Project Progress

Steak ’n Shake reports a significant increase in same-store sales following its acceptance of bitcoin payments, now holding about 161 BTC valued at $11 million, which funds employee bonuses.

Owlto Finance has launched the Privacy Mode (Beta), a privacy cross-chain feature that supports one-to-many address batch sending and random amounts and sending interval configurations to enhance privacy protection. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin emphasizes the importance of on-chain privacy, and this new feature is a response to that demand.

Solana has launched Lightspeed, a new investor relations platform to access protocol tokens with at least $100 million in market cap. The tool will offer on-chain data, in-depth research and sector breakdowns, broken down to match what institutions have been used to in legacy finance. In

Lucie, a Shiba Inu executive, warned users about scammers exploiting the SHIB community with fake portals related to the new SOU NFT project. She urged users to verify links and only use the official website to prevent wallet theft. The SOU initiative aims to compensate users affected by a previous exploit, offering audited NFTs that document owed tokens.

VeChain is rolling out endorsement controls, letting endorsers split points across multiple VeBetterDAO dApps instead of backing only one. A 49-point cap per endorser per dApp starts first, placing 20+ dApps into a two-week grace period and requiring 3+ endorsers for entry. VeChain has

Zora launched attention markets on Solana to let users trade tokens tied to online trends in real time. Users can create new markets for 1 SOL and close positions anytime as attention shifts. Early trading volume stayed modest which shows attention markets remain experimental and high

Billionaire Peter Thiel has fully divested from ETHZilla, which has reduced its Ethereum holdings significantly while pivoting to tokenized real-world assets for stable revenue. This shift reflects a significant change in strategy amid a declining crypto market.

Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-360 is expected to take seven years to achieve quantum resistance and requires code review and testing beforehand. This proposal introduces a new output type, which can defend against long-term attacks but offers insufficient protection against short-term attacks. Post-quantum signatures are larger in size, requiring technical solutions to improve processing speed.

Panama City, Republic of Panama, February 18th, 2026, Chainwire Sai today launched Sai Perps, a perpetuals trading platform built to be as fast and intuitive as a centralized exchange with the transparency and self-custody of onchain settlement. The platform features gasless transactions,

12 Chainlink standard integrations landed across 7 services on Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, Polygon and Robinhood Chain. Bank of England chose the network for the 2026 Synchronisation Lab and CME launched LINK futures expanding regulated access. Chainlink posted a weekly adoption update

DeFi lending protocol Moonwell incurred approximately $1.78 million in bad debt due to an oracle configuration error, causing the cbETH quote to deviate from the actual market price. Attackers easily liquidated debts, resulting in a large number of borrowers' assets being wiped out. The fix requires a five-day governance vote, and a repair proposal is currently planned to go live.

Ripple developer Mayukha Vadari has highlighted technical flaws in the XRP Ledger Sandbox, arguing it lacks essential features for advanced debugging and protocol upgrades. He suggests the advertised capabilities do not match its actual functionalities, calling for improvements.

Tether launches a gold-backed token, Tether Gold (XAUT), with a dividend mechanism that allows investors to receive dividends in tokenized gold, making it the first publicly listed gold company of its kind. This move marks a significant breakthrough in the gold industry, with XAUT's market capitalization approaching $2.55 billion. Investors can choose cash or gold dividends.

Jupiter DAO has initiated a proposal vote on reducing the net emission of JUP tokens to zero. The proposal includes continuing the Jupuary airdrop or adopting a zero net issuance plan to avoid token dilution. The voting will end on February 22.

PANews February 18 News, the privacy blockchain project Nillion announced on the X platform that nilChain will cease operations on March 23. Users holding NIL tokens on Cosmos must migrate to Ethereum. After the chain stops, standard transfers will no longer be possible.

Shiba Inu has launched Shib Owes You (SOU) NFT to support users with donations, payouts and some occasional rewards. SHIB has lost over 20% of its value in the past 30 days as the memecoin market loses investor interest. NFTs once had all the hype in crypto, and celebrities were forking out

Arkham Intelligence has launched its Intel API, enhancing on-chain data infrastructure for advanced fund-flow tracking and entity labeling. This innovation aims to improve compliance monitoring and market research for crypto analytics amid rising demand from institutional clients.

X Product Lead Nikita Bier revealed that the platform plans to launch a new feature within "a few weeks," allowing users to buy and sell stocks and cryptocurrencies directly on their feed, further moving toward Elon Musk's long-term vision of the "Everything App." According to Nikita Bier, one of the core aspects of the new feature is the so-called "Smart Cashtags." In the future, when users click on stock or cryptocurrency symbols (such as $TSLA , $BTC) in posts, they will not only be able to view real-time price information but also execute trades directly within the X App, seamlessly integrating investment activities with social interaction. Meanwhile, X is also preparing to launch its own payment system "X

This week, a technical dispute erupted in the XRP community over Xaman Wallet's fees and nested multisignature issues on the XRP Ledger. Ripple's CTO Emeritus, David Schwartz, responded to criticisms regarding high service fees and the complexity of nested multisigs, emphasizing his separation from third-party wallet operations.