An Ape's Prologue Weekly (1 February)
Important DeFi News
Eigenlayer has delayed its cap raise by a week to 5th February. There will be no deposit limit from 5th February to 9th February, and three new assets will be introduced: $sfrxETH, $mETH, and $LsETH
Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade has gone live on Sepolia testnet, with mainnet scheduled for March. The upgrade will introduce Proto-Danksharding, allowing L2s to reduce gas cost when posting rollup data on Ethereum
LayerZero, an omnichain interoperability protocol, has launched V2, featuring greater interoperability between all EVM and non-EVM chains
Orbiter Finance, a bridge protocol, announced Orbiter Rollup, an L2 network that will allow it to handle substantial transaction volumes with greater efficiency and reduced costs
Aevo has announced an upcoming airdrop farming program. Users who have done volume on the protocol thus far are eligible for the airdrop and can further amplify their rewards through this program
Synthetix will launch Synthetix Perps on Base soon, enabling $USDC as collateral on top of the currently utilized $sUSD
ZetaChain, an omnichain interoperability network, has launched its $ZETA airdrop claim. The initial float starts at 11%, 13% of which has been airdropped to users and contributors
dYdX has upgraded to V3, introducing interchain accounts and enabling liquid staking of $DYDX
Stride, a Cosmos LST protocol, has added support for $TIA and $DYDX restaking over the past week, named $stTIA and $stDYDX, respectively
Conic Finance, an omnipool protocol for Curve, has launched V2, introducing Liquidity Allocation Modules that enable allocation of liquidity to protocols beyond Curve, LP bonding for better rewards, and a 10% platform fee
API3, an data oracle protocol, has introduced the OEV Network, a zk-Rollup that captures Oracle Extractable Value for all dApps across all chains
Sovryn, a Bitcoin DeFi platform, announced BitcoinOS, a framework for creating a network of interoperable rollups on Bitcoin
Unibot announced a $UNISOL airdrop for its Solana users and all $UNIBOT holders
Shimmer, an EVM network, started a $1M $SMR liquidity mining airdrop for users who bridge at least $1k of LayerZero wrapped assets onto the chain, participate in ecosystem activities, and maintain the bridged value for a minimum of 30 days
Governance Proposals
dYdX DAO is voting on the allocation of $30M in $DYDX from the community treasury to fund dYdX Foundation’s operations for another three years
Arbitrum DAO is proposing the implementation of ArbOS V2, an upgrade that will enable the chain to support updates from Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade
Origin DAO is voting to increase the minimum stake required for creating Snapshot proposals from 10k $veOGV to 10M $veOGV due to recent uptick in scam proposals
News
The US Federal Reserve has left rates unchanged and dented market expectations for a rate cut in March
The US government has filed a notice on its plan to sell 2.875k $BTC, worth $120M, that was seized from Silk Road drug dealers
Law enforcement in Germany and UK are reported to have seized $2.2B and $1.78B of $BTC respectively from illegal operations
FTX has stated it plans to repay former customers in full but will not be re-launching FTX exchange
Celsius is reported to be distributing $3B to its creditors as it emerges from bankruptcy, payouts will be made through PayPal and Coinbase
Tether has reported a record net profit of $2.9B in Q4 of 2023, additionally setting an all-time high in excess reserves backing $USDT, totaling $5.4B
Invesco has slashed its BTCO $BTC ETF fee from 0.39% to 0.25% in order to stay competitive against its competitors
Hong Kong received its first spot $BTC ETF application from China’s Harvest Global Investments
Binance has begun allowing its larger traders to hold their funds with independent banks, namely Sygnum Bank and FlowBank
Coinbase will begin charging a 0.1%-0.2% fee for $USDC to USD conversions based on the amount exchanged
Ripple’s co-founder was hacked for $113M in $XRP tokens
Binance has launched the “Binance Inscriptions Marketplace” for the trading and minting of inscription tokens
Major NFT indexes have seen price gains outpacing $ETH’s performance in January
Thailand’s SEC has been reported to be transitioning toward more crypto-friendly regulations this year