The hot start problem is when the introduction of a token limits the window of time a startup has to find PMF and facilitate organic growth before users and liquidity decline. It is better than the cold start problem for highly competitive markets, like LRTs, and networks with passive supply-side participation, like L1s with staking or DePIN. Though tokens are valuable tools for bootstrapping networks, they require serious consideration into how to properly reward organic users and drive proper incentives across the protocol.
Daniel Albert, CEO of Solana, shared insights on the blockchain's journey from its early days in a San Francisco basement to becoming a leading network. Key highlights include the unique consensus mechanism enabling high transaction speeds, the upcoming Firedancer project aimed at further performance optimization, and advancements in token functionality with the new token extensions.
As June ends, the focus is shifting from airdrop incentives to the forthcoming AVS rewards for liquid restaking tokens (LRTs), which promise higher staking rewards. Key updates include EigenLayer's testnet rewards trial and notable events like Renzo's fundraise and product launches, EtherFi's buyback, and Pendle's maturing markets. Despite a slight liquidity dip, LRTs saw increased trading volume and continued growth in TVL, signaling ongoing interest and the importance of LRTs in DeFi's future.
TON hopes to achieve 500 million users by 2028 by using Telegram's large user base and integrated Web3 functions like user-friendly wallets and mini apps.
Decentralization is a principle that enthusiasts encourage but is ignored by the general public, who only care about a great UX.
Ethereum's goal of being a global neutral settlement layer requires security and independence, specifically resisting double-signing, censoring, and government attacks.
The Avalanche Interchain Token Transfer (ICTT) will allow token transfers across Avalanche L1s without the drawbacks of bridges like relying on a small set of nodes or a central operator.
Russia is considering legalizing stablecoins for international transactions to improve cross-border payments and mitigate the effects of ongoing sanctions. The Russian Central Bank is looking to regulate the transaction chain from entry to utilization. Its initiative would primarily target facilitating transactions with BRICS countries effectively integrating stablecoins into the national framework for international settlements.
The German Government recently transferred a total of 3,000 BTC, worth ~$175M, to centralized exchanges (e.g., Kraken, Bitstamp, and Coinbase) and potentially to an institutional service or OTC. This indicates a significant sale or reallocation of the government's Bitcoin holdings.
ePBS, a change to the Ethereum protocol that separates blocks into consensus and execution parts, now has an EIP number. Introducing this feature gives attesters more time to execute transactions, makes proposer-builder interactions trustless, and removes the need for staker middleware.
ERC-5564 and ERC-6538 introduce stealth address payments on Ethereum, providing Monero-like privacy by allowing transactions to be received at one-time, non-reusable addresses generated via cryptographic methods to enhance user privacy. Using this approach, transaction histories aren't visible to the public, which would cater to the next billion users who prefer confidential transactions and enable a range of use cases, from private payments to discrete NFT transfers.
Nearly half of the $25 billion in orderflow volume over the past month on Ethereum has come from private or proprietary applications. The trend started with DeFi summer, when transaction aggregators, wallet swaps, Telegram bots, and solver networks launched. This development supports the fat app thesis, where applications controlling user attention and order flow would accrue the most value in the ecosystem.
Over the past year, Hyperliquid has grown to host 150,000 users and over $220 billion in volume. Traders at all levels and across Crypto Twitter like the platform, and it has found product/market fit. Over 95% of Hyperliquid users are down on their trades but continue to use the platform, creating a community moat.
Friendtech's journey started with promising tech and a strong community in the SocialFi space, inspiring numerous clones and innovations. However, the project has faced severe missteps, including high fees, community hostility, lack of meaningful updates, and poor handling of sybil attacks, leading to a collapse in sentiment and value.
MegaETH is an L2 with sub-second latency and 100k TPS. It recently had angel participation from Vitalik Buterin. MegaETH separates transaction processing into three node types - sequencers, provers, and full nodes - that centralize block building but retain trustless verification. It also stores its state in the sequencer memory and optimizes its compiler to improve efficiency.
Rabby has introduced a 0.25% swaps fee - it is not prominently displayed and can only be seen by scrolling in the UI, potentially misleading users who don't notice the hidden fee.
The $WELL token launch had a contract loophole, allowing early sales and causing a significant drop in token value before the community could claim their tokens.
After receiving backlash for signaling plans to move away from the Base L2, friend.tech has announced that it will remain on Base as a 100% community-controlled token.
Manta and Mode have fallen below $1B FDV as general-purpose EVM L2s become less appealing to investors.
Bitwise has filed an amended S-1 form for its Ethereum ETF, potentially allowing the product to launch as soon as next week, pending SEC approval. Analysts suggest that the listing, which follows the SEC's earlier approval of 19b-4 forms for eight Ethereum ETFs in May, could happen by mid-July.
Former President Donald Trump has voiced strong support for Bitcoin, suggesting it could serve as a strategic reserve asset to bolster the U.S. economy and counter geopolitical rivals like China and Russia. This stance aligns with other political figures advocating for Bitcoin's inclusion in national reserves, sparking discussions on its potential to curb inflation and enhance economic resilience.
Flashbots has released a new block builder in the Rust programming language. It builds mainnet blocks in less than 100ms, 10x faster than the geth builder, with an average fill time of 20ms. It is now open-source.
This post discusses the difficulties of distributing tokens in crypto, specifically focusing on the issues of different distribution methods (points, airdrops, etc.) and the regulatory hurdles that come with token sales. Infinex plans to use a non-fungible governance token sold based on early participation on a platform/protocol to fairly distribute governance while also circumnavigating regulatory complexities.
Crypto market conditions are more sophisticated than "bull/bear markets". A more sophisticated approach that acknowledges the complexity of crypto's high volatility and varied investment timeframes is needed. Investing success comes from navigating market inflection points and adapting strategies based on evolving conditions, rather than sticking to standard bull/bear market positions.
L2s (Layer 2 solutions) inherit the security properties of Ethereum, addressing concerns about their similarity to centralized servers. They achieve re-org resistance, censorship resistance, data availability, and transaction validity by posting data batches to Ethereum, ensuring that any malicious attempts would require compromising Ethereum itself.
Last week, RFK Jr supporters launched the first "PolitiCoin", named $JUNIOR, a cryptocurrency supporting RFK's campaign. The coin has a unique supply of 47 million — symbolizing RFK Jr's aspiration to become the 47th President. A 1% transaction fee is included on all trades to directly fund his campaign. All liquidity is locked.
This reflection from Starknet's founder Eli Ben-Sasson highlights the difficulties of allocating tokens to real people who will contribute to Starknet's future. He emphasized the importance of creating a diverse, engaged community to secure and govern Starknet. The piece concludes by calling for research into better token distribution methods and “proof of personhood” solutions for future rounds.
Arbitrum's sequencer uses pipelining to build multiple blocks simultaneously.
Consensys has acquired Wallet Guard, a digital wallet security provider, to improve MetaMask's ability to protect users from theft, scams, and fraud.
Infrastructure has high valuations because of the potential for mass adoption, but money will ultimately flow to applications providing scalable value.
Ethereum researcher Justin Drake believes Bitcoin is insecure in the long term because of issuance and fee market dynamics.
Robinhood Crypto has expanded its availability to all U.S. states, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, giving users across all territories the ability to trade 15 different crypto assets (e.g., BTC, ETH, etc.). This expansion was facilitated by regulatory adaptations (e.g., the Hawai'i-specific MTL license is no longer required) and additional licensing. Robinhood is now well positioned to be ahead or already ahead of U.S.-based competitors like Coinbase and Kraken in terms of geographical availability.
Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded a total net inflow of ~$129M on July 1, marking five consecutive days of net inflows. Fidelity's FBTC and Bitwise's BITB ETFs achieved ~$65M and $41M in single-day inflows.
Charon is a middleware client that allows distributed validators (DVs) to stake ETH on behalf of users. It has already been adopted by Lido and EtherFi, with $1.5 billion staked to Obol DVs. This release marks a step toward long-term support of DVs and the beginning of rapid scaling.
RISC Zero has collaborated with Celestia to create Blobstream Zero, which bridges Celestia's DA layer to other prominent chains. It allows modular apps to access ZK Coprocessors, meaning there can be data-intensive ZK programs on chains like Ethereum and Solana but enabled by Celestia and RISC Zero. It also allows for apps to prove and verify Celestia DA on any chain, effectively bridging Celestia DA to the rest of the crypto ecosystem.
The Lightning Network operates as an L2 protocol on top of the Bitcoin network, permitting faster, low-cost transactions through private, secure channels between nodes without the need for broadcasting on the main blockchain. This network improves Bitcoin's functionality by allowing immediate settlements and reduced transaction fees through a system of bilateral payment channels and commitment transactions, improving Bitcoin's utility for everyday transactions.
This post explains why blockchain, with its payment and ownership properties, is an excellent fit for AI agent use cases. It expands upon the difference between single-agent and multi-agent architectures, memory and planning considerations, and examples in literature and crypto, like agent-managed multisig wallets, game NPCs, and autonomous onchain artists. The post concludes by highlighting agent-specific projects and ideas for onchain agents.
Bittensor developers have halted their blockchain network following the discovery of a suspected security exploit targeting users' wallets initially reported by on-chain analyst ZachXBT. The halt was enacted to prevent further unauthorized access while an investigation is conducted. Approximately $8 million worth of TAO tokens were stolen, causing a 15% drop in the token's value.
On the product side, mobile will become increasingly normalized, NFTs will evolve and become relevant, and stablecoin rails will become sufficient for global adoption.
Paymasters are simple, and serve the role of executing calldata and taking a fee in account-abstracted systems, while solvers take an intent, do intelligent order routing, compete for the most liquidity, and complete the trade.
Evolve Bank, a crypto-friendly bank, has acknowledged a significant data breach involving the theft of 33 terabytes of user data by the Russian ransomware group Lockbit affecting users of Bitfinex, Copper Banking, and Nomad.
Tools for Humanity, the builder of Worldcoin, has hired former execs from Google, X, and Apple to improve the privacy, security, and identity management aspects of its project.
Sony is set to relaunch the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Whalefin, which it acquired from Amber Group in 2023, marking its entry into the crypto market. Sony has begun engaging Web3, investing and incubating products with Astar Network mainly related to NFTs across gaming platforms.
Circle has announced that its stablecoins, USDC and EURC, are now compliant with the new EU stablecoin regulations (MiCA), making it the first global stablecoin issuer to meet these standards. Effective immediately, Circle is issuing these stablecoins directly to European customers from its French headquarters, making USDC the leading regulated digital dollar in the EU market and enabling high growth for Euro digital currencies.
Aphelion Trading is a Solana-native market-making firm dedicated to advancing decentralized trading and DeFi. Known for maintaining liquidity and contributing to the design of major DEXs, Aphelion is now expanding its services to offer institutional-grade liquidity and advisory support to all DEXs and token projects on Solana.
The 2077 Collective is a new initiative to coordinate marketing and promotional strategy for Ethereum, as the current focus has primarily been research and development. It released its main website, an EIP Wiki, an Ethereum encyclopedia, and a for-profit research arm upon launch.
This article explains innovations in recent lending protocols, discussing the differences between Collateralized Debt Position (CDP) protocols and Money Markets. It also examines novel concepts like DYAD's over-collateralization with its KEROSENE token, Liquity v2's user-determined interest rates, and Tapioca's blending of CDP and Money Market models.
2024.07.02·links.tldrnewsletter.com·11 min read·TLDR Crypto Around $695 million of tokens held by insiders, VCs, and other investors will be unlocked this month. AltLayer, XAI, and Aptos have unlocks above $80 million, while other projects like Arbitrum, Starknet, and Optimism have $10+ million unlocks. Worldcoin's 16-year vesting schedule begins this month.
Polkadot's Treasury, with a current burn rate of $87 million USD every six months, is projected to last about two more years. This situation has prompted debates about adopting stricter budgeting measures or altering the system's inflation parameters to extend the runway.