KuCoin has listed AKEDO (AKE) on its Spotlight platform, giving users early access to tokens in a project that combines artificial intelligence with blockchain gaming. The sale reflects KuCoin’s strategy of supporting ventures that apply emerging technologies to Web3.

Key Takeaways

• KuCoin Spotlight features AKEDO (AKE), an AI-focused Web3 gaming project.

• AKEDO enables game creation 100x faster and cheaper than traditional methods.

• Token sale terms include discounted pricing, proportional allocation, and a principal protection buyback.

• The platform spans Solana, TON, BNB, Bera, and DuckChain with multi-token rewards.

• KuCoin has recently upgraded Spotlight with a new UI, dual-crypto support, and staking perks. Users can take part in the sale directly through the AKEDO Spotlight event page.

AKEDO: AI Tools for Web3 Gaming

Founded in 2024 in Zug, Switzerland, AKEDO began with Akedog, a Telegram “tap-to-earn” game. It has since developed into a wider ecosystem based on what the company calls a “multi-agent AI framework.”

AKEDO builds AI agents straight into game engines. Instead of coding, players can type a short prompt and watch a full game take shape within minutes—something the team says is around a hundred times quicker and cheaper than using standard AI models.

To illustrate, AKEDO has described the platform as “TikTok meets Roblox on the blockchain,” aiming to combine user-generated content with on-chain ownership and crypto rewards.

Source: KuCoin

Multi-Chain Design and Rewards

The AKE token is issued on Solana, but AKEDO also connects with TON, BNB, Bera, and DuckChain. Its “PlayDrop” feature allows players to earn rewards in multiple cryptocurrencies, including DOGE, BNB, USDT, and others.

This interoperability aims to open the platform to more players and connect their in-game activity with real crypto rewards.

Spotlight Token Sale Terms

Through KuCoin Spotlight, participants can purchase AKE tokens at 80% of the previous financing round’s Fully Diluted Valuation, with an additional 10% discount for KCS subscriptions. Over-subscription is supported, with proportional allocation to ensure all participants receive tokens, according to KuCoin’s announcement.

The sale also includes a principal protection buyback, meaning KuCoin will step in to limit losses if the project underperforms. It’s part of the exchange’s attempt to pair early access with investor safeguards.

KuCoin’s Broader Role

Launched in 2017, KuCoin now serves more than 41 million users in over 200 countries. The exchange lists more than 1,000 assets and offers services including a Web3 wallet, spot and futures trading, institutional tools, and payments. Forbes has ranked KuCoin among its “Best Crypto Apps & Exchanges.”

KuCoin has also upgraded Spotlight with a refreshed user interface, dual-crypto support, and staking features, reinforcing its role as a launchpad for early-stage Web3 ventures.

The AKEDO Spotlight sale offers early access to a gaming platform that relies on AI to speed up creation and reward players across multiple chains. For KuCoin, it’s another example of how Spotlight is being used to bring experimental Web3 projects to a global audience.

KuCoin has unveiled its latest Spotlight token sale, giving users early access to AKEDO (AKE), a project that blends artificial intelligence, gaming, and blockchain technology. The sale offers reduced pricing, exclusive benefits for KuCoin users, and even a principal protection mechanism—underscoring the exchange’s push to back ambitious Web3 projects.

What is AKEDO?

Founded in 2024 and headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, AKEDO is building a multi-agent AI framework designed to reshape how games are created and played in Web3. The platform embeds AI agents directly into game engines, allowing users to generate fully functional, studio-quality games within minutes using simple text prompts—no coding required.

Compared with traditional large language models, AKEDO claims its system is up to 100 times faster and significantly more cost-efficient. The project originally started as Akedog, a Telegram-based “tap-to-earn” game, and has since evolved into a full ecosystem where user-generated content, on-chain ownership, and crypto rewards converge—something the team describes as “TikTok meets Roblox” for blockchain gaming.

The AKEDO ecosystem supports multiple blockchains, including Solana (where the AKE token lives), TON, BNB, Bera, and DuckChain. Its “PlayDrop” feature lets players earn rewards in assets like DOGE, BNB, and USDT across different chains.

Spotlight Token Sale Details

Through KuCoin Spotlight, users can secure AKE tokens before they are publicly listed. Highlights of the sale include:

• Discounted entry: Tokens are offered at an 80% Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) compared to AKEDO’s previous financing round, plus an additional 10% discount for those subscribing with KuCoin’s native token, KCS.

• Inclusive allocation: KuCoin is guaranteeing proportional allocations, meaning all participants will receive tokens regardless of demand.

• Principal protection: A buyback mechanism is in place to help protect participants’ initial investment, with full details available on KuCoin’s official announcement.

The Spotlight program itself has recently rolled out upgrades like a redesigned interface, dual-crypto support, and new staking benefits, continuing its focus on projects that expand user opportunities in the Web3 space. For participation details, please visit the event landing page.

About KuCoin

Launched in 2017, KuCoin is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, serving over 41 million users across 200+ countries and regions. The platform offers access to more than 1,000 digital assets, along with services ranging from spot and futures trading to a Web3 wallet and institutional solutions. Recognized by Forbes as one of the “Best Crypto Apps & Exchanges,” KuCoin has also been named a “Top 50 Global Unicorn” by Hurun. The exchange is ISO 27001:2022 certified and continues to prioritize security, compliance, and innovation under CEO BC Wong.

Learn more: https://www.kucoin.com/

China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) has warned that a foreign crypto company is collecting iris scan data under the guise of token distribution, raising serious concerns about personal and national security.

In an Aug. 5 statement, the ministry revealed that the firm is gathering iris data from users worldwide and transmitting it to an overseas database. Authorities did not name the company, but they cautioned that the biometric information could be exploited if it fell into the wrong hands.

The MSS stressed that iris data, like other forms of biometric information, could be used for identity theft, fraud, and illegal surveillance once leaked.

Officials cited recent examples, including a foreign firm whose fingerprint payment system was compromised due to weak security controls. Hackers reportedly accessed sensitive user data by breaching the company’s internal systems.

According to the ministry, there is mounting evidence that foreign intelligence agencies have engaged in unauthorized collection of facial and biometric data. These actors allegedly falsify such data to access secure environments and conduct surveillance operations.

The MSS noted this represents a growing risk to China’s national security.

Considering this, the authorities stressed that Chinese law provides strict safeguards around biometric data, including facial and iris recognition technologies.

The MSS urged both citizens and organizations to comply with existing legal frameworks. It also encouraged the public to remain alert and report suspicious data collection activities.

Worldcoin suspected

While the Chinese ministry avoided directly naming the company, the description closely aligns with Worldcoin, which has now been rebranded as World.

The project scans users’ irises in return for WLD tokens, a practice already under investigation in multiple jurisdictions.

Over the past year, the Sam Altman-backed company has recorded significant growth by scanning the irises of more than 10 million people worldwide. At the same time, the firm has also expanded into countries like the United States and Malaysia.

However, its operations have triggered regulatory scrutiny in Colombia, Germany, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Indonesia.

Authorities in those regions have raised red flags over data protection violations, non-compliance with privacy laws, and a lack of transparency.

Meanwhile, Worldcoin has continued to stress its commitment to legal compliance, hashed data, and the high standards of its users’ privacy protection.

Mentioned in this article

The event, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, runs from July 9 – 11 at the Messe Berlin conference center and brings together developers, tech leaders, and decision-makers for three days of talks, networking, and idea exchange.

The speaker lineup includes some of the most influential people in the tech industry. Among them are Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub; Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow; and Katrin Lehmann, CIO of Mercedes-Benz.

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Sessions throughout the conference address various topics shaping the future of technology, with a particularly strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI).

Over the past few years, AI has transformed how people build, use, and think about technology. It is pushing industries to adapt and creating entirely new ways of solving problems; but at the same time, it is raising important questions about its role in the years ahead.

The conference program explores AI from multiple angles, including its ethical implications, the rise of autonomous AI agents, and generative AI.

A common theme running through the discussions is the sense that the potential of AI in development, including blockchain development, seems limitless. Speakers are pointing to ways AI can improve efficiency, unlock creativity, and help tackle increasingly complex technical problems.

In his opening keynote, GitHub’s Dohmke summarized this perspective by saying he sees AI as a way to put software development “on autopilot.” In other words, he believes in a future where developers can focus more on solving high-level problems while AI handles much of the repetitive work.

The idea that AI can uncover possibilities beyond what was thought possible goes far beyond software. Researchers even used it to piece together a 2,700-year-old Babylonian hymn from scattered cuneiform fragments. What does the hymn say? Read the full story.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 3% of 48 million smallholder farmers are insured. Owning 1 acre of land and earning approximately $1.40 per person per day characterize a smallholder farmer. Smallholder farmers often own a mixture of cash crops and subsistence or non-commercial farming; and, they lack the financial and technological resources of large-scale industrial farms. As extreme weather events become ever more frequent due to climate change, one flood or drought can push such farmers into the spiraling cycle of poverty without protection by means of crop insurance.

The following is an update from Ethereum Foundation Fellow Benson Njuguna.

Benson is on a mission to elevate humanity from an economic standpoint through innovative ideas driven by technology. He is a Business Transformation Specialist at ACRE Africa, a microinsurance service provider based in Kenya. For more about the Ethereum Foundation Fellowship Program, read this blog post.

Roadblocks for Farmers: Trust and Affordability

Businesses like ACRE Africa have supported farmers by delivering risk management solutions and agricultural insurance products that address the precarious and uncertain livelihoods that farmers face. One challenge in this field is that farmers have a negative preconception of insurance providers due to a history of delayed or absent payouts. Farmers are unaccustomed to being given crucial information related to their policy – even something as simple as confirmation about whether they will receive a payout for losses incurred.

At ACRE Africa, a typical smallholder farmer with a half-acre plot pays about USD $5, per season, for weather-index crop insurance (a type of insurance that makes payouts on the basis of predetermined weather data like rainfall). Losses from adverse weather conditions result in a payout of about USD$50, which is just enough to cover farm inputs such as seeds and fertilizers.

For insurance businesses, such low premiums mean that scale is needed to break even, much less to turn a profit. Saving on costs through digitization and automation is crucial, not only for insurance businesses’ commercial viability, but also to make sure that farmers can afford the insurance premium.

The Problem: Old Crop Insurance Payout System

Every farmer’s life is shaped by two seasons in Kenya and the region: the long rain season and the short rain season. The long rain season begins in April and ends in July, while the short rain season starts in October and ends in December. For the first cycle of the long rain season in April, farmers begin to buy insurance. To get started, they are required to fill out many forms. Once the forms are complete and the insurance product has been purchased, ACRE Africa monitors the risk and climate until the end of the season. In short, if there is a weather event during the period over which a farmer purchased insurance, they will be paid only after the following season has already started. However, without insurance, the farmers would have suffered financial loss and struggled to continue farming into the following season.

The Solution: ACRE’s BIMA PIMA

A farmer in Embu County, Kenya is activating his insurance policy, using a scratch card included in the bag of seeds he purchased. (Thanks to Acre Africa for supplying this photo)

The BIMA PIMA product, which literally means insurance in small installments, is one of the newest insurance solutions from ACRE Africa. It was implemented in partnership with Etherisc, whose team has developed a decentralized insurance platform on Ethereum.

Farmers seeking coverage with BIMA PIMA first buy seeds for the season from a partnering agricultural supplier. Each bag of seeds includes a scratch card with a unique registration code. For the pilot, we included the price of basic insurance in the seed price, but farmers are also able to purchase additional coverage through a mobile payment network (M-PESA).

When planting the seeds, the farmer will use SMS/USSD to activate the insurance policy. During the USSD activation, their location, and phone number, along with all other relevant details obtained from the registration code (such as the type of crop and amount covered) are passed into the policy smart contract on the xDai chain; this process is known as triangulation and results in the automatic creation of a new policy. The farmer immediately receives a text message informing him/her that the policy is active.

The alternative system monitors and compares actual and historical weather data that triggers the approval of a claim. Here, the payout is not based on human assessment, but rather on pre-defined “windows” or phases throughout the farming seasons (i.e. germination, vegetation, flowering, excess rain). As long as the weather and climate data collected meets the criteria agreed in the policy, the claim is approved; then, the farmers receive payments during the ongoing season and do not have to wait until the end of the season, as was previously the case. The farmers will receive an SMS after the policy was triggered and can check the status of their insurance policy via a mobile device.

Our goal is to gain every farmer’s confidence by providing more relevant information, faster payouts, reducing costs for the insurance product as well as an audit trail for accountability.

First payout made via blockchain

Earlier this year, we made our first payout to a farmer, Samuel, who bought an insurance policy for maize seeds!

As of today, 511 mid-season payouts, totaling KES 75,295 ($670 USD), and 4,021 end-season payouts, totaling KES 309,939 ($2,766 USD) were made.

Next hurdles and steps

Though this new system addresses existing challenges and improves the current systems in Kenya (and soon in Tanzania and Zambia), it has not been without hiccups. We are still a long way from a fully ‘decentralized’ insurance solution. Payouts, for example, though technically possible, are not fully automated yet. One of the main challenges remains improving processing times for claims approvals. Just like in the old payout system, claims end up sitting on someone’s desk, waiting for approval. Likewise, the parties outside of our project (ex: the insurer, the re-insurer who support us in the claims processing, and regulator) also have their own standalone system, and there are still aspects which become bottlenecks as they require a manual approval process. Looking ahead, we will share relevant information regarding policies with all stakeholders. With direct access to one system through customised dashboards, we imagine each stakeholder accessing one source with a complete audit trail.

I’m hopeful that our BIMA PIMA insurance product can serve as a successful model to revitalize the much needed trust between farmers and insurance providers. I took up computer sciences to help my community, and realised from an early age that technology was needed to allow countries like Kenya to be part of the global market. I am excited to be a part of that, and to be working toward a future where millions more family farmers and billions of people in developing countries experience the beginnings of decentralization.

We hope you’ll continue to stay connected with the Fellowship Program, and we’d love to hear from you if you’re looking to get in touch by email at fellowship@ethereum.org. Finally, connect with Benson on Twitter, or reach out online to contact other Fellows, or to learn more about the program.

The following is an update from Ethereum Foundation Fellow Chuy Cepeda.

Our identities hold immense power. In a time when people take great pride in using multiple pseudonyms or personas, we often think about how to identify ourselves. I identify as a native of Monterrey, Mexico, a Latin-American, a son, brother, father, husband, engineer, Ph.D., entrepreneur, dog lover, hitchhiker, and a believer that democracies are suffering.

Looking back at a time when I started meeting people from different countries and gaining a better understanding of their access to public services, I recall becoming aware of how far away this reality was for Mexicans. I realized that as my home city grew, many decisions made by the government were unplanned or colluded. I learned that my home country of Mexico was one of the least favored countries according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. I realized that these problems are not limited to me and my home country, but affect people everywhere.

I now feel a profound empathy for anyone who can’t look to the government for better transport, proper education, and health services. All the while, I see technology making bigger and bigger impacts in the daily lives of people all around Latin America and beyond. Think for a minute about this: while people are becoming more digital and expect personalized and real-time services, public institutions are unable to meet those expectations.

Citizens face inefficiencies, a lack of transparency and red tape, and a terrible experience when it comes to interacting with their governments. This is a global crisis of institutional agility and trust that erodes possibilities to prosper, and it’s why Democracy as an ideal is suffering.

So I decided to incorporate a new part of my identity: I co-founded OS City to improve the landscape of government services in the modern world, essentially by bringing public institutions into the web3 paradigm. In other words, to use blockchains to digitize government services and give citizens their decentralized digital identity.

The OS City team

Upgrading Bureaucracy

From birth certificates to driver’s licenses and academic records, when we are asked to identify who we are as citizens, this is about sharing our personal information or credentials, usually notarized by the government of the place we come from. Depending on where that is, those records could be located in a fancy networked database (as is the case for Estonian citizens), but more likely what we need when we need an ‘official identity’ actually resides in the specialized passport printers of a stuffy government building, or spread about in filing cabinets of various state bank branches, or maybe it’s nowhere at all!

When we “use” these representations of our identity, what we are actually doing is getting separate bureaucratic systems to interoperate. If the visa stamps from one customs office in Country A fit onto the passport pages of Country B, that’s ‘good enough’ for us in most cases. But when that basic interoperability has stricter requirements, or when it breaks down, that’s where we get into trouble. Office A requires an original stamped document from Office B, which is closed after 3pm, and requires a notarized letter from Department C, which is in a different part of the city and needs approval first from Office A… some of us are all too familiar with being trapped in this sort of prison of paperwork. This is where collusion and corruption are born, where we start the snowball effect that ends up in a terrible response to social distress, economic growth, and climate change.

The fundamental challenge is that everyone must have an identity, but it is simply not true that everyone has an interoperable representation of identity. That’s where I believe we can do better. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s certainly not going to happen all at once, but if we start in the right direction, we might end up in a place we want to be at. Part of our work to solve these issues led us to develop an application-specific wallet called Soberana, which is meant to be used to hold and manage digital identities.

Blockchains are by design built from interoperable and standardized components that can combine and integrate into all sorts of ways. Any blockchain built to be Ethereum or EVM-compatible will follow the same set of standards. So at Soberana, that is our starting point. Unfortunately, we work in a design space that must allow for some degree of centralization, i.e. a government authority must approve a record or identity.

Nevertheless, we start with a small kernel of identity that is still compatible with the open, permissionless systems of the web3 world. Starting from that compatibility makes it a lot easier to improve and build more complex systems around it over time – a network economy of digital services, both centralized and decentralized. The goal here is maximum compatibility for a digital identity: whether you’re using it for a centralized government notary, a proprietary banking transaction or a public NFT registry, your ID should move between those systems seamlessly and securely.

As we add more and more functionality, we’ll be able to verify, port, and share that identity through a whole suite of government services that all connect to each other. From marriages to mortgages, all of the paperwork that requires identity could be de-bureaucratized and made painless by using the right infrastructure. By starting small and with this first piece of the puzzle, we pave a way towards broader institutional reform, using technology wisely to increase the legitimacy of the public sector as a whole.

This past year, we have focused on rolling out an official citizen digital identity through an online government-run portal, where citizens obtain a wallet that serves as their digital identity and digital document-holder. Citizens can port and use official documents in their digital wallets, as well as share and renew these documents.

At the moment, these documents are limited to commercial permits, construction permits, city inspector credentials, tax payer statements, among others; but we are working to expand and incorporate as many documents as possible to be compatible with local governments in Mexico and Argentina.

The Long View

I understand now that bureaucracies are merely inertial inefficiencies of governments that have lost the excitement of innovation. That’s why I believe blockchains have an enormous potential to lead us into a new era of openness and collaboration that helps to increase the legitimacy of the public sector. With the help and support of public sector leaders, we can create radical change in the government sector, and even make it a prosperous field for business, fostering the digital, economic, and social transitions of our nations.

My short-term vision is to be able to offer citizens the possibility to own their official records, to eliminate duplicate efforts in every government process, to make government transactions traceable and transparent, and to foster the first government standard for blockchain verifiable credentials. This will hopefully show the international public sector that interoperability can succeed when we put citizens in the center, when innovation promotes regulation and not the other way around.

In the long term, I hope that we can all work together to rethink governance and identity. We are starting by rethinking and reinventing the way governments, individuals and companies interact among themselves; in a decentralized digital world, interactions are not state or market-centric, but community and citizen-oriented. This implies a new ecosystemic vision where the government, startups, academia and civil organizations jointly explore public problems, seek (and transfer) appropriate solutions and feed on their learnings. It is not the state hiring suppliers, but the state interacting with other actors to solve society’s most pressing problems. I believe a new digital identity is one step that will allow governments, citizens, and communities to get the most out of blockchain technology, fostering prosperity through a network of citizen-centric digital services.

For more about the Ethereum Foundation Fellowship Program, read this blog post.

With over 15,000 attendees packing the venue across two days, the final day delivered a flurry of high-impact reveals, bullish sentiment, and a few headline-grabbing moments that will ripple across the blockchain industry in the months to come.

USD1 Becomes the Star Stablecoin of the Show

One of the standout moments unfolded on the OKX stage, where World Liberty Financial (WLF) announced a native integration of its USD1 stablecoin on TRON. Executive VP and Co-Founder Zach Witkoff didn’t hold back — confirming that the minting process will kick off with hundreds of millions and scale to billions in market cap “in the near future.”

But that wasn’t the end of it. Witkoff also revealed that USD1 will be used to close MGX’s $2 billion investment in Binance, marking the first-ever institutional Binance investment conducted entirely in a stablecoin. It’s a watershed moment — not just for stablecoins, but for how major deals might be executed in the future.

Eric Trump’s Fiery Critique of Global Finance

Eric Trump, Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization, delivered a fiery indictment of the global financial system, calling it “broken,” outdated, and rigged against the average person. Speaking alongside industry giants like World Liberty Financial’s Zach Witkoff and Tron’s Justin Sun, Trump shared personal experiences of political backlash that pushed him toward the world of crypto.

“It works really well for, you know, maybe the top 1% or the top 0.1%, but it doesn’t work for the rest of the world,” Trump said, reflecting on how his family’s political involvement revealed the fragility and weaponization of traditional systems. “The second you start saying something that goes against the system, they’ll cancel you, ostracize you, and come after you.”

Mesh Brings Crypto to Checkout With Apple Pay

Another strong play came from Mesh, which introduced an Apple Pay integration enabling crypto-to-stablecoin payments for retail and e-commerce checkouts. Built on its proprietary SmartFunding tech, the move effectively removes the last-mile barrier for crypto users who want seamless, real-world utility — spend crypto, merchants get stablecoins.

Launching later in Q2, this comes hot on the heels of Mesh’s $82M Series B led by Paradigm, and could prove pivotal in nudging crypto closer to mainstream adoption.

Pipe Network Levels Up With PipeQuest Launch

In the world of decentralized infrastructure, Pipe Foundation rolled out PipeQuest, a gamified incentive program for its upcoming Pipe Network — a decentralized CDN built on Solana. Season 1 kicks off on May 5, 2025, and will focus on ramping up node performance, community participation, and demand-side traction.

Think of it as the Web3 version of a boot camp — with each week-long season preparing the network for its anticipated mainnet launch this summer.

Emad Mostaque Debuts Open-Source Medical AI Model

On the AI x crypto frontier, Emad Mostaque — founder of Intelligent Internet and former CEO of Stability AI — took the stage to unveil the II-Medical-7B-Preview, a medical reasoning model trained with curated data and DAPO (Data & Policy Optimization).

Paired with the launch of a whitepaper waitlist, this marks a bold move toward open-source healthcare AI, a vision rooted in equitable access and decentralized intelligence.

Culture, Conversations, and Crypto in the Desert

Beyond the announcements, TOKEN2049 Dubai served as a bustling meeting ground for founders, VCs, creators, and curious newcomers alike. From Eric Trump’s appearance and thoughts on digital sovereignty to candid conversations in the event hall corridors, the energy was palpable.

As the sun set over Dubai and the final panels wrapped, attendees left not just with media kits and merch — but with a renewed sense of what’s possible in Web3.

The post TOKEN2049 Dubai Wraps Up with Major Announcements, Eric Trump Steals the Spotlight appeared first on Cryptonews.