infrastructure

According to Jinshi reports, local power plant officials stated that a drone from the Ukrainian armed forces attempted to attack the critical infrastructure of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

Fortitude Mining, a mining company under Digital Currency Group (DCG), has signed a procurement agreement worth approximately $45 million, involving mining hardware and infrastructure in Nebraska, to advance the vertical integration of Zcash mining.This expansion includes a $31.5 million commitment for mining equipment purchases, as well as two acquisitions totaling $13.9 million, which include power contracts, land, buildings, and mining equipment. Fortitude stated that its controlled data center capacity has increased to over 60 megawatts by 2026. Fortitude is advancing a proposed merger with Nasdaq-listed HeartSciences Inc.; if completed, this mining company under DCG will gain public listing status. In the first quarter of 2026, Zcash accounted for 61% of Fortitude's mining revenue, while Bitcoin's share dropped to 36%.

According to TNW, enterprise AI infrastructure company Modus announced the completion of a $10 million seed round of financing, led by Insight Partners, with participation from Soma Capital, Bullet Ventures, and several tech founders.Modus simultaneously launched the "Context Warehouse" product, positioned as the contextual foundation layer for enterprise AI, which provides precise context for AI Agents by learning the actual usage patterns of business data (rather than merely storing data), potentially reducing unnecessary retrieval and token consumption by up to 10 times.

According to the New York Daily, the decentralized data infrastructure project Permacast based on Permaweb announced the completion of its Series A funding round on January 15, 2025, raising over $5 million. Combined with the previously completed seed round and Pre-A round, the total funding raised by the project has reached $8.9 million.This round of financing received support from several leading Web3 funds, technology investment institutions, and strategic angel investors. Seed round investors include OKX Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, ChainVision, Foresight Research, and Digital Humanism (DRF); Pre-A round investors include ClearingPoint, 7 O'Clock Capital, Cipholio Ventures, SilverFox Foundation, and a number of private investors; Series A round investors include CoinSummer, angel investor Tomasz Boryniec, Waterwood Investment (Tsinghua), Scorpio VC, and a number of private investors.Permacast stated that as AI models reshape the way information is created and utilized, the demand for trustworthy, permanent, and verifiable data infrastructure is growing. The new funds will be used to accelerate protocol development, expand decentralized network infrastructure, strengthen ecological cooperation, and expand the engineering and product teams. The team stated that a permanent, verifiable, and open data network will become the foundational infrastructure for future intelligent applications.

According to the latest weekly report from Gate Ventures, global risk assets are under pressure due to adjustments in technology stocks, fluctuations in the energy market, and changes in macro expectations, with the cryptocurrency market showing a volatile recovery trend. BTC rose 1.1% over the week, ETH rose 4.4%, pushing the ETH/BTC ratio up by 2.2%, and the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies increased by 1.03%. In terms of capital flow, the net inflow for spot BTC ETFs was only $33.8 million for the week, the lowest level since their launch; the net inflow for spot ETH ETFs during the same period was $103.9 million, indicating an improvement in market sentiment, with the Fear and Greed Index rising to 30, but still in the "fear" range. Meanwhile, the price of STRC under Strategy remained around $86, trading below par for the ninth consecutive week, with the institutional holding ratio continuing to increase, and the market is paying attention to its subsequent performance.In terms of industry development, stablecoin payments and the construction of blockchain financial infrastructure are continuing to advance. KB Kookmin Bank is collaborating with Kinexys, a subsidiary of JPMorgan, to explore blockchain-based cross-border payment services, further promoting traditional financial institutions' layout in on-chain payment scenarios; Kakao and Circle are exploring the payment infrastructure for a Korean won stablecoin, accelerating the application exploration of stablecoins in retail payments and cross-border settlements. In terms of investment and financing, a total of 8 financing transactions were completed last week, with a disclosed total financing amount of $196.5 million, among which the financing scale in the infrastructure sector was the highest, reaching $193 million, and the stablecoin clearing infrastructure project Augustus completed $180 million in financing. Overall, the market's short-term risk appetite remains cautious, but stablecoin payments, on-chain clearing, and financial infrastructure construction continue to attract capital attention.

According to PR Newswire, the on-chain execution infrastructure company Birdai Labs announced the completion of a $4 million seed round financing, led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Metalayer Ventures and The Venture Dept.Birdai Labs focuses on providing measurement, verification, and optimization infrastructure for transaction execution quality on high-performance public chains, aiming to reduce value loss between orders and executions caused by sorting and propagation, and to return more value to traders and market makers. The company's team comes from traditional financial institutions such as Franklin Templeton and Citadel, and is expanding its senior engineering and quantitative research team to adapt to on-chain execution competition under a multi-proposer architecture, and to provide verifiable fairness and transparency execution standards for future institutional participation in the digital asset market.

The Web3 AI infrastructure project AI W3 announced the completion of approximately $5 million in Pre-TGE round financing. This round of financing was led by Hundreds Capital, with follow-on investments from Kirin Capital and Crestwave Capital, and strategic investment from 0G Labs.It is reported that the leading investor, Hundreds Capital, is a private equity fund focused on growth-stage investments, with a long-term focus on technological innovation and the development of emerging industries. This investment in AI W3 marks Hundreds Capital's first foray into the Web3 space, as they express optimism about the long-term development potential of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology in the future digital economy, and recognize the next-generation infrastructure innovation opportunities brought by the integration of AI Agents and Web3.The strategic investment from 0G Labs further reflects the ecological value of AI W3 in the decentralized AI infrastructure field. 0G Labs is committed to promoting the integrated development of AI and blockchain technology, and this strategic investment further strengthens the ecological collaboration between both parties in the areas of on-chain AI Agents, decentralized computing, and open intelligent economy. Recently, AI W3 has also launched community incentive activities around ecological construction, attracting user participation through airdrop tasks, ecological interactions, and other methods to promote early community growth and ecological expansion.

ALPHEA announced the completion of a $5 million financing round to accelerate the construction of its next-generation distributed AI infrastructure.The project party stated that this round of funding was participated in by institutions such as MH Ventures, IBC Group, Titans Ventures, Becker Ventures, and Yellow Labs. It will be used to expand the distributed AI computing power network, launch new products aimed at developers and enterprises, and expand the core team in positions such as engineering, research, and ecosystem development.

Circle announced the acquisition of IBM's blockchain patent portfolio, which includes over 680 patent families and nearly 1000 granted patents, covering areas such as underlying blockchain technology, banking, financial services, insurance, enterprise infrastructure, supply chain verification, and secure cloud operations.After this acquisition, Circle stated that it has become a leading company in the United States for blockchain patent holdings and will further support USDC, Circle Payments Network, Arc, and other on-chain financial products and infrastructure development. Both parties also expressed their intention to explore more business cooperation opportunities in the future.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted in response to the viewpoint "If you're in the cryptocurrency space, turn to AI," stating that this is a flawed way of thinking and a zero-sum game mentality. Brian Armstrong emphasized that cryptocurrency is a universal technology, an infrastructure, just like electricity or the internet. It does not compete with the next hot technology because it supports the latter. It is "both-and," not "either-or." Artificial intelligence, as a major trend, does not diminish the importance of cryptocurrency. On the contrary, it makes cryptocurrency even more important.AI agents require their own financial infrastructure, and ultimately their daily trading volume will far exceed the total of all human trading volumes. They cannot open bank accounts, cannot wait three days to receive remittances, and they cannot reside in just one country. They need real-time programmable money (which is exactly what cryptocurrency is). Agents need to hold funds and make payments themselves. Coinbase was the first to launch the x402 protocol, Base, and USDC, which now support the vast majority of payments for agents. Agents will also participate in trading and act as financial advisors. They will raise or borrow funds for ongoing new projects. They will also save users from the tedious tasks of tax planning, portfolio rebalancing, and bill payments.

The Bankr developer deployer released a statement on the X platform, stating that the Bankr infrastructure has not been compromised and no Bankr vulnerabilities have been exploited. The attacker infiltrated the X account.Previously, the official Bankr X account was hacked and posted a false airdrop link. Currently, the team is waiting for a response from the X platform and recommends that users enable multi-factor authentication for their Bankr accounts.

According to Cointelegraph, Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, plans to establish cryptocurrency trading infrastructure by December 1 at the latest, which includes a digital repository.Previously, Russia was incorporating cryptocurrency trading, custody, and settlement into its regulated financial system. The digital repository will record the ownership of cryptocurrencies and handle most transactions outside the main blockchain. Sberbank will operate active wallets for customers to make deposits, withdrawals, and transfers.

Gate US officially announced that Gate AI and Alpaca will collaborate on the development vision of Agentic Trading, promoting the integration of AI infrastructure and trading system capabilities to provide underlying support for the next generation of intelligent trading applications.Alpaca has built a trading API that is developer and AI Agent friendly, with its community continuously transforming trading ideas into actual projects, covering research processes, simulated trading systems, and Agentic workflows that connect market data, analysis, and execution logic. Gate AI focuses on building an infrastructure layer for AI Agents and developers, where the GateRouter unified API helps developers quickly access over 25 mainstream AI models and balances cost and performance through intelligent routing.Both Gate AI and Alpaca agree that AI trading Agent developers should not have to choose between high-quality trading execution infrastructure and AI infrastructure, but should be able to obtain support for both in a smoother manner. Next, Gate AI will explore how its model routing and Agent infrastructure can connect to trading workflows built on APIs like Alpaca, supporting developers in integrating market data, AI reasoning, and trading execution into Agentic systems.Gate AI and Alpaca also plan to promote knowledge sharing and best practice exchanges between their developer communities, continuously lowering the development threshold and complexity of AI-native trading applications. Gate AI and Alpaca will continue to explore collaborative efforts around the construction of the Agentic Trading ecosystem, providing foundational support for developers to build more efficient and scalable next-generation intelligent trading applications.

According to BBX data, yesterday and in recent days, global companies listed on the US stock market have disclosed the latest real announcements regarding digital asset transformation and ecological strategic investments. The core dynamics are as follows:Canton sells traditional business to fully transition to blockchain clearing: Canton Strategic Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: $ CNTN) officially announced that it has sold its biotechnology R&D department Gravitas Life Sciences, LLC to Gravitas Collective Corp. The transaction was completed on July 17, 2026. The company clearly stated that this divestiture is an important milestone in its transformation into an operating company, and in the future, it will support the Canton Network through Canton Coin and promote the on-chain digital transformation of traditional financial markets as a strategic investor.Empery Digital invests $20 million in cross-industry computing power electricity park: The US-listed company Empery Digital Inc. (NASDAQ: $ EMPD), which adopts a Bitcoin fund management strategy, announced that it has completed a $20 million preferred stock investment (holding approximately 8%) in Cardinal Data Power, Inc. (CDP) on July 20, 2026. CDP focuses on building electricity-driven data center parks, and this round of financing will support its construction of the first gigawatt-level data center park covering over 3,000 acres in West Texas (Phase I is planned to be operational in 2027, with a long-term plan exceeding 5GW) to meet the next generation of AI and computing power energy demands.

According to The Block, the on-chain infrastructure layer SwarmBase, aimed at autonomous AI agents, has announced the completion of a $7 million financing round. This round was co-invested by Castrum Capital, M2M Capital, Notch Ventures, and Becker Ventures. Among them, Castrum Capital contributed an additional $4 million investment.It is reported that SwarmBase is a full-stack on-chain infrastructure protocol for autonomous AI agents. The platform provides core foundational modules such as identity, reputation, coordination, and transactions, enabling AI agents to operate independently through audited smart contracts.The funds raised in this round will primarily be used for the development of the SwarmBase protocol and ecological expansion, as well as preparations for the upcoming Token TGE. Castrum Capital stated that SwarmBase is well-positioned to lead the next wave of AI agents.

According to DigitalToday, the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) and the Ministry of Science and ICT have launched the "Deposit Token Payment Infrastructure Expansion Project," which will extend the results of South Korea's CBDC pilot "Project Hangang" into the private payment sector.The project is overseen by the Financial Settlement Agency, with participation from 9 banks, 8 payment gateways, and 2 large demand-side entities, with a total budget of 9.6 billion KRW, aimed at reducing payment fees for small and micro merchants. The project utilizes existing payment systems rather than building new infrastructure, allowing users to complete payments through bank deposit token wallets without requiring merchants to change terminals.The government also plans to apply deposit tokens to a pilot for official travel expenses and explore a treasury fund management model linked with dBrain. Approximately 3 billion KRW of the total project budget will be invested in the development, operation, and promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises, startups, and IT companies, while participating banks will separately advance about 4.5 billion KRW in related businesses.

According to Gate Ventures' latest weekly report, influenced by the escalation of geopolitical risks and changes in the AI competitive landscape, all three major U.S. stock indices fell last week, energy prices rose significantly, and the trends of safe-haven assets like gold and U.S. Treasuries diverged. The cryptocurrency market continued its structural trend, with Bitcoin and Ethereum rising by 1.5% and 3.6%, respectively, while both spot BTC and ETH ETFs maintained net inflows.In terms of industry development, regulation and real-world applications continued to be the focus this week. Japanese convenience store giant Lawson, in collaboration with Netstars, is advancing a stablecoin payment pilot, further promoting the use of stablecoins in everyday consumption scenarios; South Korea plans to officially incorporate digital assets into its national asset management framework and explore the tokenization of government bonds and state-owned assets, with the construction of RWA infrastructure continuing to accelerate. In Europe, after the transition period of MiCA ended, the total number of licensed institutions increased to 294, although the number of new licenses has slowed down, institutional participation remains strong.In terms of investment and financing, the cryptocurrency industry recorded a total of 16 financing events last week, highly concentrated in the infrastructure sector: among them, Alpaca completed a $135 million financing to enhance tokenized securities and AI financial infrastructure; Flex completed a $70 million financing to further expand its stablecoin cross-border payment network, continuously confirming the capital market's long-term optimism towards digital financial infrastructure. Gate Ventures believes that as the global regulatory framework gradually improves and the integration of traditional finance and blockchain deepens, the digital asset ecosystem is expected to enter a more mature and diverse development stage.

According to a report by businesswire, the stablecoin and digital asset financial infrastructure service provider Cordant announced the completion of an $8 million seed round financing, led by Motive Partners and Oak HC/FT, with participation from Bankless VC, FJ Labs, SignalFire, Quona, Next Stage, Selah Ventures, Flatironx, Nascent Ventures, Silvercircle Ventures, and Generative Ventures. The new funds will support its introduction of new payment networks and AI automation tools.Cordant is collaborating with financial institutions on product co-development, covering banking, payments, embedded finance, cross-border transactions, stablecoins, and digital assets. Among them, the Latin American digital asset and payment platform Bitso and the blockchain infrastructure company Paxos are both participating as investors and design partners.

According to Jinshi reports, Microsoft has agreed to invest billions of dollars in Mistral's European computing infrastructure to expand artificial intelligence infrastructure in Europe.