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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.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that the 256 Foundation has launched the 256 Red Team security project, which audits ASIC miner firmware through reverse engineering, real-time traffic capture, and reconciliation by share level. The team stated that 41 issue reports have been submitted regarding the original Bitmain firmware as well as third-party firmware such as LuxOS, VNISH, and Braiins OS.Identified issues include unauthenticated factory APIs, paths that allow root access, default credentials, built-in vendor SSH keys, and updaters that cannot verify installed content. After reverse engineering the Bitmain miner daemon and checking real-time connections, researchers reported that no evidence of hash power hijacking, remote kill switches, or hidden beacons was found in the original Bitmain firmware; the related risks are mainly concentrated in third-party "optimized" firmware.Researchers have submitted 3 responsible disclosures to VNISH, Luxor, and Braiins, granting each party 30 days to respond before public disclosure. MicroBT, Canaan, Auradine, Bitdeer, and ePIC will undergo follow-up audits.

According to Bloomberg, Kraken operator Payward disclosed that due to a slowdown in industry trading activity, the company's adjusted pre-tax profit for the second quarter of 2026 was $23 million, a 71% decrease from $79.7 million in the same period last year; during the same period, adjusted revenue increased by 17% year-on-year to $508 million.Payward stated that although revenue continues to grow, the overall trading volume in the cryptocurrency market is weak, putting pressure on profitability. Kraken has been continuously expanding its institutional business, derivatives trading, and on-chain services in recent years, but changes in the industry cycle still exert pressure on its core trading business.

According to CNA, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) reported that a cryptocurrency scam involving fake job postings and compromised software systems resulted in losses of $11.8 million.The scam group impersonated cryptocurrency company recruiters on LinkedIn, used forged domain names to send emails, conducted video interviews, and induced victims to download malware on company devices to complete "technical tests," thereby stealing session tokens, bypassing multi-factor authentication, and ultimately transferring cryptocurrency.

According to official news, Gate will upgrade the Gate Card points reward program on August 14, 2026. After the upgrade, the assets that can be redeemed with Gate Card points will expand from primarily supporting USDT and GT to include USDT, GT, BTC, ETH, GUSD, as well as tokenized stock assets such as NVDAG, AAPLG, GOOGLG, SPCXG, TSLAG, MUG, SNDKG, and SKHYG, corresponding to Nvidia, Apple, Google, SpaceX, Tesla, Micron Technology, SanDisk, and SK Hynix. The newly added tokenized stock assets cover several popular fields such as AI, semiconductors, and consumer technology. After earning points through eligible daily spending, users can redeem mainstream crypto assets like BTC and ETH according to their preferences, or they can redeem corresponding tokenized stock assets like Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, and SpaceX. In addition, Gate Card points will also support the redemption of gold-backed stablecoins (XAUT), effectively enriching users' options for point redemption.The redemption ratio for Gate Card points remains at 100 points = 1 USDT equivalent asset, and points are permanently valid, with other core rules unchanged. Users can still earn cashback points through eligible Gate Card spending, with the cashback ratio continuing to be calculated based on the user's T0--T5 / VIP level. This upgrade will not affect the existing point acquisition mechanism but will provide users with more asset choices at the redemption end, expanding the application scenarios for Gate Card points. By upgrading the points reward program, Gate Card will further connect payment consumption with asset accumulation, offering users richer rights options and a more flexible asset management experience.

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser stated that although she remains concerned about how the CLARITY Act handles the rewards mechanism for stablecoins, overall, she hopes the bill will pass and believes it will benefit the financial system. Fraser indicated that Citigroup is still pushing for improvements to the bill.Fraser pointed out that if stablecoin platforms can offer rewards for user deposits, it may lead to a loss of deposits in traditional banks, thereby weakening banks' ability to provide loans and credit services in certain regions of the United States. Currently, the bill stipulates that platforms cannot offer rewards solely for users holding stablecoins, but they can provide rewards for trading and payment activities. This issue remains at the core of the controversy between the banking industry and the cryptocurrency sector as the bill progresses.

Forward Industries has resumed purchasing SOL. As the largest holder of Solana, the company acquired an additional 254,000 SOL at an average price of $75 between July and August 3, bringing its total SOL holdings to over 7.8 million.

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.

According to Gate market data, U.S. stocks opened with the Dow Jones up 0.26%, the S&P 500 index up 0.29%, and the Nasdaq up 0.12%. Computer hardware concept stocks strengthened, with HP up 6.4% and Dell up 3.4%. Cisco fell 7.9%, as the company's performance exceeded expectations but did not meet Wall Street expectations; the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index fell 0.65%, and JD.com fell 2.3%.

According to BeInCrypto, Nasdaq-listed company Forward Industries reported a net loss of $69 million for the third quarter of fiscal year 2026, primarily due to impairment losses resulting from fair value adjustments of its Solana assets in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The company held approximately 7.55 million SOL at the end of the quarter, with the per-share SOL holding increasing by 9% quarter-over-quarter to 0.073; during the quarter, it increased its holdings by over 500,000 SOL through purchases and staking, and repurchased 2.5 million shares of stock.Revenue for the quarter increased more than fourfold year-over-year to $10.8 million, mainly from SOL staking and other financial services income. As of August 3, the company held approximately 7.8 million SOL, with the per-share SOL holding rising to 0.0754. After the earnings report was released, FWDI's stock price fell slightly by 1.36% in after-hours trading.

According to Gate market data, the Hang Seng Index opened lower and then rose sharply this morning. After opening more than 150 points down in the early session, it surged back, recovering losses and turning positive. As of the midday close, the Hang Seng Index rose by 0.07%, reporting at 25,457.33 points, while the Tech Index rose by 0.3%, reporting at 4,790.56 points. The total market turnover reached HKD 132.028 billion, with strong performance in the computing hardware sector. In terms of individual stocks, Cambridge Technology rose by 15.37%, and Shengbang Technology rose by 7.69%.

CoreWeave warns investors that transitioning from NVIDIA chips to other chips will be difficult and may require a significant investment of time and money.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the predicted market Polymarket for the event "LoL: EDward Gaming vs Anyone's Legend - LPL Group Stage," the option "EDward Gaming" in the sub-market "Match Winner" has experienced severe fluctuations in winning probability, plummeting from 39.5% an hour ago to the current 20.5% (a fluctuation of 19%). Please note the impact of relevant breaking news.

Marinade Finance posted on platform X that the Solana network nearly came to a halt this morning, with 28.83% of staked SOL going offline, approaching the 33.34% halt trigger threshold, involving 90 validator nodes, resulting in a loss of approximately 333 SOL rewards.The fault originated from a routing error by the service provider Teraswitch: the erroneous routing from the Miami node was broadcast to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, causing 12 nodes (LON1, AMS1-3, DUB1-2, FRA2, SGP1-2, TYO1-3) to lose effective routing, while North America was unaffected, and the fault was resolved after 10 minutes.Marinade Finance pointed out that ASN AS20326 hosts more than a quarter of the total staking volume on the network, and during the fault, 94% of that staking volume was offline simultaneously, accounting for 27.34%, which has exceeded the 25% limit set by SFDP. The second-largest node on the network, Helius, was offline for 33 minutes, with only a few nodes achieving smooth failover. Marinade Finance stated that it will review the staking concentration limit and promote the disclosure of failover capability information by validator nodes.

The TRON DeFi Summer S2 event is currently ongoing. Users can stake TRX through JustLend DAO to exchange for sTRX, continuously accumulating returns while maintaining asset liquidity; the Energy generated from staking can also be rented to users with on-chain demand, forming a revenue cycle within the TRX ecosystem.As the largest single prize pool of this season, the 1.2 million USD TRX incentive pool remains open. Users can enter JustLend DAO through the Binance Wallet DeFi section, and by depositing 500 TRX, they can unlock basic staking returns and a Boosted APR of over 20%, and additionally share rewards daily. The S2 season covers core asset pools such as TRX, USDD, JST, and SUN.

TRON DeFi Summer S2 is in full swing, and this season's largest single reward pool of 1.2 million TRX incentive pool has been fully launched. Participating users can earn dual TRX rewards: basic staking rewards from JustLend DAO, plus a boosted APR of up to 20%+, along with daily sharing rewards.Users only need to enter JustLend DAO through the Binance Wallet DeFi section and deposit 500+ TRX to participate. The S2 season covers core asset pools such as TRX, USDD, JST, SUN, etc.

According to CoinDesk, Bitwise Research Director Ryan Rasmussen stated that as the stablecoin market expands to a scale of trillions of dollars, Circle's value is underestimated by the market. Rasmussen expects the stablecoin market to grow from about $300 billion to $3 to $5 trillion, with Circle having a first-mover advantage due to its existing market share as U.S. stablecoin regulations take shape.He believes that Circle will not only become a stablecoin giant but also a payment giant—its payment infrastructure under construction will play a key role in a stablecoin-driven financial system, yet investors are still too focused on its reserve business. Rasmussen compared Circle's potential development trajectory to that of Visa and Mastercard, arguing that the entry of banks and other giants is not a major threat, as the pace of market expansion is sufficient for Circle to maintain growth. He mentioned that Circle's Arc blockchain will test whether it can expand from stablecoin issuance to the payment infrastructure sector, with the key in the coming year being how its economic model changes with the adoption of stablecoins and the development of infrastructure.

According to CCTV News, recently, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and the National Engineering Laboratory for Computer Virus Prevention and Control, relying on the National Computer Virus Collaborative Analysis Platform (https://virus.cverc.org.cn), discovered multiple incidents of users being attacked by the "Sorry" ransomware virus within our country. After the user's important files were encrypted, the file names were changed to the original file name + .sorry suffix string. The attackers also left a ransom note on the user's host, demanding that the user download an encrypted communication tool to contact them.