Four Pillars Research

: : [Crypto/Issue] Blockchain Abstraction: The Next Frontier
Written by Jun

- Wallet and authentication abstraction, account and transaction abstraction, and chain abstraction have reduced the steps users once had to handle themselves to use blockchain. Banks and Web2 platforms can connect these capabilities to existing accounts and services, offering digital asset features within familiar user journeys.

- The complexity that abstraction removes from the screen becomes the operational responsibility of platforms and infrastructure providers. Systems for managing account recovery, transaction approvals, fee payments, and settlement status are prerequisites for offering blockchain capabilities as everyday services.

- Ramp has integrated wallets and payments into existing finance workflows. TON Wallet in Telegram has simplified incoming transfers from other chains through chain abstraction, while Naver Pay has used wallet and authentication abstraction to connect asset ownership with community access. The value of abstraction is becoming concrete within the workflows and user journeys of existing platforms.

- Connecting wallet and payment infrastructure to the customer bases of existing platforms is accelerating the integration of Web2 and Web3. Practical applications could expand to overseas vendor payments and creator payouts, tickets and memberships used across partner services, and automated purchases delegated within defined permissions and budgets.

- This article examines how abstraction reduces friction in the user experience, focusing on Privy, ERC-4337, Across, and Circle's CCTP. It then analyzes adoption by Ramp, Telegram, and Naver Pay, and explores the possibilities that emerge when these wallet architectures are integrated into Web2 services.

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: : [Tech/Article] Monthly EIP - Aug 2026 (ft. What Robinhood Chain's Success Reveals About L2 and Ethereum's Dilemma)
Written by Jay

- August saw fewer new EIPs, but existing Core EIPs made notable progress. At the Core layer, discussions became more concrete around distributing the costs and burdens of state preservation, block production, data propagation, and execution verification. On the ERC side, proposals focused on standardizing functions that applications had previously implemented on their own, including module composition, fund management, and policy validation.

- Also, the EF began moving key priorities toward real-world testing and deployment readiness. It tested major Glamsterdam changes on public testnets and against historical mainnet data, supported the migration of existing applications, and expanded its efforts into frontend security and AI-assisted post-quantum research.

- Meanwhile, Robinhood Chain’s success showed that major financial institutions can use Ethereum technology to bring existing assets and users onchain. At the same time, it revealed that when transactions and revenue remain within enterprise-run L2s, L2 growth does not necessarily translate into Ethereum’s growth, raising the question of how Ethereum can strengthen the value that only it can provide.

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: : [Investment/Issue] The Dawn of Public PnL
Written by Ponyo

- Trading has turned into a spectator business, with every trade on apps like FOMO posting to a public feed with its profit attached, and FOMO's daily traders growing from 1,100 to +90,000 in a year.

- Platforms now pay traders the way media companies pay talent, with pump.fun handing creators $483 million and offering top traders $30,000 a month to trade nowhere else.

- Clans, a feature both apps added in August that pools members' positions under one scoreboard, are the early sign of followers organizing into trading groups that recruit on trade history rather than follower counts.

- Public PnL shows who is winning but not what following them pays, since only 6% of 292,531 FOMO wallets finished a 90-day stretch ahead, the median lost $120, and the top accounts' gains are mostly unrealized.

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: : [Newletter] Robinhood Takes Over Onchain (Week 37, 2026)

🗞 Major News
- [Crypto] AMC Signals Legal Action Against Robinhood's Stock Token, Intensifying the Tokenized-Stock Debate
- [Crypto] Robinhood Chain Rises to No. 1 in Daily Fees Just Two Months After Launch

📊 Data Spotlight
- Why Do Korean Crypto Exchanges List So Many Shitcoins?

✍️ Four Pillars Weekly
- Trade[XYZ] 2026 Q2 Report
- Permissionless Deployment Triples HIP-4 Volume, With Permission the Remaining Constraint
- More Mined, Less Earned: Inside the 2026 Bitcoin Miners

🌎 Full Newsletter

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: : [Asia/Issue] Korea Expands Token Securities as Global Banks Form a Stablecoin Consortium (ASA News #30)
Written by ASA, Heechang

[News #1] Korea Expands Token Securities from Fractional Investments to Stocks, Bonds, and Funds
✍️ Korea Builds an Integrated Ledger Around the Exchange and the Depository

[News #2] Singapore Extends Stablecoin Regulation to Joint Issuance and Recognition of Foreign Issuance
✍️ Singapore Fixes the Structure Before the Issuer

[News #3] Japan's MUFG Joins 21 Global Financial Institutions to Establish a Bank Type Stablecoin Company
✍️ Bank Consortium Infrastructure Enters the Stablecoin Market
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[ASA News] is a weekly newsletter where we share the most important stablecoin-related news across Asia, along with commentary from industry insiders. (Subscribe to the Newsletter)

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: : [Seminar Announcement] Digital Asset Financial Innovation: Case Studies and Strategic Responses

As major economies around the world continue to integrate digital assets into the regulated financial system, Korea is also seeing the convergence of traditional finance and digital asset markets become a key policy priority. This includes the introduction of spot digital asset ETFs, the development of regulatory frameworks, and the advancement of security tokens.

This National Assembly seminar on digital asset financial innovation and strategic responses will examine regulatory developments and financial innovation cases in Korea and abroad. The program will feature expert presentations and discussions on evolving regulatory trends, the development and institutionalization of digital asset ETFs, and innovation in the asset management industry.

[Overview]
• Date & Time: September 10, 2026, 14:00-16:20
• Venue: Grand Conference Hall, 3F, Post Tower, Yeouido, Seoul
• Hosted by: National Assembly Members Min Byung-dug and Ahn Do-geol
• Organized by: Korea Fintech Industry Association
• Sponsored by: FnGuide, Four Pillars

This seminar is by invitation only, and attendance is limited to those who have received a prior invitation. If you are interested in attending or have any related inquiries, please send a direct message to @eth100y.

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: : [Crypto/Issue] More Mined, Less Earned: Inside the 2026 Bitcoin Miners
Written by c4lvin

- While the price of Bitcoin fell to less than half its peak, mining costs actually rose. Hashprice stayed in breakeven territory for more than two months, and MARA, Riot, CleanSpark, American Bitcoin, and Bitdeer all posted net losses in the second quarter. As a result, mining difficulty has declined for ten straight months since its October 2025 peak of 155.97T, falling to 125.81T. A prolonged decline of this kind, with no external event like China's 2021 mining ban behind it, is virtually unprecedented.

- Publicly listed miners sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter alone, the largest quarterly sale on record. This cash is not being used simply to ride out the downturn. It is moving into power infrastructure, including power plant acquisitions, long-term AI data center leases, and full pivots to AI cloud services. As a result, the hashrate of listed miners fell 13.4% in six months, a faster decline than the network as a whole (-10.6%), and the stock market has endorsed this direction by assigning lower valuations to the companies that mine the most.

- The late-August rally lifted hashprice 43% from its June low and out of breakeven territory, yet hashrate has stayed flat at around 900 EH/s. For the first time in well over a decade, hashrate has stopped tracking price. This confirms that the equipment and power already assigned to AI are unlikely to come back to mining.

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: : [Crypto/Comment] Robinhood Chain’s Reverse Playbook
Written by 100y

Robinhood Chain is growing in the exact opposite direction of the ecosystem growth playbook we’ve come to know.

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: : [Crypto/Issue] Permissionless Deployment Triples HIP-4 Volume, With Permission the Remaining Constraint
Written by Ponyo

- Permissionless deployment on August 29 took HIP-4 from a $545,000 August average to $1.97 million on August 31, with Outcome capturing 70% of that session.

- Hyperliquid settles outcomes against prices its own validators publish every 3 seconds and holds them in the same account as perpetuals and HIP-3, so a binary can hedge a perp on the identical mark. Neither Kalshi nor Polymarket can match that.

- Sports is the largest identified upside. HIP-4 traded $189.5 million across the 39-day World Cup, roughly 3% of World Cup prediction market volume against 0.05% of the field in an ordinary week.

- Deployment is permissionless, US market access is not. Nothing HIP-4 lists today engages the CFTC's gaming screen, sports would be the first, and the securities-referencing markets raise SEC jurisdiction instead.

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: : [Data/Comment] Why Do Korean Crypto Exchanges List So Many Shitcoins?
Written by Steve

Korean exchanges’ “shitcoin listing race” is not simply a product of greed, but also the result of regulations that have left trading fees as virtually their only viable growth engine; protecting investors therefore requires not only stricter listing standards, but also opening up alternative business opportunities for exchanges.

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: : [Investment/Report] Trade[XYZ] 2026 Q2 Report
Written by GLC Research, Four Pillars, Arrakis, GRZ Research

- Trade[XYZ] volume rose 79.2% QoQ to $202.36B, while its share of HIP-3 reached 95.1% for the quarter and roughly 99.5% on a trailing 30-day basis. Revenue grew 32.9% to $7.59M despite a lower take rate.

- Growth broadened beyond commodities. Equity volume rose 377% to $58.9B, indices grew 133%, and Pre-IPO Perpetuals took Cerebras, Quantinuum, and SpaceX from pre-listing trading through their IPOs.

- The pre-IPO product worked, but three listings are not enough to establish a persistent forecasting edge. Much of the final price convergence came only after Nasdaq auction indications appeared.

- With US users still excluded and nearly all HIP-3 activity concentrated on one deployer, regulation is now both Trade[XYZ]'s largest upside and its largest external risk.

📱 Report Summary (Post)
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: : [Newletter] ATLAS & Entropy (Week 36, 2026)

🗞 Major News
- [Crypto] LayerZero Unveils ATLAS, a Trading Backend for Global Markets
- [Investment] Entropy, the HIP-3 Project Backed by Ribbit Capital

📊 Data Spotlight
- Koreans Buy the Alt Top, Not the Bitcoin Top
- The Paradigm Shift of Web3 Hackathons
- Korea’s Blockchain Industry Is Falling Behind

✍️ Four Pillars Weekly
- Umia: A New Way to Build Crypto Projects
- Talus v2: Building Trust into Agent Execution
- Monthly EIP - Jul 2026 (ft. What the Issuance Debate Reveals About Ethereum Governance)

🌎 Full Newsletter

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: : [Asia/Issue] Japan Tests Tokenized Deposit Remittances as Hong Kong Opens Stablecoin Distribution (ASA News #29)
Written by ASA, Heechang

[News #1] Japan Moves on Tokenized Deposits and Central Bank Settlement at the Same Time
✍️ A Settlement Layer Beyond the Zengin System

[News #2] Hong Kong Opens HKDAP Distribution and Connects It to Tokenized Fund Settlement
✍️ HongKong Stablecoin Distribution Begins

[News #3] Korea Narrows Its Stablecoin Payment Model Through Partnerships with Visa
✍️ Settlement Use Cases Come Before Issuer Rules in Korea
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[ASA News] is a weekly newsletter where we share the most important stablecoin-related news across Asia, along with commentary from industry insiders. (Subscribe to the Newsletter)

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: : [Crypto/Issue] Talus v2: Building Trust into Agent Execution
Written by Jun

- Talus v2 merges an agent's permissions, budgets, verification, and scheduling into a single onchain Execution Model. Heavy computation and external data collection stay offchain, while tool permissions, result evidence, payments, and refunds are recorded onchain, making it possible to trace and settle who executed what, under which authority, and at what cost.

- Budgets are fixed before execution: costs are locked per vertex and settled only after the result passes verification, while price snapshots and refunds of unused budget contain mid-run price changes and failures. Three verification paths (basic recording, registered signing keys, and external Move contracts including ZK proofs) let each vertex apply a different level of trust.

- With the v2 mainnet, Leader deposits, tool bonds, and priority fees all converge on the $US token, placing execution records and the token economy on the same settlement layer. Talus's value must now be proven not by registered agents or one-off demos, but by whether the same Task repeatedly generates paid calls, verification decisions, and settlements.

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: : [Tech/Article] Monthly EIP - Jul 2026 (ft. What the Issuance Debate Reveals About Ethereum Governance)
Written by Jay

- July saw a sharp rise in new EIPs. At the Core layer, many proposals focused on redesigning the foundations of Ethereum to keep consensus, verification, and storage costs manageable as the validator set and state continue to grow, including improvements to attestation propagation, post-quantum verification, state tiering, and the state tree. On the ERC side, discussions centered on standardizing regulatory and RWA-related information, while bridging new smart account architectures with existing module ecosystems.

- Following its June restructuring, the Ethereum Foundation stepped up its engagement with governments and institutions, while pushing forward discussions around faster finality. At the same time, it added a board member known for emphasizing security, privacy, and censorship resistance, signaling a clearer effort to expand institutional adoption without losing sight of Ethereum’s core values.

- Meanwhile, the issuance debate reignited by EIP-8363 has grown into a broader governance question, extending well beyond how staking rewards should be adjusted. It exposed the limits of a system in which monetary policy proposals can advance without a sufficiently robust process for validation and stakeholder input, raising a larger question for an increasingly multipolar Ethereum ecosystem: who should build consensus, and through what process?

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: : [Data/Comment] Korea’s Blockchain Industry Is Falling Behind
Written by 100y

The gap between Korea and the global blockchain industry is getting wider. Perps, prediction markets, stablecoins, and RWAs have been some of the fastest-growing sectors this cycle. So where does Korea stand in each of them?

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: : FP Validated Launches Its Tech Blog and Ecosystem Research Hub 🛠

- The FP Validated Tech Blog will share practical insights from our experienced SRE team, which is building its operational framework toward SOC 2 compliance. Drawing on our experience operating blockchain infrastructure, we will cover node operations, incident response, monitoring, security, performance optimization, and other topics engineers can apply in practice.

- Our Ecosystem Research hub will take a closer look at the networks where FP Validated operates infrastructure. In collaboration with the Four Pillars research team, we will explore each protocol’s technical architecture, ecosystem developments, and major updates, helping builders and the broader community develop a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of these networks.

- Our contribution goes beyond operating reliable infrastructure. By sharing our operational experience and research with the wider ecosystem, we aim to build a practical knowledge base that helps blockchain networks grow and thrive.

🔧 Tech Blog Link
🔍 Ecosystem Research Link

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: : [Crypto/Comment] Blockchain Needs HTTPS
Written by 100y

The missing piece in onchain finance is a universal confidentiality layer, much like HTTPS for the internet.

Zama’s collaboration with Morpho, along with recent hints of a Polygon deployment in its public GitHub, offers a glimpse of what that could look like.

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: : [Data/Comment] The Paradigm Shift of Web3 Hackathons
Written by Jun

Hackathons are shifting from one-off prize events into deal-sourcing pipelines that identify and support sustainable founding teams. As AI lowers the barrier to product development, the key differentiator will be whether a project can generate real onchain demand and retain that value within the supporting chain.

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: : Four Pillars Joins KBW2026 as a Supporting Partner

Four Pillars is joining KBW2026 as a supporting partner. KBW2026 takes place from September 30 to October 1, 2026 at Walkerhill Hotels & Resorts in Seoul, bringing together the leaders, and builders shaping the next chapter of the global crypto industry.

This year's edition features Upbit, 0G Labs, Stable, and Tria as main sponsors. The speaker lineup includes Joseph Lubin (Consensys), Bo Hines (Tether USA₮), Jeff Yan (Hyperliquid Labs), Tom Lee (Bitmine), Yuval Rooz (Canton), Kyoungsuk Oh (Upbit, Dunamu), Caroline Pham (MoonPay), Balaji Srinivasan (The Network State), Arthur Hayes (Maelstrom), and Harry Jung (Former White House).

KBW is one of Asia's largest gatherings for the global crypto community, and this September, Seoul once again becomes the meeting point for the industry.

As a supporting partner, Four Pillars will support KBW with research and by connecting builders, institutions, and investors shaping what comes next.

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