foundation

According to CoinDesk, the DeFi Education Fund (DEF) based in Washington, USA, stated in response to the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regarding the consultation paper on the regulation of crypto asset activities that regulatory obligations should only apply to entities that have "unilateral control" over user assets or transactions, and should not be considered intermediaries solely for developing or participating in decentralized protocols.DEF argues that "control" should be linked to specific operational powers such as the ability to unilaterally initiate or block transactions, modify protocol parameters, or exclude users, and warns that directly applying the requirements for prudent regulation, reporting, and platform access of centralized trading platforms, as well as complete anti-money laundering obligations, to automated, non-custodial DeFi protocols will be structurally mismatched.

The Ethereum Foundation's Co-Executive Director Tomasz Stańczak will step down at the end of February 2026, to be succeeded by Bastian Aue, who will co-lead with the current Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei.Tomasz stated that over the past year, the Ethereum Foundation has achieved multiple goals, including accelerating decision-making, enhancing communication with the younger generation, bringing new energy to the builder community, improving open communication on social media and podcasts, being more open to institutional participation, supporting founders, and formulating treasury policies. After stepping down, Tomasz plans to continue participating in the Ethereum ecosystem as a core developer, focusing on proxy core development and governance work. He emphasized that Ethereum is becoming the underlying verification and transaction platform for financial infrastructure, with 2025 being a clear choice for institutions.

The Ethereum Foundation officially announced that the Hong Kong Ethereum Community Center is now officially operational.This community center focuses on offline communication, co-creation, and event hosting, and is regarded as an important node for connecting the Ethereum ecosystem in East Asia.

The Ethereum Foundation announced that the Chinese version of the official Ethereum website for institutions has been launched, facilitating global builders and institutional leaders to participate more easily in the Ethereum ecosystem. Users can search for institutional use cases, on-chain data analysis, and community research results on the website.

Sonic Labs has issued a statement regarding recent public comments about Andre Cronje and the Sonic network. In 2018, a Korean team initiated an ICO for Fantom (now renamed Sonic), which failed to deliver a fully functional product due to mismanagement, resulting in the depletion of a significant amount of funds. Andre Cronje joined in June 2018 and rebooted Fantom. At the time Andre joined, the treasury held less than $5 million in non-FTM assets, which grew to nine figures between 2020 and 2021.Sonic Labs further stated that Andre did not design the original Fantom token economic model; the model was created by the original Korean team in 2018 and later modified through on-chain governance. Andre does not unilaterally hold or control the Sonic development fund. Andre has never abandoned Fantom/Sonic, designed the original technology, expanded the funding, and continues to serve as a technical advisor, regularly providing guidance to the technical team. There is no instance of fund misappropriation.

Hsiao-Wei Wang, Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, stated at the Consensus 2026 conference that currently no other L1 can compete with Ethereum in terms of technology and monetary value.When discussing Ethereum's core value proposition for development teams, she pointed out that censorship resistance and privacy protection tools are becoming increasingly important, which not only aligns with the values of crypto punks but also meets the growing demand for on-chain privacy from institutions and regular users.Additionally, she emphasized that innovation at the application layer is another major focus, particularly in the "Identity" space, where there is currently no universal solution. ENS has laid the groundwork for user identity creation, and in the future, there is a need to further explore universal identity solutions with privacy protection features to cover various application scenarios such as ticket sales, governance use cases, and social layers.

At the "Build and Scale in 2026" themed forum recently held by ChainCatcher in Hong Kong, Art Abal, Managing Director of the Vana Foundation, delivered a speech on the topic of "Why Data is Crucial for Building AI." He systematically elaborated on the core value of data as "context" in an AI-driven era, and how users can regain data sovereignty and unlock its potential economic value through decentralized technology.Art Abal pointed out that there is a serious data monopoly issue in the current AI ecosystem. The vast majority of consumers rely solely on a single general-purpose AI assistant and rarely use other major models, leading to the centralization of data and context. Meanwhile, large tech companies have been continuously restricting API access, terminating free services, and planning to charge fees in recent years, effectively depriving users of control over their own data and its contextual value.In response, Vana has proposed a comprehensive solution. First, by developing tools that enable users to truly own their data; second, by establishing protocols to achieve cross-platform portability of data; and finally, by building an ecosystem that encompasses applications, data DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), and services to unlock the deeper value of data.He concluded that in the AI era, data is context, and context is the key to differentiation. Vana's mission is to return the control of data, context, and its economic value to every user through decentralized protocols and ecosystems, in order to build a more open and fair data value internet.

According to Cointelegraph, the TON Foundation has released a payment software development kit (SDK) called TON Pay, aimed at enabling cryptocurrency to be used for everyday consumer transactions within the Telegram ecosystem. The product is positioned as a simple, wallet-agnostic payment layer that allows merchants and app developers to accept cryptocurrency payments directly through Telegram, with the goal of transforming Telegram into a seamless blockchain commerce hub.The TON Foundation stated that TON Pay provides developers with a single software toolkit integrated with Telegram mini-apps, reducing the cumbersome aspects of managing wallet infrastructure, settlement, and checkout processes.

The Ethereum Foundation announced the launch of the "Trillion Dollar Security Dashboard," which showcases the overall security posture, risks, mitigation measures, and progress of the Ethereum ecosystem, covering 6 dimensions: User Experience (UX), Smart Contract Security, Infrastructure and Cloud Security, Consensus Protocol, Monitoring and Incident Response, and Social Layer and Governance.

Web3 security company Certora announced that it has received funding from the Ethereum Foundation, with the specific amount not disclosed. The funding will be used to support the verification of the correctness of its automatic precompilation, which is a key optimization technique in zero-knowledge computation developed by Powdr Labs for the Ethereum Foundation's zkEVM project. It is reported that Certora plans to open source its developed specifications, proofs, and verification framework.

The ANT.FUN team won first place in the ICM (Internet Capital Market) track at the hackathon competition co-hosted by the Solana Foundation and Trends.fun. The team's entry generates interactive and entertaining videos by combining AI multimodal video generation technology with real-time trading information.In addition, ANT.FUN announced that it will launch a group chat AI assistant for placing trades this week. The official statement indicated that future product forms will further incorporate AI, aiming to create AI trading products that offer an interactive experience similar to "Doubao" or "Yuanbao" for the general public.

According to Ai Yi's monitoring, the Binance SAFU Foundation address (0x3e3...916) has started small test transfers, receiving 64.811 USDT from a hot wallet.

Self-hosted digital bank Tria launches the independent nonprofit organization Tria Foundation.The foundation will support research and development of technologies related to routing, execution, and security, provide funding for developer tools, integrations, and ecosystem grants, promote transparent governance and protocol management, and expand partnerships to drive the practical application of self-hosted finance in everyday life.

Self-hosted digital bank Tria has launched the independent nonprofit organization Tria Foundation. The foundation will support research and development of technologies related to routing, execution, and security, provide funding for developer tools, integrations, and ecosystem grants, promote transparent governance and protocol management, and expand partnerships to advance the practical application of self-hosted finance in everyday life.

Vitalik Buterin posted on the X platform that in the next five years, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) will enter a period of "moderate tightening" to achieve two main goals: first, to deliver a more aggressive technical roadmap that ensures Ethereum continues to be a high-performance, scalable "world computer" without sacrificing robustness, sustainability, and decentralization; second, to enhance the long-term sustainability of the Ethereum Foundation itself, safeguarding Ethereum's core mission, including the foundational blockchain layer and users' ability to use the network under the premises of security, privacy, and self-sovereignty.Vitalik pointed out that as part of the tightening plan, he will personally take on some work that might have been handled by the Foundation's "special projects," focusing on supporting an open, verifiable, end-to-end hardware and software technology stack to protect personal lives and public environments. This technological vision encompasses finance, communication, governance, blockchain, operating systems, secure hardware, and biotechnology (personal and public health), emphasizing privacy protection, decentralization, and a locally prioritized software architecture.To this end, Vitalik has extracted 16,384 ETH and plans to gradually invest in the aforementioned goals over the coming years while exploring safer decentralized staking solutions to use staking rewards long-term to support related missions. He emphasized that Ethereum itself is an indispensable part of the "full-stack openness and verifiability" vision.The Ethereum Foundation will continue to focus on core Ethereum development, but the priority is not "Ethereum everywhere," but rather "Ethereum for people who need it," serving self-sovereignty, security, and privacy, rather than catering to centralized corporate demands. Vitalik stated that in an increasingly "might makes right" world, this path offers a necessary alternative—building an uncontrollable collaborative infrastructure through truly open, verifiable, and user-serving technology.

Web3 asset data platform RootData announced its data API series partners on Twitter, with the fourth being the Ethereum Foundation (EF). It is reported that the Ethereum Foundation is using the RootData API to obtain rich funding round data for an in-depth assessment and research of the funding situation in the Ethereum ecosystem.Currently, the total number of partners for the RootData API has exceeded 200, including well-known partners covering numerous scenarios such as OKX Wallet, Blockworks, CMT Digital, Amber Group, techflowpost, BlockBeats, Mask Network, Tokenpocket, and more.

The Zcash Foundation has released its strategic priorities for 2026, which include:Unique consensus node implementation Zebra: Focus on enhancing performance, completing the NU7 ZIP implementation, and advancing the Z3 tech stack to replace zcashd;Continue to advance the FROST threshold signature scheme: Plan to release version 3, finalize ZIP-312, and introduce the distributed key generation (DKG) protocol;Privacy Assistance Initiative (SAI): Promote a "privacy by default" digital cash assistance model and explore zero-knowledge proof-based identity solutions, achieving a balance between compliance, accountability, and privacy protection.

The stablecoin protocol USD.AI, which provides credit support for AI, has announced the establishment of the USD.AI Foundation and plans to launch the governance token CHIP.According to official disclosures, CHIP will undergo ICO, airdrop, and TGE after the conclusion of the Allo Game points program in the first quarter of 2026, with specific ICO issuance venues to be announced later.

The Ethereum Foundation ecosystem support project teams announced the list of funded projects and individuals for Q4 2025. The total funding amount granted in the previous quarter reached $7,385,528.84. The funded projects and individuals mainly involve areas such as: protocol growth and support, overall growth and support, developer experience and tools, execution layer, cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs, consensus layer, community and education, and others.