Search the archive

IS PUMPDOTFUN FAIR?

People are less concerned about low profitability in memecoin trading than by unfair insider practices like pump and dump schemes.

THE TRUTH OF TRUTH TERMINAL

Truth-terminal, a viral AI bot that released the GOAT memecoin, has been revealed to have its own wallet.

MORGAN STANLEY'S BITCOIN ETF HOLDINGS SURGE TO $272.1M

The firm's digital asset holdings represent 0.02% of its overall assets under management.

Learn more + invest

PLEASE READ THE OFFERING CIRCULAR BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT. https://boxabl.com/invest#circular

DEXS STRUGGLE TO COMPETE WITH CEXS AS FUTURES TRADING VOLUMES SHIFT BACK

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are losing market share to centralized exchanges (CEXs) in the futures market. DEX market share has dropped from 5.18% to 3.26% of trading volume since February. This is because of challenges like having lower liquidity and less user-friendly interfaces causing traders to shift back to centralized platforms.

CFTC SAYS COURT GOT IT WRONG IN ALLOWING KALSHI TO OFFER ELECTION BETS

The CFTC is appealing a court ruling that allowed prediction market Kalshi to offer election betting contracts, arguing that the district court misinterpreted legal terms and that these contracts may harm election integrity. Despite the CFTC's objections and ongoing efforts to ban political event betting, Kalshi has launched bets on who will win the U.S. presidential election.

INTRODUCING DGEN1: THE ETHOS PHONE

EthOS' first phone model, the dGEN1, is now available for preorder with a release in Spring 2025. The phone is about half the size of a typical iPhone. It has a second touchscreen for notifications and transaction metadata, a 3x3 LED grid for notifications and flair, and a laser. EthOS provides a light client, system-level wallet, and onchain-native browser.

INTRODUCING SUPERLANE: SUPERCHAIN INTEROPERABILITY TODAY

Superlane, a collaboration between the Velodrome DEX and Hyperlane interoperability protocol, brings interchain apps, shared liquidity, and interchain governance to OP Stack L2s. It introduces features proposed in Optimism's recent Superchain Interoperability initiative several months before its release, with a path to upgrade once the official approach arrives. Since Hyperlane allows for permissionless integrations, any OP Stack L2 can join the Superlane. Velodrome will start by making XVELO a Superchain ERC20.

POSSIBLE FUTURES FOR THE ETHEREUM PROTOCOL, PART 2: THE SURGE

In his second post outlining Ethereum's roadmap, Vitalik Buterin focuses on how Ethereum will scale to 100,000 TPS following a rollup-centric approach. The project's primary goals are to maintain the L1's decentralization and robustness, have some L2s fully inherit Ethereum's properties, and provide maximum interoperability between rollups for a seamless experience. Buterin dives into several approaches: data compression, better L2 proof systems, L2 interoperability improvements, and L1 scaling.

ANALYZING THE TOP CRYPTO VENTURE CAPITAL WALLETS

An analysis of top VC crypto wallets revealed common long-term holdings in DeFi tokens, ETH, and stablecoins. While VC investments have dropped since 2021-2022, Q2 2024 saw a 28% QoQ increase to $3.19 billion, with investors focusing on AI, infrastructure, and memecoins. VCs employ diverse strategies, including stable arbitrage, to investments in emerging sectors.

ANDRE CRONJE CRITIQUES APPCHAINS

DeFi Pioneer and Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom) founder Andre Cronje believes that independent appchains suffer from high infrastructure costs, fragmented liquidity, and a lack of developer support. Opponents of this view say rollup-as-a-service providers make support easier and solutions like AggLayer promote liquidity interoperability. Builders that agree with Cronje cite the lack of network effects on appchains and competition between builders.

WORLDCOIN REBRANDS AS ‘WORLD,' UNVEILS NEXT GENERATION ORB

Identity project Worldcoin has rebranded to ‘World' and introduced a new set of features. The company announced a more powerful Orb to verify user identities and an alternate verification form using government-issued passports. It claims that World ID Deep Face has solved deepfakes and can be used on any video.

POLYMARKET IS NOW THE NO. 1 “MAGAZINES & NEWSPAPERS” APP IN THE UNITED STATES

Polymarket has flipped the New York Times to become the highest-ranked “Magazines & Newspapers” app in the U.S. App Store.

THE BEST PRODUCTS IN CRYPTO ARE BECOMING PLATFORMS

Protocols like Uniswap, Aave, and Optimism are becoming more than simple primitives for onchain actions.

VENMO PARTNERS WITH MOONPAY

Venmo's 60M U.S. users can now buy crypto directly with their Venmo balance through a new integration with MoonPay.

COST OF TRANSACTING ON BASE HAS DECREASED BY 99%

ITALY PLANS TO RAISE CAPITAL GAINS TAX ON BITCOIN FROM 26% TO 42%

According to Vice Economy Minister Maurizio Leo, Italy plans to increase the capital gains tax on bitcoin and other crypto from 26% to 42% in its 2025 budget to generate funds for social support programs. This move comes despite Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's earlier statement that there would be no new taxes for citizens. Taxes for other assets will stay at 26%.

A16Z'S STATE OF CRYPTO

In its annual report, a16z Crypto found that crypto activity and usage are at all-time highs, with over 220 million monthly active addresses. Stablecoins are the clearest example of product-market fit with $8.2 trillion in transaction volume in Q2, doubling Visa's volume. Scaling costs have dropped by over 99%, and the crypto x AI narrative has legitimate use cases. NFTs are less speculative and have become social experiences.

MAINNET IS LIVE — INTRODUCING FUEL IGNITION

Fuel Labs has launched Fuel Ignition, a high-performance Ethereum L2 solution powered by the FuelVM. It is designed to combat blockchain centralization by creating scalable architecture on consumer hardware. Ignition offers fast, low-cost transactions with parallel execution, supports all Ethereum and Solana wallets, and aims to retain Ethereum's core values of decentralization, security, and community-driven development.

CONDUIT G2: THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL SEQUENCER

Conduit G2 is a new, production-ready sequencer that's 10x more powerful than default sequencers for Arbitrum Nitro and Optimism Superchains. It delivers 50-100 Megagas/s, equivalent to nearly 5,000 ETH transfers per second, and has a long-term goal of achieving Gigagas speeds. G2 is already live on Gravity Chain and Proof of Play.

DEEP DIVE INTO TIMEDOTFUN

Time is a platform that tokenizes creators' time into redeemable currency, allowing users to purchase “minutes” priced on a bonding curve and redeem them for events like calls, messages, and group chats, with ~95% of redeemed value going to the creator. Addressing weaknesses of previous SocialFi apps like Friendtech, Time offers features like redemption options, sustainable third-party extensibility, and creator-controlled pricing, making it a promising evolution in the creator monetization space.

BLOB EIPS AND MINIMUM VALIDATOR REQUIREMENTS

Four EIPs related to blob management and calldata costs aiming to optimize Ethereum's DA and fee mechanisms have been advanced to consideration status. Despite concerns for solo stakers about increased bandwidth requirements, they would lower the max block size. Reducing the minimum stake for running a node would be a bad idea due to the need for accountability and sybil resistance. Out-of-protocol options already allow solo-stakers to stake with for lower collateral.

L2S ARE THE NEW OLD L1S

Ethereum has not won the L1 wars - Solana, Avalanche, and Near have innovated to remain competitive. New L2s now resemble past L1s, relying on low fees and airdrop farming for user retention and acquisition instead of proper product-market fit. The unclear value accrual from L2s to ETH and the resurgence of alt-L1s could explain ETH's price stagnation.

LIQUID TOKENS & MEMES - WHAT NEXT?

Despite strong fundamentals, liquid tokens of real crypto businesses are undervalued and represent a compelling investment case. This author contrasts this value with memecoins, suggesting each has merit for different reasons. The market is shifting toward fundamentally driven valuations, and there may be a time when altcoins with strong fundamentals outperform. One investment approach is to be in both memecoins and high-quality value-driven altcoins.

RWA TOKENIZATION SECTOR COULD SEE 50X GROWTH BY 2030

According to a Tren Finance research report, the RWA tokenization sector, currently valued at $185B, could grow over 50x to reach around $10T by 2030.

PAYPAL'S PYUSD STABLECOIN MARKET CAP IS DOWN 40% FROM ITS HIGH ABOVE $1 BILLION IN AUGUST

PYUSD has experienced a 40% drop in market cap, from over $1B in August to $618M.

COINBASE PAYMASTER ALLOWS USERS TO PAY GAS WITH ANY ERC-20 TOKEN ON BASE

Coinbase has begun enabling gas fees to be paid in any token when an app uses an ERC-20 paymaster.

BLOCKCHAINS' RELIGIOUS ENERGY

“Religious energy” – a combination of compelling narratives and ideological drive – is a leading indicator of success for emerging blockchain ecosystems.

Learn about BOXABL and how you can become an investor

This is a message from Boxabl

PLEASE READ THE OFFERING CIRCULAR BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT. https://boxabl.com/invest#circular

TRUMP'S WORLD LIBERTY FINANCIAL WEBSITE CRASHES DURING TOKEN SALE

World Liberty Financial, Donald Trump's DeFi project, launched its token sale but faced technical issues - the site crashed due to high traffic. Despite the crash, the wallet handling the sales amassed over $5M in assets, well below the project's $300 million target.

ELON MUSK'S TESLA JUST MOVED $765 MILLION IN BITCOIN TO UNKNOWN WALLETS

After two years of inactivity, Tesla's Bitcoin holdings are on the move. Approximately $765 million BTC was moved to new unknown wallets. Tesla first bought $1.5 billion BTC in 2020 before selling 85% of its holdings by July 2022. There is no indication that Tesla plans to sell its remaining holdings.

TOWNS: PERMISSIONLESS GROUP CHATS

Towns is a new app for creating encrypted, permissionless, and decentralized group chats onchain. It uses River as its communication primitive and Base as its blockchain. The onchain integration allows for token-gated group chats, membership fee revenue models, and additional custom entitlements.

OPACITY NETWORK: PRIVATELY SHARE DATA ACROSS WEB2 AND WEB3

Opacity is creating a Verified Data Network (VDN) to allow users to own, monetize, and verify their data while maintaining confidentiality. It uses zkTLS to verify data, multi-party computation for cryptographic integrity, and EigenLayer for economic security. The project's goal is to bridge offchain data onchain and introduce new use cases for existing data.

THE STANFORD BLOCKCHAIN READING LIST

Stanford Blockchain has compiled a list of Crypto 101 resources for learning. The list mostly contains blog posts published by the club, with five relevant modules to get readers up to speed on the current web3 ecosystem and outlook. Each module includes goals, a reading list, and additional optional resources.

WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR DECENTRALIZED PRIVATE NEW INTERNET?

This article addresses the problems with balancing onchain confidentiality with regulatory compliance, emphasizing how the lack of privacy has impeded blockchain adoption for practical applications. It proposes a decentralized compliance framework that uses selective disclosure and threshold cryptography to provide privacy while enabling de-anonymization when necessary. This approach could allow for additional use cases like frontrunning protection and private governance votes, though critics question how it would practically operate with various government compliance requirements.

SUI FOUNDATION DISPUTES $400 MILLION INSIDER SELLING ALLEGATION

The Sui Foundation has rejected claims that insiders sold $400M worth of Sui tokens during the token's recent price surge, clarifying that the aforementioned transactions involved an infrastructure partner subject to a lockup schedule, not foundation insiders or Mysten Labs employees.

THE TRUE COST OF ELECTION MARKET MANIPULATION

Polymarket's presidential election odds have recently diverged from traditional polls, with Trump surging to 52.6% despite mainstream polls showing Harris maintaining a slight edge. It is estimated that manipulating the market by 4% would cost around $40 million. The potential manipulation, alongside a recent spike in trading volumes coinciding with the odds shift, raises concerns about the integrity of these markets. Polymarket's founder recently noted that odds differ from polls, with 50% odds being statistically very close to 52%.

GRAYSCALE UPDATES ASSETS UNDER CONSIDERATION

Institutional crypto firm Grayscale has added numerous assets to its consideration list for future crypto investment products, including Dogecoin, Pendle, Arbitrum, and Optimism.

AI BOT PUMPS MEME COIN 7,000% FOLLOWING $50,000 FROM MARC ANDREESSEN

The “Truth Terminal” AI Twitter Bot created the $GOAT memecoin, which now has a market capitalization of over $200 million, after being seeded with $50,000 in funding from a16z founder Marc Andreessen.

BITCOIN WHALE HOLDING SATOSHI-ERA STASH MOVES MORE COINS TO KRAKEN

A Bitcoin “whale,” who acquired their coins shortly after the network was created, has transferred high amounts, totaling $5.47M, to the Kraken exchange over the past two months.

CANARY CAPITAL PLOTS LITECOIN ETF JUST DAYS AFTER XRP PROPOSAL

Canary Capital plans to launch a Litecoin-focused ETF shortly after proposing a Ripple XRP ETF, following its strategy of launching ETFs beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.

UK, COLOMBIA CRYPTO EXCHANGES LINKED IN TD BANK RECORD FINE

TD Bank has agreed to pay over $3B in fines and accept growth limitations in the U.S., settling allegations of inadequate money laundering monitoring involving over $1B in transactions linked to unnamed crypto firms in the UK and Colombia. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) highlighted that these transactions predominantly involved crypto trading in high-risk jurisdictions.

DEUTSCHE BANK TO PROVIDE FOREIGN EXCHANGE SERVICES FOR CRYPTO MARKET-MAKING FIRM KEYROCK

Deutsche Bank is set to provide multi-currency accounts and foreign exchange services to Brussels-based crypto market-making firm Keyrock. This would improve Keyrock's ability to manage and expand its market-making and OTC trading services. The partnership is part of Deutsche Bank's broader engagement with the digital asset sector and will enable Keyrock to reduce risks associated with counterparty dealings and settlements.

POSSIBLE FUTURES OF THE ETHEREUM PROTOCOL, PART 1: THE MERGE

Ethereum's Merge transitioned the protocol from proof of work to proof of stake, significantly improving stability and performance while minimizing centralization risks. In this post, Vitalik Buterin discusses ongoing improvements in this post around economic finality, increasing accessibility for smaller validators, and addressing economic centralization. The roadmap post-Merge includes categories like technical improvements and economic adjustments aimed at preserving Ethereum's decentralization. This involves balancing scalability and security and striving to streamline the transaction verification process while broadening participation among validators.

HYPERLIQUID'S HYPER FOUNDATION ANNOUNCED

Hyperliquid, one of the most popular perp DEX L1s, has launched the Hyper Foundation as the first step in decentralizing its governance. The HYPE token will launch in the coming months and play a pivotal role in consensus and the launch of the HyperEVM. Users can now register to claim HYPE based on their Hyperliquid points and collect a genesis NFT.

ETHENA: THE TRILLION DOLLAR CRYPTO OPPORTUNITY

Ethena's USDe has emerged as the fastest-growing stablecoin in history, offering high yields from simplifying trades like arbitraging Bitcoin perp funding rates. Two key catalysts - declining interest rates and the USTb coin backed by BlackRock's reserves - could drive further adoption. The ENA token is promising with its reduced inflation in the coming months.