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The decentralized perpetual contract protocol Lighter announced that its average block proof time has decreased from about 5.3 minutes to about 1 minute over the past month. This progress was achieved through two independent optimizations launched on July 23 and August 23. Lighter can now complete block verification faster, thereby increasing processing capacity, reducing infrastructure costs, and creating space for further expansion.The first optimization is the Heavy/Light decomposition. This solution splits the transaction circuit into light circuits and heavy circuits, allowing simple quote updates, which account for the vast majority of transactions, to only pay for light constraints, thus halving the proof time. The second optimization comes from the Prover backend optimization brought about by the proof competition held in collaboration with Eigen Labs, which again halves the proof time under the same circuit conditions. The first batch of optimizations went live on August 23, with more batches still in progress. Additionally, on August 10, all Schnorr signature verifications were incorporated into a single Plonky3 proof for each block, resulting in approximately a 20% improvement.The above optimizations are orthogonal and their effects are cumulative. The remaining competition optimizations are expected to bring about an additional 2x improvement, potentially reaching a total of about 10x compared to mid-July. Currently, Lighter's sustained processing capacity has exceeded historical peak loads, and the finality limit for withdrawals has been reduced from about 21-22 minutes to about 16-17 minutes, maintaining stability during peak traffic periods.

UPBIT will launch Lighter (LIT) on August 24 at 13:00 and support KRW trading. LIT is an Ethereum-based utility token primarily used for staking and liquidity participation in the Lighter protocol.

According to Gate market data, the three major U.S. stock index futures opened slightly lower on Monday.

According to monitoring, "Maji" brother Huang Licheng has started to reduce his ETH long positions to take profits, with a slight reduction of about 1.02 million USD this time. The remaining ETH long positions are still valued at 68.77 million USD, with an opening price of 2,357 USD and a liquidation price of 2,189.8 USD, resulting in an unrealized profit of 1.59 million USD on the remaining positions.Maji also holds HYPE long positions, with a position value of about 20 million USD and an average entry price of 79.35 USD; he holds PUMP long positions, with a position value of about 11 million USD and an average entry price of 0.00524 USD.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the largest long position address on Hyperliquid closed half of its ETH long position after holding for about 4 months, with the highest unrealized loss reaching 120 million USD, and after breaking even and making a slight profit. The address closed 60,000 ETH at an average price of 2,514 USD half an hour ago, realizing a profit of about 14.88 million USD.Currently, the address still holds 3,000 BTC (approximately 235 million USD) and 60,000 ETH (approximately 151 million USD) in long positions, with unrealized profits of about 47.45 million USD.

Regarding Besant's increased investment in U.S. Treasury buybacks, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan stated, "When the government artificially suppresses long-term interest rates, it erodes the value of savings. Investors need to purchase hard assets to escape this predicament. Bitcoin is the fastest horse in this race."

The recovery test of SpaceX's Starship is at a critical stage. Although the recovery of the first-stage booster has been successful multiple times, the recovery of the second-stage spacecraft has not yet been achieved. Musk recently announced that the recovery plan for the Starship second-stage spacecraft, originally scheduled for late August, may be postponed until the end of the year or early next year.

Lighter CEO Vladimir Novakovski stated at the first meeting of the CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee that DeFi should not be seen as the opposite of regulators, and that on-chain verifiable transaction records assist regulators in their work regarding transparency, consumer protection, and market fairness. He pointed out that decentralized verifiable finance is expected to become an important part of the future financial infrastructure in the United States, and the industry should promote the evolution of technology towards open-source and verifiable directions.Novakovski also mentioned that AI has the opportunity to drive financial democratization, allowing users to build trading strategies based on their own judgment, a capability that has primarily been available to high-net-worth individuals and professionals in the past. He also warned that the main risk of AI in the financial sector is consumer protection issues, such as users not understanding the actual functions of models or being misled by deceptive advertising, and suggested establishing a sandbox mechanism to validate the effectiveness and verifiability of AI models before large-scale application.

Dow futures and Nasdaq futures fell slightly after Walmart (WMT.N) announced its quarterly results.

According to Gate market data, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 119.71 points on August 19, an increase of 0.22%, at 53,463.11 points; the S&P 500 index rose by 16.5 points, an increase of 0.21%, at 7,708.26 points; the Nasdaq Composite Index increased by 41.38 points, an increase of 0.16%, at 26,331.09 points.

According to Gate market data, the S&P 500 E-Mini futures rose by 0.06%, the Nasdaq 100 futures rose by 0.04%, and the Dow futures rose by 0.08%.

According to Gate market data, spot gold opened slightly higher on Monday, reporting at $4,380.58 per ounce. WTI crude oil opened higher, reporting at $81.66 per barrel.

Freddie Mac stated that the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage in the United States decreased from 6.69% a week ago to 6.67%, ending five consecutive weeks of increases.The U.S. job market is cooling, with price increases in July slowing down, and core inflation indicators dropping to a five-year low. The market expects the probability of a 25 basis point rate hike in September to fall to 38%. Stalled negotiations in the Strait of Hormuz have raised concerns about high oil prices, and U.S. home sales in July decreased by 4.1% compared to June.

According to Staking Rewards data, the staking ratio of Ethereum has risen to a historical high, with approximately 41.89 million ETH currently staked, accounting for 34.7% of the total supply of Ethereum. The corresponding market value of staked ETH is about 78.56 billion USD, and the current staking yield is approximately 2.6%, having recently decreased by 0.49%. The number of active validators on the network is about 789,000.The staking ratio has continued to climb recently, with an increase of about 0.77%, while the network inflation rate has dropped to around 0.86%. More and more ETH is being locked in the PoS consensus, simultaneously tightening the circulating supply. The staking yield of ETH mainly comes from consensus layer issuance, priority fees, and MEV, but as the staking volume increases, the yield per validator will be diluted.

According to Gate market data, the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index closed down 43.66 points on August 13, a decrease of 0.17%, at 25,396.51 points; the Hang Seng Tech Index rose 15.95 points, an increase of 0.33%, at 4,792.39 points; the State-Owned Enterprises Index fell 19.78 points, a decrease of 0.23%, at 8,426.49 points; the Red Chip Index dropped 66.9 points, a decrease of 1.61%, at 4,089.2 points.

According to The Data Nerd monitoring, the Lighter team wallet transferred 1.87 million LIT to a new address, worth approximately 4.57 million USD.

According to Bloomberg, citing informed sources, Lightspeed Venture Partners is seeking to extend its holding period for OpenAI and four other assets through a secondary transaction of approximately $600 million, along with a new investment commitment to Anthropic.The transaction, codenamed "Project Mercury," involves Lightspeed's Select V and Opportunity II funds, as well as an independently managed account, transferring the related investments into a continuation fund while returning cash to existing investors.In addition to OpenAI, the assets to be transferred include security technology company Verkada, workforce management company Rippling, AI startup Reflection AI, and enterprise search platform Glean. Coller Capital is acting as the lead buyer for the continuation fund, while UBS serves as the transaction advisor. Lightspeed has invested in Anthropic multiple times, including its latest financing round, which valued Anthropic at $96.5 billion.