U.S. equities ended higher after softer inflation data helped push the S&P 500 to another record close, with the Nasdaq and Dow also advancing. July producer prices cooled to 4.7% year over year from 5.5% in June, while the market lifted the odds of the Federal Reserve holding rates steady in September to around 65%. Even so, the long end of the Treasury market sent a different signal: the 30-year bond auction cleared at 5.216%, the highest since 2001, and indirect bidding weakened, pointing to growing concern over fiscal supply and term premium. Sector leadership was narrow. SanDisk surged after issuing aggressive long-term targets at its 2026 investor day, lifting Western Digital, SK Hynix, Seagate, Micron and the Roundhill storage ETF. Workday also jumped on a Reuters report that Silver Lake had held acquisition talks for months. In contrast, optical networking names and parts of the AI hardware trade reversed lower, while Cisco fell despite record quarterly revenue as investors focused on margin concerns. Oil prices retreated after both the IEA and OPEC lowered demand expectations, and Donald Trump signed a proclamation imposing 10% to 100% tariffs on imported drones and related parts on national security grounds.

A subtle wording change in the U.S. Treasury’s latest quarterly refunding statement has prompted Wall Street to revisit expectations for long-dated bond supply. The department replaced “future potential increases” with “future potential adjustments” in its outlook for coupon auctions, a move markets read as a possible sign that 20-year and 30-year Treasury auction sizes could be reduced. The reaction stems in part from a similar episode in October 2023, when the Treasury unexpectedly slowed the pace of long-dated issuance. In the following two months, the 30-year Treasury yield fell from near 5.18% to just above 4% by year-end, a drop of more than 1 percentage point. Strategists are split on what the latest signal means. TD Securities sees scope for easing pressure at the long end if supply is trimmed, with May next year marked as an early window to watch. Deutsche Bank and CIBC are more skeptical, arguing the government’s funding needs remain too large for any meaningful pullback and warning that heavier short-dated issuance would only shift rate pressure to another part of the curve. For crypto markets, the issue matters because lower long-term risk-free yields have historically coincided with looser liquidity conditions that can support valuations for assets such as Bitcoin.

Cross-chain routing protocol Squid took an unusual path to token issuance. The project had already been running on mainnet for three and a half years, routing more than $6 billion in volume, before introducing its native token, QUID, in 2026. On May 22, Squid announced a $6 million strategic funding round led by North Island Ventures with participation from Ripple, bringing total funding to $13.5 million. Three days later, on May 25, a third-party Gnosis Safe module tied to the Squid name was exploited, with losses reported at roughly $3 million in the article’s headline framing and about $3.2 million to $4 million in the detailed account. The core routing contracts, according to Squid, were not affected. QUID’s public sale opened from June 30 to July 3 on Legion and Kraken at $0.045 per token, with a $2.25 million hard cap. The sale drew about $26.66 million in subscriptions, or around 11.9 times oversubscribed, from 3,542 participants across 78 countries. On Aug. 4 at 13:00 UTC, QUID held its token generation event and debuted first on Binance Alpha, followed by Kraken, Bitget, Upbit, Bithumb, MEXC, and later LBank, BingX, and XT. The token rose from its public sale price to a peak of $0.14 and was trading around $0.09 to $0.11 as of Aug. 7.

The Cardano Foundation said in a post on X that Cardano and Injective have established a connection on testnet through IBC, the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol. The update indicates that the link has been completed in a testnet environment rather than on mainnet. According to the statement, ADA will be able to move into the Injective ecosystem, while INJ will also be able to enter the Cardano ecosystem. The two assets are expected to be usable across the two ecosystems under this testnet connection. The announcement came directly from the Cardano Foundation. No additional rollout details, timing beyond the testnet milestone, or production deployment information were disclosed in the source post.

PANews’ weekly roundup showed that blockchain funding stayed subdued from July 27 to Aug. 2, with six disclosed deals totaling $41.5 million, while capital in the broader private market continued to cluster around AI, robotics and computing infrastructure. In crypto, funding was concentrated in security, execution infrastructure and AI-related Web3 projects. V12 raised a $10 million seed round led by Electric Capital, Birdai Labs secured $4 million for onchain execution infrastructure, and Axis Robotics closed a $12 million seed round led by Hack VC. Perceptron Network and ALPHEA also announced financing tied to decentralized AI data and distributed AI infrastructure. Outside crypto, the biggest checks went to major AI model companies and robotics platforms. Amazon disclosed that it had completed a total of $50 billion in investment in OpenAI and separately invested $11.3 billion in Anthropic and $13.7 billion in OpenAI during the second quarter. Moonshot AI reportedly raised $3.5 billion at a $35 billion valuation. Simile, Fish Audio, Modus and Pangram all announced new rounds, while Standard Bots, Enigma and Quantum Dynamics highlighted continued investor appetite for physical AI and robotics deployment. The period also saw M&A activity from Metaplanet and Fanatics, alongside fresh financing in nuclear power, bot detection and AI-focused funds.

ALPHEA said it has completed a $5 million funding round to speed up the buildout of its next-generation distributed AI infrastructure. The project said the round included participation from MH Ventures, IBC Group, Titans Ventures, Becker Ventures and Yellow Labs, among other institutions. According to the company, the new capital will be used in three main areas: expanding its distributed AI computing network, rolling out new products for developers and enterprise users, and growing its core team across engineering, research and ecosystem development. The announcement was reported by ChainCatcher.

Axelar said about $4.67 million in tokens were stolen while bridging to Secret Network. The team traced the issue to Secret's ICS-20 contract, disabled related connections, and notified law enforcement.

Blockchain isn't monolithic—it's built in layers. This deep dive explains Layer 0 (infrastructure), Layer 1 (base chain), Layer 2 (scaling solutions), and Layer 3 (applications), showing how they tackle the blockchain trilemma.