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Ethereum developer Toni Wahrstätter posted on the X platform that Ethereum core developers are planning the next annual upgrade "Hegotá," with 66 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) currently on the candidate list. Future core developer meetings will screen these proposals to finalize the upgrade content that can be implemented, tested on the development network, deployed on the test network, and has the potential to go live in 2027. Proposals that do not make it into Hegotá will be postponed until the next hard fork, making the current screening process significantly impactful for Ethereum's future development direction.Currently, FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) has been identified as one of the important upgrade contents for Hegotá. Developers believe that combining framework transactions (EIP-8141), keying Nonce (EIP-8250), and root references (EIP-8272) will help build native privacy capabilities, allowing privacy applications to operate without relying on third-party intermediaries. Additionally, enhancing scalability is also a crucial direction for Hegotá. Developers propose that it is necessary to prepare for a future increase in the Gas limit to 600 million by repricing data resources (EIP-8131, EIP-8279) and state growth costs (EIP-8368). Although these improvements are not as intuitive as privacy features, they are considered key work to promote Ethereum's scalability in the short term.Other candidate upgrades include shorter block times (EIP-8198), adjustments to the issuance mechanism (EIP-8363), anti-correlation penalty mechanisms (EIP-7716), EVM optimization and simplification, as well as discussions on the first EIPs related to zkEVM and quantum-resistant cryptography. It is reported that Hegotá cannot incorporate all the features the community expects, and the core team needs to make trade-offs between "future vision" and "near-term deliverable upgrades," with most candidate EIPs likely not making it into this upgrade. Currently, it has been 256 days since the launch of the current Glamsterdam upgrade, with the goal of completing deployment by the end of this year. Hegotá is planned to go live in 2027, and in the coming months, core developers and the community will discuss the priorities of various EIPs. Community opinions will still play a role in the screening process, and participants who support or oppose a certain EIP entering Hegotá can present their views to the core development team through public discussions.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that Tether is currently neither building any blockchain nor has plans to build a blockchain. The company will continue to remain chain-neutral and support multiple blockchains as the transmission network for USDT.

According to Cointelegraph, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) has submitted an application to list a 3x leveraged ETF for Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold, silver, crude oil, and natural gas.The aforementioned products cover both crypto assets and traditional commodities. If approved, they will provide investors with higher leveraged trading tools, further enriching the ETF product line in the relevant markets.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reviewing the rule change application submitted by Cboe BZX Exchange, involving six leveraged commodity ETFs that track the benchmark's daily performance by three times. The initial review period set by the SEC is 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.Volatility Shares LLC is the sponsor of the relevant funds, which include 3x Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crude Oil, and Natural Gas ETFs, all intended to operate under a commodity pool and not classified as investment companies. Among them, the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs will primarily invest in near-month and next-month futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), rather than directly holding Bitcoin or Ethereum, and will allocate cash and cash equivalents as collateral or margin.Before the relevant products are listed, the SEC must approve the exchange rule changes, and the trust's Form S-1 registration statement must also become effective. Each fund must have at least 100,000 shares at the time of listing, and authorized participants can subscribe or redeem cash at a rate of 1,000 shares per 10,000 shares.

Vitalik Buterin and Etherealize co-founder and CEO Vivek Raman, supported by the Ethereum Foundation, warned that Wall Street's renewed enthusiasm for private, permissioned "consortium chains" is recreating a fragmented system, undermining the interoperability and liquidity that blockchain should bring, akin to "race to the bottom." He pointed out the rise of gated networks such as Digital Asset's Canton Network, Circle's ARC, and Stripe's Tempo, reminiscent of the R3 and Hyperledger consortium chains 2.0 from years past, where institutions will ultimately find themselves in a situation of competing consortium chains, needing permission or membership to participate.Raman emphasized that the Ethereum mainnet should serve as a globally open, permissionless foundation layer similar to HTTP, where institutions can overlay permission and privacy features at the application layer or L2 to achieve maximum interoperability and liquidity. Etherealize is committed to attracting TradFi to embrace Ethereum, which has already hosted billions of dollars in tokenized assets and supported a large amount of DeFi settlements. The company received seed funding from Buterin and the foundation in January 2025 and completed a $40 million Series A financing in the same year.He cited examples such as BlackRock's new fund based on Ethereum, stating that once regulations are clear, institutional funds are more inclined towards open network tracks that are not proprietary; choosing consortium chains would require paying the consortium and being bound by its rules, with incentives for non-early members quickly fading. Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, also pointed out that if permissioned networks driven by enterprise sales become mainstream, some competitive benefits of blockchain may not be realized.

According to SoSoValue data, yesterday (Eastern Time August 14), the ten Ethereum spot ETFs had no net inflows or outflows throughout the day, showing a zero change status.As of the time of writing, the total net asset value of Ethereum spot ETFs is $10.521 billion, and the ETF net asset ratio (market value compared to the total market value of Ethereum) reaches 4.64%, with a historical cumulative net inflow of $11.453 billion.

Zach Pandl, the head of research at Grayscale, posted on the X platform comparing Ethereum to a "small country" and discussed the ETH issuance mechanism. He believes that Ethereum has only one core "government function": to protect property rights and value exchange within the system. Unlike traditional countries that provide public services through taxation, Ethereum primarily funds network security through "seigniorage," which is the issuance of new ETH.In this framework, the stakers responsible for maintaining network security are akin to a group providing public services, as they receive rewards through newly issued ETH. Therefore, Ethereum's staking mechanism and ETH issuance policy essentially constitute the network's fiscal and monetary policy. Zach Pandl pointed out that the Ethereum community needs to decide how much "new currency" should be used to cover network security costs. More security typically means stronger protection of property rights, but at the cost of a higher ETH issuance rate and potential other risks.For example, if network security increasingly relies on a few large staking service providers, there remains room for discussion about whether these providers can maintain the asset rights of all users completely neutrally. Pandl believes that, just as in traditional economies, no one knows the "optimal level" of government spending and currency issuance; the same applies to Ethereum. However, Ethereum has several key security thresholds, including: 1/3: an attacker reaching this ratio may affect finality; 1/2: affects blockchain fork choice; 2/3: can control the finality process. Some community members believe that the design of Ethereum's monetary and fiscal policy should consider the security trade-offs brought by these key ratios, while the current mechanism has not adequately incorporated these factors. However, the above analogy is not entirely accurate, as it does not yet involve other important factors such as the ETH burn mechanism, MEV, governance, etc.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, in an interview with The Block, responded to ongoing criticisms raised after KPMG U.S. completed its first full financial audit. He stated that some critics are unable to admit that their past judgments about Tether were wrong, and said, "Honestly, I don't care." Ardoino mentioned that Tether has repeatedly proven its resilience.He noted that in 2022, Tether processed $7 billion in redemptions within 48 hours, which was about 10% of its reserves at the time, and there was no pause in redemptions during that period. He believes that many traditional financial institutions would struggle to handle withdrawals of a similar scale in such a short time. He also stated that criticism itself is not a bad thing, as it makes Tether better and stronger. Even if some critics view it as a "villain," as long as Tether can continue to serve its claimed 650 million users who rely on USDT, especially in emerging markets, he does not mind.According to informed sources, Tether, as a private company, will not publicly share audited financial statements. The company plans to conduct a full audit once a year in the future while continuing to release quarterly attestation reports. Overall, the KPMG audit is an important step for Tether to enhance transparency, but controversies surrounding its reserves, disclosure levels, and systemic impact have not completely dissipated.

According to Cointelegraph, Morgan Stanley's latest 13F filing submitted to the U.S. SEC shows that as of June 30, it held approximately 16.5 million shares of BlackRock IBIT, an increase of 23% from 13.4 million shares in the first quarter. However, due to the decline in Bitcoin prices during the quarter, the market value of this holding dropped from $667 million to $549 million, a decrease of about 18%.During the same period, Morgan Stanley also held 2.57 million shares of MSBT, valued at approximately $43.3 million, and increased its holdings in Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust, Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, and Fidelity FBTC, with FBTC holdings increasing by nearly 38%.In terms of Ethereum, its ETHA holdings increased by about 202% to 4.6 million shares, and the Grayscale Ethereum Staked Mini ETF holdings increased by about 26% to 5.1 million shares. Additionally, Morgan Stanley also established new positions in the Grayscale Solana Staked ETF and Fidelity Solana Fund, with market values of approximately $4.25 million and $2.26 million, respectively.On the individual stock front, Morgan Stanley's holdings in Circle (CRCL) surged from about 1.46 million shares to 8.32 million shares, while also increasing positions in mining companies and infrastructure firms such as Cipher Digital, Core Scientific, Hut 8, and Bitdeer; on the other hand, it reduced its holdings by about 550,000 shares in Coinbase, reduced over 3.1 million shares in CleanSpark, and completely exited approximately 8 million shares in Bitfarms.

According to Coinpedia, JPMorgan, with an asset management scale of approximately $5.1 trillion, submitted its Q2 13F filing to the SEC, showing significant adjustments in its crypto-related ETF holdings. In terms of Bitcoin, the bank held approximately 10.4 million shares of BlackRock's IBIT as of June 30, valued at about $355.7 million, up from about 8.3 million shares and nearly $162 million in Q1; the number of IBIT call options increased to about 3.94 million, while put options decreased from about 4.75 million to about 3.5 million.Regarding Ethereum, JPMorgan held nearly 1.17 million shares of BlackRock's ETHA, valued at approximately $14.3 million, a significant increase of 338% compared to the previous quarter, but the value of Bitcoin positions still exceeds that of ETHA by more than twenty times. For XRP, after the related positions were reduced to zero in Q1, the bank re-established its holdings, holding small shares of Bitwise XRP ETF and Grayscale XRP Trust ETF, as well as approximately 19,900 shares of Armada Acquisition Corp II related to Ripple-supported trading, valued at about $207,000.In addition, the filing also showed that JPMorgan established a new position in Bitwise Solana Staking ETF, holding about 47,500 shares. The article also mentioned that there has been a recent net outflow from the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF, with the next 13F covering Q3 expected to be disclosed in November.

Financial giant Charles Schwab announced that it has launched direct trading services for Bitcoin and Ethereum for approximately 40 million brokerage accounts. The product is named Schwab Crypto, covering 48 states in the U.S. (excluding New York and Louisiana), with a trading fee rate of 0.75%, operated by Charles Schwab Premier Bank and Paxos.Joe Vietri, head of digital assets at Charles Schwab, stated that the company aims to become the preferred platform for retail investors to allocate digital assets, supporting users to trade crypto assets alongside other investment types through its services, education, and research advantages. The company also maintains a risk warning, stating that even if Bitcoin or Ethereum only accounts for 1% to 3% of a portfolio, it can have a significant impact, and both have previously dropped over 70% in past cycles.

According to SoSoValue data, on August 13, Eastern Time, the total net inflow of Ethereum spot ETFs was $6.7169 million. The Ethereum spot ETF with the highest single-day net inflow was Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETF ETH, with a single-day net inflow of $6.4748 million, bringing the historical total net inflow for ETH to $1.819 billion.Following that is Morgan Stanley Ethereum Trust MSSE, with a single-day net inflow of $810,300, and the historical total net inflow for MSSE currently stands at $21.8789 million. The Ethereum spot ETF with the highest single-day net outflow was Blackrock ETF ETHA, with a single-day net outflow of $569,200, and the historical total net inflow for ETHA has reached $11.633 billion.As of the time of publication, the total net asset value of Ethereum spot ETFs is $10.572 billion, with an ETF net asset ratio (market value as a percentage of Ethereum's total market value) of 4.64%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached $11.453 billion.

Digital asset company Tether announced that it has completed a full independent audit conducted by KPMG U.S. on the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. as of December 31, 2025. KPMG U.S. issued an unqualified audit opinion.The audit covered transactions, systems, ownership records, valuations, counterparties, and financial statement evidence, and reviewed the balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity, and cash flow statement. KPMG U.S. also physically counted and inspected each gold bar held by Tether. Tether's Chief Financial Officer Simon McWilliams stated that the audited financial statements for 2025 show that its reserve assets exceed liabilities by $6.814 billion. Tether stated that this audit is an important step in fulfilling its long-term commitment to financial transparency.

Justin Drake posted on the X platform that Ethereum L1 will no longer use the SNARK-friendly hash function Poseidon, which has dominated since 2019, and will instead turn to traditional hash functions such as SHA2 or BLAKE2s.This adjustment is based on advancements in the field of SNARK design, shifting the focus from "SNARK-friendly hashing" to "hash-friendly SNARK." By aligning Boolean operations in traditional hashing with binary field native, the proof performance of traditional hashing in SNARK has reached 1 million per second, with an overhead of about 100 times.Research from Binius and Flock has driven relevant progress. The Ethereum Foundation's post-quantum team is advancing this route, with a roadmap that includes deploying production-level leanVM in 2027, and deploying in the consensus layer, execution layer, and data processing layer in 2028.Justin Drake also stated that the enhanced capabilities of AI in cryptanalysis have recently led to setbacks for the lattice-based scheme HAWK and the homomorphic scheme SQIsign, with hash-based schemes being used for post-quantum signatures on the blockchain. The trend of open-source automated research is also accelerating, with SNARK.fast achieving 1.8 million BLAKE3 proofs per second.

EtherFi announced that the existing lending infrastructure of EtherFi Cash can no longer meet development needs. A dedicated Aave V4 instance is currently being deployed on the Optimism chain to support the credit card backend.EtherFi Cash currently has an active loan amount of 22 million USD, and it is expected that the lending capacity will reach 500 million USD by 2027. There are already 70,000 cardholders using cryptocurrency for consumption without the need to sell their cryptocurrency.

According to Decrypt, the decentralized finance platform Ether.fi announced that its self-custody application has added tokenized stock, metal, and cryptocurrency trading, and supports collateralized lending with multiple holdings. Users can lend assets and borrow against collateralized portfolios through the Aave integrated market based on Optimism, allowing them to transfer or spend borrowed funds without selling their holdings.Ether.fi stated that fiat accounts support global deposits and withdrawals, covering over 30 currencies and payment methods, but tokenized stock and metal trading is not open to users in the United States and some other markets. Fiat accounts are only available to users who have completed payment card identity verification, and the speed of deposits and withdrawals varies.Ether.fi will also launch ETHFI automatic buybacks and provide 3% cash back for card spending. Ether.fi founder and CEO Mike Silagadze stated that initially, it will support Ethereum, Bitcoin, Hyperliquid, ETHFI, and some tokenized stocks and gold, with plans to add more collateral assets in the future.

According to Staking Rewards data, the staking ratio of Ethereum has risen to a historical high, with approximately 41.89 million ETH currently staked, accounting for 34.7% of the total supply of Ethereum. The corresponding market value of staked ETH is about 78.56 billion USD, and the current staking yield is approximately 2.6%, having recently decreased by 0.49%. The number of active validators on the network is about 789,000.The staking ratio has continued to climb recently, with an increase of about 0.77%, while the network inflation rate has dropped to around 0.86%. More and more ETH is being locked in the PoS consensus, simultaneously tightening the circulating supply. The staking yield of ETH mainly comes from consensus layer issuance, priority fees, and MEV, but as the staking volume increases, the yield per validator will be diluted.