Weekly Roundup (29 February)

DeFi News

• Blast, a native yield L2 network, will launch their mainnet today, and has registered $2.4B in TVL. The team has recently concluded their Big Bang competition, with the winners set to receive the largest points airdrop allocation when mainnet goes live

• Prisma Finance, a liquid restaking protocol, has launched $ULTRA, a stablecoin backed by LRTs from ether.fi, Renzo, and Kelp. Minting the stablecoin allows exposure and accumulation of EiganLayer points

• StarkWare’s $STRK token has gone live, and has reduced the first $STRK unlock for investors on April 15th from 13.4% to 0.64% of total supply, distributing the initially intended unlock amount monthly across a period of three years

• Polygon zkEVM’s next upgrade, Elderberry, is on testnet and will enable support of Dencun upgrade when it goes live on mainnet

• Uniswap has launched a series of features including limit orders and a wallet browser extension to simplify crypto transactions

• GMX has announced their 2024 roadmap, which will feature a PvP AMM and the launch of GMX Chain among other upgrades

• Aave has deprecated stable rates due to potential bug, and has switched all positions to variable rates

• Arweave AO, a scalable blockchain built on its data storage network, has opened its testnet to the public

• Curve Finance has deployed lending contracts, allowing borrowing and lending of assets on the platform

• Dopex, an options trading protocol, has rebranded to Stryke, and will be launching their CLAMM upgrade for their options product soon, featuring improved composability, deeper liquidity, and multi-DEX support

• Shido, an L1 blockchain, saw its token price plummet after an attacker drained their staking contract for 50% of $SHIDO’s circulating supply

• RiskOnBlast, a GambleFi project on Blast, has rug-pulled $1.3M of user funds

• Tornado Cash is reportedly at risk of a backend exploit of user deposits

• Seneca, a stablecoin protocol, was exploited for $6.4M but has since seen $5M returned, with the exploiter retaining a 20% bounty

• Kelp DAO, a liquid restaking protocol, has launched $KEP for users to transfer and trade EigenLayer points earned

Governance Proposals

• Uniswap DAO is discussing revamping their governance which includes rewarding $UNI stakers and delegates with protocol fees. The snapshot vote will go live on March 1st

• Floki DAO is voting to burn 2% of $FLOKI circulating supply worth $11M. The vote is currently on track pass with 95% of voters in favour of it

• Aave DAO is discussing deploying V3 on Fraxtal with support of Frax team

• JPEG’d DAO is voting to farm airdrops with treasury assets. The vote is currently set to pass with 99.8% of the votes in favour of it

• Aevo, an options and perps trading L2 previously known as Ribbon, is proposing to delay TGE of new token $AEVO to mid-March. The delay will also affect the airdrop of $AEVO, liquidity mining program, and token migration of $RBN to $sAEVO on a 1:1 basis

Upcoming Catalysts

• Ethereum’s Dencun mainnet upgrade is set for March 13th, enabling scalability and reduced gas fee for rollups

• Frax Finance is mulling sharing protocol revenue with token stakers

• Telegram is set to share ad revenue to channel owners through the distribution of $TON tokens

• GovGen, the governance forum of AtomOne, is set to launch soon. AtomOne is the fork of Cosmos Hub, and 10% of the total supply of the network’s native token will be airdropped to $ATOM holders who voted against capping the maximum inflation rate of $ATOM at 10%

• Merchant Moe, a DEX on Mantle, is proposing using $mETH as $MOE staking rewards

• Unibot, a Telegram trading bot, is set to expand to Blast network, and will feature revenue sharing with $UNIBOT holders

• PancakeSwap, a DEX on BNB Chain, is planning to launch an affiliate model, permitting forking of the DEX on other networks. $CAKE holders will be rewarded with native tokens, and protocol revenue will be used to buyback and burn $CAKE

News

• Decreasing BTC/ETH spread indicates increase in investor risk appetite in altcoins

• Bitforex has halted withdrawals after suspicious $56.5M outflow

• Microstrategy’s X account was exploited, phishing $440k crypto from followers. In other news, they have purchased an additional 3k $BTC, bringing their total $BTC holdings to $12B

• Crypto miners are selling their $BTC as Bitcoin reward halving approaches

• Morgan Stanley is set to offer spot $BTC ETF products on its platform, while $BTC ETFs registers 3 consecutive days of net inflows greater than $500M

• Ark and 21Shares is set to disclose their $BTC ETF reserves through Chainlink’s Proof of Reserves

• VanEck has launched SegMint, a digital asset management platform and NFT marketplace

• Coinbase has added two Ethereum clients to improve Ethereum client diversification

• Finoa, a crypto custodian, is set to offer clients access to Centrifuge’s tokenized T-Bill

• Gemini Earn customers could see 100% of their funds returned as crypto markets improve

• Binance to pay $4.3B fine by US prosecutors

• HashKey has obtained in-principle approval for major payment institution license in Singapore

• US Government has moved $922M $BTC seized from Bitfinex hack, but has not disclosed the reason for it

• Circle’s $USDC market cap is growing at a greater rate than Tether’s $USDT