Decentralized AI (DeAI) protocols are beginning to generate revenue through compute, data, and agent services. Multiple DeAI projects across categories, including fine-tuned models, DePIN infrastructure, portfolio management, and agent launchpads, are demonstrating product-market fit with users willing to pay for services, mirroring how centralized AI companies reach $30 million in revenue 5x faster than traditional SaaS. Despite AI being the most disruptive technology of the current era, AI tokens represent only 1.9% of the total altcoin market cap, suggesting significant undervaluation relative to their revenue-generating potential.
The crypto card market is evolving beyond simple prepaid wrappers toward solutions that leverage crypto's core advantages, with new offerings in 2025 focusing on four key differentiators: custody, yield generation, multi-chain flexibility, and privacy. EtherFi Cash leads the DeFi-native approach by allowing users to spend directly from yield-generating vaults – earning 9-12% on USDC while maintaining 3%+ cashback – while PAYY prioritizes privacy through zero-knowledge settlement, and Cypher enables spending across 500+ tokens on 18+ chains. Traditional players like Coinbase are also entering with mainstream credit card offerings featuring crypto rewards.
The current bull market will be driven by ETFs, centralized exchanges, and digital asset treasuries. Retail enthusiasm for onchain “gambling” like memecoins and NFTs has faded. DeFi will benefit if ETF investors push into onchain financial infrastructure while broader crypto adoption shifts toward payments, global settlement of USD/RWAs, and BTC/ETH as stores of value.
Wall Street will inevitably migrate to Ethereum rails, staking, running validators, and using DeFi to replace siloed legacy infrastructure. ETH will overtake BTC and ultimately become the base layer of global finance as decentralized trust is the ultimate commodity.
Stablecoin supply on Ethereum has reached an all-time high of over $160 billion, more than doubling since January 2024.
The top six sovereign Bitcoin holders in 2025 (altogether ~527k BTC with the U.S. at ~207k BTC, China at ~194k, and smaller allocations from the UK, Ukraine, Bhutan, and El Salvador) have less Bitcoin than Strategy (632K+ BTC).
Solana Mobile's Seed Vault turns a phone into a hardware wallet secured by biometrics, offering a major usability and security upgrade.
Kalshi became the leading prediction market by open interest in the first weekend of the US college football season, likely supported by its status as the main regulated prediction market in the United States.
TikTok is expanding its messaging features to let users send voice notes up to 60 seconds and share up to nine images or videos in one-on-one or group chats. The update includes editing options, safety restrictions for new contacts, and protections for younger users. The move will align TikTok more closely with platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram.
Amsterdam-based Framer has raised $100 million in Series D funding at a $2 billion valuation led by existing investors Meritech and Atomico. The professional website design platform empowers designers, developers, and marketers to create production-ready websites with AI assistance, databases, and advanced features, eliminating the need for technical expertise. Framer has focused on enterprise customers since launching its business plans last year, with hundreds of thousands of active websites and clients, including Scale AI, Perplexity, and Miro.
MindJourney is a novel research framework that enables AI agents to explore simulated 3D environments, thereby enhancing their understanding of spatial relationships derived from 2D images. The system utilizes a world model to generate photo-realistic views from various perspectives, while a vision-language model filters the most informative viewpoints using spatial beam search. Testing on the Spatial Aptitude Training benchmark showed MindJourney improved VLM accuracy by 8% without requiring additional training.
A discussion with 95 design system practitioners explored how AI fits into design systems, showing that AI is effective for divergent tasks like brainstorming, research, and low-risk prototyping, but struggles with convergent tasks that require precision, such as production-quality code, design-system fidelity, and pixel-perfect visuals. Successful integration depends on context engineering, rigorous contract tests, and careful measurement of AI output, treating AI as a collaborator to accelerate and propose rather than a fully reliable producer, while keeping human judgment central.
AI prototyping tools typically excel at speed and collaboration but struggle with brand consistency due to a lack of context about design systems. Vercel's v0 can generate brand-aligned, production-ready prototypes when paired with AI-native design systems like shadcn/ui, which provides open components, consistent APIs, and token-based styling that models can effectively interpret. Teams can create scalable AI prototyping workflows by applying design tokens to shadcn/ui themes, building reusable component blocks, and publishing registries that enable both humans and AI models to work with the same design system foundation.
The creative industries are experiencing unprecedented job losses as artificial intelligence displaces human workers, with WPP cutting 7,000 positions and tech companies eliminating over 22,000 jobs in 2025. While tech companies promote AI as "democratizing creativity," the reality creates homogenized, mediocre content that lacks the unpredictable human spark that resonates with audiences.
Adhere to WCAG by building an accessible component library, auto-detecting issues for web and mobile interfaces, and streamlining dev handoff.
Transform complex ideas into captivating visuals that inform and engage your audience. With Piktochart AI, you can create stunning infographics, reports, and presentations in seconds, perfectly aligned with your brand.
Kira is a chat-based AI image tool that lets you describe an idea, get an image, and then edit just by talking. No prompts, no layers.
Design leaders identify curiosity as a strategic tool for breaking silos and building relationships, not just a personality trait. The "Benjamin Franklin Effect" illustrates how asking colleagues for expertise-based favors can create cognitive dissonance, thereby improving strained workplace relationships. Framing curious questions around business impact helps designers connect their work to outcomes and positions design as strategic rather than purely visual.
2025.09.01·dataanddesign.substack.com·6 min read·TLDR Design TV interface design is governed by the "10-foot experience," requiring larger elements for distant viewing and the enduring D-pad navigation pattern from 1980s Nintendo controllers. Despite technological advances like touchpads and motion controls, the basic six-button scheme (four directions plus two action buttons) remains the universal foundation for TV interaction. This pattern persists because it represents the optimal balance between simplicity and functionality for remote-controlled navigation across all TV platforms.
2025.09.01·smashingmagazine.com·20 min read·TLDR Design The new poster for The Conjuring: Last Rites uses clever negative space to create a demon shape from a border of screaming faces, combining red and black for a classic horror aesthetic.
These five essential typography books, ranging from Ellen Lupton's comprehensive "Thinking with Type" to Josef Müller-Brockmann's grid-focused Swiss design classic, offer designers a foundation for fall practice renewal.
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The Thiel Fellowship pays young talents $100,000 to leave college and start companies, challenging the traditional education bubble. It prizes creativity and individuality over conventional metrics like GPA, producing successful companies like Figma and Ethereum. Originating from ideas by Peter Thiel and colleagues, the fellowship has inspired a new venture fund, 1517 Fund, that supports young entrepreneurs.
Non-consensual investing is risky early on, as successful startups usually attract competition and higher valuations. Access and strategic fund structures are key in venture capital. There is a defense-tech boom happening in Silicon Valley driven by changing warfare dynamics and new opportunities in selling to the Pentagon.
ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao threatened to quit Meta within days of joining and signed paperwork to return to OpenAI before being appeased with the “chief AI scientist” title. Other high-profile hires, including former OpenAI researchers Avi Verma and Ethan Knight, left after less than a month.
Culture changes every time you hire someone new, but most founders only notice when it's already broken - usually around employee 20 when proximity to founders starts fading. The key isn't just defining values but turning them into visible behaviors - celebrate when someone lives them, call out when someone doesn't - because as the military says, doing something below standard and saying nothing sets a new standard. Culture drifts about every six months during rapid growth, so plan regular resets at off-sites where you reconnect on what values look like in practice.
Podscan uses generative AI to convert trial users into paying customers by implementing an LLM scoring system six hours after sign-up, analyzing user behavior and attributes, and sending personalized follow-up emails. It uses an automated onboarding process to generate customized alert keywords based on user classification and project descriptions. Podscan's AI-assisted dashboard allows users to create alerts, optimizing engagement and onboarding while maintaining cost-efficiency.
AI is increasingly replacing junior roles, giving rise to strategic risks for companies. A lack of young talent can hinder leadership pipeline development and disconnect businesses from emerging cultural trends. Eliminating juniors also forfeits potential AI advancements driven by their creativity and adaptability.
Make your Google form talk.
Debugging for AI Agents.
Thousands of AI search agents running in parallel.
Kevin Kelly has built clocks that tick for 10,000 years, co-founded WIRED, wrote the "1,000 true fans" essay that launched the creator economy, and advised Spielberg on Minority Report - but he's never started a company and doesn't want to. He works "Hollywood style," jumping between projects that interest him, which Silicon Valley sees as unserious compared to grinding toward unicorn status. While tech culture fetishizes founders who get scurvy from eating only ramen or "torture people into greatness," Kelly just seems happy, following interests not for money or dominance but because the well of curiosity is bottomless. The real question isn't whether you can be great without suffering - it's why we insist greatness requires misery.
People waited eight hours to enter Costco's new Okinawa store - five to park, three more to get inside - in a country where Walmart, Tesco, and Carrefour all failed and fled. Costco succeeded by adapting everything: building up instead of out with escalator ramps for carts because land costs too much, selling 30% fresh food, including restaurant-quality sushi at $20 for 48 pieces, and paying 60% above minimum wage, which forced local shops to match or close. The real genius was understanding Japanese shopping culture - customers split bulk purchases with friends and neighbors, giving Costco 162,000 members per warehouse versus 112,000 in America, plus it let corner stores resell Kirkland products during COVID at 20% markups because spreading the brand mattered more than controlling distribution when membership fees generate half your profit.
Product-market fit isn't enough - you need PMMC fit, which means having a product, market, profitable model, and channels that actually work. Super.com nearly died during COVID when refunds exceeded bookings. It burned money on TikTok ads, assuming viral content drove bookings, but people searching "hotel tonight" use Google, not social media. The same blindness almost killed its product - it thought lower-income households wanted cheaper vacations. After making 200 employees cash paychecks at payday lenders and shops at Walmart, it learned these customers needed everyday financial help, not travel deals. It pivoted from discount hotels to a membership program for credit building, grocery cashback, and basic financial services - now it's at $200 million revenue.
The internet's biggest traffic cop can't identify which AI agent is which or why they're there.
Every company has a moment where the CEO realizes they're completely screwed and has to tell investors and employees who definitely don't want to hear it.
Assort Health raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to automate patient communication in specialty healthcare.
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DNSFilter [4] protects more than 43,000 organizations worldwide by blocking 200 million threats every day - like malware, phishing, and botnets - before they hit.
WhatsApp has released an emergency security update to patch a critical zero-click exploit that allows attackers to remotely compromise iOS and macOS devices without any user interaction. The vulnerability affects WhatsApp's voice calling feature, allowing attackers to execute malicious code by simply initiating a call, even if the target doesn't answer. Users are strongly urged to update their WhatsApp applications immediately to protect against potential attacks exploiting this serious security flaw.
Threat actors are using the Velociraptor forensic tool to deploy Visual Studio Code for command and control tunneling. The attackers are exploiting Velociraptor's endpoint monitoring to download and run Visual Studio Code, likely to establish persistent backdoor access. This follows the trend of cybercriminals exploiting trusted tools to evade detection and maintain covert channels.
There is a malware campaign that uses Meta ads offering a free version of the TradingView Premium app to spread the Brokewell malware for Android. The malicious ads direct users to a webpage that mimics TradingView's site and prompts users to download an APK file, which installs the Brokewell malware. The malware scans for crypto wallets and bank accounts, steals 2FA codes, steals accounts by overlaying fake login screens, records screens and keystrokes, steals cookies, activates the camera and microphone, tracks the device location, hijacks the default SMS apps, and provides remote control capability.
The TamperedChef infostealer malware is being distributed through fake PDF editing applications promoted via Google ads across multiple malicious websites. The fraudulent PDF editor appears legitimate but secretly installs the TamperedChef malware designed to steal sensitive information from infected systems. This campaign demonstrates how cybercriminals continue to exploit trusted advertising platforms and standard software to deliver malware to unsuspecting users.
This post analyzes how attackers bypass macOS' built-in security mechanisms, including Keychain, SIP, TCC, File Quarantine, and Gatekeeper, through techniques such as TCC Clickjacking, quarantine attribute removal, and social engineering attacks that require context menu execution. The analysis provides detection rules in Sigma format to identify malicious activities, such as keychain dumping, SIP status discovery, quarantine removal, and Gatekeeper disabling, through command-line utilities. Organizations should implement third-party EDR solutions in conjunction with native macOS protections, as attackers continue to adapt and circumvent Apple's security frameworks through techniques such as privilege escalation and user manipulation.
Attackers frequently utilize shortcut files as an initial access vector, as they can obscure malicious commands from a user. In this post, the author compiled a corpus of 614 malicious LNK files using the VirusTotal API and employed frequency analysis to extract common command-line arguments from malicious shortcuts that execute PowerShell or CMD. The author then utilized KQL to construct threat hunting queries that search for malicious LNK files using this corpus of data.
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Almost anything worth doing creates some level of risk. But without mapping or monitoring, your company security posture is constantly under pressure. Grab this OneTrust infographic [11] for a quick overview of the gap between regulations and resourcing, and how you
Founding is a tool that processes shellcode in .bin, .exe, or .dll formats, applying advanced obfuscation or encryption techniques to generate stealthy binaries with sophisticated execution methods.
JamfHound is a Python 3 project designed to collect and identify attack paths in Jamf Pro and import them as JSON object files into BloodHound.
FT3 is Stripe's adaptation of ATT&CK-style security frameworks designed explicitly for fraudulent activities.