DGAI topped this summer's new tokens at a $749M FDV, ahead of CAP ($655M) and RE ($536M). These valuations were priced in a sideways summer; now that the market's turning, we'll see which paper tags convert into real demand, and which don't.

DefiLlama and Forgd have launched Universal Token Ratings, a standardized system that scores 128 tokens from 0 to 100 and assigns letter grades from AAA down to CCC.

The grades combine each project's public disclosures with live on-chain and market data, and update continuously, so a token's rating shifts as its fundamentals change rather than sitting in a static report. Forgd, a Web3 investment bank, and DefiLlama pitch it as the first standard in digital assets that continuously verifies whether a token's real market performance matches what the project has disclosed.

Projects that are not yet covered can formally apply to disclose their information and get rated, and the full methodology behind the requirements is published openly on the platform.

For a market long criticized for opaque tokenomics and cherry-picked metrics, a continuously updated, disclosure-based rating gives allocators and researchers a common yardstick to compare tokens on more than price.

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BitGo has agreed to acquire NYDIG's institutional trading business and related assets, adding derivatives, structured products, financing and other capital-markets services to its custody, settlement and wallet infrastructure.

Roughly 250 institutional client relationships and about 30 NYDIG employees are expected to move to BitGo. Terms were not disclosed. The purchase deepens BitGo's push beyond custody into trading and capital markets, just as activity picks up after a prolonged crypto trading slowdown, making the deal one of the first clear signs of a rebound.

BitGo, founded in 2013 and based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is one of the earliest institutional crypto custodians and went public earlier this year. For NYDIG, a Stone Ridge affiliate long known for its Bitcoin-native approach, the sale marks a strategic narrowing of focus.

The move continues a wave of consolidation in institutional crypto infrastructure, as custody, trading and prime-services providers bundle capabilities to win the larger allocators returning to the market.

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The Ethena Foundation announced four changes to the ENA ecosystem: it bought out early seed investors, eliminated future monthly VC unlocks, assigned all protocol value to the Foundation, and opened a governance vote on revenue buybacks.

The buyout covered all locked tokens held by major seed investors who had sold any ENA over the past 9 months, while scrapping the monthly VC unlocks releases the remaining unvested investor overhang. All team tokens stay locked on their original vesting schedules.

A Master Framework Agreement between the Foundation and Ethena Labs assigns the protocol's IP and accrued value to the Foundation, governed by token holders, with no residual cash flow owed to Labs equity investors. Separately, a proposal already cleared by the Risk Committee would flip a fee switch so net revenue across every Ethena business line programmatically buys back ENA.

Together the moves tie ENA's value directly to protocol revenue and strip out the investor supply overhang that has weighed on the token, shifting control and cash flows toward holders. The buyback vote is live now on Snapshot.

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Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, the GitHub-like hub for open-source AI models, datasets and benchmarks, in a deal reportedly worth about $12.9 billion, according to The Information.

The acquisition hands Nvidia a dominant position in open-source AI just as freely available models close the gap with closed systems from OpenAI and Anthropic. Anyone downloading a model from Hugging Face still has to run it on their own hardware, which overwhelmingly means Nvidia GPUs, so the deal defends Nvidia's core chip business against big customers building their own silicon.

The price is nearly triple the $4.5 billion valuation Hugging Face reached in its 2023 round, which Nvidia, Alphabet and Salesforce backed. Hugging Face had rebuffed a $500 million Nvidia investment last year that would have valued it near $7 billion.

For crypto and AI builders, the move puts the field's main open-model repository under its most powerful hardware vendor, raising fresh questions about neutrality and access as more onchain and agent projects lean on Hugging Face models.

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Stablecoins, tokenized assets and payment infrastructure accounted for most of the major updates, while security issues resurfaced across DeFi and shared EVM tooling. Banks, fintechs and blockchain networks added new regulated products, RWA rails and token-economy mechanisms.

Recent Updates & Developments

- World Liberty received conditional approval for a national trust bank

- Base launched tokenized U.S. stocks for non-U.S

- JPMorgan & major banks are reconsidering stablecoin launches

- Solana advanced proposals to cut issuance and increase burns

- LayerZero launched institutional market infrastructure with ATLAS

- Revolut is preparing a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin

- Hyperliquid activated reserve-funded HYPE buybacks and burns

- Grayscale launched the first U.S. Zcash ETF

Europe builds real euro coins (Revolut, Qivalis, SocGen) as MiCA pushes USDT out. The US giants dodge stablecoins entirely and build tokenized deposits, same money on-chain, locked inside the bank.

From enemy to issuer, and a quiet fight over who owns settlement.

nOPAL is now live on Bybit RWA Earn, 80M users can now tap into Brazil's $3T credit-card market. The mechanic: BlackOpal buys future card payments at a discount (true sale, registered with Brazil's Central Bank), settled through Visa and Mastercard. That discount becomes on-chain yield.

~15% APY, 3x what T-bill RWAs pay (~4–5%), because you're taking emerging-market credit + FX risk, not farm emissions. Backed by Nest on Plume: $76.2M TVL, $1B+ processed, DTCC working-group member.

OpenAI believes it is approaching artificial general intelligence (AGI), with Chief Research Officer Mark Chen estimating the company is “80% of the way” there.

Sam Altman said OpenAI expects to have an internal system he would consider AGI by the end of 2026, marking one of the company’s clearest timelines yet.

The progress is reportedly being driven by Astra, OpenAI’s next-generation model designed for autonomous research. In one demonstration, 16 AI agents divided a research-level math problem, coordinated their work and assembled a proposed proof.

Astra can reportedly work on research tasks for extended periods, with Altman expecting it to eventually “invent new things” in ways that materially contribute to scientific discovery.

If OpenAI’s timeline holds, 2026 could mark a major transition from AI that assists with knowledge to AI capable of creating new knowledge itself.

Read the full TIME interview

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Travala has notified users of a data breach involving unauthorized access to customer records, exposing email addresses, names and cryptographically hashed passwords.

Travala says plaintext passwords, funds, private keys and 2FA credentials were not compromised.

The affected data may also include phone numbers, date of birth, nationality and certain identity-document details, according to the company’s breach notification.

Users are being advised to review their security settings and remain alert to phishing attempts, especially those using leaked personal information.

Despite the breach, $AVA remains up more than 40% since the start of August.

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