Project Progress

February 11 News, Hong Kong financial regulators are accelerating the launch of perpetual contracts to enrich the local cryptocurrency market product lineup. Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission Chairwoman Lisa Fong Yip said at the 2026 Consensus Hong Kong that regulators are about to announce a high-level framework that will allow regulated trading platforms to offer perpetual futures contracts to institutional clients. According to Lisa Fong Yip, the framework is primarily aimed at institutional investors, with retail clients not currently included, and it emphasizes risk management and customer fairness. Brokers will in the future be able to provide financing services to creditworthy institutional clients, with collateral including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to ensure market stability.

Cross-chain protocol developer LayerZero recently announced a strategic investment from stablecoin giant Tether and launched a new product Zero, which utilizes ZK proof technology to achieve separation of execution and verification, pushing forward a multi-core world computer architecture. Additionally, LayerZero has expanded its advisory team to include traditional finance heavyweights such as Woodie, further enhancing its market position.

LayerZero releases the new L1 architecture Zero, achieving 100x scalability under decentralization through ZK proofs, sparking widespread discussion. Supporters call it a major breakthrough in blockchain, while skeptics point out that the technology is still in the white paper stage and raise concerns about token economic risks.

Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission Chief Executive Julia Leung stated at Consensus 2026 that an ecosystem for virtual asset regulation will be established, along with three new initiatives, including allowing brokers to provide virtual asset financing for clients, establishing a regulatory framework for perpetual contracts, and relaxing related market maker regulations. Tokenized asset management is growing rapidly, and the SFC has authorized multiple tokenized funds and plans to work with the SAR government to advance legislation.

_SOIL’s using the XRPL Lending Protocol to transform institutional asset management. Real yields, automated loans, and on-chain credit are coming to XRP._ SOIL’s making waves on XRPL. And it’s not just talk. The farm is leveraging XLS-66 to solve real problems. Institutional problems that’ve

Foresight News Report: Clanker developer Jack Dishman announced that the Clanker token now supports deployment via the X (Twitter) platform. New features include allowing users to deposit some of their token supply into their own or other accounts, and share costs with others. The development team stated that to speed up the launch, they rewrote the old code from about a year ago, and there may currently be some bugs. The team is working on resolving these issues.

Tools for Humanity, the parent company of Worldcoin, has recently experienced frequent leadership changes, with several executives resigning. Insiders point to issues with company culture and leadership style. Amidst the personnel shakeup, the company is also facing regulatory challenges related to biometric data collection, while the founder has separately established a brain-computer interface company, drawing public attention.

Blockchain company LayerZero Labs plans to launch a Layer-1 blockchain called Zero, with Citadel leading the investment. The target market is institutional finance. Zero is scheduled to launch in Fall 2026. ARK CEO Cathie Wood will join the advisory board, along with members including ICE Strategy Vice President and former Digital Asset Head at BNY Mellon.

Ripple and Zand Bank are launching a stablecoin bridge connecting RLUSD and AEDZ on XRP Ledger, enhancing the UAE's digital economy with regulated custody solutions and direct liquidity, paving the way for broader institutional adoption and improved stablecoin functionality.

Pi Coin launches the Starpath and Pitogo Social testnets. Starpath is an AI chatbot that helps users learn about blockchain and Web3 features. Pitogo Social creates a robot-free community platform where users can publish content and earn active points. 16 million users have migrated to the mainnet, with a total of 35 million registered users.

Anything Labs launches the AI on-chain transaction settlement layer UUSD, aiming to create a peer-to-peer electronic cash system for the AI era, solve the fundamental issues of AI Agent on-chain transactions, and endow it with an independent economic identity.

Author: Nancy, PANews The once lively crypto scene has long become a distant memory at a bar. Narratives have failed one after another, projects are accelerating their cleanup, token prices remain under pressure, liquidity continues to flee, and the difficulty of startups keeps rising. The trend of a crypto winter seems difficult to reverse. In this atmosphere, a long article titled "A BNB Startup Story Without 'Shandong Learning'" unexpectedly went viral in the crypto community, also allowing many industry practitioners to feel a rare sense of sincerity and passion. The protagonist of this lengthy article is Cedric, the founder of the token issuance platform Flap Protocol (Butterfly). Recently, PANews interviewed Cedric, who shared the original intention behind writing this viral article and revisited the real entrepreneurial journey of a grassroots team that abandoned impatience, focused on PMF (Product-Market Fit), and ultimately achieved growth in a sluggish market.

The Ethereum mainnet has launched the ERC-8004 standard to establish identity, reputation, and verification mechanisms for AI agents. Led by MetaMask AI leaders and others, feedback was collected from over 80 teams. A trust system is built through three on-chain registries, integrated with x402 payment. It has been deployed on 12 chains, with an ecosystem including Virtuals Protocol, ElizaOS, and more.

Uniswap wins in lawsuit against Bprotocol Foundation and LocalCoin Ltd., with lawyers stating it did not infringe on related patents. Uniswap Labs reaffirms its protocol code is open source and opposes the allegations.

At the "Build and Scale in 2026" forum, several guests discussed the key challenges of the new Web3 era, including identity and trust issues, AI agent payment security, and blockchain-supported sustainable development, believing that by 2026, the industry will shift its focus to infrastructure development and practical applications.

On March 15, 2024, independent musician Alicia Chen made a decision that would revolutionize her career. She did not hand her new album over to a record label nor upload it to streaming platforms. Instead, she packaged all 10 songs into a single NFT collection and sold each copy on the blockchain for 0.1 Ethereum. Within 48 hours, all 1,000 NFTs were sold out, earning her approximately $320,000—an amount that is 20 times the total earnings she had accumulated from Spotify streams over the past decade. Behind this silent financial revolution is a paradigm shift reshaping the global music industry. While traditional streaming platforms still defend the revenue model of $3-4 per thousand plays, a quiet transformation is underway—shifting music from an "infinitely reproducible digital stream" to a "scarce asset that can be owned." Music NFTs are rewriting the industry's value distribution.

PANews February 11 News, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire posted on the X platform that Stripe has launched a preview version of machine and AI agent payment features, which support USDC payments and integrate the X.402 standard.

February 11 News, Robinhood Chain testnet is now officially launched on the Arbitrum platform, providing developers with instant faucet support for building. This is an extension of Robinhood's move after launching stock tokens on Arbitrum One, demonstrating its ongoing efforts in on-chain infrastructure and Web3 ecosystem exploration. Robinhood Chain is built as an independent Layer 2 network based on Arbitrum, while inheriting Ethereum's security and decentralization features, maintaining compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem to avoid liquidity fragmentation and standard conflicts. The platform allows customizable configurations, including optimized throughput, flexible governance, and support for custom gas tokens, while offering fast confirmation times and low transaction costs to create a smooth experience similar to applications for users.

In brief Citadel Securities is backing LayerZero’s Zero blockchain alongside DTCC, Intercontinental Exchange, and other institutions. Zero is designed to share work instead of having every participant handle every transaction, making it more efficient. LayerZero claims Zero could reach