap, while being stricter with the developers of Tornado Cash.According to related materials shared by Eleanor Terrett, the judge's viewpoint was that holding software developers responsible for the misuse of neutral infrastructure by strangers would be illogical, considering Uniswap as "neutral infrastructure," while Tornado Cash was deemed to have "engaged in illegal financial activities" (continuing operations despite knowing it was being used for money laundering). This statement indicates that U.S. courts may reference whether developers are merely providing neutral tools rather than participating in illegal activities when determining liability related to decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure in the future.

According to official news, the Zcash Open Development Lab, founded by former Electric Coin Company CEO Josh Swihart, has completed over $25 million in funding. This round of financing was participated in by Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Cypherpunk Technologies, Maelstrom, Chapter One, Balaji Srinivasan, David Friedberg, Haseeb Qureshi, James Nicholas, and others.ECC launched its flagship Zcash wallet Zodl in 2024, setting a new standard for Zcash usability. Earlier this year, the original ECC team, including the wallet product team, joined ZODL as a whole to continue building the main user interface for Zcash, aiming to create Zodl as an open self-custody privacy financial platform, expanding ecosystem interoperability through collaboration, and driving privacy ZEC transactions into the global mainstream.The development of the Zcash protocol remains a core focus for ZODL. Engineers who previously designed, built, and maintained key systems for Zcash at ECC have joined ZODL, continuing to advance the protocol evolution with the same commitment and integrity, ensuring that technological advancements support real needs and drive Zcash's product-market fit.At the heart of the Zcash Open Development Lab is the development of an open, self-custodied private financial platform, aimed at expanding ecosystem interoperability through collaboration and pushing protected ZEC transactions into the global mainstream market.