ChainFeeds Research’s latest PRO issue brings together a wide set of protocol and research updates across Ethereum and Bitcoin. The edition highlights Ethereum’s planned introduction of enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, through EIP-7732 in the Glamsterdam upgrade, arguing that the change could reduce protocol reliance on relays while leaving core MEV market concentration issues unresolved. It also examines two wallet entropy-generation methods designed to reduce dependence on opaque software random number generators, alongside a Bitcoin Optech roundup covering a Core Lightning security release, an opt-in replay protection proposal for potential Bitcoin forks, and the gradual wind-down of Hardware Wallet Interface. On the Ethereum research side, the issue reviews a proposal that combines EIP-8304 with UTXO Proof Tables to let wallets verify UTXO discovery without fully trusting RPC providers, and a RISC-V execution study showing that identical instruction counts can still produce large timing differences across workloads and hardware. The report also notes a post-quantum migration idea for ecrecover, a set of MEV research summaries from Flashbots, and a paper on migration paths to post-quantum cryptography for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

Ingenic rang the opening bell in Hong Kong on Aug. 25, debuting at HK$100 per H share and reaching an opening market capitalization of about HK$51.5 billion. The company had already been listed on Shenzhen’s ChiNext board since May 31, 2011, and the new listing places it among semiconductor companies with both A-share and H-share listings. The prospectus outlines a chip platform strategy built across three product lines: memory, compute and analog. That structure took shape after Ingenic completed its acquisition of Beijing Silicon and indirectly took control of Integrated Silicon Solution Inc. (ISSI) in 2020. Since then, the company has operated around three brands: ISSI for memory, Ingenic for compute and Lumissil for analog. Its recent numbers show a rebound. Revenue moved from RMB 45.31 billion in 2023 to RMB 42.13 billion in 2024, then back up to RMB 47.41 billion in 2025. First-quarter 2026 revenue reached RMB 15.60 billion, up 47.1% from a year earlier, while net profit rose to RMB 3.20 billion and gross margin climbed to 42.6%. Ingenic said it expects to raise HK$3.13 billion from the Hong Kong offering. Half of the proceeds are earmarked for R&D, while 25% is set aside for strategic investments and acquisitions.

Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum’s current Strawmap still overlaps heavily with the project’s 2023 roadmap, but several priorities have shifted. In his latest update, he said quantum security has moved higher, some items such as VDF and many EVM improvements have moved down, and several earlier ideas have been replaced by newer constructions, including new state types in place of state expiry. He also highlighted several additions that were not part of the 2023 roadmap at all, including stronger privacy, post-quantum scaling work, simplification of specifications to support formal verification, blob and gas futures, and native rollups. Buterin also pointed to a broader architectural opening beyond the Ethereum Virtual Machine, saying zkzk frames imply the protocol will expose some non-EVM instruction set architecture to users, with leanISA and RISC-V described as leading candidates. He added that STARK-based systems and AI-assisted formal verification are now being treated as core building blocks across multiple layers of the protocol. In his closing remarks, Buterin said Ethereum is moving toward a system that is quantum-secure, privacy-first, secure, censorship-resistant, high-performance, scalable and lean.

BlockBeats reported on August 22, citing MaxForAI, that Gao Jianlin, a core figure in Tencent’s chip R&D work, has left the company and started his own venture. The new startup is focused on high-performance CPUs built on the RISC-V architecture, with an emphasis on AI servers and Agentic AI. Gao previously helped build Tencent’s FPGA hardware team, moved into AI chips in 2018, and later founded the Penglai Lab in 2020. The report says he also worked on RISC-V-related projects at Tencent and was involved in chip architecture, verification, and backend work. The company name, fundraising status and product timeline have not been disclosed.

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.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has compared his 2023 Ethereum roadmap with the Ethereum Foundation’s latest Strawmap and says the network’s upgrade priorities have shifted in meaningful ways. Privacy protections and post-quantum security now rank higher, while some earlier items, including verifiable delay functions and several EVM-related improvements, have moved down the list. Some ideas have also been replaced by different technical paths, including a move from Verkle Tree plans toward a unified binary tree and later a segmented binary tree, while state expiry has given way to new state types. Buterin said the updated Strawmap includes several areas that were not part of his 2023 roadmap at all. Those additions include stronger privacy features, leanSPHINCS signatures and aggregation, zkzk frames for post-quantum signatures combined with STARKs, native rollups, and concepts such as blockspace and gas futures. He also said recursive STARK verification and AI-assisted formal verification are now seen as core pieces of Ethereum’s future technical base. The Strawmap, a living draft used as a reference for protocol planning rather than a fixed delivery schedule, currently extends to 2029 and was last updated on Aug. 4.

ChainFeeds’ Aug. 12 research digest pulled together five separate crypto narratives that are shaping current market and product discussions. The report focused first on Hermes, arguing that its breakout did not come from a decisive infrastructure lead over OpenClaw, but from solving operational pain points for users who wanted personal agents without taking on configuration, maintenance and recovery burdens themselves. It framed Hermes’ appeal around delegation trust, built through reliability, safety controls and verifiability. The digest also featured Andreessen Horowitz’s view that crypto payment cards have moved well beyond novelty status. Monthly card spending topped $759 million in July 2026, up from $306 million a year earlier, while transaction count approached 9 million. The mix of settlement chains has diversified from an early concentration on Gnosis to a broader spread across Optimism, Solana and Base, and dollar stablecoins now dominate usage, led by USDC and USDT. A third section summarized Vitalik Buterin’s updated Ethereum roadmap thinking. The piece said privacy, post-quantum security, protocol simplification and AI-assisted formal verification are taking on greater weight, while new state types, native rollups and possible non-EVM instruction set designs are entering the conversation. The digest also reviewed pressure on corporate Bitcoin buyers such as Strategy and Trump Media, and outlined how meme coin issuance and trading platforms including Pump.fun, Pons, GMGN, Axiom and Fomo are still generating sizable fee income despite a cooler market.

PANews’ daily roundup on Aug. 11 centered on two balance-sheet stories with direct relevance to crypto markets. Strategy said it sold 1,690 BTC last week and lifted its U.S. dollar reserve to about $4.65 billion, while also raising roughly $653 million through its at-the-market equity program. CEO Phong Le said the company had adjusted its approach because bitcoin alone could not meet investor demand, adding that institutional investors place greater value on cash and that Strategy now holds $4.75 billion in cash, enough to cover roughly 2.7 years of preferred dividends. Trump Media, by contrast, reported a first-half loss of $360.6 million tied to the decline in crypto asset prices. As of June 30, the company held 9,477.16 BTC with a fair value of $557.1 million, down by 65 BTC from the end of March, while its Cronos holdings stayed unchanged at about 756.1 million tokens but fell in fair value from $68 million at the end of 2025 to $40.6 million. The report also noted that most of its bitcoin had been pledged as collateral. Elsewhere, South Korea approved tougher crypto rules that tighten scrutiny of exchange major shareholders and remove the 1 million won threshold for the Travel Rule, extending it to all transfers. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded a net outflow of $145 million on Aug. 10, with BlackRock’s IBIT seeing the largest single-day net outflow at $53.56 million.