BlockBeats reported on July 18 that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said two Iranian missiles broke through a defensive screen formed by multiple Patriot interceptors. The update also said at least two Iranian ballistic missiles struck an air base in Jordan. According to the same account, Iran launched a relatively small number of ballistic missiles, but the success rate of those attacks appears to have improved steadily over the past few days. The statement was attributed to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in the original flash report. No additional details on the scale of the strike, casualties, or damage assessment were provided in the source text.

A community member of Sky Protocol has submitted an Atlas Edit Weekly proposal on the governance forum that would reduce Sky Spread from 0.1% to 0%. If adopted, the total spread between the Sky Savings Rate and the benchmark rate would be left with only a 0.2% allocation rewards fee. The proposal also seeks to replace the reference rate used for subsidized borrowing and active stable collateral, moving from Treasury bill rates to SOFR. Beyond rate changes, the draft includes several technical and naming updates: migrating Prime Agents foundation and development company entries from custom instance parameters to standard parameters, correcting the term "Instance Total RRC" to "Instance Total CRR," renaming SEJRC to PEJRC across the system, and updating the naming of Spark stablecoin transfer instances along with the ecosystem operations repository link to the Soter Labs organization. The full proposal has been published on GitHub for community review.

L1 blockchain project ILITY has secured a $1 million investment from Archer Capital and TBV, according to an official announcement cited by ChainCatcher. The funding will be used to speed up development of ILITY’s Agent-focused ecosystem, with the project saying its AI agent economy platform is set to go live soon. ILITY Network is positioned as infrastructure for the AI agent economy, offering autonomous AI agents verifiable on-chain identities, machine-to-machine real-time payment and settlement, and a portable reputation system built on actual on-chain fulfillment records. The network’s native token, $ILY, serves as both the gas token and settlement currency within the ecosystem. The project had also received backing in a previous funding round from Animoca Brands, DuckDAO, UZ Capital, Vega Ventures and other institutions.

Apple Inc. and the U.S. Department of Justice are in early settlement talks over an antitrust lawsuit filed in 2024, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. The case alleges that Apple violated U.S. antitrust law. People familiar with the discussions said the two sides are actively negotiating, though there is no assurance that the talks will lead to a final settlement. As of now, no trial date has been set for the case. The development points to a possible negotiated resolution, but the outcome remains uncertain at this stage.

U.S. federal authorities arrested a Florida man on July 14 over allegations that he used games distributed through Steam to steal cryptocurrency. According to the case details cited by The Verge, the suspect is accused of publishing malware-laced games on the platform between May 2024 and February 2026. The operation allegedly led to the theft of about $220,000 in crypto assets. Federal authorities said the campaign infected roughly 8,000 devices and accessed 80 cryptocurrency wallets. Investigators also alleged that the suspect and accomplices promoted eight games tied to the case across Discord, Telegram, and X, luring users into downloading the titles before stealing private keys and digital assets. The FBI had previously called on victims to come forward with information. Some of the games involved have already been removed from Steam. The suspect is now facing a charge of conspiracy to obtain information from computers for private financial gain.

Alibaba Cloud introduced its Agent Native Cloud offering at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, adding a new full-stack product system aimed at enterprise agent applications. Alongside the launch, the company also rolled out tools including AgentTeams and Agentic Computer, with coverage spanning infrastructure, development platforms and cloud desktop scenarios. According to Zhou Qi, head of Alibaba Cloud's cloud-native application platform, Agent Native Cloud provides a reliable runtime environment at the Infra layer. At the platform layer, it integrates AgentRun as a one-stop infrastructure platform, AgentTeams for multi-agent governance and collaboration, and AgentLoop for full-stack observability and ongoing optimization. The product set is designed around the agent lifecycle, covering faster building, governance, evaluation and optimization.

The Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, released its seventh targeted update on the implementation of standards for virtual assets and virtual asset service providers on July 16, showing wider legal adoption of the Travel Rule across surveyed jurisdictions while warning that stablecoins now account for the largest share of identified illicit on-chain activity. The report said 91 of 109 jurisdictions, or 83%, have enacted Travel Rule legislation, up from 73% in 2025. Including 11 more jurisdictions still in the legislative process, total coverage reached 93%. FATF also reported some improvement in compliance ratings. The share of jurisdictions rated “Largely Compliant” rose to 34% from 29% a year earlier, while those rated “Partially Compliant” fell to 43% from 50%. Still, the body said legislation alone does not mean effective implementation, citing gaps in supervisory capacity, cross-border data exchange, regulatory consistency and engagement with VASPs. The report placed particular focus on stablecoins and DeFi. FATF said most identified illicit on-chain activity now involves stablecoins, with use expanding among DPRK actors, terrorist financiers and cross-border drug trafficking groups. It also flagged the emergence of purpose-built stablecoins designed to bypass issuer freezing and seizure mechanisms. On DeFi, only 18% of surveyed jurisdictions had completed a risk assessment and another 9% were in progress, leaving most jurisdictions without a developed oversight framework.

According to a report cited by BlockBeats on July 18 and attributed to China Central Television, the Israeli military said on local time July 18 that dozens of U.S. aerial refueling aircraft set to be sent to Israel will land and be deployed at Israeli air force bases rather than at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. The Israeli side said the arrangement is meant to reduce disruption to civilian air traffic as much as possible. Earlier, Israel's Ministry of Transportation had capped the number of U.S. refueling aircraft parked at Ben Gurion Airport at 20 in an effort to ease interference with civilian flights during the summer travel peak. The report added that, according to the Israeli military, the decision to station the aircraft at Israeli air bases was made by the U.S. side and was coordinated with the Israeli military so the Israeli Air Force could prepare in advance.