Base App will discontinue its Creator Rewards program and remove its Farcaster-powered social feed to concentrate on tradable assets. According to the app's X account, roughly $450,000 was distributed to 17,000 creators over seven months, with final payouts set for Feb. 18. The app opened to the public in December.

On February 9, Ripple said it enhanced its institutional custody platform through integrations with Securosys and Figment, building on its Palisade acquisition and Chainalysis tools. The update lets regulated banks and custodians manage keys via on site or cloud HSMs and offer staking on networks such as Ethereum and Solana with integrated, real time compliance checks.

Chris Dixon of a16z Crypto and Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly set out opposing views on whether crypto can scale beyond finance. In 2025, venture funding surpassed $20 billion, with Q4 contributing $8.5 billion across 425 deals, while DeFi metrics showed a TVL near $99.07 billion and stablecoin supply above $307 billion. Their exchange frames finance as the most validated use so far.

In January, one crypto user lost $12.25 million after copying an incorrect wallet address, and another user lost $50 million in a similar incident in December. Signature phishing attacks in January stole $6.27 million from 4,741 victims, a 207% rise from the previous month, while a separate address poisoning case in November led to a loss of about $3.08 million in PYTH tokens. Non-custodial wallet Safe has warned of a coordinated campaign using thousands of lookalike multisig addresses, and says it has flagged around 5,000 malicious addresses in its interface.

The Israeli Crypto Blockchain & Web 3.0 Companies Forum launched a lobbying drive on Feb. 3 in Tel Aviv to ease rules on stablecoins and tokenization and streamline tax compliance. According to KPMG, the proposed reforms could add 70,000 jobs and 120 billion shekels ($38.36 billion) to GDP by 2035, while forum leaders cite strong public uptake of digital assets.

On February 9, 2026, 30‑day developer‑activity rankings highlighted MetaMask, Hedera, and Chainlink at the front. Despite pressure on token prices, wallets, layer‑1s, and scaling projects registered higher code commits and upgrades, with Internet Computer, Cardano, Aptos, Starknet, and the Sui ecosystem also showing notable momentum.

On February 9, 2026, Vitalik Buterin criticized USDC yield strategies on X, arguing they fail to decentralize risk and reflect DeFi drifting from its purpose. He favored ETH-backed or overcollateralized stablecoins that push counterparty risk to markets. According to the protocol's dashboard, Aave's main Ethereum market holds over $4.1B in USDC, underscoring reliance on centralized issuers.

On February 9, 2026, NOWPayments announced a limited-time offer waiving network fees on USDT (TRC20) payments for newly registered partners for their first two months. To unlock zero fees, users must register and enable Custody, which also provides Mass Payouts and off-chain conversions; the company says it supports 350 cryptocurrencies and imposes no limits on transaction size or volume.