Quick Take

• Bitcoin mempool transactions hit a 1-year high.
• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin updated the network's roadmap to prioritize quantum-computing readiness and user privacy.
• MoneyGram expanded its "Ramps" service to Solana, enabling two-way cash-crypto conversions via a single API for crypto wallets.
• Jupiter rolled out Lend v2, allowing assets to generate dual yields by acting as loan collateral and trading liquidity simultaneously.
• Harmony chain was exploited, resulting in the unauthorized minting of roughly 4 billion ONE tokens.
• The contentious Bitcoin BIP-110 soft fork failed during its mandatory signaling phase after securing support from only around 2.5% of miners.
• A critical vulnerability affecting Bitcoin Lightning payment servers resulted in fund theft from multiple merchants.

Weekly DeFi Index

This week, the market cap, volume, and volatility indices decreased -0.91%, -20.05%, and -36.91%, respectively.

• Grayscale's Q2 2026 fund update listed Curve DAO Token (CRV) as a component of its Decentralized Finance Fund.
• Pyth Network (PYTH) reported reaching $7.5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by July, along with record monthly RWA perpetuals volume secured.
• Jupiter rolled out Lend v2, allowing assets to generate dual yields by acting as loan collateral and trading liquidity simultaneously. Deposits and borrowed assets now earn lending interest plus a share of Jupiter liquidity pool swap fees.

Chart of the Week

The $120 million Coldcard exploit on July 30 sparked a surge in Bitcoin activity as users shifted funds, resulting in a mempool backlog of 89,031 transactions on August 3. Although traffic has since eased, levels remain elevated at 31,727, fueling ongoing debates regarding the viability of self-custody. This mempool congestion typically signals network strain, leading to longer confirmation times and higher priority fees.

News Highlights

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin updated the network's roadmap to prioritize quantum-computing readiness and user privacy. This strategic adjustment focuses on safeguarding the blockchain against future cryptographic threats while enhancing base-layer transaction shielding and zero-knowledge proof scalability.
• The global remittance company MoneyGram expanded its crypto cash "Ramps" service to Solana, enabling two-way cash-crypto conversions via a single API for crypto wallets.
• The contentious Bitcoin BIP-110 soft fork failed during its mandatory signaling phase after securing support from only around 2.5% of miners. Enforcing nodes rejected non-signaling blocks and created a minority chain that quickly fell behind the mainnet. Designed to realign priorities toward enhancing Bitcoin as a form of money, BIP-110 introduced temporary consensus-level restrictions on data field sizes to limit arbitrary data storage, but the network’s rejection underscored the broad ecosystem opposition to the proposed limits.
• Harmony suffered an exploit resulting in the unauthorized minting of roughly 4 billion of its native ONE tokens (about 26% of the pre-incident supply). Harmony confirmed the attack and is actively collaborating with exchanges to freeze funds while developing a fix and rollback options.
• A critical vulnerability affecting Bitcoin Lightning payment servers resulted in fund theft from multiple merchants. The attack targeted nodes running LND (Lightning Network Daemon) software behind BTCPay Server, where attackers exploited a flaw that allowed unauthenticated remote access to .macaroon credential files. Possession of these files enabled attackers to take full control of connected Lightning nodes, close payment channels, and sweep funds.

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