Organizing: Biscuit, ChainCatcher
"What important events happened this week (8.21-8.27)"
1.Coinbase: To Invest in Circle, USDC Plans to Launch on 6 New Chains
According to official sources, Coinbase announced on social media that it will invest in Circle to continue its long-term success in adjusting and investing in stablecoins, especially USDC.
Coinbase also stated that it has simplified the operation and governance of Circle, and Circle, as the issuer of USDC, will assume all responsibilities and obligations. For Coinbase customers, there will be no changes to USDC on Coinbase, and Coinbase will continue to support USDC on all its platforms. USDC also plans to launch on 6 new blockchains. (Source link)
2. Pepe Founder's Identity Revealed, 3 Former Members Secretly Sold PEPE and Removed Multisig Permissions
CryptoPhunks and NFT market Not Larva Labs founder PAULY revealed the identity of Pepe team members. The founder of Pepe is Zachary Testa, a landscape photographer from the United States, born in 1997, and graduated with a degree in marketing from Arizona State University in 2018. He has records of breaking the law in multiple wilderness areas, sacred indigenous areas, and other drone-restricted areas. PAULY had helped the PEPE team to connect with the Binance listing team and Sushi team.
Zachary used the income from PEPE to purchase a purple Lamborghini worth $865,000, while his team did not pay any copyright fees to the original creator of Pepe the Frog, Matt_Furie.
Earlier on August 25, the PEPE multisig wallet changed the threshold from 5/8 to only 2/8, meaning it no longer required 5 out of 8 wallets to sign transactions, but only 2 out of 8. Over 160 trillion PEPE tokens (approximately $15.5 million) flowed out of the PEPE multisig wallet to addresses associated with Binance, OKX, and Bybit.
On the 26th, the Pepe official account revealed the truth behind the secret sale of 160 trillion PEPE tokens: 3 former team members secretly returned on the 25th, logged into the multisig, stole 60% of the tokens in the wallet, which is the 160 trillion PEPE, and transferred it to exchanges for sale. Then they removed themselves from the multisig, attempting to disassociate from Pepe. The Pepe official account stated that the remaining 100 trillion PEPE tokens are safe. (Source link)
3. Balancer: Multiple V2 Pools Vulnerable, Users Advised to Withdraw Affected LP Immediately
According to ChainCatcher, DeFi protocol Balancer tweeted that it had received reports of a severe vulnerability affecting multiple V2 pools. Emergency mitigation measures have been implemented to ensure the security of most TVL, but some funds still face risks. Users are advised to immediately withdraw affected LP. Balancer UI will notify all users if they hold liquidity in affected LP and provide step-by-step withdrawal instructions.
Balancer advised Avalanche LST liquidity providers, BENQI, Yield Yak, and GoGoPool users to withdraw liquidity from Boosted pools and migrate it to the non-Boosted version. These pools have been paused and are secure.
Balancer later stated that over 98.7% of the at-risk funds are secure, the vulnerability has not been exploited, but 0.42% of the total TVL (approximately $2.8 million) still faces risks, and users are advised to withdraw using the UI as soon as possible. (Source link)
4. dYdX Founder: Crypto Builders Should Prioritize Markets Outside the US
dYdX founder Antonio Juliano tweeted that cryptocurrency builders should temporarily give up serving US customers and try to re-enter the market in 5-10 years, experimenting in other markets first, and then returning to the US once the time is right.
Juliano stated that for builders or startups, a more meaningful approach is to focus on finding product-market fit overseas and then return with a large user base. "This does not mean that crypto US policy work is not important. It absolutely is, because it takes a long time (must be prepared to re-enter), and many places in the world will follow the US's lead."
Considering the slow progress of the US government in establishing cryptocurrency regulations, Juliano suggested that the cryptocurrency industry needs further development to have a greater impact on US policies. (Source link)
5. Binance Pushing Low-Cap Projects on Its Platform to Increase Liquidity for "Continuous Risk Management Plan"
Over the past week, Binance staff contacted multiple projects, inquiring about their relationship with market makers and whether they would consider providing funds for the exchange's savings products. Specifically, Binance asked these projects if they would consider depositing 1%-5% of their circulating tokens into its savings accounts to earn interest. It was reported that if the related projects have no relationship with market makers or do not wish to provide funds for their savings products, Binance will seek an explanation.
A Binance spokesperson stated that this promotion is part of a "continuous risk management plan" targeting a few cryptocurrencies listed on the exchange, either with low liquidity trading pairs or relatively small market capitalization. The spokesperson mentioned that such projects may expose users to risks, "including potential market manipulation." (Source link)
6. Base and Optimism Jointly Release Revenue Governance Sharing Protocol
Optimism stated that its collaboration with Base has two main components: protocol governance, a joint commitment to the upgrade and ordering rules of OP Chains; and economics and governance. Sharing costs with Optimism Collective and terms for granting long-term tokens to Base.
Regarding protocol governance, if the proposed framework Law of Chains launched by Optimism last month is approved, the responsibility for the upgrade of Base, OP Mainnet, and other OP chains will be transferred to a decentralized security council. The foundation aims to submit governance proposals to implement this transition in early 2024. Before adopting this blockchain rule, Base and OP Mainnet will also share upgrades.
Regarding economics and governance, Base's trading revenue will be split and directed to Collective through on-chain contracts. Specifically, the larger of 2.5% of Base's on-chain sequencer net revenue (L2 trading revenue minus L1 data submission costs) or 15% will belong to Collective.
The Optimism Foundation also provided Base with the opportunity to earn up to approximately 118 million OP tokens over the next six years, aimed at rewarding Base for its contributions to expanding Ethereum and the OP Stack. (Source link)
7. US Department of Justice Charges Tornado Cash Founders with Money Laundering and Sanctions Violations
According to an official announcement from the US Department of Justice, Tornado Cash founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov have been charged with conspiracy to launder money, violating sanctions, and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. The indictment alleges that the two were involved in creating, operating, and promoting Tornado Cash, facilitating over $1 billion in money laundering transactions and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for the sanctioned North Korean cybercrime group Lazarus Group.
Currently, Roman Storm has been arrested in Washington state and will appear in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington today, while Roman Semenov remains at large. Additionally, Roman Semenov has been placed on the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Special Designated Nationals list.
Subsequently, Brian Klein, the lawyer for Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, stated that his client has been granted bail. (Source link)
8. Former Vice Chairman of Jiangxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Xiao Yi Sentenced to Life Imprisonment in First Instance
According to China News Network, the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court of Zhejiang Province publicly announced the verdict of Xiao Yi, former member of the Party Group and Vice Chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, on charges of bribery and abuse of power. Xiao Yi was sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, deprived of political rights for life, and had all personal property confiscated. He was also sentenced to six years in prison for abuse of power, with the decision to execute life imprisonment, deprivation of political rights for life, and confiscation of all personal property. The seized and confiscated bribes and their proceeds will be recovered and turned over to the state treasury.
"《Coinbase's Investment, USDC Crisis Response, and the Reshaping of the Stablecoin Landscape》" Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire's sense of crisis seems to be overflowing. Recently, Jeremy Allaire responded in an interview with Bloomberg, stating that Circle has over $1 billion in cash to buffer the pressure from non-cryptocurrency companies such as PayPal. Yesterday, Circle announced that Coinbase is about to invest, and USDC will be launched on 6 new chains with the support of Coinbase.
For Circle, the sense of crisis is probably not only from the invasion of Web2 giants such as PayPal but also from the round-robin pressure from stablecoin competitors such as USDT and DAI.
Currently, USDC's market value has plummeted from around $45 billion at the beginning of the year to approximately $26 billion, nearly halving and reaching its lowest level in nearly 2 years. Meanwhile, the market share of USDT, DAI, and other strong competitors has significantly increased or rebounded. Compared to $66 billion at the beginning of the year, USDT's market value has increased by 25.7% to $83 billion, while DAI, after experiencing a period of decline following the USDC unpegging crisis, has seen a 20%+ increase in market value in the past two months, leveraging RWA.
Amid the crisis of USDC's market value decline, we can also see a reshaping of the stablecoin market landscape this year. On the one hand, after the regulatory crackdown on BUSD, the top five stablecoin market share has undergone significant changes. On the other hand, old blue-chip DeFi projects such as Curve and Aave are actively launching native stablecoins, and new forces of interest-bearing stablecoins leveraging LSD and RWA are on the rise. With Web2 payment giant PayPal launching the stablecoin PYUSD, the stablecoin market has added another important impetus.
In addition to the changes in the stablecoin project landscape, core crypto regions such as the United States, Singapore, and Hong Kong are also quietly surging in the stablecoin regulatory race. Currently, the Monetary Authority of Singapore has taken the lead in issuing the "MAS Finalized Stablecoin Regulatory Framework," providing a reference for promoting compliant stablecoins.
"《Superscrypt, Temasek's Web3 Fund: What Valuable Changes Exist in Web3 Social?》" To understand the feasibility of Web3 social, the best way is to first understand how past waves of innovation were formed and evaluate whether Web3 social has similar characteristics. The waves of innovation occur at the intersection of technological innovation and new consumer/business value; they change the way our world operates, and the impact is often obvious in hindsight. Just like in the real world, after a tsunami, there are often several waves. Silicon chips and the internet are the tsunami, and personal computing, e-commerce, digital financial services, and Web2 social platforms are the waves that followed.
In the Web3 field, blockchain is the new tsunami, followed by waves such as decentralized finance, dapps, and NFTs. Will Web3 social platforms become the new wave? Can they provide more added value than previous revolutions? Superscrypt, Temasek's Web3 Fund, conducted an analysis through this article.
"《Behind the Rush of Cryptocurrency Exchanges to Vietnam: Over 16 Million Crypto Users, Trading Volume Higher Than Singapore》" However, apart from Axie Infinity, there is not much content related to the Vietnamese market on the market, so users have very little understanding of the Vietnamese market and have always seen it as a mysterious presence.
Since Vietnam has grown into an important territory that cannot be ignored in the crypto industry, it has become urgent to quickly understand the layout of Web3 projects and related enterprises in this market. As the first entry point for users to access the crypto world, the trading activity of its users is often used to measure the popularity of crypto activities in the local market. So, what is the development of the crypto exchange track in Vietnam? In China, there are leading exchanges such as Binance and OKX, in Korea, there are Upbit and Bithumb, so what are the exchanges in the Vietnamese market? What are the criteria for local users to choose exchanges? This article will systematically sort out the current development status of the Vietnamese crypto market and the layout of crypto exchanges.
"《a16z Crypto Partner: The Development Process, Operation Mechanism, and New Opportunities of NFT Royalties》" People's initial vision of NFT was very optimistic: NFT smart contracts enforce secondary royalties on-chain, so whenever the creator's NFT is traded in the secondary market, the creator can make money. This is great, as this asset circulates on the internet, and whenever the asset changes hands or is sold, the creator makes a profit.
However, the reality is that smart contracts cannot enforce NFT royalties on-chain. In this article, I will provide some background knowledge about NFT royalties, how they work, the evolution of different royalty standards, and potential solutions to the problem we just outlined, and finally, I will give some advice.
"《Product Review of ChatGPT in Web3: Basic Understanding Capability, but Overall Unsatisfactory》" Although the current hot topic of "AI + Web3" still revolves around identity recognition networks such as Worldcoin, Telegram Bot narratives like Unibot and Lootbot, and technologies that may have further linkage with scaling solutions in the future such as zkML, there have been AI-driven conversational bots such as Minmax, QnA3, and Web3 Analytics in the community, which can prove that some teams have noticed the gap in knowledge dissemination in Web3 and want to create chatGPTs in the Web3 professional field. This article will evaluate the above three Web3 conversational bots from multiple perspectives such as understanding, generation, learning, and optimization capabilities, and comprehensively judge the user experience and intelligence level.
"《L2 Newcomer Base Ecosystem Map: Traffic Fission Carnival and Overview of 100+ Projects》"
This article will summarize the Base ecosystem for readers. According to incomplete statistics, the number of projects in the Base ecosystem has exceeded 100, and the scale is relatively complete. Infrastructure occupies a large part, including but not limited to bridges, on-ramps, wallets, oracles, and node providers. The native DeFi projects of Base also account for a large proportion of the locked volume and trading volume, and many multi-chain DeFi projects such as Uniswap and Sushi have expanded to Base. Mainstream NFT markets and minting tools such as OpenSea and ZORA have also been integrated into the Base mainnet.
Have you ever wondered how Rollup generates such astonishingly high levels of revenue? @BuildOnBase achieved over $2 million in revenue in less than 3 weeks… Inspired by @DavideCrapis's recent post "Rollup Economics 2.0," let's delve into the economic model of Rollup.
Key points of this article: 1) The "old-school" business model of Rollup; 2) How Rollup design becomes more complex; 3) Interoperability between them; 4) The role of Layer 3.
8. 《Opinion: Tornado Cash's Latest Accusations Seem to Contradict FinCEN Documents on Financial Crimes》
Roman Storm and Roman Semenov are being sued, with charges including conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business. So far, all relevant facts have not been fully disclosed, but the limited factual allegations in the indictment do not show any clear violations of relevant laws. There may be follow-ups related to other accusations in this new case, but it is still necessary to discuss what constitutes money transmission and what is "pure" software development or communication services. This is a key issue in this case and is also the core of the rights of American citizens to build and release software.
9. 《PEPE's Market Crash: Unequal Distribution of Spoils or Planned Exit?》
In the past few days, the Meme project PEPE has staged a "mysterious" market crash. The PEPE team's multi-signature address transferred over 160,000 trillion PEPE tokens (approximately $16 million) to 4 centralized platforms for sale. It wasn't until a day after the event had fully fermented that the PEPE team responded: 3 former members privately deleted multi-signature permissions to sell tokens, and the remaining tokens are currently safe and will be planned for future destruction.
Since the launch of the national cryptocurrency Sango Coin, the process of asset tokenization in the Central African Republic has been ongoing for a year. It has now become one of the most crypto-friendly countries in the underdeveloped world and one of the most active areas for crypto innovation. The "decentralization" in the crypto world is a resistance to centralized authority, and the emergence of crypto technology provides new technological weapons for weak countries to resist the economic domination of hegemonic countries. Cryptocurrency and resource tokenization have become weapons to break this inequality.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
