This week centered on the economic model rollout and the systems that support it. Stage 1 of the Hemi Economic Model is live, and eligible veHEMI holders with positions now claim rewards. Rewards travel with the veHEMI NFT, so unclaimed balances move if a position is transferred. Timing for Stage 2 will follow once the short-term pool and protocol-owned liquidity treasury finalize their specifications. Stages 3 and 4 which encompass vote-directed incentives, and dual staking of HEMI and hBTC, remain in scope as part of the broader push toward progressive decentralization.

ZK work continued at pace. The team reached consensus on updated data structures for state-transition encoding and has a minimal end-to-end proving system running with RISC-0 for Bitcoin-side proofs. Indexer and TVC updates are in progress to support ZK queries. The HBIT VM white paper is nearly complete, with additions tied to efficient proof generation and the architecture for verifiable state queries across hVM.

Network upgrades advanced in parallel. The Testnet L1 contract upgrade is staged and undergoing Tenderly simulations. V2, including the updated PoP pad algorithm, is targeted for Testnet by week’s end. If stable, mainnet deployment will follow shortly after. On the VeriBlock side, a test claim tool is expected shortly. Users with nonstandard VBK setups, such as multisigs or legacy wrapped VBK, are being handled case by case.

NFT discussions continued. No updates to Hemi Hatchlings; art remains art. The team does not plan a native marketplace, as NFT platforms require substantial ongoing maintenance. Instead, integration focus is on NFTFi and GameFi partners, including projects exploring randomness, onchain games, and Hemi-specific mints. Community-driven activity remains the most reliable catalyst for additional marketplace support.

Points Season 2 will not follow the previous format; the focus has shifted to liquid rewards, which are immediately claimable incentives across LPs and protocols. Points may return for specific integrations or sprint-style events, but the current priority is predictable, liquid incentives delivered directly through onchain mechanisms.

Community notes: Merch contest winners were announced, and the community collection goes live once the team returns from travel. A weekly meme contest is being prepared with exclusive merch drops for winners. Aster’s trading campaign closes tonight. The ODD NFT collection is open for public mint on Mintpark. The OG role flow is still underway. As always, avoid third-party scripts for PoP miners unless you can fully audit them.

A new educational series is in production, walking through core crypto concepts from first principles and expanding into Hemi-specific mechanisms such as Proof-of-Proof and BTC-secured DeFi. Early episodes are recorded, with more team members joining as the series progresses.