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Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested at an airport in France by the country's National Anti-Fraud Office. He was allegedly put into custody for offenses related to terrorism, drugs, fraud, money laundering, and other charges related to individuals' activity on the messaging app.
The Federal Court for the Northern District of California ruled that none of the tokens on Kraken are securities and that the definition of SEC's “crypto asset security” is confusing and unclear. The case is proceeding to discovery, as agreements or contracts around a token could be considered a security. The SEC will have to prove that transactions on exchanges satisfy the Howey test, which is an arduous task to take across the industry.
Prominent Japanese electronics company Sony is launching its own Ethereum-based Layer 2, called Soneium. It is based on OP Stack technology and will be part of the Superchain Interoperability effort. The project aims to onboard existing Web3 users, and then integrate Sony products like Sony Bank, Music, and Pictures within two years.
Nightshade 2.0 allows for stateless validation, meaning NEAR validators no longer have to store their shard's state to verify state transitions and blockchain updates. It also improves performance and adds capacity for more shards - NEAR currently has six and plans to add four more by the end of the year. In 2025, the team will focus on dynamic re-sharding, which adjusts the number of shards based on network load and is considered “the holy grail of sharding.”
Sponsored
Ice cream isn't just delicious; it's an industry worth $80BN+ and growing fast. Dice Cream [8] is working on a robotic, AI-powered solution that disrupts the way ice cream parlors are built, staffed, and operated. The company is in the final stages of its equity round, so there's only 3 days left [8] to invest at the current valuation.
Hyperliquid has quickly become a leading DeFi platform, offering a high-performance L1 with an onchain perpetual exchange and spot trading platform. It has already surpassed established competitors in TVL and daily trading volume, introducing features like the Hyperliquidity Provider Vault for passive LPing. Its competitive fee structure, upcoming EVM support, and potential token release position it favorably, with valuations ranging from $1 billion to $3.5 billion.
The Ethereum Foundation holds $845 million in ETH, representing 0.25% of the total supply. It allocates funding to education, research, and development, which has led to the development of zero-knowledge cryptography and funded conferences, online courses, and novel projects like the ZK Email Wallet and Daimo payment protocol. The foundation recently came under fire for transferring $100 million to Kraken for future expenses as some in the community call for greater transparency.
Polymarket is leading a new era of global-first applications by aggregating global liquidity with stablecoins, creating a universal market accessible from day one. This will transform the traditionally slow and costly process of scaling because of fiat limitations.
The current crypto bull run seems to be influenced by external macroeconomic factors. However, additional market boosts may stem from exciting upcoming projects and developments across various crypto platforms. Some of these include new mainnets like Monad and MegaETH, innovative token models like those proposed by Eigenlayer, significant upgrades on Ethereum (e.g., Pectra), and major rebranding initiatives like Fantom's transformation into Sonic.
Agora on Avalanche has a stablecoin supply of ~$22.2M, with 22 holders and 34 monthly senders, 92 daily transfers, and a daily transfer volume of $9.7 million.
This Dune dashboard analyzes the top crypto VC funds and their performance in 2024.
The TON Community issued a statement on Saturday communicating its ongoing commitment to freedom of speech and decentralization, standing by founder Pavel Durov amid recent challenges.
Bill split is an app used to divide bills among friends using various tokens, with payouts in USDC.