Lido has rolled out Curated Module v2, a major upgrade to its core Ethereum staking system that requires professional node operators to post their own capital as backing for the stake they manage. The release marks Lido’s biggest protocol change since Lido V2 in May 2023 and starts the migration of more than 265,000 validators with over 8 million staked ETH to Ethereum’s high-balance validator model. Lido said the shift is expected to reduce the network’s validator count from about 880,000 to roughly 628,000 and cut attestation messages by around 29% per epoch. The upgrade also introduces a bond and penalty framework for curated operators, adds new operator classifications tied to incentives, and arrives alongside broader Lido Core changes including Community Staking Module v3 and Staking Router v3. Governance approval came through onchain vote #203 in mid-July, after earlier Snapshot support for LIP-35. Contracts were deployed to Ethereum mainnet on July 7 following audits by Certora, Statemind, MixBytes, and Composable Security.

Lido said a minor slashing event in its Ethereum Community Staking Module affected six validators, with total penalties projected below 1 ETH and fully covered by the operator bond, leaving staker rewards unchanged.

Taiwan’s Intellectual Property Division under the High Prosecutors Office said on July 21 that it had indicted a former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. manager surnamed Chen, alleging he conspired with Hong Kong passport holder Ding Xiaohu, described as a Chinese citizen, to set up a semiconductor materials analysis company in China and illegally reproduce 21 confidential TSMC technical documents for use there. Prosecutors are seeking a seven-year prison sentence under Taiwan’s National Security Act and Trade Secrets Act. The case was uncovered during a broader national security investigation linked to Ding, who had already been prosecuted in a separate espionage case and later died in February, leading prosecutors to drop charges against him in that matter. Authorities said TSMC’s internal audit detected irregularities, allowing the company to recover all 21 documents before the material was actually transferred to China. Prosecutors later searched five locations and said electronic records and physical evidence supported the indictment.

Crust Network detailed its decentralized storage market, testnet milestones, fundraising background, and parachain auction plans as it prepares for broader deployment in the Polkadot ecosystem.

AI inference chip startup Etched exited stealth mode on July 1, announcing completion of its first chip A0 tapeout and initial rack systems. The company has raised over $800 million in funding and secured more than $1 billion in customer contracts, with first racks shipping this summer. With a team of 400+ engineers from NVIDIA, Google TPU, Broadcom, SK Hynix, and TSMC, Etched also introduced Low-Voltage Inference (LVI) and Cluster-Scale Memory (CSM) architectures to boost MoE, long-context, and AI agent workloads. A 2MW datacenter and a Taiwan fab are in place for mass production.