Ethereum Proposal Would Let Users Pay Gas Without ETH

Vitalik Buterin said EIP-8141 has been quietly advancing for months, a draft letting users pay transaction fees in tokens or have someone else cover them entirely. The proposal has sat unscheduled since January.

Frames replaces the fixed shape of a transaction with a sequence of up to 64 contract calls. One validates, another approves who covers the gas, and the rest execute what the user wanted, severing the link between signer and payer.

A wallet holding only stablecoins could therefore transact by paying in ERC-20 tokens. ERC-4337 permitted this from 2023, though only by routing through a separate mempool and paying third-party bundlers, while Frames runs in the public mempool with protocol-level rules.

Its authors pitch Frames first as a native off-ramp from elliptic-curve cryptography before quantum computers arrive. Co-author Matt Garnett notes post-quantum signatures run to several kilobytes each, forcing signature aggregation, and calls it the last transaction type accounts should ever need.

Robinhood Expands Prediction Markets With CryptoCom Deal

Robinhood struck partnerships with CryptoCom and OG.com to widen its prediction markets before the NFL season, routing selected event contracts to OG.com. The brokerage will also take equity stakes in both, priced against Citadel Securities' recent $20 billion valuation.

Contracts still route to Kalshi, ForecastEX, and Rothera, with customers gaining game outcomes, player contracts, and custom combos supplied partly by CryptoCom. Robinhood traded 13.6 billion event contracts last quarter for roughly $156 million, its prediction business out-earning crypto for the first time.

Strategy Repurchases $176 Million of STRC Preferred Shares

Strategy bought back 1.81 million STRC shares for roughly $176.3 million while neither buying nor selling bitcoin, according to an 8-K filing. It doubled its digital credit securities repurchase programme to $2 billion.

Holdings stayed at 845,050 BTC worth $66.1 billion, above 4% of the 21 million supply cap and implying $2.4 billion in paper gains. The bitcoin treasury leader funded repurchases from USD Cash, which stood at $1.44 billion.

Hunter Biden to Airdrop LAPTOP Memecoin to TRUMP Losers

Hunter Biden will launch a memecoin called LAPTOP on September 9 on Base, according to the Wall Street Journal. Founders including Biden keep 30% of the 1 billion supply, locked six months then vesting across two years.

Another 20% funds two airdrop rounds targeting his Substack subscribers and wallets that lost money on President Trump's TRUMP token. A burn mechanism tied to 30 preset events, including a Democrat winning in 2028, could destroy 30% of supply.

Data of the Day

The self-described white hat hackers behind Liquid's 4,000 BTC withdrawal returned 3,400 BTC worth about $269.2 million to the federation wallet, recovering roughly 85% of the funds. Nearly 598.5 BTC worth $47 million remains outstanding.

The transfer followed a signed Blockstream message confirming bridge nodes had been patched, after the actors demanded a fix first. Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet called the retained 600 BTC closer to extortion than white-hat work.

More Breaking News

• The FCA held talks about easing its 2019 ban on retail prediction markets, as millions of Britons reach Kalshi and Polymarket through VPNs, per The Times.
• A Coldcard attacker moved 97.09 BTC worth $7.7 million through THORChain and CoinJoin, draining 11 of 293 self-built vaults while 82% of stolen coins stay unmoved.
• Bitmine bought 28,086 ether to reach 5.93 million tokens worth $14.8 billion, lifting the ether treasury to 4.9% of supply with 85% staked.
• Irish gangs are renting vaults to store seed phrases beside cash and passports, though the Criminal Assets Bureau calls Irish criminal crypto use still quite basic.
• Nine companies began sandbox tests of CHFD, a franc stablecoin, with market operator SIX and payment app TWINT joining the Swiss programmable payments pilot.
• Circle agreed to buy Tazapay for $400 million in stock, gaining last-mile rails across 100 markets where 60% of the $25 billion annual volume already involves stablecoins.
• Uzbekistan registered Humo Digital to pilot HUMO, a som-pegged token backed by government securities, with more than 20 Uzbek merchants ready to test payments.
• Itaú now sells 15 cryptoassets and Nubank lists 28, though central bank filings show Brazilian banks hold zero virtual assets on their own balance sheets.