Crypto projects are revising token economics as protocols seek clearer links between business revenue and token value. PANews counted 15 major projects across public blockchains, DeFi, AI and DePIN that have proposed changes involving lower inflation, buybacks and burns, revised unlock schedules and new staking structures. Allium Labs data showed that token buybacks by crypto projects had reached nearly $640 million by the end of August this year, compared with $545 million during the same period last year and just $366,000 for all of 2024. Solana, NEAR and Aptos are targeting token supply growth, while Lighter, Aster, io.net, Venice and SushiSwap are directing protocol or off-chain revenue toward buybacks and token support. Ethena, World, Aligned and Pharos are changing unlock schedules to address potential selling pressure. Polygon and Cronos are redesigning staking rewards around network or ecosystem revenue. Hyperliquid and pump.fun account for nearly 90% of reported buyback volume, but other tokens have fallen despite buyback programs. Allium Labs research head Elton Shehdula said buybacks can reduce circulating supply and create demand, but cannot replace organic revenue growth or guarantee long-term appreciation.

Three public blockchains halted block production within four days, but the emergency powers used in each case were not the same. Cronos responded to the Tectonic exploit by restoring the network to a pre-attack state and resuming from block height 90,896,189, effectively voiding all transactions and state changes after that checkpoint. Ontology took a preventive route, pausing block production before confirming malicious activity and later saying no user assets were lost. ICON suspended the affected contract first and then shut down the network, but by that point the foundation said most of the stolen ICX had already moved into exchange custody. Taken together, the three incidents show that a chain halt is only the first layer of control. The more important questions are who can trigger an emergency response, whether confirmed chain history can be rewritten, and what happens once funds move across chains or into centralized custodians. In Cronos’ case, rollback power only applied to assets that remained on-chain. In ICON’s case, on-chain controls arrived after the assets had largely left the chain’s sphere of control. Ontology, by contrast, used downtime to buy time for inspection, patching, and testing rather than to reverse settled transactions.

According to ChainCatcher, AI model platform B.AI has set a September 3 deadline for ending the free trial of DeepSeek V4 Flash and DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp. Starting at 17:00 SGT that day, the two models leave the free tier and move to a paid plan billed at a discount. Before that timestamp, users can still access both without charge. B.AI said it would adopt DeepSeek's official peak and off-peak pricing and then stack another discount on top. During peak windows, which run from 09:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 18:00 SGT on weekdays, usage is charged at 50% of the official price. During off-peak windows, covering remaining weekday hours and the whole weekend, the price drops by another 50%, making the final effective rate 25% of the official price. At the same time, free access stays in place for other models. GLM 5.3 Flash continues to be free, carrying 320 billion total parameters, 18 billion active parameters, and 1M context support. Qwen3.8 Flash, Hy3 and MiMo V2.5 will also be available for free going forward. ChainCatcher first reported the announcement.

CEL Solicitors says it has traced more than 5,500 BTC linked to former users of early Bitcoin exchange Intersango, a platform that shut down more than a decade ago. At a Bitcoin price of about $78,000, the identified pool is worth roughly $433.5 million. The law firm also says one UK investor has already recovered 61 BTC in full after instructing CEL on Jan. 20, 2026 and reaching a settlement on May 28, with the coins now valued at about $4.81 million. The case points to how old records from the early Bitcoin era can still carry legal weight. CEL said former users may pursue ownership claims against the traced assets, but each claimant must show a link between their identity and a historical account balance. Emails, account-linked addresses, bank transfer records and support tickets are among the documents that may help establish ownership. Court filings in California show the broader dispute is still playing out. A 2025 appellate ruling in Norman v. Strateman referenced allegations that Patrick Strateman withheld customer Bitcoin after the exchange closed and refused to return it. Separate court records also mention another user balance of 15.46306965 BTC, which the exchange’s support system had confirmed before shutdown.

Bitget said it has launched AI Smart Grid on GetAgent Playbook, adding an automated multi-asset trading strategy designed for range-bound crypto markets. The feature uses AI to scan assets, set grid parameters, monitor market conditions, and rotate across different cryptocurrencies as conditions change. Users only need to choose a trading type, strategy style, and investment amount, while GetAgent handles the remaining setup and monitoring tasks. According to Bitget, the strategy reassesses market conditions every four hours, adjusts portfolio exposure as needed, and turns specific grids on or off based on those changes. The system also runs a risk check every 15 minutes during operation. CEO Gracy Chen said AI can help narrow part of the gap between professional traders and retail users by assisting with market interpretation, strategy building, and trade execution. Bitget said the product builds on GetAgent Playbook, which launched in June as an AI strategy library covering crypto, futures, and stock screening use cases. The company previously said more than 1 million users had completed AI-driven trades through GetAgent and GetClaw, with cumulative volume above $1.2 billion. Bitget also used the announcement to highlight its broader agent-native trading push and provided updated background on its exchange, wallet, partnerships, and user protection fund.

A long-form opinion article published by ChainCatcher argues that crypto is on a path to being folded into AI finance, not pushed aside. The piece, written by Alan Walker from Silicon Valley and Jiayan Kea, frames AI and crypto as two systems built on the same mathematical asymmetry: one makes it cheap to generate claims that are hard to verify, while the other makes it cheap to generate claims that are easy to verify. On that basis, the article says an economy increasingly run by software agents will need a financial layer centered on low-cost verification, zero-trust-distance settlement, and fully computable rules. The article walks through eight sections covering proof-of-work, stablecoins, agent payments, onchain identity, and machine-native credit. It cites figures including Bitcoin mining difficulty at 127.48 trillion after an Aug. 8, 2026 adjustment, stablecoin supply at $320 billion as of May 2026, and x402 processing about 165 million agent transactions and $50 million in volume by April 2026. It also references ERC-8004, Mastercard’s proposed BVNK acquisition, Visa and OpenAI collaboration, and Hong Kong’s stablecoin licensing framework. Its central claim is that crypto’s long search for product-market fit may end with software agents rather than human users. In that scenario, the label “crypto” would fade as stablecoins, proof-of-work assets, public blockchains, wallets, and DeFi are recast as components of a broader AI finance stack.

Maji, the crypto personality known as Big Brother Maji, launched the TAIWAN meme token on Robinhood Chain on Sept. 1, pairing it with the stock token TSM. He said he would test a zero-inventory launch and buy in through the open market like other users. Data cited by Odaily shows that Maji bought $7,636.24 worth of TAIWAN at an average market capitalization of $769,000 and had not sold by publication time. TAIWAN briefly reached a $1.7 million market cap before falling to about $600,000, with only slightly more than 1,000 holders. Its liquidity pool held about $200,000, while creator fees totaled $4,784.28. The report also reviews Maji’s earlier projects, including Mithril, Cream Finance and Boba Oppa, and compares his recent performance with that of Him, Wang Xiaoer, 0xSun and Crypto D. Wang Xiaoer’s BONER call pushed the token to a peak market cap of $90 million, while JOHNDOG, backed by 0xSun and Crypto D, reached only $2.5 million. The figures point to a divided comeback for early crypto market leaders as newer traders attract social-trading users.

A malicious governance proposal has been detected in the YAM Finance voting system, and security firm Defimon is treating it as an attempted takeover of the protocol. The attacker self-delegated around 504,000 YAM tokens, roughly 3.3% of total supply and just above the governance voting threshold, then submitted proposal #45 to YamGovernorAlpha. The proposal has an empty body, encoded as 0x, and contains one operation: a call to setPendingAdmin on the YAM Timelock contract with the attacker's address as the target. Defimon warns that if the vote passes and the proposal executes, the attacker becomes pendingAdmin and can later call acceptAdmin to take full control of Timelock. That would give the attacker management authority over all YAM protocol contracts and the DAO treasury. The value exposed in this scenario is about $337,000. YAM is currently dormant, but the voting window remains live. Defimon Alerts is therefore urging YAM holders to vote no before block 25,897,343, around 34 hours from the alert.