Base Just Conceded Crypto's Killer App Is Finance
On July 15, Jesse Pollak said Base's bet on onchain social had 'disintegrated completely,' handed the consumer Base App to Cobie, and refocused the chain on trading, payments, and AI agents.
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Lean Ethereum Is a Four-Year Bet on Proofs, Privacy, and Cheap State
Vitalik Buterin published the Lean Ethereum strawmap, a three-to-four-year plan to replace almost every major piece of the protocol: verification instead of re-execution, privacy, quantum-safe cryptography, and a tiered state model that could cut token fees.
The Storefront Went Onchain. The Back Office Followed.
On July 1, Robinhood launched the public mainnet of an Arbitrum-based L2 carrying 95 tokenized stocks into DeFi in 120+ countries. Days later, DTCC, the utility that custodies $114 trillion in securities, began limited production trades of tokenized Russell 1000 stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries.
Open USD (OUSD): The 140-Firm Consortium Stablecoin That Shares the Float
140+ firms including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and BlackRock backed Open USD, a zero-fee stablecoin that returns reserve yield to partners and governs by board. The float was the business. Now it's the incentive.
The Toll Wars Are Ending. The Mint Wars Are Starting.
Base deployed Beryl to testnet on June 19 with mainnet set for June 25. Its centerpiece, B20, puts token issuance inside the node software as a precompile instead of a smart contract, with a compliance toolkit for stablecoin and RWA issuers.
A $480 Billion Manager Tokenized Its Loan Book. Then It Bought the Rail.
On June 9, a $480 billion asset manager wired a tokenized slice of its loan book into a synthetic dollar's reserves and took an equity stake in the protocol holding it. Morpho raised $175M to be the credit network, and tokenized RWAs are up 589% on the year.