We mapped 21 startups building the brains behind the machines: foundation models that give robots a mind (World Labs, Physical Intelligence, Skild AI), the infrastructure that trains and ships them (Foxglove, Voxel51), and the labs & farms already putting them to work (Periodic Labs, Carbon Robotics).

Agent Wallet is a self-custodial way for traders and builders to let AI agents execute actions while staying inside rules the user sets.

The pitch is agents that trade while users stay in control: keys and limits live with the user, so an agent can swap, send or interact with contracts only within pre-set guardrails, with no handing over a private key. It ships compatible with a stack of popular agent tools, including OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex, Hermes, OpenCode and Cursor, so builders can wire crypto actions into agents they already run.

It is MetaMask's move into a fast-growing race to give autonomous AI a safe way to touch money onchain, alongside efforts like Coinbase's x402 and Cloudflare's agent wallets.

Kalshi is paying $150 for every new trader referred, with no cap on how much a referrer can earn. For Kalshi, coming amid record prediction-market volumes, it is a cheap, viral growth lever aimed straight at crypto-native audiences.

Kaito Studio is the campaign and distribution arm of Kaito, the crypto attention (InfoFi) platform that rewards creators for mindshare, so plugging Kalshi in turns its user-acquisition push into a rewarded, creator-driven referral engine.

The no-cap structure is the eye-catching part: it lets power referrers stack rewards without limit, a signal of how aggressively Kalshi wants to scale user acquisition as prediction markets move mainstream.

DePIN project Vangrid has raised $9M in new round to build a decentralized spatial-data network that feeds physical AI, backed by HashKey, Animoca Brands, Crypto com Capital, Gate Labs, Borderless and Mapleblock Capital.

The idea: users capture real-world places on their phones, which get reconstructed into verified onchain 3D models, giving robots, autonomous agents and digital twins a stream of ground-level, continuously updated location data, useful even where GPS does not work, including for defense and government. A token is planned for later in 2026; for now contributors earn bounties for verified captures.

The group provides industry input on the DTCC Tokenization Service and works to foster digital-asset adoption, and Plume says it will contribute its compliance expertise as a modular chain purpose-built for real-world assets, from art to green energy.

DTCC sits at the center of US securities clearing and settlement, so a permissioned crypto chain in the room is a meaningful signal for where tokenization is heading.

For Plume, it is validation from the plumbing of TradFi rather than another crypto-native partnership, the kind of institutional credibility RWA projects have chased as tokenized treasuries, funds and commodities move onchain.

Crypto market maker Wintermute has registered its US arm, Wintermute USA, as a broker-dealer with the SEC and FINRA, a move that lets it trade equities and options and step directly into regulated US securities markets.

The registration lets Wintermute USA provide liquidity on US securities exchanges and to OTC counterparties, trade stocks and options from its own account, self-clear digital-asset securities, and act as an Authorized Participant for ETFs, including those tied to digital assets. It is a clear bet on the tokenization of traditional markets, and on the SEC's stance that onchain securities activity needs proper licensing.

Wintermute already clears more than $10B in average daily volume across 60-plus centralized and decentralized venues, and earlier this year added tokenized-gold market-making and prediction-market liquidity.

Stablecoins, payments and RWA infrastructure generated most of the week's momentum. Much of the activity came from banks, payment providers and infrastructure companies expanding products that had already been in development.

🔎 Recent Updates & Developments

- Mastercard completed its BVNK acquisition

- Wells Fargo launched tokenized deposits

- Cloudflare rolled out stablecoin wallets for AI

- Western Union launched Stablecard remittances

- Ethereum proposed burning validator rewards

- Base introduced the Cobalt upgrade

- Binance sued RedotPay for $470M

- Plume rebranded its RWA platform as Plume Vaults

The Optimism Foundation has released its Year 5 budget outlook, projecting that approximately 343 million OP will enter circulation between May 2026 and April 2027, bringing the circulating supply to 2.504 billion OP, or 58.3% of the total supply.

The projected increase includes 200 million OP allocated to the Ecosystem Fund, 47.6 million OP for Early Core Contributors, 15.3 million OP for investors, and additional scheduled distributions under the original token allocation framework. The Foundation noted that no new token allocation has been requested.

Optimism also confirmed that no airdrops or Retro Funding distributions are currently planned for Year 5, while OP buybacks have surpassed 9 million tokens under the protocol's ongoing revenue-backed buyback program.

The Foundation emphasized that the projections are directional estimates and may change based on governance decisions and ecosystem performance.

Maple Finance has selected Ethena's GENIUS Act-compliant stablecoin, USDtb, as a core holding in the USD liquidity buffer backing syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT, which currently secure approximately $400 million in liquid USD assets.

The integration also makes Maple Finance the first protocol to adopt Ethena Whitelabel Liquidity, enabling access to institutional-grade onchain stablecoin liquidity with 24/7/365 availability.

China's Unitree opens its IPO subscription Aug 10 on Shanghai's STAR Market at a ~$6.2B valuation. Last year it shipped ~5,500 humanoids, more than anyone, on $237M revenue and 60% margins.

For contrast: US rival Figure is valued at $39B, 6× more, with almost no revenue.

A-shares are closed to foreign retail, so the way in is crypto — a pre-IPO perp is already live on MEXC (~$72, +8% today).