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Grayscale Research Director Zach Pandl stated that the two major blockchain networks, Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL), are considering adjusting their token economic models to enhance asset scarcity by reducing future token supply growth through lowering annual inflation rates. As important native assets supporting stablecoins and tokenized asset ecosystems, the prices of ETH and SOL are primarily determined by supply and demand dynamics. If the relevant code upgrade proposals are approved, under unchanged conditions, lower supply growth may provide support for token prices.According to Grayscale's analysis, if the relevant adjustments are implemented, the supply inflation rates of BTC, ETH, and SOL will continue to decline over the next five years. By the end of 2031, the annual inflation rates for Bitcoin and Ethereum are expected to be around 0.4%, and Solana around 1.1%, which is lower than gold's annual supply growth rate of about 1.8% and the U.S. CPI inflation level of about 3.3%. Currently, these token economic adjustments are still in the community discussion phase. Among them, the Solana-related proposal has gained broader support and has a higher likelihood of implementation; the Ethereum proposal still requires further discussion.If the adjustments are implemented, staking users may face reduced token rewards, as part of the staking income comes from the issuance of new tokens. However, due to the decline in the growth rate of circulating supply, the scarcity value of the tokens may increase, potentially providing price support. For ETH and SOL holders who do not participate in staking, they may benefit directly; the final returns for stakers will depend on the balance between the decrease in rewards and the increase in prices. Zach Pandl concluded that ETH and SOL are becoming important digital commodities supporting stablecoins and the tokenization of real assets, and the economic model adjustments aimed at reducing inflation may further strengthen their scarcity attributes.

The Ethereum staking protocol Lido DAO officially interprets the NEST (Network Economic Support Tokenomics) mechanism, which binds the protocol's revenue to the value of LDO tokens through an on-chain automated method, achieving continuous LDO buybacks. The aim is to allow LDO holders to more directly share in the protocol's growth profits. This mechanism is supported by the surplus funds of the DAO treasury. When Lido's staking business revenue exceeds the set benchmark, a portion of the excess revenue will be automatically exchanged for LDO through CoW Swap.According to the initial parameters set by Lido DAO, the NEST revenue benchmark is an annualized $40 million (approximately $109,000 daily), with 50% of the excess allocated for LDO buybacks, a daily buyback limit of $50,000, and a cumulative limit of $10 million over 365 days. Buybacks are executed daily using a permissionless on-chain process.In the initial phase of NEST, a "Treasury-only mode" will be adopted, where purchased LDO will go directly into the DAO treasury. In the future, when market conditions are favorable, the DAO can switch to LP mode through on-chain voting, using half of the funds to purchase LDO and converting the other half into wstETH to provide Curve liquidity.

According to Talking Biz News citing Courthouse News Service, The Wall Street Journal requested a federal judge on Wednesday afternoon to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed by Binance. The lawsuit targets the newspaper's reports regarding Binance covering up internal investigations, obstructing compliance, and allowing sanctioned entities to trade.In the motion to dismiss, The Wall Street Journal stated that Binance's complaint from March 2026 failed to prove actual malice at the time the relevant reports were published. Binance claimed that the reports were false because it had issued a denial statement to the newspaper, but the newspaper argued that merely repeating a self-defensive denial is insufficient to constitute a defamation claim. During the hearing, The Wall Street Journal's lawyer pointed out that Binance did not deny the core content of the three reports.

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.

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.

Uniswap founder Hayden posted on the X platform stating that they had not anticipated that the tokens created during the pools.trade testing period would be discovered. They have waived all creator fees generated during the Uniswap employee testing period and transferred them to the automatic buyback and burn contract.They are currently considering making it a feature available for other deployers to use.

According to The Defiant, Cole Villemain, the co-founder of the well-known NFT project Pudgy Penguins, who was voted out by the community, launched a series of 44,000 NFTs named Spritehood on Robinhood Chain on August 11, selling out in less than an hour.According to on-chain statistics of minting transactions by analyst 0xlaplaced, this sale generated approximately $1.2829 million (equivalent to about 684.28 ETH at the minting price), higher than the approximately $755,000 figure circulating during the sale, which was a snapshot taken while the sale was still ongoing. According to the statistics, the paid sale lasted about 53 minutes, during which 37,430 pieces were sold for $17 each, and 5,526 pieces were sold for $117 each. Before the paid sale began, the deploying party also distributed 1,488 pieces for free through 20 zero-price transactions.Reports indicate that the Spritehood contract itself is displayed as unverified source code on the Blockscout browser of Robinhood Chain, preventing buyers from reviewing the public code regarding its token pricing and distribution mechanism. Cole Villemain was voted out of the founding team by the Pudgy Penguins holder community in January 2022, accompanied by accusations of misappropriating project funds, but the related accusations have remained at the level of allegations, and Villemain has not been prosecuted as a result.

According to official news, Aster announced that AOS-2 is officially in effect. Previously, AOS-1 opened up the listing of spot tokens to projects that meet public standards, and AOS-2 extends the same principle to the perpetual market, which traditionally relies on private negotiations for listings.According to AOS-2, eligible applicants must stake 1,000,000 ASTER, lock it for four years without an early exit option, and then apply to enter the on-chain validator voting phase. If the vote passes, the Aster risk control team will complete market allocation, and the perpetual contract will go live on T+1; if it does not pass, the full staked amount will be returned.The leverage and other risk parameters for each market are set by the Aster risk control system, with rules made public and decisions recorded on-chain. AOS-3 will be launched subsequently.

Chairman Paul S. Atkins of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) wrote to Robert Walley, Chairman of the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) Operating Committee, indicating that the SEC plans to undertake a comprehensive reform of the CAT system, including adjustments to its governance structure, funding sources, and operational model.Atkins stated that during his tenure, the SEC has significantly reduced the annual operating costs of CAT by issuing exemptions and approving amendments to the CAT NMS plan, and has eliminated the requirement to report personally identifiable information (PII) to the CAT system.These reforms have lowered system costs and the scope of data collection, but CAT still faces fundamental issues regarding costs, governance, and funding mechanisms. To address these issues, the SEC released a concept request for comments on April 16, 2026, to conduct a comprehensive review of CAT and other audit trail systems and data sources used in the regulation of U.S. securities markets.The SEC indicated that it has received hundreds of feedback comments, with one core consensus being that investors and market participants want the SEC to take more responsibility for the management and funding arrangements of CAT.Atkins stated that he has asked SEC staff to propose deep reforms for CAT, including: 1. Exploring new funding sources for CAT, including the use of congressional appropriations and transaction fees under Section 31 of the Securities Exchange Act; 2. Drafting rule proposals that, if approved, would repeal Rule 613 and require exchanges, FINRA, and broker-dealers to continue using the existing CAT infrastructure and reporting standards to submit CAT data directly to the SEC or its designated agency; 3. Assessing the internal resource needs of the SEC to prepare for the SEC's future assumption of governance responsibilities for CAT.The SEC expects that this reform will involve multiple stages and will need to be advanced simultaneously, with the overall transition potentially lasting until the end of 2027.

According to the disclosure from the Common platform, Sushi DAO has released an RFC proposal to comprehensively restructure the SUSHI token economic model. The proposal suggests replacing the current xSUSHI fee distribution mechanism with a more balanced framework, specifically including: reducing the xSUSHI buyback scale to a sustainable level, establishing a protocol reserve (SUSHI Reserve) through weekly regular purchases of SUSHI, and allocating the remaining protocol revenue to Sushi Ops for operations and growth.In addition, the proposal also plans to migrate part of the protocol liquidity deployment to the Robinhood Chain. Currently, the proposal is in the RFC (Request for Comments) stage, pending community discussion and governance voting.

F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun stated that they currently do not support the BIP-54 proposal, but if the proposal is strictly advanced according to BIP-9 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal activation mechanism) and reaches the required absolute majority signal threshold, their team will update the mining pool nodes. Chun indicated that they will not participate in the signal voting for BIP-54 until the formal activation conditions are met.BIP-54 is one of the protocol upgrade proposals recently discussed in the Bitcoin community, involving adjustments to Bitcoin's consensus rules. Wang Chun's statement reflects that some miners remain cautious about the proposal and prefer to promote the upgrade through the standardized BIP-9 process and community consensus.

According to on-chain data, Optimism has not conducted any buybacks after completing the second and third rounds of monthly community buybacks in March and April. In March, 367.905 ETH was used to buy back 6.951453 million OP, and in April, 50.16 ETH was used to buy back 0.925654 million OP. As of now, a total of 9.451924 million OP has been repurchased.

Uniswap founder Hayden posted on the X platform stating that the technical design of automatic compounding liquidity is his personal contribution to pools.trade. The way it works is: liquidity positions are deposited into a smart contract, with the rule that anyone can withdraw all unclaimed fees from that position, provided they increase the size of that liquidity position by 0.2%. Therefore, the fees will grow over time, and when the value of the fees exceeds 0.2% of the liquidity, seekers will naturally be incentivized to add 0.2% liquidity to the pool and claim the fees. This mechanism is based on the Uniswap token jar and can also be used for automatic compounding of regular Uniswap LP positions, so this feature will be added to the roadmap.

According to The Block, research firm Bernstein reaffirmed its "Outperform" rating and maintained a target price of $140 after Circle announced its Q2 2026 financial results, believing that the company's latest performance constitutes a "reverse validation" of the market's bearish views. Bernstein analysts stated that the market currently underestimates USDC's long-term growth potential and Circle's advantages in distribution channels, liquidity, and regulatory compliance, due to two major core concerns regarding Circle—intensifying competition in stablecoins and changes in the interest rate environment that may affect reserve income.Investors may not have fully accounted for the future revenue opportunities from transaction fees, partner ecosystems, and the Arc blockchain that Circle could generate. The firm specifically pointed out that several infrastructure initiatives recently advanced by Circle, including obtaining a national trust bank license in the U.S., expanding the Circle Payments Network, and the planned launch of the Arc public chain mainnet on September 16, could all become future growth drivers. Additionally, Bernstein noted that Circle has raised its guidance for other revenues and profit margins after deducting distribution costs for 2026, expecting to confirm approximately $180 million in Arc token presale revenue.Analysts believe that future staking yields, gas fees, and ecosystem partnership revenues from Arc have not been fully reflected in current valuation expectations. As of the end of Q2, the circulating supply of USDC was $73.3 billion, a decrease of 5% from the previous quarter but an increase of 19% year-over-year. Bernstein believes that Circle is shifting from a purely crypto trading infrastructure to payments, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, and broader financial infrastructure, which will drive USDC into the next phase of growth. Circle's stock closed at $63.28 on Wednesday, and Bernstein's target price of $140 implies a potential upside of about 121%.

The Optimism Foundation released its fifth annual budget update and outlook (from May 2026 to April 2027). According to the foundation's forecast, the circulating supply of OP will increase from the current approximately 2.161 billion to about 2.504 billion, accounting for 58.3% of the total supply, meaning that approximately 343 million OP will enter circulation during this period.By category, it is expected that the ecological fund will add 200 million in circulation, early core contributors 47.6 million, investors 15.3 million, governance fund 10 million, and both airdrops and Retro Funding will be zero. The foundation stated that the relevant tokens all come from the initial allocation framework and no new token allocation has been requested; this update is solely for the purpose of increasing transparency.Token deployment will continue to focus on the two strategic goals of OP mainnet growth and acquiring OP Enterprise corporate clients. Looking back at the fourth year, Optimism committed approximately 150 million OP in new expenditures, a decrease of about one-third compared to the third year; OP Enterprise went live in January 2026, with early clients including Bitpanda, Ink, Dunamu, and Ether.fi; the monthly transaction volume on the OP mainnet grew by over 60% during this period; the governance layer has approved a 12-month buyback plan that will use up to 50% of Superchain revenue for monthly OP buybacks, and over 9 million have been repurchased so far.

According to the official announcement, the third phase of Gate Pre-IPOs will launch Moonshot AI (KIMI) and introduce a dedicated trading market mechanism for Pre-IPOs, providing exclusive trading and circulation channels for pre-listing asset certificates.The KIMI asset certificate is a mirror note designed based on the changes in the enterprise value of Moonshot AI. The subscription period is from August 11, 2026, 15:00 to August 13, 2026, 15:00 (UTC+8), allowing users to participate using both USDT and GUSD. After the subscription ends, the asset certificates will be 100% unlocked and issued on August 17, 2026, at 15:00 (UTC+8).It is worth noting that, unlike previous participation methods in Pre-IPOs, this phase of KIMI asset certificates is expected to open a dedicated market for trading about one month after the completion of subscription and distribution. Users holding positions can trade and circulate based on real-time market prices, choose to sell part of their holdings to recover principal, or continue to hold the remaining assets to participate in the future value changes of the target enterprise. The holding period for the profit portion is expected to range from several months to several years, depending on the target enterprise's IPO process or other exit arrangements; if the target enterprise completes an IPO in the future, the platform will provide subsequent asset handling solutions based on actual conditions, including stock asset exchange or stock token exchange methods.

Lido Finance officially released a governance update, and Lido DAO has officially opened on-chain voting for the NEST automated buyback mechanism, with the voting window from August 5 to August 8 at 14:00 UTC.NEST is a set of automated, rule-based on-chain mechanisms that directly link the performance of the Lido protocol with the LDO token. The relevant design and parameters were approved through Snapshot voting in May. The core logic of NEST is to systematically buy back LDO tokens in decentralized markets through protocol revenue or liquidity controlled by the protocol, thereby continuously capturing the value growth of the protocol at the token level. The execution of the mechanism will revolve around the liquidity pair of LDO and wstETH, and specific implementation details are still being updated in the community forum.If this on-chain vote is approved, Lido will shift from a buyback plan driven by periodic governance to a continuous, predictable automated value distribution model.

According to Jinshi, the U.S. service industry maintained a stable expansion in July, with the ISM Services Index rising by 0.1 points to 54.1, indicating that the industry is in an expansion state. The growth rate of new orders accelerated, and the business activity index rose to a five-month high, showing resilience in consumer demand.However, service and material costs continue to rise, with the ISM Input Cost Price Index climbing to 70.3, putting pressure on corporate profits, and some companies may delay hiring.

According to ABC News, the New York Federal Appeals Court upheld the conviction of SBF for fraud and conspiracy following the collapse of his cryptocurrency trading platform FTX. In 2024, SBF was sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating what prosecutors called one of the largest financial frauds in American history.