This thread breaks down how over $4B in MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) has been captured on Layer 2 (L2) networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync, highlighting the impact of transaction sequencing policies such as Arbitrum's FCFS, Optimism's Priority Gas Auction (PGA), and FastLane. These policies influence how MEV opportunities like arbitrage and sandwich attacks are handled, with solutions like Timeboost aiming to balance fairness and efficiency by introducing auctions and reducing latency races.
Rise is a new Ethereum Layer 2 capable of a throughput of 1 billion gas units per second, over 20 times higher than the current highest rollups. Using technology like parallel EVM execution and innovative state access design, RISE aims to enable applications like high-frequency trading, large-scale gaming, and billion-user social networks.
Binance lists low market cap tokens, yet imposes strict conditions on founders looking to list their tokens, requiring large concessions and cap table adjustments. This potentially demonstrates a change in its token listing model.
The Royal Government of Bhutan, through its investment arm Druk Holdings, has obtained over ~$750M in Bitcoin holdings from mining operations.
Uniswap's governance token UNI is now fully unlocked with ~26% circulating.
USDC is now accessible in Brazil and Mexico through local real-time payment systems, significantly expediting transactions with local currencies and integrating digital dollars into TradFi operations.
Zora's new mobile app changes social media by allowing users to monetize their content directly through likes and enabling portability of their content and social connections across platforms.
The SEC has filed a proposed amendment complaint against Binance, addressing issues previously dismissed by the court and emphasizing arguments about some cryptos being offered as unregistered securities. The new filing includes more detailed allegations about Binance's role in promoting digital assets, particularly BNB, SOL, ADA, and MATIC, and argues that Binance provides selective information to encourage investment. The SEC also moved away from “crypto asset securities” to emphasize that the associated contracts, not the asset itself, can constitute a security.
With 50 days left until the U.S. election, the crypto-backed Protect Progress Super PAC has poured $7.8 million into Senate races in Arizona and Michigan to support Democratic candidates. The PAC, along with others tied to the crypto industry, aims to influence key elections as it advocates for pro-crypto regulation.
Circle has partnered with Sony Block Solutions Labs to integrate Bridged USDC on the Soneium blockchain, enhancing its use as a primary token for secure, borderless transactions. This collaboration aims to empower creators in the digital economy, leveraging decentralized technologies to drive innovation and global accessibility on Soneium, a versatile Ethereum layer 2 platform.
Grayscale has announced the launch of the first U.S. XRP Trust, providing select investors with exposure to the Ripple token. Following a similar trajectory to its Bitcoin and Ethereum trusts, which eventually became ETFs, the market is now speculating that an XRP ETF could be next.
2024.09.17·links.tldrnewsletter.com·2 min read·TLDR Crypto Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) are emerging as a transformative force in crypto, disrupting centralized models across multiple industries through blockchain and token incentives. This report explores critical sectors, including telecom (e.g. Helium), energy (e.g. Plural Energy), compute (e.g. Akash), and others. While DePIN faces regulatory hurdles and unsustainable tokenomics, it offers opportunities for improved efficiency, democratized ownership, and innovative solutions to real-world problems. Future use cases include disaster response, healthcare, and space debris tracking.
Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) aim to revolutionize traditional infrastructure models by leveraging blockchain technology to enable community-driven, decentralized management and ownership of physical assets. This piece explores the potential of DePIN to disrupt established industries like telecom, energy, and data management, while acknowledging challenges such as token incentives and scaling demand and offering a detailed breakdown of six key subsectors where DePIN could have the most impact.
Early in Arbitrum's history, it was offered money from an alt L1 to build for their network in addition to Ethereum. Though Arbitrum would have had more money then, its long-term growth and adoption would have suffered. Co-founder Steven Goldfeder recommends new projects to keep their “eye on the prize” and focus on the bigger picture.
Crypto projects launching with excessively high fully diluted valuations (FDVs) often face a quick downfall. Factors like anchoring bias, inflated VC valuations, poor incentive structures, and token distribution create imbalances between early investors and public buyers. The lack of genuine price discovery harms the project's chance at long-term success. Avoiding high FDV launches, raising VC funds wisely, and ensuring product-market fit before launch can help mitigate these issues.
NFTs, despite being labeled "non-fungible," are treated as fungible assets by their creators and communities, with no real recognition of rarity in token distributions or benefits.
For the first time this cycle, addresses sending 1-5 transactions per day on Solana have a revert rate of less than 1%.
Bhutan's government, through its investment arm Druk Holdings, has accumulated over $750 million in Bitcoin from mining operations.
Uniswap v4's hooks will introduce massive customization improvements, allowing developers to create unique yield opportunities for liquidity provision.
The options market has seen a surge in Ethereum interest, with over 20,000 contracts bought aiming for a $3,000 price level by December 27. While there may be short-term volatility, QCP remains optimistic about locking in yields and preparing for a potential rate cut and bullish scenarios ahead.
Six months into a 25-year sentence, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is appealing his fraud conviction and requesting a new trial. He claims that the former judge was biased against him after he was convicted of seven counts of fraud because of the collapse of the FTX exchange. Bankman-Fried claims that the exchange was never insolvent, as evidenced by the over-100% customer fund recovery.
DeGods' "404" hybrid token model combines the closedness of NFTs and NFT communities with the accessibility of fungible tokens. This enables broader participation in the community while maintaining the prestige and emotional value of owning unique NFTs. The innovation aims to narrow the current valuation gap between NFTs and memecoins.
Chaos Labs has unveiled the Edge Oracle Network, a risk-aware, decentralized oracle protocol that is the primary oracle for Solana's Jupiter Exchange. Edge integrates risk management, security, and real-time market context earlier in the data pipeline, allowing for precision during black swan events where traditional oracles often falter. Chaos Labs plans to fully decentralize the network in the coming weeks.
Token Terminal's new Discover Page simplifies data-driven crypto analysis, making it easier to identify profitable opportunities even in a down market. This thread highlights five key insights, including the growth of protocols like Base, Aave, Avalanche, and Celo, and offers guidance on how to leverage these metrics to inform investment strategies in DeFi blue chips such as Lido, Maker, and Uniswap.
Culture allows for the ideas and forms of expression to scale, reaching tens of thousands of people. Lore, branding, and imagination are used heavily in Web3 to bootstrap cultural relevance quickly. The best cultures are created organically and encourage criticism to sustain their long-term health.
Within the next two years, most crypto users will move away from browser extension wallets, adopting next-gen wallets powered by Passkeys, OAuth, and Account Abstraction.
This thread discusses the convergence of AI and crypto in terms of data centers, AI agents managing finances, and the importance of blockchain for authenticating items in a world of increasingly advanced counterfeits/deepfakes. It highlights that data centers for mining Bitcoin are among the largest globally, AI will soon facilitate personal financial transactions possibly using crypto, and blockchain's role in verifying authenticity amid rampant high-quality fakes.
This post and associated graph indicate a large increase in daily active Solana users holding zero $SOL, suggesting these are predominantly single-use wallets likely operated by bots for volume or wash trading, especially with the spike at the end of August.
Circle has announced it will be relocating its global headquarters from Boston to NYC, signaling a move to position itself at the core of Wall Street and the global economic landscape.
Pendle Finance's new Bitcoin pools are offering yields up to 45% for liquidity providers and fixed yields around 10% on Bitcoin-based tokens.
MicroStrategy continues its Bitcoin acquisition with an additional $1.11 billion purchase, bringing its total to 244,800 BTC ($14.14B).
Following a settlement with the SEC, eToro US will cease nearly all crypto trading except for Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ether. It will allow customers to sell other crypto assets within 180 days. The platform agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine after being charged with operating as an unregistered brokerage and clearing agency in the U.S.
Grayscale is launching the first US-based XRP Trust, providing select investors with exposure to the Ripple token through a "closed-end" fund. Speculation is growing that an XRP ETF could be next in line following the success of its Bitcoin and Ethereum trusts, which were converted into ETFs earlier this year.
2024.09.13·links.tldrnewsletter.com·2 min read·TLDR Crypto Coinbase has officially released cbBTC, an ERC20 token backed 1:1 by Bitcoin. This will allow millions of BTC holders to access DeFi apps across the @base and Ethereum ecosystems, with more chains to follow.
zkVM company Succinct Labs has introduced OP Succinct, a new way for any OP Stack chain to become a ZK rollup in an hour. Its benefits include fast finality instead of the 7-day fraud-proof window of optimistic rollups, cost-effective proving, and a customizable developer experience.
Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) offer secure, isolated computation that complements blockchain capabilities. They have applications in MEV, DePIN, Passkey wallets, and scaling, as they provide privacy and computational power while maintaining onchain verifiability via remote attestations. As the technology matures, long-term value will likely accrue to apps utilizing TEEs, aligning with a shift towards the “fat-app” thesis.
Stablecoins have evolved beyond crypto trading and have become critical financial instruments in emerging markets, with over $160 billion in circulation and settling an estimated $2.6 trillion in H1 2024. This study, which combines onchain data analysis with survey results from developing countries, reveals that stablecoins are used for non-trading purposes like savings, currency conversion, and yield generation. Nigerians showed the highest stablecoin affinity.
EigenLayer has introduced a new security model for decentralized services centered around Operator Sets, Total Stake, and Unique Stake. It allows more efficient AVS operation by providing greater control over slashing risk and guaranteeing slashable stake for each AVS. Key advantages include localized slashing, permissionless AVS onboarding, and eliminating the need for a standard veto committee.
This post critiques the SEC's settlement with eToro, highlighting the platform's structure, which involved contracts for difference (CFD) rather than direct crypto purchases. It argues that the SEC's press release misrepresented the situation by focusing on token removals instead of the actual issue — securities based on token prices — and calls for greater transparency in regulatory communications.
Vitalik Buterin believes rollups should be at stage 1 decentralization or higher by the end of 2024 and refuses to mention rollups that aren't secured by cryptographic trust.
Ether.Fi's season 3 airdrop starts on September 17th - participants have until the 15th to decide to claim their tokens on mainnet, Base, or Arbitrum.
Base daily transactions are approaching 5 million while the average transaction fee trends towards zero, indicating high adoption.
Bunni, a DEX built on Uniswap v4, introduces features like customizable liquidity curves, automated yield maximization, and dynamic fee structures.
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Surging demand for AI chips has made NVIDIA investors rich. Lithium might be next in line: demand is expected to grow 20x by 2040 as automakers go fully electric, far outstripping supply.
Sony Bank is planning to launch a Stable Yen on Sony's upcoming L2, Soneium. The experimental process to determine its legal status will last several months. The project's goal is to make money transfers faster and cheaper.
The U.K. government has introduced a bill to clarify the legal status of digital assets like crypto and NFTs. The bill will establish them as personal property, which will help with legal disputes and improve protections against fraud and scams. It introduces a new personal property category, strengthening legal clarity for digital asset ownership and protection.
Atlas, a blockchain focused on verifiable finance, merges the speed and performance of traditional finance with the transparency of DeFi. It is built on a custom Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) and settles on Ethereum for security. Atlas has launched its private testnet and is inviting developers to apply for access.
g8keep offers a platform for launching a token in just 30 seconds from your phone, making the token instantly tradable on all decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and safeguarded from bots and snipers. It streamlines token creation while ensuring security from automated trading exploits.
Technological and social developments are prereqs for advancements in DeFi, which mirror the gradual evolution of internet technologies from dial-up to high-speed broadband. The upcoming launch of Sonic aims to overcome several technological barriers in blockchain, such as latency and user onboarding, potentially enabling not only financial dapps, but also broader apps, similar to how credit scores revolutionized traditional finance.
2024.09.12·links.tldrnewsletter.com·3 min read·TLDR Crypto