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According to CryptoQuant, Bitcoin holders moved funds on a large scale following the Coldcard security incident. On July 31, daily active Bitcoin addresses surged from roughly 645,000 to nearly 1 million, while transfers of less than 1 BTC reached about 39,600 BTC, the highest level since the collapse of FTX. Exchange deposits from small holders rose to their highest level since early February, alongside sharp increases in long-term holder spending and pending mempool transactions. CryptoQuant said the activity reflected security-driven asset repositioning, but cautioned that transfers to exchanges do not necessarily indicate selling.

Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that prediction market platform Polymarket is in preliminary talks with potential investors to raise about $1 billion at a valuation exceeding $20 billion. If completed, the deal would more than double its $9 billion valuation from October 2025. Polymarket reportedly completed roughly $1 billion in financing at a $15 billion valuation in April, adding investors including D.E. Shaw and G Squared. Since then, it has launched its U.S. platform and increased annualized revenue to more than $1.2 billion. Rival Kalshi was valued at $22 billion following a May funding round, while its July trading volume was reportedly about three times Polymarket’s. A Polymarket spokesperson declined to comment.

Bitdeer, founded by Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu, announced that its subsidiary Tydal Data Center AS has signed a 16-year colocation and services agreement with Volta Tydal AS. The project will provide 121 MW of IT capacity, or approximately 133 MW of total power, for AI computing infrastructure at the Tydal AI/HPC campus in Norway.
The agreement is expected to generate approximately $4.7 billion in contracted revenue over its initial term, with an eight-year renewal option that could bring the total contract value to around $8 billion. Bitdeer shares surged 23% following the announcement.

Written by | GaryMa, Wu Blockchain
The WuBlockchain summarizes key developments in the blockchain technology space for July:
Bitcoin
Bitcoin Core v31.1 was released on July 8, 2026, introducing new features, multiple bug fixes, performance improvements, and translation updates. This release fixes an issue in which the chainstate database repeatedly rewrote large amounts of its own data during normal operation, resulting in excessive disk reads and writes. It also fixes an IP address leak when using the -privatebroadcast feature, where, under certain circumstances, connections were established over the clearnet rather than through an enabled privacy network.
BIP-110 became a focal point of Bitcoin governance in July. The proposal seeks to use a one-year soft fork to restrict inscriptions, OP_RETURN, and other non-monetary data. By mid-month, miner signaling remained below 1%. On July 18, Saylor published “110 Reasons to Oppose,” arguing that the proposal would undermine network neutrality and create risks of censorship and chain splits. Foundry subsequently launched a hashrate-weighted vote. By July 27, signaling had reached approximately 2.64%, still far below the 55% threshold, shifting the controversy toward the mandatory signaling window in August.
Ethereum
Glamsterdam upgrade: extreme L1 scaling and greater MEV fairness. Progress: the upgrade has entered its final round of integration and performance testing. In early July, developers largely completed the DevNet 7 specifications, confirming core changes including ePBS, BAL, and Gas repricing, while adopting block propagation and proof timing parameters of 3/6/9 seconds. DevNet 7 launched in mid-July with approximately 3,000 validators and an initial participation rate of around 80%–90%. Operations later stabilized, but testing exposed issues including performance degradation in progressive SSZ containers, inconsistencies in BAL RPC, the Builder API, circuit-breaker mechanisms, and payload propagation. As of July 30, DevNet 7 had reached nearly 100% participation, but Gas repricing benchmarks still showed potential performance regressions. The team has therefore postponed the launch of the final public DevNet 8 / Platåberget testnet until benchmark testing and Discovery v5 preparations are complete. Officially, the upgrade is currently only scheduled for the second half of 2026, with no formal mainnet date announced.
Hegota upgrade: censorship resistance, enhanced privacy, and lighter nodes. Progress: proposals are still being collected and the scope of the upgrade is still being determined. The focus in July was not implementation, but narrowing the upgrade scope. Among the core proposals, the censorship-resistance mechanism FOCIL has been included in the upgrade, while the native account abstraction proposal Frame Transaction remains under consideration. A large number of proposals were introduced or discussed this month, including private transactions, delayed state roots, BAL sidecars, SSZ execution blocks, removal of log Blooms, Hash-Chain RANDAO, and bundled proof propagation. The submission deadline for non-core EIPs was set for August 6. Hegotá therefore remains in the “selection stage,” with neither the final feature set nor the mainnet timeline determined.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote that Lean Ethereum will be Ethereum’s third major iteration following The Merge and will be rolled out gradually over the next three to four years. Its core directions include incorporating recursive STARKs into native protocol verification, advancing quantum-resistant solutions, introducing new and more scalable state structures, and exploring low-level virtual machines such as RISC-V or leanISA to support programmable privacy and greater scalability. Vitalik also said that over the next approximately five years, Ethereum will repeatedly increase the Gas limit and Blob capacity while shortening Slot time, and that the Glasterdam upgrade is expected to deliver a substantial increase in the Gas limit.
Vitalik Buterin published a proposal outlining a path for further reducing the state requirements of Ethereum’s consensus chain and improving validator privacy in the context of the Lean upgrade. The proposal includes removing validator public keys from the Beacon Chain state through STARK-based aggregation, having validators generate daily STARK proofs to update balances, compressing each validator’s state to a one-byte effective balance and a five-byte public-key index, and reducing end-of-epoch processing overhead. Vitalik said the design could potentially support millions of validators. In an advanced version, validator privacy could be enhanced through daily validator re-anonymization, ZK-STARK proofs for balance updates, and hidden withdrawal-address commitments, breaking the public links between deposits, staking activity, and withdrawals. The mechanism could also approximately provide Single Secret Leader Election, or SSLE. For balance update intervals, one hour would be the lower bound, while one day would be a more conservative option.
A new proposal titled “Native UTXOs on Ethereum” suggests introducing native UTXOs alongside the account model. UTXO data would be stored in historical records, while only a marker indicating whether a UTXO has been spent would remain on-chain, reducing the permanent state footprint of one-time payments by approximately 99.8%. The design is based on EIP-8141 Frame Transactions, supports UTXOs paying their own Gas, trustless Gas sponsorship, and use cases including ERC-20 tokens and private payments.
Ethereum proposal EIP-8222, or Lean Staking, aims to use STARK cryptography to separate staking deposit and withdrawal information, reducing the link between validator identities and fund flows and thereby improving privacy for institutional staking. At present, institutional stakers’ deposit addresses, validators, and withdrawal credentials can all be publicly tracked, allowing external analytics firms to infer their staking scale, timing, and strategies. If implemented, institutions could gain stronger privacy, but may also face more complex deposit and withdrawal processes, transaction delays, higher operating costs, and increased compliance requirements. EIP-8222 remains under discussion, with no launch date determined.
Ethereum L2s
Starknet announced the launch of its STRK20 privacy framework, allowing users to apply privacy protections to any asset, while developers can integrate it through an SDK and wallet APIs. Users must undergo screening before entering a privacy pool, while activity inside the pool remains encrypted. Information relating to specified users, transfers, or time periods will only be disclosed after a valid legal request is received and independently reviewed. Starknet said the mechanism can be used for source-of-funds audits and investigations into stolen assets while avoiding the exposure of unrelated users’ data.
The Polygon Foundation announced that the Ithaca hard fork had been successfully deployed to the Amoy testnet and was scheduled to launch on the Polygon mainnet at approximately 14:00 UTC on July 29, at block height 50,185,000. The upgrade will improve network reliability through measures including automatic failover mechanisms, restrictions on transactions that could affect network stability, and enhanced monitoring capabilities for node operators.
Solana
Anza has published the release plan for Agave v4.2, with the first phase of the upgrade targeted for August 17. The upgrade will lay the groundwork for 200-millisecond block times, greater transaction capacity, and a reduced-rent mechanism, while also advancing the implementation of Solana’s Alpenglow consensus upgrade.
The Solana Foundation announced the official launch of the on-chain governance mechanism Solana Governance Proposals, or SGP. Validators can now use SGP to submit, support, and decide on core protocol matters. All proposals are conducted on-chain, use stake-weighted voting, and are verified through Merkle proofs. Any validator with at least 100,000 SOL delegated to it may initiate an SGP. Unlike Solana Improvement Documents, or SIMDs, which focus on technical and protocol changes, SGP is primarily intended to express ecosystem governance opinions. A proposal must receive support from at least 15% of total network stake before it can proceed to the formal voting stage.
Brennan Watt, CEO of Solana core engineering company Anza, wrote that the Solana mainnet is expected to activate SIMD-0286 at the beginning of Epoch 1009, increasing the per-block compute limit from 60 million compute units, or CUs, to 100 million, an increase of approximately 66.7%. Solana uses CUs to measure the computational workload required to execute transactions. SIMD-0286 is intended to expand network block capacity, allowing validators to process more computational tasks within a single block. The actual increase in transaction throughput will still depend on transaction types, network demand, and validator operating conditions.
BNB Chain
The BNB Chain Pasteur upgrade has entered the testnet phase. It fixes an issue in which duplicate validators could potentially bypass cross-chain signature thresholds and strengthens the security of staking, governance, and legacy consensus keys. It also introduces block-builder proposals and a validator blind-signing mechanism. The mainnet upgrade is scheduled for August 25.
BNB Chain released its technical roadmap for the second half of the year. BSC’s current block interval has been reduced to 450 milliseconds, with test throughput reaching approximately 5,200 TPS. The goals for the second half include doubling throughput again, advancing resource isolation, parallel execution, dedicated transaction channels, lowering Gas costs, and developing a next-generation L1 architecture.
Others
Zcash core developer Sean Bowe wrote on X that activation of Zcash Ironwood had entered the rollout phase. All consensus-rule changes had been implemented and moved into the audit stage, while the related specifications and ZIPs had been published and were nearing finalization. He said Ironwood was expected to activate around July 21, with the official testnet activation scheduled for the following day and a supporting version of Zebra expected to be released that same day. Sean Bowe said there was already sufficient hashrate signaling technical readiness for the mainnet upgrade. The main unresolved issue was that some wallets might not complete upgrade preparations in time, but because alternatives were already available and the testnet schedule provided sufficient time, this did not justify delaying Ironwood.
NEAR has released mainnet version 2.13.0. The release supports the NIST-standard ML-DSA-65 quantum-resistant signature scheme, making it the third protocol key type after ed25519 and secp256k1. It also supports dynamic resharding, allowing the network to automatically split heavily loaded shards at epoch boundaries based on shard-state size. The update also introduces Gas Keys under NEP-611, allowing access keys to maintain independent prepaid Gas balances and 1,024 parallel nonce channels, and to be combined with DelegateV2 meta-transactions for Gas sponsorship. In addition, contracts can assign deterministic yield IDs, and node state synchronization has shifted to a peer-to-peer model.
The activation block height for the Zcash Ironwood mainnet has been finalized and marked. Major organizations have committed to activating NU6.3 at block height 3,428,143, which is expected at approximately 20:00 Beijing time on July 28.
The Zcash ecosystem released Zakura 1.0.0, a new full-node client supporting data pruning, fast synchronization, and compatibility with the original zcashd interface. The team said that an approximately 11 GB node snapshot can reduce startup time to less than two minutes, representing a speed increase of around 680 times. Zakura is the first implemented component of Zcash’s scaling plan, whose long-term goal is to increase processing capacity to more than 50,000 transactions per second while preserving privacy and full verification capabilities.
Cardano Protocol Version 11, also known as the van Rossem hard fork, has been activated at an epoch boundary. This is Cardano’s first hard fork to be approved entirely through on-chain governance, following votes by DReps, SPOs, and the Constitutional Committee. The upgrade will reduce smart-contract costs, introduce new Plutus built-ins and cryptographic built-in functions, and lay the foundation for the subsequent Dijkstra phase.
Uniswap Labs announced the launch of Permissioned Pools, a new Hook standard based on v4, designed to provide automated market makers, or AMMs, with infrastructure for trading permissioned assets with on-chain compliance enforcement. The initial partners include Superstate, Securitize, and Dowgo, which integrates the ERC-3643 standard. The standard allows asset issuers to manage whitelists directly at the protocol layer rather than through front ends or off-chain systems, and to verify wallet permissions during every trade or liquidity addition. It also uses Uniswap v4’s flash-accounting mechanism to ensure that underlying permissioned assets remain securely held, expanding the path for compliant assets such as tokenized funds, securities, and equities to access DeFi.
Sui announced the launch of the Hashi testnet, allowing developers and institutions to test lending and credit applications backed by native Bitcoin collateral without moving BTC off the Bitcoin network. Hashi also introduced a Guardian Layer that uses a 2-of-2 multisignature scheme to protect collateral.
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CoinGlass data shows the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index has remained negative for 78 consecutive days, the longest such streak on record, with its latest reading at -0.1145%. The index measures the BTC price gap between Coinbase and other major exchanges and is commonly used as a gauge of U.S. market demand. A persistently negative reading means Bitcoin is trading at a relative discount on Coinbase, potentially indicating weaker U.S. investor demand or comparatively stronger selling pressure.

The five major crypto platforms recorded about USD 864.6 billion in combined BTC and ETH options volume in the first half of 2026, according to CoinGlass. Deribit remained the market leader with USD 425.9 billion in volume and a 49.3% share, followed by Bybit at 22.3%, Binance at 13.4% and OKX at 13.3%. The four platforms controlled more than 98% of the market. Deribit’s monthly share declined from 56.3% in January to 41.8% in June, while Bybit led ETH options with about 38%, ahead of Deribit’s 29%.

CryptoRank data shows Hyperliquid generated $218 billion in July trading volume, exceeding the combined $189 billion recorded by the other seven leading perpetual DEXs. Aster, Lighter and GRVT posted volumes of approximately $43.6 billion, $36.4 billion and $34.4 billion, respectively. Combined volume across the top eight platforms fell by about $85 billion, or 17%, month over month, while trading activity remained heavily concentrated on Hyperliquid.

Coinbase plans to migrate institutional clients’ International Exchange accounts, balances and positions to Deribit on September 9, with trading expected to pause for about 30 minutes. All open orders will be canceled, while positions will be settled at mark price and recreated on Deribit at the same reference price. Existing API keys and margin loans will not transfer. Clients that decline the migration must close their positions and accounts by August 28.

Former FBI supervisory agent Patrick Steven Yaroch has been charged after allegedly using internal bureau systems to obtain access credentials for cryptocurrency wallets linked to an adversarial country and transferring funds to wallets he controlled. According to the criminal complaint, Yaroch admitted making about 10 unauthorized transfers beginning in late 2024 and estimated that he took less than USD 1 million, later placing some of the assets in Suilend to earn yield.

Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi said the Coldcard wallet incident shows AI is reshaping the economics of crypto security, with product safety increasingly determined by how much companies spend on AI-powered testing. He introduced a “Cost of Discovery” metric to measure how cheaply a frontier model can reproduce a vulnerability, estimating the Coldcard flaw’s cost at roughly USD 2. Qureshi noted that a reported eight-minute Claude Code discovery may have been influenced by web search, but said a separate offline GLM test reproduced the issue in about 20 minutes.

Telegram has been removed from the Apple App Store. Independent monitoring data as of Aug. 4 indicates the app is unavailable across all 175 tested App Store storefronts. Existing installations continue to function for now, while Apple and Telegram have not yet provided an official explanation for the removal.

Jimmy Song: Altcoins Are Scams; Bitcoin Is Better Money, Not Better Technology
In June 2026, well-known Bitcoin educator Jimmy Song said in an interview with Cointelegraph during BTC Prague in Prague that altcoins, even when marketed as technically superior, still struggle to replace Bitcoin because they lack Bitcoin’s network effect and long-term security hardening.
In his view, many people simply do not care how often those assets get hacked, and the bigger misconception is that Bitcoin is still seen as a technology rather than money.

The Solana Foundation has opened several senior positions, including GM of AI Ecosystem, Head of Stablecoins, Director of Institutional Growth, and institutional growth leads for Greater China and Japan. The hiring plans indicate a broader focus on AI, stablecoins and institutional adoption, alongside continued expansion in Asian markets.

Bloomberg reported that digital asset brokerage FalconX has cut about 10% of its global workforce, including roughly half of its Singapore staff, with senior managers and employees in sales and accounting among those affected. The company plans to refocus its Singapore operations on crypto derivatives trading, which does not require a license, and withdraw its application with the Monetary Authority of Singapore. FalconX said it will concentrate resources on priority areas while maintaining its Asia-Pacific presence and expanding its regulated European business.

Morgan Stanley downgraded Circle to underweight from equal-weight and cut its price target to $38 from $106, citing a weaker long-term earnings outlook. The bank expects slower USDC growth, greater pressure on reserve income and a shift toward lower-margin transaction revenue, while competition from tokenized money market funds, tokenized deposits and Open USD could further weigh on Circle’s economics. Circle shares fell about 6% following the downgrade.

Michael Saylor said his “never sell your Bitcoin” message reflects his personal stance as one saver speaking to another, adding that he has never sold a single satoshi. He stressed that Strategy is a public company, not his personal wallet, and has disclosed since 2020 that it may buy or sell Bitcoin for capital management purposes. Saylor said his and Strategy’s conviction in Bitcoin remains unchanged.

BlackRock launched OnChain Shares of the BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund on Ethereum and the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle, which supports multiple blockchains and daily dividend reinvestment. Both products are structured to hold assets intended to qualify as reserves for permitted U.S. payment stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act. BlackRock also manages about $60 billion in reserves for Circle.

Strategy sold 1,638 BTC for $104.7 million between July 27 and August 2 at an average price of $63,957. The company used roughly half of the proceeds to fund preferred-stock dividends and the remainder to repurchase STRC shares. Strategy also raised $290.6 million through MSTR share sales, repurchased $81.2 million of STRC and increased its U.S. dollar reserve to $4 billion. It continues to hold 842,138 BTC acquired for $63.51 billion at an average price of $75,419.

BingX appointed Kevin Lee as chief strategy officer to lead its long-term platform, business and ecosystem strategy as the exchange expands toward multi-asset trading. Lee has more than 20 years of experience across institutional finance, electronic markets, fintech and digital assets, including previous roles at JPMorgan Chase, Macquarie Group and BNP Paribas.
Sponsored by BingX

South Africa’s National Treasury and Reserve Bank released draft rules that, for the first time, set out when crypto transfers are treated as cross-border transactions. Transfers from local providers to offshore platforms or non-custodial wallets would require authorised processing and reporting, while individuals would remain subject to existing foreign-exchange allowances. Public comments close September 30.