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34 minutes ago

Ben‑Sasson urges meritocracy: prioritize engineering over politics in Ethereum

Eli Ben-Sasson, cofounder of StarkWare and a founding scientist of Zcash, has weighed into the growing debate around the Ethereum Foundation with a call to prioritize technical merit over political alignment. Ben-Sasson framed his intervention as neither an attack on the Foundation nor an uncritical defense. “Ethereum has many strengths, and it also has its politics,” he wrote, adding that he spoke “as a friend.” His central argument: the ecosystem should evaluate teams and ideas primarily on engineering quality and long-term technical value, not on whether they appear socially or politically aligned with the Foundation. Why his voice matters Ben-Sasson helped steer StarkWare’s early technical direction. He noted the company’s first paid work in 2019–2020 focused on building a post-quantum secure, scalable ZK‑STARK system for Ethereum—work intended to both scale the network and insulate it against future quantum risks. Subsequent choices—embracing STARKs, developing the Cairo language, building a zkVM, pursuing native account abstraction and even Bitcoin-scaling work—were sometimes labeled “misaligned” with mainstream Ethereum preferences. Ben-Sasson defended those choices as sound technical decisions that benefited the broader stack, even if they originated outside consensus. Context: leadership and funding pressures His comments arrive amid a tense period for the Foundation. Hsiao‑Wei Wang recently resigned as co‑executive director and board member after a sabbatical, following other senior departures including Tomasz Stańczak. The debate over Ethereum’s direction also includes funding worries: former contributor Trent Van Epps warned core development could face a funding gap within three to nine months tied to spending cuts and the end of the Client Incentive Program; others, like Tom Lee, pushed back, calling such a crisis unlikely. A push for meritocracy, not new governance Ben‑Sasson didn’t lay out a formal governance blueprint. Rather, he urged the emerging system to weight merit and technology more heavily than “alignment” or political signaling. He said he’d be more inclined to work with ecosystem institutions that adopt that stance. His view also reframes past critiques of StarkWare: useful engineering can begin outside prevailing consensus and later be integrated into the mainstream stack. Why this matters for Ethereum The exchange spotlights a structural tension in Ethereum’s ecosystem: layer‑2 and protocol teams rely on Ethereum but often make independent technical bets. When those choices move at a different pace than Foundation priorities, friction follows. Ben‑Sasson’s intervention pushes the conversation toward a meritocratic evaluation of contributions—an argument likely to resonate with engineers and entrepreneurs navigating the tradeoffs between independence and alignment in Ethereum’s evolving governance landscape. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

34 minutes ago

Toss Bank Signs MOU with Solana Foundation to Test Stablecoin Cross‑Border Payments

Toss Bank has taken a major step toward blockchain-powered cross-border payments by signing a memorandum of understanding with the Solana Foundation to test Solana-based rails for global remittance and settlement. The agreement was signed in Seoul on June 19 and publicly disclosed on June 22. Under the deal—described by Toss as the first direct one-to-one strategic partnership between a South Korean internet-only bank and the Solana Foundation—the two organizations will explore how the Solana network can support overseas transfers, payments and, later, digital asset services. The initial focus is a proof of concept (PoC) to see whether stablecoins can speed up and simplify international transfers while integrating closely with existing banking flows. Toss Bank’s roughly 15 million customers are expected to be the eventual beneficiaries if trials succeed. Toss said the collaboration will include a joint review of blockchain-based payment and settlement models and an assessment of future services tied to stablecoins, other digital assets and tokenized assets. Park Jin-hyeon, Toss Bank’s head of strategy, called the MOU a “starting point” for bringing blockchain-based financial infrastructure into the bank’s current service lineup. The timing of the partnership overlaps with regulatory developments in South Korea. Seoul is weighing whether fintech firms should be included in a new licensing regime for cross-border virtual-asset transfers that is due to take effect in December. That shift could determine which firms can offer blockchain-based overseas transfers and foreign exchange services under formal oversight, and Toss says it will align its plans with any new stablecoin rules introduced domestically. Toss’s move follows a wave of bank-linked stablecoin experiments across Asia. KB Financial has run tests around a won-denominated stablecoin for issuance, offline QR payments, merchant settlement and remittances to Vietnam—reportedly completing a Vietnam transfer in under three minutes while cutting fees by roughly 87%. Japan’s SBI Remit has also partnered with Fasset to build cross-border stablecoin infrastructure for remittances and settlements. The broader Toss group has previously explored its own blockchain options—including a bespoke Layer 1/Layer 2 and a potential native token as part of a “Money 3.0” stablecoin strategy—so this MOU with Solana gives Toss Bank an alternative route to experiment with public-chain infrastructure before any wider rollout. For Solana, the partnership adds another institutional partner to its payments and stablecoin ecosystem. The network has already drawn interest from established players: Western Union launched USDPT on Solana in May for regulated payment-stablecoin settlement and prospective customer services. Lily Liu, chair of the Solana Foundation, said the Toss collaboration could help establish “a new standard” for faster, smoother global remittances by combining the trust of banks with blockchain efficiency. Importantly, the MOU initiates testing and feasibility studies—not a live stablecoin remittance product. The next hurdles are regulatory approval in Korea, demonstrable reductions in transfer friction and a seamless fit with Toss Bank’s existing services. Toss has not announced a public launch date. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

1 hour ago

Altura Winds Down Stablecoin Vault After $8.5M Redemption Rush Amid MainStreet Depeg

Altura begins orderly wind-down of stablecoin vault after $8.5M rush Altura has started winding down its stablecoin yield vault after processing more than 8.5 million USDT in instant redemptions over a 24‑hour period, CEO Ranveer Arora said. The move follows a weekend spike in withdrawal requests that the team attributed to “sustained withdrawal demand and current market sentiment,” and was taken to protect user capital and ensure redemptions are handled “fair, transparent, and efficient[ly].” What’s happening now - The protocol has notified counterparties and partners and started unwinding positions across the vault portfolio. Holdings being unwound include allocations on exchanges, private credit opportunities, and real‑world asset (RWA) strategies. - Some positions can return capital quickly; others require standard settlement or redemption windows. Altura says it is working with counterparties to accelerate where possible and will return funds to users as each underlying position redeems. - The team has pledged ongoing updates as liquidity becomes available. No final completion date has been set—timelines depend on each position’s settlement terms. Why it escalated The wind-down followed market unease in yield-bearing stablecoin products after MainStreet’s MSUSD experienced a depeg. MSUSD fell sharply after proof-of-solvency provider Accountable ended its service agreement, saying MainStreet “was unable to meet our verification standards.” MainStreet later insisted its assets remained fully backed and blamed market stress on the shutdown of a third‑party proof‑of‑reserves dashboard. Altura stresses limited exposure Altura emphasized it had no direct exposure to MainStreet or its strategies. The firm said its HyperEVM lending vault (Alpha USDT Prime), the related USDT/AVLT market, and borrowers using its Ethereum vault were not affected by the MainStreet incident. CEO comments and market noise Arora said the team worked through the weekend to process redemptions and engage partners and users, and criticized “misinformation and speculation” for stoking additional market fear and withdrawal pressure. Scale and context - DeFiLlama data lists Altura with roughly $32.36 million total value locked (TVL) on Hyperliquid L1, with one tracked yield pool and an average APY near 17.49%. The vault previously peaked at about $39 million TVL on HyperEVM. - The case highlights growing demand—and fragility—in tokenized RWA and stablecoin yield products. Recent industry moves include a $100 million yield-bearing RWA vault from Plume and Ether.fi, underscoring appetite for yield even as proof‑of‑reserves disputes can quickly create liquidity shocks. Key questions going forward Users will be watching how fast settlements complete, how much capital returns at each stage, and whether the process can avoid forced or rushed sales of slower positions. Altura says it will continue posting updates as redemptions progress and new liquidity is unlocked. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

1 hour ago

Taiko Urges Users to Pull Funds After Bridge Verification Flaw Drains $1M+

Taiko urges users to pull funds after bridge exploit drains >$1M Taiko has told users to withdraw funds from every bridge on its network after confirming a compromise of its chain state verification mechanism. The Ethereum Layer-2 project said the issue undermines the security assumptions of its bridge system and warned that deposits should not be trusted until further notice. What happened - Blockchain security firm Blockaid flagged an active attack on Taiko’s ERC-20 vault on Ethereum. Its exploit-detection system identified ongoing unauthorized activity, estimating losses above $1 million and publishing the victim contract, attacker wallet and exploit transactions. - Blockaid attributes the breach to a flaw in Taiko’s bridge “source-signal” proof validation. Crafted message proofs were accepted as valid on Ethereum L1 even though no corresponding legitimate MessageSent events existed on the Taiko source chain. - Those fraudulent proofs enabled the attacker to register and later retrieve forged bridge messages, triggering unauthorized releases from the ERC-20 vault. Taiko’s response - Taiko confirmed a broader verification failure and said it is coordinating with its Security Council and ecosystem partners to investigate and remediate the issue. - All block proposers on the network have temporarily stopped producing new blocks while the team works through the incident. - The project asked centralized exchanges to immediately suspend TAIKO deposits and said deposits should only resume after an official announcement. - Taiko published several attacker addresses and said it will pursue technical and legal remedies where appropriate, but gave no timeline for restoring bridge security or restarting block production. About Taiko Taiko is a Type-1 Ethereum-equivalent zkEVM rollup that launched mainnet in May 2024. The network supports EVM-compatible smart contracts and is designed so that Ethereum L1 validators help order transactions. Broader context Cross-chain bridge exploits have been a recurring source of losses in 2026. Crypto.news recently reported bridge-related attacks accounted for $28.6 million in May — roughly 42% of that month’s reported losses, according to CertiK. High-profile incidents this year include: - Verus Protocol: over $11.5 million lost in a forged-transfer exploit. - Axelar: disabled Secret Network bridge routes after a $4.7 million exploit. - Aztec Connect: about $2.1 million lost due to a verification mismatch that let unbacked balances move through Ethereum settlement records. What users should do - Withdraw funds from any Taiko bridges immediately. - Avoid depositing TAIKO to centralized exchanges until official confirmation that bridge security has been restored. - Monitor official Taiko channels for updates and published attacker addresses. We’ll update this story as Taiko and security partners disclose more technical details and recovery steps. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

3 hours ago

MSUSD Plunges After Proof‑of‑Reserves Feed Halt, Sparking DeFi Liquidity Panic

MainStreet’s yield-bearing stablecoin MSUSD plunged after a rapid loss of confidence tied to a halted proof-of-reserves feed, fueling a wider scramble in related DeFi markets. What happened - MSUSD, designed to trade at $1, slid as low as $0.065 in the last 24 hours and was trading around $0.3781 at the time of writing (24‑hour range $0.065–$0.9995). PeckShield reported the token dropped as much as 85% before a partial rebound. - CoinGecko shows MSUSD’s market cap near $27.06 million and 24‑hour volume about $8.25 million, underscoring volatile trading as holders tested liquidity and redemption confidence. Trigger: verification feed cut - The rout followed Accountable’s immediate termination of its service agreement with MainStreet, with the verification firm saying MainStreet “was unable to meet our verification standards.” That move removed a public layer users relied on to confirm the stablecoin’s backing. - MainStreet says the issue stems from the shutdown of a third‑party proof‑of‑reserves dashboard and that the dashboard’s removal “does not reflect any loss of assets or deterioration in portfolio quality.” The protocol asserted it “remains fully backed” and has deployed more than $8 million in USDC to support liquidity while searching for alternative proof‑of‑reserves providers. Contagion into lending markets - The shock rippled into lending: PeckShield reported the Morpho msY/USDC market reached 100% utilization, meaning available lending liquidity was fully used—a state that can make withdrawals difficult, push borrowing rates higher, and leave users waiting for repayments or new deposits. - AlphaUSDC Delta V2, a product curated by AlphaPING, reportedly had ~30% exposure to the affected market—about $18 million—highlighting how stress in one yield‑linked instrument can threaten lenders, vault depositors and borrowers using linked positions. Why this matters - The episode highlights the fragility of yield-bearing stablecoins that rely on external verification feeds. A depeg isn’t just a token‑price problem: it can cascade into real liquidity shortages across DeFi’s composable stack. Past incidents, such as the Resolv Labs USR depeg and related exploit losses, underline how quickly risk can spread between protocols. What to watch next - Restoration or replacement of proof‑of‑reserves verification, MainStreet’s ongoing liquidity support, and on-chain indicators such as Morpho utilization and MSUSD’s market price versus its $1 peg. Traders and depositors will be watching whether deployed liquidity and transparency measures are enough to rebuild trust. Bottom line MainStreet insists assets are intact and has injected liquidity, but the loss of an independent verification layer sparked a severe market reaction that exposed the broader risks of yield‑bearing stablecoins. Recovery now depends on restored transparency and demonstrated liquidity. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

3 hours ago

Mercury 2: Ultra-Fast Diffusion LLM Cuts Costs, Boosts Crypto dApp Performance

Inception Labs this week shook up the AI race with Mercury 2, a new “diffusion” language model the company bills as the world’s fastest reasoning LLM. In benchmark and customer tests, Mercury 2’s standout claim is raw throughput: roughly 1,000 tokens per second versus about 89 tokens/sec for Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5 Reasoning and 71 tokens/sec for OpenAI’s GPT-5 Mini. That puts it squarely in the same high-speed bracket Google later associated with its own DiffusionGemma — welcome to what some are calling the diffusion era of large language models. What diffusion models do differently - Traditional chatbots generate text one token at a time, checking each step as they go. Diffusion models instead initialize a block of text with noisy placeholder tokens and refine that block in several parallel passes until a final answer emerges — a technique borrowed from image generators like Stable Diffusion. - The result is much higher parallel throughput and a snappier “flow” for long sessions: instant autocompletes, faster iterations on code or plans, and subagents that can run many quick utility calls without dragging down the whole system. Benchmarks and head-to-heads - On AIME 2026 (based on real American Invitational Mathematics Examination problems, scored as percent solved), Mercury 2 scored 90%. Google’s DiffusionGemma scored 69.1% on the same test, while standard (non-diffusion) Gemma 4 scored 88.3%. - On GPQA, a PhD-level science benchmark, the gap narrows: Mercury 2 at 77% vs. DiffusionGemma’s 73.2%. Google’s own guidance still recommends standard Gemma 4 for applications that need the absolute highest quality, noting DiffusionGemma trails it across the board. Real-world performance and cost - Mercury 2’s speed claims aren’t just lab numbers. Augment Code, an AI coding-agent company, swapped Mercury 2 in for Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 on a context-compaction subagent and reported an 82% latency drop and a 90% cost reduction, while maintaining comparable output quality (per a joint case study). Origins and funding - Inception’s approach builds on diffusion research from founder Stefano Ermon, a Stanford professor who co-authored early score-based diffusion work used in image generation. The startup raised a $50 million round with backing from Nvidia’s venture arm and individual investors Andrew Ng and Andrej Karpathy. Mercury 2 is currently available via API/cloud — the model weights aren’t public. Practical caveats and the new architecture - Diffusion LLMs excel where latency and high-volume throughput matter (real-time editing, many small utility calls, voice interfaces, etc.), but they’re not necessarily the best fit for the absolute hardest frontier reasoning tasks, where larger autoregressive models may still hold an edge. - Architecturally, the big shift is toward orchestras of specialized subagents (reasoners, summarizers, routers, checkers). Sequential token-by-token models make many utility calls slow and expensive; parallel diffusion models make those calls cheap enough to use liberally. - The ecosystem is still catching up: local runtimes, agent frameworks, and other infrastructure need to mature to make diffusion models seamless everywhere. Where this matters for crypto and web3 - Faster, cheaper LLMs lower the friction for latency-sensitive on-chain and off-chain services: - real-time developer tools for smart contract coding and “vibe coding” that keep pace with edits; - multi-agent support systems and bots for DAOs that require many quick sub-calls; - low-latency voice or chat interfaces for wallets, dApps, or on-call node operators; - cheaper inference costs for oracle preprocessing, monitoring, and alerting pipelines. - At scale, higher throughput on commodity GPUs can translate into meaningful cost and energy savings for projects that run lots of AI calls. Bottom line Mercury 2 pushes diffusion LLMs into the “fast and good” quadrant, delivering dramatic latency and cost improvements for throughput-heavy tasks while keeping competitive quality. It won’t replace every model class, but for crypto builders and other developers focused on speed, responsiveness, and multi-agent systems, diffusion models like Mercury 2 open new practical possibilities — provided the surrounding tooling and runtimes catch up. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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