WuBlockchain’s August technology report tracked a broad set of blockchain infrastructure updates across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, major Layer 2 networks, and several other ecosystems. The report said Bitcoin’s long-debated BIP-110 entered real activation in August but failed to gain support, with miner signaling at only about 2.5% during the mandatory signaling phase. Nodes enforcing the rule began rejecting non-signaling blocks from height 961,632, effectively creating a minority chain that produced only around two blocks before largely stalling, while the main Bitcoin network continued as normal. On Ethereum, the Glamsterdam upgrade moved from internal DevNet testing into a public test phase, with DevNet 8/Platåberget launched on Aug. 13 and the Gloas fork activated on Aug. 20. Testing has shifted from basic functionality to edge cases and client compatibility, while tentative testnet activation targets of Sept. 28 for Sepolia and Oct. 26 for Hoodi have been proposed. Hegotá also advanced from open proposal intake into a narrower candidate-selection stage. The report also highlighted rising performance competition across scaling networks. OP Mainnet upgraded from 250ms Flashblocks to 200ms Subblocks, Base outlined a 200ms Native Blocks plan, and Solana is preparing to reduce mainnet slot time to 350ms starting from epoch 1020. In parallel, Arbitrum said real mainnet blocks can now be proven with SP1-generated ZK proofs, extending its path toward a multi-proving architecture.

OpenAI has made a triple hire in a single day, bringing all three people into its Codex and ChatGPT teams. Nan Yu, product lead at Linear, announced he is joining OpenAI, ending his four-year tenure at the company. Shortly afterward, Kairos Computer co-founders Manas Bam and Samarth Patel also announced they are joining OpenAI, with the same destination: Codex and ChatGPT. Kairos is building a personal agent that can operate a computer directly. The approach gives the agent a cloud-based computer, allowing it to log into websites on its own, operate browsers and software, and complete tasks across different applications. According to the two co-founders, when they founded Kairos, their goal was to create "personal AGI for everyone." They now plan to continue pursuing that goal at OpenAI, where all three new hires will be assigned to the company's Codex and ChatGPT projects.

Swift is testing whether blockchain infrastructure can plug into its existing cross-border messaging network, which handles about $1.5 quadrillion in annual traffic, according to a CoinDesk report published on Aug. 29. The pilot uses a shared ledger built on Linea, the Ethereum Layer 2 network developed by ConsenSys, to explore round-the-clock tokenized payments that could operate outside standard banking hours. The initial trial includes 17 major banks across six continents, including ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, Citi, DBS, HSBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, Mitsubishi UFJ and Wells Fargo. Under the current setup, final settlement still runs through existing payment rails, while the blockchain ledger is being used first for messaging and coordination. The test lines up with a wider push in traditional finance toward tokenized cross-border payments, including JPMorgan’s Kinexys. For Swift, the main challenge is not simply whether the technology works, but whether it can run with the scale, reliability and regulatory standards required by a network that sits at the center of global banking flows.

The Interfold’s token, FOLD, rose after South Korean exchange Bithumb announced a KRW trading pair on Aug. 28, briefly touching $0.10 and trading at $0.094 at the time of writing. That left the token with a circulating market capitalization of about $30.71 million and a fully diluted valuation near $120 million. The listing marked FOLD’s third major exchange debut in nine days, following launches on Upbit and Kraken after its Aug. 19 token generation event and the rollout of Network Alpha, the first production phase of its mainnet. The move also sharpened attention on who is setting the token’s price. Before Bithumb joined, Upbit’s KRW pair already accounted for roughly 55% of global volume, while two Uniswap v4 pools made up just over 30%. Earlier public price discovery through two Uniswap continuous clearing auctions had valued FOLD at roughly $0.023 and $0.0224, putting FDV near $27.6 million. Against a spot price near $0.096, those auction buyers were sitting on paper gains of about 4.2x to 4.3x. Supply remains a central issue. FOLD has a total supply of 1.2 billion, with 27.22% circulating at TGE. Linear unlocks for the foundation treasury, Gnosis Guild, airdrops, and team advisors are set to begin on Sept. 1, adding about 21.63 million tokens per month, or 6.6% of the current circulating supply.

Japan's revised Export Trade Control Order took effect on August 16, subjecting high-end five-axis machine tools with positioning accuracy of 3 microns or below to case-by-case review, with approval timelines stretching up to 180 days and rejection rates exceeding 80% for sensitive sectors. Gree Electric, which began its machine tool R&D push around 2013 under chairwoman Dong Mingzhu, has spent over 2 billion yuan across a decade building fully self-developed five-axis CNC machines. By 2026, Gree's five-axis exports account for more than 75% of its machine tool sales, supplying BYD, Tesla, and BMW at 40–60% of German and Japanese pricing. Meanwhile, KEDE Numerical Control and Beijing JingDiao are pushing into the sub-3-micron precision frontier, with China's overall five-axis localization rate hitting 59.5% in 2025. Significant gaps remain against Japan's big three—Fanuc, Mazak, and Makino—particularly in long-duration precision retention and hard-material machining, but the export ban is accelerating domestic substitution orders.

Cardano governance body Intersect has updated the roadmap for the Dijkstra upgrade, breaking the rollout into two separate phases, according to Crypto.news. The first phase is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026 and includes the Linear Leios scaling design, nested transactions, a new serialization structure, and PlutusV4 changes. A second phase is set to activate the Ouroboros Peras consensus protocol through a separate hard fork, with a target window in the second quarter of 2027. The roadmap update also outlines how Linear Leios is intended to work. It introduces an endorsement block mechanism under which a stake committee certifies additional transactions to raise throughput, while keeping the current Praos security model in place. Cardano also plans to submit an amendment by Sept. 11 to add parameters tied to Dijkstra. Separately, the Rust node client Amaru already has relay and chain-sync capabilities, and its mainnet block-production target is November 2026. Intersect said the dates are estimates rather than firm commitments, adding that governance procedures and community testing could delay activation.

Jeff Dean’s new startup, Discovery Loop, is drawing attention after details from its pitch deck circulated online. Rather than spending much time on product-market slides, the presentation focuses on the founding team’s track record across Google Search, Ads, Gmail, Translate, Gemini, Cloud TPU, GFS, MapReduce, Bigtable, Spanner, TensorFlow, Pathways, and a long list of AI research and application milestones. It also highlights the scale of teams previously managed by the founders, along with their academic citation records in machine learning and distributed systems. The company says its mission is to automate machine learning, science, and engineering in order to speed up discovery and progress. Its core idea is an “automated experimentation loop,” where AI helps generate hypotheses, run large numbers of experiments, analyze results, and adjust the next round of work. According to the article, Discovery Loop will start with machine learning research and engineering, then may expand the same framework into computer hardware, drug discovery, and other scientific and engineering fields. Confirmed backers named in the report include Khosla Ventures, Radical Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, and Doerr Capital, with Khosla and Radical listed as co-leads. Alphabet also participated and signed a long-term cloud computing agreement with the company. Axios, citing people familiar with the matter, said the round reached several hundred million dollars, though that figure has not been officially confirmed by Discovery Loop or its investors.

A discussion sparked by TeraFab-related information and a reply from Elon Musk has revived attention on free-electron laser, or FEL, technology as a possible alternative to conventional extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, lithography light sources. The source article stresses that the claim remains speculative and does not confirm Musk’s actual plans, but argues the technical route is worth examining on its own terms. It lays out how FEL systems work, starting with high-energy electron beams from particle accelerators, then using periodic magnetic structures known as undulators to generate tunable, coherent, high-intensity light across a range that can theoretically extend from soft X-rays through EUV and beyond. The piece also points to U.S. startup xLight as a notable supporter of this direction and notes that former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is now xLight’s executive chairman. According to the article, xLight says its FEL source can deliver up to four times the EUV power of current LPP systems, lower wafer costs by about 50%, support as many as 20 ASML systems, and operate for up to 30 years. At the same time, the article makes clear that stronger source physics does not automatically translate into better manufacturing readiness. FEL systems still face major hurdles in size, cost, stability, uptime, and integration with lithography optics, leaving today’s engineered EUV sources more suitable for high-volume fabs at this stage.