News linked to both this project and an event.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated in an Axios interview that distillation (AI learning from other AI) is the foundation of intelligence, that it is good that AI can learn, and that smarter AI is also safer. He predicts that in the coming years, 99% of internet content may be generated by AI, and AI systems will continuously distill knowledge and intelligence from other AI. Previously, there was controversy in the industry over whether open-source models should be allowed to distill closed-source models; Jensen Huang's statement supports open learning paths.
According to IT Home, NVIDIA donated a supercomputer built based on GB300 "Grace Blackwell" servers to the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation, marking the first time the US military has directly deployed NVIDIA's most advanced AI computing platform. The system has been deployed on the campus of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, with the specific scale undisclosed. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated that artificial intelligence will become an important pillar of the US defense system.
The Polygon Foundation stated that the Ithaca hard fork has been successfully deployed to the Amoy testnet and is scheduled to activate on the Polygon mainnet at block height 50,185,000 around 14:00 (UTC) on July 29.
According to an official post from Midnight Foundation (@midnightfdn), the Wanchain Cardano<>BNB cross-chain bridge suffered a security attack. Currently, multiple major exchanges including KuCoin, Kraken, Binance, Bybit, OKX, and MEXC have responded rapidly, taking preventive measures to restrict the flow of stolen assets, including freezing relevant accounts and addresses, blacklisting the attacker's wallets, and suspending NIGHT token deposit and withdrawal services. The exchanges confirmed that this incident is an isolated third-party bridge vulnerability and is unrelated to the Midnight Network mainnet and the NIGHT asset itself.
the Midnight Foundation has provided an update on the handling of the cross-chain bridge attack event involving Wanchain Cardano and BNB. Multiple exchanges including KuCoin, Kraken, Binance, Bybit, OKX, Gate, and MEXC have coordinated risk control actions, temporarily freezing the involved accounts and associated addresses, adding the hacker wallet to a blacklist, and pausing NIGHT token deposits and withdrawals as needed to curb the transfer and cashing out of stolen assets.The Foundation specifically noted that this security incident is an isolated incident related to a third-party cross-chain bridge, and the Midnight mainnet and native NIGHT assets have not been affected. The project team continues to collaborate with major exchanges and ecosystem partners to advance traceability investigations, reminding the community to rely on official disclosures for information and to be cautious of misinformation.
: Qiming Venture Partners has released the "2026 Qiming Venture Partners Top 10 AI Outlook," which focuses on four major directions: foundation models, embodied intelligence, AI infrastructure, and AI applications, predicting the development trends of the artificial intelligence industry over the next 12 to 24 months. In terms of AI infrastructure, the demand for AI computing power is shifting from the training phase to the inference phase. Segments such as storage, advanced process technology, and advanced packaging will continue to face structural shortages. Over the next two years, computing power asset reserves will become a crucial strategic resource for AI companies. The competition in AI infrastructure will also evolve from competition centered on single chips to system-level competition encompassing chips, interconnects, cooling, power supply, and other components. In the next 12 to 24 months, the commercialization of AI applications will focus more intensively on vertical industries and high-paying users. Applications that improve enterprise efficiency will take off first. Meanwhile, as token costs decrease and interaction models innovate, phenomenal AI consumer applications are also expected to gradually emerge.Furthermore, Qiming Venture Partners anticipates that AI-Native organizations will move from concept to practical implementation. Some companies are expected to achieve several times the per capita productivity improvement compared to traditional organizations.
: The South Korean government plans to invest approximately 4 trillion won next year to procure 10,000 of NVIDIA's latest Vera Rubin GPUs, aiming to support the expansion of public-facing services such as "AI for All" and the construction of a national-level AI infrastructure. The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to extend the "Project for Strengthening the Foundation for Utilizing AI Computing Resources" and configure all GPUs introduced next year as Vera Rubin. This project entrusts private companies, such as cloud service providers operating data centers, with the entire process of GPU procurement, construction, and service provision, funded by the government budget. Over the past two years, through this project and other means, the South Korean government has secured over 30,000 GPUs, providing them to both the public and private sectors. Compared to the previous generation Blackwell architecture, the Vera Rubin offers up to a 6-fold improvement in training performance and over an 8-fold improvement in inference performance. A source from the Ministry of Science and ICT stated that the specific GPU procurement plan and budget size have not yet been finalized. Industry insiders mentioned that current data center space is insufficient, making it challenging to secure large-scale new resources by next year. The government is currently evaluating various alternative plans.
: Zcash has launched a new full node, Zakura, maintained by a team independent of the Zcash Foundation. It is released as a fast-sync branch that is a trimmed version of Zebra and is compatible with the legacy zcashd client, whose lifecycle will end on July 18th. Zakura is part of Zcash's scaling efforts, working in conjunction with Project Tachyon and private information retrieval research. The goal is to increase network throughput to the level of Visa and Mastercard by reducing verification data and eliminating wallet performance bottlenecks. Zakura also supports the Ironwood (NU6.3) upgrade, which will be activated on July 28th. This upgrade introduces a turnstile mechanism to limit withdrawals from the Orchard shielded pool and to control the creation of counterfeit ZEC that could be generated by potential long-term soundness bugs.
Additionally, according to RWA Foundation data, approximately $116.4 million worth of tokenized active strategy assets are currently deployed on Mantle, ranking third in scale among all blockchain networks for this asset category.
tokenization platform Tradable plans to bring up to $1 billion in private credit assets onto the Stellar blockchain to expand institutional access to tokenized RWAs. The initiative is expected to launch with $500 million in nominal assets under management, with plans to increase to $1 billion over time. Tradable will leverage the Stellar network to support institutional functions such as compliance, investor onboarding, and asset lifecycle management. The specific launch date has not yet been disclosed. Tradable stated that it has already tokenized $1.7 billion in private credit assets across nearly 30 institutional-grade private credit positions. Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon noted that this agreement reflects growing institutional interest in using the Stellar network for tokenized RWAs. Stellar has recently focused increasingly on tokenized RWAs and has attracted institutional partners such as the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation.
Odaily Odaily A new study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance reveals that approximately 31% of Ethereum node activity is located in the United States, with another 39% distributed across EU countries excluding the UK, indicating that the geographic distribution of Ethereum nodes remains relatively concentrated in Western nations.Lead researcher Alexander Neumuller stated that while node distribution is not currently concentrated in any single country, it is heavily reliant on a few major cloud service providers, including Hetzner, Amazon AWS, and OVH. Notably, the Ethereum network does not require half of its validators to fail for problems to arise. If more than one-third of validators go offline simultaneously, the network may be unable to finalize block checkpoints (finalization). Neumuller pointed out that nodes and validators do not have a one-to-one correspondence; a single node may run multiple validators. Therefore, it is currently impossible to precisely assess the actual impact on the validator network from the failure of a specific node or service provider.Furthermore, the study reassessed the energy consumption of Ethereum following The Merge. Data shows that Ethereum's current annual energy consumption is approximately 7.9 GWh, equivalent to a continuous power draw of about 1 MW. This represents only about 0.02% of pre-merge levels, a reduction of approximately 99.98%. Currently, over 56% of the energy used by the Ethereum network comes from sustainable sources, exceeding the global average.The study also noted that client software diversity is another potential risk. If a dominant client software has a vulnerability, it could affect a large number of network participants. The report was published by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance and supported by the Ethereum Foundation. (The)
According to Visa's official website, Visa and Artemis jointly released a report that deeply analyzes the current status and trends of AI agent payments based on real-time on-chain data. The report indicates that AI agent payments are divided into two categories: one is "macro commerce" where agents replace users to complete tasks like booking tickets and subscriptions, similar to traditional e-commerce payments; the other is "micro commerce" such as high-frequency, low-value API calls between software, where single transaction amounts are typically less than 1 cent. On-chain data shows that the open protocol x402, incubated by Coinbase and Cloudflare and now hosted by the Linux Foundation, has processed approximately 109 million transactions since launching in May 2025, with an adjusted transaction volume of about $15 million, mainly active on the Base, Solana, and Polygon chains; the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), jointly built by Stripe and Tempo with Visa's contribution, launched in mid-March 2026 and completed approximately 115,000 transactions within weeks, with a settlement amount of about $25,000. The report notes that blockchain settlement costs have dropped to extremely low levels, making small payments in the 1-cent to 1-dollar range economically feasible for the first time, but agent payments still face significant challenges at the legal and regulatory level regarding trust, liability attribution, and dispute resolution. Visa stated that its goal is to build a unified foundation that simultaneously supports card-native trust authorization and machine-native settlement
Ripple announced on July 14, 2026, that it has joined the x402 Foundation under the Linux Foundation as a Premier Member, participating in the technical and governance development of the protocol. The x402 Foundation, initiated by 40 member organizations, aims to develop an open payment standard based on HTTP for AI agents, APIs, and applications. Coinbase has contributed x402 to the Linux Foundation, supporting AI agents, APIs, and applications in sending and receiving payments directly during network interactions. Ripple stated that the XRP Ledger already supports agent payments via x402, including transactions using XRP and the Ripple USD stablecoin RLUSD. (Bitcoin.com News).
EthSystems announces its official establishment. The company was founded by the original team of the Ethereum Foundation's "Institutional Privacy Working Group" and has received support from Bitmine, Sharplink, Joe Lubin, and others. It primarily develops Ethereum-based privacy and compliance technology for regulated entities such as banks and asset management institutions, aiming to support institutions in conducting on-chain financial activities without disclosing sensitive information such as transaction details and client identities.
EthSystems, an institutional privacy technology company for Ethereum, has officially launched, securing strategic funding from ecosystem supporters including Bitmine, Sharplink Gaming, and Joe Lubin.EthSystems focuses on developing privacy technologies tailored for banks, asset management firms, and other regulated institutions, enabling them to execute financial transactions at scale on the Ethereum network while protecting sensitive information such as transaction details and client identities. The company was founded by the core team of the Ethereum Foundation's Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF). The team had previously conducted a year-long open-source research and development effort on the EthSystems official website and established collaborations with multiple central banks, regulatory bodies, large banks, and asset management institutions.EthSystems stated that while institutions have begun exploring stablecoins, tokenized assets, and Ethereum-based settlement solutions, widespread adoption still faces privacy and compliance challenges. Financial institutions require more than just access to the blockchain network; they need a complete infrastructure that meets the requirements for protecting trade secrets, complying with regulations, and ensuring compatibility with existing financial systems. The goal is to build a "selective disclosure" privacy architecture, allowing transaction participants to view only the information they are authorized to access, while preserving Ethereum's core advantages of decentralization, security, and openness, and complementing two other organizations:Ethlabs: Focused on core Ethereum protocol and infrastructure research and development;Ethereum Institutional: Responsible for institutional collaboration, education, market research, and ecosystem coordination;EthSystems: Concentrated on application-layer technology, translating institutional needs into operational privacy protocols and financial systems.
SBI and the Solana Foundation have announced a strategic partnership to jointly advance the development of Japan's on-chain financial market. Under the collaboration agreement, the Solana Foundation will acquire a stake in SBI R3 Japan, and work alongside existing shareholders SBI and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group to drive a new growth strategy. The company plans to rebrand as SBI Solana Global Co., Ltd. SBI Solana Global will focus on promoting the issuance and circulation of yen stablecoins such as JPYSC on the Solana network, supporting the issuance and circulation of corporate bonds and tokenized RWAs, building cross-border payment infrastructure, providing on-chain financial services for institutional investors, and developing the next generation of payment infrastructure for the AI Agent era.
Four departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued guiding opinions on promoting the high-quality development of Internet infrastructure resources, which mentioned strengthening Internet technology innovation planning, promoting the implementation of relevant national key R&D programs and national major science and technology projects, and strengthening original technology innovation. Technical breakthroughs should be carried out in the integration and innovation of technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and distributed identifiers with Internet infrastructure resources, breaking through key technologies such as network dynamic optimization, intelligent resource scheduling, and secure data interaction. Innovation in the IPv6 technology system should be strengthened to solve key issues such as protocol compatibility and high-performance transmission. Key technologies such as satellite Internet mega-constellation networking, rapid routing switching, and reliable anti-interference transmission must be broken through. Key technologies for the large-scale deployment and application of resource public key infrastructure should also be broken through. (Jin10)
27 crypto and Web3 companies, including OKX, MetaMask, and Matter Labs, have jointly supported the "Internet Court" project led by the Genlayer Foundation. The project aims to provide automated dispute resolution infrastructure for transactions between AI agents.As AI agents begin to autonomously conduct negotiations, payments, and commercial transactions, machine-to-machine economic activity is growing rapidly. However, similar to business dealings between humans, AI agents may also encounter issues such as contract breaches and payment disputes. Existing legal systems and traditional courts find it difficult to adapt to the high-speed transaction scenarios of machines. The Genlayer Foundation stated that the Internet Court aims to enable interoperability between AI-based payment, escrow, and dispute resolution systems, providing a "machine-speed" arbitration mechanism for the agent economy. (CoinDesk)
EF Protocol Support tweeted that the Ethereum Foundation Protocol Support team has been disbanded. The team was primarily responsible for coordinating the Ethereum protocol development process, including organizing and coordinating core developer meetings, tracking network upgrade progress, supporting EIP progression, operating the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship (EPF) program, and providing education, community, and infrastructure coordination support. This adjustment is part of the Ethereum Foundation's recent organizational restructuring, as the foundation has recently seen multiple team and personnel changes.
researchers from the Ethereum Foundation Protocol Security team said in a blog post on Thursday that they have deployed a series of AI agents to test the software relied upon by Ethereum, searching for vulnerabilities in encryption systems, protocol code, and smart contracts. The vulnerabilities discovered by the AI agents include a remotely triggerable panic issue in the libp2p gossipsub peer-to-peer layer used by Ethereum consensus clients. The issue has been fixed and disclosed on Github as CVE-2026-34219. Researchers stated that the AI agents are organized into specialized roles such as reconnaissance, search, patching, and verification, used to find potential attack paths, reproduce faults, and verify their applicability to production code. The Ethereum Foundation stated that AI has not replaced security researchers but has changed the way they work, enabling the team to cover far more scope than manual review. However, it requires researchers to exercise more careful judgment when evaluating a large number of seemingly credible conclusions. (Decrypt)