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The Ethereum Foundation has announced the list of grants and ecosystem support projects for the first quarter of 2026, focusing on cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs (ZK), protocol security, and core infrastructure development, continuously strengthening the Ethereum underlying technology stack and long-term scalability.This quarter's funding covers several key areas. At the protocol and client level, projects include optimizations for the Geth and Erigon clients, upgrades to the Lighthouse client, and the development of network monitoring tools after the Pectra upgrade, with a focus on improving network performance and attack resistance. Additionally, projects such as HSM key management, the validator security tool Vero, and the DISC-NG node discovery mechanism have also received support to enhance node-level reliability and institutional compliance capabilities.In the areas of cryptography and ZK, the foundation continues to invest in projects such as the analysis of the Poseidon hash function, research on Gröbner basis attacks, exploration of quantum-resistant and homomorphic mixed encryption, and formal verification of RISC-V zkVM, further strengthening the security boundaries of zero-knowledge proofs and cryptographic infrastructure.In terms of the developer ecosystem, the BuidlGuidl education system upgrade, ERC standard community building, WalletConnect clear signature library, and Open Creator Rails toolchain are continuously advancing to lower development barriers and enhance user interaction security. Meanwhile, L2BEAT continues to provide transparency analysis for Layer 2, strengthening the data infrastructure for scaling ecosystems.Furthermore, the foundation supports privacy technologies (such as Tor integration and Privacy Pool SDK), decentralized identity (did:ethr standard upgrade), DAO governance research, and public goods experimental projects, covering a complete ecological structure from the protocol layer to the application layer. Overall, this round of funding continues Ethereum's long-term investment in the three core directions of "cryptography + ZK + protocol engineering," emphasizing the support for future multi-layer scaling and institutional-level application implementation through infrastructure and standardization development.

According to official news, B.AI has officially announced a strategic partnership with HTX DAO, and both parties will jointly create a new paradigm covering the entire field of AI and Web3. B.AI is committed to becoming the foundational financial infrastructure of the AI Agent era. This cooperation will rely on HTX DAO's decentralized governance ecosystem to accelerate the arrival of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) through a more open and composable on-chain architecture. In the future, both parties will explore directions such as autonomous intelligent agent networks and on-chain intelligent services, promoting the on-chain implementation of the intelligent economy layer.

According to official news, B.AI announced a formal partnership with deBridge, and both parties will jointly explore intent-driven cross-chain infrastructure to provide seamless cross-chain execution for a scalable AI Agent economy. B.AI is committed to building the financial underlying infrastructure for the AI Agent era, while deBridge's 0-TVL model and gasless cross-chain technology provide secure and decentralized underlying support. With deBridge's MCP and intent-driven Bundles, both parties will work together to promote an efficient and secure autonomous trading system, accelerating the implementation of cross-chain execution in the AI Agent era.

Binance will support the RIF network upgrade and hard fork. Starting around May 4, 2026, at 17:00, Binance will suspend token deposits and withdrawals on the Rootstock Infrastructure Framework (RIF) network.The network upgrade and hard fork will take place at block height 8,804,200, or approximately at 18:00 on May 4, 2026. Once the upgraded network is stable, the token deposit and withdrawal functions on the aforementioned network will be reopened.

The Web3 asset data platform RootData has outlined 38 business partners of Polymarket, covering multiple key areas such as oracle, cross-chain assets, exchanges, wallets, and application layers. From a structural perspective, Polymarket primarily relies on Polygon to process transactions and supports assets from multi-chain networks such as Ethereum and Solana. It also provides key data inputs through oracles like UMA and Chainlink to ensure the credibility of event outcomes and price discovery mechanisms. In terms of asset liquidity, it collaborates with stablecoins and cross-chain services like Circle and Bridge, and connects with mainstream wallet systems including MetaMask, Phantom, and Privy, facilitating the flow of funds across different networks and lowering the barriers to participating in prediction markets. Regarding user entry points, Polymarket integrates centralized exchanges like Gate and Phemex, and combines applications and data tools such as Jupiter, MoonPay, Polysights, and Kaito to form potential ecological traffic expansion. Overall, the Polymarket ecosystem can be broken down into three layers: the upstream relies on oracles to settle "tradeable information," the middle layer completes matching and settlement through multi-chain and stablecoins, and the downstream reaches users through wallets and applications. The platform is building a financial system that converts information into prices and completes pricing through on-chain markets. Related collection: [Polymarket Web3 Partner Network Collection (continuously updated)](https://cn.rootdata.com/Archives/detail/Polymarket%20Crypto%20Business%20Partner?k=NDc2OTgz) Cryptocurrency projects actively showcasing their partner networks have become a key way to enhance transparency and market trust. It is reported that RootData welcomes Web3 project parties to [claim data](https://www.rootdata.com/Projects/submit?ft=claimApply) and continues to track and open more project business relationship disclosure channels. The platform has continuously released multiple editions of cryptocurrency project ecological maps, nominating Web3 ecosystem partners for upstream clients such as Visa, Mastercard, and Coinbase. **If you wish to nominate your project in future ecological maps, please fill out the [RootData 2026 Industry Ecosystem Mapping](https://forms.gle/tWArmXcpSfZJkh1r8) form to supplement your important clients and partners.**

Sky announced that it is building Laniakea, a standardized infrastructure framework for institutional-level capital deployment, for its Sky Agent Network.Currently, Sky Protocol manages over $11 billion in USDS circulation and generates returns through strategies such as DeFi lending, private credit, and compliant real-world assets. Laniakea will serve as the underlying infrastructure to enhance the scalability and efficiency of capital allocation, further advancing on-chain finance towards institutional levels. The project aims to address the current issue of over $300 billion in idle stablecoins and the lack of unified infrastructure.Laniakea will achieve standardization from four dimensions: smart contracts, risk and governance, data infrastructure, and legal compliance, allowing new capital products to avoid redundant construction of underlying frameworks, thus enabling modular expansion and scalable deployment. At the same time, through unified risk measurement and loss layering mechanisms, it ensures that risks are transparent and responsibilities are clear.Under this framework, Sky Agents (Primes) will develop investment strategies and compete for capital allocation based on unified standards, while specific products (Halos) will quickly land based on shared infrastructure. Laniakea will also encode the entire protocol's operational status in a machine-readable manner, providing a foundation for AI-driven real-time risk control and capital scheduling.As the capital scale expands and returns increase, Sky expects to strengthen the value capture capability of the SKY token through buyback and staking mechanisms.

Tether announced the launch of the Mining Development Kit (MDK). MDK is an open-source, full-stack development framework designed to provide Bitcoin miners and developers with unified control over their entire infrastructure stack.MDK adopts an open modular architecture and Agnostic interface, combining a JavaScript backend SDK and a React UI component library to replace the closed proprietary systems that have led to fragmented mining operations over the years. The framework is suitable for all users, from home miners to gigawatt-scale mining farms, supporting Windows, macOS, and Linux, and capable of avoiding vendor lock-in. MDK includes a standalone core layer (MDK Core) and a UI development kit, enabling rapid development of operational dashboards, automated workflows, mining pool management tools, and analytics pipelines.Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that MDK will provide the infrastructure support for the next generation of Bitcoin mining focused on automation and optimization. Previously, Tether had open-sourced its mining operating system MOS.

According to official news, B.AI has made several advancements this week in product iteration and ecological layout: the BAIclaw landing page has undergone a complete visual and interactive renewal, and the website's multilingual support has expanded to 10 languages, further solidifying its global usability; in terms of infrastructure, strategic partnerships with Biconomy, MoonPay, and Pundi X have significantly optimized the Web3 payment link, greatly lowering the entry barrier for users. Meanwhile, B.AI's multi-chain LLM service continues to evolve, covering intelligent search, boundaryless mode, and memory functions, with significantly enhanced interactive performance. In the future, with the upcoming subscription system, points incentive mechanism, and core Skills like "Sun Yuchen Brain," B.AI is accelerating the construction of a fully functional intelligent ecological matrix, relying on the deep integration of AI Agent and Web3.

a16z released the latest research indicating that stablecoins are gradually evolving from their initial role as transaction settlement tools and stores of value into global financial infrastructure. Data shows that following the regulatory clarity driven by the U.S. GENIUS Act, the stablecoin market has accelerated its growth, with adjusted trading volumes reaching approximately $4.5 trillion.The report shows that consumer-to-business (C2B) stablecoin transactions grew by 128% year-on-year, reaching 284.6 million transactions. The monthly collateral deposits for stablecoin card projects also increased from nearly zero at the end of 2024 to over $300 million by early 2026, reflecting the rapid expansion of stablecoin payment scenarios. Meanwhile, the velocity of stablecoins has increased from 2.6 times to 6 times since early 2024, indicating a shift from being "held" to being "frequently used." a16z believes that the focus of stablecoin applications is shifting from cross-border payments to local payment infrastructure, particularly evident in markets such as Asia and Brazil.

Web3 AI infrastructure AIW3 announced the completion of a $2 million seed round financing. This round of financing was led by Buffalo Capital, with participation from GalaXin Capital and Three-stones Ventures.It is reported that AIW3 is committed to transforming into an AaaS (Agent-as-a-Service) on-chain execution paradigm, providing callable strategy services, autonomous agent orchestration, and native vault collaborative funding flows, aiming to build a system-level next-generation on-chain execution layer. The official statement indicates that its core protocol infrastructure has officially entered a fully verifiable real-time operational phase, laying the foundation for the long-term development of a scalable decentralized agent network and ecosystem.

The cryptocurrency payment network MoonPay announced that its Iron platform has officially launched virtual account services in New York State, supporting fintech companies, cryptocurrency platforms, neobanks, and financial institutions to integrate compliant fiat-to-stablecoin infrastructure.This launch is based on MoonPay's acquisition of the enterprise-grade stablecoin infrastructure platform Iron in 2025, allowing users to receive payments through channels such as ACH, wire transfer, and SWIFT, and automatically convert them into stablecoins, settling to non-custodial wallets. MoonPay has also obtained a BitLicense, money transmission license, and limited purpose trust license from the New York State Department of Financial Services in the same year.

AI deep technology and Web3 infrastructure company Cluster Protocol announced the completion of a $5 million financing round, led by DAO5, with participation from Paper Ventures, JPEG Trading, Mapleblock Capital, among others, bringing the company's total funding to $7.75 million.The new funds will be used to accelerate the development of its EVM ecosystem-oriented browser-native IDE product CodeXero, expand the product and engineering teams, and enhance AI systems, developer workflows, deployment infrastructure, and ecosystem growth. Cluster Protocol stated that CodeXero has connected over 300,000 wallets, processed more than 3 billion AI tokens, and supported the deployment of over 25,000 dApps.

AI Smart Routing and Infrastructure Network DGrid AI officially announces the launch of its AI inference API integrated with the x402 payment protocol. This API seamlessly merges payment logic with AI model invocation for the first time, allowing developers and AI Agents to complete authorization, inference, and payment within a single API request lifecycle without managing cumbersome API Keys or requiring centralized account pre-funding.It is reported that this API currently supports BNB Chain (BSC) as the underlying settlement network. With the micropayment features of the x402 protocol, the system can achieve extremely low-friction on-chain real-time settlement while ensuring that invocation costs remain absolutely controllable. Additionally, this API supports streaming responses and real-time usage feedback while being compatible with mainstream AI invocation methods, making it suitable for various application scenarios, including model selection for AI Agents, inference billing, intelligent agents, and multi-task execution.DGrid states that this initiative aims to completely break the prepaid barriers of traditional large model invocation and provide a programmable underlying payment infrastructure for building a fully automated AI Agent economy (machine-to-machine transactions).

Axe Compute Inc. (NASDAQ: AGPU), a publicly traded company on NASDAQ, announced that it has signed a 36-month AI infrastructure contract with an enterprise client, with a total contract value of approximately $260 million. The deployment includes a dedicated cluster of 2,304 NVIDIA B300 GPUs and a high-speed AI storage system, expected to officially launch in the third quarter of 2026 at a Tier 3 data center in the United States. This is the largest single enterprise contract since the establishment of Axe Compute.Axe Compute's underlying computing power infrastructure is supported by Aethir's decentralized GPU cloud. The contract includes a dedicated 4.8 megawatt N+1 redundant power supply, with deployment locations and service standards specified by the client, utilizing a structured payment arrangement. Daniel Wang, co-founder and CEO of Aethir, stated that this contract is the result of months of deep collaboration between the two teams: "The enterprise-grade workloads supported by 2,304 NVIDIA B300 GPUs are exactly the scale we aimed for when building Aethir's computing power infrastructure. Today's announcement proves that decentralized GPU infrastructure is capable of handling AI workloads from the world's top enterprises."After the announcement, Axe Compute (NASDAQ: AGPU) experienced significant stock price volatility, with an intraday increase of over 166%, reaching $14.47, and the trading volume exceeding one hundred times the average daily level over the past three months.