PANews’ August 18-19 digest was packed with policy, markets, and AI updates. The U.S. debt burden may cross $40 trillion sooner than expected after tariff-related revenue losses accelerated Treasury borrowing. The SEC also proposed “Regulation Crypto Assets,” a new framework that includes startup and fundraising exemptions plus a safe harbor for digital assets that stop all managerial activity. OpenAI said it is tightening safeguards on its unreleased models, adding sandboxing and faster alerts after recent security concerns, while also pausing parts of its latest reinforcement learning training for two weeks. Elsewhere, Bhutan’s government-linked address moved 300 BTC, USDC Treasury minted 250 million USDC on Solana, and Metaplanet said it will use 2,100 BTC and $2.5 million in cash to acquire Super League and build a U.S. Bitcoin treasury platform called Superplanet. Cash App expanded beyond Bitcoin and USDC by integrating MoonPay, Ripple Prime sold $275 million of senior unsecured notes, and FASB proposed treating qualifying stablecoins as cash equivalents. The digest also covered NoOnes’ shutdown plan, a Maya Protocol exploit, Solana’s slot-time reduction, and major AI and IPO updates from OpenAI, Anthropic, Temporal, and Zhiyu/Unitree-related market listings.

Telegram has applied for the “.gram” top-level domain, according to a post by founder Pavel Durov on Aug. 19. If the application is approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the platform’s roughly 1 billion users could become eligible for their own second-level domain names tied to Telegram usernames. Durov gave examples in his post, saying the Telegram handle @durov could eventually map to durov.gram, while @monk could map to monk.gram. He also said users would be able to create and host interactive websites on Telegram through a single command. The proposal, as described by Durov, links Telegram identities with domain naming and website creation, but the plan still depends on ICANN approval before any rollout could happen.

A busy week across crypto projects brought updates in protocol design, governance, lending products, wallet security and payment infrastructure. Robinhood Chain posted $3.13 million in daily NFT volume, overtaking Ethereum, while its average daily transactions hit 11.6 million and TVL rose to $473 million. ENS token holders passed and executed the “Next Era of ENS DAO” proposal, turning ENS Foundation into a formal operating body with a full-time executive director, staff and a five-member board. On Solana, Jupiter rolled out Lend v2, a lending upgrade that lets deposited and borrowed assets also serve as trading liquidity. Other notable developments included Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake saying Ethereum L1 will stop pursuing Poseidon and instead move toward SHA or BLAKE-based hashing options; Hyperliquid outlining a plan to route idle HLP USDC into its native lending pool; Uniswap redirecting creator fees tied to a test token into an automatic buyback-and-burn contract; UniSat raising the default seed phrase length for new wallets from 12 words to 24; a USENIX study finding security-rule violations across 15 x402 payment providers; MegaETH’s native stablecoin USDm dropping to roughly $18 million in supply from a peak near $600 million in May; and World Liberty Financial delaying a yield-token launch tied to a Trump-branded Maldives resort project.

ENS token holders have approved the proposal titled "The Next Era of ENS DAO," and the executable components have already been carried out onchain. The change turns the ENS Foundation into a fully operating legal entity with an executive director, staff, and a five-member board, giving it the ability to represent ENS in settings where a DAO alone could not act. According to the proposal description, the foundation can now engage directly with institutions such as ICANN, IETF, and W3C, pursue recognition and stewardship of the .ens top-level domain, meet regulators and lawmakers on issues tied to decentralized naming, hold and defend ENS trademarks and brand assets, hire full-time staff, and serve as a clear counterparty for courts, registries, standards bodies, and other institutions. The overhaul also sets boundaries. ENS Labs and the ENS Foundation remain separate legal and operational entities. DAO-held ENS tokens, which account for 54.6% of total supply, stay under token-holder control, with one approved exception: a one-time transfer of 1 million ENS to the foundation for employee compensation under a public framework. The endowment funded by .eth registration revenue stays in place, and related transactions are now subject to a nine-day timelock during which the ENS Security Council can cancel any transaction that falls outside the foundation’s mandate.

ENS tokenholders have approved and executed a sweeping governance proposal that turns the ENS Foundation into a staffed organization with a full-time executive director, a five-member board, and onchain control over the DAO’s endowment. The vote passed with 1,269,420 ENS in favor and 480,690 against, clearing the 1 million-token quorum, and was executed early Tuesday. At the center of the dispute was custody. The proposal replaces the Endowment Safe’s sole owner with a new timelock contract that carries a nine-day delay, while giving proposal power only to the Foundation’s 3-of-5 multisig. The Security Council can cancel queued transactions with five of eight signatures, but that safeguard expires on Aug. 7, 2028. Critics, including ENS co-founder Alex Van de Sande and governance security firm Blockful, said important constraints such as draw limits and budget caps were written only in the proposal text and not enforced in code. The proposal also transfers 1 million ENS to the Foundation for employee compensation under a published vesting framework, worth about $4.2 million at current prices. The DAO still retains control of roughly 54.6 million ENS and an operational wallet holding about $16 million in ETH and stablecoins. The change lands after months of governance tensions over voting concentration, ENS Labs’ role, and the structure of oversight inside the ENS ecosystem.

ENS token holders have approved the “ENS DAO New Era” proposal, and the implementation has already been executed on-chain, formally turning the ENS Foundation into an independently operating entity. Under the new structure, the foundation will have a full-time executive director, dedicated staff, and a five-member board. Its remit includes representing ENS in organizations and standards bodies such as ICANN, IETF, and W3C, handling matters tied to the “.ens” top-level domain, and taking on policy outreach, intellectual property protection, hiring, ecosystem grants, and other offline operational functions. ENS said the change lets ENS Labs focus more closely on protocol and product development, including core infrastructure such as ENSv2. The new governance model separates responsibilities across ENS DAO, the ENS Foundation, and ENS Labs. ENS also said the Endowment backed by .eth registration revenue remains unchanged, with transactions subject to a nine-day timelock, while the ENS Security Council can cancel actions that exceed the foundation’s authority. ENS DAO’s holdings, equal to 54.6% of total ENS supply, remain under DAO and token-holder control, except for a one-time transfer of 1 million ENS to the foundation to pay staff under a public compensation framework.

The ENS DAO has voted to approve the 'Next Era of ENS DAO' proposal and completed its on-chain execution, formally establishing the ENS Foundation. The foundation will operate as a fully staffed organization with an executive director, a professional team, and a five-member board, taking on institutional responsibilities spanning legal affairs, policy engagement, standards development, and brand protection. ENS noted that while it has grown into key Ethereum infrastructure with millions of registered domain names and broad integration across wallets, applications, and Layer 2 networks, the DAO lacked a legal identity, which limited its ability to participate in internet naming governance, sign institutional agreements, hire full-time employees, maintain trademark rights, or join regulatory discussions. The new foundation is designed to fill that gap. Its future duties include representing ENS at ICANN, IETF, and W3C to advance recognition and management of the '.ens' top-level domain; engaging with regulators and government bodies as a legal entity; safeguarding ENS trademarks and intellectual property against phishing and impersonation; hiring full-time staff to run ecosystem operations, grants, and treasury management; and serving as the formal cooperation interface between traditional institutions such as registrars and standards organizations and the ENS ecosystem.

Solana Name Service (SNS) will pause .sol domain registrations on August 17 to run an eligibility snapshot. Existing .sol holders at snapshot time will keep their original domain under the .sns suffix, while receiving a free same-name .sol domain; ownership is tied to wallet holdings at the moment of the snapshot. Domains kept on exchanges must be moved to self-custody wallets beforehand, and if a domain is listed for sale, the new domain will go to the listing wallet. .sns registration reopens in early to mid-September. The upgrade is meant to eventually let .sol be used as a regular web address in browsers; SNS has previously supported Solana Foundation's application to ICANN for .sol as a top-level domain, a process likely to take years with an uncertain outcome. New .sol domains will initially lack resolution, records, and subdomain features; eligible wallets automatically receive them between late September and early October, with resolution and trading abilities activating from Q4 2026 to Q1 2027.