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CEO OF SOUTH KOREAN CRYPTO EARNING COMPANY STABBED

The CEO of Haru Invest, a South Korean crypto earning company, was attacked and stabbed multiple times in the neck during a court appearance.

CRYPTO-FRIENDLY WEB STARTUP BRAVE LAYS OFF 15% OF ITS WORKFORCE

Brave has laid off ~15% of its workforce (27 employees), marking its second round of job cuts in less than a year despite growing its MAUs to ~80M.

HOW A COLORFUL INVESTOR PROFITED FROM A CRYPTO GIANT'S DEALMAKING

Tether is investing its massive profits into AI and neural implant companies with assistance from controversial tech investor Christian Angermayer. It has already spent $1.5 billion on majority stakes in Northern Data, a German data center operator, and brain-computer interface maker Blackrock Neurotech. These deals mark an expansion of Tether's business from stablecoins, where it earns $4 billion annually, into new technologies, though Angermayer has a questionable track record on past deals.

TONCOIN AND ETHER LEAD DOWNTURN AMID SURGE IN CRYPTO LONG LIQUIDATIONS

Toncoin and Ethereum have led a downturn in the crypto market, with Toncoin seeing a 20% decline following the arrest of CEO Pavel Durov. The crypto market overall saw over $144M in long liquidations within 24 hours, heavily impacting these two cryptocurrencies amid broader market corrections.

MAKERDAO REBRANDS TO "SKY" AND SCHEDULES USDS STABLECOIN LAUNCH

MakerDAO has rebranded to "Sky" and is set to launch a new stablecoin, USDS, and a governance token, SKY, on September 18, marking a large overhaul in its operations. The rebranding includes a new UI that aims to make the platform more approachable and expandable with a metaDAO ecosystem called "Sky Stars" for decentralized project governance. While the existing DAI and MKR tokens will remain, they can be voluntarily upgraded to the new tokens.

MAGIC EDEN'S MINT TERMINAL

Magic Eden has launched Mint Terminal, which aggregates minting platforms. It currently aggregates mints on Ethereum, Polygon, and Base.

SPOTLIGHT NARRATIVES, BREWING NARRATIVES, AND DORMANT NARRATIVES

The market is currently driven by a few prominent narratives, including new L1s like Berachain and Monad, the TON ecosystem, stablecoins, and institutional adoption. Emerging trends like progressive web apps, DeFi blue chips, and ETH restaking are gaining momentum and could become dominant soon. Dormant narratives, like GameFi, SocialFi, and NFTs, are slow right now but could revive eventually.

WEEKLY TECHNICAL READS

This thread highlights some interesting technical papers and reads about topics like ZK Machine Learning, verifiable sequencing, and DeFi exploits. It also recommends “Thinking in Systems: A Primer” as a quick read to help understand crypto protocols.

ERIC WALL'S THOUGHTS ON THE CRYPTO MARKET

Bitcoin is becoming increasingly attractive as a simple, gold-like asset, even with all its flaws and areas for improvement. It staying as the #1 asset is critically important, as it simplifies the pitch to investors about how to choose a winning digital asset. Ethereum has been a loser this cycle as value has been extracted by VCs, hence why money has been flowing into memecoins. Going forward, AI will become a bigger problem for crypto as it outcompetes in mindshare and developer talent.

AI AGENTS WILL REVOLUTIONIZE DECENTRALIZED STABLECOINS

Stablecoins face a trilemma around scalability, decentralization, and stability. Payments have been Crypto's first killer app, becoming a global payment system, especially in countries with unstable fiat currencies. AI agents can improve scalability by dynamically minting and redeeming. Agentic payments, where AI pays for goods on users' behalf, are the future of payments.

AERODROME REVENUE OVER LAST WEEK EXCEEDS KEY PLAYERS'

Aerodrome, a newer DEX, has generated more revenue over the last week than Ethereum, Solana, and UniSwap.

TON CHAIN DOWN

TON Network was down for 2+ hours yesterday, with major exchanges like Binance suspending withdrawals to TON.

THE SCOOP: SAN FRANCISCO'S LEGACY ENDURES AS VCS FURTHER GLOBALIZE THE CRYPTO MARKET

San Francisco maintains its role as a tech and VC hub despite the crypto industry's shift towards global markets, with Asia leading in retail crypto adoption.

SONY IS LAUNCHING THE FIRST PUBLIC TESTNET FOR ITS OPTIMISM-BASED SONEIUM BLOCKCHAIN

Sony is launching a public testnet and a developer incubation program for its Soneium blockchain, an L2 based on Optimism.

ROBINHOOD WALLET ADDED SUPPORT FOR SOLANA

Robinhood Wallet has added support for Solana so users can self custody their tokens.

WYOMING IS PUSHING CRYPTO PAYMENTS AND TRYING TO BEAT THE FED TO A DIGITAL DOLLAR

Wyoming plans to launch the Wyoming stable token, a US-dollar-backed stablecoin, in Q1 2025. Its goal is to facilitate faster and cheaper transactions while introducing a new revenue stream for the state. The token will serve as a model for a federally digitized dollar, and the state will invest reserves into Treasury Bills to fund public schools. If successful, Wyoming hopes to expand to tokenizing other assets like commodities and real estate.

STABLECOIN MARKET CAP HITS NEW ALL-TIME HIGH, BEATING EARLY 2022 RECORD

This past weekend, the total market cap of stablecoins (excluding algorithmic stablecoins) hit its all-time high at $168.1 billion. This surpassed the previous high from March 2022, and is a $40 billion increase from October 2022 lows. Analysts see this metric as a signal that there is growing confidence and interest in the market from institutional investors.

BLOCKWORKS LAUNCHES LIVE SOLANA DASHBOARD

Blockworks' new Solana dashboard provides comprehensive data access, including Total Economic Value (TEV) stats, validator and staker cash flows, as well as detailed transaction activity and segmentation.

ORDERLY NETWORK'S $ORDER STAKING & CLAIMS NOW LIVE

$ORDER staking and claims have gone live, allowing users to participate in staking, claim their airdrops, and earn rewards for trading and market making on the platform.

SVM VS. EVM

EVM L1s and L2s attempt to attract existing developers and liquidity through incentive programs and novel features. SVM-based rollups also target ETH & BTC liquidity alongside developers in mainstream languages like Rust and C++.

DEEP DIVE INTO MANTLE

Mantle is gaining momentum in the crowded Ethereum Layer 2 space, backed by a $3B treasury, strategic products like mETH and FBTC, and upcoming tokens like cmETH and COOK. With a strong track record, significant product traction, and lucrative farming opportunities, Mantle continues to stand out as a key player in Web3.

ETHEREUM IS DYING WHILE L2'S DANCE ON ITS GRAVE

Ethereum's reliance on Layer 2 (L2) solutions is leading to its downfall by fragmenting the ecosystem, pushing users towards centralized L2s, and undermining the original promise of decentralization. L2s are siphoning off Ethereum's fees and users, making it impossible for Ethereum to scale effectively at Layer 1, which could ultimately lead to Ethereum's demise while benefiting L2s and their backers.

MAGIC EDEN'S MAGIC TICKETS CONTROVERSY

In early 2022, NFT marketplace Magic Eden (ME) airdropped Magic Tickets to users, promising airdrops, points, and whitelist sports. It also introduced the Magic DAO, but it was never implemented, and mentions of the Magic Tickets have slowly been removed from ME's blogposts. When ME's diamonds were introduced as part of its points program, there was a one-time exchange for users - there is now no planned utility for tickets. Users are frustrated with the small conversion value and fees that the marketplace generated from speculative ticket trading.

VITALIK'S THOUGHTS ON DEFI

Vitalik Buterin hopes to see applications that are sustainably useful and aligned with crypto's core principles of decentralization and permissionlessness.

SREERAM'S 20-YEAR PREDICTIONS

By 2045, DeFi is expected to be bigger than Wall Street, and the broader crypto market to be bigger than DeFi, much like the relationship between the US economy and Wall Street.

STANI ON DEFI APPLICATIONS

DeFi is positioned to revolutionize all financial sectors by serving as a primary platform for credit extensions, using protocols like Aave to leverage tokenized RWAs as collateral.

RESILIENT SOCIAL NETWORKS

The concept of "resilient social networks" advocates for designing systems that function without centralized control.

TELEGRAM FOUNDER AND CEO PAVEL DUROV ARRESTED IN FRANCE BY NATIONAL ANTI-FRAUD OFFICE

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.

COURT RULES THAT NONE OF THE TOKENS TRADING ON KRAKEN ARE SECURITIES

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.

SONY, ELECTRONICS PIONEER BEHIND WALKMAN, STARTS OWN BLOCKCHAIN 'SONEIUM'

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: NEAR'S NEW SHARDING DESIGN

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.”

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HYPERLIQUID: INNOVATING ON-CHAIN PERPETUAL TRADING

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.

HOW DOES THE ETHEREUM FOUNDATION SPEND ITS ETH?

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.

FIRST-CLASS CRYPTO APPS

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.

CRYPTO BULL RUN DRIVEN BY MACRO FACTORS

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 AVAX

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.

TOP-TIER FUND PERFORMANCE DASHBOARD

This Dune dashboard analyzes the top crypto VC funds and their performance in 2024.

TON COMMUNITY STATEMENT

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.

BUILDING BILL SPLIT

Bill split is an app used to divide bills among friends using various tokens, with payouts in USDC.

GRAYSCALE UNVEILS INVESTMENT TRUST FOR AVALANCHE'S AVAX TOKEN

Grayscale Investments has introduced the "Grayscale Avalanche Trust," offering accredited investors exposure to Avalanche's AVAX token. This addition to its portfolio aims to provide more access to the crypto ecosystem.

SAM ALTMAN'S WORLDCOIN VIOLATED DATA POLICIES, COLOMBIA REGULATOR SAYS

Colombia's Superintendence of Industry and Commerce has accused Worldcoin and parent company Tools for Humanity of violating data protection regulations in the country. Worldcoin has been collecting biometric information in its onboarding process across the country using its Orb device to capture iris information. If found guilty, Worldcoin could face economic sanctions or permanent closure in Colombia. Other Latin American countries, including Ecuador and Argentina, have also investigated Worldcoin's activities.

$ME TOKEN COMES TO MAGIC EDEN

The $ME token claim will be executed on the Magic Eden wallet. Its team hopes to power the top cross-chain dApps ecosystem, allowing trading of fungibles and NFTs across major chains.

MAKER LAUNCHES TWO NEW TOKENS

Endgame has launched NewStable and NewGovToken, which are upgraded versions of the current DAI and MKR tokens. The switch will maintain flexibility for users to switch between the old and new tokens while ensuring that both DAI and MKR remain functional for governance and existing applications.

FRANKLIN TEMPLETON LAUNCHES TOKENIZED MONEY MARKET FUND ON AVALANCHE

Franklin Templeton has launched the first U.S.-registered mutual fund on the Avalanche blockchain, introducing the tokenized U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX), tokenized as BENJI. This expansion allows for features like USDC conversions for investments and peer-to-peer transfers of fund shares, with plans for future trading and collateral use.

HOW TO BE A BETTER CRYPTO ANALYST

Navigating complex protocols as an analyst can be challenging, especially when deciphering Solidity code and contract interactions. This guide walks through an example using Zora x Uniswap, teaching you how to identify key contracts, trace transactions, and decode contract functions to understand the flow of funds and interactions. The process involves using tools like block explorers, transaction logs, and Solidity interfaces to uncover how the protocol operates behind the scenes.