The Polylog Crypto Intelligence Brief

Morning Edition · Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Crypto

Galaxy Research Confirms $115 Million Stolen From Coldcard Wallets After Firmware Randomness Failure

A 2021 build error silently bound seed generation to a software random number generator, cutting key strength from the intended 128 bits to as low as 40 on some devices.

3 sources
Corroborated

Crypto

Aztec Discloses Critical Proving-System Flaw in Its Live Privacy Network

Core contributors say an attacker could construct a proof that passes verification for a transaction the network should reject, a class of defect that validator re-execution does not catch.

3 sources
Corroborated

Crypto

Treasury Opens Comment on the Rule That Decides Who May Issue a Dollar Stablecoin

The proposal defines when a token is issued or sold in the United States, and it arrives days after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) conditionally cleared a Trump-linked issuer to run its own trust bank.

3 sources
Corroborated

Crypto

Ethereum Opens Platåberget Testnet and Warns Tooling Built on a Fixed Gas Cap Will Break

The public testnet forks on 20 August with enshrined proposer-builder separation and block-level access lists, ahead of a target block gas limit of 200 million.

1 source

Crypto

Monad Offered Early Backers Up to $60 Million to Sell, and Almost None Took It

The buyback offer came three months before investor unlocks begin, with the MON token trading below its public sale price and most of the supply still out of circulation.

1 source
Plausible

Crypto

Compound Approves $52 Million Program and New Leadership to Chase Institutional Lending

The protocol that helped invent on-chain lending is rebuilding around institutions and tokenized real-world assets after retail deposits fell far from their peak.

2 sources

Crypto

Oracle Manipulation Proof of Concept Published as Bridge and Payment Exploits Stay Unexplained

A new reproduction shows a staking pool reading a manipulable spot price, while the $8 million Coinsbuy drain and the $24 million AFX Trade bridge theft still lack disclosed root causes.

4 sources
Corroborated

Crypto

BitMart Founder Rejects Audit Calls as Users Report Blocked Withdrawals

Sheldon Lee says a hacked Chinese-language account produced the claims, while customers ask the exchange to publish wallets, assets and liabilities before its scheduled wind-down.

2 sources
Corroborated

Crypto

BitMine Stakes 87 Percent of Its Ether While Strategy Builds Cash and Buys No Bitcoin

BitMine now holds 5.82 million ether, about 4.8 percent of supply, as Strategy sits on a $4.8 billion cash reserve and its executive chairman rules out share buybacks as a priority.

3 sources
Corroborated

Crypto

Bitcoin Miners Cut Computing Power by a Fifth in Three Quarters to Make Room for Artificial Intelligence

One miner has warned it may face bankruptcy after an unclosed financing left $33 million of maturing notes exposed against $9.2 million of liquidity in June.

2 sources
Corroborated

Markets

Nasdaq Opens an Overnight Session as Crypto Lobby Asks the SEC to Clear the Way for Tokenized Stocks

The exchange plans a 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. Eastern session from December, while the Blockchain Association asks regulators to repeal two order-handling rules it says block on-chain securities markets.

2 sources

Crypto

Solana's Agave 4.2 Reaches Its Activation Target With Mainnet Feature Gates Still Unconfirmed

The release carries a 90 percent cut to account rent and support for 4,096-byte transactions, but the first slot-time gates had not activated as the target date arrived.

1 source