Top crypto stories of week 11, 2026
Mon 9 to Sun 15 March 2026
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 9 to Sun 15 March 2026, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 41 comments in total. Most-shared sources: x.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- @ethereumfndn: Today, the Foundation’s Board released the EF Mandate. (firefly.social)
- @whycryptonotfun: why many of us aren't having fun working in crypto anymore (x.com)
The author of this essay, posted as a tweet by @whycryptonotfun, argues that many people working in crypto are no longer enjoying their jobs because the market for their work has shrunk and the alternatives look weak. The essay says selling infrastructure to crypto developers is now a market of roughly $2-300 million a year split among hundreds of organizations, with the most successful generating double-digit millions. It presents three crypto-and-AI options (tokenized traditional businesses, decentralized AI infrastructure, and stablecoin infrastructure for agents) as unappealing, and it closes by proposing that crypto capital should fund AI-driven "agent companies."
- @Polymarket: Meta acquires Moltbook, a social network built for AI agents (x.com)
- yj_nearbyglasses: attempting to detect smart glasses nearby and warn you (github.com)
Nearby Glasses is an open-source app by Yves Jeanrenaud that scans for Bluetooth Low Energy signals from smart glasses and sends a warning when they are detected nearby. It identifies devices by manufacturer company IDs in BLE advertising data, including Meta, Luxottica, Snapchat and Zhuhai Jieli, and also matches device names such as rayban and HeyCyan. The author warns that this approach produces false positives, for example from VR headsets, and that the default RSSI threshold of -75 dBm roughly corresponds to 10 to 15 meters in open space. The author also states that the app stores no personal data and that harassing someone because of suspected glasses may be a criminal offence.
- Trump's DOJ Seeks October Retrial for Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm (decrypt.co)
Federal prosecutors have asked a Manhattan judge to retry Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm on money-laundering and sanctions-evasion conspiracy charges that a jury deadlocked on last August. In a letter to Judge Katherine Polk Failla, prosecutors under U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton requested an October 5 or 12 retrial date, which the defense indicated it was available for. The court must first rule on Storm's Rule 29 acquittal motion, scheduled for argument on April 9, and the defense has said setting a trial date before then is "premature."
- POAP to enter maintenance mode March 16th, 2026 (x.com)
POAP is moving into maintenance mode starting March 16, 2026, because growth stayed limited to a niche and it could not evolve into the broader infrastructure the team believes the ecosystem needs. From March 16, new issuers will no longer be able to access the issuer interfaces, while existing issuers keep their tools, created POAPs remain intact, and collector interfaces and APIs continue to function. The platform will no longer be actively developed and some operations may run more slowly. The team says it is focusing on an open collectibles standard and a platform offering a canonical implementation, and it has not yet decided whether the current platform will connect to the new system.
- AltStore (altstore.io)
AltStore is an app store for sideloading iOS apps, and it lets developers distribute their own apps without going through Apple's App Store. Anyone can publish apps by hosting a text file with basic app information as a "source", which users add in AltStore so the apps appear automatically. The project is open source and developed by a small team, and AltStore LLC states that AltStore, Delta, and Clip are not associated with Nintendo Co., Ltd. or Apple Inc. The site also notes that AltStore shows an app's permissions and alerts users if they change.
- tree-style invite systems reduce AI slop (abyss.fish)
- @everythingempty: Virtuals' north star is agentic GDP (xcancel.com)
Virtuals names agentic GDP (aGDP) as its north star, defined as the economic value and revenue that Virtuals citizens, meaning AI agents and the builders behind them, create collectively. The post lists four pillars: an agent marketplace where agents hire other agents, with a new ERC standard released; personalised AI agents, with about 30,000 DAUs using its butler product and 1.7 million jobs completed; tokenised co-ownership of agents, with 10 billion USD in trading volume and over 120,000 co-owners; and robotics. It states that AI agents have made over 3 million USD in revenue excluding trading fees.
- @feyprotocol: fey shutting down infrastructure, founders to market sell tokens (x.com)
- Summer and then winter (basche42.substack.com)
The author argues that crypto faces a macro-driven price surge followed by a deep structural winter, even as the sector's infrastructure is being built out. The essay predicts a blow-off top in the next 12 to 18 months, driven by expected Fed pivots and geopolitical relief rallies, before a shakeout. It contends that crypto's value proposition is in crisis, citing dead NFTs, idle L1s and L2s, and talent loss, while trading, stablecoins and neobanking show real traction. It expects infrastructure to be reused by corporates such as Stripe and Coinbase's Base, with the surviving decentralized core being small but real.
- Humanoid Robots Arrive on the Ukrainian Battlefield: A New Era in Warfare (jamesmarinero.substack.com)
Two Phantom MK-1 humanoid robots, developed by San Francisco-based startup Foundation, arrived in Ukraine in February 2026 for evaluation in an active high-intensity war zone. Foundation confirmed the transfer in early March 2026, describing the deployment as a pilot programme rather than part of a standard military aid package. The robots are initially assigned to reconnaissance and logistics support near the frontline, where officials are testing how a bipedal machine handles mud, rubble and destroyed infrastructure. Data from these weeks is expected to inform the Phantom MK-2, slated for introduction in April 2026.
- The Ethereum Foundation Mandate (ethereum.foundation)
- European Parliament voted End-to-end encrypted communications cannot be weakened (eupolicy.social)
- @jinglejamOP: OP Labs layoffs reflect narrowing focus, not runway issues (x.com)
OP Labs has laid off members of its team, with co-founder Jinglejam (@jinglejamOP) stating that the decision reflects a narrowing of the company's focus rather than a shortage of runway. The announcement says the company prioritized informing affected staff and giving them time to process the news before going public. Jinglejam encourages teams across the ecosystem to reach out to those leaving, describing them as talented engineers, operators, and builders who helped build Optimism, and offers to make introductions for teams that are hiring, with dual consent.
- chat.fun - Create an onchain social experiment in 5 minutes (chat.fun)
- Tlon (tlon.io)
Tlon is presented as a platform where people and AI agents collaborate to research, organize, monitor, and build small systems, with the context kept in a permanent archive. The company says the archive lets users experiment without being locked into a single model provider or harness. Tlon gives each user an agent that can read the context of conversations within a shared environment with their contacts' agents, and agents can handle long-running and recurring tasks. The company states that it uses the agents to monitor its infrastructure and progress and to manage its households. The text states that models and harnesses will change, so users should keep their context and retain the ability to switch.
- The Rise and Fall of Urbit (compactmag.com)
Urbit, a decentralized network project created by Curtis Yarvin, promised users sovereignty over their data and identities as an alternative to Big Tech platforms. Its address space is divided into planets, stars and galaxies, and the network launched in 2017 through an Ethereum smart contract that sold identities as NFTs. Tlon Corporation and the Urbit Foundation promoted the project, with Foundation CEO Josh Lehmann saying it would "make computers personal again." Its appeal was largely speculative, the text says, because Urbit did not work especially well.
- Anonymous credentials: an illustrated primer (blog.cryptographyengineering.com)
Anonymous credentials, first proposed by David Chaum, let a user prove they hold a valid credential without letting the website or issuer link that use back to their real identity. The article argues this matters more as age-verification laws in 25 U.S. states and at least a dozen countries push sites to check government ID. It explains the central obstacle: a digital credential can be copied endlessly, so systems must limit duplication through single-use credentials, revocation, or hardware binding. It describes Chaum's approach as using blind signatures, where the signer cannot see the message it signs.
- Dune CLI & Skills (docs.dune.com)
The Dune CLI and Agent Skills give AI coding agents structured access to Dune's blockchain datasets, query engine, visualizations, and dashboards from within the tools users already work in. The Dune CLI is a terminal interface for discovering datasets, executing DuneSQL queries, and managing visualizations and dashboards, and all of its commands support JSON output for agent use. Dune Skills are portable instruction packages that teach agents to use the CLI, including writing SQL, handling errors, and managing costs. The Dune Skill is installed by the CLI install script and is supported by agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, and OpenAI Codex.