News linked to both this project and an event.
Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-8222 plans to leverage STARK-based cryptographic mechanisms to separate staking deposits from withdrawals and re-anonymize validators, aiming to reduce the traceability of validator activity. Currently, approximately one-third of all ETH is staked. Thibault Dubuis, Head of Staking and Decentralized Finance Products at Sygnum Bank, stated that current deposit addresses, validators, and withdrawal credentials form visible links, making institutional holdings sizes, entry timings, and staking strategies nearly public. The proposal remains in the discussion phase, with no deployment timeline yet announced. Its design may involve fixed deposit denominations, asset withdrawal waiting periods, and other arrangements, potentially requiring institutional users to bear higher execution costs, process delays, and compliance overhead.
Odaily, July 21 - Microsoft and French AI startup Mistral AI announced an expansion of their strategic partnership on July 21, signing a multi-billion dollar agreement centered on European AI infrastructure to enhance AI computing capabilities in the region. Under the agreement, Microsoft will leverage Mistral's expanded European GPU infrastructure to support its cloud computing and AI services. This infrastructure will be based on thousands of Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs.In terms of products, the Mistral Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 models are now available on the Microsoft Foundry platform, and Mistral Medium 3.5 has also been integrated into Microsoft Copilot Studio for agent applications, document processing workflows, and industry-customized workflows. Additionally, the two parties will expand AI deployment options through Azure and Azure Local, supporting cloud, cloud-connected, and fully offline environments, targeting industries with high data compliance requirements such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing.
According to official sources, Gate's new lightweight trading product, Event Contracts, has officially launched. After updating the Gate App to version v8.28.5, users can enter the dedicated section within the contracts module to trade. The product focuses on short-term price direction predictions for BTC and ETH, requires no leverage or margin, and carries no liquidation risk. Participation starts from as low as 1.5 USDT, with automatic settlement at expiration, making it suitable for beginner short-term traders.Meanwhile, Gate is launching the Event Contracts Premier Carnival from July 21, 10:00 (UTC+8). Users who click "Participate Now" to register can trade and share in a total airdrop reward of $50,000. The event features a three-tier incentive mechanism. First Trade Loss Coverage: The first 2,000 users incurring a loss on their first trade will receive compensation, capped at $5 per person. Profit Doubling Reward: Net profits during the event period are eligible for doubling, distributed based on profit ranking from high to low, capped at $500 per person. Trading Sprint Reward: Users with a cumulative buy and sell trading volume of ≥ $1,000 will share a prize pool proportionally based on their trading volume, with a maximum of $1,000 per person.
: Asset management firm Fidelity Investments announced the expansion of its institutionally managed Separately Managed Account (SMA) product line, adding 6 custom strategies and 2 model strategies for Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) and brokerage clients, aiming to enhance personalized investment services for high-net-worth clients.The newly added strategies include the Fidelity Institutional Tax-Managed Enhanced Equity strategy and the Fidelity Institutional Tax-Managed Fundamental Equity strategy. Both strategies cover large-cap core, growth, and value investment styles, combining Fidelity's long-term active management capabilities with customized SMA service models.Among them, the Enhanced Equity strategy employs a benchmark-tracking framework, seeking excess return opportunities through diversified alpha factors; the Fundamental Equity strategy is based on a systematic portfolio construction process combined with high-conviction individual stock selection.Fidelity stated that the above strategies are now available to RIA firms through its customized SMA platform. This platform integrates with the Fidelity Wealthscape brokerage platform, helping wealth management firms handle client account opening, strategy customization, execution, and portfolio monitoring.Amanda Robinson, Head of Wealth Advisor Management Solutions Distribution at Fidelity, noted that as investor demand for personalized investment experiences continues to grow, particularly with the expanding base of ultra-high-net-worth clients, wealth advisors require more flexible and customized asset management tools. By combining active management, direct indexing, and factor strategies, Fidelity provides advisors with deeper portfolio customization and tax management capabilities.Since launching its institutional customized SMA product line in 2022, Fidelity has expanded the number of standardized SMA strategies to 50, while also supporting advisors in combining multiple indices or strategies to form custom allocation solutions based on client needs.Additionally, Fidelity launched two equity model SMA strategies, including the Fidelity Institutional Blue Chip Growth Focused Model SMA and the Fidelity Institutional Small Growth Focused Model SMA. These are available to RIA and brokerage clients and can be integrated into a Unified Managed Account (UMA) structure to achieve more comprehensive and tax-optimized investment management.Currently, Fidelity offers 8 active equity model SMA strategies covering U.S. equities, sectors, and international stock markets. Additionally, 5 factor model strategies and 2 index model strategies are available through the Fidelity Managed Account Xchange (FMAX) and third-party platforms.Fidelity stated that its SMA strategies are developed by the Quantitative Research and Investments team within Fidelity Asset Management. This team comprises over 250 quantitative analysts, data scientists, and technologists, leveraging long-accumulated proprietary da
According to official announcements, Morph has officially launched Morph Tachyon, an independent Layer 1 network built specifically for on-chain trading. As one of the first projects to build trading infrastructure on Morph Tachyon, the decentralized perpetual contract trading platform PopDEX will establish a high-performance on-chain trading environment based on Morph Tachyon, further enhancing the execution efficiency and user experience of on-chain derivative trading. Leveraging Morph Tachyon's high-performance on-chain trading scenario design and independent consensus and settlement architecture, PopDEX achieves a 200ms target block time, up to 200,000 TPS throughput capacity, and instant finality. Building on these high-throughput processing capabilities and trading-native architecture, PopDEX will further strengthen on-chain trading execution capabilities, supporting faster and more stable order processing and market interaction, providing traders, market makers, and liquidity providers with an on-chain trading experience closer to professional trading platforms. Both parties will continue to collaborate on on-chain trading infrastructure, jointly promoting the development of a higher-performance, higher capital efficiency on-chain market.
According to Chaoxiang Research, UBS released a SemiBytes Flash Note on July 20, 2026, judging that the semiconductor sector is transitioning from a broad-based rally to a phase of severe divergence, while the AI-themed crowded trade continues. The report covers five core topics. The release of Kimi K3 drives another upgrade in open-source model scale; longer context windows boost demand for HBM and storage, with NVIDIA being the biggest beneficiary. Micron's cumulative free cash flow over the next few years is expected to exceed $400 billion; after the buyback ban is lifted, the theoretical buyback ratio could exceed 40%, which is not yet fully priced in by the market. Divergence within the analog chip sector is intensifying; stocks with higher AI exposure have gained a 42x P/E premium, while valuations for stocks with automotive and industrial exposure remain near historical averages. Position crowding data shows that Lam Research, Broadcom, Seagate, Micron, and AMD remain in a state of extreme long positioning crowding.
Tencent Hunyuan announced the launch of the first version of Hyra (Hunyuan Research Agent), Hyra-1.0. According to Tencent Hunyuan, this is an agent capable of recursive self-improvement, oriented towards performance-driven research and engineering tasks. In addition to model R&D and scientific discovery, Hyra can also enter open scenarios such as gaming, design, and content creation, continuously iterating strategic outputs based on self-play, self-evaluation, and user feedback.
Odaily Odaily News: Base co-founder Jesse Pollak stated that Base is focused on reshaping the financial ecosystem, including areas such as trading, payments, agents, the long tail effect of developer-driven innovation, and Meme trading.Jesse Pollak said the team will continue to scale up support for developers, progressing from batch-based support to the BEF (Base Ecosystem Fund), and then to mass distribution, prioritizing support for products that can naturally gain market recognition.
: On the prediction market platform Polymarket, the probability of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait closing before August 31 has risen to 21%, up from a low of 11% on Monday morning. The probability of a closure before September 30 once rose to 26%. The Yemeni Houthi group, Ansar Allah, has announced a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia, stating that the operation is based on the principle of "an eye for an eye" and aims to disrupt the flow of Saudi crude oil exports. The relevant passage handles the transit of over 4.5 million barrels of crude oil. The outcome of this prediction contract will be determined based on maritime trade flow data released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) platform, PortWatch. If the 7-day moving average of vessel arrivals at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is equal to or less than 10 on any day between the contract's creation and its expiration date, the contract will be resolved as "Yes."
Odaily News: Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has signed an executive order to coordinate virtual asset regulation, enhance cooperation between the country's financial, tax, and capital market institutions, and address the fragmentation of digital asset regulation. The executive order establishes a Virtual Assets Committee composed of heads from Nigeria's major financial regulatory agencies to guide relevant policies. Nigeria's tax authority will update digital asset policies and provide more details on the impact on taxpayers. Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President, stated that the executive order does not create new regulatory agencies nor transfer powers between agencies; each institution retains its statutory duties and independence, and registration requirements will be determined based on the nature of the activity and the assets involved. A June report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows that since 2019, Nigeria has accounted for approximately 60% of stablecoin inflows in Sub-Saharan Africa; between July 2023 and June 2024, the country's cryptocurrency inflows reached approximately $59 billion.
TownSquare, an institutional yield and cross-chain lending brokerage service infrastructure, announced the official launch of its ICO public sale. This public sale is technically supported by the Echo Sonar platform from the Coinbase ecosystem. The valuation is divided into two tiers: a $150 million valuation based on a 6-month lock-up, and a $200 million valuation with no lock-up and full release at TGE, with a fundraising cap of $1 million. Currently, 30 minutes into the public sale, over $200,000 has been raised. According to data, most users chose the second tier with the $200 million valuation. This public sale is the first project based on the Monad ecosystem on Sonar, supporting USDC and USDT0 tokens on Monad. Previously, TownSquare completed a total of 3 rounds of financing totaling $16.25 million, with participation from World Liberty Financial, Auros Ventures, Amber Group, Animoca Ventures, OKX Ventures, as well as angel investors and institutions from ecosystems such as Monad, a16z, etc. It is projected that the previous valuation is comparable to this ICO valuation. TownSquare Sonar Public Sale Registration: townsq.xyz/sale
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has responded to recent controversy surrounding his X account profile picture change and claims that the Base community is "unsupported." He thanked the community for their feedback and acknowledged that his previous communication regarding expectations was not clear enough. Users should not interpret the content of his personal X account as investment advice or signals for individual tokens. He stated that he simply shares internet content he finds interesting or amusing, and may not even be aware whether such content is associated with any particular token or project. He pointed out that his tweets and profile picture changes do not represent endorsements of or commitments to any project.Regarding support for the Base ecosystem, Brian Armstrong explained that Base aims to build financial services infrastructure, supporting various application scenarios including stock tokenization, lending protocols, stablecoin payments, and Meme coin trading. Coinbase supports users in freely trading assets but will not use its official influence to "pump" or promote specific tokens. Both Coinbase and the Base team are indeed subject to compliance and regulatory restrictions, preventing them from listing certain tokens on the centralized exchange and from marketing specific projects at the community's request.Base currently supports ecosystem development primarily through offline Base Batches events, developer grant programs, and investments from Coinbase Ventures and the Base Ecosystem Fund. Additionally, based on long-term user value assessment, Coinbase may integrate certain Base ecosystem DeFi protocols into its own products to help projects expand distribution.Brian Armstrong stated that Coinbase will continue to prioritize projects capable of creating long-term user value in the future, and expressed hope that this clarification will help the community set clearer expectations. He added that he may still continue to post Meme content he finds interesting, but such content will not constitute investment advice.
Bybit Alpha has now launched Jimothy trading. Jimothy is a meme coin on the Solana blockchain, based on a viral video of a short-tailed raccoon from Seattle, which quickly gained popularity through its cute and quirky "mutant raccoon" image. The current on-chain price is approximately $0.007, with a market cap of $6.95 million.
the cross-chain protocol Allbridge has issued an official statement confirming that an attacker has withdrawn approximately $1.65 million in assets from the Allbridge Core liquidity pool. A detailed analysis of the incident is currently being compiled, and the full investigation results will be published subsequently. The team emphasizes that there is no further risk to current user liquidity and that the Allbridge Next service is operating normally.In response to this incident, Allbridge plans to relaunch the Core version but will remove the liquidity pool design. Future cross-chain transfers will be facilitated via Circle CCTP and the LayerZero router to eliminate the risk of liquidity pool imbalance and the model vulnerabilities exploited in this attack. This incident has accelerated the previously initiated migration plan to fully transition to the more secure new infrastructure, Allbridge Next. According to the plan, Allbridge Core and Allbridge Classic will cease operations in their current form within the next three months, and users are advised to withdraw their relevant liquidity in advance.It is understood that this attack has exposed the risks inherent in the traditional cross-chain liquidity pool model and has further driven the protocol's transition towards a cross-chain architecture based on message passing and native asset transfer.
According to AMD's official blog, AMD and Microsoft announced an expanded collaboration to jointly provide AI infrastructure for production-scale deployments on Azure. Microsoft will adopt the AMD Helios rack-scale AI infrastructure powered by AMD Instinct™ MI455X accelerators as a significant part of its continued investment in Azure AI infrastructure. AMD Helios is AMD's integrated platform for rack-scale AI infrastructure, integrating AMD Instinct™ MI455X accelerators, next-generation AMD EPYC™ processors, AMD Pensando™ networking technology, and the ROCm™ software ecosystem, supporting large-scale AI training, inference, fine-tuning, and Agentic AI workloads. Additionally, Microsoft will launch new Azure infrastructure products based on 6th Gen AMD EPYC processors, covering high-demand scenarios such as AI data systems and semiconductor design. Both parties stated that this collaboration aims to provide customers with more infrastructure options and drive AI from the experimental phase to scaled production deployment.
Elon Musk has completed the acquisition of APR Energy, a mobile power generation company, with the overall transaction valued at least $1 billion. Documents show that Duos Technologies sold its 5% non-voting stake in New APR Energy, realizing a net gain of $50.4 million, which implies an enterprise value exceeding $1 billion. Headquartered in Florida, USA, APR Energy specializes in modular gas and diesel mobile generator sets, with a total installed capacity exceeding 1 GW. Individual projects can be deployed in as fast as 15 to 30 days, providing temporary and backup power for data centers.Industry analysts suggest that this acquisition aims to support the expansion of xAI's computing cluster and reduce reliance on the public grid. However, the fossil fuel-based power generation model will also bring trade-offs in terms of carbon emissions, compliance, and long-term operational costs. (Techrepublic)
According to a series of tweets posted by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on X on July 20, he engaged in deep reflection on AI capability growth and the future of humanity. Vitalik divides the evolution of machine capabilities into three stages: the Industrial Revolution (physical repetitive labor), the Computer Age (mental tasks definable by logic), and the LLM Era (mental and partial physical tasks defined based on massive samples). He points out that the current core question lies in: whether LLMs plus subsequent improvements can ultimately cover all unique human capabilities, or if a fourth or fifth technological wave is still needed. Regarding the definition of AGI, Vitalik proposes: AGI refers to AI that, if uploaded into a robotic body and humans suddenly disappear, can still independently continue civilization. He emphasizes that once AGI is realized, it will be an "irreversible turning point," and humanity's dominance over Earth will remain only due to historical inertia rather than capability advantage. Regarding the future path, Vitalik hopes for deep human-machine integration—erasing the human-machine binary boundary through technologies such as brain-computer interfaces and consciousness uploading, enabling humans to remain competitive before the technology ceiling arrives. He also calls for maintaining global political and economic diversification, avoiding monopolization of AI advantages by a single nation or corporation, and expresses support for AI development "slowdown" and "pause" proposals, leaning towards achieving decentralized slowdown via an open-source weights model rather than relying on coercive political means.
According to the latest report released by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on July 16, FATF conducted the seventh targeted review on the implementation of Recommendation 15 (R.15) across global jurisdictions. The report points out that since the last update in 2025, countries have continued to advance in the regulation of Virtual Assets (VA) and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP), including conducting risk assessments, improving licensing and registration frameworks, implementing the Travel Rule, and strengthening enforcement actions. However, the report also points out that significant gaps still exist, mainly reflected in: the difficulty in effectively translating risk assessment outcomes into mitigation measures, insufficient implementation of licensing and registration frameworks, difficulties in identifying entities engaged in VASP activities, and insufficient effectiveness of risk-based supervision and enforcement. Regarding emerging risks, the report focuses on the following areas: the intensified "industrialization" trend of organized crime groups using virtual assets to commit fraud, increased risk of stablecoin abuse, risks associated with non-custodial wallet peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, offshore VASPs operating outside regulatory oversight, and ongoing challenges in the DeFi sector. FATF calls on the public and private sectors to jointly strengthen the implementation of R.15, enhance risk mitigation capabilities, and deepen domestic, international, and public-private cooperation mechanisms.
Odaily reports, according to official sources, Gate Alpha is launching a Robinhood Chain trading contest from 17:00 on July 17 to 16:00 on July 22 (UTC+8). After users click "Join Now" to complete registration, trading any token assets on the Robinhood Chain will qualify them to share in a $30,000 USDT airdrop reward. Sprint Trading Award: During the event, users with a cumulative trading volume on the Gate Alpha platform for Robinhood Chain assets (including both buys and sells) of ≥ $1,000 will proportionally share the $30,000 USDT airdrop reward based on their trading amount. Please visit the Gate Alpha zone, search for the Robinhood Chain token contract address, and participate in trading.Gate Alpha now supports popular public chains including SOL, ETH, Gate Layer, BSC, Base, SUI, ARB, World Chain, AVAX, Polygon, LINEA, ZK, OP, and Berachain, and enables seamless cross-chain token trading through contract address search functionality, breaking down cross-chain trading barriers to provide one-click access to all on-chain tokens.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin stated that he has built a toy-level demo version on Aztec based on the concept of a "moderated anonymous bulletin board" via vibe-coded methods, and has published the related experimental project on GitHub. He noted that the project is still in an early stage, but it can already implement some "very interesting and not simple" features; he also added that the project is currently at Stage 2.