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HIGHEST-PAYING CRYPTO JOBS

Crypto x AI jobs and infrastructure projects pay the most of any sub-industry in crypto, with median salaries of $400k and $288k, respectively.

ETH FUTURES VOLUME HITS ALL-TIME HIGH ON CME

CME's Ethereum futures hit a record $118B in trading volume for July, up 82% month-over-month, with open interest jumping 75% to $5.21B.

DO KWON MAY PLEAD GUILTY IN U.S. FRAUD CASE

Kwon faces multiple charges, including wire fraud, securities fraud, and market manipulation.

WHITE HOUSE CRYPTO COUNCIL HEAD BO HINES TO STEP DOWN

Bo Hines, executive director of the White House's crypto council, is stepping down and returning to the private sector. His deputy, Patrick Witt, will take over. Hines, appointed by President Trump in late 2024, met with over 150 crypto leaders during his tenure and will continue advising on AI initiatives under David Sacks.

HOW HIGH WILL ETHEREUM GO AFTER BREAKING $4K?

Ethereum surged 24% this week to above $4,330, breaking key resistance around $4,200 in its highest rally since December 2021. Analysts see a Wyckoff Accumulation breakout in play, with a potential move toward $6,000 if the new uptrend holds. A simultaneous breakout from a multi-year symmetrical triangle points to an $8,000 target in the coming months, echoing past multi-month rallies triggered by similar patterns.

COINBASE LAUNCHES RETAIL DEX WITH AERODROME

Aerodrome is now fully integrated into Coinbase's frontend, making every Base asset, pool, and launch on Aerodrome instantly accessible to 100M+ Coinbase users. Unlike protocols reliant on proprietary frontends, Aerodrome's design rewards integrations, allowing for deeper liquidity, wider reach, and more rewards for $AERO lockers.

WORLD MOBILE LAUNCHES DRONE-BASED, DECENTRALIZED TELECOM PROJECT

World Mobile has partnered with Indonesia's Protelindo to launch a blockchain-enabled 5G network using hydrogen-powered drones in the stratosphere, delivering wireless coverage of up to 15,000 sq km per aircraft. Operating at 60,000 feet with 6ms latency, the system claims to provide connectivity up to 18x cheaper per gigabyte than satellite-based services. The company is targeting a share of the $98.3B sky-based telecom market, positioning itself against competitors like Helium Mobile and Starlink by focusing on areas with higher mobile user density.

THE EXHAUSTION OF THE METAGAME: CRYPTO IN ITS POST SLOP ERA

Crypto has entered a “post-slop” era where hype-driven token launches and influencer campaigns no longer drive lasting value—projects must now deliver tangible utility and sustained user activity to earn market trust. The rise of platforms like Kaito exposed the mechanics of paid promotion, but moving forward, only reputation, real products, and sticky liquidity will stand out. Historical cycles—from DeFi Summer to Solana's resurgence—underscore that genuine community engagement and on-chain usage, not endorsements or content volume, fuel long-term success. As quality and transparency become paramount, projects like Hyperliquid that inspire true confidence and put capital at risk are poised to lead the next phase of crypto innovation.

LAUNCH BY KINETIQ

Launch by Kinetiq is the first “Exchange-as-a-Service” on Hyperliquid's HIP-3 protocol. It lets any team crowdfund the 1 million+ HYPE stake needed to deploy perpetual futures markets without building backend infrastructure. Launch pools contributor capital into isolated exHYPE tokens per exchange, so slashing events only affect the specific market's staking pool, and fees are distributed transparently to backers. Operators focus on market curation, governance, and community, while HYPE holders earn dynamic yields by choosing which deployments to support. This Shopify-meets-Kickstarter model democratizes perp exchange creation, expands market diversity, and unlocks new yield primitives across the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

COINBASE DEX TRADING SHIFTS POWER, SIDESTEPS UNISWAP

As Coinbase rolls out DEX trading to millions of users, Uniswap's frontend fee revenue faces disruption. Unlike Aerodrome, which incentivizes integrations through protocol-based rewards to $AERO lockers, Uniswap Labs profits from its own interface, creating friction with alternative frontends like Coinbase. While Uniswap's moat is built on brand trust, Aerodrome's is built into its smart contracts. The “DeFi mullet” shift, TradFi frontend with DeFi backend, could reroute flows and flip the competitive edge.

LINK BUYBACKS SIGNAL NEW ERA FOR CHAINLINK

Chainlink is entering a new phase as token buybacks begin, aligning network success with $LINK value accrual for the first time. Long dubbed a “dino coin,” the project has quietly built one of the deepest moats in crypto, powering mission-critical infrastructure and onboarding top financial institutions under Sergey Nazarov's leadership. With hundreds of millions already in revenue and no regulatory roadblocks for onchain finance, LINK is now positioned as a prime beneficiary of the institutional adoption cycle.

PHANTOM LEADS HYPERLIQUID BUILDER REVENUE WITH $1.83M IN ONE MONTH

Since launching Hyperliquid perps directly in-wallet, Phantom has onboarded 25,000+ wallets and generated $1.83M in revenue, outpacing all other builders.

LINEA & SBET TO COLLABORATE

Joseph Lubin says Linea and its group of Consensys-linked projects like SBET will soon hit full stride, unlocking capabilities other L2s can't easily replicate.

HARVARD REVEALS $116 MILLION INVESTMENT IN BITCOIN

Harvard's latest regulatory filings show the university has $116 million in BlackRock's IBIT Bitcoin ETF, making it and Brown two leading universities with crypto holdings.

TRUMP ORDER WILL ALLOW ALTERNATIVE ASSETS LIKE CRYPTOCURRENCIES IN 401(K)S

President Trump will sign an executive order directing the Labor Secretary to review ERISA fiduciary guidance so that private equity, cryptocurrencies, real estate, and other alternative assets can be included in 401(k) and defined-contribution plans. The move marks a major victory for alternative asset managers after conditional 2020 and Biden-era guidance already allowed limited private market exposure. With Americans holding about $8.7 trillion in 401(k) assets, BlackRock and Empower are already preparing funds that allocate 5-20% to private investments. Proponents argue that broader access can improve diversification and long-term returns, despite higher fees, longer lockups, and transparency concerns.

RIPPLE TO BUY STABLECOIN PAYMENTS FIRM RAIL FOR $200M

Ripple is set to acquire Toronto-based stablecoin payments platform Rail for $200 million. The deal is expected to close in Q4. It is part of Ripple's strategy to deepen adoption of its newly launched RLUSD stablecoin. Rail will augment Ripple's global payments network by integrating fast, compliant stablecoin rails into its On-Demand Liquidity infrastructure. This move follows Ripple's prior bid for Circle. It is the latest development in the intensifying race among blockchain firms to control stablecoin payment flows. By combining Rail's payment expertise with its settlement network, Ripple aims to accelerate stablecoin innovation in cross-border finance.

NARRATIVE: THE PERPETUAL INFORMATION MARKET

Narrative is a perpetual market that allows users to speculate on trends and mindshare rather than more objective information like prices. Its goal is to make it possible to speculate on any piece of information. It is the latest entry to the InfoFi narrative. Narrative's testnet deployment is live on Monad. A private beta is available for interested users.

BOROS: INTRODUCING FUNDING FUTURES

Boros is a new protocol from the Pendle team that lets users trade and hedge funding-rate yields on BTC and ETH via Yield Units (YUs), each representing the yield from one unit of the underlying asset until maturity. By allowing traders to go long or short YUs and providing isolated liquidity pools (exLSTs), it introduces a standardized, trustless way to fix or speculate on funding exposure. Over time, Boros aims to become a core pillar of onchain yield markets and extend beyond funding rates to bonds, equities, and other real-world assets. Initially capped at $10 million open interest per market and 1.2x leverage, Boros supports Binance BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT funding rates, with vaults offering PENDLE incentives, swap fees, and implied APR gains.

UNVEILING THE PREDICTION MARKET FOREST

Onchain order-book data from Polymarket between April 2024 and April 2025 reveals persistent pricing inefficiencies. Leveraging heuristics and LLM-assisted semantic matching, this research classifies mispricings into intra-market “Market Rebalancing” and cross-market “Combinatorial” arbitrage, scanning 17,218 conditions. Opportunities surfaced in 7,051 single-condition and 662 multi-condition markets, with 11 logically linked market pairs enabling cross-market trades. Onchain activity shows arbitrageurs have already extracted about $40 million, highlighting both the scale of inefficiency and the corrective role of sophisticated traders in decentralized prediction markets.

THE COMET CRYPTO PORTFOLIO EXPERIMENT

Comet, Perplexity's browser agent, was put to the test of creating a crypto portfolio and investing on Coinbase. It collected market information using various news sources and pricing data and organized it into a digestible format. Comet then navigated to Coinbase and started making trades based on its analysis, marking the first agentic trading on Coinbase. The portfolio includes BTC, ETH, SOL, ADA, and XRP.

“MONEY 3.0” THESIS FOR STABLECOINS

Stablecoins mark a foundational shift from batch-based legacy finance to real-time, programmable money, creating new markets and value layers. There are four core layers in the stablecoin stack: issuance (where trust lives), infrastructure, orchestration, and distribution. While most builders chase the middle layers, the most defensible value lies at the edges, specifically issuer network effects and end-user distribution scale. The stablecoin market cap is at $232B and projected to hit $400B by year-end.

BOROS LETS TRADERS HEDGE FUNDING RATES WITH FIXED-RATE YU TOKENS

Boros' YU tokens are fixed-rate instruments that let long and short traders hedge volatile funding rates. In bull markets, longs pay high funding - buying YU at a fixed rate locks in costs. Shorts in bear markets can sell YU to fix incoming funding gains. Basis traders (e.g., long spot + short perp) can use short YU to preserve favorable funding without closing positions, especially relevant for protocols like Ethena. While Boros is early and short-YU demand dominates, it reflects smart yield engineering for the growing perp ecosystem.

SEC VS. RIPPLE CASE OFFICIALLY DISMISSED BY BOTH PARTIES

In a joint filing, the SEC and Ripple Labs agreed to dismiss their respective appeals, marking the official end of the long-running case.

BASE BEGINS COLLECTING TOKENIZED CONTENT TO SUPPORT CREATORS

Base announced it will start collecting tokenized posts on @baseapp to directly support creators.

FUNDAMENTAL GLOBAL FILES TO RAISE $5B FOR ETH TREASURY STRATEGY

Nasdaq-listed Fundamental Global has filed to raise up to $5 billion, with the majority of proceeds earmarked for Ethereum purchases as part of its treasury strategy.

LIDO DAO PROPOSES DYNAMIC BUYBACKS TIED TO TREASURY HEALTH

Lido DAO has proposed using up to 70% of incoming assets for $LDO buybacks, targeting more efficient capital use of its $145M+ treasury (stables + stETH).

TORNADO CASH DEV ROMAN STORM FOUND GUILTY ON ONE COUNT

A New York jury found Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm guilty of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, but they acquitted him of sanctions violations and were deadlocked on money laundering charges. The partial verdict spares Storm from a potential 20-year sentence but leaves him facing up to five years. The defense counsel argued Storm had no control over the decentralized protocol, which was used for both privacy and illicit purposes. The decision is seen as a partial win for crypto developers, highlighting the legal ambiguity around building open-source privacy tools. Sentencing is pending, and the DOJ may still retry the unresolved charge.

SEC GREENLIGHTS LIQUID STAKING, UNLOCKS INSTITUTIONAL PARTICIPATION

The SEC clarified that receipt tokens from liquid staking aren't securities if the underlying activities are “ministerial or administrative,” effectively greenlighting protocol-driven LST platforms. This unlocks institutional strategies like earning 5–15% staking yields while maintaining liquidity, solving a key treasury obstacle. Liquid restaking on Ethereum has surged to $24B TVL, and the new guidance is expected to accelerate that growth.

AXAL – A SMARTER WAY TO SAVE

Axal is a new stablecoin savings account leveraging DeFi positions to earn a 6-10% yield. Axal acts as a curator of protocols and automatically allocates funds to the appropriate pools to earn high yield at adjusted risk. Currently, the yield sources include Morpho, Aave, and Euler, though there are plans to further expand the strategies and yield sources.

INTRODUCING THE SUPERFORM FOUNDATION

The Superform Foundation was established as a legally independent Cayman foundation to guide Superform's permissionless infrastructure and accelerate decentralization of its consumer finance protocols. It will steward core infrastructure, expand the ecosystem through integrations, grants, and incentive programs, and develop governance and token-utility frameworks for $UP holders. The Foundation will also drive a gradual shift toward community-led governance with full transparency over decisions, treasury operations, and roadmap priorities. Upcoming deliverables include a tokenomics paper, protocol documentation, core governance proposals, and activation of token functionality to coordinate protocol growth.

BALAJI ON TOKENIZED IPOS

Lina Khan's decision to block a major acquisition forced startups like Figma to scale independently, creating outsized value for employees and investors. While some argue Adobe's purchase might have delivered greater returns, proponents counter that in a power-law world, you only need one home run to justify a policy. Balaji calls for easier IPO access, ideally via crypto-native equity markets, to reverse the decline in US listings and avoid the regulatory complexity that entrenches Big Tech. He warns that antitrust interventions and baroque deal structures ultimately strengthen incumbents and that crypto exchanges could supplant traditional capital markets.

BEST HYPE YIELDS

beHYPE campaigns on HyperBeat (20% of the airdrop) and Spectra Finance (29% APR until August 30) reward early depositors with tradable points via Rumpel Labs. Leveraged wstHYPE farming on Sentiment can net an 82.5% APR looped yield, while Pendle offers a 3.11% ROI over 85 days for long-term exposure with exit optionality. Felix Protocol's stability pool provides 16% organic APR on feUSD and discounted HYPE from liquidations. Advanced users can deploy delta-neutral positions – combining fixed-rate farming with shorting – to lock in 15-26% net yields while farming additional ecosystem points.

HYPERLIQUID: THE ECONOMICS OF TRUST

Hyperliquid addresses the industry's “extraction meta,” where speculative token launches and founder dumps erode market trust, by operating without private backers and sustaining continuous buybacks through its Assistance Fund. Its buyback rate is set to repurchase the entire circulating supply in under four years, backed by real revenue and an integrity-driven team, which attracts serious, long-term holders. By aligning incentives around transparent, risk-capital commitment rather than hype-driven speculation, it restores the foundational trust that underpins viable crypto markets. In doing so, Hyperliquid positions itself as a rare, credible store-of-value token amid a landscape of extractive projects.

AAVE BASE USDC DEPOSITS HIT $200M AFTER INCENTIVE CAMPAIGN

USDC deposits on Aave's Base deployment increased 22.7% to a record $200M following the launch of the Base Incentive Campaign on July 23. Framed as an ongoing “arms race” for DeFi dominance on Base, the campaign pits Aave's yield-backed growth model against competitors allegedly burning governance tokens. While the rivalry unfolds, users benefit from the boosted incentives and attractive yields, evidence of how protocol wars can drive adoption.

BASE CHAIN 30-MINUTE OUTAGE

After nearly two years of uninterrupted operation, Base chain experienced a 33-minute pause in block production due to a handoff to an unhealthy sequencer.

MEI PHARMA BUYS $100 MILLION OF LITECOIN

MEI Pharma, a Nasdaq-listed company, bought 929,548 LTC worth $100 million as a treasury asset.

ETHEREUM TREASURY FIRMS ARE NOW “VERY INVESTABLE”

Ethereum treasury companies are now more attractive than U.S. spot ETH ETFs because of staking yield, DeFi access, and normalized NAV multiples above 1.0.

TOM LEE'S ETH BET COULD RESHAPE THE FINANCIAL ORDER

BitMine's Tom Lee is accumulating ETH 12x faster than Saylor's BTC pace, aiming to own 5% of the supply (~6M ETH) by 2026.

SEC SAYS LIQUID STAKING DOESN'T RUN AFOUL OF SECURITIES LAWS

The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance clarified in a non-binding staff statement that liquid staking, where users deposit covered crypto assets to receive receipt tokens, does not require securities-law disclosures as long as the assets aren't part of an investment contract. With nearly $67 billion in TVL across protocols like Lido, Jito, and Rocket Pool, the market saw only muted price changes after the announcement. The guidance emphasizes that liquid staking providers act as agents without entrepreneurial or managerial efforts in staking decisions. By following this statement, industry participants should avoid enforcement actions under current securities laws.

SHARPLINK BOOSTS ETH HOLDINGS TO 522K, RAISES $265M IN A WEEK

SharpLink (Nasdaq: SBET) added 83,561 ETH in the week ending August 3, increasing total holdings to 521,939 ETH, up 19% week-over-week. The firm raised $264.5M in net proceeds via its ATM facility at an average ETH price of $3,634. Staking rewards now total 929 ETH since the firm launched its treasury strategy in June. Its proprietary “ETH Concentration” metric rose to 3.66, up 83% since launch, as SharpLink continues to position itself as the leading Ethereum-native treasury company.

SLASH LAUNCHES GLOBAL USD: BORDERLESS BANKING WITHOUT THE BAGGAGE

Slash has launched Global USD in partnership with Base, offering international users U.S. bank accounts without needing an LLC, EIN, or facing sudden account shutdowns. Users get a real U.S. account and routing number in ~10 minutes using local documents, earn up to 4.5% cash rewards, and pay zero fees to receive USD or USDC. Slash has also introduced a free AI finance agent that tracks spending, flags duplicate charges, and cancels subscriptions.

COINBASE TO ENABLE IN-APP TRADING FOR ALL BASE TOKENS

Coinbase is about to make every Base token, meme or utility, searchable and tradable by its ~8 million active users, removing the need for formal listings. Projects building on Base now just need attention, not exchange approval, to unlock retail access. The gate is open now it's a race for visibility.

90 DEFI-FOCUSED CT ACCOUNTS TO FOLLOW

Pink Brains dropped a curated list of 90 high-signal DeFi Twitter accounts, organized by category: Educational Content, Yield Farming & Trading Strategies, Podcasts & Media, Market Insights, and Airdrops. It includes a mix of key opinion leaders offering sharp analysis, yield strategy breakdowns, narrative detection, and protocol deep-dives.

24 RECENT ETHEREUM ECOSYSTEM LAUNCHES

Over the past few weeks, the Ethereum ecosystem has seen major integrations and supply growth: Robinhood went onchain via Arbitrum, Base launched Base Pay and its onchain app, and total stablecoin supply across Ethereum L1/L2 topped $140 billion. Institutional momentum accelerated with ConsenSys' “Trustware” report, Electric Capital's ETH advocacy, a record $726.6 million single-day ETH ETF inflow, and treasury moves by BitDigital and BitMNR. Key infrastructure and app innovations shipped, including FocusTree's 500k daily users on Starknet, Boundless's ZK execution layer beta, EigenLayer's slashed-funds redistribution, and the Talos AI agent on Arbitrum. The ecosystem also celebrated Ethereum's 10th anniversary globally, released a new documentary, and saw expanded real-world deployments, from Google Cloud ZK identity proofs and PayPal crypto payments to Morpho Labs' $2 billion TVL on Base.

BASE APP'S EARLY METRICS

Base App transforms Coinbase's wallet into a crypto “super app,” merging self-custodial wallet functions, Farcaster-powered SocialFi via Zora NFTs, USDC-based PayFi with 1% cashback, and integrated mini-apps. Since rebranding in July, daily token launches surged from 4k to 15k, trading volume rose from $1M to $6M, and creator rewards jumped to $30k/day, with over 8k Zora smart wallets now active. Partnerships with Zora, Noice, and Clanker, along with an independent security council and a friendlier US regulatory climate, fuel speculation of a future $BASE token.

FRAXNET: THE FAT STABLECOIN THESIS

A “Fat Stablecoin” model flips the traditional banking and stablecoin yield capture by programmatically redistributing real-time frxUSD yield directly to holders under GENIUS-compliant regulations. Serving as the account layer atop L1 Fraxtal, it enables instant minting, redemption, yield streaming, and plug-and-play integrations without lockups or custody complexity. Targeting the $7.5 trillion money market fund sector and broader $20 trillion U.S. M2 supply, FraxNet eliminates daily settlement delays and intermediaries to unlock new cash-management primitives. By aligning incentives and offering transparent, auditable distribution, frxUSD is positioned as a superior institutional cash infrastructure that drives mainstream adoption.

THE WASHINGTON WALL STREET INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, EXPOSED BY CRYPTO

The U.S. banking system is a “protected” industry that functions as a workaround for government surveillance, shielded by regulation, bailouts, and chartering hurdles.

CRYPTO GIVES YOU WALL STREET-LEVEL DATA FOR FREE

33-MINUTE BASE CHAIN OUTAGE

Base Chain experienced a 33-minute-long outage last night due to an automated handoff to an unhealthy sequencer in its high-availability cluster.

ETHEREUM APPS HAVE GENERATED $26.8B IN CUMULATIVE FEES

Since launch, applications on Ethereum have generated ~$26.8B in user-paid fees.