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According to Bitcoin News, Sparrow Wallet v2.5.4 has been released after extensive AI-assisted review, featuring multiple security enhancements aimed at reducing user reliance on external servers like Electrum.Additionally, this version strengthens Ledger, Keycard, Trezor, Payjoin, PSBT, and multi-signature handling, removes Bitcoin Core credentials and other confidential information from debug logs, restricts existing wallet and backup directory permissions to owner access only, closes local DNS resolution leaks when using Tor, and enhances wallet import, signing, downloading, and server response validation. This update expands Sparrow Wallet's scope for independently verifying transaction data, hardware devices, and other inputs, reducing reliance on external servers for data provision.

The Sandbox released an update on the security vulnerability attack incident involving the SAND cross-chain bridge, stating that the attacker modified the verification mechanism to forge cross-chain deposit messages and mint unbacked SAND. This incident resulted in approximately 14.7423 million SAND being withdrawn, valued at about $697,000. Additionally, some uncollateralized SAND was profited through market trading, leading to an overall economic impact of approximately $1.497 million, of which the attacker actually obtained about $987,000.The Sandbox stated that the attack did not affect the supply of SAND on Ethereum and Polygon, with the total amount of SAND on Ethereum remaining unchanged at 3 billion. There were also no super administrator privileges stolen, and the attack stemmed from a vulnerability caused by the combination of the general call function in the token contract and the design of bridge permissions. Currently, the related addresses have been marked, and collaboration has begun with exchanges, security agencies, and the LayerZero team.For affected users, The Sandbox promises to compensate wallets holding legitimate bridged SAND with a 1:1 ratio of SAND on the Ethereum chain based on an on-chain snapshot taken before the attack. The compensation application process is expected to open within two weeks and will last for two weeks.

According to Coinglass data, the cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index is currently at 70, up 6 points from yesterday. The average over the past 7 days is 69, and the average over the past 30 days is 40.

Franklin Templeton's Chief Investment Officer for Crypto, Seth Ginns, stated that the current market is at a "turning point," where large investors will begin to allocate to liquidity crypto funds in unprecedented ways.Seth Ginns pointed out that this phase signifies a significant change in how institutional funds are allocating to crypto assets, and liquidity crypto funds are expected to see larger-scale participation from major investors.

According to Gate market data, after-hours trading on Wednesday for U.S. stocks saw Nvidia's new quarterly results continue to exceed market expectations, with a forecast of approximately 70% sales growth for the next fiscal year, driving AI concept stocks higher in after-hours trading.The storage sector collectively strengthened, with SK Hynix rising 4.48%, SanDisk up 3.71%, Micron Technology up 3.67%, Seagate Technology up 3.15%, and Western Digital up 3.11%. The Neocloud sector saw widespread gains, with Nebius up 6.27%, CoreWeave up 4.76%, Applied Digital up 3.26%, and both IREN and Core Scientific up 3.16%.Optical communication stocks rose across the board, with Applied Optoelectronics up 4.25%, Marvell Technology up 4.08%, Credo up 3.78%, Coherent up 3.35%, and Astera Labs up 3.34%. Semiconductor stocks also strengthened, with Arm up 4.18%, Marvell Technology and Nvidia both up 4.08%, Lam Research up 2.65%, and KLA up 2.42%.

Matthew Gould, the founder of Unstoppable Domains, stated that the company did not submit an application for its Web3 top-level domains in ICANN's 2026 expansion round and will refund customers who purchased related domains. Gould mentioned that the compliance, application, and bidding costs of incorporating Web3 domains into the ICANN system exceeded the company's expected recoverable sales. This move ends the company's commitment since 2019 that domains like .crypto and .wallet would eventually be resolvable in standard browsers.The application window for this round of ICANN opened on April 30 and closed on August 12, receiving over 1,600 major applications. Gould stated that customers have been notified via email, but the list of affected extensions and refund terms have not been disclosed. Some holders questioned the scope of the refunds, claiming they held the domains based on Unstoppable's commitment to advance the ICANN application. Gould responded that Web3 domains will still serve as on-chain assets for cryptocurrency transactions.Unstoppable continues to participate in ICANN activities as a service provider and previously announced a partnership with Telegram to apply for the .gram domain. Meanwhile, ENS has chosen a different path, with token holders approving the restructuring of the ENS Foundation to pursue the .ens top-level domain in ICANN, but ENS will not apply for .eth, as it is reserved for ISO 3166-1 country codes.

Pump.fun announced that its application now supports HyperEVM, allowing users to trade any HyperEVM tokens using USDC, and receive referral rewards along with a near-zero fee trading experience.Pump.fun stated that it is the first application to introduce HyperEVM into relevant trading scenarios.

Analyst Ted (@TedPillows) stated that the Coinbase Ethereum premium has turned positive, indicating that institutions are accumulating. In related discussions, market participants noted that a positive premium means that U.S. demand is beginning to re-emerge, and Ethereum is showing some strength.The Coinbase premium is typically used to measure the premium or discount level of asset prices on the Coinbase platform relative to other major trading platforms. When this indicator turns from negative to positive, it is often interpreted as U.S. investors, particularly institutional funds, being relatively active in buying, providing support for spot demand. The recent rebound in Ethereum-related premiums is viewed by some observers as one of the signals of marginal improvement in liquidity.

According to The Block, Bitwise has launched Automated Token Portfolios, allowing eligible non-U.S. users in supported jurisdictions to automatically replicate and rebalance professionally designed Coinbase tokenized U.S. stock portfolios while maintaining self-custody in their own wallets.The portfolio is supported by Coinbase and implemented through Glider, initially focusing on themes such as Mag 7, SpaceX, leading companies in robotics, and AI. The product charges a 0.15% methodology access fee, excluding transaction fees and platform fees.

According to The Block, the Blockchain Association has submitted a letter of opinion regarding the stablecoin issuer rules proposed jointly by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve. The association supports limiting the Customer Identification Program (CIP) obligations to transactions where issuers directly face customers in the primary market, and it should not extend to peer-to-peer transfer activities in the secondary market.At the same time, the association calls on regulators to further clarify definitions such as "account," "customer," and "digital asset service provider," excluding one-time redemptions and other non-continuous businesses, and to avoid creating overlapping compliance burdens with anti-money laundering rules. The association stated that the implementation of the rules should balance stablecoin security, operability, and space for industry innovation.

According to Coinglass data, the cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index is currently at 73, down 1 point from yesterday. The average over the past 7 days is 66, and the average over the past 30 days is 37.

On August 25, CITIC Construction Investment Research reported that on August 21, OpenAI reduced the price of GPT-5.6 SolAPI by over 20%, further lowering the cost of high-performance model calls, which is expected to drive growth in high Token scenarios such as Agent and code generation, continuously boosting demand for inference-side computing power.Alibaba's latest quarterly AI Cloud and Compute Services revenue was approximately 48.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 45%. Revenue from AI-related products has seen triple-digit growth for 12 consecutive quarters, confirming that AI demand is accelerating towards commercialization. We remain optimistic about the opportunities in the industrial chain driven by the commercialization of large models and the increase in computing power demand, including optical modules, servers, liquid cooling, and cloud computing.

On August 24, recent news reported that some banks in Hong Kong have initiated a source of funds declaration procedure for certain existing mainland investment clients, setting deadlines of August 20 (services may be suspended if not submitted) and September 12 (services may be terminated if not submitted).Previously, in response to requirements from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, some banks have begun to require new mainland account investors to confirm that their source of funds comes from legitimate overseas channels. This source of funds confirmation procedure targets existing mainland investor accounts, primarily focusing on long-term "inactive accounts." It is understood that some licensed institutions in Hong Kong, including HSBC Hong Kong and branches of Chinese banks in Hong Kong, have indeed implemented such measures recently.

Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich stated that the core logic behind their bullish outlook on Bitcoin is that AI is significantly reducing the production costs of software, content, and analytics, and value will shift towards scarce assets that cannot be infinitely increased.The supply cap of 21 million Bitcoins is guaranteed by network rules, cannot be copied or diluted, and can be settled globally 24 hours a day. The long-term experience of Japanese households regarding changes in currency purchasing power has also reinforced this judgment.

On August 24, according to CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr., Bitcoin rose 22% from $63,000 to $77,000 within 8 days, with the profit supply ratio of short-term holders (STH) increasing from 26.1% to 74.9%. Meanwhile, the net inflow of STH to exchanges shifted from negative to +28,600 BTC, breaking through the +25,000 threshold, indicating that profit-taking pressure is building.If this indicator remains above the threshold and price momentum slows down, the risk of selling will significantly increase; if the flow converges to zero and the profit ratio maintains above 50%, the market is expected to continue its upward trend.

According to Coinglass data, the cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index is currently at 74, up 7 points from yesterday. The average over the past 7 days is 61, and the average over the past 30 days is 36.

The Slow Mist security team disclosed that the cross-chain bridge project Allbridge was attacked on August 19, 2026, resulting in a loss of approximately $190,000. Notably, this attack was not executed instantly; the attacker had begun laying the groundwork nearly a month prior and bypassed the verification mechanism by forging cross-chain messages. According to Slow Mist's analysis, on July 26, the attacker directly called Circle's MessageTransmitterV2.sendMessage function on the Polygon chain, constructing a cross-chain message disguised as a CCTP style message, claiming that a transfer of 1 million USDC existed, but in reality, no USDC destruction operation took place. Subsequently, Circle generated a valid verification proof (attestation) for this complete message according to normal procedures.About 24 days later, on August 19, the attacker waited for the Base Router to receive a real CCTP deposit, increasing the balance to approximately 191,000 USDC, and initiated the attack just 6 seconds later. The attacker utilized the previously forged message and verification proof to call Allbridge's receiveCctpMessage function. Due to the project's lack of critical verification, the system mistakenly recognized the false cross-chain message as a real deposit and recorded a limit of 1 million USDC. The attacker then temporarily borrowed approximately 809,000 USDC through an Aave flash loan, matching the Router balance with the forged amount, and used the internal credit record to call the transfer function, ultimately transferring out approximately 999,000 USDC (after a 0.1% fee). After repaying the flash loan and fees, the attacker netted a profit of about $189,800. The root cause of this vulnerability lies in Allbridge's failure to verify the identities of the sender and receiver of the cross-chain message, as well as not confirming whether USDC was genuinely minted and whether the balance actually increased, instead directly trusting the amounts and message hash data constructed by the attacker. Slow Mist emphasizes that on-chain message verification does not equate to the actual arrival of real assets. Cross-chain protocols not only need to verify the authenticity of messages but must also ensure that the message source is trustworthy, that the receiver is Circle's official TokenMessengerV2, and that asset accounting can only proceed after confirming the actual minting of assets and changes in balance. This incident once again highlights the security risks of cross-chain bridges in the message verification and asset settlement processes.