This week's review: Hong Kong Web3 Carnival opens on April 6; Solana experiences outage for the first time in nearly a year

BlockBeats will organize the key industry news content of this week (4.01-4.07) in this article, and recommend in-depth articles to help readers better understand the market and learn about industry trends

Review of important news this week

2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival opens on April 6, and a list of related activities

2024 Hong Kong Web3 Blockchain Week will be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center from April 6 to April 9. The event is co-organized by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab and HashKey Group. Related reading: "Event Express丨 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival will open on April 6, and a summary of surrounding activities"

Base chain is hot, and the ecological meme coin DEGEN has increased by more than 37% in 24 hours

Recently, the Ethereum ecological Base chain has been hot. On April 1, the ecological meme coin DEGEN briefly broke through $0.06 in the early morning, with a 24-hour increase of 37.4%, and a market value of more than $1.5 billion. After the launch of the Degen channel on Farcaster in January 2024, users are allowed to use Degen to reward high-quality content creators. So far, there are more than 83,000 holders, and it is still growing rapidly. Related reading: "US$1 billion in three months, reviewing the growth path of "Golden Dog" Degen", "How to get started with the Degen ecosystem? Teach you how to operate it step by step", "Base Season", the self-fulfilling prophecy of FOMO retail investors and MEME hot money"

Binance Launchpool Launches Saga (SAGA)

On April 4, Binance Launchpool launched Saga (SAGA) in its 51st phase, supporting users to invest in BNB and FDUSD. The investment will be open at 8:00 am on April 5 (Beijing time), and the event will last for 4 days. Detailed data includes: total token supply: 1,000,000,000 SAGA; Launchpool share is 45,000,000 SAGA, accounting for 4.5% of the total; initial circulation supply is 90,000,000 SAGA, accounting for 9% of the total.

In addition, Binance will list SAGA at 22:00 on April 9th (Beijing time), and open SAGA/BTC, SAGA/USDT, SAGA/BNB, SAGA/FDUSD, SAGA/TRY trading pairs.

OKX and Binance will list Wormhole (W)

On April 1st, OKX will list Wormhole (W). Wormhole is an interoperable platform that supports large-scale multi-chain applications and bridges, and the total issuance of the W token is 10 billion.

Binance will list Wormhole (W) at 20:00 on April 3rd, 2024 (Eastern Time 8), and open the following spot trading pairs: Spot trading pairs: W/BTC, W/USDT, W/FDUSD, W/TRY; W recharge channel is now open.

Solana releases 2024 Q1 report: Surge in usage brings network congestion, Solana experiences downtime for the first time in nearly a year

On April 5, the Solana network user transfer failure rate was as high as 76.8%. The core problem is related to the QUIC implementation and the behavior of the Agave validator client when processing a large number of requests. On April 6, Anza, which focuses on the development of the Solana ecosystem, released an announcement introducing its latest progress and timetable for solving the current network congestion problem in the Solana validator client Agave. Anza said that after working with other core contributors to analyze the root cause and evaluate multiple potential changes, significant progress has been made and it is expected to start releasing fixes next week. The Anza team will test a patch for the current network congestion today, and if successful, the patch will be ready for wider promotion. Anza reminds that even after these changes are launched, DApp developers should optimize their program deployment to improve the Solana network experience.

On April 6, according to Messari's latest Solana Ecosystem Report for the first quarter of 2024, Solana's average daily DEX spot trading volume in the first quarter increased by 319% year-on-year to US$1.5 billion. Solana has become a major venue for retail users and memecoin transactions. The report pointed out that although the surge in network usage has caused congestion problems, the upcoming network, scheduler, and fee market upgrades will solve these problems. In addition, the Solana network suffered a downtime for the first time in nearly a year. Related reading: 《Solana is stuck again》

Ethena releases the details of the second season event. Users who meet the conditions in the first season will increase their Sats points by 20%

On April 1, Ethena Labs officially released the details of the second season event. The event started on April 2. "Shards" have been replaced by "Sats" to match the change of the protocol to use BTC as a supporting asset. If users do not make any activities that violate the airdrop rules in the near future (in short, don't cancel anything), and add any new USDe to the new incentive plan of the same wallet on this basis, then users who participated in Season 1 will receive 20% more Sats in Season 2.

Ethena Labs said that BTC perpetual futures can provide Ethena with about $25 billion in additional open contracts for Delta hedging, which is 2.5 times the current size of ETH perpetual futures. If half of the open contracts (longs) pay fees to shorts, this is equivalent to an opportunity for Ethena's total annual cash flow to increase by about $2.75 billion. Related reading: 《ENA market value exceeds $1 billion, but some people worry that it is creating the next black swan》

BOME will launch an innovative mechanism to burn tokens and exchange for random NFTs

On April 3, BOME founder Darkfarms revealed on social media that the project was conducting the final test of a new gameplay. By entering the Ethereum address and burning 888 BOME tokens, users can enter the whitelist and have the opportunity to obtain collections through free claims or airdrops.

Darkfarms said that if the test goes well, the project will continue to develop a large-scale CC0 Meme artwork distribution tool. By then, the tool will support multiple public chains such as Ethereum and Base, and include collection vaults from different artists and projects, including 1/1 artworks, PFP, OE, limited collections, XCP cards, and inscriptions. In addition, Darkfarms also mentioned that the number of BOME tokens burned may change after the test, but the basic gameplay remains unchanged, that is, a fixed number of BOME tokens are burned and a collection is randomly obtained from the vault. If other projects in the community intend to use this method for airdrops or casting, the BOME team will disclose the relevant code and share the experience of tool building.

SEC solicits public comments on Grayscale, Bitwise and Fidelity spot Ethereum ETFs, JPMorgan Chase says the US SEC will eventually approve Ethereum spot ETF

On April 3, the US SEC is soliciting public comments on Grayscale, Bitwise and Fidelity spot Ethereum ETFs. The SEC stated in a document about Bitwise: "The Commission is issuing this notice to solicit comments from interested parties on the proposed rule changes (as modified by Amendment No. 1)." Comments must be submitted within 21 days.

On April 6, according to The Block, although JPMorgan Chase said earlier this year that the probability of Ethereum spot ETF passing within the preliminary review period of May was no more than 50%, the company is still optimistic about the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) eventually approving the Ethereum spot ETF.

"If the Ethereum spot ETF is not approved in May, then we assume that there will be a litigation process after May." Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, managing director and global market strategist at JPMorgan, told The Block. "We believe the most likely scenario is that the SEC will ultimately lose this lawsuit (similar to the legal battle between Grayscale and Ripple last year), which means that the SEC will eventually approve the Ethereum spot ETF (but probably not before May this year)."

Zeus Network completes $8 million financing at a valuation of $100 million, led by Mechanism Capital

On April 4, the first project of Jupiter LFG Launchpad, Solana Ecosystem Cross-Chain Communication Network Zeus Network, was publicly issued. On the same day, Zeus Network announced that it had completed $8 million in financing at a valuation of $100 million, led by Mechanism Capital, with participation from OKX Ventures, Animoca Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Lemniscap and The Spartan Group. Angel investors including Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali and Mechanism Capital founder Andrew Kang also participated in this round of financing. Zeus Network founder and CEO Justin Wang said that this round of financing was in the form of a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT). On the same day, OKX launched Zeus Network (ZEUS). Related reading: "Understanding Zeus Network: Bringing Bitcoin's Liquidity to the Solana Network (with Participation Tutorial)"

Two Grayscale Funds Remove ATOM and ADA from Holdings

On April 5, Grayscale's Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC) and Grayscale Smart Contract Platform Ex-Ethereum Fund (GSCPxE Fund) announced the latest fund component weights for each product related to their respective first quarter 2024 reviews. Among them, ATOM and ADA have been removed from the scope of holdings, and the funds obtained from the sale of tokens will be reallocated to other crypto assets.

Ordinals Developer: Runestone NFT Holders Will Receive Three Runes Memecoin Airdrops

On April 6, Ordinals protocol developer Leonidas said that Runestone NFT holders will receive three Runes Memecoin airdrops, later this month, later this year, and "when we become the world's top Memecoin." Leonidas said that one of the tokens will be related to dogs. Related reading: 《"Rune" is coming, a war between Ordinals is about to start?》

Beijing police cracked a series of virtual currency cases involving more than 2 billion yuan

Recently, Beijing police and the Beijing branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange jointly cracked a series of virtual currency cases involving more than 2 billion yuan, involving 15 provinces and cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang. It is worth noting that this case is not only a variety of hidden criminal methods, but also a "serial case", from dark web transactions to illegal foreign exchange trading, which is complicated. After in-depth investigation, the six members of Lin Moumou's underground bank and Yan Moumou, who illegally sold citizens' information, gradually became clear about their respective criminal facts. In December 2023, the police divided into four groups and took action simultaneously in Wenzhou, Nanjing, Beijing, and Harbin, arresting all the suspects involved in the case. The police seized more than 20 mobile phones and other electronic devices and more than 30 bank cards used in illegal activities. After counting, the case involved more than 2 billion yuan in funds, and more than ten virtual currency wallets were used for illegal transactions.

Hot articles this week

"Understanding Zeus Network: Bringing Bitcoin's Liquidity to the Solana Network (with Participation Tutorial)"

After several days of voting, the cross-chain communication protocol Zeus Network stood out in the first round of Jupiter Launchpad and was officially listed on Jupiter LFG Launchpad on April 4. Zeus Network aims to build an open communication layer that connects Solana and Bitcoin, leveraging the power of Bitcoin assets and bringing them to Solana, a high-performance decentralized trading chain. The project combines Solana's transaction speed and scalability with Bitcoin's security and liquidity. By providing seamless integration and functionality, emphasizing peer-to-peer communication services and state-related programming elements within the Solana virtual machine, Zeus Network provides developers with opportunities to build diverse applications and services, facilitating barrier-free connections between Solana and Bitcoin.

《ENA market value exceeds 1 billion US dollars, but some people worry that it is creating the next black swan》

One of the hottest events in the DeFi field this week is the airdrop of Ethena. After Binance launched Ethena (ENA) on financial management, flash exchange, leverage and contracts, it opened a 1-hour claim time and invested more than 19 million BGB. Within a day, the ENA token rose by more than 30%, directly entering the ranks of billion-dollar market value. However, some community members have different opinions on this. Marc (@lemiscate), founder of Aavechan, criticized the recklessness of certain DeFi practices, especially the investment of $100 million DAI, accounting for 20% of the total supply, into "an untested" protocol, and announced that he would propose to reduce the loan-to-value ratio of DAI on Aave. In addition, analyst Duo Nine (@DU09BTC) pointed out that MakerDAO is "printing money for free", which may eventually cost ordinary investors, and the risk of USDe decoupling is gradually becoming prominent. In this context, some observers are worried about a repeat of Luna's events, so they call on big players in Ethena to show some restraint to ensure long-term development.

《The chip structure has changed dramatically. What happened to the Atomicals protocol that has been at a low point for several months? 》

In the past few months, Bitcoin has continued to hit new all-time highs, and the BRC20 token ORDI and SRC token STAMP in the Bitcoin ecosystem have also performed well. However, the token ATOM of the Atomicals protocol has continued to fall and faces challenges. Although ATOM has landed on multiple trading platforms, the price has fallen by 62% since the high of $16 in December last year. The ATOM community has begun to pay attention to the development of its ecosystem and the development progress of AVM. Although the early community had high expectations for the split function, the decision of Arthur, the founder of the protocol, to turn to the development of AVM has raised some questions. The emergence of AVM will bring more possibilities to the Atomicals ecosystem, but it also increases uncertainty. Compared with ORDI's drop from $25 to $2.86, which has experienced a drop of 88.56%, ATOM's current drop is not too high. But there is indeed a possibility that ATOM is not favored by capital. There is room only when there are differences in the market.

《The world's largest money laundering case: more than 61,000 bitcoins seized, the mastermind behind the scenes is still on the run with $6.3 billion in money》

Chinese woman Jian Wen was implicated in a case where she was convicted of money laundering. During the investigation, the police seized about 3.4 billion pounds worth of bitcoins, the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the UK's history. Jian Wen was once an ordinary deliveryman, but her life changed dramatically after she met her financier Qian Zhimin. Qian Zhimin is a planner of a wealth management plan who defrauded nearly $6.3 billion in China and then absconded to this day. Jian Wen was accused of assisting Qian Zhimin, and her life changed from an ordinary employee to a person who enjoys luxury houses, luxury cars and luxury goods. However, the police eventually locked up Jane Wen and found about £1.4 billion worth of Bitcoin in her residence. Although Jane Wen denied knowing that the funds were proceeds of crime, she was eventually found guilty of money laundering charges.

《US government sells coins again? $2 billion of Bitcoin was transferred, and the 65,000 support level was "under great pressure"》

On Tuesday, the crypto market and U.S. stocks continued their downward trend, with the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq Composite all suffering heavy losses, with the Dow Jones falling nearly 400 points, marking the worst quarterly start since 2020. Rising borrowing costs weakened the stock market's gains, putting pressure on the S&P 500, and 10-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury yields hit their highest levels since early November. Bitcoin once fell below $65,000. Among the mainstream currencies, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin led the decline. The US government transferred nearly $2 billion of Bitcoin to Coinbase, triggering concerns about selling pressure. The transfer involved 30,174.70 BTC. Cryptocurrency analysts said that the price of Bitcoin needs to remain above the weekly low of $65,600 to avoid further losses. If it falls below this price, the risk of liquidation will increase.

《Sequoia Capital USA: AI Market Potential to Reach Trillions of Dollars》

In September 2022, the Generative AI: A Creative New World study released by Sequoia Capital USA triggered the first wave of discussions on Generative AI, and the advent of ChatGPT and GPT-4 accelerated the development of the GenAI field. This article summarizes the systematic review of the development of GenAI in the past year and a half by several partners at Sequoia Capital USA's AI Ascent Conference. The progress in the field of GenAI is much faster than people expected. In the future, one of the great opportunities for AI will be software replacing services. If this change can be achieved, the market potential of AI will not be hundreds of billions of dollars, but tens of trillions of dollars. At present, AI is everywhere; in the future, everything can be generated. Perhaps, we are standing at the greatest and most unlimited value creation time in history.

《A special RWA model: RWA for US and Hong Kong stocks》

The concept of RWA has attracted much attention, but the RWA products of licensed exchanges have failed to expand and are limited to DeFi's US debt pledge interest-bearing asset cases. Recently, BlackRock entered the RWA track, causing RWA to be hotly discussed again. However, RWA is more oriented to the institutional market, and how to design it into the retail market is still a limiting factor. The RWA model of coin-stock linkage is a special fusion that successfully combines virtual assets with traditional financial products and directly targets retail investors. This article analyzes two relatively mature cases, Micro Strategy for US stocks and Boyaa Interactive for Hong Kong stocks. I believe that there will be more and more Bitcoin stock RWA trading solutions in the future, which will also promote the emergence of more RWA models and products.

《Pacific Water Drops Webinar First Session Selection: Anchoring Coordinates for the Next Crypto Destination》

In January 2024, the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF triggered an influx of investors and onlookers, and the crypto asset market entered a seemingly unstoppable bull market cycle. This article is selected from the first episode of the Pacific Water Drops Webinar. Zhou Chenggang, CEO of Pacific Insurance Asset Management Hong Kong, and Seth Ginns, partner of CoinFund, discussed the development trend of the cryptocurrency market. Seth believes that the passage of the Bitcoin spot ETF will push the market into a longer growth cycle, and pointed out that regulatory clarity and the influx of traditional financial institutions are the notable features of the current market. He is optimistic about the future and believes that cryptocurrencies are expected to continue to outperform traditional stocks, but also mentioned potential risks such as regulatory risks and accelerated inflation. The two also discussed the current hot narratives such as the Solana ecosystem, the integration of games and cryptocurrencies, and the integration of AI and cryptocurrencies.

《DeFi "Old King" AC publishes article questioning Ethena (USDe): The next UST? 》

Ethena Labs opened ENA airdrop applications this week. With the rapid growth of USDe, its issuance scale has exceeded 1.8 billion US dollars, surpassing projects such as FRAX, crvUSD, and GHO in the field of decentralized stablecoins. However, André Cronje, the "Old King" in the field of DeFi and co-founder of Fantom Foundation, published a long article questioning the emerging DeFi infrastructure. Although it did not explicitly point to Ethena Labs and USDe, the goal is clear from the description. He questioned the automatic interest-bearing function of perpetual contracts and collateral, and warned that positions may be liquidated when the market turns.

《How to create a project in Farcaster? 》

Recently, the meme project Degen has performed well in the Farcaster ecosystem, and its more than 20-fold increase has attracted the attention of the community. Merkle Manufactory announced that it will soon complete a round of financing led by Paradigm, with a valuation of US$1 billion. The number of users in the Farcaster ecosystem has reached 270,000, and users have posted an average of more than 33,000 casts per day in the past 30 days. There are more and more opportunities in the Farcaster ecosystem. How to operate a project in it? In this article, the Variant team sorted out its observations on the Farcaster ecosystem, and on this basis, made some suggestions for those projects that want to enter the Farcaster ecosystem, including client innovation, community currency applications, and personalized content experience. In addition, they talked about the potential of decentralized content moderation and tagging networks and discovery/recommendation algorithms, pointing out new directions for the development of the Farcaster platform.

《"Rune" is coming, a war of Ordinals is about to start? 》

Ordinals protocol v.017.0 version released, including the long-awaited "Rune" protocol, is expected to take 14 days to activate. The first rune will be "UNCOMMON•GOODS", and the Genesis Rune is limited to a limited time and unlimited quantity, 1 per transaction. Runes can be fairly cast or self-deployed, and the unlocking methods are from long to short, the first one is "ZZZZZZZZZZZZ". At the same time, the BRC-20 update supports 5-character tickers, self-issuance and burning mechanisms, but runes are independently implemented, based on the UTXO model, avoiding the generation of "junk" UTXO, providing more responsible management and a small on-chain footprint. With the launch of Runes, the competition between Runes and BRC-20 has officially begun.

《Learn from Nvidia's "selling shovels", GPU leasing becomes the new favorite of crypto AI hype》

In the crypto market in 2024, AI has become a hot topic, especially in addition to meme coins. "Crypto-native" projects such as Bittensor and Olas, as well as tokens like WLD, have risen in price under the impetus of OpenAI, strengthening the connection between AI and crypto and Silicon Valley and US stocks. GPU tokens have shown strong performance in recent times, attracting market attention to the NodeAI protocol, especially in overseas communities. NodeAI uses the concept of "GPU leasing" to allow users to lend idle GPU computing power to other users and earn GPU tokens, which is seen as a hype logic similar to Nvidia's stock NVDA. In the field of AI+Crypto, projects like NodeAI play the role of "selling shovels" and fill the market gap, but investors should also pay attention to risks such as anonymous teams and rat warehouses.

《Dissecting the Crypto Cycle: I Will Be Able to Escape the Top This Time》

In this article, Matti, partner at Zee Prime Capital, explores the development trends of the cryptocurrency market. With the increase in capital flows within the market, especially the influx of institutional funds, the market continues to develop and price action has emerged. Although innovation is relatively limited, the market remains active, and investors are constantly faced with the balance between the pursuit and exploration of immediate wealth and new opportunities. However, the market outlook has become more complex and uncertain, and overexposure may lead to disastrous consequences. Nevertheless, for practitioners in the cryptocurrency field, the opportunities for exploration and development continue to bring opportunities. The article summarizes the dynamics of market capital inflows and the changes in the exploration and development stages, and puts forward some personal views on future developments. In the rapid changes in the market, investors should remain rational and be cautious in investment decisions.

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