An Optimism governance proposal passed in the final minutes on Agora after a late 8.49 million OP vote flipped support from 45.77% to 61.84%. The measure transfers 546.9 million OP from the project’s user airdrop allocation to a foundation-controlled strategic ecosystem fund, an amount equal to 12.7% of total supply and nearly 24% of circulating supply, according to the article. The decisive vote came from Test in Prod, a core development team that identifies itself on Agora as part of the Optimism Collective and, in a 2025 Security Council nomination document, said it was “fully funded by the Collective.” Critics including L2BEAT, independent researcher Polynya and community member Luckyhooman.eth argued that the authorization is too broad, prior ecosystem spending has not been formally evaluated, and reallocating tokens away from users rewrites a distribution commitment made when OP launched in 2022. The dispute has turned into a wider debate over whether DAO voting can remain independent when funded parties vote on foundation-directed budgets, and whether a tokenholder majority can legitimately alter the original promises tied to token allocation.

Aligned, a zero-knowledge infrastructure project spun out of LambdaClass, said its native token ALIGN will begin spot trading on Coinbase, Bitget and KuCoin, with the airdrop set to open when the token officially goes live. Coinbase has already enabled deposit address generation, though it had not announced a trading start time as of publication. The listing arrives after a controversial strategic shift: less than a month before TGE, Aligned retired its Proof Verification Layer, the project’s most mature product, despite it having verified more than 136,000 proofs and reached more than 50 operators at its peak. The move has pushed investors and users to re-examine the project’s business case. Aligned said it made the change because ZK technology has matured, Ethereum is moving toward native ZK support, and demand has tilted toward Ethereum-level security over ultra-low latency. Since the shutdown, operator count has fallen to about 26 and restaked capital stands at roughly $119 million. The project is now centered on its Proof Aggregation Service, which it says can cut costs by more than 90%, while several other pieces of its broader stack remain in development. ALIGN has a fixed supply of 10 billion tokens, with about 16% expected to circulate at TGE. Updated token allocations from April 2026 set aside 23.50% for the team, 19.71% for investors, 18.00% for the ecosystem, 16.61% for future reserves, 11.40% for the foundation, 8.74% for airdrops and 2.04% for community sales.

A White House crypto gathering set the tone for the day’s market and policy headlines. U.S. President Donald Trump urged Congress to move the CLARITY Act forward, calling it a powerful market-structure bill, while saying Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the U.S. in a fully compliant way. HYPE rose more than 20% over 24 hours following those remarks. The event came ahead of the first meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee, which is scheduled to cover crypto regulation, AI in trading and compliance, and prediction markets. At the same time, Coinbase said it has integrated Hyperliquid into Base App to offer perpetual futures trading to eligible users with up to 50x leverage in supported jurisdictions. Outside the policy story, VanEck said Bitcoin has triggered eight of its 12 capitulation indicators, suggesting the market is approaching historical bear-market bottom zones, though not necessarily a confirmed bottom. PANews’ daily roundup also highlighted Unitree’s launch of a 7-axis bionic robotic arm starting at 9,900 yuan, fresh ETF flow data, new funding deals across AI infrastructure, and several project updates spanning Berachain, Nethermind, Aligned, Linera and Flop Labs.

ZK verification layer project Aligned said its native token, ALIGN, will go live at 23:00 on Aug. 20, with airdrop claims opening at the same time. The token has a total supply of 10 billion, and the initial circulating supply at the token generation event, or TGE, is set at about 16% of that amount. Users can check eligibility through the project’s official airdrop portal. According to previously cited details from Foresight News, 44.36% of the airdrop allocation will unlock at TGE, equal to 3.88% of total supply. The airdrop is split into three buckets: Airdrop 1 for the community, Airdrop 2 for projects that made notable contributions to Ethereum and zero-knowledge technology, and a separate allocation for ZK Arcade. Unlock schedules differ by category and by allocation size. For claim routing, Aligned set a 10,000 ALIGN threshold. Recipients allocated 10,000 ALIGN or less will claim on Base, while those allocated more than 10,000 ALIGN will claim on Ethereum mainnet.

Aligned, a ZK verification layer project, has released the details of its Genesis Drop. The airdrop sets aside 8.74% of the fixed 10 billion ALIGN supply for communities that support crypto, Ethereum, and ZK. At the token generation event, 44.36% of the airdrop allocation will unlock, equal to about 3.88% of total supply. The distribution is split into three parts: Airdrop 1 for the broader community at about 6.54% of supply, Airdrop 2 for notable contributors at 2.10%, and ZK Arcade at 0.10%. Claim rules also differ by allocation size. Users assigned 10,000 ALIGN or less will claim on Base, while those allocated more than 10,000 ALIGN will claim on Ethereum Layer 1. Eligibility and allocation amounts can be checked at community.alignedlayer.com.

Aligned published the terms for its ALIGN airdrop on Tuesday, 20 months after registration for the drop closed, but the company still did not set a launch date for the token. The Genesis Drop covers 8.74% of a fixed 10 billion ALIGN supply, with 44.36% unlocking at TGE. Aligned also outlined allocations for the main community pool, ZK Arcade, Protocol Guild, L2BEAT, ZachXBT and Zero Knowledge Podcast, while noting that the public sale site now says the sale has been canceled. The token sits with 26 holders on Ethereum and no transfers, and preview pages on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap show no price. The article also details Aligned’s two failed public sale attempts, the deprecated Proof Verification Layer, the new Proof Aggregation Service, LambdaVM progress, and the disputed Coinbase listing claims circulating on X.

Gnosis and Zisk, backed by the Ethereum Foundation, propose the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) to enable synchronous cross-rollup execution within a single transaction, bypassing bridges. Over 20 L2s hold nearly $40 billion in fragmented liquidity.

Uniswap’s community is weighing an expansion of its fee-and-burn system to BNB Chain, Polygon, and Celo, which would bring the mechanism to 13 blockchains. Fees from swaps on those networks would be bridged to Ethereum and burned there.