News linked to both this project and an event.
MetaMask has officially launched Agent Wallet, a self-custody wallet designed for AI agents. It enables automated trading, perpetual contracts, and liquidity provision on Ethereum, multiple EVM-compatible chains, and the Hyperliquid network. The product is equipped with multiple security mechanisms, including transaction simulation, spending limits, and address whitelisting. It integrates with Blockaid's risk scanning, requiring user secondary confirmation for high-risk transactions. The platform also introduces a transaction guarantee service, offering up to $10,000 in compensation for compliant and secure transactions. Currently, the product is only being tested by a small group of users via the command line, with plans for a full public release this summer. (The Block)
Ivan Chebeskov, Deputy Minister of Finance of Russia, stated that the ministry does not wish to allow dollar-denominated stablecoins to circulate in the Russian market.Chebeskov pointed out that issuers of foreign stablecoins like USDT and USDC have the capability to freeze wallet assets held by users. Once such wallets engage in transactions with platforms licensed by the Central Bank of Russia, the risk of asset freezes for holders will significantly increase. He revealed that dollar stablecoins held by Russian legal entities have previously been frozen by issuers, while no similar incidents have occurred with Bitcoin and Ethereum due to the lack of relevant technical means.The Russian Finance Ministry believes it is necessary to establish a regulatory framework specifically for stablecoins, prioritize supporting the development of stablecoins pegged to the ruble and currencies of friendly nations, and grant the Central Bank of Russia the authority to adjust the list of related assets. (Bits.media)
According to The Block, Payward—the parent company of Kraken—announced that it will open up access to IPO offering-price subscriptions for U.S. publicly traded companies to Kraken users and select partner platform users via the xStocks framework in the coming weeks. Users may submit non-binding subscription indications prior to listing; Payward will aggregate demand and coordinate with underwriting syndicates to allocate tokenized shares at the offering price on the listing day. These stock tokens are fully backed 1:1 by the underlying equities held in custody by regulated entities and are tradable across blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, and TON. Payward stated that it plans to expand into additional markets and onboard more partners to the xStocks Alliance in the future.
xStocks, a framework under Kraken parent company Payward, will launch services allowing users on Kraken and partner platforms to participate in US stock IPOs at the offering price. Users will receive on-chain tokenized shares with a 1:1 correspondence to the underlying stock, which will be held by regulated custodians.Users can submit non-binding subscription intentions via partner platforms weeks before the IPO. Payward aggregates demand, coordinates with the underwriting syndicate for share allocation, and completes pricing, allocation, and token issuance on the listing date. xStocks tokens will be tradable across multiple blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, and TON, and can be integrated with DeFi protocols. (The Block)
Ink, an Ethereum Layer 2 network incubated by Kraken, announced last night that the network is experiencing a full-chain outage. Current network availability is intermittent, and services have not yet stabilized.According to the official statement, user transactions and cross-chain bridge operations may be unstable until the chain resumes normal operation. Ink is collaborating with its infrastructure partner Gelato to investigate the root cause of the failure and facilitate network recovery.As of press time, Ink has not yet disclosed further progress or a timeline for restoration.
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 Central Bank of Russia’s “Financial Stability Review,” Russian private investors currently hold approximately 3.8 billion rubles in cryptocurrency-linked financial instruments—a figure nearly unchanged from 3.7 billion rubles six months earlier—indicating stagnation in market interest growth. Of this amount, 1.7 billion rubles flowed into crypto-linked corporate bonds; 5,600 investors collectively held cryptocurrency futures positions worth 1.7 billion rubles; and roughly 3,800 investors allocated 354 million rubles to digital financial assets pegged to Bitcoin and Ethereum. Major issuers include large banks such as Sber and VTB. Meanwhile, the Moscow Exchange has progressively launched Bitcoin and Ethereum futures, along with related ETFs, and will introduce Solana, Ripple, and TRON futures in May 2026.
Prediction market platform Kalshi has submitted a self-certification application to launch derivatives linked to Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Dogecoin, Stellar, Chainlink, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Sui, Shiba Inu, Polkadot, and Hedera. This follows the CFTC's approval of Bitcoin perpetual futures last Friday. The CFTC stated that perpetual futures products that US companies intend to list, other than Bitcoin, will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and noted that the design of such derivatives may not be suitable for all asset classes. Therefore, this batch of products submitted by Kalshi has not yet been approved.
Aave has published a post-mortem of the April 18 rsETH incident, stating that the rsETH LayerZero V2 cross-chain bridge of liquid staking protocol Kelp accepted a forged message during a cross-chain transfer from Unichain to Ethereum. This caused the adapter on the Ethereum side to release 116,500 rsETH without a corresponding burn on the Unichain side. Aave stated that the attack occurred on a third-party cross-chain bridge infrastructure. However, the attacker deposited the stolen rsETH into 8 Aave V3 positions, borrowing 82,650 WETH and 821 wstETH, which impacted the Aave market.Aave stated that the attacker's rsETH on Arbitrum has now been burned. The LayerZero OFT adapter has replenished 116,131.72 rsETH in 5 batches, and the asset backing for rsETH has been fully restored. The affected WETH and rsETH markets have returned to normal.
Kraken has announced plans to launch its first perpetual futures product regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the U.S. market within the next 30 days.Eligible U.S. clients will be able to trade perpetual futures on digital assets including BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, ADA, LINK, DOGE, LTC, and AVAX through Kraken Pro. Kraken stated that it will gradually expand contract types and product features in the future, as well as provide more collateral options.It is reported that the perpetual futures on Kraken Pro are provided by NinjaTrader Clearing, LLC (operating as Kraken Derivatives US), which is a CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant. The related spot margined and perpetual futures products will be available on the Bitnomial Exchange, a CFTC-regulated exchange that was recently acquired by Payward, Kraken's parent company.
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.
SUPERFORTUNE AI released a 24-hour investigation update stating that the May 27 GUA security incident was not, as previously suspected, address poisoning—but rather resulted from the leakage of private keys belonging to multi-signature signers. The attacker then forged valid signatures pointing to a malicious address and exploited the “premium address” feature—where the malicious address shared the same first four and last four characters as the legitimate address—to mislead the remaining signers into completing the signing process via the Safe interface.
Nasdaq-listed company Bit Digital CEO Sam Tabar stated on X that he has purchased more ETH.Sam Tabar explained: "Many people look at ETH's price performance over the past two years and conclude it's finished. But I believe they are looking for the wrong catalyst. The repricing of ETH was never meant to be built on retail narratives. For an asset backed by such a massive infrastructure, that kind of narrative is simply too fragile. The real catalyst is institutional demand. And the pace of institutional demand never follows the sentiment on social media. It only materializes when compliance frameworks are ready, custody systems are established, and the regulatory environment is stable enough for a CFO to give the green light. And that moment is closer than what market prices reflect."He added: "I hold ETH because I have a fiduciary obligation to make smart capital allocation decisions. And at the price I bought in, ETH meets that standard."
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recommended the "The Interfold" project in a post, stating that more people should learn about Interfold. It is a general implementation version of the MACI (Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure) concept he has repeatedly called for over the past decade. Essentially, this project is a privacy protocol optimized for scenarios such as voting and secret auctions, allowing more people to pay attention to and understand this technological advancement.Vitalik also stated that the core mechanisms of Interfold include generating threshold encryption keys, users submitting votes on-chain with ZKP eligibility proofs, performing arbitrary computations within Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) followed by threshold decryption. This enables unconditional voter anonymity, Ethereum-level censorship resistance, and ensures correctness through ZK over FHE, among other strong security guarantees. The main limitation at present is the high cost of complex computations (such as multiplication operations); only additive vote counting is mature. Optimizations based on slashing are being advanced, with a long-term goal of implementing obfuscation techniques to eliminate reliance on M-of-N committees.
according to an Everstake report, among six Ethereum treasury companies that separately disclosed staking-related revenue, staking income accounts for an average of 60% of their reported revenue. The report reviewed 15 public companies with an Ethereum treasury strategy, of which those reporting losses in 2025 had a combined net loss of approximately $1.41 billion. Additionally, BitMine Immersion Technologies reported a net loss of $9.02 billion for the six months ending February 28, driven primarily by unrealized losses on digital assets.The report noted that spot crypto ETFs have diminished the appeal of publicly traded companies that simply hold Ethereum, forcing treasury companies to justify their valuations through yield-generating strategies such as staking. (cointelegraph)
the latest weekly report from CoinShares shows digital asset investment products recorded net outflows of $1.47 billion last week, marking the second consecutive week of negative growth and the third-largest single-week outflow of 2026. Cumulative outflows over the two weeks have reached $2.54 billion.By asset, Bitcoin saw outflows of $1.315 billion, the largest single-week outflow of 2026, compressing its year-to-date net inflows from $3.9 billion to $2.6 billion. Ethereum recorded outflows of $223 million, roughly flat compared to the previous week. Some altcoins still saw minor inflows, with XRP attracting $31.8 million, Near $9 million, and Solana $7.7 million.By region, the United States dominated the outflow landscape with $1.425 billion in single-week outflows. Switzerland, Canada, and Hong Kong recorded outflows of $16.2 million, $12.5 million, and $12.2 million respectively, indicating that risk aversion sentiment, which was localized last week, has now spread to most regions globally. CoinShares notes that these outflows are closely linked to heightened geopolitical risks related to Iran. Despite the ongoing legislative progress of the CLARITY Act, market risk aversion continues to deepen.
Vitalik Buterin stated that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is not the “center of Ethereum,” but rather “a node within the ecosystem,” and is currently transitioning toward a smaller, more opinionated, and more sustainability-focused organizational structure. He explained that the Foundation will prioritize allocating its limited resources to work essential for Ethereum’s viability as a censorship-resistant, control-resistant, open, private, and secure system—work that would be unlikely to happen without the Foundation’s involvement—while also reducing ETH sales. Vitalik further noted that Ethereum should not pursue only maximum throughput and low latency, but should instead aim to be “impressive” in areas such as formal verification, chain availability consensus, and reducing reliance on intermediaries. He emphasized that the Foundation’s new structure is expected to gradually stabilize over the coming months.
recently, Liu Feng, former founder of ChainNews, and Dan Romero, former Farcaster founder and Tempo team member, engaged in a series of discussions on topics such as payments, cryptocurrency, and AI Agents. During the conversation, Dan Romero addressed some key questions raised by both Liu Feng and the public. The highlights are as follows:1. The reason for the shift from idealistic socialfi products to public chains dominated by large enterprises: "The crypto landscape has changed. Now we have stablecoins and crypto (more native) as two distinct things." Tempo and Playbook's goal is: "Starting with payment services, collaborating with large, established companies to help them conduct on-chain payments and advance their own business development. Then, by integrating DeFi applications, we will launch yield-generating products that end users actually need."2. "Tempo has no meme coins or anything similar, which is a good thing for a conservative bank. Tempo has other characteristics: compliance and privacy. This might not be as exciting for crypto natives, but it is very attractive to banks."3. Regarding core use cases for payments: "Platform-based marketplaces and cross-border payments are two clear stablecoin use cases."4. Micropayment-driven agent-to-agent payments are worth anticipating; stablecoin-based micropayments will usher in a new spring. Regarding payments between agents: "Traditional payment methods are too costly to use at scale. This level of granularity and speed can only be achieved through cryptocurrencies and streaming payments."5. "I deeply respect Ethereum's adherence to cypherpunk principles regarding decentralization. I really like their new mission; it's good for the world. But the reality is that businesses don't care about these things; they care about whether it can solve real problems." "If Tempo can attract 1 million businesses and 1 billion consumers, it won't be a bad thing for either cryptocurrency or Ethereum."6. Regarding Tempo's decentralization process: Hoping to achieve it within two years. "We are not a bunch of suit-wearing outsiders; we truly understand the space. We know how important decentralization is, but at the same time, we are very pragmatic. I guarantee that we will actually drive application adoption."7. Regarding the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP) and the X402 protocol, AI Agents don't care about the differences between them. The key to satisfying them is the elimination of human intervention.8. Tempo's Asian market lead is now in place and will be operating out of Singapore.
Grayscale’s latest research report states that Grayscale Research Head Zach Pandl believes tokenized assets and decentralized finance (DeFi), among other blockchain applications, may experience growth as the CLARITY Act advances and related guidance from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) becomes increasingly clear. Grayscale identifies Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, and Canton Network—currently dominant in on-chain financial activities—as likely to attract institutional capital first. The report notes that Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain lead in areas such as tokenized assets, stablecoins, and DeFi, while Canton Network also holds a significant share in the tokenized assets space.
Anchorpoint Financial, OSL Group, and PantherTrade have successfully completed the first end-to-end financial transaction of Hong Kong's first approved stablecoin, HKDAP, on the Ethereum public chain. This digital asset operates under the regulation of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.The technical execution of this transaction was jointly carried out by Anchorpoint Financial, a fintech firm backed by Standard Chartered Hong Kong, along with digital brokerage firms OSL Group and PantherTrade. During this blockchain test, participants directly converted traditional physical Hong Kong dollars into reserve assets, triggering the minting of on-chain digital balances. Upon completion of the transaction, the tokens were converted back to fiat bank balances through a redemption agreement. Standard Chartered provided the custodial architecture and trust services for this process.The stablecoin is scheduled to begin its phased public issuance towards the end of the second quarter of this year. (financefeeds)