Base blamed a 33-minute outage on Aug. 5 on an unprepared sequencer and said it has fixed the issue to ensure any chosen sequencer will be ready to process transactions. Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Base stopped producing blocks for 33 minutes on Tuesday after switching to a backup sequencer that wasn’t set up properly to process transactions. The incident began at 6:07 am UTC when the active sequencer started falling behind on block production, prompting Conductor — Base’s system for managing sequencer availability and reliability — to switch sequencers. However, it switched to an “unhealthy mainnet sequencer” that was still being set up and thus wasn’t able to produce blocks, Base Build’s X account said in a post on Tuesday. Read more
Institutions may now have a clearer footing to build products around liquid staking tokens and unlock new market segments, according to industry executives. The crypto industry is hailing the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s latest guidance on liquid staking as a rare regulatory win, with stakeholders calling it a major step forward for decentralized finance and institutional adoption of digital assets. Released Tuesday, the SEC staff issued a guidance on liquid staking, writing that under certain conditions, liquid staking activities and the receipt tokens they generate do not constitute securities offerings. “Institutions can now confidently integrate LSTs into their products which is sure to drive new revenue streams, expand customer bases, and enable the creation of secondary markets for staked assets,” Mara Schmiedt, CEO of blockchain developer company Alluvial told Cointelegraph. Read more
Commissioner Caroline A. Crenshaw warns that the SEC’s statement offers little clarity for liquid staking providers. US SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw sharply criticized a staff statement released on Tuesday by the regulator’s Division of Corporation Finance that praised the SEC’s position on liquid staking activities, saying it created more confusion than clarity. “Some things are better left unsaid,” began Crenshaw’s rebuttal, in which she argued that the staff statement “only muddies the waters” by relying on unverified assumptions. Crenshaw said the statement creates a “wobbly wall of facts without an anchor in industry reality,” warning liquid staking entities to proceed cautiously: “Caveat liquid staker.” Read more
The developer tool offers customizable wallets, USDC rewards and deeper integration with Coinbase’s Base app, aligning with recent pro-crypto legislation. Crypto exchange Coinbase is launching a developer tool aimed at simplifying wallet onboarding and boosting technical capabilities, as self-custody gains momentum in the United States following the passage of pro-crypto legislation earlier this month. Offered through the Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP), the Embedded Wallets tool gives developers access to the same infrastructure that will power Coinbase’s forthcoming decentralized exchange, the company disclosed Tuesday. The toolkit offers native rewards in USDC (USDC), the stablecoin issued by Circle. Users can earn 4.1% APY on USDC balances held within the wallets, without requiring staking. According to the Coinbase Developer Platform, this APY can either be retained by developers or passed on to users. Read more
Bitcoin has outperformed Berkshire and its top holdings in 2025, highlighting the cost of ignoring BTC as a hedge or growth asset. Key takeaways: Berkshire could have made $850M from Bitcoin with just a 5% allocation. Bitcoin has outperformed Berkshire stock and its top holdings in 2025. Read more
The State of Michigan Retirement System has nearly tripled its Bitcoin ETF holdings, signaling rising institutional confidence in digital assets. Michigan’s state pension fund has significantly increased its exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) via the ARK 21Shares (ARKB) exchange-traded fund, highlighting how ETFs are streamlining access to digital assets for institutional investors. By the end of the second quarter, the State of Michigan Retirement System owned 300,000 ARKB shares, worth $10.737 million, according to regulatory filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This marks a notable increase from the 110,000 shares it held in the previous year. ARKB is one of the 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs approved by the SEC in January 2024, offering direct exposure to the cryptocurrency. Read more
The move follows significant gas fee reductions after the Dencun upgrade, and comes amid intensifying competition across blockchains. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and developer Anders Elowsson have introduced EIP-7999, a proposal to streamline Ethereum's transaction fee structure. Released on Tuesday, the proposal seeks to establish a unified multidimensional fee market, allowing users to specify a single aggregate maximum fee for multiple resources. The proposal, if adopted, would eliminate the need to estimate and manage multiple fee components when submitting transactions and let users specify one all-encompassing maximum fee, making paying for transactions simpler and more predictable. Read more