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Pauly is an AI agent on RoboNet designed to trade on US Election markets via Polymarket. It combines data from presidential speeches and other unique sources. Pauly's mission is to make history with each trade by assessing political markets for opportunities and executing optimal trades.
Nexus 2.0 introduces a new prover frontend, backend, and SDK. The frontend uses the Jolt arithmetization system, which speeds up verifiable computation. HyperNova folding on the backend uses recursive ZK proofs to check many extensive constraints simultaneously. Developers can leverage the Nexus SDK to perform asynchronous proof generation and abstract the complexities of the zkVM.
Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures and Bitcoin influencer, has open-sourced his stablecoin syllabus. It includes whitepapers, blogs, papers, and data tools to get readers up to speed on the stablecoin industry.
Over $111 billion of ETH is staked, representing 28% of the total supply. Stakers are issued rewards from issuance, priority fees, and MEV. Restaking has grown to $19.4 billion on Ethereum and offers benefits like unified security and efficiency while introducing risks such as impacts on base chain security, centralization pressures, and complexities for node operators. Cosmos introduced replicated security in 2023, allowing Cosmos Hub stake to secure consumer chains and mandatorily restake ATOM.
Nate Silver, a statistician and journalist known for founding analytics site FiveThirtyEight, has joined Polymarket as an advisor, as the company focuses on prediction markets for news events. Polymarket has risen to prominence as the leading prediction market for the 2024 presidential election, with over $400 million in trading volume in 2024, all secured by smart contracts on Polygon. Silver expects investors to use prediction markets to understand and hedge against political risks.
Chaos Labs developed a Sybil Detection Platform to enhance risk models by identifying wallet and whale concentration in DeFi applications, which it has since refined to apply across various verticals, including social applications. Its clustering algorithms help optimize incentive strategies and explore non-DeFi use cases, revealing that some application user bases could be over 98% Sybil, posing challenges in distinguishing genuine user interactions from AI-driven activities.
This retrospective post from an onchain gaming developer highlights what they would do differently if they could start again.
If L2s are onchain hubs, L3s are "onchain servers" that settle to L2s but have full customization and unique capabilities.
This article argues against choosing political allegiances based solely on candidates' stances on cryptocurrency, warning that the approach could lead to support for policies that ultimately conflict with the broader values of freedom and decentralization that underpin the crypto movement.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in DC has initiated a "civil forfeiture" to recover $2.5M in USDT lost to pig butchering scams, aiming to seize crypto from Thai accounts linked to fraudulent investment schemes.
The LI.FI bridge has been hacked for at least $8M. This has resulted in unauthorized withdrawals of up to $5.8M in ether and various stablecoins. LI.FI has advised users against interacting with its dapps while the issue is investigated. Users who did not set infinite approval should not be at risk.
Around 100 people donated crypto to Donald Trump's presidential campaign last quarter. Notable names included the Winklevoss twins and Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell. Crypto made up 1% of donation volume. Trump's acceptance of crypto has had a positive media impact on the crypto industry.
Chain GDP is a new on-chain metric designed to accurately gauge economic activity on a blockchain that focuses on the sum of all application fees generated within a chain. It is difficult to manipulate this metric (e.g., wash trading) because it only accounts for fees paid across various applications. Chain GDP aims to provide a clearer and more tamper-resistant picture of a blockchain's economic activity compared to traditional metrics like TVL or transaction count.
Uniswap has officially released its wallet browser extension. The extension is positioned directly in the browser sidebar, eliminating pop-ups and providing seamless access to crypto transactions. Uniswap's extension also offers automatic network switching and supports multiple blockchains, integrating smoothly with other Uniswap products.
The number of crypto owners worldwide is 400-500 million, over half of which come from Asia. The top 20 L1 chains boast 75 million monthly active users, and L2s have 20 million MAUs. 44% of non-owners cite instability and lack of government protection as reasons they will never buy crypto. The most popular cryptos in the US are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Cardano.
This post describes an experiment that evaluated the crypto onramp experience for new users using Phantom Wallet. The experiment demonstrated significant challenges in the fiat-to-crypto conversion process. None of the available payment providers supported credit card transactions, potentially because of concerns around fraud and chargebacks, posing a large obstacle for retail onboarding. There is a need for more streamlined and integrated onramping processes to increase crypto user adoption.
This bull cycle, Ethereum may be the only tokenization platform with a spot ETF classified as a commodity, giving it a massive advantage in onboarding institutions like BlackRock's BUIDL fund. It is also the chain of choice for Coinbase, as evidenced by the Base L2. Institutions will pay premium transaction fees for its stability and liveness, and they will value its high cash flow and real yield.
Consumer apps do not get the same attention as high-valuation infra projects.
The protocol wars were a multi-decade debate on what standard the Internet should use, concluding with the adoption of TCP/IP.
Vitalik Buterin shares thoughts on how too much investment is going into specific types of infrastructure that benefit from high-risk ventures, while other essential infrastructures are underfunded.
Stripe will permit Europeans to use both their credit and debit cards to purchase Bitcoin
Larry Fink stated in an interview with CNBC that while he was originally a skeptic on Bitcoin, he now believes it is a legitimate financial instrument. Fink sees it serving a purpose for investors afraid of currency debasement and as a hedge against government financial control. Equating it to “digital gold,” he believes it is a hedge against hope with strong industrial use.
According to Bloomberg ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas, the SEC has asked issuers to return their final S-1 application on Wednesday. Next Monday, they will request effectiveness for a launch on Tuesday July 23rd, though there could be unforeseen last-minute issues.
Gwyneth is a new based rollup, meaning transactions are sequenced by L1 validators with blocks constructed by L1 builders. It is a synchronously composable “booster rollup,” allowing for seamless access to the L1's state with no fragmentation. Gwyneth was built using Taiko's prover technology and will eventually utilize zkVMs like SP1 and Risc0 for transaction execution.
Pendle has seen extreme growth driven by airdrop points programs, and boasted an ATH TVL of $6.7B. The much-anticipated V3 upgrade will help it become the centralized exchange of interest rate derivatives, being the first of its kind even among traditional finance. With the interest rate swap market being worth $500 trillion, and blockchain providing the backbone for trustless, guaranteed swap delivery, Pendle's TVL could skyrocket. In the short term, permissionless market listing, new L1 listings, and Bitcoin restaking could usher in new highs for Pendle.
The TON ecosystem has made significant strides in Web3 gaming, with highlights like $NOT's impressive fair launch and Hamster Kombat's rapid user growth. Leveraging Telegram's vast user base and privacy features, TON is well-positioned to lead Web3 adoption, aided by its native in-app currency and strong developer support.
Polkadot is a decentralized multi-chain network that uses a main Relay chain that provides security and interoperability to multiple L1 parachains, each customized for specific functions. It supports a dynamic ecosystem with a capped number of 100 parachains, enabling specialized apps like privacy, RWAs, and DeFi solutions within its architecture.
Stablecoin issuers and lending protocols have a symbiotic relationship that has been increasingly closer aligned. Stablecoin issuers like MakerDAO are lending protocols through their collateralization, and lending protocols like Aave are arguably a specific type of stablecoin issuer. The specialization of lending protocols has changed the market structure, and stablecoin lenders will become the primary users of lending platforms.
In traditional markets, the entity in the stack closest to the user captures most of the value, like Robinhood or retail stores. However, infrastructure has gotten all the attention and funding in crypto markets. There are still massive opportunities on the application layer, but they require a great idea, masterful product design, and user acquisition.
South Korea is considering delaying crypto gains taxation from 2025 to 2028 because of negative investor sentiment.
This weekend event triggered ~$170M in short liquidations, emphasizing a strong bullish sentiment among investors despite potential upcoming challenges from scheduled market events like the Mt. Gox liquidation.
Scroll's TVL has increased by ~22% over the past week to ~$1B, making it the eighth Ethereum L2 network to pass the $1BTVL mark.
Philip Gradwell, the ex-chief economist at Chainalysis, will become the head of economics at Tether.
Coinbase's recent weekly report suggests the U.S. economy may have peaked in Q2 '24, which may discourage retail investors from further investing in crypto or stocks. The report talks about key recession indicators like a rising unemployment rate and an inverted Treasury yield curve amidst expectations of a September Fed rate cut.
The SEC has terminated its investigation on the Stacks blockchain and parent company Hiro and will not pursue legal action. Stacks performed the first SEC-qualified token offering in 2019, initially classifying its token as securities before transitioning to a decentralized network.
Forma aims to co create Solana Economic Zones that build bridges between the web3 economy and Nations' economies to help both prosper exponentially. The first ever Solana Economic Zone will be in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and will have a month-long assembly for founders, builders, investors, and policy makers to work together.
MakerDAO is set to launch an open competition to invest $1 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasury products, attracting interest from major players like BlackRock's BUIDL, Ondo Finance, and Superstate. This move is expected to significantly boost the $1.8 billion tokenized real-world asset market.
Kevin Owocki, founder of Gitcoin, has a new book that explains capital allocation and how it can be revolutionized using crypto and blockchain. It dives into mechanisms for funding and coordination, including quadratic rounds and retroactive grants, and explains the incentives to make these systems work. The 270-page book is available for free.
This article discusses the challenges and potential solutions related to intent-based protocols in decentralized finance, particularly the need for more solvers to execute user intents efficiently. It highlights the current barriers to entry for solvers, such as staking requirements and high operational costs, and explores emerging solutions like ERC-7683 for standardizing intents and platforms like Khalani for solver collaboration to address these issues and avoid centralization.
Vitalik Buterin's EthCC keynote explained Ethereum's strengths, areas of improvement, and future vision for the ecosystem. Going forward, the Ethereum base layer could be anything from a minimal proof verifier for L2s to a high-performance Solana-like L1, though Buterin sees being the L2 base layer as the focus. Ethereum's staking is extensive and decentralized, and solo staking is further improving. There are risks around socially recovering from 51% attacks and preventing censorship, and L2s need to incorporate more trustless verification via light clients and zero-knowledge proofs.
Much criticism has been put towards governance tokens that do not accrue value or pay dividends. Uniswap's UNI has not paid dividends or collected fees yet. However, the token has a multi-billion dollar market cap and the protocol has a 70% DEX market share, generated $820 million in fees distributed to LPs, and has over 500k DAUs. Though some stocks do not pay dividends and have high valuations yet still earn revenue, some protocols do not collect any fees for their treasury or token holders, so the value of pure governance rights and the potential of a future fee switch is the basis for its worth.
Consumer crypto dapps can be categorized by their go-to-market focus as either degen, crypto-savvy, or mainstream-oriented.
Germany's crypto wallet balance reached zero after the government transferred all of its remaining bitcoin to various exchanges and market makers.
This thread shares ten new tools for crypto analysis, portfolio tracking, and onchain data.
On June 22, CoinStats detected unauthorized access to its infrastructure, resulting in the theft of approximately $2.2 million in cryptocurrency from 1,590 CoinStats Wallets.
Goldman Sachs' global head of digital assets, Mathew Mcdermott, says the bank plans to launch three tokenization projects before the end of 2024. These projects will create marketplaces for tokenized assets, increase transaction speeds, and diversify collateral options. Goldman views tokenization as a critical area of opportunity and differentiates itself from BlackRock and Franklin Templeton by focusing on institutions.
Germany is almost finished selling its Bitcoin. It has less than 5,000 BTC remaining after recent transactions totaling ~$600M worth of Bitcoin to various exchanges, suggesting the nation's massive sell-off, valued at approximately $3 billion, might end as early as next week.
L2-native assets, worth a combined $12 billion, cannot be bridged to other L2s. Two-way canonical bridges allow these tokens to be bridged to any L2 by first reverse-canonically bridging to the L1. Though shared sequencers and AggLayer solve this problem, they do not do so across all L2 ecosystems, making bridging the ideal solution.
Coinbase is launching a new web app designed to act as a hub for users to manage their entire crypto portfolio (tokens, NFTs, and DeFi positions), with the goal of simplifying the user experience and bringing its entire user base of ~100M "on chain." The app will allow users to connect multiple wallets and perform a range of on-chain activities.