Arthur Hayes said on Aug. 18 that he is coming out of retirement to become CEO of Flop Labs, a new project built around what it calls fuel for the AI agent economy. The team says Flop Network is designed for a future in which AI agents autonomously perform tasks, trade with one another, and pay for compute, memory storage, and retrieval with the native token, FLOP. Instead of traditional hash-based mining, the project proposes a model where miners provide real AI inference power and are rewarded for carrying out useful inference tasks. So far, public disclosures remain limited. Flop has published a landing page, three application forms, and a project overview graphic, but has not released a white paper, tokenomics, a contract address, or a clear explanation of the underlying chain and technical implementation. Its roadmap points to a large-scale airdrop in the fourth quarter of 2026 and a genesis block in the first quarter of 2027. Hayes’s involvement has also drawn scrutiny because he had repeatedly warned about an AI infrastructure bubble in 2026. He said his criticism was aimed at debt-fueled data center expansion and inflated valuations tied to AI infrastructure, not the agent economy itself, which he said he believes in “100%.”

ChainCatcher, citing Binance spot market data, reported broad volatility across major altcoins. LINK rose 10.68% over the past 24 hours, reaching both a fresh intraday high and a new high for the week. NEAR also posted gains, climbing 6.11% and touching its weekly high. On the losing side, BICO fell 16.39% after a spike-and-retreat pattern. GTC, YGG, BMT, and HAEDAL showed the same price action, with declines of 5.06%, 5.57%, 8.12%, and 7.24%, respectively. At the same time, MITO and AT moved in the opposite direction, rising 6.82% and 12.01% after a rebound from earlier lows. The update points to a market session marked by fast rotations, with some tokens extending gains while others gave back earlier advances.

NEAR AI has rolled out a new feature called Staking for NEAR AI, letting users stake NEAR tokens in exchange for private AI compute credits. According to Techub News, the feature has attracted more than 500,000 NEAR in staked tokens roughly two weeks after launch. The minimum stake is 50 NEAR, which is enough to activate the IronClaw autonomous agent. Under the current setup, staking 500 NEAR generates about $5 in monthly compute credits, while users can withdraw their principal at any time. The protocol uses Trusted Execution Environment, or TEE, technology to protect data privacy. The staking model is designed to support the IronClaw 1.0 agent framework, which CryptoBriefing said performed strongly across several benchmark tests, including PinchBench and OfficeQA.

NEAR AI Cloud has integrated signed attestation tokens from Intel Trust Authority to add an independent verification layer for confidential AI inference requests, according to Techub, citing CryptoBriefing. The setup lets users verify the authenticity of trusted execution environments, or TEEs, through standardized tokens instead of manually parsing raw cryptographic evidence. The integration combines Intel TDX with NVIDIA confidential computing technology, covering both ends of the hardware stack used in AI inference. Data decryption keys are released only after the attestation token confirms that the computing environment has not been tampered with. The report said the move lowers the barrier for enterprises that would otherwise need to build their own verification pipelines and also supports programmatic inspection of JWT tokens through standard libraries.

Grayscale Investments said on Aug. 5 that it had completed the 2026 second-quarter review and rebalancing of three of its multi-asset products: the Grayscale Decentralized Finance Fund, the Grayscale Smart Contract Fund and the Grayscale Decentralized AI Fund. According to a report cited from GlobeNewswire, the firm also disclosed the latest constituent assets and weightings for the three funds as of Aug. 3, 2026. In the DeFi fund, Grayscale said it sold Uniswap and reallocated the proceeds across the remaining constituents based on existing weights. In the smart contract fund, it sold portions of current holdings and used the proceeds to buy BNB. In the decentralized AI fund, it sold NEAR Protocol and redistributed the proceeds across the other existing holdings. Grayscale added that each fund’s constituents and weightings will continue to be reviewed quarterly under the relevant index methodology or fund methodology, and future changes may include adding new assets or removing current ones.

Grayscale Investments has released the second-quarter 2026 rebalancing results for several of its multi-asset crypto funds, with changes made under the methodology of the indexes each product tracks. In the Grayscale Smart Contract Platform Fund, the firm sold part of its existing holdings and used the proceeds to buy BNB, making it the fund’s largest position as of Aug. 3. In the Grayscale Decentralized AI Fund, NEAR Protocol was sold and the capital was redistributed across the fund’s remaining components. Grayscale also adjusted its DeFi Fund by selling Uniswap and reallocating the proceeds based on the existing weight of current holdings. The updated portfolio breakdowns disclosed by the firm show how those moves reshaped exposure across BNB, ETH, SOL, TAO, RENDER and other tokens.

Grayscale has completed the scheduled rebalancing of its multi-asset digital asset funds for the second quarter of 2026, according to Globenewswire. The changes covered the Grayscale DeFi Fund, the smart contract fund and the decentralized AI fund. In the DeFi portfolio, the firm sold Uniswap (UNI) and redistributed the proceeds based on existing component weights. As of Aug. 3, UNI still accounted for 34.16% of the fund, followed by ONDO at 25.44%, AAVE at 19.97%, ENA at 12.19%, CRV at 4.42% and LDO at 3.82%. In the smart contract fund, Grayscale sold part of its existing holdings under index rules and used the proceeds to buy BNB, which became the fund’s largest position at 30.6%. The decentralized AI fund sold NEAR and reallocated the proceeds across current holdings, with NEAR, TAO, RENDER and FIL listed as of Aug. 3.

WEEX Exchange said it has opened zero-fee trading for PREDIX (PDX), Uniswap (UNI) and NEAR Protocol (NEAR), according to an Aug. 5 announcement cited by ChainCatcher. The platform is also offering a 20,000 USDT newcomer-exclusive airdrop tied to the campaign. The promotion runs from Aug. 4 at 17:00 to Aug. 11 at 17:00, UTC+8. No other terms were disclosed in the brief notice.