Leading DeFi researcher questions Ethereum’s Layer 2 strategy: Robinhood’s revenue has surged, yet Layer 1 settlement layer revenue remains low—Is this a problem?

ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood (affectionately known as "Woodie" in financial circles) noted that August non-farm payroll data shows the U.S. economy remains highly resilient. Markets may interpret the strong jobs figures as a sign of rising inflationary pressure, leading to further bets on the Federal Reserve tightening policy, but they are overlooking more critical shifts. While the U.S. headline inflation rate still stands at 3.7%, other inflation metrics are closer to the 2% target, and oil prices could even fall to around $30 per barrel. U.S. stocks continue hitting record highs amid rising interest rates, corporate capital spending has broken through a growth bottleneck that has persisted for over two decades, and Bitcoin is gradually decoupling from gold’s price trends. These phenomena are not mutually independent. As more companies adopt artificial intelligence, AI-related firms are creating jobs at a faster pace, and technological advances could simultaneously boost productivity and reduce costs. These signals point to stronger real economic growth and the emergence of powerful "tech-driven deflation." Current markets are still pricing based on traditional economic models, but a new economic system driven by AI and emerging technologies is taking shape rapidly.

According to EmberCN's monitoring, WLFI advisor ogle's PONS holdings are not the 10.96 million units shown on FOMO, but 15.28 million units valued at $13.92 million. He also holds 4.32 million PONS in another address, worth $3.86 million. Ogle is actually the top PONS whale, having accumulated a total of 15.28 million PONS at an average price of $0.1 per unit, with an unrealized profit of $13.77 million, marking an 87x gain. The relevant addresses are: 0x1Bcc5f67CD17e13770F199fA03bC043b0cde1143; 0x825F23921dCFf36944d8B0b0CA23ac7D05fB86cB

From Beating AI Express News: OpenAI has appointed three new state-level policy heads, with Jessica Schumer drawing the most attention. She is the daughter of US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, previously served as chief of staff at the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, and later led Amazon’s public policy work in New York. At OpenAI, she will oversee policy and partnerships in the US Northeast. Another new hire, Caulder Harvill-Childs, previously worked in public policy at Meta and also served Republican Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns; he will now be responsible for the US Southeast. Thomas MacLellan will handle state-level cybersecurity policy, with prior experience at firms including Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, and FireEye. OpenAI is shifting more focus to US states, a strategy it terms "reverse federalism": instead of waiting for Congress to enact uniform legislation, it is pushing major states like California and New York to adopt similar AI rules, eventually forming de facto national standards. OpenAI publicly noted that California, New York, and Illinois have already started aligning on frontier AI safety rules.

According to HTX market data, altcoins are rallying broadly amid active trading on Robinhood, BNB Chain, and Solana. The L2, DeFi, and DEX sectors are seeing sharp gains, with L2 led by ARB, followed by OP, STRK, IMX, etc. DeFi and DEX tokens including RAY, ORCA, JUP, UNI, SUSHI, CAKE, CRV, SPK, LISTA, and ENA are all rising, as capital flows back to DeFi projects with real trading use cases and fee mechanisms. On BNB Chain, boosted by BNB breaking above $780, tokens like BOME, 1000CAT, MARSCOIN, and TUT are also climbing. Meanwhile, today’s Altcoin Season Index has risen to 40, meaning roughly 40 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap have outperformed Bitcoin over the past 90 days, and total altcoin market cap has hit $1.10 trillion. Top gainers: ARB up over 51% in 24 hours, trading at $0.1997. Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum L2 built on Arbitrum Orbit, allocates 10% of its net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem—8% to the DAO treasury and 2% to development funds. RAY up over 42% in 24 hours, trading at $1.177. Solana-based token launch platform StonkFun announced it has integrated with Raydium LaunchLab. Going forward, all new StonkFun token deployments will launch via LaunchLab to cut costs, reduce front-running risks, and enable auto-compounding liquidity post-binding. SUSHI up over 24% in 24 hours, trading at $0.2385. SushiSwap has integrated its DEX and launchpad into Robinhood Chain, allowing new tokens to pair with tokenized stocks and launch with an existing Sushi V3 pool. SushiSwap Launch V2 is set to launch around September 4, with SUSHI serving as the launchpad’s quote asset. Other notable 24-hour gains: BOME, IOST, 1000CAT up over 20%; COTI, TUT, CAKE, SPK, UNI, STRK, MET, ORCA up over 10%; CRV, ENA, IMX, JUP, LISTA also posting solid increases.

Solana-based token launch platform StonkFun announced it has completed a $1 million STONK token buyback, while over $7.5 million in rewards have been distributed to holders in the StonkFun ecosystem. StonkFun also announced it has launched on Raydium LaunchLab. Going forward, all new StonkFun token deployments will be initiated via LaunchLab to lower deployment costs, reduce sniper risks, and enable automatic liquidity compounding after binding is completed. According to GMGN market data, StonkFun’s platform token STONK surpassed $100 million in market cap today, currently trading at $92 million, with a 256% 24-hour gain and $30.4 million in trading volume over the same period. BlockBeats reminds users that related token prices are highly volatile, so investors should exercise caution.

Beating AI Express News: Leaker Lyra claims Google’s next Pro model already has its first checkpoint (a saved model state version from training) and is set to be unveiled in October. Lyra also predicts a new Flash-Lite launch in September, alongside an update to Nano Banana 2 Lite. The final name for the new Pro model remains unconfirmed; some community members speculate it could be Gemini 4 Pro, while others believe it may be another Pro variant.