Russia's deputy finance minister said about 50 billion rubles of crypto changes hands in the country each day and called for a formal regulatory framework. A central bank official added he hopes the State Duma will pass the measures in the spring session, as the EU weighs broader restrictions on Russian crypto activity.

Apollo Global Management, which oversees nearly $940 billion in assets, has entered a cooperation agreement with DeFi lending platform Morpho to back its onchain lending infrastructure. Under the deal, Apollo or its affiliates may purchase up to 90 million MORPHO governance tokens over 48 months, while Morpho remains one of the largest DeFi protocols by total value locked.

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has dropped its planned Namechain layer-2 and will launch the ENSv2 upgrade directly on Ethereum L1, according to a Friday blog post by lead developer nick.eth. The shift follows a reported 99% fall in ENS registration gas costs over the past year and the Fusaka upgrade lifting the gas limit to 60 million, with core developers targeting 200 million in 2026.

On Thursday, BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) set a $10 billion daily trading record as Bitcoin fell 12% in the past 24 hours. The ETF dropped 13%, its second-worst day since launch, and saw $373.4 million in net outflows on Wednesday. Bitcoin traded near $64,000 after an intraday low of $60,300.

Crypto project Payy has launched a privacy-enabled Ethereum layer-2 network that makes all ERC-20 transfers private by default without requiring new wallets or tokens. Users can already add the network to MetaMask and other EVM wallets, with Payy targeting both institutions moving capital onchain and crypto natives seeking easier privacy when handling stablecoins and other ERC-20 assets.

ARK Invest disclosed on Monday that it increased holdings of crypto‑linked companies across ARKK, ARKF and its Next Generation Internet ETF. A trade notice showed 235,077 Robinhood shares valued around $21.1 million and 274,358 BitMine shares worth about $6.2 million were among the largest allocations. The trades were dated Feb. 2 amid a broader stock pullback.

On Monday, Tether released MiningOS, an open-source and modular Bitcoin mining operating system designed for users ranging from home miners to large institutions. The software, first outlined in plans from June last year, aims to simplify and scale mining while reducing reliance on costly proprietary vendors.

Optimism's governance has cleared a plan to direct 50% of Superchain revenue to monthly OP token buybacks over the next 12 months, starting in February. The Jan. 8 proposal from the Optimism Foundation will convert ETH sequencer revenue to OP via an OTC provider, with acquired tokens held in the treasury for future ecosystem needs.

Rodeo will wind down after struggling to scale, according to CEO Kayvon Tehranian. It will operate normally Jan. 27–Feb. 10, move to read-only from Feb. 10, and shut off by March 10, with media and metadata migration via Arweave. Nifty Gateway extended its asset transfer deadline to April 23.