Security had a rough week. Roughly 594.5 BTC (about $38M) was drained from some 500 wallets in an attack traced to a key-generation flaw in Coldcard's Mk3 hardware wallet, prompting maker Coinkite to warn that anyone who generated a seed on affected firmware (v4.0.1 and later) "may have funds at risk." It capped a brutal first half of the year: Blockaid data shows crypto exploits topped $1 billion in H1 2026, a record. Even DeFi's smaller incidents added up, with vault platform Summer Finance losing roughly $6M to a flash-loan attack that was flagged in real time.

Circle deepened its regulatory footprint on July 31, winning a limited-purpose trust charter from the New York Department of Financial Services for a new entity, Circle Internet Trust Company (doing business as Circle New York Trust). The charter lets the USDC issuer provide fiduciary, custody, and asset-management services, including holding digital assets on behalf of customers, under New York banking law. It stacks a state layer on top of federal oversight: Circle received OCC approval on July 10 to establish a national trust bank, First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A. The move extends a relationship that dates to 2015, when Circle became the first company to receive a NYDFS BitLicense.

New York became the latest and largest state to move against prediction markets on July 31, when Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James sued Kalshi for allegedly running an "illegal gambling operation." The suit seeks a permanent ban in the state and penalties that could exceed $36 billion (the state is asking for up to $100,000 per unauthorized bet), arguing Kalshi lets users wager on sports, elections, and cultural events without a state gaming license. Kalshi's response is the one it has used everywhere: its event contracts are federally regulated derivatives under CFTC oversight, and states lack the authority to block them.

The early alpha of Oxygen, Hemi's ZK prover for Bitcoin state, is finished and moving from the development repo into the Hemi network repo, where it will begin going open source in pieces as internal code review wraps. On the proving side, op-reth downstream crates are being wired into Kona to start testing the ZK-proving components, which puts Oxygen to the test in a DevNet environment now and soon in a brand-new testnet based on the Hudi testnet network.

The smart contract side of the ZK Proving Marketplace is essentially complete, with only minor cleanup and review remaining. It will launch as part of the new testnet once the OpReth ZK-proving pieces are ready. A cleaner, more technical demo recording is in the works, and the team is weighing a "Built on Hemi" episode to walk builders through it. Worth noting for accuracy: it's about succinct proving of computation on a public marketplace rather than zero-knowledge in the privacy sense.

A new game-building contest is launched in the Hemi Discord this week, going live. The ask is simple: build an onchain game, deployed on the Hemi network, that can be featured in future seasons of Hair Games. There are three judged categories, most fun, best on-chain game, and most original, plus a community award for the overall top vote-getter. Winners take home Hemi tokens and special-edition merch, though the team was clear that the real prize is the exclusive merch and having your game shown on a live stream and potentially carried into future seasons. See official rules below.

Compete for exclusive prizes and bragging rights:

Most Fun: 10,000 $HEMI and special edition Hemi Arcade hoodie and mug.

Best Onchain Game: 10,000 $HEMI and special edition Hemi Arcade hoodie and mug.

Most Original: 10,000 $HEMI and special edition Hemi Arcade hoodie and mug.

Community Award: goes to the overall top vote-getter: 2,500 $HEMI tokens, a Hemi Arcade T-Shirt, and a spot in a future HAIR Games season.

See Official Contest Rules and Guidelines.

Hemi and Lunar Finance are now integrated. Move assets from EVM or Solana to Hemi in seconds.

Explore more with Lunar Finance.

HAIRgames Season 6 Wraps

Season 6 closed out strong with roughly 5,500 transactions and $60 in fees collected, nearly double Season 5, alongside solid swaps and more tunnels. Season 7 is coming soon, with Alpha and Alex free to launch it whenever they're ready.

Play here: https://game.hairtoken.xyz/

Join Hemi’s Discord for your chance to win and become part of Hemi’s growing community.

Midweek with Max covers ongoing engineering, community, and marketing updates.

Catch the full recap.

Join Hemi’s Discord to send questions for Max ahead of next week’s AMA.

Protocol Engineering Office Hours are now streaming on X, YouTube, and LinkedIn, every other Wednesday at 8:00 AM PDT, 11:00 AM EDT, and 15:00 UTC. The next session is set for Wednesday, August 12th.

Watch the last session.