By Justin Bons, Founder, Cyber Capital

Compilation: Felix, PANews

Editor's note: On May 3, Justin Bons, the founder of Cyber Capital, posted on the X platform, accusing the SUI tokenomics of being too centralized, with more than 8 billion SUI being stake, and more than 84% of the stake supply being held by the founder, without any Lock-up Position and legal guarantees. Recently, Justin Bons published another article to provide a "neutral" interpretation of the NEAR protocol, mainly including its sharding mode and governance mechanism. The following is the full text:

NEAR can meet demand through Sharding scaling. There are now 6 shards delegated to 467 permissionless validators. NEAR is committed to stateless verification and dynamic load balancing. ETH and SOL would do well to remain vigilant, otherwise NEAR will swallow up its market share.

NEAR Sharding is not fully implemented at the moment. Although all validators still validate all shards, NEAR's TPS can still exceed 1000, consistent with SOL. In a few years, with the realization of the roadmap, NEAR's TPS may exceed 100,000. That's the power of sharding.

The core here is "parallelism". SOL achieves this in a single machine through parallelization (longing threading). Sharding takes it to the next level by distributing workloads across longest machines. thereby increasing capacity while maintaining decentralization.

This is the solution to the Blockchain trilemma. True scale-out to unlock millions of future TPS. The trade-off is not security or decentralization, but speed. Due to cross-Sharding communication, Sharding has a latency of a few seconds before it is finally completed.

SOL sacrifices capacity for speed. Shard chains like NEAR, EGLD, and TON sacrifice speed for capacity. That's why authors prefer Sharding, a trade-off that, unlike "L2 scaling," is at least valid.

The authors say they are less concerned about data availability for L2. But interestingly, NEAR offers longest more data availability than Ethereum and is cheaper. Someday, chains like NEAR will also be more secure. When this happens, there is no reason to use Ethereum anymore.

NEAR also uses a novel Sharding pattern. Since Block producers do not create Blocks in Shards, they add their Blocks/Shards to a single Block. This helps improve composability while still spreading the state workload across longest shards. This is a truly unique design.

NEAR's tokenomics are also excellent. Using a similar model to Ethereum, combining fee burn with tail inflation, this may be the ideal economic design for Blockchain. Because it combines long-term sustainability with greater potential for scarcity.

However, the authors strongly disagree with the governance mechanism of NEAR and, more importantly, the direction in which NEAR is headed. Because NEAR is trying to weaken the power of large Token holders. Insist on concepts like "one person, one vote".

This is completely contrary to the stakeholder-aligned governance design that NEAR should prioritize. Because Blockchain is not democratic at all. NEAR is trying to balance their design with democracy, which in fact severely weakens NEAR's governance. The design of democracy requires a permissive element, and as long as the problem of "human proof" is not solved, it cannot be democratic. This can be seen in NEAR, where joining a "working group" requires filling out a form.

NEAR does have an on-chain treasury. This is an excellent, perhaps even critical, mechanism that most long Blockchain lack. Unfortunately, the treasury is still under Foundation control.

NEAR governance is a mixed bag. Here is a reminder that no Blockchain can meet all the criteria of authors. Nothing is perfect, and governance tends to be the least mature module in a large long Blockchain. It is hoped that NEAR will be able to make achievements in stakeholder voting in the future.

Another aspect that the author claims not to like about the NEAR design is the "development costs". A portion of the revenue will be returned to the person who created the code module. However, this is often set outside of the contract and is not in line with market expectations as it can lead to inefficiencies.

In Justin Bons' opinion, all kinds of criticism of sharding are untenable.

Criticism 1. Single Sharding Poor Security

Sharding share the same security guarantees. In addition to DDoS attacks, such attacks can be easily mitigated as long as there are a sufficient number of Nodes. Due to the random assignment of validators Sharding, attackers are unable to choose which Sharding they end up verifying. Therefore, the only way to attack a single shard is to attack the entire L1. Mathematically, the chances of controlling a single sharding are slim to none.

Criticism 2. Sharding breaks composability

This is also incorrect, because due to the inherent nature of the design, perfect composability is maintained between all shards. Since all shards are identical and part of the same Consensus Mechanism, native interoperability is possible.

That's exactly what NEAR does with cross-Sharding TX. A few seconds of latency is not the same as breaking composability. That's why L2s can't fully interoperate seamlessly with each other. Because you're dealing with different rulesets and power blocks.

Since EGLD and TON are fully sharded, NEAR lags behind some of its competitors. This is because NEAR adds some design requirements along the way, such as stateless verification (which will ultimately help a lot with fully shard chains). But it's competition after all.

Whether the NEAR team continues to focus on L1 scalability through sharding is a multi-billion dollar question. While they are working on other new advanced features, such as DA and ZK proofs, they are still behind the roadmap planning, so there are reasons to be concerned.

All in all, NEAR is a great Blockchain and is at the forefront of industry technology. In contrast, Bitcoin and Ethereum are still in the Stone Age (old).

Ignore the drawbacks of NEAR, as it clearly represents the future of encryption.

Related reading: LD Capital: Returning to the NEAR of AI, Overlaying Longest Narratives or Ushering in Value Discovery?

Original | Odaily

Author | Husband How

Recently, the development of the TON ecosystem is in full swing, and the ecological TVL pumped by more than 70% this month to $260 million. However, the rapid development of TON has also attracted the attention of phishing groups, and community members have previously disclosed that they have long a "pretty number" (888 0505 0707 NFT) in their TON Wallet, but many community members have found that the transfer fee of the NFT is as high as 1 Toncoin (normal 0.02 Toncoin), and NFT will appear in your Wallet after the transfer.

At present, the TON ecosystem is flooded with longest "confusing" projects, for which Odaily will review the development of virtual numbers themselves, as well as the risks of this type of scam.

Fishing team gameplay upgrade, take advantage of small cost and take advantage of the psychology

The "+ 888" series of virtual numbers was sold by Telegram on the Fragment platform in 2022, of which the decentralization auction platform Fragment is an important witness to the ice-breaking between Telegram and TON.

Initially, the "+ 888" series of virtual number NFTs were sold directly through Telegram in the early days, priced at 9 Toncoin, and later after all were sold out, buyers could directly use or resell. The Telegram team originally demonstrated Telegram's censorship-resistant ability by auctioning virtual numbers to provide users with privacy needs in Telegram.

In addition, during the same period, Telegram's relationship with TON eased, and the Fragment auction platform based on TON was launched, so that virtual numbers were auctioned in the shape of NFTs.

At present, Telegram has only launched the "+ 888" series of virtual numbers, and the buying group, which should be based on privacy needs, has turned into a symbol of status, which is the same as the previous demand for domestic mobile phone numbers, causing TON and Telegram users to auction coherent and auspicious numbers.

According to data from the Fragment platform, the current virtual number with the highest asking price is "+ 888 0666 0000", the asking price is 1365 Toncoin (about 9350 USD), and the number with the highest asking price is the "protagonist" of this article (+ 888 0505 0707).

The phishing team first creates fake NFT impersonating a virtual number (+ 888 0505 0707) at 0 cost and distributes it via nftTONificatorBot to TON on-chain active Address. Users who regularly engage in on-chain activities may feel that the NFT has no value and the security is uncertain, so skeptical users try to transfer the NFT.

The above is that the phishing team took advantage of the user's suspicion of transferring NFT to raise the transaction fee of the NFT to 1 Toncoin, and the NFT remained in the Wallet, as for how to set the smart contracts to NFT cannot be transferred or use the redirection Airdrop fake NFT, there is no theoretical support.

However, only through this novel phishing method can only make a small number of people deceived, so the phishing team followed the previous method of fake airdrop on the X platform (formerly Twitter), opened the minting page, and let users participate in manufacturing, which is different from the previous Airdrop, open Wallet permissions, so that the funds in the Wallet were stolen, and the fishing team this time purely relied on users to send money.

The author found in the acceptance Address of the phishing team that there are still users who are "sending money" to them, from transferring 1 Toncoin to minting handling fee of 0.02 Toncoin, and the phishing team is suspected of being in the process of pooling funds, according to tonscan data, UQB1QBhyiY76wtIDTaV3pFtl8jE_aCrlGeDDTRbz2LaNjTvH The Address has transferred 6483 Toncoins in recent days, about 4.5 $10,000. This Address is only one of the Address where funds are pooled. The amount of fraud may exceed $100,000.

To this end, Odaily reminds everyone that although the current TON ecosystem is developing rapidly and the wealth income is high, it is also a new position for the fishing team to commit crimes, and community members have responded to longing fake airdrops and fake NFT links, hoping that everyone will strengthen their awareness of risks.

Headlines

Fed Chair Jerome Powell: I don't think the next move could be to raise interest rates

Fed Chair Powell said in his speech that the US PPI data is actually quite mixed, uncertain whether inflation will continue, restrictive policy may take longer than expected to work to drop inflation, the US will bring inflation back to 2%, restrictive policy may take longer than expected to work to drop inflation, from the longer side, policy Intrerest Rate is restrictive, do not think the next move may be to raise interest rates, more likely to maintain policy Intrerest Rate at current levels. (Golden Ten)

Fed Chair Jerome Powell reiterated that Intrerest Rate may remain high for longer

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a speech today that it looks like it will take longer to be confident in inflation and may need to stay on top of the current policy Intrerest Rate longer. The Fed needs to be patient and wait for more long evidence that high Intrerest Rate is taxing inflation, doubling the need for Intrerest Rate to remain elevated for longer. Powell expects inflation to fall month-on-month, but first-quarter price data has undermined his confidence. The lack of further progress on inflation in the US in the first quarter is noteworthy. The Fed doesn't see the fight against inflation as a smooth road, but the recent data has been higher than anyone expected. This tells people the need to be patient and let restrictive policies work. (Golden Ten)

Fed Chair Jerome Powell: Inflation is expected to fall back month-on-month

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in his speech that the U.S. economy is performing very well, with a very strong labor market, there was no further progress in U.S. inflation in the first quarter, there is no expectation that the road to inflation will be smooth, we must be patient and wait for policy to work, U.S. GDP will continue to rise at a rate of 2% or higher, and confidence in inflation coming back is lower than before, and inflation is expected to fall back month-on-month. (Golden Ten)

Industry News

A Dutch court found Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev guilty of Money Laundering and can appeal within 14 days

On Tuesday, three judges in the Netherlands found Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev guilty of Money Laundering $1.2 billion in illegal assets on Crypto Assets mixer platform Tornado Cash. The panel is expected to sentence Pertsev on Tuesday, and Alexey Pertsev's attorney will have 14 days to appeal the judge's decision. （DL News ）

Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev has a sentence of 64 months in prison

A Dutch judge found Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev guilty of Money Laundering at the 's-Hertogenbosch court. The court sentenced Pertsev to 64 months in prison. In August 2022, Tornado Cash was sentenced to prison for the first time in the Netherlands after it was blacklisted by the U.S. government. At the time, the U.S. Treasury Department claimed that Tornado Cash was a key tool for the North Korean Hacker group Lazarus. The Lazarus Group has been linked to a $625 million hack attack on Ronin Network, owned by Axie Infinity, as well as other significant Crypto Assets thefts. （Coindesk）

J. Christopher Giancarlo, former president of the U.S. CFTC, joins the board of directors of stablecoin issuance business Paxos

"Paxos has become a leader in bridging traditional and digital asset markets through the launch of regulated solutions for institutional and consumer safety, and is honored to join the Paxos Board of Directors and be a part of innovation in the financial sector," J. Christopher Giancar stablecoin issuance lo said in a statement.CFTC ”（Coindesk）

Project News

LayerZero CEO: Longer 100,000 Addresses have been "exposed" as witches

LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino posted on the X platform that longing 100,000 addresses have been recognized as witches.
Protocol to previous news, LayerZero posted on the X platform that it is in the best interest of the protocol to distribute Tokens to persistent users (rather than Sybil users), and for Sybil users, there are now two options: 1. Self-report the witch Address by May 17; 2. When an Address is flagged by LayerZero's internal witch report or bounty hunter, further reporting will no longer be valid and no Tokens will be received.
Bryan Pellegrino replied to users on Platform X that the "witch self-report" is not a long wick candle for ordinary users, but a long wick candle for large witch users. The focus of the report is on mass witches rather than individual users.

The LayerZero: Witch Bounty will begin on May 18th at 10:00

LayerZero Labs posted on the X platform that the witch bounty will start on May 18 at 10:00 Beijing time. Bounty reports close on June 1 at 07:59 CST and must contain at least 20 addresses.
Bounty hunters who successfully report witches will receive 10% of the witch's expected Token distribution, while witches will receive 0 distributions.
Witch self-reports will be available until May 18 at 07:59 a.m. EDT. Address that self-reports as a witch will receive 15% of their expected allocation. Address that do not self-report and are identified as witches by an internal report co-authored by LayerZero with Chaos and Nansen, or Address discovered during the bounty process, will not receive Token.

Lens Protocol: Lens Network, a Blockchain network, is being developed

Lens Lab, led by Stani Kulechov and the team behind Lens Protocol, a Web3 social platform built on Polygon PoS, announced that it is now developing its own Blockchain network, Lens Network. The new network will be built on Matter Labs' ZK Stack, powered by zkSync on Ethereum.

PEPE continued to reach new highs, surpassing SOL by nearly $2.9 billion in 24 H volume

CoinGecko data shows that PEPE 24 H volume is close to $2.9 billion, and currently stands at $2, 893, 749, 805, surpassing SOL ($2, 287, 698, 756) and ranking sixth among all Crypto Assets.
According to the OKX market, PEPE briefly hit 0.000011533 USDT, continuing to hit a record high; It is now trading at 0.000010988 USDT, with a 24-h pump of 15.88%.

Sonne Finance, which lost more than $20 million in an attack, has suspended its Optimism marketplace

Protocol to Paidun, the Decentralized Finance lending protocol Sonne Finance was attacked by Hacker and needs to scrutinize its timelock contract, and has now lost more than $20 million.
Sonne Finance posted on platform X that all Optimism markets have been suspended. The marketplace on Base is safe and will provide more long information in a timely manner.

Characters* Voices

Former SEC Chairman: It's troubling that meme stocks are back again, but Roaring Kitty is legitimate

CNBC interviewed former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton long wick candle the issue of GME pump 187% this week and the comeback of meme stocks, saying, "long It bothers me on many levels," Clayton said. It's closer to gambling than trading, and certainly not an investment. ”
In addition, Clayton commented on the legality of Roaring Kitty's recent actions, although it is not insider trading and stock market manipulation, but Clayton believes that Kitty should express his thoughts directly and clearly (Tell people why you do this.), and his behavior is legal.

OPINION: Tornado Cash developer sentenced to 64 months in prison is unlikely to affect Roman Storm's U.S. case

According to the verdict, the Dutch court convicted Pertsev, 31, of Money Laundering $1.2 billion through Tornado Cash. A panel of three judges sentenced Pertsev to five years and four months in prison. In its final conclusions, the court stated: "The court finds that the law and facts prove that the suspect, together with others, engaged in Money Laundering through Ethereum obtained through the crime, and that he has become accustomed to this Money Laundering." Meanwhile, Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm's trial in the United States is scheduled to begin on September 23. Last year, U.S. prosecutors charged Storm and another co-founder, Roman Semenov, with conspiracy to Money Laundering, conspiracy to violate sanctions, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed coin transmission business. At the time of the indictment, Semenov was still at large.
A spokesperson for the DeFi Education Fund (Decentralized Finance Education Fund) said they were disappointed by the outcome of Pertsev's case in the Netherlands, but believed that it should not affect the U.S. long wick candle's case against Storm. A spokesperson for the fund said in an emailed statement: "As we argued in our previously filed amicus briefs on the Roman Storm case, the theory of the government's responsibility in the indictment is unprecedented. "According to the allegations in the indictment, software developers will be held criminally liable if third-party wrongdoers use the software longest years after creating Open Source, and there is no direct or active interaction between the developer and those wrongdoers."
"This is not the current law in the United States at all," they added. （The Block）

Investment and financing

encryption prediction market Polymarket closed two rounds of funding totaling $70 million, led by Founders Fund and others

encryption prediction market Polymarket has closed two funding rounds totaling $70 million, the most recent of which was led by Founders Fund and others, Ethereum with participation from co-founder Vitalik Buterin and others. A Polymarket spokesperson said Founders Fund led a $45 million Series B funding round. General Catalyst earlier helped the company raise $25 million in a Series A funding round. （Bloomberg）

Tokenization reinsurance RWA platform Re closed a new $7 million funding round led by Electric Capital

Tokenization reinsurance RWA platform Re closed a new $7 million funding round led by Electric Capital, which reportedly closed a $14 million seed round at the end of 2022, and Re aims to support $200 million in premiums by the end of this year. （Coindesk）

Solana on-chain DEX Zeta Markets closed a $5 million funding round led by Electric Capital

Solana DEX Zeta Markets announced the closing of a new $5 million funding round led by Electric Capital, Digital Asset Capital Management, Selini Capital and Airtree Ventures, as well as Solana's Anatoly Yakovenko, Helius' Mert Mumtaz, Tensor Angel investors including Richard Wu of Pyth, Genia Mikhalchenko of Pyth, JMR Luna of Wintermute and Nom of Bonk participated. （TheBlock）

Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author | Southern citrus

At the end of 2022, ChatGPT opened public beta, which started the boom of LLM-like AI, and since then, the number of various AI projects has begun to increase rapidly, including data, AI models, computing power, applications and longer aspects. Entering 2024, what are the combination angles of AI-enabled Crypto application layer, and will AI bring productivity changes to Crypto? In this article, Odaily will take stock of the various types of combined applications.

AI Audit

As early as the early days of the LLM explosion last year, Slowfog used ChatGPT to conduct ChatGPT audit tests, and the AI at that time were all general-purpose AI, and ChatGPT had the ability to check for vulnerabilities in ordinary small-scale code through Slowfog tests, but it was not enough to deal with long-code problems with complex logic. Recently, a number of applications have emerged specifically for Web3 code auditing:

AEGIS AI

AEGIS AI is specially designed for Web3 code audit, mainly including static code audit and Token audit (that is, the Open Source contract code of the Token is retrieved for audit). The audit will be handled by three types of AI: the auditor will conduct the code audit, the reviewer will review and verify the facts, and finally the judge will judge the risk level.

In addition, AEGIS AI provides real-time monitoring (WatchDog) to detect real-time activity and proactively identify suspicious behavior.

ZAN

ZAN is a project-oriented plug-and-play tool and service, in addition to static analysis (i.e., basic vulnerability checking), fuzz testing (testing using paper trading), ZAN also provides AI-based auditing services, using GPT fine-tuned based on large-scale vulnerability databases for security checks.

AI Trading/Strategies

Such projects employ AI for trading assistance and are designed to provide users with trading signals and a better trading experience.

AlphaScan AI

AlphaScan AI links k Telegram groups, users can manually set up search signals, and AlphaScan AI will conduct full-channel information search and automated trading, while supporting the use of AI to perform advanced analysis of content and push key information.

Hera Finance

Hera Finance is an AI-powered longest DEX aggregator designed to leverage AI to provide the best trading pair Router. Hera has launched AI pathfinder, an AI that is self-learning and whose fundamental goal is to find the maximum output for the user's swap operation (i.e., to redeem as much long Token as possible).

Aimbot AI

Aimbot AI is a special project, the project team has compiled an AI robot dedicated to on-chain earth dog transactions, and users can share the trading profits of AI by purchasing project tokens. At the time of writing, Aimbot AI has made a profit of 716.14 ETH from on-chain Token trading.

AI Search/Q&A

This kind of product uses AI to integrate, train and output the X platform, TG and various project information, and the functions are relatively consistent, usually including hot spot tracking and Web3 question answering, which can better sort out the basic concepts, historical events and hot spots, but the current understanding Depth is still insufficient, can only be used as a reference or basic data, and cannot rely on the independent decision-making of AI answers.

Due to the strong homogeneity of the products, the analysis will not be carried out here, and some of the current landing products include Scopechat AI, QnA3, AwesomeQA, Brian, Libertai, Clab.AI, etc.

AI assistant

Such products use AI to enhance the original functionality of the platform and drop the barrier to entry, and the Scopechat AI mentioned in the previous section also falls into this category, other items include:

Nansen AI

Nansen AI's capabilities include on-chain data changes, intelligent search, and filtering, grouping, and tracking specific Wallets. Among them, AI-powered Smart Search allows users to use natural language to ask questions, such as the number of holders, the number of transactions, etc., and Nansen AI will search and answer the data on the site and related sites.

Dune AI

Allowing users to ask questions using natural language, Dune AI will automatically write SQL query code based on user input, and will be able to calculate the confidence difference between that query code and the user's expected value, allowing for secondary editing queries.

Conclusion

Looking back on the AI+Crypto track, what is more long is the products that empower AI with Crypto, such as Decentralization Computing Power, sharing data, etc., although AI empowers Crypto has long explorations, the Depth and breadth are still far from enough, and the market is still looking forward to a disruptive product.

Original author: Layergg

Original compilation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Memes are emerging as an alternative to "VC, CEX, and high FDV" in this encryption cycle. Community-driven + fair launch has captured the hearts and minds of retail investors and is beginning to exert influence in the actual bidding stage.

This year, large cap memes have outperformed and maintained strong returns even during market corrections. Memes are now a mainstream asset class, which is evident from Robinhood users' coins holdings.

One thing to consider is that global asset managers are just beginning to enter the Crypto Assets space.

I think Wall Street veterans are unlikely to be the exit liquidity of encryption venture capital firms, they are likely to disrupt the status quo, and memes are expected to be one of their tools to achieve that.

Two prominent examples are Franklin Templeton and VanEck.

a) VanEck's MarketVector recently launched the Meme Index.

b) Franklin Templeton continues to publish articles on memes. An interesting case is Franklin Templeton's propaganda about $WIF.

Surprisingly, traditional Crypto Assets VCs are still slow to embrace memes. Major memes such as $WIF and $PEPE cannot be found in the portfolios of top VCs. If they eventually give in and decide to auto-invest in memes, this could mark the beginning of the second wave of the meme cycle.

Perhaps the upcoming U.S. presidential election will force VCs to make the painful choice of whether or not to add memes to their portfolios soon.

While it's uncertain who will win either Trump or Biden, each of these events seems to be in favor of boosting the meme's popularity.

Most importantly, retail investors are disappointed with the "low Circulating Supply, high market capitalization" project. Venture capital advocates "serious/fundamental! But the market reaction remained lukewarm. In this case, Hedging funds and market makers are under pressure to generate returns within the stipulated timeframe.

"Is the meme over?"

Today, Roaring Kitty, known for $GME, posted for the first time in three years. His return may well herald the beginning of the second wave of the meme cycle.

Don't underestimate his influence.

From a technical analysis perspective, longing of the major memes are still in the retesting phase. Some important memes (eg$PEPE$WIF) is on track to break into the top 20 soon.

Joel Frank

Last updated:

May 14, 2024 21:42 EDT | 3 min read

Roaring Kitty/meme stock-themed meme coins were the top crypto gainers today / Source: CryptonewsTrading conditions were broadly bearish on Tuesday as traders focused on a hotter-than-expected US PPI report and commentary from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, with traders having to turn to the on-chain meme coin markets in the hunt for top crypto gainers today.

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) were both down around 2% in the past 24 hours, as per CoinMarketCap.

Focus in the market has now mostly shifted to Wednesday’s release of US CPI and Retail Sales data.

This could be a major market catalyst depending on how it impacts Fed rate cut bets.

One reason why Bitcoin and Ether, last at $61,500 and $2,880 respectively, are down substantially from earlier yearly highs is that the US economy has remained hotter than expected this year.

Please US CPI, be merciful to us sinners! pic.twitter.com/ejX8jR99bB

— Daniel Cunha (@cunhans) May 15, 2024

Traders will be hoping for evidence that the rise in price pressures seen in recent months is beginning to reverse.

That could come as a relief to the market. But even if a bounce is incoming, major cryptos mostly remain tightly locked within recent ranges.

Big moves are unlikely to come in anytime soon. The same can not be said for the highly illiquid on-chain crypto markets.

Indeed, these markets were set alight this week by GameStop icon Roaring Kitty’s abrupt return.

Meme coins in honour of the 2021 meme stock craze leader have been spring up left, right and center.

Here are some top crypto gainers today as per Decentralized Exchange (DEX) analytics tool DEXScreener.

Top Crypto Gainers Today

Roaring Kitty Wif Hat (RWIF)

A recently launched Solana meme coin called Roaring Kitty Wif Hat (RWIF), a combination of popular meme coin dogwifhat and Roaring Kitty, is ripping higher since its launch.

As per DEXScreener, it was last up 95,000% in the past 24 hours. RWIF now has a market cap of $2.7 million.

$RWIF

9 HOURS OLD

1.3K HOLDERS

269 TG MEMBERS

ATH 2.4M

BIG NAMES FOLLOWING $RWIF

NEXT LEG UP ! ARE YOU GOING TO BE LEFT BEHIND?#GME #WIF pic.twitter.com/RCcSfyYtfr

— Roaring Kitty WIF | $RWIF (@RWIFonSol) May 14, 2024

Little more than 12 hours old, RWIF has 1,300 holders and over 250 Telegram members.

Before getting too excited, traders should remember that nearly all newly launched coins are scams or pump-and-dumps. Hardly any end up having any long-term value.

DUMB MONEY (DUMB)

Another just launched Solana meme coin called DUMB MONEY (DUMB) is also pumping.

As per DEXScreener, it was last up 36,000% in 24 hours with a market cap nearing $900,000.

DUMB MONEY is likely a play on the joke that the retail investors behind the meme stock/meme coin pump are considered “dumb money”, as opposed to “smart money” hedge funds or institutional investors.

_Money_Sol/status/1790428817539895663

But the meme stock craze of 2021 is widely hailed as an instance when Dumb Money won.

DUMB has just over $100,000 in locked liquidity, but could easily just be a pump-and-dump scheme.

GameStop (GME)

BNB traders are getting in on the action, with just launched meme coin named GameStop (GME).

That is, of course, borrowing its name directly from the legendary meme stock.

Up 8,900% in 24 hours as per DEXScreener, GME’s market cap was last $4.4 million.

The token has close to $1 million in unlocked liquidity, with over 1,500 unique wallets having traded it.

Again, traders must do their own due diligence and keep in mind that most newly issued tokens are scams.

Better Alternative to Consider

Investing on newly launched meme coins is fraught with risk.

Yes, some of these coins might 100x. But the vast majority will fall flat, and investors might never be able to find the liquidity to sell.

Their fast price action tends to trigger FOMO in traders, who neglect to do the required due diligence.

A potentially better alternative to investing in just-launched meme coins is to invest in presales.

Here, traders have more time to research a project and see if it is a good fit for them.

Indeed, if a trader can reliably identify projects that end up gaining tract, they can make big gains.

Analysts at Cryptonews keep a close eye on the presale market. Here are some of their top presales for 2024.

20 Best Crypto Presales to Invest In Now

Follow Us on Google News Disclaimer: Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital.

A crypto shrimp, perhaps better called the King shrimp, who was earlier tracked by Crypto.News has upped the holdings of his Mollars token presale ‘bag.’ Buying frequently or dollar cost averaging into the presale, the traders frequent buys have made them what’s believed to be the biggest holder of Ethereum blockchain’s coming store-of-value token.

The buyer’s wallet transaction address is public [see here] and was last active 11 days ago.

Investor has a successful track record with Memecoins

The trader appears to be savvy in memecoin ICO investing as they have transactions with Shiba Inu (SHIB), Volt Inu (VOLT), and Robo Inu (ROBO) The regular purchases of Mollars tops all other investments this year, but this holder is believed to be a major holder of Shiba Inu tokens Possibly a holder from the SHIB token’s golden era.

Investments in the Mollars token presale would not have caught the eye of anyone watching the presale’s transaction addresses. The biggest single purchase by this ‘King Shrimp’ was for 1.06 ETH, which is far from the biggest single buy from an investor However, when making 12 purchases of such a magnitude, the numbers add up quickly.

DCA: Made 12 Mollars Token Presale Purchases

The total value of the 12 purchases, in Ethereum coin, is 7.974272038 ETH The purchase has a value of roughly $23080.73 at the time of writing this article.

The amount of Mollars tokens purchased with this $23K investment is estimated to be around 57,700 Investments are believed to be made between 1st and 3rd round of the ICO, averaging around $0.40 [cents] per token.

Mollars token is already slated to be listed on at least 2 crypto exchanges on or around June 1st — Bitmart and LBank If the Initial Coin Offering reaches its max hard cap, the listing day price of the token will be $0.62 [cents] per token.

How Listing Day Could Yield Investor $12.6k Profit

The listing day of 62-cents means this ‘King Shrimp’ will see their investment rise in value from $23,080.70 to $35,775.09 on June 2nd, if hard cap’s met.

The value of the token is projected to continue to rise from there however, with some token predictions suggesting the $MOLLARS token could reach ~$15 [dollars] before the year’s end; higher possible if popularity continues growing at a similar pace as today, after listing day.

The “King Shrimp” appears to have made a valuable decision with a $12695 profit close to materializing.

The hard cap of the Mollars ICO is 4-million tokens The total token supply of the cryptocurrency, ever to be minted, is 10-million tokens. Just 40% of the total token supply for the cryptocurrency was designated for the presale, from which much will be used to fund the project’s development and critical growth in branding value.

Investor Choosing SHIB Signals Higher Expectations For Mollars

The “King Shrimp” appears to be migrating a sizable amount of his funds from Shiba Inu to Mollars This is possibly a signal that the veteran investor believes the $MOLLARS token will see a substantially higher growth than $SHIB in 2024.

Mollars token presale has raised $1.31-million-dollars in funding thus far. This holder with $23,000 is believed to be the biggest holder of the new store-of-value token pre-listing.

For the year, Shiba Inu token has yielded investors a +168% gain but most holders are still under water [losing] in 2024.

The last months’ gains were only +6.6%, which is less than the expected listing day yields for Mollars. Migratory traders see the writing on the wall for the new store-of-value token, set to rival Bitcoin; It’s likely going to produce far more gains than Shiba Inu (SHIB) any time soon.

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Author: NingNing

In the post-Cancun upgrade era, Ethereum equivalence is no longer innately correct.

At the heart of Ethereum equivalence is EVM compatibility. The reason why EVM compatibility is important is not only because of the simplicity and reliability of the EVM and the completeness of development tools, but also because the developer community and the scale of precipitated assets of the EVM are far ahead. EVM compatible, obtaining developers, users, capital and other resources from the Ethereum ecosystem, is a shortcut to the end of the PMF point for any chain/rollup.

But the EVM is far from perfect, and its state data accounts mechanism, serial state data processing, and the VM characteristics of high-performance public chains have a sense of comparing a 19th-century ironclad ship with a 21st-century destroyer.

After the completion of the Cancun upgrade, although the gas fee of the mainstream Rollup L2 has dropped by two orders of magnitude, the explosion of the Ethereum L2 ecosystem expected by the market has not come as expected, and we have ushered in the strong rise of high-performance public chain ecosystems such as Solana and Sui. This has led some keen minds in the encryption industry to reflect on whether the universal Rollup L2 scaling scheme with the ultimate goal of pursuing the full equivalence of Ethereum is going in the wrong direction.

At present, the parallel scaling scheme has three main shortcomings: EVM compatibility and consistency of the underlying mechanism, which makes the Ethereum Mainnet highly homogeneous with the Dapps in the Ethereum general L2 ecosystem; The L1-L2-L3 hub-and-spoke network structure also deprives Dapp developers of their sovereignty to a considerable extent; The 1+1+1+1+1+*+n linear scalability enhancement that crowd long L2 achieves has a clumsy feel to mechanical stacked Lego.

Therefore, there must be both parallel and vertical expansion schemes. Perhaps, it's time to try to introduce the transaction parallel processing capabilities of high-performance public chain VMs to the Ethereum ecosystem to create some chaos and uncertainty. Recently, parallel EVM projects Monad, Movement, and Lumio (Pontem) have officially announced a new round of financing led and participated by top encryption VC.

Monad, Movement Needless to say, long very well-known. Let's focus on the more low-key Lumio.

Lumio is a parallel EVM project developed by the Pontem team, which is positioned as Ethereum's altVM layer, a VM abstraction protocol that supports longest VMs such as Move, SVM, and WASM. This altVM layer supports out-of-the-box support that allows non-EVM ecosystem teams to "copy-paste" their code on Ethereum with minimal modifications, and only needs to maintain a codebase that minimizes technical debt.

The Pontem team is a team with strong engineering capabilities, and has been deeply involved in the Move high-performance public chain ecosystem since the Diem period. The team has now developed two mature products in the Aptos ecosystem: the Liquidswap AMM and the Pontem Wallet. These two products have an average of ~10,000 active addresses per day. Among them, Liquidswap has a cumulative Tx of 8 million, 700,000 unique Addresses and a daily volume of ~$2 million.

To briefly summarize the history of Pontem, it is a process of Wallet Optimal DEX, DEX Optimal and Parallel EVM.

The Pontem team has a wealth of experience in application development, so the architecture of Lumio was designed with a strong focus on protecting the sovereignty of developers and providing them with the highest possible degree of freedom.

Lumio's design goal is to support any chain and any VM, helping developers break free from the shackles of the product supply chain. VM-level modularity allows developers to choose their favorite VMS (SVM, EVM, MoveVM) to deploy their favorite L2 and L1, such as Optimism and Solana, on Lumio without compromising performance and interoperability.

Lumio integrates basic components such as the OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbits' shared sequencer, and cross-chain bridges to achieve shared state and unified liquidity between Dapps on Lumio and mainstream L2.

Shared state and unified liquidity between L1 ecosystems such as Lumio and Solana are achieved through cross-VM calls. As a next step, the Pontem team plans to support Lumio's shared state and unified liquidity with other L1 ecosystems such as Bitcoin and Ton.

To achieve the above Lumio protocol design goals, Pontem heavily reused components of the OP Stack, especially its RUST instance. Lumio's technology stack consists of the Magi Node Network + Rust language Ethereum client Reth+OP Stack shared sequencer + altVM layer developed by A16Z.

Such a technology stack design can take full advantage of the high performance and security features of parallel EVMs such as SVMs and MoveVMs, while maximizing compatibility with EVMs and UX (user interaction) consistency. The first Mainnet iteration of Lumio, SuperLumio, can also be regarded as an OP superchain.

This makes Lumio naturally have a strong relationship with other OP superchain projects, such as OP Mainnet, Base, Aevo, Worldcoin, Redstone, Mode, and other rollups, to form a robust, prosperous and long L2 ecosystem.

One thing to say, compared to Monad and Movement, Lumio's parallel EVM implementation is a "glue-like" engineering thinking solution with the advantages of fast availability, developer learning curve friendliness, and stability. Although it does not have as high a concentration of new technology primitives as the first two solutions, it is still an excellent and novel Ethereum scalability L2 solution.

Finally, to add details about Pontem's latest funding round: In January '24, Pontem announced a $6 million funding round co-led by Lightspeed Faction (Faction) and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The funding also attracted participation from companies such as Pantera Capital, Aptos Foundation, Wintermute, Altonomy, Shima Capital, and Kraken Ventures.

Original by Delphi Digital

Original compilation: Luffy, Foresight News

Modular theory is generally considered to consist of four layers: DA (Data Availability), Consensus, Execution, and Settlement. However, a new layer, the shared prover, may be integrated into the modular theory.

Could it be the missing piece of efficient, scalable validation? The shared prover, proof aggregation, and prover markets are changing the landscape of zk-SNARKs. You can learn everything you need to know in our latest report.

Below is a summary 👇 of the key takeaways from the report

Brief review of zk Rollup

The zk Rollup solution can scale Ethereum's transaction size, moving transactions off-chain for faster processing, while enabling hard determinism on top of Ethereum and verifying with zk proofs (zk-SNARKs).

zk proof: fast verification, slow generation

While zk proofs are powerful in terms of privacy and scaling, creating proofs on Ethereum can be costly and slow.

The high cost of attestation limits zk apps. New approaches such as attestation aggregation and prover marketplaces aim to address these limitations.

Protender Supply Chain

Shared sequencers provide high throughput for transactions across Blockchain. However, they don't actually prove anything. They may be integrated with a shared prover network in the future to delegate this task.

Today, rollups face the challenge of expensive, separate zk-SNARKs submissions.

The Proof Network provides a solution: a unified marketplace where various ZK applications can outsource proof generation to dedicated attestation service providers, increasing costs and efficiency.

Shared attestators can greatly improve the situation for applications that require zk-proof support but lack in-house zkVM or circuit development resources.

Currently, Rollups submit separate zk proofs, resulting in high gas costs during peak hours.

The goal of the prover network now is to outsource the generation of proofs to specialized hardware providers in order to increase efficiency.

In a network with longest rollups and connected to a prover network, the transaction lifecycle works as follows:

• Rollup submits an attestation request.
• The matching mechanism selects a prover.
• The certifier satisfies the request.
• Aggregate proofs.
• The prover submits the final attestation to L1 for verification.

Allocate the cost of validation

Proof Singularity refers to a variety of techniques designed to drop on-chain proof of validation costs.

Proof aggregation is one of these techniques, which compresses longest valid proofs into a single proof that verifies all proofs.

This "batch validation" can drop gas costs compared to verifying each proof individually.

zk App Prover Cost

The high verification cost and proof time of ZK applications is ultimately passed on to the user.

Over the past few years, zk applications (mostly Rollups) have spent nearly $30 million in gas to validate and publish proofs on the on-chain.

Proof aggregation protocol profile

Nebra UPA

Nebra UPA lets zk apps bundle long proofs to drop the cost of verification, and they claim to support about 10 proofs per second on Testnet. Their certifiers are currently centralized, but plan to implement them later without the need for proof of permission.

They have a forced inclusion mechanism similar to the existing L2 escape pods. If the prover reviews or latency the proof, the zk application can bypass the prover and enforce the proof settlement on L1.

Aligned Layer

Aligned Layer is Ethereum's universal zk verification layer secured by EigenLayer AVS. Restakers provides users with soft finality through proof aggregation and single Ethereum commits. The default DA is EigenDA, but you can also choose other DA layers, such as Celestia or Avail.

AggLayer

Polygon's AggLayer is a neutral infrastructure for secure cross-chain interoperativity. It aims to unify independent Blockchain networks under a single cross-chain bridge, facilitating interoperability without compromising Blockchain sovereignty.

The system is designed to aggregate the proofs in all connected rollups and then submit a unique proof that contains the Merkle tree for each individual proof submitted.

• It does not require a specific Virtual Machine or execution environment
• Blockchain is free to choose its own gas Token
• It does not need to be subject to co-governance.

Under the hood, the infrastructure that brings all of this together is the LxLy cross-chain bridges, which standardizes a common cross-chain messaging protocol so that Rollups can communicate with each other and with Ethereum while maintaining sovereignty.

A brief explanation 👇 of how LxLy works

• Each chain tracks withdrawal transfers in a Merkle tree (exit tree).
• All exit trees are merged into a global exit tree, which is shared cross-chain
• Updated local and global trees to allow validation and net withdrawal calculations.

In addition, Agglayer has a shared cross-chain bridge between connected rollups, simplifying the flow of assets between L1 and L2. Assets are collateralized in an L1 contract without wrapping or locking/minting.

Traditionally, frameworks have relied on a single internal prover, risking censorship and liveness issues. A network of provers may start in a centralized manner and gradually Decentralization over time.

Decentralization of the prover market is still an open question, but some approaches are being explored:

• Proof Competition: The fastest prover wins, improving efficiency but wasting computation (costs passed on to users).
• Proof Mining: Similar to PoW Mining, random numbers are used to prevent winner-take-all (computational waste still exists). Hardware acceleration in SNARK ASICs is expected to drop costs.

Although this may be an exaggeration, the speed of application innovation may not be as fast as the addition of public chains.

Especially recently, with the improvement of modular public chains and RaaS, the rapid development of "scene chains" has been promoted, such as DePIN, AI or financial applications need an independent Blockchain network, and many long financial or comprehensive institutions also need to issuance their own chains (HashKey Chain and Base).

In addition, the second layer of Bitcoin has also been intensively launched in the past two months, such as Citrea, BOB, Bitlayer, Merlin Chain, etc. Finally, there is the eternal topic of "performance", which is also driven by parallelized virtual machines (and parallel EVMs), such as Monad, MegaETH, Artela, etc.

For the average user, managing assets and applications on longest chains has become increasingly painful, not to mention leaving some gas (transaction fees) on each chain in case of emergency.

These problems have been solved by the popularity of "cross-chain bridges" over the past few years, and some of the Liquidity problems are sometimes categorized under the topic of "interoperability". But in the end, how to bring this liquidity together, or how to tie it all together, is a milestone.

Hence the birth of this new concept and narrative "chain abstraction", which can also be seen as "interoperability 2.0" or the ultimate form of such products.

Three scenarios

Because of these experience issues, Blockchain interoperability is becoming increasingly important. However, the purpose of users is not to use "cross-chain bridges", but to achieve more specific needs, such as trading specific assets or using certain applications.

In scenarios with only a few chains, users can barely manage cross-chain bridges and longing chain assets on their own. However, with the competition of such long chains in the future, as well as the decentralization of applications and Liquidity, it is completely unrealistic for users to manage these assets by themselves. It's not uncommon to hear feedback from the community, "I don't remember stake any assets on which chains and in which protocol."

Users don't want to know what a "chain" is, they just want to know what it can be used for. Therefore, the "demand" should be what the user needs to know, and hiding the "chain" under the demand is the cognition of a normal user.

It is precisely because the cross-chain bridges cannot solve the needs of users to manage assets and directly use applications that the concept of chain abstraction is proposed as another important node under the topic of "interoperability".

There are already many teams focusing on "chain abstraction" and providing solutions, but on the whole, each team has similar modules and architectures, but their respective focuses are also very different, and can be divided into at least these three most representative directions: signature networks, common account layers, and cross-chain bridge aggregation.

In fact, it is also easy to understand that for the chain abstraction scheme, users are usually required to have a unified account, this account and the associated account can submit transactions on longest on-chains, while solving problems such as gas payment and cross-chain information communication. In addition to the above-mentioned commonalities, these solutions focus on different individual modules due to their own characteristics.

NEAR focuses on building a Decentralization Network with MPC Nodes to achieve longer chain signatures, while Particle focuses more on the EVM ecosystem, first supporting the public chain ecology that is currently more widely based on the EVM technology stack, while other solutions like Polygon and Optimism focus more on unified cross-chain bridges, more focused on their own RaaS ecosystem, and only serve L2 with CDK or OP Stack.

Signature Network: NEAR

The signature network solution was proposed by NEAR and is called "Chain Signatures". The core of this technology is to allow addresses generated on the NEAR on-chain to become the user's main account, while accounts and transactions on other chains are signed through a Decentralization Longer Computation (MPC) network and submitted to the target on-chain.

In addition, NEAR has launched a module called Multichain Gas Relayer (long chain gas Relay). The main function of this module is to pay the gas fee of the transaction, which solves the problem that users need to hold the native tokens of each on-chain when conducting cross-chain transactions. Currently, this feature supports paying for gas using NEP-141 tokens on NEAR or NEAR, and does not yet support broader gas abstraction.

The fundamental reason for this design is that NEAR is not an EVM-compatible chain, but as we all know, the mainstream of the current market is still the EVM isomorphic chain, and the number is long long. Therefore, interoperability with the EVM isomorphic chain can only be achieved through the MPC network.

As a result, there are some experiential issues:

1. Migration cost is large: For users of the Ethereum ecosystem, it is not possible to migrate directly (such as using MetaMask) to the NEAR ecosystem, or need to create a new account through NEAR.
2. The confirmation transaction process is longer: Because the EVM multichain wallet created through NEAR is EOA (that is, a wallet generated by public and private keys), for these cross-chain processes that require longing transactions (including at least authorization + transactions) to queue and sign in parallel, users need to wait for the confirmation process for a long time. And because it is separated and longest, all the gas it consumes cannot be optimized.

From the perspective of Token Utility, NEAR's native Token will become the gas Token of the entire chain abstraction process, and users need to consume NEAR to pay all gas costs in the entire chain abstraction process.

Universal accounts: Particle Network

Particle Network's solution, on the other hand, focuses more on the accounts themselves, scheduling other on-chain states and assets through an independent blockchain network. To put it more bluntly, users only need to use the Address of Particle Network to access the assets and applications of all chains, and Particle calls this Address Universal Account.

As for the relay of information, that is, the transmission of messages across different chains, Particle's L1 listens to the execution of the UserOps of the external chain through the Relayer Node on its own on-chain, but because the underlying layer is still based on EVM, if you want to support the address of the non-EVM isomorphic chain, you may need other modules to support, such as the MPC network similar to NEAR.

So this is a big difference, unlike NEAR, the design of Particle Network is to put EVM in the highest priority, natively an EVM address, access to any chain and application of the EVM ecosystem, or wallet, etc., will be quite easy.

From a user's point of view, Particle Network's EVM-first solution allows users to easily migrate the accounts created in the EVM ecosystem before, that is, to add a network in MetaMask, which is as simple as the process of adding Optimism or Arbitrum networks at that time.

Take a scenario that heavy or Web 2.5 users will have a strong perception as an example: USDT is distributed on several on-chains, such as 100 USDT on chain A, 100 USDT on chain B, and 100 USDT on chain C, when users want to use these assets to buy assets on chain D, it will be very troublesome. Although these USDT belong entirely to users, the user experience is not convenient to implement, because these assets are play people for suckers. If all these USDT are transported to one on-chain, it is not only a matter of finding cross-chain bridges and waiting time, but also preparing gas for different chains. With the Universal Account provided by Particle L1, users can collect the purchasing power distributed on different on-chains, buy assets of any chain with one click, and can choose any token as Gas. The underlying operating mechanism can be referred to the following figure.

In addition, the biggest difference between the Particle solution and NEAR is that the granularity of transactions is different, and batch signatures and transactions can also be achieved through aggregation. That is, users can bundle longest transactions together, which not only saves the number and time of user signatures, but also saves gas involved in complex transaction scenarios.

Particle has designed long consumption and usage scenarios for its Token $PARTI. As an ordinary user, the most direct thing is to use the gas Token as a Universal Account to complete any Blockchain transaction, and if there is no $PARTI, you can also choose other Token to pay on your behalf (but no matter what Token you use to pay for gas, it will consume $PARTI). For the entire ecosystem, Particle L1 has 5 Node roles (refer to the figure below), which can become a Node through stake $PARTI and participate in network Consensus and transactions to obtain more long rewards. In addition, $PARTI Token can also act as LP Token within the Particle Network, participate in cross-chain atomic swap and earn transaction income.

Cross-chain bridges aggregation: Polygon AggLayer

Two typical schemes for cross-chain bridge aggregation are Polygon AggLayer and Optimism's Superchain. They are also all architectures designed with the Ethereum ecosystem first.

Compared with traditional cross-chain bridges, AggLayer hopes to unify the standards of cross-chain bridge contracts, so that there is no need for independent smart contracts between each chain and Ethereum. So in this scheme, the Ethereum Mainnet is the center of everything, and then the cross-chain information of all chains is aggregated through a single zk-SNARKs.

But the problem is that other chains will not necessarily accept this unified liquidity cross-chain bridge contract, which will bring some resistance to access the new public chain, unless this solution can be accepted by all other public links, or become a broad industry standard. If you look at it from another angle, AggLayer is actually an extra feature for teams that have adopted the Polygon CDK development chain, so those who don't use the CDK won't come with this feature.

Optimism's Superchain is similar, they will focus on the interoperability between Ethereum Layer 2 first, after all, there are already some teams using the OP Stack to develop more long layer 2 networks, and they can achieve interoperability in this way, but more importantly, how to expand to a wider range of other public chain networks.

Therefore, in terms of user experience, AggLayer and Superchain can also be easily migrated from MetaMask because they are bound to the EVM ecosystem, but they cannot be connected to the ecosystem outside the EVM.

Summary

Although these schemes differ in focus, they share the same goal: to provide users with a simple and intuitive way to manage longest chain assets and applications in a rapidly expanding world of Blockchain networks. Each team is grappling with how to keep operations simple and clear for users in a longest chain environment.

From the perspective of the three schemes, NEAR's signature network takes the NEAR network as the core, and designs a decentralization MPC network to implement cross-chain signatures. Particle Network's universal accounts focus on enhancing interoperability through the powerful ecosystem of EVM, while accessing longest other public chain ecosystems. Polygon AggLayer, on the other hand, focuses on optimizing interoperability within the Ethereum ecosystem by aggregating cross-chain bridges. Although these solutions have different technical implementations and application focuses, they all aim to improve the convenience and drop complexity of user cross-chain operation.

But I think in the end, these technology choices will end up in the same way. Because they all work towards the same end goal – to improve the user-friendliness and interoperability of the Blockchain ecosystem. As technology evolves and the industry becomes more integrated, we may see more long collaboration and convergence, and the lines between approaches may blur. Therefore, it is more important not only to choose the technology and narrative, but also to land as soon as possible and let users perceive this new experience of full-chain aggregation.

References:

In the Crypto Assets space, Bitcoin's technological advancements have been a key driver of the industry's development. Grayscale, a leader in encryption asset management, recently highlighted in its investor report the latest advancements in Bitcoin layer 2 (Layer 2) technologies, including BitVM, Spiderchains, and Taproot Assets, heralding a new era of Bitcoin applications.

Bitcoin's Rollups Technology**

Michael Zhao, an analyst at Grayscale, noted that the Bitcoin development space is experiencing a "renaissance", with the development of Layer 2 technology being particularly eye-catching. Not only do these technologies have the potential to bring new use cases to Bitcoin, but they are also likely to spark more long demand for BTC.

Rollups technology on Bitcoin, specifically BitVM proposed by Robin Linus, is considered one of Bitcoin's "most anticipated" next-generation applications. BitVM, as a new computing model, is able to verify computations on Bitcoin, introducing Ethereum-like smart contracts functionality to the network. Currently, optimistic Bitcoin rollups is one of the main applications of BitVM, which allows users to process transactions in batches in a off-chain environment and then Settlement them back to Bitcoin, which greatly improves transaction efficiency and drop costs.

Grayscale also looked at the Spiderchains technology, developed by Botanix Labs. Spiderchains are Layer 2 chains secured by Bitcoin (BTC) stake in the Decentralization multisignature Wallet. The innovation of this technology is that it allows Bitcoin assets to be secured on a layer 2 on-chain while maintaining the Decentralization nature of the Bitcoin network.

Bitcoin's ** re-staking technology

In addition, the Babylon project opens up new opportunities in the Bitcoin stake sector through its BTC re-stake technology. Enabling BTC holders to stake their coins through other Blockchain networks such as ETH or Sonana through this technology and earn yield from them provides Bitcoin holders with new ways to add value.

The Taproot Assets project mentioned in the Grayscale report seeks to bring tokenization technology, especially stablecoins, into Bitcoin's Lighting Network, one of Bitcoin's most popular layer-2 solutions.

Grayscale believes that although Bitcoin's smart contracts ecosystem is not fully developed, its potential market size is huge. Currently, about 17% of Ethereum's total market capitalization ($360 billion) is currently used in applications, while the value locked in Bitcoin dapps is only 0.2% of its total market capitalization ($1.2 trillion). Grayscale predicts that Bitcoin's market value is expected to lead to higher market value over time if the current development wave can drive broader adoption of these use cases.

This report provides investors with a valuable perspective on the evolution of Bitcoin technology and highlights the potential of Layer 2 technology to drive Bitcoin adoption and market demand. As these technologies mature and apply, the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem will be more longing and vibrant.

Conclusion:

Grayscale's report sheds light on the exciting prospects for Bitcoin's layer-2 technology developments that have the potential to dramatically expand Bitcoin's functionality and applications. As innovative solutions such as BitVM, Spiderchains, and Taproot Assets continue to mature, the Bitcoin network's smart contracts capabilities, transaction efficiency, and user engagement are expected to improve significantly.

In particular, the development of these technologies can not only bring new market opportunities for Bitcoin, but also may trigger a new round of demand for BTC, thereby providing investors with new value-added potential. Although Bitcoin's smart contracts ecosystem is still in its infancy, its untapped market potential portends a huge rise short.

With the continuous progress and application of Bitcoin layer 2 technology, we have reason to believe that Bitcoin will continue to be a leading asset in the Crypto Assets field and lead the industry into a new stage of development. For investors, it's time to take a deep dive into these cutting-edge technologies and consider their impact on Bitcoin's long-term value. As technology continues to evolve, we expect the Bitcoin ecosystem to usher in a more prosperous and longest future.

Original authors: Hannah Miller, Muyao Shen

Original compilation: Luffy, Foresight News

As Crypto Assets industry fundraising takes off again, venture capitalists are turning back to encryption startups founded by professors.

Companies such as Sahara, CheckSig, and NEBRA were all founded by academics and have raised new funding in the past two months. Among the projects known as "professor coins" in the industry, two stand out. EigenLayer, founded by former associate professor Sreeram Kannan at the University of Washington, raised $100 million from Andreessen Horowitz in February, while Babylon, founded by Stanford professor David Tse, raised $18 million in December. Both projects are focused on a growing area of Crypto Assets, known as "staking," which allows new projects and blockchains to get a head start by borrowing Ethereum or Bitcoin's secure infrastructure and resources.

Riad Wahby, a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and CEO of Crypto Assets startup Cubist, said some of the techniques people use to generate yield during the Crypto Assets cycle "come from David and Sreeram's research." "They've worked on a lot of long of these kinds of re stake techniques. I mean, it's kind of like their brainchild. I think these kinds of technologies, which are getting more and more long, will come from research."

Kannan spent two years as a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, where he worked with TSE, according to his bio on the University of Washington's Information Theory Lab webpage. According to computer science literature website DBLP, the two collaborated on 23 academic papers between 2015 and 2023, publishing numerous articles on Blockchain and the concepts on which their respective startups depend. Neither Kannan nor Tse responded to requests for comment.

Re-staking favored by capital

Global venture capital activity for Crypto Assets startups, source: PitchBook

Kate Laurence, CEO of Bloccelerate VC, said her VC firm often sees an academic background as a disadvantage when deciding which founder to support. "Professors tend to focus on academics and theory rather than practical and commercial applications," she said.

But Kannan's work on staking and his close relationship with Tse led Bloccelerate to invest first in EigenLayer and then in Babylon. "They're working together to solve the same problem, but EigenLayer solves a different market," she said.

The process of "staking" is a reference to how Ethereum works. In Ethereum, Tokens are "staked" into the network to help validate transactions on the Blockchain. For new projects and blockchains running the same mechanism, setting up your own stake system can be too slow and costly due to a lack of user activity and funding. Re-staking allows new players to borrow Ethereum's staking power to get a head start.

Babylon takes a similar approach but focuses on Bitcoin. This task is more complicated because Bitcoin uses a different mechanism (PoW) to verify transactions. If successful, the Babylon platform will also address a long-standing problem for Bitcoin holders: a lack of yield.

Vance Spencer's company, Framework Ventures, which has also invested in Babylon, said it makes sense that such advanced technological achievements came from universities. "There are so few people who can build Blockchain," he said, "and they are likely to come from these research institutions."

What are the controversies?

Emin Gun Sirer, a former associate professor of computer science at Cornell University and CEO of Ava Labs, which developed the Avalanche blockchain, said the road ahead for professor-led encryption projects is often not smooth, with longest projects failing.

"They're playing a game of technological innovation," Sirer said, "rather than product-market fit."

DefiLlama said that while the EigenLayer platform attracted more than $15 billion in encryption assets, it also suffered setbacks, with critics arguing that it was a misunderstanding of the broader encryption asset market.

Although Kannan told Bloomberg in February that they had no plans to issuance Token, EigenLayer released a issuance plan for the Eigen Token in April and began distributing it on Friday. Eigen's total supply is around 1.67 billion Tokens, more than half of which are designated for investors and early contributors, and the plan caused a backlash from the community after it was revealed. This distribution has sparked criticism of the pockets of the EigenLayer team and initial supporters, as well as concerns among users about potential selling pressure. The decision to make the Token non-transferable at issuance also disappointed some early adopters who had invested heavily in EigenLayer.

The Eigen Foundation, which is responsible for the Token program, said in a blog post that by restricting Token transfers, it could have more long time to improve the Decentralization of the project, as well as enhance key features related to Token.

The total value of Crypto Assets on EigenLayer has exceeded $15 billion, source: DefiLlama

Ayesha Kiani, chief operating officer of Crypto Assets Hedging fund MNNC Group and an adjunct professor at New York University, rejects criticism related to EigenLayer, arguing that the startup is more than just another "get-rich-quick scam." She said Kannan and Tse are working to improve the encryption industry.

"The industry has criticized them for their lack of decentralization, or just a means of making money," she said, "and in this industry, we're now used to free incentives, and if everything doesn't go well, we basically have to abandon the program."