Parse notes
Ryan Selkis has resigned as Messari's CEO after making controversial tweets, which included inflammatory political statements and hostile remarks towards immigrants, that placed his team at risk. He made the decision after receiving intense criticism for his social media conduct. Messari's Chief Revenue Officer Eric Turner will take over the position as interim CEO.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has received court approval to invest US customer funds in US Treasury Bills, marking a significant step in utilizing low-risk government debt securities. This comes after a settlement for criminal charges with the US Justice Department that included a $4.3 billion fine and the resignation of former CEO Changpeng Zhao.
Moonshot is the first app on the App Store that allows users to buy and sell memes with Apple Pay. It offers a seamless sign-up with email and FaceID with no need for blockchain knowledge or wallet addresses. Users can earn money through trades and referrals. The app is now available in over 130 countries.
Zellular introduces a Consensus Layer and Sequencing Service for developing decentralized applications (zApps) using both high-level and low-level programming languages. Key features include rapid state finalization, unlimited throughput through horizontal scaling, robust interoperability, dynamic security, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, and a decentralized transaction explorer.
The crypto market cap grew 37.3% in H1 2024, with significant gains in L1s, L2s, and DeFi sectors. Notable developments include Bitcoin's increased dominance post-halving, ETF approvals, the Ethereum restaking boom, and a surge in L2 activity driven by airdrop speculation. The second half of 2024's key themes will be Bitcoin ecosystem developments, ownership economy applications, and real-world assets.
There are now 6x more active users of L2s than mainnet, with Arbitrum and Base leading the charge at 550,000 and 350,000 daily active addresses each. Thanks to EIP-4844, ETH fees dropped by $679M, and L2 fees are 13% of Ethereum's, even with 9x more transactions on L2 than L1. Arbitrum has the lowest transaction fees and value to TVL, while Base has the most transactions and smart contracts deployed.
L3s struggle to break even unless they have 50M+ monthly transactions or fees no more than 3x cheaper than L2s. Their primary use case is as an economic bootstrapping tool for onchain games and unique experiences, though they may be running at a loss for their developers. Applications retain most of the benefits of L3s, but priority fees and native gas tokens could introduce more value to the chain.
Telegram bots like Banana Gun, which allow for trading tokens in a Telegram chat on Ethereum or Solana, are a misunderstood and valuable business operation. Its 150k users are willing to pay high fees for a simple UX, and the bot is on track to generate nearly $8 billion in volume and $60 million in cash flow this year. Its adjusted market cap is $345 million. It pays 40% of revenue to token holders, using the rest for expenses and growth initiatives.
The Scroll team temporarily delayed chain finalization while investigating an exploit on the RhoMarket protocol.
On July 14, a rogue account compromised Fractal ID's system, exfiltrating data from about 0.5% of users.
The XRP token is up 40% in the past few weeks on the expected end of this case.
Base has seen a large increase in the number of weekly active smart accounts, rising to nearly 200k in mid-July.