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Mastercard is expanding its settlement network to support regulated stablecoins, planning to introduce stablecoin settlement, intraday settlement, as well as weekend and holiday settlement services to meet the demand for real-time fund movement.According to the introduction, the new settlement framework will operate in parallel with the existing fiat settlement system, providing financial institutions with more flexible liquidity management solutions. The first supported stablecoins include Circle-issued USDC, Paxos-issued PYUSD, USDG and USDP, Ripple-issued RLUSD, and SoFiUSD.The related services will cover blockchain networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum, and XRPL. (CoinDesk)
According to The Block, Base—the Ethereum Layer 2 network operated by Coinbase—has officially activated the Azul upgrade on its mainnet. This marks Base’s first independent network upgrade following its separation from the Optimism Superchain. The Azul upgrade introduces a multi-proof system that combines TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) proofs with zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, reducing the shortest possible withdrawal finalization time to just one day. Both proof types can independently confirm proposals; in case of conflict, permissionless ZK proofs override TEE proofs—further enhancing the network’s censorship resistance. Additionally, Azul integrates Base into a single execution client, <code>base-reth-node</code>, and introduces a new consensus client, <code>base-consensus</code>, built on OP Kona. Following the upgrade, the number of empty blocks has plummeted from approximately 200 per day to roughly 2 per day, and the network has achieved a sustained peak throughput of 5,000 transactions per second.
crypto market maker and investment firm Keyrock has released a new report indicating that as traditional bank card payment systems struggle to meet micro-payment needs, blockchain-based stablecoin payment rails are gradually becoming the default payment layer for AI agents.The report shows that between May 2025 and April 2026, AI agents have completed over 176 million transactions through on-chain infrastructure, settling more than $73 million.The so-called "Agentic Payments" refer to AI software that can autonomously purchase data, computing power, API access, or AI services without requiring human authorization for each individual transaction. For example, an AI trading agent can continuously and automatically buy market data, cloud computing resources, or AI analysis services. Keyrock believes this growth rate may even surpass the early explosive phase of stablecoins.Currently, Coinbase's x402 protocol has emerged as one of the leading crypto-native machine payment solutions, allowing AI agents to directly pay for on-chain data analysis, cloud services, and other resources using USDC, without the need for accounts or subscription systems.Data shows that approximately 76% of AI agent payment amounts fall below the common 30-cent fixed fee threshold of traditional bank cards, with most transactions ranging from just 1 to 10 cents. This makes traditional payment networks unsuitable for machine-to-machine micropayments. In contrast, on chains like Base and Tempo, the settlement cost for stablecoins is "less than one cent."However, regulation may still become a limiting factor for industry growth. The report points out that new regulatory frameworks, including Europe's MiCA, the US's GENIUS Act, and the EU's AI Act, have yet to directly cover critical issues such as autonomous transactions by AI agents, liability attribution, and identity authentication. (CoinDesk)
Wasabi Protocol released a security incident update, stating that the attacker exploited a Spring Boot Actuator configuration vulnerability in its AWS infrastructure to steal private keys controlling EVM smart contracts, and subsequently drained approximately $4.8 million in user funds and $900,000 from the protocol’s treasury—totaling roughly $5.7 million in losses. The attack chain originated from a public-facing analysis server whose Actuator heap dump was not properly password-protected, enabling the attacker to obtain credentials for another server and ultimately gain control of the smart contract private keys. This incident affected only EVM deployments—including certain treasuries on Ethereum, Base, Blast, and Berachain—while Solana deployments and the Prop AMM remained unaffected. No final user compensation plan has been announced yet; however, “ensuring all affected users are compensated” remains the team’s top priority. Updates on the investigation will be shared with the community via Discord.
Coinbase announced a “seven-figure” strategic investment in Centrifuge and selected it as the primary asset tokenization partner for its public blockchain, Base. Under the partnership, Centrifuge will serve as the core infrastructure for issuing tokenized assets on Base, enabling the onchain issuance and trading of real-world assets (RWAs), including ETFs, credit funds, and structured products. The two parties have previously collaborated—for instance, launching the first compliant onchain S&P 500 index fund on Base.
According to an official disclosure by Hyperbridge, the losses from the Token Gateway vulnerability incident on April 13 have been revised upward from an initial estimate of $237,000 to approximately $2.5 million. The increase stems primarily from losses incurred in incentive pools on Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, and Arbitrum. The attacker extracted roughly 245 ETH from related contracts, then bypassed the MMR proof verification mechanism by forging cross-chain messages, minting 1 billion bridged DOT tokens and dumping them onto illiquid markets. Currently, some of the stolen funds have been traced on-chain to Binance. Hyperbridge is collaborating with Binance’s compliance team and law enforcement agencies to investigate the incident. Polkadot-native DOT and products such as Intent Gateway remain unaffected. The Token Gateway and bridged DOT contracts on the four affected EVM chains remain suspended. An external audit of the patched MMR verification logic is underway, and bridging functionality will be restored upon completion of the audit.
On-chain lending platform Votre has raised $3.75 million in seed funding, led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Druid Ventures, and angel investors from Goldman Sachs, Harvard University, and OrangeDAO. Founded in 2025, Votre operates a non-custodial crypto lending platform on Coinbase’s Base Layer 2 network, enabling users to borrow USD—settled the same day—using Bitcoin as collateral, with loan sizes ranging from approximately $25,000 to $5 million. The funds will be used to scale technical infrastructure, increase platform capacity, enhance liquidity management tools, and strengthen risk and compliance systems.