ARK Invest said in its latest research that institutional demand is increasingly replacing retail participation as the main force behind Bitcoin, pointing to the growing share of supply held through investment vehicles. According to the report, spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds and digital asset trusts now control 12.2% of Bitcoin’s total supply, a figure ARK used to illustrate the market’s changing ownership structure. The firm also said its crypto-related assets have risen above $2.15 billion. The update adds detail on ARK’s own positioning. Its flagship fintech ETF, ARKF, has roughly 29% of its assets allocated to digital assets, including exposure to companies such as Coinbase and Circle. ARK also continued buying crypto-linked stocks from 2025 into early 2026. In December 2025, it filed for two ETFs designed to track the CoinDesk 20 Index. The research was cited by CryptoBriefing and summarized by Techub.

WuBlockchain’s August technology report tracked a broad set of blockchain infrastructure updates across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, major Layer 2 networks, and several other ecosystems. The report said Bitcoin’s long-debated BIP-110 entered real activation in August but failed to gain support, with miner signaling at only about 2.5% during the mandatory signaling phase. Nodes enforcing the rule began rejecting non-signaling blocks from height 961,632, effectively creating a minority chain that produced only around two blocks before largely stalling, while the main Bitcoin network continued as normal. On Ethereum, the Glamsterdam upgrade moved from internal DevNet testing into a public test phase, with DevNet 8/Platåberget launched on Aug. 13 and the Gloas fork activated on Aug. 20. Testing has shifted from basic functionality to edge cases and client compatibility, while tentative testnet activation targets of Sept. 28 for Sepolia and Oct. 26 for Hoodi have been proposed. Hegotá also advanced from open proposal intake into a narrower candidate-selection stage. The report also highlighted rising performance competition across scaling networks. OP Mainnet upgraded from 250ms Flashblocks to 200ms Subblocks, Base outlined a 200ms Native Blocks plan, and Solana is preparing to reduce mainnet slot time to 350ms starting from epoch 1020. In parallel, Arbitrum said real mainnet blocks can now be proven with SP1-generated ZK proofs, extending its path toward a multi-proving architecture.

ARK Invest and on-chain analytics firm Glassnode said in a joint research report that Bitcoin and Ethereum would each need only three major entities, based on block production concentration, to cross their respective consensus thresholds. Solana, by contrast, would require 19 validator entities under the report’s framework. The study, titled The Decentralization Spectrum: Design Tradeoffs in Digital Assets, uses the Nakamoto coefficient to estimate how many independent actors would need to coordinate in order to control enough hash power or staked weight to disrupt network operations. Using a July 2026 snapshot, the report put Bitcoin’s threshold at 51% of network hash power, while Ethereum and Solana were measured against a 33% staking threshold tied to liveness and finality risk. The authors also cautioned against reading the figures too literally. They said three entities do not amount to full control of Bitcoin or Ethereum, and warned that Bitcoin’s 51% threshold is not directly comparable with the 33% threshold used for proof-of-stake networks, making simple comparisons such as “3 versus 19” incomplete.

A wide set of crypto, policy, payments and market developments surfaced between Sept. 1 and Sept. 2. In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed updating registered transfer-agent rules for the first time in decades to reflect blockchain-based securities records and tokenization. At the international level, a G20 chair statement released by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said finance ministers and central bank governors recognized the growth potential of digital assets and pledged to create a clear path for “responsible innovation.” Separately, 21 global financial institutions said they plan to form a new company to issue fully reserve-backed stablecoins, starting with a U.S. dollar product and targeting launch in the first half of 2027. Market activity also stayed busy: U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in about $3.5 billion in August, Felix Pago raised $200 million in Series B financing, Ethena rolled out a test version of Ethena Pay on Avalanche, and Bitfinex Securities listed five tokenized products tied to listed Bitcoin treasury companies. On the enforcement and security side, TRM Labs’ $95 million U.S. Homeland Security contract drew a lawsuit from Chainalysis, while Full Sail said it would wind down after a Switchboard oracle incident hit Virtue Money.

ARK Invest and Glassnode's new report, “The Decentralization Spectrum,” compares Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana on auditability, security, governance, and ownership across six quantifiable dimensions. Security findings show Bitcoin and Ethereum each need only three entities to reach a critical control threshold, while Solana needs 19. Bitcoin miners can shed 1% of their positions in about 30 seconds; an equivalent Ethereum stake could take weeks to exit under stress. Geographically, Bitcoin has the most evenly distributed nodes, with 63% running over Tor. Ethereum relies heavily on cloud services, with AWS hosting around 20% of nodes. Solana runs nearly all infrastructure in data centers by design. In the six-dimension scoring, Bitcoin leads in auditability, ownership distribution, and geographic resilience, Ethereum ranks in the middle, and Solana trades decentralization for performance and coordination speed. The report offers a structured look at how the three networks balance decentralization with operational efficiency.

ARB climbed nearly 30% on Sept. 1, with open interest rising more than 10%, making it the strongest-performing major crypto asset over the past 24 hours. The move followed a sharp increase in on-chain revenue from Robinhood Chain, a chain built with Arbitrum’s Dedicated Chain stack. Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder said the chain generated more than $2 million in transaction revenue over the previous 24 hours, up from roughly $1.22 million a day earlier. Under the revenue-sharing structure cited in the source material, about 10% of net protocol revenue flows back to the Arbitrum ecosystem, implying roughly $73 million in annualized protocol revenue at the current run rate. Data cited from Lorenzo Valente of ARK Invest showed Robinhood Chain’s daily revenue climbed from $54,676 on Aug. 22 to $1.088 million on Aug. 30, almost a 20-fold increase in eight days. The market is now watching whether that pace can hold once Robinhood Chain’s 90-day gas subsidy expires in early October. A fallback scenario of $500,000 in daily revenue would still imply about $18.25 million in annualized revenue for Arbitrum, but the source argues that level would not justify the latest price jump.

Robinhood’s on-chain ecosystem has produced a wide range of meme tokens, launchpad projects, NFTs, DeFi protocols and stock-paired markets in less than two weeks, according to an analysis published by TechFlow. As of Sept. 1, the ecosystem had at least 30 meme tokens with market capitalizations above $1 million and 28 application tokens. BONER, paired with a tokenized version of HIMS stock, rose from an $8 million valuation to $80 million in a single day. During the New York Stock Exchange’s weekend closure, the on-chain HIMS token reportedly traded as high as $132, compared with HIMS’ $28.8 Friday close. Artificial Inu, or AI, which is paired with tokenized Nvidia stock, reached a market capitalization of $190 million. Other stock-linked pools included Micron, SpaceX, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, QUBT, SPY and ZEC-related projects. Infrastructure tokens also gained attention. UP generated about $180,000 in fees from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, while PONS, HOOKR, INDEX, DENAR and PICKLES represented launchpad, liquidity, stock-distribution, lending and AI-trading themes. The analysis also covered MARKETPLIER, launched after Markiplier became GoPro’s largest single shareholder, and several smaller sentiment-driven tokens.

ARK Invest, led by Cathie Wood, added to positions in Block Inc. and Circle Internet Group on Monday, with total purchases worth about $40.8 million, according to the source article and SEC trading disclosures cited there. The larger trade was in Block, where ARK bought 456,059 shares worth roughly $37.4 million across three ETFs: ARK Innovation ETF, ARK Next Generation Internet ETF, and ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF. Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, was the second name in the trade, with ARK buying 35,192 shares worth about $3.36 million. The article said Circle had just received an Outperform rating from Bernstein with a $140 price target, while Block shares closed lower on the day. The report also highlighted the different setup behind the two buys: Block was described as a dip-buying move after a 1.85% decline, while Circle came after a sharp rebound and a 52.6% gain over the past month. The purchases point to ARK’s continued use of public equities as a way to build crypto-related exposure through its ETF lineup.