April 2026 News Digest

April highlights on GPT-5.5, agent commerce, identity, stablecoins, security, ZK, and Ethereum infrastructure.

April was the most productized month so far: GPT-5.5 landed, agent commerce started showing up in Stripe and x402-adjacent work, and proof-of-human moved from thesis to launch-event surface area. At the same time, security kept forcing itself into the foreground: DeFi exploits, AI vulnerability discovery, bridge risk, and post-quantum planning all made the same point from different angles.

This issue covers 62 items across 8 categories. This newsletter was created by GPT-5.5.

AI

AI was the headline category: GPT-5.5, Claude Code quality work, image generation, autonomous labs, and vulnerability discovery all pointed toward agents doing longer and higher-stakes work.

GPT-5.5 released — rolling out in ChatGPT and Codex
OpenAI releases GPT-5.5, a new frontier model for agentic coding, computer use, knowledge work, and scientific research. Rolling out in ChatGPT and Codex today; API coming soon. · @OpenAIDevs · 2026-04-23 · r9
Introducing GPT-5.5
OpenAI introduces GPT-5.5 — a new class of intelligence for real work and powering agents, built to understand complex goals, use tools, check its work, and carry tasks through to completion. Available in ChatGPT and Codex. · @OpenAI · 2026-04-23 · r9
Claude Code posts quality postmortem, fixes land in v2.1.116
Anthropic publishes postmortem on three issues behind reported Claude Code quality regressions; all fixed in v2.1.116+ with usage limits reset for all subscribers. · @ClaudeDevs · 2026-04-23 · r7
Claude Code introduces /ultrareview for cloud-based bug hunting
@ClaudeDevs · 2026-04-22 · r7
Claude Code's /ultrareview research preview runs a fleet of bug-hunting agents in the cloud before merges to critical code paths. Pro/Max users get 3 free reviews through 5/5.
Introducing ChatGPT Images 2.0
State-of-the-art image model for complex visual tasks with sharper editing, richer layouts, and thinking-level intelligence. · OpenAI · 2026-04-21 · r7
379 zero-days from an orchestrated pipeline that beat unconstrained Claude Code by 30x
Researchers built SAILOR, a three-phase pipeline combining static analysis, LLM-driven symbolic execution, and concrete validation that discovered 379 unknown memory-safety vulnerabilities in C/C++ projects — outperforming an unconstrained AI agent by 30x. · Ilya Kabanov · 2026-04-09 · r8

Crypto

Crypto was quieter by count but still important: MEGA's launch and bridge-design commentary both reflected the pressure to make new chains and cross-chain systems more legible.

MEGA TGE — April 30, 2026
MegaETH announces its token generation event for April 30, 2026. · MegaETH · 2026-04-23 · r7
The Bridge less travelled
Long-form essay by Odysseus, founder of Phylax Systems, on cross-chain bridge design choices and the paths the industry hasnt taken. · Odysseus (phylax.systems) · 2026-04-22 · r6

DeFi

The DeFi item was a warning light: exploit losses dominated the month and made security the unavoidable backdrop for every product launch.

April 2026 was the worst month ever for DeFi exploits
April 2026 saw roughly $635M lost across 28 DeFi exploit incidents, making it the worst month on record for DeFi exploits. · Abdul · 2026-04-30 · r5

Infrastructure

Infrastructure focused on developer leverage and privacy: Solidity, Plank, Schelk, and OP Stack privacy all targeted the lower layers builders depend on.

Solidity 0.8.35 released
Solidity 0.8.35 ships with an erc7201 comptime builtin, a new --experimental flag, experimental SSA CFG codegen, and deprecation warnings for upcoming 0.9.0 keywords. · Solidity · 2026-04-30 · r7
Plank v0.1 smart contract language released
Plank v0.1 introduces a new smart contract language that rebuilds the smart contract development stack from the ground up. · philogy · 2026-04-28 · r8
Open sourcing Schelk — fast filesystem snapshot and rollback for database benchmarking
Paradigm open-sources Schelk — a fast filesystem snapshot and rollback tool used daily for database benchmarking. Work by @pepyakin. · Georgios Konstantopoulos (Paradigm) · 2026-04-23 · r7
Privacy on the OP Stack
OP Labs CEO and Optimism co-founder on bringing privacy to the OP Stack via Privacy Boost — a regulatory-friendly, composable SDK leveraging ZK and TEEs for confidential EVM transactions. · Jing Wang (OP Labs) · 2026-04-21 · r7

Product

Product launches were unusually concrete: agent credentials, stablecoin payments, ENSv2, Browser Harness, Runner, Warp, and Tempo all made automation and crypto UX feel closer to everyday use.

Stripe launches Link CLI — agents can mint single-use credentials with synchronous approval
Patrick Collison announces the Link CLI — agents can use it to create single-use credentials that the user synchronously approves each time. Patrick demos it by asking Claude to buy itself a gift on Etsy. · @patrickc · 2026-04-30 · r8
Stripe Sessions: agents of growth
Stripe announced 288 updates at Stripe Sessions to accelerate AI company growth, help enterprises adapt to AI, prevent token theft, and empower agents as economic actors. · Stripe · 2026-04-29 · r8
Circle Gateway nanopayments are live on mainnet
Circle Gateway nanopayments are live on mainnet, enabling gas-free USDC transfers down to $0.000001 with instant verification and unified liquidity across supported chains. · Circle · 2026-04-29 · r5
Google Wallet expands digital ID access with Aadhaar Verifiable Credentials
Google Wallet is expanding digital IDs in select countries, with Aadhaar Verifiable Credentials rolling out in India and selective disclosure privacy features. · Google · 2026-04-28 · r5
Warp is now open-source
Warp has open-sourced its client, enabling community participation through an agent-first workflow managed by Oz. · Zach Lloyd (Warp) · 2026-04-28 · r5
ENSv2 is coming
ENS announces ENSv2 — a new foundation for names, built for integrations and subnames at scale. · ens.eth · 2026-04-23 · r7
Introducing Runner — a knowledge work agent across all your apps
Yitong introduces @runneragent — a knowledge work agent that works across all your apps to stay on top of messages, project management, user feedback, and more. · Yitong Zhang · 2026-04-21 · r8
Introducing Browser Harness — a self-healing harness for browser tasks
Browser-use founder Gregor Zunic introduces Browser Harness — a self-healing harness that edits helpers on the fly and talks to Chrome via direct CDP, removing the LLM-restricting framework layer. · Gregor Zunic (browser-use) · 2026-04-18 · r7
Tempo is building Zones for businesses that need privacy
Tempo is building Zones, private blockchains for businesses that need privacy around stablecoin payments. · Tempo · 2026-04-16 · r7

Research

Research mixed AI-scale distributed training with post-quantum cryptography, autonomous labs, MEV, and private uniqueness: a clear signal that the frontier is both computational and institutional.

Private uniqueness: how the bleeding edge offers the impossible
An X article examines private uniqueness and how proof-of-human systems can preserve privacy while resisting duplicate identities, using World ID as the motivating example. · Daniel Shorr · 2026-04-27 · r5
Decoupled DiLoCo — resilient distributed AI pre-training
Google DeepMind and Google Research release Decoupled DiLoCo — enabling AI pre-training across datacenters worldwide on heterogeneous hardware, without halting the system. · Arthur Douillard (DeepMind) · 2026-04-23 · r8
The post-quantum cryptography debate has reached a tipping point
Ledger CTO on why the transition to post-quantum cryptography is inevitable — even without knowing when (or if) a cryptographically relevant quantum computer will arrive. · Charles Guillemet (Ledger CTO) · 2026-04-23 · r7
Medra opens America's largest autonomous lab
Michelle Lee (founder/CEO of Medra AI) announces the opening of America's largest autonomous lab — hundreds of robots running 24/7 to accelerate scientific discovery. · @michellearning · 2026-04-23 · r8
The MEV Letter #135
Weekly roundup of MEV research, EIPs, and tooling — CEX-DEX arbitrage modeling, OP stake-based priority ordering, Privacy Boost, Frame transactions, Besu parallelization, and more. · Flashbots · 2026-04-22 · r6
You Can Only Be in One Place
Digital identity systems can verify knowledge or possession, but proof of physical presence is needed to verify who is actually present. · Benjamin Fels · 2026-04-22 · r5
The MEV Letter #134
Issue #134 covers Blockspace Under Pressure: An Analysis of Spam MEV on High-Throughput Blockchains, The L2 Fee Vault: Pricing L1 Costs with Feedback Control, The Functional Layers of Non-Custodial Wallets and DeFi Interfaces, and What is "Finalized" in Ethereum? | Canonical Reorgs & Reflections. · Flashbots · 2026-04-15 · r6
The MEV Letter #133
Issue #133 covers Geographical Centralization Resilience in Ethereum’s Block-Building Paradigms, When Frontrunning is Alchemy, Economic Security of VDF-Based Randomness Beacons, and Blocks Are Dead. Long Live Blobs. · Flashbots · 2026-04-08 · r6

X Posts

The X stream caught the social layer of the month: OpenAI/TBPN, World ID, x402, Praxis, Reth, Project Glasswing, Trail of Bits, and crypto security incidents all moving in public at once.

MEGA is now trading
MEGA is now trading. · MegaETH · 2026-04-30 · r5
Falcon Heavy side boosters land on LZ-2 and LZ-40
Falcon Heavy’s side boosters landed on Landing Zones 2 and 40 after launch. · SpaceX · 2026-04-29 · r5
Tempo adds stablecoin payment capabilities on mainnet
Tempo released new mainnet capabilities for stablecoin payments, including subscriptions, auto-pay, per-customer deposit attribution, and invoice reconciliation. · Tempo · 2026-04-27 · r5
Core Memory — Sam Altman & Greg Brockman: 10 Years of OpenAI
Full Core Memory pod with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman — new models, the trial with Elon, more compute, the death of Sora, and more. On YouTube and all major podcast platforms. · Core Memory · 2026-04-23 · r7
Tiago Sada: full World ID keynote — AGI & Proof of Human
As AI advances, most apps and websites will use proof of human to protect themselves and their users. Full World ID keynote: AGI & Proof of Human with @sama, the new World ID, and World ID for apps. · Tiago Sada · 2026-04-22 · r9
Daniel Edrisian leaves OpenAI to found Blackstar
Ex-OpenAI Codex engineer launches Blackstar, a new hardware company building the next OS for human-AI interaction on the premise that 'software is solved'. · @DanielEdrisian · 2026-04-22 · r7
Arbitrum Security Council freezes 30,766 ETH tied to KelpDAO exploit
The Arbitrum Security Council froze 30,766 ETH on Arbitrum One connected to the KelpDAO exploit, moving the funds to an intermediary frozen wallet after technical diligence and law-enforcement input. · Arbitrum · 2026-04-21 · r7
World Network Liftoff event live updates
World Network Liftoff event is underway, with live updates and announcements from the venue. · David Hoffman · 2026-04-17 · r6
World ID 4.0
World · World · 2026-04-17 · r7
Ethereal news weekly #19
Weekly issue #19 covers the Roman Storm acquittal hearing, ETHGlobal Cannes hackathon finalists, and the evmnow block explorer. · Ethereal news · 2026-04-10 · r5
Quantum safe Bitcoin transactions without softforks
A GitHub project outlines how to support quantum safe Bitcoin transactions without requiring softforks. · Avihu Levy · 2026-04-09 · r5
PRAXIS launches PRAXIS APP TestFlight
PRAXIS APP launches a limited TestFlight with agent-made double opt-in introductions, end-to-end encrypted messaging, and gated admission. · PRAXIS · 2026-04-08 · r8
AI powered Google Finance launches in over 100 countries
The redesigned Google Finance now ships to more than 100 countries with AI powered market research, advanced charting, live earnings calls, and expanded real time data. · Nick Fox · 2026-04-08 · r7
OpenAI Foundation directs over 100 million dollars to Alzheimer research
The OpenAI Foundation is committing more than 100 million dollars to scientists mapping Alzheimer disease, designing drugs, and related research. · Jacob Trefethen · 2026-04-08 · r7
Alexandr Wang releases Muse Spark from MSL
Muse Spark is the first model from MSL and now powers Meta AI after a full rebuild of the stack and data pipelines. · Alexandr Wang · 2026-04-08 · r6
Category Labs analyzes spam MEV and its blockspace cost
Speculative probes that search for MEV on-chain at execution time consume around a quarter of blockspace while rarely producing a trade. · Category Labs · 2026-04-08 · r6
Reth 2.0 launches with major performance gains
Reth 2.0 is now faster, smaller, and built for the future of crypto infrastructure, with gigagas-per-second performance exceeding prior milestones. · Georgios Konstantopoulos · 2026-04-08 · r6
Anthropic launches Project Glasswing with Claude Mythos Preview
Anthropic · 2026-04-07 · r10
Project Glasswing gives major technology and security partners access to Claude Mythos Preview to find and fix critical software vulnerabilities, backed by up to $100M in usage credits.
DL Research interviews dcbuilder on x402 agent payments and proof of human
DL Research · 2026-04-07 · r7
An interview with dcbuilder explores x402 agent payments and how AgentKit adds proof-of-human to solve uniqueness.
Trail of Bits shares lessons from auditing WhatsApp TEE security
A WhatsApp private inference audit highlights four implementation lessons for TEE security. · Trail of Bits · 2026-04-07 · r7
EU Digital Identity picks Noir for its ZK identity app
The EU digital identity initiative selected Noir as the zero-knowledge language for its identity app. · Remco · 2026-04-07 · r6
Morpho expands enterprise and institutional adoption in March
The Ethereum Foundation increased its treasury allocation to Morpho, while Tempo, Privy, Ramp, OKX, Binance, and ShapeShift expanded yield offerings with Morpho. · Morpho · 2026-04-07 · r6
X launches a new photo editor in the post composer
The new photo editor adds drawing, text, Grok-powered editing with words, and blur redaction inside the X post composer. · Nikita Bier · 2026-04-07 · r6
Z.ai introduces GLM-5.1 open-source coding model
Z.ai · 2026-04-07 · r5
GLM-5.1 is a new open-source model from Z.ai for long-horizon coding tasks, ranking first among open models across SWE-Bench Pro, Terminal-Bench, and NL2Repo.
America still saves pilots, reaches the Moon, and confronts authoritarianism
A pro-American post apologizes for European idiocy and praises the United States for rescuing pilots, sending humans to the Moon, and confronting authoritarianism head-on. · Tim Soret · 2026-04-05 · r6
a16z interviews Alex Blania on proof of human and AI identity
Alex Blania discusses deepfakes, proof of human, AI identity, and iris-based uniqueness verification at scale. · a16z · 2026-04-02 · r7
Linux Foundation launches x402 Foundation with contribution of protocol from Coinbase
Linux Foundation · Linux Foundation · 2026-04-02 · r7
TBPN has been acquired by OpenAI
OpenAI has acquired TBPN, the tech talk show co-hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays. · Jordi Hays · 2026-04-02 · r7
$213M+ have been drained from Drift Protocol on Solana after admin key compromise
Drift’s admin key was compromised and more than $213M was drained in under 10 seconds via a fake collateral market, a manipulated oracle, and disabled circuit breakers. · Drift · 2026-04-02 · r6
pcaversaccio says Vyper is set to become the first formally verified smart contract compiler
Vyper is on track to become the first formally verified smart contract compiler, a milestone aimed at stronger correctness guarantees. · pcaversaccio · 2026-04-02 · r5
delian shares orbital animation of Artemis 2 heading to the Moon
An orbital animation shows Artemis II's crewed trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth. · delian · 2026-04-01 · r5

General

The general essay widened the frame around digital life, which matters because identity, agents, and online coordination were recurring themes everywhere else.

The Internet is Real Life
Long-form essay by Erik Torenberg (GP at a16z) on how digital life has become indistinguishable from — and as consequential as — physical life. · Erik Torenberg · 2026-04-21 · r6

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The MEV Letter → Flashbots' MEV research roundup covering papers, posts, and ecosystem updates
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