The SEC has proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, a tailored securities framework meant to give crypto projects clear, legal ways to raise capital in the US, building on its March 2026 interpretive guidance.

The proposal includes two registration exemptions: a one-time offering of up to $5 million over four years with whitepaper-style disclosures, and up to $75 million per 12 months with financial statements and ongoing reporting. A conditional safe harbor would let a crypto asset fall outside the "investment contract" definition of a security once the issuer has completed or permanently ceased the essential managerial efforts it promised. The rules would also preempt state securities registration.

Chairman Paul Atkins framed it as a move to onshore innovation and step away from regulation by enforcement. It is still only a proposal, with a 60-day public comment period once it is published in the Federal Register.

AI dictation startup Wispr has raised $280M in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures at a $2B valuation, bringing its total funding to $361M.

The new capital will help Wispr expand beyond dictation into AI meeting notes and broader human-computer interfaces, including its newly launched note-taker and partnerships with hardware makers.

Wispr is also launching Canto, a new speech-understanding model that the company says will reduce dictation error rates from 30% to below 10%, following recent user complaints about output quality.

The company is increasingly positioning itself as an AI interface platform rather than a simple voice-to-text tool, with products spanning dictation, meeting intelligence, hardware integrations, and new interaction models.

Wispr is now competing across multiple categories against AI dictation products such as Willow, Superwhisper and Monologue, while its meeting product enters the market alongside Granola, Fireflies, and Read AI.

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Kaito has launched Kaito Pulse, a browser extension designed to bring users’ off-platform activity directly into the X timeline, starting with onchain trading and prediction-market activity.

Pulse allows users to see public positions on platforms such as Polymarket and Hyperliquid directly from X profiles, with additional integrations planned. The product is also designed to help traders build audiences around their live positions and conviction, while giving creators a way to verify the authenticity and quality of their reach.

Alongside Pulse, Kaito introduced Aura, a reputation score designed to measure meaningful attention across both what users post and what they do onchain.

Aura combines signals including content, verified onchain activity and Yaps to create a more comprehensive measure of reputation and influence.

Users can get a starting Aura score through their existing Yaps, verify creator or trading activity, install Kaito Pulse and earn additional Aura through referrals.

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A. Hayes has announced that he is “coming out of retirement” to lead Flop Labs and build Flop Network, a proof-of-useful-inference protocol designed around the emerging AI agent economy.

The network’s native token, FLOP, is intended to serve as the currency for AI agents, allowing them to pay for compute, inference, memory storage and eventually agent-to-agent commerce. Flop Network aims to provide a decentralized infrastructure where agents can autonomously transact and access the resources they need.

The network will coordinate four key participants: miners provide compute and earn FLOP through block rewards and inference payments; validators verify miners’ work and secure the network while supporting agent memory storage; agents spend FLOP on compute and memory; and KOLs and community partners help grow network activity in exchange for rewards.

Hayes says FLOP will launch with no presale and no VC allocation, using a 100% fair-launch model

The project is positioning this structure as an attempt to create a native economic layer for an increasingly autonomous agentic economy rather than a traditional venture-backed crypto network.

Flop Network expects to conduct a large-scale FLOP airdrop in Q4 2026, with the genesis block planned for Q1 2027

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Banking giant Citi plans to go live with bitcoin custody later this year, its first digital-asset service on the newly launched Custody+ platform for institutional clients.

Citi Investor Services says Custody+ brings traditional and crypto custody into one framework built on its common digital-asset architecture, alongside real-time settlement, cash and liquidity management, FX and AI-powered market intelligence. Citi says its Single Event Processing tech already handles more than 80% of its event volume in real time.

It is another step by Wall Street deeper into crypto, giving Citi's huge institutional client base a bank-grade way to hold bitcoin next to their traditional assets, with more digital assets likely to follow.

Five models, one from each category: a curated app (Shyft), a DeFi protocol (Morpho), a CEX earn desk (Kraken), a consumer exchange (Coinbase), and an RWA platform (Ondo).

Each gives something up. CEX earn is simple but custodial. Morpho keeps your keys but leaves the work to you. Ondo is treasuries only. The corner that combines self-custody, simple access, and multi-asset breadth is still mostly empty.

That corner is exactly where Shyft is building: a curated app where you keep your keys, onboard with guidance, and reach crypto, RWA and mixed strategies. Onchain yield without giving up control.

For the first time, Jupiter no longer routes the majority of Solana's DEX aggregator volume. On Aug 17, Jupiter routed 48.9% of Solana volume. The three challengers combined took 51.1%, and OKX led them with a record 31.3%, ahead of DFlow and Titan.

For years Jupiter simply was Solana routing. Now the market is fragmenting, and OKX is the one taking the biggest bite out of the leader.

Centrifuge, a real-world-asset protocol, has proposed letting CFG token holders convert their tokens 1:1 into equity, or equity-like instruments, in the entity behind the protocol.

The proposal would also restructure Centrifuge's foundation and introduce a shareholder structure. For now it is only a Request for Comments, sitting in a 14-day feedback window on the governance forum, with no confirmed vote date or implementation timeline. The team frames it as a way to align token value with the underlying company.

If it moves forward, it would be a rare shift from a pure token model toward real equity ownership, and could influence how other DeFi projects think about linking value to the businesses behind them.

Neynar is looking to hand off the Farcaster social protocol, its Clanker token-launch platform and its developer tools, less than seven months after acquiring them from Merkle Manufactory.

Co-founder Rish Mukherji said the search is on for a new team to run all three. It follows a steep revenue slide: Farcaster's gross protocol revenue fell from $35.43 million in the first quarter of 2026 to roughly $377,000 between July 1 and August 17, as the token-launch frenzy that drove Clanker's fees cooled off.

The Haun-backed Neynar took over in January, when Farcaster's founders moved to return the full $180 million they had raised from backers like a16z Crypto and Paradigm. Now one of crypto's best-known decentralized social projects is up for grabs again.

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Compound, one of the oldest DeFi lending protocols, has overhauled its leadership and approved a record $52 million budget as it pivots to serving institutional clients.

The plan centers on real-world assets, partner integrations and credit infrastructure built to meet TradFi compliance and technical standards. It comes as Compound tries to revive growth after its total value locked slid to $1.2 billion from a $12 billion peak in 2021, leaving it far behind Aave's $14.8 billion. Compound says it has processed about $480 billion in volume since 2018.

The new bench pulls executives from Near, Maple Finance, Coinbase Custody, Anchorage and HSBC, part of a broader DeFi shift toward institutions as the sector leans on tokenized real-world assets for its next leg of growth.

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