Parse notes
Ethereum researcher Dankrad Feist has proposed EIP-9698, a plan to increase the network's gas limit by 100x over four years, potentially enabling up to 2,000 transactions per second. While it could greatly improve scalability and competitiveness, it may strain less-optimized nodes and slow block propagation, requiring gradual adaptation.
Nexo is reentering the U.S. market nearly two years after exiting due to regulatory scrutiny, having paid a $45M settlement without admitting wrongdoing. Announced at a private event attended by Donald Trump Jr., Nexo's return aligns with the Trump administration's more crypto-friendly regulatory stance and includes plans to relaunch savings accounts, asset-backed loans, and other core services.
Coinbase Asset Management will launch the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund on May 1, targeting a net annual return of 4%-8% for institutional investors outside the U.S. It will implement a cash-and-carry strategy, arbitraging between spot and derivatives markets, to generate yield on Bitcoin holdings. The fund is backed by investors like Abu Dhabi's Aspen Digital and aims to reduce operational and investment risks associated with Bitcoin yield products.
Noise is a new trading app that lets users long or short a project's mindshare. Tracked via Kaito's onchain oracle monitoring Crypto Twitter activity, its leaderboard-driven UX fosters a viral trading-tweeting loop, offering potential stickiness beyond memecoin speculation and challenging the “tokenize everything” narrative. Long-term success will depend on maintaining liquid markets and preventing attention manipulation.
Airdrops, which distribute tokens widely to users, are a powerful tool for building communities, decentralizing networks, and solving early growth challenges, but they're often misunderstood in the crypto world. This post unpacks the role of airdrops, the risks like Sybil attacks, and proposals for making airdrops legally safer in the U.S. It also dives into why stablecoins are becoming a backbone of global payments, outlines principles for securely custodying crypto assets, and highlights news like PayPal's PYUSD rewards and Helium's partnership with AT&T.
The influx of new talent during last year's agent boom is now crystallizing around pre- and post-training infrastructure, open-source research, and onchain incentive design. Crypto x AI is emerging across four pillars: AI fundamentals, open-source collaboration, DeAI protocols, and historical precedents. Decentralized pre-training, distributed fine-tuning (“RL Gyms”), and modular post-training markets could unlock new value flows. Drawing on lessons from ‘90s open-source movements and emerging GPU-network research, DeAI's growth will follow philosophical, practical, and experimental paths.
Despite new competitors, Pump overwhelmingly dominates on launchpad fees, earning over $1.36M in 24 hours and vastly outpacing others like SunPump ($328) and Moonshot (~2% of Pump's fees). Given Pump's $700M revenue and strong industrial backing, its market leadership remains secure unless a competitor shows meaningful traction.
BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund has rapidly grown to $2 billion, bringing with it near-instant settlement and onchain collateral borrowing. CEO Larry Fink believes fully tokenizing every asset could eliminate market closures, free up billions now tied in settlement delays, and accelerate economic growth. While Treasuries lead the way, tokenized equities stand ready to follow once regulatory frameworks adapt, promising global trading access, shareholder voting via tokens, and dramatically reduced IPO costs.
Michael Saylor's company, Strategy, acquired 15,355 more Bitcoin for $1.42B, bringing its total holdings to 553,555 BTC (worth $37.9 billion) at an average purchase price of $68,459.
World Chain (WLD) is currently the fastest-growing Ethereum Layer 2 by 7-day L1-to-L2 bridge deposit growth, with deposits increasing 57.9% to $446.4 million.
This move is part of Tether's wider strategy to strengthen its image with regulators and investors, particularly in Europe, while continuing a major investment spree across crypto, media, and Bitcoin mining.
Analysts expect Bitcoin will hit a new all-time high of around $120k in Q2 2025, driven by U.S. investors reallocating away from domestic assets, strong whale accumulation, and ETF inflows from gold into Bitcoin.