finance

The decentralized lending protocol Pencil Finance has announced the completion of a $1 million student loan portfolio on-chain, including fundraising, lending, repayment records, and fund returns, constituting a complete financing and repayment cycle. Animoca Brands, Open Campus, and NewCampus provided funding for this portfolio in July 2025.The education financing company ErudiFi issued most of the funds through Southeast Asian student loans and tuition financing, covering markets such as Indonesia and the Philippines. The portfolio operates for 12 months, supporting over 6,600 students across 118 schools and universities, of which approximately 1,050 students received funding directly attributable to Pencil Finance. Investors are divided into priority and subordinate shares, with the former providing fixed returns and enjoying repayment priority, while the latter has variable returns and bears the first loss from defaults. Pencil Finance claims this is the first fully on-chain student loan cycle, but has not disclosed interest rates, investor yields, default situations, or blockchain transaction records.

According to Bitwise CEO monitoring, there are currently 1,328 investors using the ATP. An important aspect of on-chain finance is providing participation opportunities for everyone.

According to Pie Shield citing Specter monitoring, the escrow contract of the fixed-rate lending protocol Notional Finance is suspected to have been attacked, resulting in a loss of approximately $1.7 million in DAI and USDC.The attacker subsequently exchanged the stolen funds for about 689.2 ETH and further deposited the funds into Tornado Cash. Currently, the reasons for the attack and the final scale of the losses are still pending further confirmation from the project team.

Student Loan RWA Agreement Pencil Finance announced the completion of its first fully on-chain student loan cycle, deploying $1 million in funding as a lender, with borrowers having repaid both principal and interest to the funders of the asset package. This loan package was funded in July 2025 by Animoca Brands, Open Campus, and New Campus, and is structurally divided into fixed-income senior shares and floating-income junior shares that bear the risk of priority losses.This $1 million on-chain loan cycle provides financing for approximately 6,600 students across 118 schools and universities in Southeast Asia, with about 1,050 students receiving direct funding. Pencil Finance stated that these loans target student groups underserved by traditional financial institutions, with 50% of borrowing students being female and 93% coming from low-income families, claiming this is the first fully on-chain loan cycle to transparently record student loan financing on the blockchain.In addition, tokenized RWA is increasingly being used to issue loans or as collateral for loans. In July of this year, the Brazilian stock exchange B3 issued a loan of 100,000 Brazilian Reais (approximately $19,600) secured by 10 tokenized cows, each cow possessing a unique digital token linked to a crypto digital identity.

After a two-day meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, G20 finance ministers and central bank governors issued a statement committing to developing clearer rules for digital assets to promote financial innovation. The statement acknowledges that digital financial innovations, including digital assets, can support "broad economic growth" and play a key role in driving private sector innovation.The statement reads: "We are committed to advancing a responsible and effective regulatory and supervisory framework to maintain financial stability, support economic growth, and establish a clear path for sound digital finance and digital asset innovation, while taking into account cross-border opportunities and challenges." G20 officials expressed anticipation for the upcoming findings from the Financial Stability Board regarding the cross-border impacts of global stablecoin arrangements, as well as related reports on stablecoin data sources, availability, and potential challenges.They also reiterated their commitment to strengthening the G20 roadmap for cross-border payments and called on member countries to extend the operating hours of large payment systems. Several G20 member countries, including the United States, the European Union, and Japan, have reviewed the potential of digital assets or stablecoins to enhance the efficiency and accessibility of existing financial and payment systems and have established relevant frameworks.

The security company Defimon issued an alert stating that a governance takeover attack against YAM Finance has been detected. After self-delegating approximately 504,000 YAM (about 3.3% of the total supply, slightly above the legal voting threshold), the attacker submitted YamGovernorAlpha proposal #45, which is described as empty ("0x"), with the sole action being to call the setPendingAdmin method of the YAM Timelock contract, pointing to the attacker's address.It has been disclosed that if the proposal is voted through and executed, the attacker will become the pendingAdmin, and then can fully control the Timelock through acceptAdmin, which includes management rights over all YAM protocol contracts and the DAO treasury, involving a risk amount of approximately $337,000. As the protocol is currently in a dormant state, Defimon Alerts reminds users holding YAM to vote against the proposal before block height 25897343 (about 34 hours remaining).

Liquid Capital founder Yi Lihua stated, "In the cryptocurrency industry for over a decade, it has been a small world with human emotions and conflicts. Perhaps it's too close to money, or perhaps there are no rules; regardless, the remaining voices in the industry are mostly negative, and the industry's reputation is getting worse.I sincerely hope everyone shifts their attention back to innovation and opportunities in the industry. A new bull market is about to begin, and on-chain finance, especially stocks, has opened up imagination. There are still many meaningful things and opportunities to gain wealth coming, not to mention that the entire cryptocurrency industry is just a fraction of what exists, with the AI industry, which is dozens of times larger than cryptocurrency, worth exploring."

SoftBank Group is seeking an additional $10 billion loan to refinance the related debt incurred from its investment in OpenAI and to raise further funds. According to informed sources, this loan has a term of two years and an interest rate approximately 275 basis points higher than the secured overnight financing rate (SOFR), with Mizuho Bank serving as the lead arranger and bookrunner.

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange service provider Coincheck announced that it has completed the registration for electronic payment methods and other transactions on August 27, 2026, becoming the second company in Japan to obtain a license related to stablecoins.Coincheck stated that it will gradually develop stablecoin and on-chain financial related businesses based on its previous cooperation with the American company Circle to expand the use cases of USDC in Japan. The company claims that stablecoins have price stability linked to fiat currencies, which can be used for around-the-clock, fast, and low-cost transfers and payments.

TokenPocket's cross-chain aggregation trading product Transit Finance announced an upgrade to its token information page, deeply integrating project and token data from the Web3 data platform RootData. Users can verify trading data, liquidity, security risks, position structure, and project background on the same page before trading.It is reported that the integrated RootData data covers more than 20 fields, including detailed project descriptions, financing information, news reports, calendar events, etc., to enrich the project profile and dynamic information on the Transit token information page, providing structured data support for users' trading decisions. Currently, the number of partners accumulated by RootData has exceeded 245.

Doppler Finance announced the launch of the native utility and governance token XDP, serving as the protocol coordination layer, supporting user participation, decentralized governance, and ecological growth. XDP is designed around three main functions: protocol privileges, governance, and future security modules. Users can stake XDP to gain access to premium vaults and strategies, priority for new products, and eligibility to participate in ecological activities; staking details will be announced separately.In terms of governance, XDP holders can participate in decisions regarding protocol parameters, ecological incentive budgets, vault plans, and future functionalities. The security module is planned to be launched in subsequent phases, where eligible users can configure their staked XDP into a coverage pool, assuming corresponding risks to earn additional incentives. The total supply of XDP is 10 billion, with over half allocated to ecological development, vaults, partners, and community growth, while contributors and investors have longer lock-up and vesting arrangements.The XDP genesis airdrop accounts for 1.0%, which will be fully unlocked for early users, contributors, and supporters at TGE; an additional 43% is allocated for ecology and incentives, to support subsequent Doppler Points seasons, XDP staking, and other community programs. The official contract address will only be published through official Doppler channels, and users should be wary of third-party information, phishing websites, and any requests for funds or private keys.

The development team of Term Finance, Term Labs, announced that after the governance attack incident, all Term Meta Vaults have been permanently closed, DAO governance rights have been revoked, but the withdrawal channel remains open. In an update on August 23, Term stated that this closure is irreversible and permanently prevents subsequent deposits, but did not disclose the scale of the remaining assets in the vault, only indicating that it will "explore pathways" to address any gaps, and the amount that depositors can recover remains undecided.Blockchain security company PeckShield estimates that the attacker stole approximately 2,843 ETH (worth about $6.87 million at the time) and 1.68 million USDC (which was later exchanged for about 1.68 million DAI), with total losses estimated at around $8.5 million. On-chain records confirm the related transfers: one transaction transferred 2,841.74 WETH to an address labeled "Term Finance Exploiter 1" by Etherscan, while another transaction transferred 1.68 million USDC to an address labeled "Term Finance Exploiter 2".Yearn stated that Term's vault contract uses its V3 architecture, but the attack occurred on Term's custom governance wrapper, which is not applicable to standard Yearn vaults. Term indicated that, according to the current investigation, its underlying protocol and direct lending market were not affected and is working with external security teams for remediation and recovery, but did not provide any compensation commitments or timelines.

According to Gate Europe CEO Dr. Giovanni Cunti's latest LinkedIn post, the next phase of digital asset adoption may no longer focus on guiding users to crypto platforms, but rather on integrating digital asset capabilities into the financial services that users are already using. Through embedded finance, scenarios such as payments, commerce, and fund transfers can directly connect to digital asset infrastructure, allowing users to access digital asset-related services without changing their existing financial service usage.Dr. Giovanni Cunti also pointed out that this trend is reshaping the competitive logic of the digital asset industry. Liquidity and product capabilities will still be important foundations, but whether payment channels, asset custody, risk management, and compliance systems can achieve synergy in different markets and regulatory environments will become increasingly critical. Europe has significant advantages in this development process, as MiCA is gradually establishing a more unified regulatory framework for digital assets, and the continuous evolution of payment infrastructure is creating new opportunities for compliant digital asset companies to collaborate deeply with the traditional financial system.For Gate Europe, the integration of digital assets and payment systems is becoming an important direction for business development. Relying on the compliance foundation established by the dual licensing system of MiCA and payment institutions (PI), Gate Europe will further promote the connection between digital assets and payment services, as well as a broader financial ecosystem. As digital assets gradually integrate into daily financial activities, they are expected to evolve from independent financial products into a core component of a new generation of financial infrastructure that is more open, interconnected, and programmable.

The State Council Information Office held a series of themed press conferences titled "Starting Off the 14th Five-Year Plan." Officials from the Ministry of Finance introduced the role of this year's proactive fiscal policy and outlined the key focus areas for policy efforts in the second half of the year.Vice Minister of Finance Liao Min stated that since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Finance has firmly implemented a more proactive fiscal policy:This year's fiscal expenditure budget arrangement has exceeded 30 trillion yuan for the first time.The scale of new government bonds has reached 11.89 trillion yuan, the largest in history.Central government transfers to local governments have exceeded 10 trillion yuan for the fourth consecutive year, reaching 10.42 trillion yuan.In the second half of the year, fiscal policy will continue to focus on three areas for effective results: accelerating the use of funds, increasing efforts to expand domestic demand, and strengthening fiscal reform management.Regarding incremental policies, in the second half of the year, based on the macroeconomic operation situation, the Ministry of Finance will timely plan and introduce practical and effective incremental policies to provide strong support for achieving a qualitative improvement and reasonable growth in the economy.