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Institutional digital asset custodian Zodia Custody's CEO Julian Sawyer announced his resignation and will take on the role of strategic advisor. In a memo sent to employees on September 10, Sawyer stated that Standard Chartered Bank's acquisition of Zodia Custody's custody business and the establishment of Zodia Solutions provided an appropriate time for him to hand over daily leadership responsibilities, and he will continue to be closely involved in company affairs.According to the memo, Zodia Custody's Chief Revenue Officer Richard Clark will lead the company’s transition to Standard Chartered Bank and will be responsible for the custody business; current executives Craig Perrin and Anoosh Arevshatian will be responsible for the establishment of Zodia Solutions. A spokesperson for Zodia Custody confirmed this personnel change. Zodia Custody is an institutional-grade digital asset custodian based in London, supported by Standard Chartered Bank and other banks, providing regulated asset custody, wallet infrastructure, staking, and over-the-counter settlement services for financial institutions, asset management companies, and others.This arrangement differs from previous plans. In May of this year, SC Ventures announced that Sawyer would serve as CEO of Zodia Solutions after the acquisition was completed. Standard Chartered Bank stated in May that Zodia's shareholders and noteholders had accepted its non-binding acquisition offer, and the custody business would be integrated into the bank's financing and securities services division, while the infrastructure platform would be spun off into Zodia Solutions, which is under SC Ventures.

According to Anza's monitoring, the second step of the Solana proposal SIMD-0437 rent reduction will take effect on the mainnet at approximately 21:15 UTC, corresponding to epoch 1033. At that time, the lamports required per byte will decrease from 6333 to 5080, a cumulative decrease of about 27% from the initial level, and the deposit required for on-chain storage such as creating token accounts will be further reduced.There is currently no fixed timetable for subsequent steps; the third step will be initiated once the growth of on-chain status is confirmed to be safe. If any anomalies occur, SIMD-0438 can serve as a fallback mechanism to revert the rent parameters. Currently, three steps remain in the five-step plan.

Zora co-founder Dee Goens has taken over as CEO, succeeding co-founder Jacob Horne, who held the position for over six years. Goens stated in a post on Wednesday that Horne will leave the company to embark on a new chapter but "won't stray too far from crypto." Goens revealed that Zora has conducted layoffs this year, reducing the team size to fewer than 10 people, and is shifting towards a more AI-driven operational model.On the product front, Zora has shifted its focus from the Creator Coins model launched on Base last June to supporting trading pairs on other networks. The Custom Pairs feature, launched on August 20, allows users to customize token trading pairs, with over 4,000 created so far. Zora also expanded to Robinhood Chain and Solana this summer, supporting cross-chain trading and eliminating fees for direct messages and comments. According to DefiLlama data, Zora recorded only $14,800 in fees deployed on Base in August, a 99.4% drop from $2.51 million in the same period last year.Goens outlined five key priorities, with the top priority being to align the business with the interests of ZORA token holders through the implementation of buyback and reward mechanisms, though he did not disclose specific scales, sources of funds, or timelines. The remaining priorities include rebuilding community trust, focusing on mobile app user acquisition, and restarting community incentive distribution. As of the time of publication, ZORA is priced at $0.00814, with a market cap of approximately $36.3 million, down 94.4% from its historical high of $0.1456 reached on August 11.

X-Agent stated in a recent article that with the help of AI programming tools, "Vibe Coding" is significantly lowering the barriers to software development, allowing a developer to complete work that previously required small product and engineering teams in a short time. However, for a one-person company like OPC, what is truly scarce is not productivity, but demand, trust, and distribution. Being able to quickly create a demo does not mean it will enter the real workflow of users or other Agents.X-Agent indicated that compared to building a complete SaaS from scratch, which includes a website, login, backend, subscription, and customer service system, developers can start with a clear, practical, and callable capability. They can encapsulate data analysis, market research, automated processes, or AI tools as MCP services, enabling Agents to understand what they can do, when to call them, what inputs are needed, and what results will be returned. This is also the focus of the X-Agent AI MCP Hackathon, which is not about competing to build the most complex MCP Server, but rather about helping developers upgrade real and usable APIs, tools, or services into Agent-native services with clear capability boundaries, stable interfaces, verifiable deployments, and ongoing productization potential.X-Agent believes that the most important aspect of the Agent economy is not "service launch," but making services reliable enough to be discovered, trusted, and repeatedly called by other Agents. For OPC, the real advantage is not stacking more features, but capturing market signals faster than large companies and transforming professional capabilities into digital services that can continuously generate value.

Towns co-founders Ben and Pat announced that after five years of collaboration with Brian, they have completed the transfer of protocol operations to the Towns Foundation located in Switzerland. The new experienced leadership team will continue to manage the protocol, drive the next phase of growth, and will gradually appear through official channels. The protocol will continue to operate as a decentralized communication protocol, supporting on-chain community ownership, end-to-end encrypted messaging, programmable identities, and native value transfer.According to reports, Towns has accumulated over 1.6 million users and over 400,000 communities, with users expected to earn over $40 million through the protocol by 2025, and has completed listings on multiple mainstream exchanges. The protocol also supports real-time messaging, payments, governance, and $TOWNS network incentives. The team pointed out that building a sustainable company and building a protocol are different challenges, and in response to changes in the market environment, they chose to hand over the protocol to the appropriate team for continuation rather than shutting it down.Both parties expressed their anticipation for the foundation to promote the development of Towns in the intersection of decentralized communication and AI. Pat and Ben will engage in new ventures while continuing to support the transition part-time, thanking the team, investors, node operators, exchange partners, developers, $TOWNS holders, and community members.

According to CCTV Finance, a very rare scene this week is that Jensen Huang teamed up with six Wall Street asset management giants to endorse "making AI computing power an independent asset class." Analysts believe this is Jensen Huang practicing the concept of token economics he proposed, and it also marks that the AI boom is extending from a technological competition to a capital competition.However, the latest plan has also raised investors' concerns about "revolving financing" and debt risks. In response to the doubts, Jensen Huang once again personally stepped in to calm the market. He stated that Nvidia might "provide up to 25% residual value support mechanism for individual investment projects" and will carefully evaluate each project. After that, market sentiment was slightly alleviated.

According to Bitcoin News, Boltzhq has shut down due to its five-person team being overwhelmed by increasingly complex AI-assisted attacks. A group of experienced Bitcoin users will take over the service with additional capital and engineering resources.The founder has stepped down. The service is currently still offline, and the new team is working to restart it.

Luke Dashjr posted on the X platform that he will temporarily step down as the chairman and chief technology officer of OCEAN and shift his focus to Bitcoin and supporting open-source projects related to Bitcoin.Luke Dashjr is a core supporter of BIP-110, but on August 9, the default endpoint of OCEAN's stratum has reverted to a non-BIP-110 chain, and miners' hashes are no longer defaulted to be directed to the BIP-110 chain.

The Move-to-Earn application Step App officially announced its closure after four years of operation. The official statement indicated that the platform has achieved over 1 million downloads, tracked billions of steps, and facilitated the integration of Web2 and Web3 in the fitness sector.All services will cease before August 21, 2026. The team reminds users to unstake locked tokens and manage their exchange positions before this date.

According to South Korean media MK, the annual tax reform plan previously announced by the South Korean government does not include a proposal to further postpone the taxation of virtual assets (cryptocurrencies), which means that the current legal schedule for taxation in 2027 is likely to remain.According to the current South Korean Income Tax Act, starting in 2027, income from the transfer and lending of virtual assets will be classified as "other income," and investors will enjoy a tax-free allowance of 2.5 million Korean won per year. Any amount exceeding this will be subject to a 20% income tax, along with an additional 10% local income tax, resulting in a combined tax rate of 22%.

According to Bloomberg, the merger plans of Tether's Twenty One Capital, Strike, and Elektron Energy have been terminated. Jack Mallers, the CEO of Twenty One Capital and Strike, has stepped down from the position of CEO of Twenty One Capital, and Elektron CEO Raphael Zagury has taken over.

According to reports, the U.S. "Digital Asset Market Clarity Act" (CLARITY Act) is expected to enter the next stage of the legislative process on July 4, 2026. As the regulatory framework for digital assets continues to improve, the market's expectations for the development of stablecoin payments have become clearer, providing businesses with more explicit policy references for adopting stablecoins for global payments.In this regard, WasabiCard CEO Ray Yang stated, "For businesses, regulatory transparency is more important than regulatory leniency. Companies can adapt to strict compliance requirements, but it is challenging to formulate long-term development plans in an environment where regulations are unclear. The advancement of the CLARITY Act will create a clearer and more predictable development environment for stablecoin payments."As an enterprise-level stablecoin global payment infrastructure platform, WasabiCard continuously enhances its compliance capabilities and global payment network, establishing a risk management system covering KYB, KYC, KYT, and AML, and holds U.S. MSB and MTL licenses, providing businesses with one-stop payment solutions for global card issuance, stablecoin payments, global remittances, and fund distribution.Regarding the development prospects of stablecoin payments, Ray Yang believes, "As the global regulatory environment continues to improve, stablecoin payments will accelerate their integration into the global payment systems of enterprises. WasabiCard will continue to help businesses conduct global operations more robustly through compliant and reliable payment infrastructure."

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, after being dormant for five months, the Step Finance attacker sold all 261,933 SOL (worth $21.4 million) and bridged the funds to Ethereum, subsequently purchasing 12,128 ETH.After that, the attacker deposited these ETH into Tornado Cash for money laundering.

According to market news, CME Group CEO Terry Duffy is about to step down. Possibly influenced by this, CME Group's stock price fell 4% in pre-market trading.CEO Terry Duffy had previously expressed "great concern" about the recently approved perpetual contracts by U.S. regulators, stating that perpetual contracts have almost no practical use for institutional investors while exposing retail traders to excessive risk. Additionally, he expressed that he "completely disagrees" with the CFTC's decision to approve the first batch of crypto perpetual contracts after a rapid review, warning that perpetual contracts and prediction markets are triggering a speculative frenzy among retail investors.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the prediction market Polymarket for the "Spurs vs. Knicks" event, the "is" option for the sub-market "Stephon Castle: Assists O/U 6.5" experienced a dramatic fluctuation in win probability, dropping from 55% an hour ago to the current 37.5% (a fluctuation of 17.5%). Please note the impact of relevant breaking news.

According to Arkham monitoring, the German government has previously sold a total of 49,858 bitcoins, with an average selling price of approximately $57,900.If bitcoin drops about 6% from the current level, the price will fall near the German government's average selling price, which means that bitcoin is gradually approaching the cost range during large-scale sell-offs by sovereign institutions. Therefore, in the context of significant liquidation pressure facing the market this week, the area around $57,900 is worth paying close attention to. Since government sales typically exhibit characteristics such as non-voluntary nature and insensitivity to price, this price level may become an important reference range for the market to assess supply and demand relationships and subsequent trends.

According to a Securitize announcement, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced that its Form S-4 registration statement for the merger transaction with SPAC company Cantor Equity Partners II has officially become effective. This means that Securitize's listing process has made significant progress, and CEPT shareholders will hold a special meeting on June 29, 2026, to vote. If approved, the transaction is expected to be completed shortly thereafter.After the transaction is completed, the merged company is expected to operate under the name "Securitize Corp." and be listed on the New York Stock Exchange with the stock ticker "SECZ."

According to Jinshi reports, Lindsay Rosner, the head of multi-sector fixed income investments at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, stated that recent data indicates the Federal Reserve does not need to worry about labor market issues and will focus on inflation concerns. The duration of the Iran war will ultimately determine the Federal Reserve's next actions.