Ethereum Foundation abandons the Poseidon hash algorithm, shifting to SHA-2 or BLAKE2 to advance its post-quantum cryptography roadmap.

Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Ethena’s token ENA, projecting it will appreciate to $2 by the end of 2028. The bank’s report notes that Ethena sits at the intersection of perpetual contracts, tokenization, and stablecoins, with ENA set to benefit from growth in these sectors and its newly launched buyback program. It adds that Ethena is currently the fourth-largest stablecoin issuer globally, trailing only Tether, Circle, and Sky, and the second-largest interest-bearing stablecoin issuer after Sky. Its USDe stablecoin holds the record for reaching a $10 billion market cap the fastest.

Beating AI News Flash: ByteDance’s Doubao is developing a personal AI assistant product named “Xiaodou” and plans to launch a standalone app. “Xiaodou” was not a last-minute initiative launched after Muse’s viral rise; the name was finalized this summer. Doubao kicked off internal beta testing for its personal assistant project codenamed “Spell” back in April this year, initially led by Doubao’s mobile assistant team. Recently, the project has started further integration with Doubao’s existing products, and is now jointly managed by the Spell project team and Doubao’s dialogue team. ByteDance is accelerating the push to bring its existing personal assistant projects to official product status. The main Doubao app will remain the general AI entry point, “Doubao Work” is positioned for office use, while “Xiaodou” targets consumer-grade personal assistants.

Bitwise officials announced that the U.S.’s first spot NEAR ETP, the Bitwise NEAR ETF (ticker: NRR), reached $36 million in assets under management (AUM) on its debut day, with a net inflow of $35.5 million and trading volume of $15.1 million. Earlier reports noted that Bitwise plans to internally stake the NEAR tokens held by the fund to maximize participation in NEAR’s average ~5% staking rewards.

EU MiCA-regulated stablecoin issuer AllUnity has announced the launch of its USD stablecoin USDAU, which maintains a 1:1 peg to the U.S. dollar through segregated reserves. The stablecoin will first be issued on Ethereum, Solana, Base, Tempo, Arc, and Polygon. This is AllUnity’s fourth fiat stablecoin, following the euro-pegged EURAU, Swiss franc-backed CHFAU, and Swedish krona-linked SEKAU. AllUnity CEO Alexander H?ptner said USDAU aims to bring U.S. dollar liquidity into the European regulatory framework, providing a USD settlement tool for European enterprises’ global trade and cross-border payments. (Cointelegraph)

Beating AI News: Personal AI agent assistant Instinct has launched a new feature called Selections, which integrates recommendations from real human experts into the agent. The company partners with local chefs, designers, architects, travel guides, and other professionals, who curate restaurants, travel itineraries, and products in their areas of expertise. Instinct then delivers recommendations tailored to user preferences. For example, if a user is looking for a restaurant, Instinct will draw on a list curated by local chefs; for home goods, it will suggest options matching the user’s style and budget from products recommended by independent designers. Noah Shinn said the team aims for these recommendations to be significantly higher quality than those from standard web searches and other chatbots. Notably, Shinn recently made clear his opposition to ad-based models in his first public long-form interview. He argues that personal agents hold large amounts of user data, so allowing brands to pay agents to persuade users to purchase items they wouldn’t otherwise want would create major conflicts of interest. Instinct plans to offer free access to users, generating revenue by taking commissions from merchants for orders driven by the agent. Selections is not currently classified as an ad product. Instinct has not stated whether merchants can pay to be included in recommendation lists, nor has it disclosed whether collaborating experts are compensated. However, if Instinct does eventually rely on transaction commissions for revenue, Selections will face a pressing question: Will its recommendations be tied to how much the platform stands to earn from them? Shinn did not address this in the interview.

Crypto analyst Darkfost’s data shows that demand from Bitcoin retail investors (trading volumes between $0 and $10,000) has rapidly faded during this latest BTC rally, with the 30-day change rate shifting from over 17% to -3.5%. Darkfost notes that this indicates retail investors tend to engage in quick in-and-out trades at current market highs, which could impact BTC’s short-term volatility.