OpenAI core researcher Max Schwarzer announces departure, joins Anthropic to focus on reinforcement learning research. He has participated in post-training for o1 and o3, and led the post-training team to deliver multiple GPT products.

On February 24, news reports indicated that Russia has launched an investigation into Telegram founder Pavel Durov, accusing him of "assisting terrorist activities," showing that his relationship with the Kremlin has severely deteriorated. According to official media outlets Rossiya and Komsomolskaya Pravda, Telegram is being accused of becoming a tool for Western and Ukrainian intelligence agencies and being used to plan multiple attacks against Russia. The reports cite materials from the Federal Security Service (FSB), stating that Durov's actions are under criminal investigation. Since leaving Russia in 2014, Durov has built Telegram into a platform centered on privacy and independent of government control. He has acquired French and UAE citizenships and successfully resisted Moscow's attempts to ban the platform in 2018. Nevertheless, Russia continues to pressure Telegram, including restricting traffic, blocking certain features, and encouraging users to switch to the state-controlled messaging app Max.

Foresight News reports that USD.AI has launched the Level Up mechanism, where participants can gain rights by locking Pendle YT. The CHIP token ICO will be open from February 22 to 27, with an FDV of $300 million. Users can choose different strategies to lock tokens, enjoying refunds and discounted valuations, and can also obtain monetization opportunities through airdrops.

February 12 News, Meta's instant messaging app WhatsApp publicly accused Russia of blocking its service to force domestic users to switch to an officially supported local app. The company stated on social platform X that cutting off the private communication channels of tens of millions of people is a backward move that will only weaken public digital security. The alternative platform promoted by Moscow is called Max, launched by Russian tech company VK in March 2025, positioned as a domestic alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram. The Russian government has mandated that, starting September 1, all smartphones sold domestically must come pre-installed with this app. This move is seen as a key step to accelerate the "localization of communication."

The Surf platform has obtained priority allocation rights for the public sale of the Fabric native token ROBO. All Surf Pro/Max annual subscription users will have their eligibility snapshot taken on January 30th. Surf combines artificial intelligence and decentralized technology to promote the development of the intelligent economy.

PANews January 14 News, according to Cryptopolitan, the Cardano community hard fork working group proposed to name the 2026 protocol version 11 hard fork "van Rossem Hard Fork" in memory of the late governance representative (DRep) Max van Rossem.

On January 13th, HyperInsight monitoring showed that the largest short whale of ZEC reduced its holdings by 3,776.39 ZEC, still holding a $5.93 million short position with an unrealized profit of approximately $239,600. This whale previously shorted ZEC at $184, turning a loss of $21 million into a profit after the market reversed.

Gate 2025 Year-End Community Gala enters the voting phase. Users can vote for their favorite hosts and content creators, participate in a lottery to win prizes such as the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The TOP 20 winners will receive honorary titles and cash rewards exceeding $10,000.

PANews reported on December 22 that bipartisan members of the U.S. House of Representatives are working together to draft a tax framework for cryptocurrency, which will provide a safe harbor for certain stablecoin transactions and delay taxation on rewards obtained through verified blockchain transactions. As broader digital asset regulation legislation is still under negotiation, the cryptocurrency industry is urgently calling for legislation to clarify the tax treatment of digital assets. Republican Congressman Max Miller of Ohio and Democratic Congressman Steven Horsford of Nevada have responded to the call by drafting a proposal to align the taxation of cryptocurrency with that of traditional securities. The proposal, which includes the bill text and policy objectives, suggests exempting transactions of regulated stablecoins that maintain a value between $0.99 and $1.01 from Capital Gains Tax. The proposal also attempts to establish safe harbor rules for the distribution and handling of rewards from staking and mining.

The latest data from Bitwise shows that Ethereum treasury transactions are experiencing a sharp decline. In November, digital asset treasury companies purchased only 370,000 ETH, a drop of about 81% compared to 1.97 million ETH in August, signaling that the current "altcoin season" is gradually coming to an end. Bitwise senior researcher Max Shannon pointed out that this trend is similar to previous cycles: as alternative assets increase, it becomes more difficult for the same capital pool to meet demand. In July of this year, the Ethereum treasury market heated up rapidly, with multiple companies emulating Bitcoin treasury strategies for acquisitions. Among them, Bitmine, led by Wall Street strategist Tom Lee, continued to dominate the market, holding more Ethereum than the combined total of the other 68 treasury companies, making it the largest Ethereum-holding enterprise. Meanwhile, the purchasing power of smaller treasury participants declined, premiums were compressed, and they faced elimination pressure, leading to an intensified trend toward market concentration.