Parse notes
The TON Foundation has appointed MoonPay co-founder Maximilian Crown as its new CEO, aiming to increase growth following a plateau in user adoption and ecosystem activity. Crown's leadership is expected to bring fresh strategic direction to TON, which has seen limited momentum despite its integration with Telegram and previous efforts to expand its blockchain ecosystem.
Citigroup projects that the stablecoin market could expand to nearly $4 trillion by 2030. This will be largely driven by the increasing use of stablecoins in payments, cash management, and as a hedge against local currencies. ~90% of stablecoins will remain U.S. dollar-denominated. Banks can potentially stay relevant by offering services like custody, reserve asset brokerage, and issuing their own stablecoins.
SNAIL introduces a new zero knowledge circuit that improves prover runtime to be within 30% of native execution. It is a new way to prove that complex computations (like executing a blockchain block) were done correctly without redoing the work. Instead of doing lots of cryptographic tricks, like FFT transforms and using big Merkle trees, SNAIL streams a program's data once and uses a novel “difference check” to compress everything into a single proof. Live, on-the-fly proofs are now practical, enabling Ethereum blocks to be proved in 30ms and verified on a smartphone in 1ms.
Halo is launching HUSD to be a digital dollar for the Hyperliquid chain and DEX. It aims to replace bridged USDC to eliminate cross-chain and issuer risks. Backed by treasury assets with daily attestations and ISIN-level visibility, HUSD offers native liquidity and yield capture for the ecosystem. Unlike existing stablecoins, Halo will distribute most trading and collateral income back to liquidity providers, builders, and HYPE stakers.
Key blockchain indicators, including TVL, fees, stablecoin market cap, DEX volume, and net bridge flows, should be distilled into “size” and “growth” scores that simplify cross-network comparisons. Using 30-day averages and normalized market-share conditions for “size” alongside week-on-week min-max and Z-score aggregations for “growth” surfaces major shifts without requiring deep dives into raw data. Applied to L1s and L2s, the metrics show a modest decline in the top three networks' (Ethereum, Solana, and Base) combined market share and highlight volatility driven by bridge flows and token performance.
Decentralized Science (DeSci) tackles pain points across collection, transformation, storage, and computation by embedding cryptoeconomic incentives and blockchain-based verifiability to guarantee data ownership, privacy, and quality. It positions data collection as the key piece to coordinating high-quality contributions at scale and is enabled by Web3 wearables, DataDAOs, and cryptographically secure lab hardware. DeSci aims to overcome fragmentation, bias, and trust issues that plague traditional AI academia by tokenizing participation and anchoring provenance onchain.
Plasma is an EVM-compatible L1 incubated by Bitfinex/Tether. It anchors its state of Bitcoin and uses custom PlasmaBFT consensus to offer compliant, shielded, and zero-fee USDT settlements. Plasma aims to build a “T-chain” ecosystem focused on payments, PayFi, and fintech rails rather than speculative trading. Its goal is to capture stablecoin volume and foster long-term USDT adoption.
Base scaled to 25 Mgas/s in Q1 and is on track to hit 50 Mgas/s by end-of-Q2 on its way to a 250 Mgas/s annual target. Key bottlenecks include L1 data availability, execution client speed, fault-proof performance, and state/history growth. A rigorous go/no-go process, proactive benchmarking against future gas limits, and published node configuration guidance ensure safety and reliability as Base raises its gas target.
Coinbase and PayPal have partnered to eliminate trading fees for PayPal's stablecoin, PYUSD, on Coinbase, allowing users to buy, sell, and redeem it directly for U.S. dollars.
The U.S. SEC has postponed its decisions on proposed ETFs for Polkadot and Hedera, extending the review period to June 11.
MetaMask now lets users pay gas fees with tokens like DAI, USDC, or USDT instead of ETH, allowing full flexibility in choosing a default gas token for all transactions.
El Salvador's top digital assets regulator, CNAD, met with the U.S. SEC's Crypto Task Force to propose a cross-border regulatory sandbox, hoping to share lessons from El Salvador's agile crypto framework and test small-scale tokenization projects.