PANews_

Compiler: Alex Liu, Foresight News

Ethereum has succeeded in bringing a thriving decentralization application ecosystem, but its scalability challenges are also increasing. Developers are faced with a difficult choice: limit the functionality and data richness of their applications, or put up with high gas fees and gas usage limits. What if developers had a way around these limitations?

Steel, connecting RISC Zero and Ethereum

RISC Zero is one of the major zkVM developers, and if you've heard about zkEVM in your ears but don't know what a word-for-word zkVM is, you can refer to this article. RISC Zero's latest release is Steel, an Alloy-based proof-of-call library that revolutionizes the way developers interact with Ethereum L1 or other EVM chains. Leveraging zk-SNARKs and RISC Zero zkVM, Steel enables developers to perform view calls in a scalable, secure, and cost-effective manner and provably read and compute the state of Ethereum.

The convenience of Solidity, the power of ZK

Steel bridges the gap between Ethereum application development and zero-knowledge technology, making it easier for developers to harness the power of ZK in their smart contracts. Combined with the capabilities of RISC Zero zkVM, Steel enables developers to build more secure, scalable, and efficient applications on Ethereum L1 or any EVM equivalent on-chain.

With Steel, developers can:

• Execute Solidity smart contracts directly within zkVM, compatible with more complex on-chain logic
• Access historical Ethereum state within zkVM
• Calculations are performed using continuations, regardless of block and transaction data size
• Ensure off-chain computations are as secure and reliable as they are executed on-chain
• Leverage the first production-ready zkVM that has been rigorously tested and used by longing partners
• Private computation of Ethereum state
• Maintain flexibility with an Open Source codebase that is vendor-agnostic

Seamless integration and cost savings

With Steel, performing a view call is as simple as specifying the desired Solidity method. Whether it's retrieving everything from ERC-20 Token balances (examples) to accessing Ethereum state, Steel streamlines the process while ensuring security and efficiency by seamlessly integrating with RISC Zero zkVM. Testing has shown that Steel has the ability to handle more than 100K SLOAD operations in a single view call, saving k dollars in gas charges on the Mainnet. We can prove it in about 15 minutes using Bonsai, which requires at least 210M of gas, 7 times more than the block limit.

Example: ERC20 balanceOf

The following code snippet demonstrates the process of proving the balance of an ERC-20 contract deployed on Ethereum at a specific Address using Steel. This example shows how a developer can leverage Steel to interact with Ethereum on-chain data within a zkVM. The full code can be viewed here.

Define View Function Signature

First, use sol! macro to define the balanceOf function signature for ERC-20. This will parse the Solidity syntax to generate the corresponding Rust struct that implements the SolCall trait and can be used to call the balanceOf method, which accepts a account Address and returns the associated ERC-20 Token balance.

Ready to call

Next, set up the call by instantiating the balanceOfCall struct with the target account Address. At the same time, define constants for the contract Address you want to query and the Address of the caller.

Make a call in Main

The main function is executed in zkVM, generating zk-SNARKs. It first reads the input environment and then constructs a ViewCallEnv object to ensure that the current state matches the expected state root. After the relevant Block hash and number are submitted, a view call is performed, and the balance is printed.

How it works

Steel simplifies execution by proving Solidity code in RISC Zero zkVM in three steps:

1. Pre-flight phase: Initiating a pre-flight by making a view call to the Ethereum RPC Node caches the necessary storage slots and populates the EVM database with only the data required for the query. All slots are automatically discovered and fetched based on view calls.
2. Storage validation: Perform a storage integrity check to ensure that the data in the EVM database is aligned with the state root of the Blockchain to confirm its legitimacy.
3. Solidity Execution: Run a given Solidity function on the EVM inside the RISC Zero zkVM.

How is this different from Proof of Storage?

With traditional proof-of-storage, developers must manually select the storage slots used by their smart contracts and re-implement the smart contracts logic. With Steel, all storage slots are automatically discovered and fetched based on view calls. This saves developers a lot of time and reduces the likelihood of implementation errors, which reduces the chances of security breaches.

Get a verified Block hash

When validating with a blockhash Operation Code in a Ethereum smart contracts, the validated commitment must reference no more than 256 Block old Block hash. Considering that the average block time is 12 seconds, this sets a narrow time frame of about 50 minutes for completing proof generation and confirming that the verification transaction is included in a Block.

When you need to get a verified Block hash older than 256 Block in on-chain, you can use one of several strategies:

• When you know in advance what Block hash will be needed (e.g., when initiating a governance proposal), you can save that Block hash to the contract state.
• Another approach is to use RISC Zero to prove the hash chain from the Block of the query to one of the last 256 Block Block.

The future of on-chain applications

Envision a future where off-chain computation will be seamlessly integrated with on-chain verification. Steel contributes to this vision by enabling developers to reliably access and compute the complete history of Ethereum within zkVM, enabling the creation of the next generation of data-rich and more powerful on-chain applications.

By Golem, Odaily Planet Daily

RGB++ is an RGB-based extension protocol that also technically leverages one-time seals and client-side authentication to manage state changes and transaction validation. Different from RGB protocol which requires users to run the client to verify transactions, RGB++ maps the Bitcoin UTXO to the cell of Nervos CKB through isomorphic binding, and directly acts as the DA layer of Nervos CKB, although it sacrifices some privacy, but brings Turing Complete contract expansion and performance expansion without cross-chain and security to Bitcoin.

Due to the market fear of missing out (FOMO) caused by the superiority of the design and the first asset, the Seal issuance, the Hong Kong conference in April seems to have become the evangelistic home of the RGB++ protocol, even when the ecology is short, and people are afraid of missing the future wealth train of RGB++. However, time has passed, and in just one month, RGB++ protocol is no longer as hot as it was at the beginning, and the leader asset Seal Floor Price has fall by more than 70% from its high, and the volume has also shrunk.

Whether the RGB++ protocol is a flash in the pan or accumulating strength in the trough, the degree of ecological construction is the best test protocol. Protocol below, Odaily will take stock of RGB++ ecological projects from the perspectives of Wallet, DEX, infrastructure, entertainment, tools, etc., in order to present readers with the current status of ecological development after the protocol is launched.

Wallet

JoyID

JoyID is a longest, cross-platform wallet built on Nervos CKB. It allows users to use biometrics to create and use Wallets without the need for passwords or mnemonic phrases. It is also the first Wallet to support RGB++ assets, allowing users to not only transfer RGB++ assets Bitcoin Mainnet, but also use its built-in DEX to trade RGB++ assets on Layer 2 Nervos CKB.

REI Wallet

REI Wallet is a native Nervos CKB browser plug-in Wallet, which is also compatible with RGB++ protocol, and the Testnet version was released on April 25, although it currently supports Mainnet, it is reported that it is still in testing.

DEX

HueHub

HueHub is the first Launch platform and DEX based on RGB++ assets on the Bitcoin Mainnet, where users can issuance and minting RGB++ assets fairly and trade on the Mainnet. HueHub supports connecting to mainstream Bitcoin Wallet such as JoyID, Unisat, and OKX.

Omiga

Omiga is the first RGB++ asset-based DEX on the second layer of the Nervos CKB, which was originally a inscription project built on the Nervos CKB, and when the RGB++ protocol became popular, it chose to build for the RGB++ ecosystem. At present, the platform has supported the function of batch sweeping.

Nomadland

Nomadland is a Bitcoin service provider that supports RGB++ assets. At present, the trading market for RGB++ assets is mainly developed, and the AMM swap function is expected to be launched in mid-May. At the same time, Nomadland has also developed an RGB++ plug-in Wallet that supports RGB++ assets in BTC Mainnet and Layer 2 Nervos CKB is free bidirectional Leap.

UTXOSwap

UTXOSwap is a DEX exchange (DEX) protocol protocol based on the BTC ecosystem, which aims to provide users with a better trading experience through intent-based trading. UTXOSwap will initially support RGB++ and CKB ecosystem assets for trading, and plans to support other BTC ecosystem assets such as Ordinals and Runes in the future. However, it has only released a white paper so far, and it is expected to be in public beta at the end of May.

Infrastructure

UTXO Stack

UTXO Stack is launched by Blockchain software development company CELL Studio, which is RAAS (Rollup as a Service) in the Bitcoin ecosystem, similar to the OP Stack in the Ethereum ecosystem, which can help developers issue BTC Layer 2 based on the UTXO architecture with one click. And it is natively compatible with the RGB++ protocol, so that assets can be seamlessly transferred between BTC and homogeneous UTXO chains, without the need for cross-chain bridges. At the same time, it also integrates the concept of restaking proposed by EigenLayer, which can ensure the security of isomorphic chains through assets such as stake BTC and CKB.

UTXO Stack has closed a seed round led by ABCDE Capital and SNZ Holding, with participation from OKX Ventures, Waterdrip Capital, and others, for an undisclosed amount.

Stablecoins

Stable++

Stable++ is the first over-collateralization stablecoin based on the RGB++ protocol issuance that allows USDPP to circulate freely in Bitcoin Blockchain and other UTXO isomorphic chains by over-collateralization BTC and CKB issuance stablecoin USDPP using the Leap feature of RGB++ protocol. Stable++ team members are mainly from Google, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, etc., and it has received investment from the CKB Eco Fund.

Entertainment

World3

World3 is a Bitcoin autonomous world based on the RGB++ protocol and Digital Things (DOB). World3 will use Bitcoin Mainnet as the asset control layer of the digital thing, and Nervos CKB as the DA layer and smart contracts layer of the digital thing, connecting the Bitcoin and the rest of the ecological chain.

The team plans to Airdrop DOB on the BTC Mainnet and gradually open up DOB-based interactive test scenarios. World3 has previously raised $6 million in funding, with participation from Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, EVG, Com2uS and others.

SilentBerry

SilentBerry is a Web3 digital music issuance platform protocol based on the RGB++ protocol, providing one-stop ecological services for the issuance, investment and income distribution of digital music assets. Among them, FT assets $Berry will be BTC Mainnet issuance, with a total supply of 66 million $Berry 10,000 each, for a total of 6,600 NFT assets issuance on Nervos CKB and other Blockchain ecosystems.

At present, the product has not yet been launched, and it is expected that the SilentBerry platform will be officially launched in May and June.

DID

.bit

.bit, a decentralized identifier protocol owned by d.id, advertised its support for RGB++ protocol on April 15, enabling .bit to run on BTC networks. At present, .bit already supports the binding and parsing of Bitcoin Address, and can directly transfer Bitcoin and RGB++ assets through .bit. At the same time, .bit plans to build a long chain DID, based on Bitcoin Blockchain, across other chain ecosystems.

Governance

Metaforo

Metaforo is a veteran decentralization community governance protocol established in 2021, which announced support for the RGB++ protocol on May 9, and users can use CKB or RGB++ assets to participate in decentralization community governance, vote or snapshot, etc. The first asset on RGB++ $seal is the first RGB++ community to access Metaforo protocol for voting governance.

Tools

CKB Explorer

CKB Explorer is a browser for Nervos CKB Blockchain, which not only allows you to understand the Nervos CKB network operation data, but also allows you to view RGB++ assets and related transactions.

Haste

Haste is a community-developed RGB++ asset manager, which does not support RGB++ protocol Wallet such as OKX Wallet, Unisat, etc., and can transfer RGB++ assets through this manager.

Summary

In summary, in the case of declining market heat, RGB++ ecological construction has not stagnated, and key ecological components such as Wallet, DEX, and infrastructure are steadily being built. From the launch of the protocol concept in February to the launch of the Mainnet in April, long projects have been filling the short gaps in their ecosystems in just a few months, which is actually a rapid development in the Bitcoin ecosystem long asset protocol.

However, the RGB++ protocol is not without controversy, with some community members criticizing it for rubbing the concept of the RGB protocol and expressing concern about its over-reliance on Nervos CKB. Maxim Orlovsky, the founder of the RGB protocol, also issued an article stating that RGB++ has nothing to do with RGB.

On the evening of May 8, local time, Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for the 2024 U.S. election, held the latest NFT dinner at the Maarago Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Buyers who purchased at least 47 NFTs of Trump's "MugShot Edition" (headshots) were invited to attend, and Hong Kong actor Fung Delun, who is keen on NFTs, also appeared on the scene. At the rally, Trump announced a big embrace of Crypto Assets, promising to end U.S. hostility toward Digital Money. This is a significant shift from his previous criticism of Crypto Assets.

Group photo of the NFT dinner Ahead of the dinner on recess day, Trump announced that he was accepting U.S. presidential campaign contributions in the form of Crypto Assets, Watcher.Guru reported. Subsequently, the prices of Trump-related memes coin TRUMP and NFT pump more than 55% and doubled, respectively, in a short period of time, by pump.

Host an NFT dinner to attract Large Investors buyers

There are currently 3 series of Trump Digital Trading Cards. The first series was released in December 2022 and features 45,000 cards, which include his image as a superhero, an astronaut, sheriff west, and a slew of other fantasy characters. These NFT minting are on Polygon, and the standard version cards are sold for $99 each. Customers who purchase 45 cards can get a ticket to an NFT dinner. According to OpenSea, all 45,000 NFTs were sold out in about 12 hours at the time.

On April 19, 2023, the Trump team launched the second series of Trump digital trading cards, maintaining the price of $99 each, and selling shorter after 5 hours of issuance, earning $4.6 million, and the ability to attract money is still the same.

The most recent dinner was a stake in Trump's NFT MugShot Edition. There are a total of 100,000 NFTs in this collection, of which 99,000 are available for purchase, one is $99, also minted on Polygon, and if you buy 47 ($4,653) in a single transaction, you can get a chance to have dinner with Trump.

If buyers are more generous and spend nearly $10,000 on 100 MugShot Edition NFT cards, they will be able to attend a VIP cocktail reception before the dinner, and will also receive a one-of-a-kind Bitcoin inscription digital trading card (limited to 200), as well as two VIP dinner tickets for buyers and fren to have dinner with Trump, and buyers will be seated at VIP tables.

The images on the Mugshot Edition NFT collection vary from a police custody photo of Trump to a picture of him wearing a bull hat to a cartoon image of Trump with lightning bolts in his hands and "America's superheroes" written underneath. Officially, though, the cards have nothing to do with politics and nothing to do with any political campaigning.

Buyers who purchase these headshot NFTs will also receive a physical card with the fabric of Trump's suit when he took the headshot. Trump's mugshot photo was taken at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia, Aug. 24, 2023. Previously, Trump was indicted on suspicion of racketeering and other crimes. This is the first and so far the only photo of a U.S. president. After the photo was released, it became an internet meme and appeared on the front pages of longest newspapers around the world.

"This card is more than just a souvenir; It is part of a piece of history and a testimony to resilience," the official website describes the physical card with fragments of the suit. "It symbolizes President Trump's unwavering commitment and tireless struggle for the American dream."

On May 8, this trading card (NFT) was officially sent to eligible NFT dinner attendees. According to The Independent, at the dinner, in response to a question about how to keep Crypto Assets businesses in the United States, Trump emphasized his commitment to keeping them in the United States. He expressed concern about the potential relocation of Crypto Assets businesses that could be due to hostility to the industry, saying, "If Crypto Assets leave the U.S. because of hostility to Crypto Assets...... Well, we'll put a stop to it. We don't want that. If we're going to embrace it, we've got to keep them here. ”

Trump said President Joe Biden doesn't know what Crypto Assets is, saying that "Democrats are very much against it" and that "if you support Crypto Assets, it's better to vote for Trump." ”

Although Trump told a crowd in New Hampshire in January that he would never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency, calling it a "dangerous threat to freedom," it seems that the former US president is gradually embracing the world of Crypto Assets. According to Cointelegraph, when asked if people could donate to him using Crypto Assets, he replied, "If you can't, I'll make sure you can." ”

Meme coin big pump 55%, NFT Floor Price doubled

With a series of actions and news, according to CoinMarketCap data, Trump-related meme coin MAGA (TRUMP) then pump from $4.2 in the early morning of May 9 to $6.52 at noon on May 9, a pump of 55%, and $5.48 on the morning of May 11.

As of the morning of May 11, another meme coin Doland Tremp (TREMP) was quoted at $0.652, a 7-day pump of 69.85%. Even the Meme coins associated with Biden are "lying down". On May 9, Boden, a joke meme coin that deliberately misspelled US President Joe Biden's name, soared 25% after Trump answered questions from reporters

In one episode, American talk show host Jimmy Kimmel even lashed out at Donald Trump's NFT project collectors as "fools" and "freaks", but the recent secondary market price of Trump-related NFT assets has not stopped pumping.

According to NFT Floor, the Trump Digital Trading Cards minting on Polygon pump from $211.56 at 10 p.m. on May 9 to $465.7 at 4 p.m. on May 9, a pump of 120%. As of about 2 p.m. on May 10, the Trading Volume on the 7th reached $42,921, or 561.33% pump.

Screenshot of the NFT Floor at 8 a.m. on May 11 Trump's Series 2 NFT collection sold even more than the original series, reaching 405 sales in 24 hours on May 9. However, their price is longest lower, with a floor price of around $82, which is lower than the initial first sale price of $99.

Historically, Trump's NFT cards have achieved mixed results. In March 2023, the price of Trump's digital trading card NFT first series big pump, with a maximum selling price of nearly $1,700, was sparked by an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney for allegedly using 2016 campaign funds to pay Stormy Daniels hush money. However, shortly after the release of the second series of Trump cards on April 18, 2023, its value falls rapidly.

It is worth mentioning that, according to the official website, the Trump card is "not owned, managed, or controlled by Trump," but is owned by NFT INT LLC. Trump licensed his image to the company, which paid a portion of its profits to a company owned by Trump. According to his financial disclosures, in 2023, Trump earned between $500,000 and $1 million from the image licensing of Trump Card NFTs.

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

At this Node when the market is vacillating and the market is slightly tired, Alliance is heading to the market with the latest batch of incubated projects.

As the world's largest accelerator in the encryption, Alliance has incubated projects such as Tensor, Pendle, Synthetix, etc., the recently popular encryption consumer apps Fantasy.top and Pump.fun were incubated by Alliance, and Fantasy.top and Pump.fun are now in the top 10 Crypto Assets protocol by fees and revenue generated, surpassing many established L1s.

Last week, 12 start-up encryption companies successfully "graduated" from Alliance, among which the current popular RWA, AI, and DePIN tracks accounted for longest of the projects, and the selection of incubation members reflects Alliance's close understanding of market hotspots and industry narratives.

In addition to controlling the current hot narrative, several projects in this issue focus on exploring the encryption market in Asia, Africa and Latin America, reflecting the current trend of encryption expansion to third world countries.

Here's an introduction to these 12 startups:**

1.Villcaso

**Product Direction:US Real Estate Tokenization

Project Twitter:

Brief introduction**:**

Villcaso has on-chain tokenization U.S. real estate in a Compliance way, and now users around the world can participate in U.S. real estate investment by holding Villcaso's on-chain Token $USH (U.S. housing), solving the problems of policy Compliance and high barriers to entry faced by non-U.S. residents investing in U.S. real estate.

**2.**GoBankless

Product Direction: Crypto Assets Cross-border Payment in Africa

Project Twitter:

Brief introduction**:**

GoBankless builds a Compliance Stablecoin Cross-border Payment System for African SMEs, a project that helps SMEs convert cash into stablecoins. Through on-chain cross-border payment, it helps African SMEs avoid SWIFT fees of up to 20% and long settlement times, solving the huge pain points of African SMEs. Currently, GoBankless has served longest 400 courier companies and 49 bank branches in Africa.

3.Wasabi Protocol

Product direction:NFT and MEMECOIN derivatives trading

Project Twitter: _protocol

Brief introduction**:**

Wasabi Protocol is a Web3 long-tail asset derivatives trading built on Blast Chain, providing users with Margin Trading of high-Fluctuation assets (such as NFT and MEMECOIN), as well as services such as NFT Options, asset stake, and fractional NFT trading. It is also the first project to provide derivatives trading for the protocol of ERC721s and ERC404 assets, while actively promoting the Liquidity problem solving of cultural memecoins. Within months of its launch, Wasabi attracted more than 30,000 users and generated more than $200 million in platform volume.

**4.**Lulubit

Product direction: provide **** fiat currency **** exchange for Central America

Project Twitter:

Brief introduction**:**

In order to solve the pain point of the $70 billion Central American Crypto Assets market, which is still dominated by P2P networks with high transaction fees and poor user experience, Lulubit provides Central American users with a fiat exchange Crypto Assets service, which allows users to buy or sell Crypto Assets directly using bank account and use debit cards to spend Crypto Assets. In less than a year, Lulubit has attracted more than 18,000 users. The product currently serves residents of Panama and Guatemala and will soon be expanded to the rest of Central America.

**5.**ZwapX

Product Direction: Tokenization of Watch Trading

Project Twitter:

Brief introduction**:**

In order to combat fraud, traditional luxury watch trading platforms such as Chrono24 and Montro have led to an endless number of fraud incidents around luxury watch transactions due to their imperfect technology for distinguishing the authenticity of watches, and in order to combat fraud, traditional platforms must rely on deposit escrow systems to solve this problem.

ZwapX solves this problem by hosting watches for customers instead of funds, users can send the watch to ZwapX's warehouse in Geneva after registering the watch information, and there will be professionals to check the authenticity and condition of the watch before the watch is put into storage, and after confirming the storage, ZwapX will exchange the watch for the corresponding on-chain Token, and the user can choose to hold or freely trade the watch Token. Transaction success funds are delivered immediately to the seller, and the buyer can exchange the token for a physical watch or use it as collateral in Decentralized Finance at any time.

**6.**Fractal Payments

Product direction: stablecoin cross-border payment

Project Twitter:

Brief introduction**:**

Fractal Payments is a global cross-border payment platform that supports stablecoin Settlement and Money Laundering is 3x cheaper and Settlement 6x faster than Swift. Traditional cross-border payment solutions face high fees, slow processing times, and complex barriers to use.

Fractal Payments is fully licensed in the European Union and currently supports payments in longest 60 countries. This allows businesses to use on-chain stablecoin for fast and low-cost Settlement while pricing transactions with fiat.

At present, Fractal Payments has been widely used in applications such as Zerion.

**7.**Codigo

Product Direction: Artificial Intelligence Code Generation Platform

Project Twitter:

Brief introduction**:**

The usability of an AI model largely depends on the quality of the data on which the model is trained. However, obtaining training data is difficult because the relevant domains are often not well classified, and the quality of the models is uneven. Today, Codigo is committed to making it easy for users to access high-quality training data. The Codigo platform uses tokens as incentives to provide customers with high-quality datasets through data crowdsourcing and centralized review, while providing segmented professional model training services for high-risk AI financial zones. It's worth mentioning that Codigo's initial focus is on encryption Source Code, which is rich in data volume and of excellent quality. Their beta tool generated over 4 million lines of code in just 6 months.

**8.**Accrue

Product direction: cross-border payment in underdeveloped areas of Africa

Project Twitter:

Brief introduction**:**

Accrue provides a service for users in the African region to create virtual payment cards, and on the Accrue platform, African users can stablecoin deposit virtual cards in US dollars and Settlement transactions with US dollar stablecoin through long channels, including banks. This approach drops the cost of cross-border settlement in Africa by nearly 10 times, and the settlement speed is reduced from 2 weeks to 5 minutes. Accrue is currently available in 7 countries and is integrated with Opera, Africa's largest payment wallet app. Since its launch, Accrue has processed more than $5 million in metatransactions.

**9.**Fig

Product Direction: CeFi Options tokenization

Project Twitter:

Brief introduction**:**

Fig focuses on the CeFi Options market, which is long larger than the CeFi Perptual Futures market, and uses complex Options tokenization to help users easily use Options to on-chain portfolios and use complex Hedging strategies to obtain returns

In the four months since the project was launched, Fig's Options volume has exceeded $50 million, and the ecological TVL has exceeded $10.2 million.

**10.**0G

Product Direction: Artificial Intelligence On-Chain Data Availability Solution

Project Twitter:_labs

Brief introduction**:**

0G lbs is the first modular AI chain that is building a Programmability data availability solution designed to solve the large amount of data storage and throughput required for on-chain AI operations, dividing data into two phases: publishing and storage. Officially, this architecture performs 50,000 times faster than leading data availability solutions such as Celestia, while at a 100 times lower cost.

**11.**Proto

Product direction: Building on-chain Google Maps with DePIN devices

Project Twitter:_proto

Brief introduction**:**

Proto's DePIN network uses Token incentives to provide up-to-date mapping services for emerging economic industry regions through geographic data uploaded by users' mobile phones. Uploading geographic data through users' mobile phones can solve the problem that large map operators such as Google do not update their information in a timely manner due to the dense construction of urban centers and the rapid change of geographic information in developing countries such as Mumbai and Bangalore.

Within months of going live, Proto had achieved 75% Google Maps coverage in Bangalore, while also providing new coverage in areas where Google Maps couldn't.

**12.**Dinari

**Product direction: **** US stock **** securities Token ******

Project Twitter:

Brief introduction**:**

Dinari is a Web3-oriented securities asset trading platform, Dinari uses smart contracts to tokenize securities called dShares, allowing users to trade traditional securities assets such as stocks, bonds, and ETFs on the on-chain. Currently, Dinari only runs on Arbitrum and supports the use of stablecoins such as USDC, USDC.e, and USDT to pay for transaction gas, without the need for native tokens such as ETH.

As Bitcoin continues to consolidate between $60,000 and $65,000, the encryption market ended the week sluggishly.

The University of Michigan's better-than-expected May consumer report, with broader consumer indicators hitting their lowest level in six months, revealed that inflation expectations for the year ahead rose to 3.5% from 3.2%, still at high levels compared to pre-pandemic values. The Fed appears to be in a "dilemma" between adapting to an economic slowdown and battling rising inflation expectations. After the release of the report, risk assets smoothed out the pump.

Bitcoin experienced a sharp sell-off near midday on Friday, falling from a low of $63,000 to a low of $60,155 and has been consolidating below $61,000 ever since.

At the time of writing, BTC is trading at $60500, down 3.45% fall 24 hours.

market capitalization the top 200 alts fall long pump, only 20 alts pump. Akash Network (AKT) was the best performer, pump 14.6% above and trading at $5.93, followed by Jito (JTO) pump 6.4% and ZetaChain (ZETA) pump 5.3%. ssv.network (SSV) had the largest fall with a fall of 17.5%, cat in a dogs world (MEW) fall 11.6%, and AIOZ Network (AIOZ) fall 8.2%.

The overall market capitalization of Crypto Assets is currently $2.25 trillion, with Bitcoin dominating 53.2%.

Equities pump fall mixed, with the Dow Jones trading pump for the eighth straight session, closing pump 0.32%, while the S&P pump 0.16% and the Nasdaq was flat.

Bitcoin is in a 'boring to death' phase

Charles Edwards, founder of Capriole Investment, a Crypto Assets Hedging fund, said in the X platform: "Bitcoin is in the 'boring to death' stage".

He explained that this consolidation period is likely to last from one to six months, during which the Bitcoin will Fluctuation in a low-Fluctuation range until market participants lose patience. He added that market sentiment will be the most negative until the end of the consolidation.

"When you're tired enough of sideways swings, common symptoms will include thinking that the halving has been priced in, that the bull market is over, and selling to buy stocks at the bottom, and that sentiment and shorts will peak before the big pump," Edwards said. ”

Chris Yin, CEO and co-founder of Plume Network, said: "The last few weeks have been between around 60,000 and 64,000, and the overall trend seems to be towards downward consolidation. Therefore, in the short term, we will see, but Bitcoin is likely to continue to slide for some time, which is natural. After Bitcoin Halving and months of price pump, there will naturally be some cooling, especially if the Fed hasn't cut rates aggressively. ”

Yin said excessive expectations for rate cuts meant that "the market was a little bit ahead of reality, so naturally there would be some pullbacks." In addition, global macro instability is also a problem, "in the context of increasing global conflicts", which leads to more panic and wait-and-see. Not to mention that all the wells have taken note of SEC Chairman Gensler's continued enforcement actions in the Crypto Assets space."

Chris Yin said that what people really need to focus on is the macro environment.

First, investors are waiting for improving economic data and signals of interest rate cuts, US inflation has been stubbornly high, so Jerome Powell will cut Intrerest Rate sharply when inflation cools. Once this happens, there will be a reversal in the relevant indicator – BTC ETF inflow data improves, and traders will feel comfortable injecting Liquidity again, driving BTC price pump upwards.

At the same time, the upcoming US election in November will be an important indicator because Trump has been saying that he is positive about Crypto Assets, and the Biden administration is clearly very negative about this asset class, Yin said: "If Trump wins, risk asset prices are Favourable Information, and if Biden wins, things tend to be conservative." ”

"The bottom may be near"

Analyst firm Santiment says the bottom may be near.

Santiment said on platform X on Friday that "traders are showing interest in 'buying the dips for Bitcoin's latest pullback." "In general, the lack of confidence in the crowd is a strong signal that the price is close to the bottom."

Bitfinex analysts noted in a note on Friday that Bitcoin's recent weakness comes against the backdrop of a surging dollar and waning expectations of interest rate cuts, and said the lull could continue into early summer.

"We expect the market to remain uncertain in the near term in a low Fluctuation environment until the actual tapering of QT (quantitative tightening) in June," the analysts said. ”

The Fed announced plans to curb the pace of balance sheet reduction starting next month, which will affect the liquidity of the US dollar, in favor of risk assets such as Crypto Assets, which are sensitive to the global liquidity environment. "The continued strength of Bitcoin and the recovery of range lows, as well as the simultaneous weakness of the US dollar, following the FOMC and job market data, is a new sign that will prepare us for a very bullish look for Bitcoin in Q3-Q4," Bitfinex reported.

background

In CertiK’s previous article “On-chain IPO Game, Large-scale RugPull Technique Revealed”, a large-scale exit scam automated harvester address 0xdf1a targeting IPO robots was revealed. This address completed more than 200 exit scams (hereinafter referred to as RugPull) in just about two months, but this gang does not only use one RugPull technique.

In the previous article, the RugPull method of the gang behind the address was described using the MUMI token as an example: the token balance of the tax address was directly modified through the code backdoor, but the total supply of the token was not modified, and no Transfer event was sent, so that users who checked etherscan could not discover the project party's secret minting of tokens.

Today's article uses the token "ZhongHua" as an example to analyze another RugPull method used by the gang: using complex tax function logic to cover up the transfer function that can be used for RugPull. Next, we will use the "ZhongHua" token case to analyze the details of another RugPull method at address 0xdf1a.

Deep into the scam

In this case, the project team exchanged a total of 999 billion ZhongHua for about 5.884 WETH, draining the liquidity of the pool. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the entire RugPull scam, we will sort out the context of the incident from the beginning.

Deployment Token

At 1:40 am on January 18 (UTC time, the same below), the attacker address (😈0x74fc) deployed an ERC20 token called ZhongHua (🪙0x71d7) and pre-mined 1 billion tokens and sent them to the attacker address (😈0x74fcfc).

The number of pre-mined tokens is consistent with the number defined in the contract source code.

Adding Liquidity

At 1:50 (10 minutes after the token was created), the attacker address (😈0x74fc) granted the Uniswap V2 Router the approval permission for ZhongHua tokens in preparation for adding liquidity.

One minute later, the attacker’s address (😈0x74fc) called the addLiquidityETH function in the Router to add liquidity to create the ZhongHua-WETH liquidity pool (🦄0x5c8b), adding all pre-mined tokens and 1.5 ETH to the liquidity pool, and finally obtained about 1.225 LP tokens.

From the above token transfer records, we can see that there is a transfer in which the attacker (😈0x74fc) sent 0 tokens to the ZhongHua token contract itself.

This transfer is not a regular transfer for adding liquidity. By looking at the source code of the token contract, it is found that a _getAmount function is implemented in it. This function is responsible for deducting money from the from address of the transfer and calculating the handling fee to be charged, and then sending the handling fee to the token address, and then triggering the Transfer event indicating that the token address has received the handling fee.

The _getAmount function will determine whether the sender of the transfer is the _owner. If it is the _owner, the handling fee will be set to 0. The _owner is assigned by the input parameter of the constructor when the Ownable contract is deployed.

The ZhongHua token contract inherits the Ownable contract and uses the deployer msg.sender as the input parameter of the Ownable constructor during deployment.

Therefore, the attacker address (😈0x74fc) is the _owner of the token contract. The 0 token transfer that adds liquidity is sent through the _getAmount function, because _getAmount will be called in the transfer and transferFrom functions.

Permanently Locked Liquidity

At 1:51 (within 1 minute of the creation of the liquidity pool), the attacker address (😈0x74fc) sent all 1.225 LP tokens obtained by adding liquidity directly to the 0xdead address to complete the permanent lock of the LP tokens.

As in the MUMI token case, when the LP is locked, the attacker's address (😈0x74fc) theoretically no longer has the ability to perform a RugPull by removing liquidity. In the RugPull scam targeting new bots led by address 0xdf1a, this step is mainly used to deceive the anti-fraud script of the new bot.

At this point, it seems to the user that all pre-mined tokens are used to add to the liquidity pool, and no abnormal situation has occurred.

RugPull

At 2:10 am (about 30 minutes after the ZhongHua token was created), the attacker address 2 (👹0x5100) deployed an attack contract (🔪0xc403) specifically for RugPull.

**As with the case of MUMI tokens, the project owner did not use the attack address that deployed the ZhongHua token contract, and the attack contract used for RugPull was not open source. The purpose was to increase the difficulty of tracing the source for technical personnel. Most RugPull scams have such characteristics. **

At 7:46am (about 6 hours after the token contract was created), the attacker address 2 (👹0x5100) performed a RugPull.

He transferred 999 billion ZhongHua tokens from the attack contract (🔪0xc403) and exchanged them for about 5.884 ETH by calling the "swapExactETHForTokens" method of the attack contract (🔪0xc403), draining most of the liquidity in the pool.

Since the attack contract (🔪0xc403) is not open source, we decompiled its bytecode and the results are as follows:

The main function of the "swapExactETHForTokens" function of the attack contract (🔪0xc403) is to first use approve to grant the UniswapV2 Router the maximum number of ZhongHua token transfer permissions, and then convert the caller's specified number of "xt" ZhongHua tokens (owned by the attack contract (🔪0xc403)) into ETH through the Router, and send it to the "_rescue" address declared in the attack contract (🔪0xc403).

It can be seen that the address corresponding to “_rescue” is the deployer of the attack contract (🔪0xc403): attacker address 2 (👹0x5100).

The input parameter xt of this RugPull transaction is 999,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which corresponds to 999 billion ZhongHua tokens (ZhongHua’s decimal is 9).

In the end, the project used 999 billion ZhongHua to drain the WETH in the liquidity pool and complete the RugPull.

As with the MUMI case in the previous article, we need to first confirm the source of the ZhongHua tokens in the attack contract (🔪0xc403). From the previous article, we learned that the total supply of ZhongHua tokens is 1 billion. After the RugPull ended, the total supply of ZhongHua tokens we queried in the block browser was still 1 billion, but the number of tokens sold by the attack contract (🔪0xc403) was 999 billion, which is 999 times the total supply recorded in the contract. Where do these tokens that far exceed the total supply come from?

We checked the ERC20 transfer event history of the contract and found that, like the RugPull case of the MUMI token, the attack contract (🔪0xc403) in the ZhongHua token case also had no ERC20 token transfer event.

In the case of MUMI, the tokens of the tax contract come from the modification of the balance directly in the token contract, which makes the tax contract directly have tokens far exceeding the total supply. Since the MUMI token contract does not modify the totalSupply of the token when modifying the balance, nor does it trigger the Transfer event, we cannot see the transfer record of the tokens of the tax contract in the MUMI case, as if the tokens used by the tax contract for RugPull appeared out of thin air.

Back to the ZhongHua case, the ZhongHua token in the attack contract (🔪0xc403) also seemed to appear out of thin air, so we also searched for the keyword "balance" in the ZhongHua token contract.

The results show that there are only three modifications to the balance variable in the entire token contract, in the "_getAmount", "_transferFrom" and "_transferBasic" functions.

Among them, "_getAmount" is used to handle the logic of collecting transfer fees, "_transferFrom" and "_transferBasic" are used to handle the transfer logic. There is no statement that directly modifies the balance as obviously as the MUMI token in the figure below.

More importantly, when the MUMI token contract directly modifies the balance of the tax contract, no Tranfer event is triggered. This is why we cannot query the token transfer event of the tax contract in the block browser, but the tax contract can have a large number of tokens.

However, in the ZhongHua token contract, no matter the "_getAmount", "_transferFrom" or "_transferBasic" functions, they all correctly trigger the Transfer event after modifying the balance. This conflicts with the situation that we could not find the Tranfer event of the token transfer when we queried the Transfer event related to the attack contract (🔪0xc403) earlier.

**Is it possible that unlike the MUMI case, the tokens in this attack contract (🔪0xc403) really appeared out of thin air? **

Technique Revealed

Where do the tokens for attacking contracts come from

In the process of analyzing the case, when we found that every time the balance was modified in the ZhongHua contract, the Transfer event was correctly triggered, but we could not find the token transfer record or Transfer event related to the attack contract (🔪0xc403), we needed to find a new analysis idea.

We queried a large number of transfer records and once used the "performZhongSwap" function in the contract as a breakthrough point. This function is responsible for selling tokens in the token contract. In other RugPull events we analyzed, there are many cases where this type of function is used as a RugPull backdoor.

Despite checking other functions, we still found nothing. So we began to focus on the "transfer" function itself. No matter how the attacker performs RugPull, the implementation logic of the "transfer" function must contain the most important information.

Fatal Transfer

The "transfer" function in the token contract directly calls the "_transferFrom" function.

It looks like the "transfer" function performs a token transfer operation, and a Transfer event is triggered after the transfer is completed.

**But before transferring tokens, the "transfer" function will first use the "_isNotTax" function to determine whether the sender of the transfer is a tax-free address: if not, the "_getAmount" function will be used to collect taxes; if so, no tax will be collected and the token will be sent directly to the recipient. And this is where the problem lies. **

As mentioned earlier, in the implementation of “_getAmount”, the token contract verifies the sender’s balance, deducts the sender’s amount, and then sends the handling fee to the token contract.

The problem is that "_getAmount" is only called when the sender is not a tax-free address. When the sender is a tax-free address, the amount is directly added to the recipient's balance.

At this point, the problem becomes very clear: when the tax-free address is used as the sender to transfer funds, the token contract does not verify whether the sender's balance is sufficient, and does not even subtract the amount from the sender's balance. This means that as long as it is a tax-free address defined by the token contract, any number of tokens can be sent to any address. This is why the attack contract (🔪0xc403) can directly transfer 999 times the total supply of tokens.

After inspection, it was found that the token contract only set _taxReceipt to the tax-free address in the constructor, and the address corresponding to _taxReceipt is exactly the attack contract (🔪0xc403).

Since then, the RugPull method of ZhongHua tokens has been confirmed: **The attacker used specific logic to circumvent the balance check of the privileged address, allowing the privileged address to transfer tokens out of thin air, thereby completing the RugPull. **

How to profit

Exploiting the above vulnerability, the attacker address 2 (👹0x5100) directly calls the privileged attack contract (🔪0xc403) "swapExactETHForTokens" to complete the RugPull. In the "swapExactETHForTokens" function, the attack contract (🔪0xc403) grants token transfer permissions to the Uniswap V2 Router, and then directly calls the Router's token exchange function to exchange 5.88 ETH in the pool with 999 billion ZhongHua tokens.

In fact, in addition to the above RugPull transaction, the project also sold tokens 11 times in the middle through the attack contract (🔪0xc403), and obtained a total of 9.64ETH; plus the last RugPull transaction, a total of 15.52ETH was obtained. The cost was only 1.5 ETH for adding liquidity, a small amount of handling fees for deploying contracts, and a small amount of ETH used to induce new bots to actively exchange.

The project team even used different EOA addresses to call the attack contract (🔪0xc403) to sell tokens, making it look like different senders were selling tokens in order to disguise their true intention of continuously cashing out.

Summarize

Now, looking back at the RugPull case of ZhongHua tokens, we find that the method itself is very simple, which is just to cancel the token balance check of the privileged address. But why was it not so smooth when analyzing this case? There may be two main reasons:

1. Security protection and attack have different perspectives. For security practitioners, the balance check in the code is the most basic security guarantee that needs to be completed. Therefore, most security practitioners subconsciously believe that the "transfer" function will naturally complete the verification of the user's balance and relax their vigilance against such vulnerabilities (or think that such vulnerabilities are too basic and attackers will not use them).

**However, from the attacker's perspective, the most effective attack method is often the simplest: not checking the balance is an effective and easily overlooked RugPull technique, and there is no reason not to use it. This is indeed the case. At least from the case characterization, the RugPull technique in the ZhongHua token case left the least traces, and it is much more difficult to track than other types of RugPull. In the end, it is still necessary to manually audit the code to locate the code backdoor. **

2. The project owner intentionally concealed the backdoor code that does not require the verification of the balance of the privileged address. The project owner even implemented a complete set of tax transfer calculation logic and token address withdrawal and reinvestment logic for non-privileged addresses, making the complex transfer logic of the tokens look reasonable. The transfers to other ordinary addresses are no different from normal behavior, and no clues can be found without carefully reading the code.

Comparing the team's RugPull cases against MUMI tokens and ZhongHua tokens, both of them use relatively covert methods to allow privileged addresses to have the right to control a large number of tokens.

**In the MUMI token RugPull case, the project party directly modified the balance without modifying the totalSupply or triggering the Transfer event, making it impossible for users to perceive that the privileged address already has a huge amount of tokens. **

**The ZhongHua token case is more thorough. By not checking the balance of the privileged address directly, it is impossible to find that the privileged address already has unlimited tokens by any means other than looking at the source code (using balanceOf to query the balance of the privileged address will show 0, but unlimited tokens can be transferred). **

The RugPull case of ZhongHua tokens reflects the potential security issues of token standards. In terms of security, the ERC20 token standard can only be used to constrain gentlemen but not to prevent villains. Attackers often hide backdoors that are difficult to detect while implementing business logic that meets the standards. If the token behavior is standardized, although the flexibility of the function is reduced, the possibility of hiding backdoors is avoided, providing more security guarantees.

On May 6, 2024, Kiosk, a new Web3 social application protocol based on the Farcaster protocol, announced that it has successfully completed a $10 million funding round, led by Electric Capital, with the participation of a16z Crypto, USV and Variant Fund, the participation of these well-known venture capital firms, marking the high recognition of the on-chain social and business model advocated by Kiosk in the Capital Market.

The $10 million funding round opens up a new horizon for the Web3 social track

Kiosks are designed to enhance in-app community building and commerce, with the aim of creating a new platform for social and business interaction. Kiosks provide a unique platform that allows creators to not only share rich media content, minting NFT, but also interact with like-minded individuals and transact seamlessly through a custom channel economy. The app emphasizes the combination of on-chain assets and social interaction, envisioning a more inclusive and connected Web3 experience through this convergence.

According to RootData, a Web3 asset data platform, Kiosk serves as a Farcaster client that gives creators the tools to build communities from scratch. Here, creators can share creative media content, use it as a NFT minting, and gather like-minded people in the channel, building a new type of channel economy, such as tipping and distribution, while also engaging with community members in real-time, all without leaving the app.

The proceeds will be used to further expand the Kiosk's product capabilities and user base. Farcaster plans to use the funds to continue to invest in marketing and user acquisition to strengthen the competitiveness and impact of its products in the Web3 shorts. This strategic investment not only shows investors' confidence in the future potential of the kiosk, but also indicates that the kiosk could become a key force in driving the convergence of social media and Blockchain technology.

With the popularity of Blockchain and Crypto Assets, the demand for digital asset in the market is rise day by day. Kiosk offers users a whole new way to interact through its innovative social and business integration solutions, helping to drive the entire Crypto Assets industry forward. In addition, the participation from heavyweight investors not only strengthened the market's confidence in the kiosk, but also added an optimistic outlook for the future of the entire Crypto Assets industry.

Overall, the successful financing of Farcaster's Kiosk app is an important validation of its innovative social and business model, demonstrating its great potential to drive Web3 social media growth. As the Kiosk further develops and improves, it is expected to have a profound impact on the social media and Blockchain industry.

Introduction to Kiosk: The social commerce platform of the Farcaster network

As an important client of the Farcaster network, the kiosk aims to provide a new social media and business platform for creators and communities. This app not only enables creators to build their own communities from scratch, but also allows them to share rich media content with the social graph and turn that content into NFTs. Kiosks, through their unique features, allow creators to gather like-minded collectors and collaborators on the platform, while building custom channel economics, such as tipping and distribution, for true community-driven and economic benefit sharing.

The design concept of the kiosk stems from the forward-thinking vision of its founder, Denis Nazarov. Nazarov is not only the founder of Mirror, but also an advisor to Uniswap Labs and an investment partner at a16z. His experience has brought deep industry experience and a broad perspective to the development of Kiosk. It is worth mentioning that Mirror has been acquisition by Paragraph and has shifted its focus to the development of kiosks. Currently, users can enter the waiting list by subscribing to the Kiosk and minting the NFT of the official announcement article, which provides a new avenue for Kiosk promotion and user engagement.

The main innovation of the kiosk is that it makes it easier for users to embed digital assets directly into social media posts. This means that users can not only showcase and quote NFT in their posts, but they can also take advantage of the Blockchain features embedded in the Kiosk, such as viewing NFT Blockchain Address directly or purchasing NFT directly through the post. The integration of these functions greatly simplifies the user's operation process and improves the efficiency and convenience of interaction.

Through these features, Kiosk not only promotes the integration of social media and Blockchain technology, but also provides users with a more dynamic and interactive platform, making the socialization and commercialization of on-chain assets more intuitive and easy to implement. The goal of the kiosk is to create a more inclusive and connected Web3 experience with these innovative features, giving users unprecedented ways to interact with each other through social and business interactions.

Overall, the kiosk, through its revolutionary design and features, heralds the increasingly seamless integration of social media and Blockchain transactions, opening up new directions and possibilities for the development of Web3. As the platform continues to mature and improve, it is expected to bring more long opportunities for innovation and development to the social media and Blockchain industries.

Farcaster: Highly secure Decentralization online community

Farcaster is not just another social web platform, but a decentralization social protocol. It harnesses the power of Blockchain technology to create a more open, transparent, and user-centric online community. Built on Optimism, an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution, Farcaster not only ensures data sovereignty and agency for users, but is also at the forefront of a new generation of social media platforms.

Farcaster was designed to address the data control and privacy shortcomings of traditional social media platforms. For example, common methods of tracking, geofencing, and cross-site tracking not only violate user privacy, but can also put user data at risk of being compromised. With a decentralization architecture, Farcaster eliminates the need to rely on centralized servers, thereby dropping the risk of data breaches and censorship.

Farcaster's technology architecture focuses on protecting user privacy and improving interoperability. The protocol uses smart contracts to manage user identities and social interactions, keeping user data secure and private. In addition, Farcaster focuses on performing off-chain operations to improve efficiency, which is designed to ensure the immutability of on-chain transactions while providing flexible ways to interact.

Smart contracts are one of the core components of Farcaster, which manages user accounts and social interactions on-chain. For example, the identity registry manages the creation of accounts, the storage registry oversees where user data is stored, and the secret key registry handles the encrypted keys required for users to interact with the network. Together, these contracts not only ensure the security and verifiability of user identities, but also improve the flexibility of interaction with the network.

Farcaster's social media platforms also have a special focus on user experience. It uses Optimism as its technical foundation, ensuring the smoothness of user operations while maintaining decentralization and security. To further enhance the user experience, Farcaster has also developed the Hub system, a peer-to-peer network of servers for storing and replicating messages. When users generate messages, they are first uploaded to the Hub, where they are verified and propagated to other Hubs in the network, forming a causally consistent network that ensures data consistency and reliability.

Overall, Farcaster offers a new social media solution that is secure, efficient, and user-friendly through its innovative decentralization architecture and smart contracts technology. It not only solves the core problems of existing social media platforms, such as privacy protection and data control, but also brings a new online social experience to users around the world, heralding a new direction for the development of social media.

By Zen, PANews

Recently, Fantasy.Top on Blast, a Ethereum Layer 2 network, has fueled a spike in volume and become one of the most profitable protocol or apps in the entire Crypto Assets space at a time when the market is on a downturn. On May 8, The Block reported that Fantasy.top became the sixth-ranked Crypto Assets protocol by fees and revenue generated; As of May 9, 60,000 card packs (300,000 cards) have been minting, 224,000 cards have been traded in Secondary Market, $10 million has been deposited into the treasury, and nearly 800,000 BlastGold has been allocated for the first time, of which 292,000 have been distributed to players, according to Parsec, a encryption on-chain data analysis platform Par Fantasy.Top sec.

Fantasy.Top: A card game that combines SocialFi with fantasy sports

Fantasy.Top is a SocialFi trading card game (TCG) that was launched on the Blast Mainnet on May 1st by the creator who goes by the pseudonym Travis Bickle. The project initially attracted the attention of the encryption community and was one of the 47 winning projects in Blast's BIG BANG competition. In its announcement, Blast referred to Fantasy.Top as "combining fantasy games and SocialFi to collect cards that encryption Twitter influencers and earn rewards based on their weekly performance on X." ”

Similar to the gameplay of the Ethereum fantasy soccer game Sorare, players need to open packs or buy them in the market to collect influencer cards, and at least 5 cards are required to assemble the match lineup. By creating their own fantasy lineup in a tournament, players will ultimately determine the scores of the selected "heroes" based on their social engagement on platform X for points and rewards. Each pack has 5 cards, which are dynamically priced according to demand, and as of May 10, their price is about 0.4 ETH, or about $1200.

Based on the Crypto Twitter community, long 100 unique "Hero" cards in the game are based on well-known traders, investors, analysts, and content creators in the encryption industry, including Blast founder Pacman, trader Ansem, "Big Brother Maji" Huang Licheng, and Su Zhu, co-founder of Three Arrows Capital.

Hero cards have four categories: Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary, and have a level mechanic, such as owning the same 5 cards, you can also fuse them to upgrade. In addition, each card has three scoring indicators, with stars representing their scoring potential based on last week's performance, and the two numbers below, from left to right, representing the hero's score and current position over the past 7 days based on various Twitter-related metrics. These metrics help players make decisions about how to place their lineup.

According to analyst Hildobby's Flipside Crypto dashboard, the NFT volume Fantasy.Top in the first week of the month exceeded 7,000 ETH, with a total of more than 31,000 users. As the popularity of Fantasy.Top climbs, the price of cards pump also high. On May 6, a Pacman Blur card was sold for 18.9 ETH. When the seller upgraded the card from Rare to Epic, he accidentally upgraded directly to the highest Legendary level, which cost only 2.6 ETH and made a profit of 16.3 ETH. Projects with skyrocketing revenues also offered a generous prize pool for the inaugural Main Contest, including more than $150,000 worth of Ethereum (50 ETH), an Airdrop distribution of 222,222 Blast Gold, as well as card packs and other in-game rewards.

Alternative coins of KOL-created content

Fantasy.Top says the goal is to be the ultimate financial infrastructure for online creators to coin their content at scale. This is similar to friend.tech that also target KOLs and make them coin their influence. However, the advantage of the Fantasy.Top reward mechanism is that it relies entirely on TwitterCrypto's traditional social media short, where influencers or creators don't need to create additional content on different platforms, but only interact on platform X, continuing what they have been doing for go long years.

It is worth mentioning that on the evening of May 10, another recently popular Web3 social platform tweeted Friend.Tech official X account, saying that all Fantasy.Top users shared $3 million worth of Blast Gold on paper, and their single user had earned $2 million worth of ETH, which was built in a different way. Later Fantasy.Top founder Travis Bickle retweeted and replied: "We need to work harder. "At the moment, Friend.Tech has deleted this tweet.

As the main characters of the game, these "heroes" earn a 1.5% fee from the trading of their cards, and 10% of the revenue from the sale of all card packs will also be distributed to them. In the first week of opening, all heroes received a total of 409 ETH, or about $1.25 million in prize money, of which 300 ETH came from card pack set sales, 109 ETH came from the card trading market, and each hero also had an average of 7,500 FAN points, which may be used for Airdrops in the future.

In the first week, the highest-paid content creator, Jenn Duong, was rewarded with 6.7 ETH, or about $20,500, and was also a problematic "hero". Over the weekend, Duong consciously made her Twitter account private for the time being after noticing an unusually high level of engagement on one of her Twitter videos. She said users are "manipulating" her content, or artificially inflating engagement, which she worries could cause potential problems for her game.

Due to the presence of automated bots, the total number of social media content engagements of Xu long "heroes" has been manipulated and abnormally increased. As a result, Fantasy.Top ended the "Main Contest" campaign early on May 9 and will address such issues by applying anti-bot systems to better identify bot-driven interactions, distinguish between replies and main tweets, and reduce differences between heroes.

**long How long can virality last? **

In the recent sharp cooling of the market, the sudden emergence of Fantasy.Top undoubtedly shows full rise potential and potential. From the perspective of the core design of the game, its user portrait is mainly the indigenous people of Twitter's encryption community. While encryption related projects shouted the slogan of aiming for mass adoption, Fantasy.Top focused entirely on the crypto world one-third of an acre of land, and cleverly used the influence of encryption KOLs in the industry.

However, in addition to the need for the project team to eliminate malicious interference by robots, whether it can establish a fair competition system still needs to be observed for a long time. The combination of encryption Twitter influencers and NFT games, as well as its winner-takes-all design mechanism, has also raised concerns that the project may be just a short-term hype. Some players said that after finding out that Fantasy.Top was Whale the game, they sold their cards and quit the game, and after the end of the free and discounted package activities launched by the Fantasy.Top, the high price of their card packs also discouraged civilian players, and the minting of the game was greatly reduced. In addition, there are also many long players who report that they will inexplicably get or lose cards in the game, and it is suspected that there is a problem with the front end of the game.

In short, the virality of Fantasy.Top has only just begun, and this encryption upstart still has long problems to solve. Will it be a carnival to the end, or will it calm down after the hustle and bustle, and what will the future hold? PANews will also continue to pay attention.

By Nancy, PANews

Berachain is one of the most popular high-valuation public chains in the current market, but its co-founder Smokey has recently been criticized by the community for dissociating himself from Cosmos.

Due to the huge financing and strong investment lineup, Berachain has gained a lot of enthusiasm in the market. In April 2023, Berachain announced that it had secured a $42 million funding round from Polychain Capital, OKX Ventures, Hack VC, Dao5, Tribe Capital, former partner of Dragonfly Capital and founder of Celestia, Mustafa Al-Bassam, before acquiring Brevan Howard at a valuation of $1.5 billion in March this year Digital and Framework Ventures, among others, invested $69 million in Series B funding to become unicorns, and it was subsequently revealed that their funding had increased to $100 million.

While Berachain is not expected to launch its Mainnet until the second quarter of this year, it has already launched its public Testnet Artio. According to @0x_Umeshu statistics, there are more than 90 Berachain ecological projects, covering Restaking, Gaming, NFT and Decentralized Finance.

Although many users reported that the interaction of the Berachain testnet was very stuck, and the faucet often did not receive "water", its participation was still high. According to the Testnet Artio browser data, as of May 10, the number of transactions on Berachain exceeded 1.678 million, the total number of addresses has reached 17.7 million, 1338w, and the current number of daily active Addresses is 902,000. At the same time, the popularity of Berachain has also driven the popularity of related NFTs, including Baby Bears, Bong Bears, Boo Bears and Bond Bears. According to Dune, as of May 10, these NFT market capitalization have exceeded $100 million.

At a time when the market is highly sought after, Berachain, which is built on the Cosmos SDK, has caused controversy due to "drawing a line" with Cosmos. It all started with a tweet.

On May 8, @QwQiao, the former head of product at Messari, tweeted, "After delving into chain abstraction and AppChain meta-concepts, I'm officially a big fan of Cosmos. Chain abstraction: IBC is probably one of the best bridges available, providing cheap, fast and secure settlement without the need to solve its underlying technology; For AppChains: Seeing projects like dYdX and Hyperliquid choose Cosmos over Ethereum has dramatically changed my opinion. Somehow, while the visions of Cosmos and Ethereum are converging, Cosmos is somehow lagging behind Ethereum. Perhaps Cosmos lacks a spiritual leader like Vitalik (Ethereum co-founder) and a more outspoken tech evangelist like Mert (CEO of Helius). In another parallel universe, if Vitalik hadn't been influenced by Bitcoin maximalists and hadn't created Ethereum in 2014, Cosmos might have won. ”

Smokey tweeted, "Cosmos doesn't understand GTM (Go-To-Market) at all, and said that while the analysis is logically valid, it's unrealistic at the moment. ”

And long wick candle replied to the comment that "Berachain is a Blockchain running on the Cosmos SDK", Bera v2 is more of a Ethereum than Cosmos (including its stake mechanics), and that Cosmos needs a new community or rebranding. Berachain does not position itself as a Cosmos chain.

As soon as this statement came out, the Cosmos community immediately exploded. Someone said, "It's okay not to Airdrop or dislike Cosmos to the Cosmos community, but this kind of behavior of rubbing Cosmos' popularity and ridicule is appropriate and standing, not to mention that the early technology has forked Cosmos." Others believe that "it comes down to the failure of Cosmos to grow, and Berachain's emphasis on being an EVM rather than a Cosmos chain may also be behind it to inflate its valuation." ”

In response, Smokey clarified that they have never denied that Berachain is using the Cosmos SDK, but that doesn't mean it has to be called a Cosmos chain. Berachain is closer to Ethereum than Cosmos, which will be reflected in the upcoming new version of Polaris, a modular EVM framework. In fact, from the perspective of developer adoption, brand recognition, and overall image, the chain known as Cosmos has harmed Berachain in longing ways such as talent recruitment, venture capital, and development experience. The Cosmos SDK is an important part of Berachain's technology stack, and although it has some drawbacks, it has a lot of potential. And he thinks that Cosmos as a whole will reap greater benefits by helping to implement good technology behind the scenes rather than being the protagonist.

In addition, Smokey emphasized that Cosmos is not the main reason for Berachain's attention, but its ecosystem, community building, and Liquidity our Proof of Liquidity mechanism.

"Berachain was developed using Polaris EVM, Cosmos' CometBFT+Cosmos open source EVM-compatible framework. The founders are so disgusted and fiercely debated about the label of Cosmos Chain, on the one hand, because the encryption gangster culture objectively exists, and as former OHM team members, they are unwilling to offend the Ethereum community; On the other hand, Berachain's POL Consensus Mechanism needs to suck blood from the Ethereum ecology, and if it arouses Ethereum community's vigilance and disgust like Celestia, it will only be half the Nth power. For this controversy, the research institute @@0xNing0x explained.

In 2024, with the upgrade of Ethereum Dencun, the Decentralized Finance track will also be renewed. In the Ethereum stake ecosystem, represented by Liquidity re-stake, innovative projects are constantly emerging, bringing new opportunities to the ecosystem and users.

Among them ether.fi as a leader in Liquidity re-stake, it has attracted global attention through its unique non-custodial and Decentralization stake solutions that not only enhance the security of the network, but also provide users with an efficient way to encryption assets rise.

At the same time, its rising TVL shows the enthusiasm of users for the project - according to DefiLlama data, as of April 2024, the ether.fi TVL is about $4 billion, accounting for half of the Liquidity stake market (the total TVL of the overall track is $10 billion).

In order to better understand the ether.fi, this paper will summarize and analyze its technology implementation, market performance, ecosystem development and future planning from long aspects, so as to depict its innovations and challenges in the process of promoting Decentralized Finance innovation, and provide some reference materials for the majority of participants in the Liquidity re-stake track.

Project Introduction

ether.fi plays a key role in the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) sector, especially in the Ethereum stake and Liquidity re stake markets.

As the leading non-custodial stake solution, ether.fi provides users with services and features that give them full control over their encryption assets and the ability to monetize their stake. At the same time, ether.fi is able to maintain Liquidity while keeping encryption assets safe. In the underlying technology, ether.fi introduces advanced technologies such as Distributed Validator Technology (DVT), which greatly enhances the security and Decentralization of the Ethereum network, while also providing transparent monitoring of validator behavior.

Based on powerful technology and innovative solutions, ether.fi wants to be the benchmark for Decentralized Finance services, leading the next 100 million users to participate in the encryption world, and is committed to driving the development of Decentralized Finance in a more secure, transparent, and low-barrier manner. For example, while maintaining full control over the user's funds, it provides a simple, intuitive operation interface and comprehensive educational resources.

In terms of governance, ether.fi encryption has adopted the world's most democratic and fair organizational model, the DAO (DAO), which ensures that all key decisions are voted on by community members by holding and using ETHFI Token. This model not only ensures transparency and fairness in the project, but also allows community members to directly participate in the development of the ether.fi and co-shape the future of the project.

Technical Architecture

Based on three core technologies, ether.fi can provide users with safe and reliable Decentralized Finance services while driving the development of security, transparency, and Decentralization across the industry.

Smart contracts

As with other financial products in Decentralized Finance, ether.fi uses smart contracts as its underlying logic. smart contracts controls all aspects of stake, re-stake, reward distribution, and Node operations, and is at the heart of the ether.fi protocol and key to ensuring transparency, security, and non-custodial across all transactions. To ensure the security of the smart contracts, ether.fi conducted long rounds of rigorous security audits, including code reviews and stress tests conducted by well-known third-party security firms Certik and OpenZeppelin.

Secret key management technology

In ether.fi, Secret Key management is a key technology to ensure the security of user assets. To enable users to have complete control over their assets, ether.fi uses advanced encryption technologies such as ECIES to encryption the user's authenticator Secret Key and set rules that only designated Node operators can decrypt and use these Secret Key to launch authenticators. With this set of encryption and Secret Key protections, each stake ether.fi has full control over the keys to their stake assets.

Decentralization validators Technology (DVT)

Decentralization validators Technology (DVT) is one of the major innovations in the ether.fi technology architecture. DVT allows longest independent validators to jointly manage a single Node, spreading risk and increasing the network's resilience to attacks. In ether.fi's DVT model, the validators Secret Key is play people for suckers into long parts that are distributed to different Node carriers, and the authentication Node can only be operated if long or all carriers work together.

DVT not only enhances the security of the system, but also enhances the Decentralization of the Ethereum network by providing a more fair and transparent verification process. In this way, the dependence of the entire network on a single validators is ether.fi drop, making the network more robust and reliable.

Product features

ether.fi protocol designed a range of innovative services to support and extend the Ethereum stake ecosystem, including delegated stake, liquidity pool and re-stake, and Node services, each of which can long wick candle provide a solution to a specific need.

Delegated staking

ether.fi's delegated stake feature is based on a Decentralization and non-custodial mechanism that allows users to participate in the verification process of the Ethereum network. In this process, when a user stakes 32 ETH, two NFTs are generated: T-NFT and B-NFT. T-NFT represents transferable ownership of 30 ETH, while B-NFT represents the remaining 2 ETH and gives holders additional responsibilities and risks, such as monitoring the performance of validators. Based on the application of such NFT, ether.fi not only provides Liquidity of stake assets, but also enhances the security and transparency of the entire stake process.

Liquidity pools and re-staking

As a Liquidity re stake leader, the core function of ether.fi must be Liquidity stake.

In ether.fi, users who participate in liquidity re-stake ether.fi stake less than 32 ETH and automatically receive the equivalent amount of eETH or weETH in protocol minting. These tokens can be freely traded, ensuring that users can quickly exchange back to ETH or other encryption assets when liquidity is needed. At the same time, the ETH stake liquidity pool is not stored statically, but is dynamically re-stake on other Decentralized Finance protocol or Ethereum verification Node to increase the efficiency of the use of funds and generate additional income, thereby increasing the total return of users who hold eETH and weETH.

Since eETH and weETH have the properties of ERC-20 tokens, in addition to holding them for liquidity pool yields, they can also be used in various Decentralized Finance platforms, such as lending, liquidity provision, or as a medium of exchange. Once again, these playways enhance the usefulness of the ether.fi Token and expand the scope and potential benefits for users in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Node service

ether.fi's Node services provide operators with a business model that leverages ether.fi infrastructure to provide services to stake and other network participants, including running validators, providing a secure and stable Node operating environment, and other value-added services such as performance monitoring and data analytics.

These services not only improve the stability and security of the Ethereum network, but also create new revenue channels for Node operators, driving the business potential and sustainable development of the entire ecosystem.

Economic model

According to ether.fi's external information, the total supply of ETHFI is 1,000,000,000, of which:

• 23.26% is allocated to core contributors, i.e., core team members who continue to develop Ether.fi protocol and build communities, and this part of the Token will be gradually unlocked over three years;
• 27.24% allocated to the DAO Treasury to support the development of ecosystems and fund projects and community activities related to ether.fi ecosystems;
• 11% is allocated to user Airdrops to reward users for engagement and loyalty, as well as to attract new users. The total airdrop volume in the first quarter was 68,000,000 and the actual claim volume was 46,596,978;
• 6% allocated to partners to ensure the long-term rise of the project;
• 32.5% is distributed to investors and aims to reward early investors and fund providers who support the development of the project, and this part of the token will be unlocked over two years.

At the same time, ether.fi gives ETHFI and its holders long applicable ways and rights:

• DAO governance. ETHFI Token holders can participate in the platform's governance decisions and vote on key protocol updates and changes;
• Incentives. ETHFI Token is an important part of the platform to reward users who participate in staking and running nodes, and encourage them to contribute to the security and stability of the network.
• Payment of fees. ETHFI Token can be used to pay for various protocol fees incurred when trading and operating on the ether.fi platform.

Ecological development

The expansion and influence of ether.fi ecosystem is due to its go-to-market strategy, community engagement, strategic partnerships, and real-time feedback from the market. Together, these elements make up ether.fi's competitiveness in the Liquidity stake track.

Market Strategy

From the very beginning of ether.fi's launch, it was clear that the team had established a clear market positioning and developed a series of promotional strategies to enhance its market visibility and appeal. Especially at the time of launch, whether it is to launch products when the market re-stakes is at its highest, or to attract users to participate in the form of points and Airdrops, it is a reflection of a successful market strategy.

According to Dune statistics, ETHFI Airdrop attracted 43,717 independent Wallet to participate in the application on the same day, and a total of 85,911 independent Wallet Address have completed the application by the end of April. And according to DeFilLama data, ether.fi's TVL has reached a staggering $3.138B due to Airdrop expectations.

Incentives

In addition to the TVL brought by Airdrop activities, ether.fi also planned other incentive activities to not only increase the enthusiasm and activity of community participation, but also attract more long participants from the outside. For example, the recent "Staking Frens" event held in ether.fi can not only earn the same amount of ETHFI, but also provide more long rewards, such as ZK, OMNI reward shares, ether.fi and EigenLayer Airdrop points, and so on.

The event managed to attract a large number of attendees, with ether.fi TVL reaching a maximum of $3.892B during the event, according to DeFilLama.

Strategic cooperation

Since its launch, ether.fi has been seeking strategic cooperation with other platforms, applications, and infrastructure. For example, in "Staking Frens", we continue to combine with other application combinations to provide more long incentives to attract users from different ecosystems to participate. For example, it recently announced a partnership with the SSV Network to enhance the security and decentralization of the network by integrating decentralized validator technology (DVT).

In addition, for the practical application of eETH and weETH, ether.fi is also expanding its cooperation with other well-known Decentralized Finance platforms, making it easier for ether.fi users to use their Liquidity stake Token on these platforms.

Market feedback

Overall, the current encryption market's attitudes and perceptions towards ether.fi are positive. The two most critical metrics are:

TVL。 As of the end of April, ether.fi successfully exceeded $4 billion, and although it has subsequently shrunk, it is still stable at more than 3.9 billion, accounting for only 40% of the market share of the Liquidity stake track.

ETHFI。 Affected by the overall market, the current price of ETHFI is around 3.8 USDT, which is higher than the issuance price and some encryption assets. ETHFI ranks 151 in market capitalization and has a market Circulating Supply of nearly $113M in the past 24 hours, both of which belong to the upstream level of the industry.

Therefore, despite the impact that changes in the market environment may have an impact on it, based on the current market acceptance and user feedback, ether.fi remains in a leader position to provide Liquidity re stake services.

Future developments

According to the roadmap released by ether.fi, its future development plan closely combines technological innovation and market demand, and is committed to promoting the continuous progress and rise of the Decentralized Finance ecosystem. Here are the key directions for ether.fi in the future:

• Technology iteration and optimization. According to the roadmap released, ether.fi will continue to deepen its Decentralization validators technology (DVT) to improve the security and scalability of the network. In addition, the planned upgrade includes improvements to the Secret Key management process to further secure user assets.
• Improve the governance model. ether.fi plans to gradually introduce a more comprehensive DAO governance structure in the future, allowing community members to be more directly involved in protocol decision-making. This measure will ensure transparency and fairness protocol while enhancing users' trust and participation in the platform.
• Expand the partner network. In order to strengthen its market position and expand its ecosystem, ether.fi will seek to establish partnerships with more long Decentralized Finance projects and TradFi institutions. These collaborations will help bring in new user groups and further enrich ether.fi's products and services through partner technologies and services.
• Enhance marketing activities. In light of increased competition in the market, ether.fi plans to increase marketing and user education activities on a global scale. By providing more long educational resources and engagement opportunities, it aims to attract more long users to the ether.fi platform while increasing the engagement and loyalty of existing users.
• Promote technology standardization. ether.fi is committed to promoting interoperability and standardization with other major Decentralized Finance protocol, and will continue to do so through leadership or participation in relevant industry organizations and standards development in the future.

Risk assessment

During the development of ether.fi, while the project demonstrated significant growth potential and innovation, it also faced a number of risks that could affect its operational efficiency and market performance. The following are the main risk factors for ether.fi projects:

• Smart contracts security risks. As a Blockchain-based Decentralized Finance project, ether.fi relies heavily on smart contracts technology. Although smart contracts have been heavily audited and tested longest, there is still a risk of being hacked or having unknown vulnerabilities. Such risks may lead to the loss of users' funds and affect the credibility of the platform.
• Secret key management risk. ether.fi provides non-custodial encryption asset management services, and users must manage their Secret Key on their own. This increases the risk of lost or stolen secret keys due to user error. While ether.fi has invested heavily in user education and Secret Key protection technologies, it has not been able to completely eliminate this risk.
• Regulatory risk. As the encryption industry comes under increasing focus from regulators around the world, there may be more regulations long affect the Decentralized Finance industry in the future. These regulatory measures may include, but are not limited to, restrictions on the movement of funds, changes in tax policies, or outright injunctions on encryption assets, which may negatively impact ether.fi's operations.
• Market risk. encryption market is extremely Fluctuation, and ether.fi's Token ETHFI and its associated financial products may experience significant price Fluctuation. This Fluctuation may be affected by macroeconomic factors, market sentiment and other external events, such as ETHFI pumping to 10 USDT in March and currently falling to 5 USDT.
• Technical failures or performance issues. ether.fi technology architecture, while advanced, like all technology systems, can experience unexpected technical failures or performance bottlenecks. Systemic technical issues can lead to service interruptions, affecting the user experience and the overall security of the system.

Summary

Today, liquid staking and re stake continue to be one of the mainstreams in the Decentralized Finance and encryption industry, and ether.fi has established itself in the Decentralized Finance space by providing innovative non-custodial Liquidity stake solutions. However, there are still longest challenges ahead. Whether ether.fi can continue to maintain its leader position and continue to demonstrate its strong innovation and technological capabilities, and finally achieve its vision, still needs to be tested by the market price and the market.