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MAKER IN THE ENDGAME ERA

As part of its Endgame plan, Maker will rebrand, launch its own chain, and create SubDAO protocols to further innovation and capture market share.

YUGA LAYS OFF STAFF AND REFOCUSES

Yuga plans to refocus on gaming efforts in the 3D Otherside.

ZKSNACKS RESTRICTS US USER ACCESS TO WASABI WALLET

zkSNACKs, the company behind Wasabi Wallet, has prohibited users in the U.S. from accessing its products, likely because of regulatory concerns highlighted by recent arrests related to crypto privacy (e.g., Samourai wallet).

STATE OF BLOCKCHAIN ECOSYSTEMS

Solana has captured innovation and memecoins, Bitcoin is entering an NFT and DeFi run like Ethereum in 2021, and Base is the main innovation hub for Ethereum.

AFTER 6-YEAR HIATUS, STRIPE TO START TAKING CRYPTO PAYMENTS, STARTING WITH USDC STABLECOIN

Stripe has announced it will allow customers to accept cryptocurrency payments on its platform. It will start this Summer with USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, showing a demo of crypto payments using Solana at their developer conference. Stripe previously supported Bitcoin in 2014 but halted crypto efforts in 2018, citing its use as a store of value instead of as a medium of exchange. It processed $1 trillion in payments in 2023.

CONSENSYS SUES SEC

Consensys is suing the SEC to restrain the SEC's attempts to expand its jurisdiction over crypto regulation and defend the Ethereum blockchain and its community of developers and users. Consensys argues that the SEC's current approach is creating unnecessary confusion and disruption for those invested in the future and development of Ethereum and related decentralized technologies.

VISA ONCHAIN ANALYTICS

Visa's Head of Crypto, Cuy Sheffield, recently announced the launch of Visa's Onchain Analytics Dashboard. The dashboard tracks public stablecoin data like supply, monthly active users, and transaction volume of major stablecoins across 5 L1s and 4 L2s. It shows that the adjusted onchain stablecoin volume for the past 30 days was $265 billion. Visa is looking for community feedback to make the tool better.

INTRODUCING ETHEREUM BLOBSPACE DERIVATIVES

Ethereum's recently introduced Blobs have drastically reduced data availability costs for rollups but have volatile price movements that make future costs unpredictable. Blobspace derivatives offer an opportunity for rollups to hedge against future price changes and de-risk operational costs. Outstanding issues include physical delivery, protecting against market manipulation, and creating a proper seller incentive structure.

AN ASSORTMENT OF RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE MARKET

The hype behind Runes and memecoins has died down, indicating a potential buying opportunity. Similarly, airdrop farming has become far less popular, and the fragmentation of the market's ecosystems makes it hard for people to keep up with everything happening. For investors with lots of capital, finding a few high-conviction plays and waiting for the long term is valuable, while lower-capital portfolios are still best off farming airdrops.

WHY CONSUMER CRYPTO APPS WILL VERTICALLY INTEGRATE

Consumer-facing crypto apps with strong brands and large user bases are well-positioned to vertically integrate by launching their own application-specific blockchains, as they can provide better user experiences and capture more value compared to building on general purpose infrastructure. The current market favors crypto projects with clear narratives and product-market fit over broad infrastructure plays, many of which have struggled to gain traction.

WHY MANY ‘ZOMBIE BLOCKCHAINS' ARE STILL WORTH BILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Forbes has defined a list of 20 zombie blockchains with over a billion dollars in market capitalization but little utility or user activity. This phenomenon can be attributed to the intangible qualities of these networks, their longevity in surviving multiple cycles, and the presence of loyal supporters promoting them. Some investors value these chains for factors beyond utility, similar to how fashion brands derive value from social status or storytelling.

MEMECOINS ARE DESTROYING CRYPTO

The rise of meme coins in the crypto space has sparked concerns about their negative impact on the industry's credibility and long-term growth. Critics argue that these tokens, which often lack technical innovation and rely on hype-driven speculation, create a predatory environment that disproportionately benefits savvy traders at the expense of less experienced investors.

ETHEREUM ECOSYSTEM ARMS RACE UPDATE

Onchain data shows that Base is the hub of retail activity, Polygon is the most mature non-speculative consumer economy, and Arbitrum is the leader of institutional DeFi.

FBI WARNS FOLKS AGAINST USING UNREGISTERED CRYPTO MONEY TRANSMITTING SERVICES

The FBI has warned Americans to only use crypto services that are registered as Money Services Businesses (MSBs) in compliance with federal law.

10 TOOLS TO DISCOVER CRYPTO ALPHA

These tools range from tracking the growth of and investments into projects to aggregating crypto news, tracking testnets for airdrop farming, and analyzing potential price actions of Bitcoin with on-chain data.

BITCOIN MINING DECENTRALIZATION ‘NOT GREAT,' SAYS ORDINALS CREATOR

Ordinals and Runes creator Casey Rodarmor has criticized the Bitcoin mining space for sharing the same transaction selection policies, hurting decentralization.

US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE SEEKS 3-YEAR JAIL SENTENCE FOR FORMER BINANCE CEO CZ

The Department of Justice says that Binance CEO CZ Zhao should spend three years in jail for money laundering charges. The sentence is harsher than the federal guideline of 18 months because of Zhao's willful violation of U.S. law. In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering and sanctions violations, forcing Binance to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and barring Zhao from involvement with Binance for at least three years. The sentencing is scheduled for April 30th.

FEDS ARREST FOUNDERS OF BITCOIN MIXER SAMOURAI WALLET

The two founders of Samourai Wallet have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Samourai is being accused of facilitating more than $100 million in money laundering from illegal wallets and over $2 billion in unlawful transactions. The website has been seized and replaced with a government notice.

RETH'S PATH TO 1 GIGAGAS PER SECOND - ETHEREUM SCALING ROADMAP

Paradigm has released its roadmap for scaling the Reth Ethereum execution client. The roadmap proposes changing the scalability metric from transactions per second to gas per second as a more nuanced way to understand the network's computational throughput. Paradigm plans to use vertical and horizontal scaling — accomplished via a parallel EVM, multi-rollup support, and cloud-native nodes, among other improvements — to achieve 1 gigagas/s, 200x faster than Base and 800x faster than mainnet.

SQUARE ALLOWING SELLERS TO AUTOMATICALLY CONVERT SALES INTO BTC

Payment processing solution Square has announced a new feature that allows sellers to convert their sales into Bitcoin automatically. The conversion occurs using the subsidiary company Cash App, which can convert 1-10% of daily sales to BTC. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Square and Twitter, strongly supports Bitcoin.

HOW TO TAKE PROFIT

Taking profit primarily depends on personal circumstances, such as outstanding debt and other opportunity costs of money. In a bull run, take profit on the way up, for example, sell 10% for every 20% price increase. A lot of mental fortitude is required to know when to buy and sell, so the easiest strategies pre-plan or automate decisions.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE RENZO PROTOCOL DEPEG

This thread examines the depeg of Renzo's liquid staking token (ezETH), the protocol's airdrop plan, and the misleading token allocation chart. The ezETH depeg was likely caused by a sell-off following the conclusion of the Season 1 Airdrop and misleading chart on token allocation, leading to liquidations on leverage protocols and losses for users.

WHY LST DEPEGS (LIKE RENZO) ARE GETTING MORE COMMON

This thread discusses the recent depeg of Renzo Protocol's liquid staking token, ezETH, noting that such events are becoming increasingly common in the crypto space. Its author highlights the importance of setting safe parameters and using safe leverage to protect funds, even if it means losing market share to riskier competitors, as survival is the key to long-term success in the industry.

INTRODUCING PRIME INTELLECT - DEMOCRATIZING AI DEVELOPMENT AT SCALE

Prime Intellect is launching a decentralized platform to enable researchers to build open-source AI models using distributed computing power. It plans to reward participants for contributing compute, code, and capital to enable a new wave of AI progress and make model training more transparent. Its first focus areas include open-source LLMs, autonomous coding agents, and scientific models for drug discovery.

MEMECOINS 101

This thread provides a comprehensive guide to investing in memecoins, emphasizing the importance of risk management, community, and having a well-defined plan.

A DISCUSSION ON NFTS VERSUS FUNGIBLE TOKENS

Because of their limited supply and reduced liquidity, NFTs are valuable for creating tight-knit communities.

THE WHY FOR CONSUMER CRYPTO

The crypto user experience is improving because of innovations like web wallets and passkey adoption, combined with an emerging social graph.

FUEL NETWORK EXPLAINED

Most L2s are closely aligned with the L1 by using the EVM. Fuel is taking the opposite approach to create a custom parallelized VM with a UTXO account model.

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PHILIPPINES SEC WORKS TO REMOVE BINANCE FROM GOOGLE AND APPLE APP STORE

The Philippines' SEC has ordered Google and Apple to delist the Binance app from the Filipino app store, following a push to restrict access to unlicensed crypto trading platforms and protect the local economy and investors. This comes after prior warnings, as part of the SEC's ongoing efforts to regulate crypto activities.

BLOCKCHAIN ASSOCIATION AND CRYPTO ACTIVIST GROUP SUE SEC OVER ‘DEALER RULE'

The SEC is being sued over the recently finalized Dealer Rule expansion, which redefined the term to require more crypto organizations to register with the SEC and comply with securities laws. The lawsuit argues that the SEC did not address public concerns and failed to consider the expansion's negative consequences. The Blockchain Association and Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas are advocate groups representing the industry and pushing for better crypto legislation.

LIQUID RESTAKING PROTOCOL RENZO ANNOUNCES AIRDROP

CELO CHOOSES OPTIMISM, CONCLUDING BAKE-OFF AMONG LAYER 2S

After months of consideration, Celo has chosen Optimism as the tech stack for building an Ethereum L2. This decision comes after Celo pivoted from an independent blockchain to becoming an L2, citing Ethereum alignment and greater liquidity. Other candidates included Arbitrum Orbit, zkSync's ZK Stack, and Polygon's CDK.

A CAUTIONARY TALE ABOUT ‘THE VC PONZI SCHEME'

Founders should be wary of the VC ponzi scheme, where venture capitalists pressure startups to raise massive rounds at premature valuations, only to show paper gains to attract more funds from limited partners, which they take fees on. To avoid misaligned incentives, some firms opt for internal capital structures instead of traditional VC funds, ensuring they only profit from genuine investment success.

DEEP DIVE INTO THE HISTORY OF DEGEN

This post explores how Degenchain has grown since its L3 launch on Base. Degenchain is community-driven and has shifted to a robust ecosystem with high transaction rates. The history of its native DEGEN token is traced from a community token on Farcaster, a crypto-native social network, to its ascent as a primary utility token. Future catalysts for DEGEN's growth include Coinbase's market influence, Base network's expansion, potential ETH ETFs, Bitcoin halving, and onchain events like "Onchain Summer”.

SEC SEEKS $5.3B FROM DO KWON AND TERRA

The SEC is seeking over $5 billion from Do Kwon and Terraform Labs for penalties and disgorgement after a guilty verdict for defrauding investors. The enforcement action also involves barring Kwon from executive roles in any securities issue.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT BIP-420

A BIP, or Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, is a pending upgrade to the Bitcoin blockchain that has been assigned a number for easy communication. BIP-420 is related to OP_CAT, an upgrade to Bitcoin's scripting language that would make smart contracts and zk bridges possible. The process to upgrade Bitcoin is decentralized and community-driven, so there must be a consensus from miners and developers alike to adopt BIP-420.

POLYMARKET'S AIRDROP ODDS FOR THE NEXT 69 DAYS

The protocols most likely to airdrop tokens within the next 69 days are Swell, zkSync, and friend.tech.

THE EFFECT OF THE HALVING

With halvings, there is excess demand over supply, which leads to dramatic price increases as new investors and a lower inflation rate disrupt the equilibrium.

JANE STREET IS BULLISH ON COINBASE AND HERE'S WHY

Trading firm Jane Street Capital owns 5.3% of outstanding Coinbase shares, up from 2% in December 2023.

DEGODS RUMORED TO MIGRATE BACK TO SOLANA

NFT project DeGods, which is most famous for migrating to Ethereum from Solana, may be planning to move back to its original blockchain, according to a cryptic post from its founder.

CRYPTO FUNDS SEE $206M IN OUTFLOWS

Investors recently withdrew ~$206 million from crypto investment products (e.g., ETF/ETP), likely due to expectations of persistently high interest rates. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs had significant withdrawals, while crypto futures in the U.S. saw even larger outflows, contrasting with inflows in Canada and Switzerland.

THAILAND TO BLOCK CERTAIN CRYPTO PLATFORMS

Thailand's SEC is expected to restrict access to unapproved crypto platforms to prevent illegal activities like money laundering. This aligns with measures in India and the Philippines and follows Thailand's positive regulatory steps towards cryptocurrency this year.

GPU-EVM: THE MOST PERFORMANT PARALLEL-EVM BY 100X

INTRODUCING BIP-420: FORMAL BITCOIN IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL FOR OP_CAT

The OP_CAT opcode has formally received proposal number 420. BIP-420 will allow two values to be concatenated in the Bitcoin scripting language. Though trivial in implementation, this feature greatly increases Bitcoin's functionality by introducing covenants that enable smart contracts, cryptographically secure bridges, zero-knowledge proof verification, and other useful features. OP_CAT has received much attention recently because the Taproot Wizards promoted the opcode through its Quantum Cats Ordinals.

A FULL BREAKDOWN OF ZKASINO'S $33M THEFT

In a brazen $33 million rug pull, the crypto betting platform ZKasino converted over 10,500 ETH of user funds into $ZKAS tokens at an inflated price without consent and imposed a 15-month vesting schedule. Despite numerous red flags, including the founder's shady past, unpaid employees, and abruptly canceled token listings, ZKasino managed to raise a massive war chest before ultimately shutting down communication channels and banning users who called out the scam.

UNPACKING THE STACKS BITCOIN L2 NAKAMOTO UPGRADE