StarkWare plans to significantly reduce the number of validators in its STRK Delegation Program, raising the cap on a single delegate to 20 million.
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Vitalik Buterin released a new proposal suggesting that the consensus layer state be drastically reduced to only 6 bytes.
According to Foresight News , Vitalik Buterin has released a new proposal, "The Extremely Lean Chain." The core of this proposal is to significantly simplify the state stored by each validator in the current Beacon chain (public key, withdrawal certificate, activation/exit epoch, etc.), retaining only 6 bytes (1 byte for effective balance + 5 bytes for deposit tree index). Validators will need to track their deposit Merkle proofs themselves and asynchronously update their effective balance and participation records using daily generated STARK proofs, instead of having these updates processed in real-time on-chain every epoch. The proposal is planned to proceed in multiple phases: removing public key storage and replacing it with a deposit tree index, with daily STARK proofs used to update the balance; subsequently, a daily public key refresh mechanism will be introduced to achieve strong anonymity of validator identities, while naturally supporting Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE). This design is considered feasible in the context of Lean upgrades such as single-slot finality (SSF) and recursive STARK, aiming to significantly reduce consensus layer state overhead and computational burden, support the number of validators to the millions, and provide strong privacy protection in advanced versions.
Core DAO plans emergency hard fork after validators drew excess rewards
Core says the incident is contained and its planned forward upgrade will not roll back the network or reverse previously confirmed transactions.
Guangdong: By the end of 2027, the province's urban digital infrastructure support capabilities will be significantly enhanced.
According to Mars Finance, 11 departments, including the Guangdong Provincial Government Service and Data Management Bureau, recently issued the "Guangdong Provincial Action Plan for Promoting the Digital Transformation of Cities and Building Smart Cities." The plan emphasizes using cities as comprehensive carriers for the construction of Digital Guangdong, promoting infrastructure connectivity, data integration, platform interoperability, business integration, and a smooth ecosystem. It also aims to actively explore future-oriented smart city management models and achieve high-quality development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area smart city cluster. By the end of 2027, the province's urban digital infrastructure support capabilities will be significantly enhanced, the level of efficient digital governance will be greatly improved, digital public services will be more efficient and convenient, the momentum of digital economic development will be fully released, and the digital ecosystem will be comprehensively and collaboratively guaranteed. A number of effective and replicable typical application scenarios for digital transformation will be implemented, with Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, and Dongguan taking the lead in building efficient smart governance systems and implementing a number of advanced, usable, and independently controllable large-scale urban models. By 2030, no fewer than 10 cities will have achieved full-area digital transformation, achieving an overall leap in the digital transformation of cities throughout the province, forming a number of new smart city benchmarks and digital China city models with regional competitiveness and national influence. (Cailian Press)
MiniMax plans to launch a large model with 2.7 trillion parameters.
PANews reported on July 8th that, according to sources, AI company MiniMax is developing a new large-scale language model with 2.7 trillion parameters, exceeding the scale of all currently available domestic AI models. The sources stated that this new model is expected to be released as early as the third quarter of this year. Internal employees involved in the development have designated it as M3 Pro, but it is unclear whether the company will use this name in the official release. MiniMax plans to open-source the model. This new model is significantly larger than MiniMax's current flagship model, M3 (428 billion parameters). Larger-scale AI models are better suited for handling complex reasoning and multi-step instruction tasks.
Zhipu plans to develop its own AI chip and has already contacted chip companies to accelerate efforts to address its computing power shortcomings.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Zhipu is evaluating the possibility of designing its own AI chip to address the rapidly growing demand for its GLM series of open-source large models and the shortage of computing resources caused by US export restrictions. Odaily has recently made preliminary contact with some Chinese chip design companies to explore cooperation in developing a customized AI processor optimized for its model operation scenarios. Zhipu is one of China's leading AI large-scale model companies, with its GLM series models attracting attention due to its open-source strategy and performance. As the application scale of large-scale models expands, high-performance computing resources have become a key bottleneck for AI companies. Developing its own chips is seen as a way to reduce dependence on external GPUs and improve computing efficiency. Currently, Zhipu AI has not yet made a final decision on whether to proceed with the chip project; the relevant plans are still in the early evaluation stage. (The Information)
The National Development and Reform Commission disclosed five key work plans for the artificial intelligence industry during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, emphasizing the strengthening of key technologies such as models, computing power, and data.
According to Mars Finance, at a press conference held by the Shanghai Municipal Government on July 7, Wang Ruomeng, Deputy Director of the Innovation and High-Tech Development Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, disclosed the working plan for my country's artificial intelligence industry during the 15th Five-Year Plan period: First, accelerate independent innovation. Strengthen research on key technologies such as models, computing power, and data; increase basic research; generate more original achievements; and contribute Chinese wisdom to the global development of artificial intelligence. Second, strengthen application-driven development. Focus on areas with significant economic contributions, high strategic value, and good social benefits; open up a number of high-value scenarios; and create a number of benchmark applications. At the same time, pay attention to the impact of artificial intelligence on employment, promote the creation of new jobs and empowerment of traditional jobs through artificial intelligence, and prioritize its application in "dangerous, dirty, tiring, and heavy" scenarios. Third, deepen ecological collaboration. Continuously promote deep adaptation of software and hardware, common prosperity of open and closed sources, integration of industry, academia, research, and application, and differentiated regional development to significantly improve the efficiency of ecological collaboration. Fourth, adhere to openness and win-win cooperation. Extensively carry out international cooperation in artificial intelligence, promote open-source and inclusive technology, support the Global South in strengthening artificial intelligence capacity building, and actively participate in international governance in the field of artificial intelligence. Fifth, ensure safety and controllability. We must coordinate development and security, accelerate legislation in the field of artificial intelligence, improve the system of rules and regulations, prevent risks such as data misuse, deepfakes, and privacy breaches, and ensure that the development of artificial intelligence is for human use and under human control. (Cailian Press)