Top crypto stories of week 33, 2026
Mon 10 to Sun 16 August 2026
The 14 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 10 to Sun 16 August 2026, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 5 comments in total. Most-shared sources: x.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- vitalik.eth: 2023 roadmap vs Strawmap shows new priorities in privacy and PQ (farcaster.xyz)
Vitalik Buterin compares his 2023 Ethereum roadmap diagram with the current Strawmap and argues that the newer plan shows changed priorities, especially in privacy and post-quantum security. He says quantum safety has been moved up in order, while VDFs and many EVM improvements were deprioritized, and Verkle trees and state expiry were replaced with newer constructions. The Strawmap adds items absent from 2023, including strong privacy work, leanSPHINCS signatures, native rollups, blob and gas futures, and a more open design space for the EVM. He also says formal verification, made feasible by modern AI tools, and STARKs are now central to the protocol's technical direction.
- @NilsEdison: Right to wipe and rebuild software on hardware you own (x.com)
Nils Edison argues that people should be able to wipe the software on tools and devices they own and rebuild it to their needs, using AI-assisted "vibe coding." He says a corner of his internet reached the same conclusion, and he suggests that old hardware such as a Wi-Fi microwave, an old table, a Rabbit R1, a Playdate or a PSP could get a second life this way. He also raises the questions of whether there is a right to repair software and whether a car could be "de-shitified" with a few prompts. The post is informal and short, offering a growing trend rather than detailed evidence.
- CTFBench - Benchmarking AI Smart Contract Auditors (ctfbench.com)
CTFBench is a benchmark for evaluating AI smart contract auditors, using test contracts that each contain exactly one known vulnerability. It scores auditors on a Vulnerability Detection Rate (the proportion of known vulnerabilities identified) and an Overreporting Index (false positives per line of code in contracts known to be free of vulnerabilities). In the listed results, SavantChat Dec 2025 scores 1.000 VDR with an OI of 0.005, while gpt_5.5 also scores 1.000 VDR but with an OI of 0.098. The page's table also lists gemini_3.1_pro at 0.984 VDR and claude_opus_4.7 at 0.730 VDR with an OI of 0.202.
- @drakefjustin: Ethereum Foundation abandoning Poseidon for SHA/BLAKE on L1 (x.com)
The Ethereum Foundation is abandoning Poseidon for L1 in favor of SHA2 or BLAKE, according to a post by @drakefjustin, because breakthrough SNARK designs show traditional hash functions can now match Poseidon inside a SNARK. The post credits binary-field research, including Binius by Jim and Ben in 2023 and Flock by Ron, Benedikt and William in June, for making this possible. It claims binary-field SNARKs reach 1M traditional hash calls proven per second on a laptop, with about 100x overhead versus native CPU boolean compute. The strawmap points to a production-grade leanVM in 2027 and CL, DL, EL deployments in 2028.
- Crypto going through a massive dot-com style shakeout as over 100 projects fold (coindesk.com)
Over 100 crypto projects shut down, filed for bankruptcy or went permanently dark in 2026, according to RootData data cited in the article, and the article describes a dot-com style shakeout in which only projects with real revenue and users are surviving. Four firms, BitMEX, BitMart, Movement Labs and Storj Labs, announced closures or filings in late July alone. The article attributes much of the collapse to token-denominated treasuries that lost 70% to 90% of their value in the bear market, while the surviving protocols it names, Hyperliquid, Aave and Ether.fi, earn fees in dollars or stablecoins.
- @virtuals_io: 79% of onchain agents on Base, 47.3% of Base agent tx via Virtuals (x.com)
- @pcaversaccio: SafePal data breach exposed 39,798 customers' personal info (x.com)
- UK Police Face recognition software (x.com)
- Manifesto Roulette (forum.devcon.org)
Mina and the Swarm Foundation team propose Manifesto Roulette, a physical and digital art installation that presents political, artistic and technological manifestos, from cypherpunk and hacker culture to effective accelerationism, to visitors at Devcon. A visitor spins a wheel on a purpose-built console, which lands on a manifesto to read, comment on, and optionally top up, with the collection stored and served through Swarm. The authors say the texts are not presented as a coherent canon or as equally desirable positions, and they propose an open call to the Ethereum community to nominate texts, with the Ethereum Foundation and Devcon team as possible curatorial partners.
- @Trezor: shipping provider breach exposed 13,689 customer addresses and emails (x.com)
Trezor reports that a data breach at one of its shipping providers exposed customer order data for new customers who received orders within the 90 days before August 8, 2026. The exposed data includes full names, shipping addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, with 11,742 customers fully exposed and 1,947 partially exposed (name, city and email). Trezor says its systems and devices remain secure, but affected customers could see more phishing attempts, and all affected customers have been contacted by email.
- Should Gnosis Chain transition into the Ethereum Economic Zone? (snapshot.box)
- @jamiegourlay: Verse V1 Tezos marketplace live with USD/ETH, Base, Shape support (x.com)
- @gnosis_: GIP-152 passes 105k-3k, Gnosis App spins out as independent company (x.com)
- Inside Ethereum Upgrades: Hegotá (x.com)
Ethlabs, a non-profit R&D lab for Ethereum, recommends prioritizing stronger censorship resistance, faster blocks, native account abstraction, and continued L1 scaling for the Hegotá upgrade. Its top recommendation for faster blocks is EIP-8198 (Quick Slots), rated S-tier, which it says would deliver a first slot-time decrease in Hegotá, with a one-time refactor that makes slot time easier to change. Ethlabs argues the window for this refactor is available now because ePBS in Glamsterdam already restructures the slot. The article says the proposals are still being evaluated and that FOCIL is already confirmed as Hegotá's headliner.