Latest blockchain news: August 2025

August comes packed with updates for the blockchain ecosystem. Beyond the fact that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) clarified that liquid staking activities and tokens are not considered securities—a major win for global adoption—each ecosystem has moved forward with key announcements, launches, and upgrades.

At Stakely, we closely follow every development, not only in our role as network validators, but as active observers of everything that impacts delegators, networks, and developers. As always, we bring you the August recap with the latest blockchain news, including updates from Stakely.

The migration to Commit-Boost improves relay management, real-time monitoring, and prepares the network for future innovations like Ethereum preconfirmations.

We’re now strengthening Avail’s modular network, driving scalability and new opportunities in the blockchain ecosystem. Discover Avail ⬇️

This Uniswap Layer 2 rollup on Ethereum processes transactions off-chain and publishes data on Ethereum, reducing costs and increasing scalability. Our node helps ensure data availability and strengthens the network for reliable and decentralized DeFi.

Five years validating networks, building tools, and growing alongside an amazing staking community. Thanks to everyone who believes in our vision!

Take a look at what we’ve achieved:

We were sponsors and speakers at this educational event, where our Co-founder & Head of Node Operations, Paco Ducha, joined a roundtable on the future of Web3. Here’s what happened ⬇️

YMAX is the new cross-chain portfolio management and execution layer, optimizing transfers and account management for safer and smoother operations.

The Baby Raptr update is now live on mainnet, and we at Stakely are thrilled to have contributed to its launch.

Shelby launches early access to its tools. The new platform allows developers to explore and test features before the official release.

This month Aptos reached a block time of 98ms, with 8.6B $ in monthly USDC transfers and 23.1M transactions.

Program updates: Registration is now open for the CTRL+MOVE global hackathon with $100K in prizes. Applications for Aptos Collective are also open.

Archway integrates with Range to offer real-time cross-chain metrics, enabling users to monitor Archway’s performance and activity live with detailed data from the Range dashboard.

AKT from Akash Network is now available on Archway Connect, enabling seamless swaps directly from the platform.

Transactions on Avalanche C-Chain increased by 272% in a single month.

You can now transfer BTC to Avalanche with just a 0.1% fee, thanks to the Bitcoin Bridge that connects BTC liquidity with DeFi speed on AVAX for efficient transactions.

Avalanche supports developers with $250K in retroactive rewards via Retro9000. Eight L1 projects and tools were awarded in the program’s second cohort.

Celestia reaches 100M blobs!

Celestia launches a demo of its native ZK bridge for ultra-fast transfers. ZK interoperability allows TIA to move in under a second without relying on multisigs.

Finally, Celestia resolved the IBC transfer issue of TIA on mainnet. The dev team successfully restored functionality after the recent network incident.

Celo is preparing for the Ice Cream hard fork, bringing scalability and speed improvements: EigenDA v2 will be integrated on September 10, and validators must upgrade to version 1.8.2.

Celo launches Celo Sepolia, its new Ethereum-compatible L2 testnet. This new testnet will replace Alfajores on September 30; migration is recommended by September 14 to avoid interruptions.

Celo Camp Batch 10 closes applications with 363 teams from 65 countries: 37 projects have already pitched, with 25 more preparing to do so in the coming days.

Celo launches rewards for Season 0 contributors with the Prosperity Pass! The drop rewards on-chain activity, governance participation, and verification via Self Protocol.

Concordium integrates with Safle Wallet: this partnership enables access to the Concordium ecosystem directly from Safle Wallet, boosting use cases in digital identity and PayFi payments.

New ID App with age verification based on ZKPs is Concordium’s privacy-focused identity solution applying zero-knowledge proofs to everyday use cases, starting with regulatory-compliant age checks.

CCD is now available on Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest exchange! This marks a key step in LATAM by listing its token in the region’s fastest-growing crypto market, improving access to the PayFi ecosystem.

Cosmos is now integrated with Dfns: secure, programmable wallets via API. Developers and institutions can now create Cosmos wallets, sign transactions with ATOM, and monitor on-chain activity in real time from a single API.

IBC Explorer has been updated and now tracks all connected chains. With over 803,000 transactions and nearly $1B in monthly volume, the tool is solidifying its position as the IBC’s on-chain radar.

Covalent closes a strong Q2: 471M API calls, over 5M CXT bought back, and 300M CXT in staking.

Covalent launches the Mindshare Leaderboard, with $200K in rewards for creators. In partnership with WallChain, Covalent rewards those who make a real impact with authentic on-chain data content. The top 80 will receive monthly CXT rewards for 5 months.

CXT is now available on Revolut: thanks to this integration, over 60M users can now buy and sell CXT instantly via the Revolut app.

Ethereum launches Phase 2 of “Trillion Dollar Security” and celebrates 10 years with record numbers! Over 2.9 billion transactions, 200 million unique addresses, and $20B in revenue back its first decade.

Lido fixes a critical vulnerability affecting its community staking module that could have allowed fraudulent withdrawals.

Ethereum advances with PeerDAS and Native Rollups: PeerDAS optimizes blob handling for L2s, while Native Rollups promise direct execution on L1 with lower risks and higher decentralization.

Stablecoins on Ethereum hit record highs: $143B in market capitalization.

We picked the 10 best non-custodial Ethereum wallets for 2025, based on security, UX, and integration ⬇️

Stage 8 of the VIP program ended with $215K in INIT distributed among 5,900 users for exploring the ecosystem. Stage 9 is already underway, renewing every two weeks with new opportunities to earn from on-chain activity.

Initia Foundation launched the Bribe Match Program, which matches 50% of bribes on Cabal (up to 5,000 INIT per appchain and per stage), incentivizing governance participation.

Galaxy and NTT Digital join the Injective Council as founding members. Galaxy, with $10B in assets, supports institutional tokenization; while NTT Digital strengthens Injective’s presence in Japan and global expansion.

Record activity and reinforced deflationary model: over 129,000 monthly users (+70% YoY), a +1400% growth in RWAs since January, and more than 6.7M INJ burned—all driving Injective’s expansion.

Injective expands its ecosystem with SBET and Helix, introducing ETH trading backed by on-chain treasury and tokenized derivatives of Nvidia H100 GPUs—bringing AI computing into DeFi with real-time oracles.

The SEC opens a comment period for Canary Capital’s Staked INJ ETF, a key step toward approval and listing on the CBOE.

The KILT migration period has ended!

USDT will no longer be available on Kusama starting September 1, 2025. From that date, USDT on Kusama will be frozen and inaccessible if not migrated in time.

All LTO holders must swap to EQTY on Base. The new contract goes live on September 1, 2025, at 12:00 UTC. Follow the instructions carefully to complete the migration 👇

Monad testnet updated: block time reduced to 400ms and MonadBFT is active. The new version introduces JIT execution, WebSockets, improved consensus, and more efficient full nodes.

NEAR Intents now supports 109 assets! Plus, it surpassed $10M daily and reached $320M monthly trading volume.

NEAR Protocol reaches 9 shards, 600ms block time, and 1.2s finality. Operating with 295 active validators and consolidating its user-friendly sharding architecture.

Discover everything about NEAR Protocol ⬇️

Privacy demand in DeFi is growing: the value protected in MASP exceeds $2M, with an 80% increase over 30 days.

First mainnet ETH protected in Housefire: this ETH was shielded in the testnet MASP, then unshielded and returned to Ethereum—a first step toward IBC Eureka and EVM asset support.

Namadillo v2 is on the way, with the rollout of an improved interface already underway and soon to be available for the community.

Osmosis hits new records! With 1.25s blocks and over 40 million produced, Osmosis reaches a new milestone. The protocol has now surpassed $20M in cumulative revenue and over $42B in trading volume.

Osmosis launches update v30, featuring permissionless pools and key security improvements.

Bitcoin now has cross-chain swaps on Persistence DEX V2. The cross-chain swap solution for BTC assets on Base and BNB Chain is now live, and the rewards period for early testers ended on August 25, 2025.

Persistence DEX V2 testnet campaign ends with over 18,000 participants. Rewards have been distributed after the campaign, which recorded 418,000 orders and validated the use of cross-chain swaps with Bitcoin.

Cohort 5 of the Decentralized Voices program is now open, promoting more inclusive governance with more delegators, the new DV-Light path for light participation, and the experimental integration of AI agents as thematic delegates.

Secret Network prepares to close 2025 with more decentralization and composability. Before the year ends, we’ll see the arrival of SecretAI/VM, SNIP governance improvements, and community-upgradable contracts.

CMB International launches first public tokenized fund on Solana! The subsidiary of China Merchants Bank tokenizes its public fixed-income fund on Solana, marking a milestone in institutional adoption.

130,000 merchants now accept SOL payments thanks to BitPay integration.

Solana dApps generate more revenue than any other L1 or L2 blockchain: with 2.54M active addresses and $6.06M generated in just 24 hours.

Delegate SOL with Stakely: 0% commission = 100% rewards

S Airdrop Season 1 gets better: now you can claim starting at 5 S and get 70 S per eligible shard (one per wallet), making the airdrop more accessible to users.

Sonic launches its first governance proposal: the community votes on whether to move forward with an S ETF, featuring institutional custody via BitGo and potential listing on NASDAQ.

Fee Monetization in Sonic surpasses 2M S in revenue: SiloDAO leads with 17,026 S earned, consolidating the income-sharing model within the ecosystem.

SonicLabs distributes over 2.4M S in its Innovator Fund. Five projects were selected, with ODX leading the way by receiving 800,000 S for its standout proposal.

Bitcoin staking is coming to Starknet! After SNIP-31 passed with nearly 93% support, Starknet will allow staking of tokenized BTC (WBTC, LBTC, tBTC, and SolvBTC) to earn rewards in STRK, assigning up to 25% of consensus power to Bitcoin.

Stride wraps up its Cosmos chapter and explores new business lines beyond the ecosystem. After canceling the Cosmos EVM project, Stride reached an agreement, continues to operate its liquid staking platform, and is exploring new revenue streams beyond Cosmos in August.

Sui integrates with Dfns to offer institutional-grade MPC wallets and implements passwordless, seedless login via Passkey, enhancing user security and experience.

Sui and Alkimi bring digital advertising on-chain with support from brands like AWS and TikTok. The collaboration aims to transform the ad ecosystem with transparency, efficiency, and big-name partners already onboard.

Suilend launches its xBTC campaign with $300K in rewards, encouraging use of xBTC on the platform with rewards in SEND and SUI now available.

Move is enhanced with AI via Alibaba Cloud’s multilingual assistant.

Terra’s delegation program relaunches with virtual tokens to boost the network. It rewards validators committed to performance, security, and ecosystem growth through virtual tokens.

New NFT airdrop for WAL stakers! If you’ve staked WAL, check your wallet. The initial distribution already rewarded over 80,000 users, but those who missed it will have new chances in future rounds.

Walrus releases improvements to its TypeScript SDK: the new SDK enables direct uploads from wallets via Upload Relay and adds native Quilt support.

OG members can now sign the official contract, receive a certificate, and an exclusive NFT as part of the Decotio initiative.

The BTCFi & Payments Fellowship begins: a 4-week program for Bitcoin DeFi builders. The pre-accelerator, in partnership with Sui and Press Start Capital, aims to support founders in payments and BTCFi.

Walrus Explorer is the new on-chain dashboard with ZK-verified data. Developed alongside Space and Time, it enables real-time viewing of auditable data on the Walrus network.

At Stakely, we stay alert to every change to help you make informed decisions. Have questions or want to learn more about these updates? Join our Telegram community and let’s chat!