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According to Bloomberg, Alibaba has reached an agreement to sell its gaming business Lingxi Interactive Entertainment to the Asian private equity firm Trustar Capital, with the deal valued at least $1.5 billion. Lingxi Interactive Entertainment CEO Zhou Bingshu stated in an internal memo that this move aims to allow Alibaba to better focus on strategic priorities.Alibaba is accelerating its strategic transformation in AI and cloud computing, aiming for AI revenue to reach $100 billion within five years. This month, Alibaba released its largest AI model ever, claiming performance comparable to Anthropic. This sale is the latest initiative by Alibaba to divest non-core assets and focus on its AI strategy.

Coinbase announced the launch of the US500 perpetual contract product, allowing users to go long or short on the overall performance of the 500 largest companies by market capitalization in the United States through a single contract. This product is designed to provide traders with a convenient tool for exposure to U.S. stock index risk without the need to trade individual component stocks separately.The US500 perpetual contract supports leveraged trading, enabling users to express their bullish or bearish views on the overall performance of large U.S. companies in a more efficient manner. Coinbase continues to expand its product line of derivatives and traditional financial assets to meet the diverse trading needs of institutional and retail users.

According to official news, the Gate stock derivatives section will launch on August 18 at 14:00 (UTC+8) with perpetual contract trading for SHENHUA (China Shenhua 601088.SH), YANGTZE (Yangtze Power 600900.SH), HYGON (Haiguang Information 688041.SH), MIDEA (Midea Group 000333.SZ), BEIGENE (BeiGene 688235.SH), MOUTAI (Kweichow Moutai 600519.SH), HENGRUI (Hengrui Medicine 600276.SH), BIWIN (Biwin Storage 688525.SH), DEMINGLI (Demingli 001309.SZ), and TAIJI (Taiji Industry 600667.SH) (settled in USDT), supporting 1-20x leverage.In addition, Gate will hold the 15th phase of the new coin airdrop event for the stock derivatives section from August 18 at 16:00 to August 27 at 16:00 (UTC+8). New users who complete their first contract trade will receive 5 USDT; daily trading volume of the participating coins can accumulate up to 35 USDT; trading the participating coins will share a prize pool of 30,000 USDT. The total prize pool for the event is 50,000 USDT, with a maximum of 240 USDT that can be claimed by a single person.

According to the official announcement, to meet the diverse investment needs of users, Bitget has launched perpetual contracts for 3 stocks and ETFs: GDX (Gold Mining ETF), NET (Cloudflare), and LYTE (Photonics and Optical ETF).The above contracts are all settled in USDT, supporting up to 20 times leverage and 24/7 trading. As of now, Bitget supports a total of 276 stock perpetual contract underlying assets.

Consumer-grade blockchain Abstract announces the launch of Builder XP, an extension of its XP system, aimed at rewarding builders who contribute to the Abstract ecosystem. This mechanism allocates Builder XP weekly based on the project's overall impact on the chain.Builder XP will further incentivize developers and project parties to continue building, promoting the development of the Abstract ecosystem. Abstract is created by the Pudgy Penguins team, focusing on consumer-grade crypto applications and on-chain experiences.

According to official news, GoPlus announced a comprehensive upgrade of DeepScan, launching an AI-based smart contract security solution. GoPlus stated that as hackers begin to leverage AI to dig deeper into contract vulnerabilities, the traditional "one-time audit, go live and it's done" security model is struggling to cope with the continuously evolving attack risks.DeepScan constructs a complete security closed loop around the entire lifecycle of smart contracts, consisting of AI contract auditing, continuous security monitoring, and Token security self-checks, providing ongoing security assurance for developers, project parties, and trading platforms. Among them, AI contract auditing can analyze contract source code, permission management, and business logic based on AI deep analysis, identifying security risks such as syntax vulnerabilities and business logic vulnerabilities, and outputting a structured audit report that includes security scores, key findings, problem details, and remediation suggestions. Continuous security monitoring targets contracts that are already live and have completed audits, tracking newly disclosed vulnerabilities, on-chain attack events, and changes in external dependencies such as oracles and cross-chain bridges in real-time, and using AI to determine whether the project is affected, conducting timely reviews and alerts. Token security self-checks are aimed at projects that are about to be launched or applying for listing, quickly detecting risks such as P2P pools/honeypots, malicious issuance permissions, blacklist mechanisms, abnormal transaction taxes, Owner permissions, and transaction restrictions.In addition, the GoPlus DeepScan team also released an open-source Benchmark dataset built on real smart contract attack events, used to assess AI's actual capabilities in vulnerability identification, attack path understanding, contextual reasoning, and audit stability. Currently, it has included nearly a hundred typical attack events since May 2025 and continues to be updated. GoPlus stated that DeepScan can be used for low-cost security scanning by developers, security reviews before project launches, and continuous monitoring during operations, while also serving as a supplement to security assessments before listing on trading platforms, helping all parties to more promptly identify new vulnerabilities and attack risks.

Galaxy Research released the Q2 2026 Crypto Leverage Market Report, showing that the total amount of crypto collateralized lending decreased by 16.78% month-on-month to $56.16 billion, down 40.13% from the Q3 2025 peak of $78.69 billion. Among them, DeFi lending shrank by 27.61% month-on-month to $20.43 billion, while CeFi borrowing decreased by 9.62% month-on-month to $22.98 billion, marking the first time since Q3 2023 that CeFi volume has surpassed DeFi. Tether continues to dominate the CeFi market with a 58.54% share.The report points out that the current deleveraging differs from previous bear markets in its "orderly and moderate" pace: with consecutive quarterly declines of only 10%, 5%, and 17%, rather than the cliff-like collapse of over 55% in a single quarter as seen in 2022. In the futures market, open interest in Q2 slightly decreased by 3.08% month-on-month to $103.2 billion, but rebounded to about $114 billion in July. Regarding institutional corporate debt, Strategy completed a $1.5 billion debt buyback in May, reducing the total outstanding debt in the DAT industry to $16.1 billion. The report believes that if the market does not experience severe liquidations or counterparty defaults, deleveraging is expected to continue in a gradual step-down pattern.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated on X that the company has recently released a short-term roadmap for agentic capabilities and related standards. This roadmap covers multiple capabilities being built, with a focus on expanding support for agents as work sellers, and involves mechanisms such as agent identity, reputation, verification, and trusted discovery.Allaire pointed out that the above planning aims to promote the implementation of agent-related standards and functionalities, enabling agents to participate in work transactions and service provision. As the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, Circle continues to pay attention to the integration of infrastructure such as payments and on-chain identity with emerging agent scenarios.

AI voice interaction startup Wispr announced the completion of a $280 million Series B financing, with the company's valuation reaching $2 billion.This round of financing was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, 8VC, MVP Ventures, as well as Acrew, Peak XV, Together Fund, and PLUS Capital.

According to The Block, Bitcoin mining company HIVE Digital Technologies has signed a five-year GPU cloud service agreement worth approximately $350 million through its subsidiary BUZZ High-Performance Computing, with a client that has not been disclosed as an investment-grade enterprise.The contract is expected to add approximately $70 million in annual revenue for HIVE, bringing BUZZ HPC's total annual revenue to about $180 million.

According to Whale Alert monitoring, a certain whale transferred 32,400 ETH to the Ethereum staking deposit contract (Beacon Depositor), worth approximately 61.46 million USD, for staking.

According to the official announcement, Bitget's stock perpetual contracts have been launched for CXMT (Changxin Storage). The contract is settled in USDT, supports up to 20 times leverage, and allows trading 24/7. So far, Bitget supports a total of 273 stock perpetual contract underlying assets.

On August 17, WEEX announced the official launch of the sixth phase of "Contract Mining," with the event running from 8/17 14:00 to 9/6 23:59:59 (UTC+8), and a total prize pool valued at 1 million USDT. During the event, users can earn real-time fee rebates in WXT by engaging in contract trading. The larger the cumulative contract trading volume, the higher the miner level, and the higher the rebate ratio.While continuing the core gameplay of "Contract Mining," the sixth phase introduces a new "Treasure Map" exploration feature: users can complete tasks such as recharging, trading, upgrading miner levels, and inviting friends to earn treasure map fragments. Collecting fragments can unlock the treasure map and claim corresponding rewards. Additionally, users can participate in leaderboard competition based on their cumulative trading volume during the event to share in extra USDT rewards.

According to reports from Blue Whale Technology, Alibaba and CITIC have officially reached a transaction agreement, in which Alibaba will transfer its shares in Lingxi Interactive Entertainment, and Xincheng Capital will become the new shareholder. Xincheng Capital supports the existing team to operate stably under the leadership of the management team, which will remain stable and continue to develop alongside the company.Lingxi Interactive Entertainment is a gaming brand under Alibaba, and its gaming business can be traced back to the integration of the 9Game channel business after the acquisition of UC in 2014. In 2017, Alibaba fully acquired Guangzhou Jianyue for approximately 1 billion yuan, which later became the predecessor of Lingxi Interactive Entertainment. The self-developed game "Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition" became a top hit in the SLG category in 2019. Since 2023, Lingxi has undergone multiple adjustments, and in March 2024, founder Zhan Zhonghui stepped down as CEO, with producer Zhou Bingshu of "Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition" taking over.The new shareholder, Xincheng Capital, is a private equity investment business under CITIC Capital, which has completed over 100 investments since 2002, managing a total of 10.5 billion USD in funds. Lingxi Interactive Entertainment CEO Zhou Bingshu expressed gratitude in an internal letter, stating that Alibaba "nurtured and grew Lingxi," and that the new shareholder Xincheng Capital will "inject new momentum" into the company's development. The specific amount of the transaction has not yet been disclosed.

The non-profit Ethereum development lab Ethlabs published an article outlining its priority recommendations for Ethereum's next network upgrade, Hegotá. Ethlabs listed the following directions as top priorities: strengthening censorship resistance (EIP-7805 FOCIL has been confirmed as the top proposal); making Ethereum faster (suggesting the addition of EIP-8198 Quick Slots to reduce slot time and improve confirmation speed and finality); native account abstraction (recommending EIP-8141 Frame Transactions to support Passkey wallets, ERC20 Gas payments, batch transactions, and privacy, etc.); continuous L1 scaling (recommending EIP-8131 and EIP-8279 to enhance capacity and predictability).

The Binance futures platform will launch GDXUSDT, NETUSDT, VSTUSDT, SHOPUSDT, and LYTEUSDT USDT-denominated perpetual contracts on August 17 at 21:30, and will launch CXMTUSDT USDT-denominated perpetual contracts on August 18 at 13:00, with a maximum leverage of 20 times.

Chainalysis Government Solutions has sued the U.S. government in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over an exclusive contract. Chainalysis claims that the Department of Homeland Security/Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS/ICE) bypassed the normal competitive process and directly awarded the work to TRM Labs. They are requesting the court to stop this action.TRM Labs has joined the lawsuit as an intervenor, defending the award of the contract, with oral arguments scheduled for September 2. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims is responsible for hearing nationwide claims against the U.S. government, typically involving contract disputes and bid protests. Both Chainalysis and TRM Labs sell blockchain analysis tools for government agencies to track cryptocurrency transactions, and they are now competing for government business in court.

SafePal stated that its order tracking plugin has a security vulnerability, leading to unauthorized access to some customer information.This incident involves approximately 39,798 users, with affected customers being those who placed orders between March 2, 2025, and April 11, 2026.The leaked information includes names, email addresses, shipping addresses, phone numbers, and purchase details, but does not involve mnemonic phrases, private keys, wallet passwords, bank card information, or government-issued identification numbers.SafePal stated that the relevant vulnerability has been fixed, and affected users have been notified individually. At the same time, the official has launched a query page where users can confirm whether they are affected by entering their order number and shipping country.

According to CoinDesk, as Wall Street and global financial institutions accelerate their entry into the digital asset space, the boundaries between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) are gradually blurring. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley stated, "The era of 'going long on Bitcoin and shorting bankers' is over," as financial institutions are turning to the other side of the crypto industry, promoting the adoption of digital assets.Hunter Horsley mentioned that this summer, two financial institutions managing over $1 trillion in assets approved the launch of crypto products in a bear market environment, indicating that large institutions are expanding channels for clients to access digital assets. "This year, everyone is wearing the crypto industry's jersey. Now, everyone is working for the crypto industry," Horsley said. He pointed out that these financial institutions, which manage over a trillion dollars in client assets, previously would not have opened related services during the downturn of the crypto market in 2022, but now they are actively embracing this field.Sygnum Chief Investment Officer Fabian Dori also believes that the relationship between banks and the crypto industry has undergone a structural change. "The past trades of 'going long on Bitcoin and shorting bankers' are over; banks have shifted from resisting digital assets to building, supporting, and distributing digital assets through custody, tokenization, and compliant trading." This change is primarily driven by growing customer demand and gradually clarified regulatory rules, rather than short-term market cycle changes.Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley stated that over the past two years, its client structure increasingly reflects the trend of integration between traditional finance and crypto finance. Large financial institutions typically choose to collaborate with specialized crypto infrastructure companies rather than building their own technology systems.In recent years, more and more financial institutions have entered the crypto space, including Swissquote, DBS, BBVA, BNY Mellon, Credit Suisse-related institutions, as well as Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab.