Top crypto stories of week 33, 2025
Mon 11 to Sun 17 August 2025
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 11 to Sun 17 August 2025, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 15 comments in total. Most-shared sources: farcaster.xyz, x.com, vitalik.eth.limo.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Introducing, Simple Page (jthor.eth.link)
Simple Page is a new tool for publishing websites on Ethereum, built by its creator as a passion project to let them publish a personal website on their ENS domain. The article says it is designed to outlast its creator, with each website update's fingerprint recorded on the Ethereum ledger and site content stored on IPFS. Publishing works by making an Ethereum transaction, and the editor is bundled inside each website so owners can update content even if simplepage.eth no longer exists. Sites are sustained by a subscription fee, not a token, which pays for DService nodes that index Ethereum and seed content on IPFS. The code is open source under GPL v3.0.
- @v: Base app drops Mobile Wallet Protocol support (farcaster.xyz)
Farcaster is disabling Coinbase Wallet / TBA as a transaction option on mobile because the latest version of that wallet no longer supports the Mobile Wallet Protocol. Until recently, users could transact on Farcaster through either Coinbase Wallet or Rainbow using that protocol. The post says the change was made after discussion with the Base team, which may add support in the future, and that Farcaster will revisit enabling it then. It also states the change affects fewer than 2% of transacting users.
- Kiwi now has a llms.txt (news.kiwistand.com)
Kiwi News, a community-curated site for crypto, Ethereum and builder-focused tech links, has added an llms.txt file to help language models and developers find its URLs and machine-readable data. Stories are submitted and upvoted by holders of the Kiwi Pass NFT, and every submission, upvote and comment is a signed message on an open peer-to-peer protocol, so all data is public and verifiable. The file recommends the plain-text endpoint /stories/context for questions about a single story and lists JSON and RSS feeds, a weekly archive, a public read API on port 443, and a read/write API on port 8443.
- "I support it only if it's open source" should be a more common viewpoint (vitalik.eth.limo)
The author argues that the view "I support it only if it's open source" is undervalued as a middle path between rapid, unrestricted deployment of powerful technologies and control by trusted gatekeepers. The argument holds that open source improves equality of access, makes producers out of consumers, improves verifiability, and prevents vendor lock-in. Applied to proprietary life extension, for example, the author expects open source would let anyone use and offer the technology cheaply, whereas proprietary versions might be limited to billionaires and political leaders. The author also says open source carries misuse risks for things like nuclear weapons, and is skeptical of gatekeeper control because militaries have a poor history of constraining themselves, citing the Soviet bioweapons program.
- @tokenfox.eth: Happy 4th anniversary Moon in Motion by @miragenesi.eth (farcaster.xyz)
- @timdaub.eth: Profiles are back (farcaster.xyz)
- GPT-5 and the Great Slowdown (research.auditless.com)
The author argues that LLM progress may be entering a slower, more nuanced phase, and that founders should consider how different forms of model stagnation would change what they build. The piece cites GPT-5 failing to impress relative to its promotion, and usage limits introduced by Replit, Cursor and Claude Code that left some users finding the services less helpful. It suggests subsidized subscriber credits used to embed services in workflows are now being tuned back for utilization and profitability. It then outlines hypothetical startup "metas," such as workflow agents, domain data loops and research firms, for different stagnation scenarios.
- Google Play Store Bans Wallets That Don't Have Banking License (therage.co)
Google's Play Store policy requires software wallet developers to hold a license before publishing cryptocurrency wallet apps, and the article argues that this effectively bars non-custodial wallets. The policy targets 15 jurisdictions, including the European Union and the United States, and in the US requires developers to be registered with FinCEN as a Money Services Business and with a state as a money transmitter, or to be a federal or state chartered bank. In the EU it requires authorization as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA, a license the article says would not be issued to a simple non-custodial wallet. The article also notes that Google later clarified non-custodial wallets are not meant to be in scope and that the policy will be updated.
- @polynya: USDC on Ethereum adds intermediaries, making it less decentralized (farcaster.xyz)
Polynya argues that deploying USDC on Ethereum makes the stablecoin less decentralized by adding intermediaries, mainly a few thousand node runners, that are unnecessary for many use cases. He says USDC is issued by Circle, a publicly owned company regulated by government agencies, and that Ethereum is very centralized but differently so. He adds that Ethereum or Tron are not the best technology for most stablecoin payments, though they suit some cases, such as jurisdictions that restrict USDC and access to Ethereum DeFi.
- @kenny: our friend @vitalik.eth has Zora thoughts (farcaster.xyz)
- Epoch 9...our most creative one yet? (blog.octant.build)
- Polynya on Solana's NASDAQ aspirations (x.com)
- ETH staking exit queue grows (decrypt-dispatch.beehiiv.com)
Ethereum's staking exit queue has reached an all-time high, meaning users trying to unstake ETH now wait longer than ever to reclaim their tokens. Users trying to unstake currently face a wait of nearly 16 days, with $4 billion worth of ETH sitting in the queue. Bitwise Senior Investment Strategist Juan Leon told Decrypt that unstaking usually doesn't cause a sudden crash, but under stress it can act like a steady tap of new supply, pressuring prices lower if it overwhelms new demand for ETH.
- On idea-driven ideas (vitalik.eth.limo)
Vitalik Buterin argues that good decision-making in complex settings needs both idea-driven reasoning, meaning principles and ideologies that generate intermediate steps, and pragmatic reasoning, and that ideologies are best understood as a mix of means and ends. He says the world is too complex to reason pragmatically through every decision, and that principles give communities a robust basis for coordination, since they act as a brake against clever arguments for harmful actions. He also says that different people holding narrower goals enables specialization and measurement, and he notes that ideologies can cause motivated reasoning, such as climate hawks resisting solar geoengineering and crypto enthusiasts resisting non-blockchain solutions.
- The Creator Economy Is Race to the Bottom for Human Dignity (zine.kleinkleinklein.com)
- @0FJAKE: Base/Ethereum identity fragmentation across 4 naming systems (x.com)
Jake (@0FJAKE) argues that Base and Ethereum have a identity fragmentation problem that needs resolving, since four naming systems are in use: Farcaster names, Base names, ENS names and Zora names. He says switching someone from their Farcaster name to an ENS name in a different client would force them to change their identity, and that three or more popular naming systems is both unideal and unrealistic. He notes that the Farcaster, Base and Zora apps currently accept different sets of names, with Zora accepting only Zora names, and that the issue matters most for creator coins, since users would not want separate coins attached to each name. He notes that no app he is aware of currently forces such a switch, and he invites other people's thoughts.
- When Did AI Take Over Hacker News? (zachperk.com)
AI-related posts on Hacker News are at their highest level since 2019, and the first major jump came with GPT-4's release in Q1 2023 rather than ChatGPT in Q3 2022. Using GPT-5-mini, the analysis classified 24,910 top 10 stories from January 1, 2019 to August 15, 2025, finding 2,816 AI-related posts, of which 52.13% were positive, 31.46% negative and 16.41% neutral. Sentiment turned largely negative in Q3 2021, amid backlash to Apple's on-device CSAM scanning called NeuralHash and clips of GitHub Copilot reproducing licensed code, and has stayed mostly stable since, with recent quarters only slightly more negative.
- @stephancill: gifted sister $70 ETH, $20 $higher, $20 $degen last year (farcaster.xyz)
- @dwr: 9 thoughts on consumer crypto onboarding and mobile UX challenges (x.com)
Dan Romero (@dwr) lists nine observations on consumer crypto onboarding and mobile UX, with the core claim that products requiring seamless onchain interaction will push most people back to Web2 if users must switch apps for each transaction or maintain spend permissions. The post states that most consumers spend their free time on mobile, prefer native apps over PWAs, and do not have a pre-existing wallet. It adds that mobile deeplinks between apps are unreliable, especially on iOS, and that adding choices in onboarding flows reduces conversion. It also says world-class Web2 consumer apps typically onboard with a phone number, sometimes an email address, and recommends building on an open protocol so power users can bring their own wallet.
- @polynya: Regulated stablecoins don't need blockchains (farcaster.xyz)
Polynya argues that regulated stablecoins no longer need blockchains, since regulatory acceptance means they do not need the strict global consensus property blockchains provide. He suggests regulated issuers such as Tether and Circle could run their own infrastructure, with blockchains as one option, and that transacting directly with centralized exchanges like Binance might be prudent because much consumer stablecoin use happens there. He also expects stablecoins to remain a large part of Tron and Ethereum (including L2s) given their network effects over the last decade, while unregulated products such as USDS and LUSD will continue to depend on Ethereum.