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The increasing centralization of power, exacerbated by AI, poses significant risks to society. Decentralized systems like open-source software, public blockchains, and NFTs, combined with the power of memes and culture, can serve as an essential safety valve against potential centralized nightmares.
Crypto's path to hundreds of millions of users will come by making the user experience drastically better than Web2. Passwordless keys, web wallets, smart contract accounts, and open social graphs remove many frustrations around having multiple accounts, two-factor authentication, and siloed information. Signing into new apps will be a one-click process, with all relevant information and finances immediately available. Crypto will make the internet more usable and interconnected than ever before.
During a bull market, it is difficult to distinguish between valuable, long-term innovations and "noise" (short-term, copycat projects).
Although overall stablecoin supply has increased year-over-year, USDT, the market leader, has seen the majority of gains ($85 billion to $110 billion market cap) whereas USDC supply has risen from $31 billion to $34 billion.
EigenLayer has over $15 billion in total value locked, but its actively validated services (AVSs) will likely only need 10% of that.
Bitcoin mining is quickly growing, with the total market cap of publicly listed Bitcoin miners at over $20 billion.
Mintair now supports the deployment of Eigen Layer Mainnet Operator nodes with a simple one-click process without the need for running a full node.
In a recent report, the International Monetary Fund mentioned that Bitcoin is a savings tool “for individuals in high inflation countries.”
The launch of ZKasino, a decentralized gambling network, has sparked outrage among investors after the developers unexpectedly changed plans, preventing users from redeeming their bridged ether and instead automatically vesting it into $ZKAS tokens over a 15-month period. Despite warning signs and allegations of mismanagement, the project had initially attracted over $33 million from 10,000 participants. Following the controversial launch, the funds were sent to staking platform Lido, leading to widespread accusations of a rug pull and the cancellation of ZKasino's IDO and exchange listing.
Grayscale, creators of the GBTC trust-turned-ETF, has announced a Bitcoin Mini Trust with an industry-leading 0.15% fee. 10% of GBTC's assets will be contributed to the mini trust and automatically distributed to GBTC holders, giving them a non-taxable event to migrate to the lower-fee product. The Bitcoin Mini Trust will trade under the BTC ticker.
Messaging app Telegram made several announcements at Token2049 about new blockchain-based features. For creators and channel owners, it will introduce creator tips, tokenized stickers, and in-app digital product sales. A user-friendly in-app wallet will be introduced to interact with the TON blockchain, which will now feature native USDT for free transfers to Telegram contacts.
The EigenLayer team created a new model for analyzing the cryptoeconomic safety of PoS chains by comparing the cost of corrupting a blockchain with the profit that can be extracted from corrupting it. StakeSure is an on-chain insurance mechanism that guarantees no honest user can lose funds. Its many complex characteristics include provably safe bridging, automatically adjusting economic security, and a Karma system for loss compensation and hacker penalization.
We've seen a dramatic increase in Bitcoin prices after each halving, compounded by narratives like ICOs in 2016 and NFTs in 2020. With this halving, the two main narratives are ETFs and institutional adoption and the rise of the BTC L2/DeFi ecosystem. The Bitcoin ETFs are already half the size of gold ETFs, with $43 billion in combined assets, and there has never been more institutional interest. At the same time, Ordinals, Runes, and Bitcoin L2s are driving higher transaction fees and reinvigorating the Bitcoin development ecosystem.
This thread provides tips for navigating crypto and NFT communities within Discord. Key tips include verifying the legitimacy of servers before joining, maintaining privacy in discussions, carefully approaching unsolicited advice and DMs, reporting suspicious behavior, avoiding publicly sharing wallet addresses, understanding smart contracts before interacting, and staying informed on the latest scams and security best practices.
L2s like Base are making millions of dollars daily on sequencer fee revenue. However, competition for blockspace is not the end goal. Instead, it is to make blockspace as cheap, reliable, and desirable as possible to incentivize applications to build on the platform. Over time, this will lead to network effects and massive liquidity advantages for the winning L2s.
BlackRock categorizes digital assets into cryptoassets, stablecoins, and tokenized assets. As the owner of the iShares Bitcoin Trust, an investor in Circle, and the BUIDL money market fund creator, it is exposed to each group. BlackRock believes in Bitcoin for its internet-native accessibility, cross-border transactional efficiency, and sound inflation schedule. Blockchain can create nonstop capital markets with greater efficiency and transparency.
Robert Leshner, founder of Superstate, celebrates the company's first birthday and reaching $100M AUM from its first product, $USTB, a short-term government bond fund with daily USD/USDC liquidity yielding 5.36%.
The U.K. government plans to introduce legislation for stablecoins, crypto staking, exchange, and custody by June or July this year.
Risk is often incorrectly treated as an absolute measure, but it is actually subjective and dynamic, varying based on factors like technical expertise and domain knowledge.
This chart shows Base's growth trajectory by highlighting the daily number of contract deployers since its launch.
JPMorgan predicts that the price of Bitcoin will decline after the halving to around $42,000. The halving, which reduces Bitcoin's supply growth, could also prompt mining companies to relocate to regions with lower energy costs.
Avi Eisenberg, a crypto trader who manipulated Solana's Mango Markets in October 2022, was convicted of commodities fraud and manipulation by a U.S. federal jury. Eisenberg manipulated the DEX using collateral pumping to borrow $110 million from Mango without repaying it. His legal team argued that his actions were completely legal by the rules of the smart contracts, but the prosecution successfully asserted that he acted with fraudulent intentions.
HyperspaceAI has announced HyperspaceZK, a fast and free browser-based zero-knowledge (ZK) proving engine for AI agents. The open-source TypeScript library aims to drive adoption of ZK technology by offering sub-20 ms proving times and no associated costs, making it suitable for social, gaming, and marketplace applications.
ByteDance's innovation arm has partnered with Sui's Mysten Labs to offer blockchain-based gaming and social applications. Though no products have been announced yet, Sui expresses optimism about using BytePlus' augmented reality technology alongside its NFT capabilities for social applications. Sui's emphasis on user experience, which includes zkLogin and sponsored transactions, should make the onboarding process easier for mass adoption.
This flowchart explains the different entities involved in BlackRock's Ethereum-based money market fund. Securitize is used as the transfer agent to tokenize the fund, which invests in overnight repos and Treasury Bills and issues dividends. Stablecoin issuer Circle plans to implement USDC-based investments and redemptions, which are currently taking place in USD.
Runes is a new protocol for fungible tokens on Bitcoin that uses a minimalistic approach with off-chain data tracking. The protocol uses an Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model for transactions which includes off-chain data tracking, effectively reducing network strain. Runes will launch after the halving, giving holders of pre-Rune Ordinals Rune tokens.
In a future where stablecoins and blockchain technology are ubiquitous, digital currencies have revolutionized global finance, fostering economic inclusivity and redefining value exchange. As AI, privacy-preserving technologies, and innovative regulation shape this new era, society must navigate the balance between the benefits of programmable money and the preservation of individual freedoms, while collectively striving towards a more equitable and sustainable economic future.
Uniswap, DyDx, and Lido had great technology and their mindshare caused them to establish themselves as premier DeFi protocols. Uniswap generated a memorable brand by focusing on design simplicity and user experience. dYdX listened to its customers from the beginning and was not afraid to pivot from a dApp to its own L2 and finally migrate to a sovereign chain. Lido's bias for action, exemplified by its use of permissioned validator sets to start, allowed it to ship quickly and integrate rapidly with various other protocols.
The SEC's lack of clarity about what a security is and is not in the crypto industry has scared innovators away from releasing new protocols.
Binance has swapped its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) into USD Coin (USDC).
Maison Margiela and The Fabricant have launched the MetaTABI Collection, an NFT project that combines token-gated experiences with the iconic Tabi shoe, offering holders access to exclusive physical and digital products, as well as priority access to future Web3 projects and events.
Aptos Ascend is primarily geared toward financial institutions requiring compliance and security.
Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and pro-crypto Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) released the Lummis-Gillibrand Payment Stablecoin Act to regulate the stablecoin industry. The act would require stablecoin issuers to hold one-to-one cash or cash-equivalent assets and prohibit unbacked algorithmic stablecoins. If an issuer experiences insolvency, there would be an FDIC conservatorship and resolution. There are some concerns that the bill is too strict with its definition of cash equivalents and that it could prohibit innovation with new stablecoin designs.
BlackRock recently released a video about its Bitcoin ETFs, calling Bitcoin “the most widely adopted digital asset in the world.” The asset management firm's US Head of Thematics and Alternative ETFs, Jay Jacobs, noted the cryptocurrency's immense status and promise in a video published this week.
Kraken has launched a self-custodial wallet, allowing users to manage NFTs and tokens and conduct DeFi transactions across 8 blockchain networks. The Kraken team published the app's open-source code on GitHub for enhanced security through third-party review. The wallet is considered a hot wallet due to current iOS limitations. Kraken is committed to security and transparency.
Worldcoin is set to launch its own Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain, "World Chain", to improve its ability to onboard new users. The Layer 2 is designed to prioritize human-verified users, with benefits like priority block space and free gas. World Chain is expected to be released this Summer.
The Runes protocol, set to launch in April 2024, is a new fungible token standard on Bitcoin that aims to improve upon the shortcomings of its predecessor, BRC-20. By integrating with Bitcoin's existing UTXO model and utilizing OP_RETURN for data storage, Runes minimizes on-chain footprint and network congestion while offering a more user-friendly and accessible token creation process.
Modularity breaks up blockchain functionality into three parts — data availability and consensus, settlement, and execution — each of which gets its own chain or environment. Prominent projects exist in each sector, along with interoperability to unite liquidity, with the goal of integrating together to make something greater than the sum of their parts. The commoditization of block space and execution will enable applications to operate at much larger scales with grander visions.
Faraway, a gaming studio, has acquired the Legends Of The Mara and HV-MTL brands from Yuga Labs. It plans to integrate them into Faraway gaming products while maintaining close ties to Yuga and Otherside. Spencer Tucker, Yuga's Chief Gaming Officer, will move to Faraway as Chief Product Officer to ensure a seamless transition.
Legendary cryptographer Wei Dai weighs in on the pros and cons of whether a base layer like Ethereum should offer privacy by default. On one hand, it is technically feasible for privacy to be implemented, and having it as the default option makes it much more normalized, especially for users from traditional finance. On the other hand, this would be incredibly complex to implement, remove some level of neutrality, and not align with the rollup-centric roadmap's idea of end users never interacting with the base chain. Dai leans towards a transparent base layer with L2s and apps leading the experimentation with privacy based on their goals.
Venom is a Threaded Virtual Machine (TVM) with features like account abstraction and dynamic sharding to improve transaction speed and reliability.
The game integrates tower defense and monster collection gameplay and is a collaboration between Gravity and Ronin's developer Sky Mavis.
Crypto adoption will shift from buying tokens to stake and trade to earning them through new user experiences like gaming.
Nansen explains how to use its onchain data to analyze tokens, using PENDLE as an example.
Bitcoin's price has dropped below $62,000. Analysts attribute the decrease to geopolitical tensions, a strengthening dollar, and volatility ahead of the upcoming halving. The wider crypto market has similarly fallen, with large cap cryptocurrencies experiencing double-digit losses and liquidations occurring across the market.
A list of Bitcoin ETF holders has been released thanks to quarterly reporting requirements. The largest holder of IBIT, BlackRock's ETF, and Fidelity's FBTC is Brookstone Capital Management. There were no surprising or well-known holders. More filings are expected to be released over the coming month.
This thread provides a concise analysis of Omni Network, a cross-rollup bridge launching on Binance Launchpool. Omni aims to become the dominant bridge by leveraging restaked ETH for security, offering fast finality, and providing developers with cross-chain tooling. Omni's success hinges on convincing users that Ethereum alignment matters for bridges and supporting developers in making Omni their primary deployment and liquidity focus.
Reth AlphaNet, an OP Stack-compatible testnet rollup, has been open-sourced to maximize Reth performance and enable experimentation with cutting-edge Ethereum research. AlphaNet aims to break the gigagas barrier and tackle the state growth problem while implementing three new Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) not yet available on other networks. Built using the modular Reth SDK, AlphaNet allows for extreme customization without forking the node, enabling developers to experiment with custom RPCs, EVMs, and block builders.
This post discusses the evolution of memecoins, from early beginnings on Bitcointalk to their growing presence on Twitter in 2024, highlighting their role in each cycle of the crypto ecosystem. It also touches on the psychology behind memecoin trading (a blend of minimal research and luck, among other items). Many memecoin collections are highly concentrated within the top 10 holders.
a16z research partner Joseph Bonneau documented his experience at the 11th zkSummit in Athens. ZK hardware has been accelerating support for faster proof generation, which, when paired with a zkVM, could achieve a 1000x overhead over primitive computation and potentially become part of Ethereum's final version. Decentralized prover networks promise to create more competitive and distributed markets for generating proofs for L2s and other applications. Instead of re-creating identification systems, protocols like ZK Email and zkPassport are building upon existing systems for greater anonymity and applicability.