IOSG argues that the current storage rally is being driven by artificial intelligence, but not in the way traditional IT buyers used to think about storage. In its view, the market is no longer rewarding raw capacity first. It is rewarding the ability to keep GPUs fed, move checkpoints quickly, support retrieval-augmented generation with very low latency, and raise overall compute utilization across tightly coupled infrastructure stacks. That shift, the article says, is why components such as HBM, DRAM, CXL, enterprise SSDs, SSD controllers, NVMe pathways, and performance storage software have become central to the AI investment narrative. The piece draws a sharp distinction between AI storage and decentralized storage. AI storage is framed as an efficiency system built for hot data and commercial output. Decentralized storage, by contrast, is described as a trust system for cold data, focused on permanence, censorship resistance, auditability, and public memory. IOSG uses Filecoin and Arweave as the main examples, outlining how the two networks diverge in architecture and product direction, while also listing persistent problems across the sector, including weak enterprise service layers, retrieval limits, supply-demand incentive mismatches, privacy and compliance tensions, and token economics that can amplify market cycles rather than solve product-market fit.

Jademont Zheng, co-founder and CEO of Waterdrip Capital, argues that the crypto industry has reached a place few expected several years ago, after token-launch projects fell in batches, major centralized exchanges lost influence, and primary-market investors pulled back. In his view, responsibility for the sector’s current state is not evenly distributed. He singled out FTX and Luna for damaging traditional capital’s trust in crypto, said top centralized exchanges failed to raise listing standards and instead favored short-term gains, and criticized the Ethereum Foundation’s shift from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake as an overrated decision that, in his opinion, cut off a larger opportunity tied to blockchain-based AI computing infrastructure. Zheng still sees a path forward, but he says the number of variables that can truly reverse the trend is now limited. He points to only two developments that could reopen a new phase of expansion: the United States adding BTC to a national strategic reserve and continuing to buy it, and the emergence of a true on-chain super app with hundreds of millions of users that creates real value and proves blockchains can generate demand, not just issue assets.

Jademont Zheng, co-founder and CEO of Waterdrip Capital, argues that the crypto industry has drifted far from what many expected just a few years ago. In his view, token-launch projects across Web3 are dying in batches, major centralized exchanges are losing their industry influence even as trading volumes hit fresh highs, and primary-market investment firms are stepping away because exit channels have broken down. He says the damage was not caused by a single actor. Instead, several forces carried heavier responsibility than others. Zheng names FTX and Luna as two of the biggest blows, saying their collapse during crypto’s most prosperous period shattered traditional capital’s trust in the sector and kept institutional money on the sidelines. He also criticizes leading CEXs for failing to raise listing standards or cultivate long-term industry norms, arguing that short-term incentives turned low-quality token issuance and liquidity extraction into the dominant playbook. He further says the Ethereum Foundation’s move from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake was overrated, claiming it cut off Ethereum’s chance to become a major blockchain-based AI compute network. Despite that outlook, Zheng says the industry still has a path forward. He points to only two developments that could start a new boom: the U.S. adding BTC to a national strategic reserve and making sustained purchases, or the emergence of a real onchain super app with hundreds of millions of users and genuine value creation.

Galaxy Digital said on Aug. 4 that it has entered a strategic partnership with Bank of New York Mellon, or BNY, to build out digital asset infrastructure for institutional clients. The arrangement is set to support digital asset services including staking, which the company described as a mechanism that lets eligible digital assets earn reward income. Under the partnership, BNY’s digital asset custody platform will be combined with Galaxy’s expertise across proof-of-stake, or PoS, networks. The two firms said the goal is to bring custody and staking into a single institutional service model, giving clients an integrated way to take part in staking through a process designed to be secure and simplified. Galaxy will also serve as a design partner to help refine the infrastructure behind BNY’s digital asset platform. The planned staking service from BNY, along with related infrastructure upgrades, remains subject to regulatory review.

Bank of New York Mellon said it plans to add staking to its digital asset custody platform through a partnership with crypto financial services firm Galaxy, according to a report cited by CoinDesk. The setup is designed to let institutional clients earn staking rewards without moving assets out of custody, a point the report framed as especially important for firms managing compliance and safekeeping requirements. The service is still subject to regulatory approval. Under the arrangement, Galaxy will provide the staking infrastructure and also serve as a design partner as BNY expands its blockchain-related services. The move adds to BNY’s digital asset push since launching crypto custody in 2022, a business line that already includes bitcoin, ether and tokenized securities. The report also said that in June 2026, BNY partnered with Circle so clients could custody, transfer, mint and burn USDC on the bank’s platform.

AmericanFortress, a Wyoming-based blockchain security and cryptography firm focused on post-quantum security, has published research outlining a way for Bitcoin and other blockchain wallets to defend against future quantum attacks without forcing users to move funds to new addresses. In a paper titled “ZKPoSP: Post-Quantum Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets,” the team proposes replacing traditional elliptic-curve signatures with zero-knowledge proofs while preserving compatibility with hierarchical deterministic wallet standards. The paper centers on the industry’s so-called Q-Day scenario, when a fault-tolerant quantum computer could run Shor’s algorithm to derive private keys from public keys. The authors argue that, instead of relying on exposed key pairs, wallet owners could prove control through the wallet seed phrase without revealing the seed itself. The study introduces ZKPoSP and a key derivation approach called QBIP32, and reports prototype benchmarks built in Rust with the RISC Zero zero-knowledge virtual machine. AmericanFortress said proof generation took about 12 to 13 seconds, while verification took roughly 9 to 10 milliseconds. The system has not been adopted by any blockchain network, and deployment would require support from developers, wallet providers, exchanges, miners, and users. The research arrives as post-quantum security efforts across the crypto sector continue to accelerate.

Foresight laid out a broad primer on decentralized storage, arguing that the Web3 stack needs alternatives to centralized cloud providers because of four persistent weaknesses: user ownership does not fully rest with the uploader, single points of failure can disrupt access, stored content can be altered without cryptographic proof, and long-term storage costs keep compounding. The article frames IPFS, Filecoin and Arweave as the three core building blocks of this shift, each serving a different role. IPFS is presented as a content-addressed, peer-to-peer file layer that generates a CID hash for each file but lacks built-in token incentives, which limits its ability to guarantee long-term retention on its own. Filecoin adds the market and incentive layer on top, using Proof of Replication and Proof of Spacetime to verify storage and sustain a commercial marketplace for large-scale data. Arweave, by contrast, focuses on permanent storage through its Blockweave structure and SPoRA consensus, paired with a one-time payment model backed by a long-term endowment fund. The piece also maps out practical use cases, including long-term archives, NFT metadata, AI training datasets and storage mining, before outlining industry trends such as hybrid storage architectures, growing use in modular blockchain systems and lower adoption barriers for creators and smaller businesses.

On-chain data shows a wallet linked to f2pool co-founder Chun Wang withdrew 15,740 ETH (≈$26.4M) from Binance. Wang is a veteran miner, founder of f2pool and stake.fish, and recently funded a private polar orbit space mission.