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According to reports from Seoul Economic Daily, Samsung Electronics is developing HBM4E (seventh generation) 8-layer products that meet NVIDIA's requirements, aiming to secure its position as a core partner in the supply of customized high-bandwidth memory NVHBM. This product reduces the stacking height compared to the originally planned 12-layer and 16-layer designs. The speed specifications proposed by NVIDIA are 17-18Gbps, which is about 20% higher than the speed of Samsung's initial HBM4E samples (14.4Gbps), and will be used for NVIDIA's publicly disclosed NVLink optimized specifications for NVHBM.The use of 8 layers, contrary to the previous logic of increasing capacity by adding more stacking layers in HBM, can reduce the difficulty of post-processing and yield pressure, which is beneficial for expanding supply and is seen as NVIDIA's strategy to alleviate memory shortages. NVHBM is expected to be applied starting with the next-generation AI GPU "Rubin Ultra," which is set to launch next year. This GPU will expand the interconnection scale between GPUs from a maximum of 72 to 576, enhancing overall computing power through hundreds of GPUs equipped with faster HBM.In the customized HBM market, Samsung is more competitive compared to SK Hynix and Micron, as NVHBM requires DRAM and the production capabilities of logic chip-based bare die designs, which Samsung can integrate. Industry insiders say that Samsung has verified the highest speed levels in HBM4, which can provide an advantage in speed competition.

a16z partner Sarah Wang recently published an article pointing out that AI application layer products should not price based on tokens like the model layer, but rather on "recognizable work units." The article argues that token pricing anchors the value of application products to a unit whose cost is continuously declining, making it difficult for customers to predict context length, retrieval volume, or reasoning time, and improperly compares applications to raw computing power.The article suggests a tiered pricing model based on value levels: model layer priced by tokens; application layer priced by recognizable work units for customers (such as account research briefs, code modifications, completed queries), which can be encapsulated through Credits; and scenarios that are attributable and have clear value priced directly by results (such as resolved customer service conversations, qualified leads). The design of Credits should map to different levels of work difficulty to protect gross margins and distinguish "work value" from "delivery cost." The article uses Clay as an example, where its new pricing separates Data Credits (third-party data) from Actions (orchestrated work), only passing on costs for reasoning models with significant cost fluctuations without markup. The author believes that pricing anchored to value rather than computing cost allows customers to understand spending in relation to value, while also benefiting product providers in maintaining profit margins.

According to South Korean media Chosun Biz, SK Hynix's NAND is lagging in the transition of old process lines, making it difficult to narrow the efficiency gap. As of the second quarter of this year, its 176-layer products still account for about 50%, while Samsung has completed the transition mainly to 236 layers. Omdia data shows that Micron's 232-layer products account for 53%, and YMTC reaches 68%.During the rising cycle of NAND prices, companies with a higher proportion of advanced processes see better cost and profit improvements. SK Hynix (including Solidigm) saw its NAND revenue share drop from 21.4% in the fourth quarter of last year to 16.4% in the first quarter of this year, while YMTC increased from 11.5% to 16.2%. SK Hynix prioritizes equipment investment in DRAM and HBM, with NAND investments decreasing for three consecutive years, from $3.5 billion in 2023 to $2.9 billion in 2025, slowing down the transition. It is currently considering impairing old NAND assets to optimize costs.

Polymarket US has withdrawn two NFL player participation contract documents from the prediction market platform. The platform has completed certification with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and plans to launch related products no earlier than August 27. Polymarket US certifies Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana price contracts, all three types of contracts are submitted in pairs and classified as swap contracts under the binary options subcategory.Both the NFL contracts and cryptocurrency contracts involve the relevant classifications. The NFL compliance analysis document has been submitted separately for confidentiality, with Polymarket US requesting permanent non-disclosure on the grounds that public disclosure would leak trade secrets and give competitors an unfair advantage. As of the record, another NFL American football eligibility contract remains in certified status.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plan to increase the supply of 8-layer HBM4 memory to NVIDIA in the second half of this year.This move is influenced by NVIDIA's supply strategy, aiming to ensure a stable supply of HBM memory while also considering product heat generation.

Cryptocurrency investment firm RockawayX announced the acquisition of the crypto hedge fund Relayer Capital to incorporate long-short strategies into its existing platform and expand its business footprint in the United States. RockawayX manages approximately $2 billion in assets, and Relayer will be renamed RockawayX Liquid Opportunities Fund, focusing on uncovering "undervalued liquidity tokens and crypto-related stocks." After the acquisition is completed, Relayer founder Austin Barack will serve as the chief investment officer of the fund, with Forbes citing informed sources that the company plans to raise $150 million for the fund.According to the announcement, Relayer's liquidity strategy has achieved approximately 70% net returns this year, outperforming a weighted basket of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana by 86% as of August 21. The strategy expresses fundamental views on crypto tokens through long and short positions and pairs trading, while reducing overall market exposure at appropriate times. RockawayX CEO Viktor Fischer stated that now is the "right time" to implement this strategy, as there are crypto companies with real revenue and strong fundamentals emerging in the market, but inefficiencies and mispricing still exist, providing good opportunities for active investors.This transaction occurs amid a recent rebound in the crypto market, with Bitcoin recording its largest weekly dollar gain in history last week, dropping 1.68% to $79,064 in the past 24 hours after briefly reaching a high of around $81,000.

According to SoSoValue data, after a significant rebound, the overall cryptocurrency market is experiencing a general pullback, with only the Layer2 sector remaining relatively strong, rising 1.13% in 24 hours, among which Stacks (STX) increased by 16.73% and Polygon (POL) rose by 6.29%. In addition, Bitcoin (BTC) fell by 1.10%, dropping below $79,000; Ethereum (ETH) decreased by 1.61%, falling below $2,500.In other sectors, the DeFi sector dropped 0.38% in 24 hours, with Ethena (ENA) down 7.78%, but Hyperliquid (HYPE) rose by 1.89%; the CeFi sector fell by 1.65%, with OKB (OKB) down 3.12%; the Layer1 sector declined by 2.39%, with Zcash (ZEC) down 6.44%; the Meme sector decreased by 3.42%, while SPX6900 (SPX) rose against the trend by 13.33%; the PayFi sector fell by 3.99%, with Dash (DASH) down 10.10%.

According to The Information, blockchain infrastructure company LayerZero will launch the blockchain trading platform ATLAS in the fall of 2026, primarily targeting financial institutions, with no consumer-facing applications.ATLAS will be based on the Zero blockchain announced by LayerZero in February this year, initially supporting spot crypto assets and perpetual contracts, with plans to expand to prediction contracts, futures, and options in the future.Citadel Securities, DTCC, and the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, ICE, are all partners of Zero. LayerZero stated that top global market makers will provide liquidity on the first day of ATLAS's launch.

AI market prediction project Fortune Protocol officially announces the integration of liquidity from Polymarket and, together with the previously integrated Predict.fun, provides more prediction markets and liquidity for Fortune Markets.After this update, users can directly explore markets from different liquidity sources within Fortune Markets and discover and compare the liquidity, trading volume, and probabilities of different markets more quickly through a brand new market interface. Fortune Protocol has optimized the trading and asset management experience, adding a streamlined trading process that supports result selection and position browsing; the Portfolio feature is unified, allowing users to view their current positions, settled markets, and complete trading history in one place.Fortune Protocol states that by continuously integrating liquidity from various mainstream prediction markets, Fortune Markets will further build a unified market layer, providing users with a more open, efficient, and integrated prediction market trading experience.

TAC posted on platform X that an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the Cosmos EVM precompiled layer to transfer 2,985,651,403 TAC from a single account on the TAC network.The project team subsequently paused the network at block height 24,671,475 to prevent the attack from continuing.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the event "LoL: Dignitas vs FlyQuest - LCS Regular Season" on the prediction market Polymarket, the "Yes" option for the sub-market "Any Player Quadra Kill" has experienced a dramatic fluctuation in win rate, soaring from 50% an hour ago to the current 90% (a fluctuation of 40%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.

According to Catcher Predict monitoring, in the market prediction event "Dota 2 Team Spirit vs TEAM VISION" on Polymarket, the "Yes" option for the sub-market "Any Player Ultra Kill" has experienced a sharp fluctuation in win rate, dropping from 37.5% an hour ago to the current 19% (a fluctuation of 18.5%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.

On August 21, 3D storage-computing integrated chip company Qianhe Yibang announced that its self-developed global first 4-layer 3D DRAM stacked storage-computing integrated chip successfully returned to the wafer and was powered on, marking the transition of this technology from validation to the engineering implementation stage. This chip adopts a three-dimensional integrated native computing architecture, with data access and storage bandwidth improved by an order of magnitude compared to traditional solutions, while access and storage power consumption, latency, and single data processing costs have all decreased by an order of magnitude.Qianhe Yibang was established in January 2024, incubated by NetEase, and recently completed over 2 billion yuan in Series B financing.

According to The Block, Ethereum ecosystem core contributor Nethermind announced that after a "comprehensive review," it will exit the LayerZero decentralized validation network (DVN) business and migrate its cross-chain infrastructure to the Chainlink network. Nethermind stated that it has ceased operations of LayerZero's DVN and joined the Chainlink network as a node operator and strategic technology provider.In the future, Nethermind will provide engineering tools, infrastructure services, and integration support for blockchain application developers. It is reported that this shift occurred after the LayerZero ecosystem experienced a security incident. In April of this year, the rsETH cross-chain bridge of Kelp DAO was attacked, resulting in a loss of approximately 116,500 rsETH, valued at about $292 million at the time. Following this incident, several companies have begun to shift their cross-chain operations from LayerZero to Chainlink. However, Nethermind did not explicitly state whether this migration is directly related to the Kelp DAO incident, nor did it disclose any specific technical issues with LayerZero or changes in commercial terms between the two parties.

Decred announced that the mandatory patch version v2.1.6 has been released, which includes a fix for a critical security issue related to consensus, preventing potential periodic de-anonymization mixing attacks.In addition, this patch also addresses several possible network-related denial of service (DoS) attack issues and improves the expiration duration of mixing sessions. The official urges users to upgrade as soon as possible, while noting that the Windows version of Decrediton has not yet been released and is expected to be launched the following day.

Sei announced the launch of the Eidos upgrade, which involves a comprehensive reconstruction of the on-chain storage layer. Eidos is one of the three parts of the Sei Giga upgrade trilogy, following the consensus layer Autobahn and the execution layer Ares, which have been progressively advanced. Eidos is responsible for addressing the most critical storage bottleneck in blockchain scalability.Core changes include: replacing the traditional Merkle tree with FlatKV and LtHash, allowing state updates to shift from chain-based hash recalculation to constant time operations; migrating EVM state to an independent database, with historical data moved to off-chain archives, and nodes retaining only the content necessary for real-time operations.Sei's long-term goal for the Giga upgrade is 200,000 TPS, and Eidos is a key underlying support for achieving this goal. This upgrade represents an update to the technical roadmap, and the specific implementation effects will need to be validated in the future. Node operators can configure migration according to Sei's official documentation.

The attention economy platform Kaito AI launched the browser extension Kaito Pulse on August 18, which can directly integrate users' public holdings and other off-chain activities on platforms like Polymarket and Hyperliquid into the X timeline, and synchronously introduce the attention metric Aura to measure the attention signals generated by users' statements and actual behaviors. Users can accumulate Aura by installing the extension, using Yaps to receive initial Aura, verifying transactions, or engaging in creator activities.Subsequently, well-known analyst @0x_ultra released a source code analysis stating that the extension has multiple data collection behaviors, including generating a unique device fingerprint through GPU rendering, device model, and audio tests, and associating it with the X account; recording user behaviors such as scrolling duration, clicks, searches, bookmarks, etc., during X sessions, and sending heartbeat packets every 30 seconds; reading subscription plans and usage for ChatGPT and Claude during verification, as well as wallet balances, holdings, profits and losses, and deposit/withdrawal records on platforms like Binance. The extension only allows communication with the Kaito domain, and the ZKTLS part is based on the open-source project Primus branch. Kaito officials have not yet responded to this.

The Wyoming Stablecoin Committee has migrated its issued Frontier Stable Token (FRNT) from LayerZero to Chainlink's cross-chain interoperability protocol CCIP, and will completely discontinue the LayerZero token implementation after completing a comprehensive security review. CCIP will serve as the sole cross-chain infrastructure for FRNT under a multi-year contract. This is the first time a U.S. government entity has publicly changed blockchain infrastructure for security reasons, and FRNT is currently the only stablecoin issued by a U.S. public institution, fully backed by fiat reserves, with reserve earnings used to support the state's school foundation projects. The token has been deployed on chains such as Ethereum, Base, and Avalanche, with a current market cap of less than $1 million.This decision was announced four months after the Kelp DAO bridge based on LayerZero was attacked, resulting in the theft of approximately 116,500 rsETH (worth about $292 million at the time), an incident that triggered a wave of industry security reviews and migrations. To date, nearly $15 billion in related assets have migrated from LayerZero to Chainlink, with early movers including Kelp, Solv Protocol, Re, and Kraken. Subsequently, BitGo chose CCIP and completed a migration of approximately $7.7 billion in wrapped Bitcoin, bringing the total to the current level. According to a case study by LayerZero in January of this year, Wyoming had previously operated its own decentralized validation network and controlled validation and compliance functions.