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Fidelity has filed its own application for a spot Ethereum ETF. The move, which the firm says aims to offer safeguards to US investors dealing in the crypto space, comes in the wake of a court ruling criticizing the SEC's inconsistency regarding crypto ETFs. The SEC has so far permitted futures-based products but has rejected spot crypto ETFs.
Jump Trading has amicably parted ways with its crypto project, Wormhole. Several key figures from the project will operate Wormhole independently. This move is in line with Jump Trading's continuing withdrawal from the digital asset space. The exact reason for the separation or the number of employees who left due to it is not yet known.
ZKP2P, the first trustless fiat-to-crypto onramp powered by zero-knowledge proofs, has been launched in alpha. The platform will offer swift, affordable, and permissionless conversions from USD to USDC, with a limit of $250 every six hours. Built on a decentralized front end, it allows any smart contract to take liquidity. Users can opt-in for its proving service but it's not required. Future plans include expanding to more payment services and gasless onboarding.
Fhenix’s newly released whitepaper details a more scalable solution for executing confidential smart contracts known as Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) Rollups. This system, which enhances the efficiency of confidential smart contracts, doesn't require all nodes in a network to execute FHE computations to reach a consensus over the encrypted state, unlike current methods. Fhenix's design adopts an optimistic rollup approach, avoiding the computational penalty caused by current verifiable FHE techniques. This development could enable the most commonly used smart contract ecosystems to be augmented with confidential smart contracts.
The anticipation of a Bitcoin ETF has been driving the mini-bull market over the past few months. An ETF could bring billions into the crypto ecosystem, akin to Gold ETFs which made gold access and storage easy for US customers. The market has been highly sensitive to questions around the timing and likelihood of these approvals going through. This guide breaks down the different relevant dates for each of the current Spot Bitcoin ETF applications under review at the moment.
NFT trading volume has spiked in recent weeks, with most of the activity happening on Blur, likely in anticipation of its upcoming season of airdrops. Research firm Revelo Intel provides an update on Blur and a thesis for its token in this thread. Blur's approach, focusing on professional NFT traders' needs, has led to improved overall NFT market efficiency and liquidity. The next step for Blur in improving token utility might be governance voting with discussions about using platform profits for token buybacks and burns.
Parallel Colony is pioneering a shift in gaming with a gaming experiment powered by AI on-chain. Based on Stanford and Google research, the game uses AI-powered avatars that evolve in a simulated colony using Parallel's native token, PRIME. Notably, these avatars, being NFTs, can function as wallets, accumulating and managing their own game assets. The avatars, created by customizing a large language model, have dynamic life histories affected by AI and human interactions.
The Solana ecosystem has shown real resilience through a brutal bear market, with the price of its token, SOL, 6xing from the lows so far. This comeback has been driven by a surge in developer and institutional interest, despite previous setbacks from a close association with FTX. Key indicators show Solana's resilience, including a significant rise in TVL and an increase in users. However, occasional network outages and potential security issues could be potential roadblocks in its path to challenge Ethereum as the main L1 ecosystem.
This tool can help you check and see if any of your wallets are eligible for the upcoming Pyth and Jupiter airdrops on Solana.
This article provides a good summary of Rachel O'Dwyer's book, Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform, which explores the evolution of money, examining the shift from physical cash to digital tokens and the social and economic implications of this transformation.
This post explains how dollar alternatives like USDT and USDC cater to different demographics and markets. USDT tends to dominate in areas with capital controls, while USDC aligns more with institutional needs.
Sam Altman's departure as OpenAI CEO led to a 13% drop in Worldcoin's token value due to uncertainty about his future role at Worldcoin.