Eliza Labs, the team behind the popular Eliza framework and ai16z agent, has partnered with Stanford's Future of Digital Currency Initiative through a grant exceeding $250,000 to research trust mechanisms and governance for AI agents. Led by prominent professors David Mazières and Dan Boneh, the lab is researching how to improve AI agent coordination and blockchain computational power, while Eliza continues to improve its agents' capabilities.
2024.12.18·links.tldrnewsletter.com·2 min read·TLDR Crypto Relay Protocol has launched "Relay Deposit Addresses," enabling users to easily bridge funds across chains by sending them to a designated address - no wallet connection required. This feature supports major tokens across popular chains, automatically handles errors like wrong chain deposits, and simplifies onboarding for both users and developers.
An industry report from OpenMind explores how the convergence of robotics, AI, and blockchain technologies could enable truly autonomous, trustworthy machines, with blockchain serving as the infrastructure layer for robot-to-robot and human-robot interactions. It highlights how blockchain can provide secure identity verification, transparent operation logging, and programmable economic incentives for robots, while also addressing key challenges in data privacy, coordination, and trustless verification. The report identifies several emerging trends, including decentralized robotics networks, hardware-level security through TEEs, and crypto-economic incentives for robotic tasks, suggesting that blockchain technology could be essential for scaling autonomous systems while maintaining security and accountability in human-robot interactions.
Crypto entrepreneurs must choose between adhering to blockchain's original cypherpunk principles (decentralization, privacy, and self-sovereignty) and adopting more conventional business practices to achieve mainstream success and regulatory compliance. As the industry matures and integrates with traditional finance and business models, the tension is becoming more pronounced. While most projects will likely choose the path of integration and regulation, a critical mass of developers must continue building decentralized systems to preserve blockchain's revolutionary potential.
Base has quickly become one of the fastest growing and largest blockchains, with more 3-month inflows than Solana and leading in many L2 metrics including transactions and stablecoin market cap. The DEX sector is dominated by Aerodrome, while lending markets Morpho, Moonwell, and Aave all remain relatively close in TVL. AI platform Virtuals has become a standout project on the chain and is driving lots of interest and mindshare to Base AI builders.
The Polygon community has largely opposed the "Stake the Bridge" (STB) pre-proposal due to unresolved concerns, while allegations of anti-competitive tactics by Aave leadership have sparked criticism.
After announcing the Monad Foundation, Monad Labs has rebranded to Category Labs.
Base users have increased their deposits in Base applications from ~$300M to $4B this year, highlighting significant ecosystem growth.
As Web3 startups have raised over $5.4B since Q3 of this year, Cointelegraph accelerator participants will look to pitch their startups (DeFi, Payments, etc.).
Claiming $PENGU tokens may compromise anonymity, as the public API reveals linked Ethereum wallets for Solana claims.
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MicroStrategy has acquired an additional 15,350 BTC for $1.5 billion at an average price of $100,386, bringing its total holdings to 439,000 BTC (approximately 2.1% of the total supply) worth over $45 billion. About 39% of its position was accumulated in just the past six weeks. The company, which will join the Nasdaq 100 index on December 23, continues its aggressive acquisition strategy through a combination of share sales and debt, with $42 billion in planned capital raises, while analysts at Bernstein suggest the company could be eligible for S&P 500 inclusion in 2025 following new accounting rules for crypto valuations. MicroStrategy's stock has gained over 490% year-to-date.
2024.12.17·links.tldrnewsletter.com·4 min read·TLDR Crypto FTX debtors announced that Kraken and BitGo will help to distribute the first FTX recovery payments come January 2025. Initial claimants are expected to receive funds within 60 days of January 3, 2025.
El Salvador will allow Bitget to offer Bitcoin-related services like fiat exchanges and custody solutions while the exchange seeks further approval to support other digital assets. This comes as El Salvador negotiates with the IMF to amend its Bitcoin law and expands its global crypto strategy through international partnerships.
Ethena Labs has launched USDtb, a new stablecoin backed by BlackRock's BUIDL Fund, positioning it as the most BUIDL-backed stablecoin on the market. USDtb offers cross-chain compatibility via LayerZero and will primarily be distributed through centralized exchanges, with liquidity incentives on Curve Finance.
The Monad Foundation has been launched as an independent organization to support the development and adoption of the Monad blockchain, focusing on governance, ecosystem growth, and community engagement implying a token may be introduced soon.
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2024.12.17·links.tldrnewsletter.com·Sponsor·TLDR Crypto This article compared six leading zkVMs (SP1, RISC0, Jolt, Delphinus, Nexus, and Powdr) across eight cryptographic algorithms, evaluating both performance metrics and developer experience. SP1 and RISC0 are the most mature solutions, with SP1 taking a slight lead due to its extensive precompile support and lower cycle counts, while both platforms offered reliable prover networks and strong documentation. While zkVMs are making zero-knowledge proofs more accessible to developers, there are current limitations including resource-intensive proving requirements and the continued performance advantage of custom circuits for specific use cases.
This guide highlights the critical steps for hiring a Head of Business Development (BD) in crypto. It emphasizes the importance of founder-led sales early on, finding high-agency and crypto-native candidates, and balancing strategy with tactical execution. It also provides actionable advice on scaling growth, measuring performance through secondary metrics, and fostering adaptability for crypto's cyclical market.
With the proliferation of AI agents, we are nearing a new version of DAOs that aligns with Vitalik Buterin's original vision of “automation at the center, humans at the edges.” This evolution is exemplified by projects like Clanker, which enables token launching through natural language, and Botto, which creates AI-generated artwork and uses human intervention to decide which art to sell. While AI-driven DAOs show clear promise in areas with deterministic data like trading and content creation, they still face limitations in tasks requiring long-term planning.
This article challenges the DOJ's attempt to classify Tornado Cash as an unlicensed money transmitting business under 18 U.S.C. § 1960, arguing that the statute's broad interpretation contradicts Supreme Court precedent and FinCEN guidance, which emphasize "control" as a key factor in money transmission. By applying Section 1960 to Tornado Cash's non-custodial, decentralized smart contracts, the DOJ risks prosecutorial overreach, potentially stifling innovation and privacy tools in blockchain technology.
Crypto investment products recorded their 10th consecutive week of inflows, totaling $3.2B, with Bitcoin leading at $2B and Ethereum ETPs achieving $1 billion in their seventh consecutive week of gains.
Kofi, a crypto data researcher, created a Dune dashboard to track investment activity on Echo.
Axiom and Scroll have launched OpenVM, a new open-source zkVM framework that enables developers to add custom opcodes, circuits, and proof systems without forking repositories, marking a shift away from monolithic zkVM solutions.
This proposal outlines a collaboration between Lido Alliance, Fluid, and Instadapp to drive wstETH adoption through incentives, liquidity optimization, and joint education efforts.
A Bitcoin holder was sentenced to prison time for underreporting gains on Bitcoin for the first time. Frank Ahlgren III, an early adopter of crypto, underreported $4 million in Bitcoin sales and pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion. He attempted to hide the sale using mixers and cash and believed his actions to be anonymous.
MicroStrategy will join the Nasdaq-100 as its first Bitcoin-focused company, ranking 40th with a $92 billion market cap and 0.47% weighting. This inclusion exposes $550 billion in passive funds to its $42 billion bitcoin holdings, driving institutional adoption but raising potential reclassification as a financial firm in March.
An OpenSea Foundation registering in the Cayman Islands likely signals a strategic shift for OpenSea, possibly involving new financial or governance structures optimized for crypto-friendly regulation. A Cayman Islands foundation could pave the way for decentralized initiatives, token launches, or greater community-driven governance.
a16z Crypto stablecoins will disrupt the traditional payments industry due to its substantially lower transaction costs, with fees under $0.01 compared to credit cards' 2-3%. Major retailers like Walmart and Chipotle could dramatically increase profitability by switching to stablecoin payments, potentially improving margins by 60% and 12% respectively. Three key trends are driving adoption: increasing back-office integration through stablecoin orchestration, improved onboarding processes with shared incentives for businesses, and growing regulatory clarity, while the technology continues to improve through infrastructure development and permissionless composability.
This piece builds the case for Hyperliquid ($HYPE) as a game-changing decentralized exchange (DEX) and Layer 1 protocol. By blending centralized exchange-like performance with fully on-chain operations, Hyperliquid captures growing market share in perpetuals trading and prepares to expand further with its EVM launch. The piece highlights the $HYPE token's growth potential, competitive advantages, innovative ecosystem, and upcoming milestones, while also addressing key risks like centralization and ecosystem quality.
Vitalik Buterin explains in this thread that deep funding applies a graph-based approach to measure contributions by crediting nodes based on their impact on connected outputs. Deep funding then combines this with distilled human judgment, where AIs propose edge weights and a human jury spot-checks for accuracy to determine the final scoring system.
VanEck's 2025 Crypto Predictions foresee a dynamic year, with Bitcoin reaching $180,000 and Ethereum surpassing $6,000 by Q4, alongside breakthroughs in tokenized securities ($50B+ market), AI agents (1M new deployments), and explosive DeFi ($4T DEX volumes). It also predicts U.S. regulatory advancements, surging stablecoin payments ($300B/day), and a rebound in NFT trading ($30B).
Ethereum liquid restaking TVL has skyrocketed from $284M to $17B in 2024, driven by the growing utility and capital efficiency of liquid restaking tokens (LRTs), which enable stakers to reuse derivative tokens for securing additional networks (e.g., stEth).
BiT Global has filed a lawsuit against Coinbase over its planned delisting of Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), alleging that the exchange is unfairly removing the token to promote its own recently launched cbBTC product.
Solana is accelerating its scaling efforts with plans to raise block limits, optimize network infrastructure, and achieve 120 ms block times, paving the way for massive scalability while already operating at high capacity.
Eliza is an open-source library used to easily launch and customize AI agents, with extensive plugin support for on-chain transactions, multi-platform presence, and the most integrations of any AI agent framework.
Grayscale Investments has launched two new single-asset funds for Lido's LDO and Optimism's OP tokens, offering exposure to Ethereum's largest liquid staking protocol (LDO) and a popular layer-2 scaling solution (OP). This expansion adds to Grayscale's growing suite of crypto investment products, highlighting its focus on protocols that improve Ethereum's scalability, security, and adoption within the DeFi ecosystem.
Crypto analysts predict Ethereum could reach $5,000, driven by strong institutional demand evidenced by $2 billion in cumulative ETF inflows and increased network activity averaging 6.5-7.5 million daily transactions. The analysts point to bullish fundamentals including growing ETH burns since September, total value locked reaching $77 billion (led by Lido, Aave, and EigenLayer), and renewed market optimism following the U.S. presidential election results, with Trump's potential crypto-friendly policies sparking hopes for a DeFi sector revival.
Royco Protocol has introduced a new DeFi primitive called Incentivized Action Markets (IAMs), designed to create efficient markets for onchain transactions by allowing anyone to offer and negotiate incentives for specific blockchain actions. The protocol addresses current inefficiencies in token incentive distributions, citing examples like Ethereum's $4B+ staking rewards and EigenLayer's 15% token distribution, by enabling price discovery and broader market participation. Various lending markets have already released Royco vaults on Base, Arbitrum, and Ethereum.
CoW DAO has launched its main product, CoW Swap, on Base, bringing gasless trading, MEV protection, and advanced order types to Base users while seamlessly integrating with its existing ecosystem. This deployment positions CoW DAO as a foundational player in Base's growing ecosystem and sets the stage for further innovations like CoW AMM, improving the DeFi experience for both traders and developers.
The Ethereum gas limit is directly controlled by validators, who vote with each block to raise or lower it, bypassing the formal EIP process. Recently, core developers signaled support for raising the limit to 36m gas as a safe first step, with client updates facilitating the change, but there is frustration over the small increase and discussion about implementing more dynamic, scalable adjustments in the future.
The Electric Capital Developer Report reveals shifts in patterns in 2024 with global monthly active developers down 7% to 23,613 and showing major geographic redistribution as Asia became the leading continent for crypto development, surpassing North America and Europe. The report highlights substantial growth in Ethereum Layer 2 development, with over half of Ethereum's developers now working on L2 solutions, while Solana emerged as the leading platform for new developers in 2024. Notable trends include record-breaking crypto ETF inflows exceeding $50B, all-time high stablecoin usage at $196B in circulation, and significant growth in NFT deployments and DeFi activity, particularly in restaking and liquid staking derivatives.
Odos DAO has officially launched, marking a shift towards decentralized governance and unveiling a Tokenized Loyalty Program set to begin on December 20. The initiative combines user rewards through $ODOS tokens with community-driven decision-making, positioning Odos at the forefront of decentralized finance's growth.
Ethereum is shifting from speculative cycles to sustainable adoption patterns with a focus on real-world utility through stablecoins and traditional finance integration. This author predicts significant involvement from traditional financial institutions but warns of potential compromises to crypto's core values of permissionlessness and decentralization, drawing parallels to how other revolutionary technologies like file sharing and encrypted messaging evolved. The essay emphasizes the importance of preserving user freedoms within custodial solutions while acknowledging that mass adoption will likely come through more centralized, user-friendly applications.
This post outlines potential signals of a bull market top, including increased public interest in crypto, excessive displays of wealth, market structure breaks, bullish sentiment across retail and media, and exaggerated price predictions, suggesting caution as markets may become overheated.
U.S. spot ETH ETFs have recorded positive inflows for 13 consecutive trading days.
This proposal suggests depositing $1.3B of idle stablecoins from the Polygon POS bridge into Morpho vaults to generate ~$91M in annual yield, which can be redirected to grow the Polygon ecosystem.
Rabby Wallet has expanded to Firefox, offering browser users another way to manage their crypto.