Lido has unveiled NEST, an automated LDO buyback mechanism that ties protocol revenue more directly to token accumulation. Under the framework, once Lido’s annualized staking revenue rises above a $40 million baseline, 50% of the excess will be allocated to NEST and used to buy LDO automatically through CoW Swap. The system starts with a daily repurchase cap of $50,000 and a rolling 365-day cap of $10 million, calculated on a cumulative basis. If protocol revenue falls short and the running balance turns negative, buybacks will stop automatically until future revenue restores the surplus. At launch, NEST will run in Treasury mode, meaning purchased LDO will go to the DAO treasury rather than being burned. Lido also said the mechanism could later switch to an LP mode through DAO voting, where half of the funds would buy LDO and the other half would be converted into wstETH before both are deposited into a Curve liquidity pool. Backtesting by Lido showed that applying the mechanism to roughly $94.18 million in total reward revenue from 2024 to 2025 would have produced about $7.09 million in cumulative buybacks.

Lido DAO has published a breakdown of its NEST, or Network Economic Support Tokenomics, framework, a mechanism designed to connect protocol revenue with LDO token value through automated onchain buybacks. Under the initial setup, once staking revenue rises above a baseline of $40 million on an annualized basis, or about $109,000 per day, 50% of the excess revenue will be used to repurchase LDO through CoW Swap. The model also includes a daily cap of $50,000 and a 365-day cumulative cap of $10 million. At launch, NEST will run in a treasury-only mode, meaning purchased LDO will go directly into the DAO treasury. Lido said the DAO may later switch to an LP mode through an onchain vote if market conditions are suitable. In that version, half of the funds would be used to buy LDO, while the other half would be converted into wstETH and deployed as liquidity on Curve. Lido said NEST is a core part of its broader LDO value alignment strategy. The protocol described the design as transparent, adjustable and free of manual intervention, with safeguards including daily funding limits, governance-based parameter changes, oracle protections and an emergency pause. Based on backtesting using 2024 to 2025 revenue data, Lido said the model would have supported about $7.09 million in LDO buybacks, in line with its target spending scale.

Lido DAO has published an overview of NEST, short for Network Economic Support Tokenomics, a mechanism designed to connect protocol revenue with the value of the LDO token through onchain automation. Under the framework, when revenue from Lido’s staking business rises above a preset benchmark, part of the excess income will be swapped into LDO via CoW Swap, creating a recurring buyback flow. The stated goal is to give LDO holders a more direct way to share in the protocol’s growth. According to the initial parameters released by Lido DAO, the NEST revenue benchmark is set at an annualized $40 million, or about $109,000 per day. Of revenue above that threshold, 50% will be allocated to LDO buybacks. The mechanism also includes a daily buyback cap of $50,000 and a rolling 365-day cap of $10 million. Buybacks are set to run daily through a permissionless onchain process. At launch, NEST will begin in Treasury-only mode, with purchased LDO sent directly to the DAO treasury. Lido DAO said the system could later switch, through an onchain vote and if market conditions are suitable, to an LP mode in which half the funds would buy LDO and the other half would be converted into wstETH to provide liquidity on Curve.

Project updates over the past week spanned restaking, token launch tooling, DAO governance, derivatives trading, legal disputes, token unlock visibility, Layer 2 upgrades, and shifting sector data. ether.fi removed all EigenLayer restaking exposure from weETH and is moving that function to a separate Symbiotic-based token, weETHs, with the remaining EigenLayer exposure already below 1% and expected to reach 0% in the third quarter of 2026. Uniswap rolled out Pools on Robinhood Chain as a launchpad for high-volatility meme tokens, offering Crowd Launch and Instant Launch formats, permanent liquidity and anti-sniping features; data from @Adam_Tehc showed $99.1 million in first-day volume, or about 54.2% of token launchpad volume on Robinhood Chain that day. Elsewhere, Lido DAO opened voting on its NEST automated buyback mechanism, Hyperliquid posted $218 billion in July perpetuals volume, and Shaw said ai16z would abandon its token, wind down the foundation and keep building open-source AI around Eliza. DeFi total value locked also turned up in July, rising 5.3% to about $73.8 billion after six straight monthly declines.

A new report from Greenfield Capital argues that Ethereum’s priority fee market should not be viewed as a single pool of demand. Instead, it is made up of separate order-flow segments with very different economic drivers, including MEV, Telegram trading bots, wallet trades, DEX frontends, smart-contract interactions, and solver-based systems. Based on onchain data, the study says the center of gravity has shifted sharply since 2024: retail-led Telegram bot activity no longer dominates priority fee spending, while MEV-related flow now accounts for roughly 66% to 80% of weekly spend. The report breaks MEV into three major categories — statistical arbitrage, sandwiching, and atomic arbitrage — and finds that each behaves differently in terms of concentration, opportunity frequency, and fee intensity. Statistical arbitrage remains the largest segment by DEX volume and fee outlay, sandwich activity has fallen from its earlier peak but recently picked up again, and atomic arbitrage has become more prominent and remains structurally fragmented. The study also highlights the rise of wallet-layer monetization and order flow auctions, arguing that priority fee rebates may distort how onchain data reflects users’ real willingness to pay. Among retail-facing products, MetaMask Swaps stands out for much higher average per-trade priority fees than in early 2024, while GMGN has emerged as a notable new spender after expanding to Ethereum mainnet. Greenfield says these trends matter because execution-layer rewards from builder auctions are one of the few validator revenue streams directly tied to demand for blockspace.

Lido DAO has opened the on-chain voting window for “NEST: Auto-Buyback,” with the main voting phase running from Aug. 5 to Aug. 8 at 22:00. The mechanism is designed to create an on-chain link between Lido protocol performance and LDO, and its design and parameters had already been approved through a Snapshot vote in May. According to the Lido governance forum, the rollout is now proposed under a “Treasury Only Mode” rather than the previously approved “LP Mode.” Under the plan, NEST would use Stonks v2 and CoW Swap to sell a portion of DAO-held stETH and buy LDO. In treasury-only mode, 50% of the acquired LDO surplus would be transferred directly to the DAO treasury, while LP mode would have directed 50% of surplus into the LDO/wstETH Curve v2 pool. The team said additional modeling showed LP mode had limited use cases, and no audit report currently covers the specific Curve version deployed on-chain. NEST has an annual spending cap of $10 million, and the related contracts were audited and deployed to mainnet in July.

Odos, the decentralized exchange aggregator, said it will permanently shut down all services on July 30, 2026, bringing its four-year operating run to an end after routing more than $104 billion in trades. The team said the app will switch to read-only mode on July 27. Because Odos is non-custodial, user assets remain onchain, though users who created wallets through social or email logins must transfer funds or export private keys before the cutoff. The company did not give a reason for the shutdown. It has already disabled new signups, wallet creation, and limit orders, while swaps will continue until the app becomes read-only. Odos also said the ODOS token remains unaffected onchain and that the Odos DAO operates separately from the company, while warning that any post-shutdown token migration, claim, or airdrop offers should be treated as scams. The closure follows a sharp decline in platform volume from its December 2024 peak and comes less than two years after the company closed a Series A round backed by firms including Uniswap, CE Innovation Capital, Orbs, Mantle, and PAKA.

Q1 2026 saw $450M stolen in 145 crypto incidents despite a 89% drop in smart contract exploits. Social engineering accounted for two-thirds of losses, including a 6-month DPRK operation against Drift Protocol.