Project Progress

Pi Network has begun its second mainnet migration phase, allowing users to transfer more mined Pi coins to the blockchain. This updates users on KYC verification requirements, enhances security with two-factor authentication, and has elicited mixed reactions from the community as it progresses toward a fully active ecosystem.

In 2025, China's DeepSeek-R1 model launched and quickly attracted global attention, driving a decline in AI stocks. In 2026, Bittensor successfully released Covenant-72B, becoming the largest decentralized large language model. The model broke through the bottlenecks of decentralized training, demonstrated commercial competitiveness, and garnered widespread market attention, marking a new future for decentralized AI.

Gate News, on March 17, PayPal announced that it will expand the wallet holding scope of its stablecoin PYUSD to 68 additional countries and regions, bringing the total number of eligible markets to 70, a significant expansion from the previous limitation to only the United States and United Kingdom. The newly added markets include Uganda, Colombia, Peru, and others, covering more regions across South America, Africa, and Asia.

Canada-based tokenized real estate platform RealT faces a legal and compliance crisis after a civil lawsuit was filed by the Detroit municipal government. The lawsuit alleges multiple regulatory violations, including properties lacking compliance certificates and delinquent tax payments. RealT plans to sell properties and suspend rental distributions while pivoting to new projects.

Ripple CTP David Schwartz defends Ripple and XRP amid criticism. The criticism is currently over the way Ripple makes XRP sales.  The CTO explains how retail will benefit from this framework. The crypto community is warmed by how Ripple CTO David Schwartz defends Ripple and XRP amid crit

xAI is recruiting financial domain experts from Wall Street to expand its data annotation team for Grok, aiming to improve training data for credit markets. The team, led by Diego Pasini, targets enhancing AI programming capabilities and business customer development, currently facing competitive pressure.

Stripe and Paradigm's newly developed public chain Tempo is expected to launch its mainnet at the end of March, adopting a dual-track model focusing on payments and DeFi. The mainnet will not issue tokens, and the team will wait for a better market environment to design the token economic model.

Custodia Bank suffered another setback in its lawsuit seeking a master account from the Federal Reserve, with the court ruling that the Fed possesses authorization discretion and that the bank's crypto business model carries risks. In contrast, crypto enterprise Kraken successfully obtained a master account, becoming the first pure cryptocurrency company to gain this privilege. Custodia may next file an application with the U.S. Supreme Court and continue developing its business.

Pi Network, launched in 2019, introduced a mobile-first approach to cryptocurrency mining by allowing users to mine Pi Coin directly from their smartphones without requiring high computational power. The project reached a major milestone with the launch of its open mainnet in early 2025. This is en

Matrixdock launched the institutional-grade silver token XAGm on March 17, introducing physical silver into on-chain finance. The token is backed by silver bars that meet LBMA standards and utilizes Matrixdock's FRS issuance framework, ensuring a verifiable relationship between on-chain tokens and underlying assets, with initial deployment on the Ethereum network. This marks a further expansion of the on-chain precious metal reserve asset system.

Ocean Network has launched its Beta version of a decentralized P2P compute ecosystem, focusing on GPU deployment to eliminate central gatekeepers. This initiative streamlines access for developers and data scientists, reducing infrastructure barriers and offering a pay-per-use model, thus fostering a unified decentralized compute marketplace.

Crypto security researcher al_f4lc0n has accused the blockchain project Injective of slow communication in handling a critical security vulnerability and disputes over the bug bounty amount. The vulnerability originates from a defect in the sub-account verification mechanism, threatening over $500 million in assets. al_f4lc0n failed to receive the deserved bounty, raising questions about Injective's security governance.

Gate News, on March 17th, payment infrastructure Pieverse launched an AI Agent Skill Shop. The shop allows users to select desired Skills, and developers can monetize their works through it. The first batch of Skills launched covers multiple platforms including PancakeSwap, Aster, and Four.Meme. Additionally, Pieverse's full-stack infrastructure layer Purr-Fect

The Ethereum Foundation published a new charter on March 17, clarifying its role as a neutral coordinator committed to maintaining decentralized infrastructure and promoting the long-term development of the ecosystem. The announcement has sparked extensive discussions about leadership and institutionalization, with some industry insiders questioning the lack of specific implementation plans, while supporters believe it will help preserve network neutrality and foster innovation, highlighting Ethereum's balancing act between decentralized governance and institutional development.

Gate News: On March 17, Sanctum, a Solana ecosystem liquid staking token (LST) protocol, announced the launch of Infinity V2. The new version achieves three core upgrades: support for real-time distribution of staking rewards per slot (the smallest time unit on the Solana blockchain), introduction of a yield smoothing mechanism to optimize user experience, and optimization adjustments to the underlying portfolio configuration. The INF token will be the first LST to support slot-level continuous yield distribution.

Lido is advancing a community staking module upgrade by introducing the "Identified DVT Cluster" (IDVTC) mechanism to optimize Ethereum staking structure, lower participation barriers, and enhance network security and stability. Each IDVTC comprises vetted stakers and leverages Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) to reduce systemic risk and increase decentralization. This feature will launch in 2026, demonstrating Lido's commitment to enhancing system resilience through architectural optimization and maintaining competitiveness.

Mistral AI released the open-source code agent Leanstral, designed specifically for Lean 4 formal verification, capable of generating code and proofs that can be automatically validated. The model employs a sparse MoE architecture, outperforming other leading models, and offers free downloads and API calls.

The decentralized finance project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) passed a vote with 99% approval on March 14, introducing a three-tier investor privilege framework. Under this framework, "super nodes" are required to lock 50 million WLFI tokens (approximately $5.3 million) for at least 180 days to gain opportunities to discuss matters with WLFI executives. The project has received support from the Trump family but has sparked controversy due to the connection between investments and politics, particularly triggering investigations regarding investments from the UAE royal family.

The Russian Central Bank plans to submit a proposal allowing digital financial assets (DFA) to circulate on open blockchains such as Ethereum to counter Western sanctions and attract foreign investment. If the bill passes in 2026, it will improve the current market structure that relies on domestic demand and provide new opportunities for Russian enterprises in international capital markets. However, technical integration and legal barriers still need to be overcome.

Gate News, on March 17, Sui Developers released a tweet stating that Sui's new virtual machine has been launched for testing, and a bug bounty program has been simultaneously opened. According to the introduction, the new virtual machine launched this time includes three core technology upgrades: a complete rewrite of the execution engine, faster caching mechanisms, and a next-generation Move language upgrade.