An Ape's Prologue Weekly (21 December)
Important DeFi News
EigenLayer, an Ethereum restaking protocol, exceeded $1B in TVL 48 hours after raising LST caps. It also announced Restaked Rollups, a streamlined service designed to improve the efficiency and security of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain
Solana’s mobile phone Saga sold out 48 hours after $BONK announced a 30M token airdrop worth $700 to its owners, essentially covering the cost of the device. Access Protocol has also distributed $ACS tokens worth $259 to similar wallets, with users buying these phones at inflated prices in anticipation of additional airdrops
Bitcoin Ordinals-inspired inscriptions have been crowding various chains, with Arbitrum experiencing an outage for 1.5 hours from a sustained surge of transactions, Avalanche seeing $13.8M being spent in fees for inscriptions over a five day period, and Polkadot achieving its highest daily transaction count at 1M transactions
Trezor, a hardware wallet, has added support for Solana and SPL tokens
Phantom, a crypto wallet, has added support for Bitcoin, Ordinals, and BRC-20 tokens
Ondo Finance, an RWA protocol, has launched on Solana, bringing its US Treasury products $USDY and $OUSG to the chain
LayerZero, an omnichain interoperability protocol, has announced V2, an upgrade that will maximize network throughput while granting dApp developers control over their Security Stack
Metis, an Ethereum L2, has announced a 4.6M $METIS ecosystem development fund currently worth $133M
Lisk, an L1 blockchain, is converting to an Optimism Superchain with the help of Optimism and Gelato. Native $LSK tokens will be migrated to Ethereum mainnet as part of the transition
Avail, a data availability blockchain, has partnered with StarkWare to bring data availability support to Starknet L3 appchains
Arbitrum Orbit and Manta Network have integrated Celestia’s data availability model for enhanced modularity and transaction cost reduction
Infinex, a cross-chain perp DEX, has introduced Infinex Account, featuring account abstraction and allowing users to tie their Web3 wallet to a Web2 identity
IPOR, a DeFi credit hub, has released Stake Rate Swap for $stETH, allowing users to speculate on $stETH’s yield with up to 500x leverage
$mETH, an $ETH LST by Mantle, will be earning boosted yield of 7.2% APY for two months starting December 22nd
Immutable, a gaming L2 built on Ethereum, launched its Passport tool enabling players to utilize their digital assets and identity across multiple Web3 games
Governance Proposals
PancakeSwap DAO is discussing reducing $CAKE’s total supply by 40% from 750M to 450M
ApeCoin DAO is discussing deploying ApeChain using zkSync’s ZK Stack
Osmosis DAO is discussing extending its Grants Program for another 12 months, and allocating $9.2M $OSMO for it
Stargate DAO is voting on integrating with NEAR via Aurora
News
BlackRock and the SEC have met for the second time in a month to discuss its $BTC ETF application, with recent filings showing $IBIT being the ticker for their product. 7RCC, a crypto asset manager, has also submitted a $BTC ETF application. In other news, the SEC has delayed its decision on Hashdex and Grayscale’s $ETH ETF
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology intends to boost NFT and dApp development in the country
The International Organization of Securities Commissions has published policy guidelines for DeFi, including a recommendation to identify and regulate related parties like in traditional institutions
A federal judge has approved a settlement between CFTC and Binance amounting to $1.35B
Google’s search volume for Solana surged 205% over past two months
Tether is onboarding the Secret Service and FBI in a commitment for security and working with law enforcement
OKX’s NFT trading volume has exceeded Blur and OpenSea amid Bitcoin Ordinals trading frenzy
Russia has integrated the digital Ruble into its tax code
Ripple has successfully registered as a Virtual Asset Service Provider in Ireland
Bitfinex Securities announced its first tokenized bond on Liquid Network
Sandbox, a metaverse platform, is aiming to make India its largest market within the next two years
British Virgin Islands court has frozen $1B of 3AC’s assets
SBF’s request for a longer sentencing process has been denied
Montenegro court has canceled Do Kwon’s extradition approval