Headlines
SEC officially approves spot Ethereum ETF
According to the SEC documents, the SEC has approved the spot Ethereum ETFs of several issuers, including BlackRock, Fidelity and Grayscale. It should be noted that only the 19 B-4 form has been approved, and the S-1 form is still required to officially start trading. The specific approval time has not yet been determined, but it is expected to be a few weeks later.
US House of Representatives passes bill prohibiting the Federal Reserve from creating a CBDC
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would prohibit the Federal Reserve from creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC). (Bitcoin Magazine)
The Federal Reserve released meeting minutes: 5.25% to 5.5% high interest rate policy may continue for a longer period of time
The Federal Reserve released the minutes of its interest rate meeting from April 30 to May 1 yesterday. The minutes showed that after the US inflation data failed to meet expectations for three consecutive months, Fed officials believed that interest rates would need to remain high for longer than previously expected. At the interest rate meeting, the Fed, as expected, continued to maintain the interest rate level at 5.25%-5.5%, and prepared to slow down the pace of balance sheet reduction from June, reducing the monthly redemption limit of US Treasury bonds from US$60 billion to US$25 billion. (Caixin.com)
Industry News
The Montenegrin Ministry of Justice recently met with the US SEC to discuss the Do Kwon investigation
Montenegro's Ministry of Justice said on Wednesday that authorities recently met with representatives of the U.S. SEC to discuss an investigation into former Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, as well as broader issues in cryptocurrency investor protection. The ministry said in a statement that the U.S. SEC has submitted its findings on Do Kwon and court proceedings against him in the United States to Attorney General Andrej Milović. While the press release did not reveal specific details about what Do Kwon discussed, the discussion could mean progress in Do Kwon's extradition case, which had been at a stalemate for months over whether he would be extradited to the United States or South Korea. (The Block)
Parts of FIT 21 may change and need to be approved by the U.S. Senate, after which Biden will have ten days to sign or veto it
The 21st Century Financial Innovation and Technology Act (FIT 21, HR 4763), led by the US Republican Party, was passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, local time. However, it may take several months for the 100-member Senate to consider the bill. Some of the content of FIT 21 may change. Members of the House and Senate will meet to resolve differences in their respective versions of the bill before final approval, after which US President Biden will have ten days to sign or veto it. Even if Biden vetoes the bill at that time, the House and Senate can return it to the two houses with at least a two-thirds majority vote, thereby overturning Biden's veto. (Cointelgraph) Earlier, Gary Gensler, chairman of the US SEC, said on Wednesday that the 21st Century Financial Innovation and Technology Act (FIT 21) would harm investors and hinder the work of the SEC.
BlackRock Spot Ethereum ETF is listed on the DTCC website with the ticker ETHA
Watcher.Guru monitoring pointed out that BlackRock's spot Ethereum ETF has been listed on the DTCC website with the code ETHA.
ETF approval decisions are not made by a vote of the five commissioners, but by the trading and market department based on authorization.
The approval document for the spot Ethereum ETF shows that the approval decision was made by the SEC's Trading and Markets Division, not five commissioners including SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. In the document on the approval of Form 19 b-4 for companies such as BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Bitwise, VanEck, Ark, Invesco Galaxy and Franklin Templeton, the last line reads: "This decision was made by the (SEC) Trading and Markets Division on behalf of the Commission, pursuant to the authorization authority." Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said that it is normal for the SEC to make decisions through authorization. (The Block)
Project News
Consensys plans to go public through blockchain and is seeking acquisition opportunities
Consensys CEO Joe Lubin said the company wants to use crypto-native methods to attract public investment and is looking for acquisition opportunities. When asked about "Consensys's path to listing," Lubin said "We've been talking about this for a long time." "There are different ways to go public in our ecosystem," he continued, "You can launch a protocol, you can tokenize the protocol, you can externalize the project." But he did say Consensys might spin off MetaMask or other divisions, such as toolkit developers Infura or Linea. Consensys is working with audit firm KPMG, but declined to provide specific details. In addition, Lubin made it clear that Consensys will choose to go public through the blockchain route rather than listing on Nasdaq or other stock exchanges. He added: "If we do go public in some form, we always tend to do something with our own technology. This does not mean that we want to leave the U.S. capital market, which has strong depth and liquidity. But there may be a way to go public using our own technology and still make it available to people." (DL News)
Galxe Quest launches LRT activity involving ether.fi, Puffer and other platforms
According to official news, Galxe Quest launched Liquid Restaking Token related activities, involving platforms including ether.fi, Karak, Puffer Finance, SSV Network, Ion Protocol, and Inception.
Base announces 10th cohort of 2024 Builder Grants winners
Base has announced the tenth batch of projects for the 2024 Builder Grants, covering multiple fields including Meme, DePIN, social, games, infrastructure, etc. The specific winners are Bolide, Offline Nostalgia, Scaffold-Eth, Surreal, TOKEN.CACHE, OtoCo, Fresh Crypto Lib, and MiCROMiGOS.
Divvy.Bet announces DVY token economics: total 1 billion, 5% for airdrops
Jupiter's third LFG candidate project Divvy.Bet announced the DVY token economics, with a total supply of 1 billion, and the specific distribution ratios are as follows: -40% allocated to the community and ecosystem (staking and betting rewards); -9% for private sales; -10% for public sales; -5% for airdrops; -2.5% for liquidity; -8% for market and cooperation; -10.5% for the team; -15% for the foundation treasury. According to previous news, Jupiter LFG's third round of voting has been opened at 1:00 am today, for a period of 3 days, and will end at 1:00 am on May 26. It is reported that the candidate projects for Jupiter LFG's current round of voting are the cross-chain interoperability protocol deBridge, the betting platform Divvy.Bet, and the NFT market Exchange Art.
friend.tech launches Keydrops feature, allowing users to give away Club keys
friend.tech announced on the X platform that it has launched the Keydrops feature. When a user holds more than one Club key, they can choose to give the key to anyone.
Telegram to launch in-app currency Telegram Stars to counter Apple App Store payment restrictions
Starting from June 12, Telegram will launch a new in-app currency, Telegram Stars. Users can buy Telegram Stars through Apple and Google in-app purchases, and then use it to pay for digital goods and services within Telegram bots/applets. Many developers said they received notifications about the launch of the token, and Telegram marketing channels also released relevant messages. According to reports, Apple has notified Telegram and issued a warning to it for violating Articles 4.7 and 3.1.1 of the Application Review Rules, that is, it accepted payments and services from customers without using Apple's internal purchase mechanism. According to reports, users will be able to purchase Stars through shopping tools in the App Store and Google Play, and may be charged a 30% service commission. Developers will be able to view their Telegram Stars balance and withdraw them on the TON chain at any time. (Rozetked)
StarkWare announces ZKThreads, a scaling framework based on ZK execution sharding
StarkWare has partnered with Cartridge to launch ZKThreads, a new scaling framework based on ZK execution sharding. ZKThreads aims to solve the fragmentation problem by providing a standardized development environment that supports verifiable applications. ZKThreads will be particularly beneficial for high-performance DApps, such as blockchain games and DEX on Starknet. Cartridge will initially leverage ZKThreads to scale blockchain games. The estimated development time for ZKThreads is expected to be 9 months, after which it will be implemented on the testnet. At the core of the ZKThreads architecture are several basic components: a batcher, a prover, and various contracts that handle application logic and state changes on networks such as Starknet. This setup is designed to ensure that transactions on Starknet are both accurate and available. (The Block)
UniSat will airdrop the “pizza” inscription to eligible user wallets
UniSat announced that it will airdrop the "pizza" inscription to eligible user wallets. The claim page shows that addresses that have interacted with UniSat services within 3 months, addresses that hold more than 500 UniSat points, addresses that have interacted in the brc 20-swap module, and UniSat OG Pass holders can all obtain the inscription. After the user claims on the page, there is no need to pay a handling fee. UniSat will send the inscription to the user's wallet after the inscription is completed.
Liquidity staking protocol ClayStack announced that it will stop operating and will only support withdrawals from now on
ClayStack, the Ethereum liquidity staking protocol, announced that it has decided to cease operations due to a lack of resources and product-market fit in the platform’s continuous operation over the past three years. Effective immediately, ClayStack will enter a withdrawal-only mode, and the platform has already conducted a staking operation, and it is expected that funds can be claimed before June 18.
STEPN will launch a new social fitness application STEPN GO and will launch a new token GGT
STEPN announced that it will launch a new social fitness app called STEPN GO, which will unlock new social, health and rewards features. STEPN GO has released a white paper and website. According to the trailer, the new app will include:-Easy to join the Haus system, support lending sneakers;-GGT tokens: Earn the new GO GAME TOKEN (GGT) by walking or running;-Customizable avatars and clothing: Build and equip unique digital images and clothing, and display them on the interactive map of the application;-Energy system: In order to maintain economic sustainability, users need to burn sneakers to obtain energy and increase the energy limit.
Loopring: 2.5 million TKO tokens received from airdrop will be distributed to the community
Ethereum Layer 2 protocol Loopring posted on the X platform that it has received 2.5 million TKO from the Taiko airdrop, which will be distributed to its loyal community users. The airdrop inspection and collection portal will be officially released next week, which will contain more details about the eligibility criteria.
Character*Voice
Bloomberg analyst: Demand for SOL ETF may be huge, but SEC’s tough stance will be a huge obstacle
James Seyffart, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg, said in an article on X that, in addition to BTC and ETH, the demand for SOL ETF may be greater than other digital assets, but the problem is that the SEC's attitude towards SOL is completely different from that towards ETH. In previous lawsuits against Coinbase, Kraken and other companies, the SEC has stated bluntly that "Solana (SOL) is a security", which may make SOL's ETF road very bumpy.
Vitalik: L2 is consistent with the underlying scaling method of executing shards, but key challenges such as coordination need to be addressed
Vitalik Buterin published an article today titled "How do layer 2 s really differ from execution sharding?", in which he mentioned that in public discourse, "Layer 2 " and "sharding" are often described as two opposite strategies for how to scale blockchains. But when you look at the underlying technology, you'll find a conundrum: the actual underlying scaling methods are exactly the same, including some data sharding, fraud proofs (fraud prover) or ZK-SNARK proofs, and cross-(rollup, shard) communication solutions. The main difference is: who is responsible for building and updating these parts, and how much autonomy do they have? An L2-centric ecosystem is a very real sharding in the technical sense, but in this sharding, you can create your own shards with your own rules. This is powerful and supports a lot of creativity and autonomous innovation. But it also faces key challenges, especially in terms of coordination. For an L2-centric ecosystem like Ethereum to succeed, it needs to understand these challenges and address them head-on in order to get as many benefits as possible from an L1-centric ecosystem and get as close to the best of both worlds as possible.
Taiko Lianchuang: In order to avoid unnecessary disputes, the details of the TKO Genesis airdrop will not be disclosed
Taiko co-founder and CEO danielwang.eth posted on the X platform: "In order to avoid unnecessary debate, we will not disclose the detailed TKO Genesis airdrop rules. Our goal is fairness, but we cannot satisfy everyone. Congratulations to those who received TKO, and apologize to those who did not receive TKO." Earlier, Taiko officially announced the launch of the TKO airdrop qualification query page, which will allocate 5% of the initial supply.
Taiko Lianchuang responded to the airdrop question: People who don’t like it can leave, and we have zero tolerance for all abusive behavior
In response to the Chinese community's questions, Taiko co-founder and CEO Daniel Wang replied in a post on Discord: "1. I have zero tolerance for insulting me, my team, our family and friends for any reason. No matter whether what you say makes sense or not. 2. We are a partner of Galaxy, not working for them. We do not refer to the Galaxy rankings. We count the Taiko-related activities we participate in on Galaxy, but the weight is not large (it seems to be in the single digits). 3. If you did not get the airdrop, it is because others have more points than you, it's that simple. 4. The rules are not transparent because transparency cannot resolve differences. Everyone has a strong subjective definition of "fairness". We cannot unify and do not try to reach a consensus. I have no intention of arguing with you whether Taiko is a good project. You can dislike us and you can leave. We are not without fault and there is a lot of room for improvement. But as far as airdrops are concerned, no project can please everyone: those who are very happy to get airdrops are rarely willing to share their joy publicly. I will no longer respond to comments related to airdrops."
US SEC Chairman: Not all crypto tokens are securities
Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said: “I believe the SEC has legal tools applicable to the cryptocurrency securities space and does not presume that all crypto tokens are securities.”
Skybridge Capital founder: We will be ready for SOL ETF
“We’re going to be ready for a SOL ETF,” Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, said on the X platform.
Investment and Financing
Dora Factory Completes $10 Million Strategic Financing
According to official news, decentralized governance infrastructure Dora Factory announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing of US$10 million, with participation from 15 well-known institutions and individuals including Nomad Capital, No Limit Holdings, Cloud Nine Capital, Singapore UOB Web3 Venture Capital Fund UVM Signum Blockchain Fund, Cai Wensheng's Longling Capital, Cosmos Ecosystem OG Interop Ventures, and Eigenlayer co-founder Calvin Liu. This round of financing will accelerate the strategic expansion of Dora Factory's decentralized governance and public goods funding technology system.
Pencils Protocol Completes $2.1 Million Seed Round, Valuing $25 Million
According to official news, the Scroll ecosystem project Pencils Protocol announced the completion of a $2.1 million seed round of financing, with a current valuation of $25 million. It is reported that this round of financing was participated in by many well-known institutions such as OKX Ventures, Animoca Brands, Galxe, Gate.io Labs, Aquarius, Presto and Agarwood Capital, as well as many individual investors including Scroll co-founder Sandy Peng, V Fund partner Ashely Xiong, Inception Capital co-founder David Gan, Cyberconnect founder Ryan Li and Arcanum Capital co-founder Lucia Zhang. At present, Pencils Protocol has officially launched the Season 3 stage event. Participating in the event Staking Pool staking can earn high APR income, and obtain a series of point rewards including Scroll Marks, Pencils points, EigenLayer points, StakeStone W 1 Points, Kelp Miles, Puffer Points, and Ecological Alliance airdrop rewards.
MANTRA completes a new round of strategic financing, Laser Digital participates in the investment
According to official news, MANTRA announced that it has completed a new round of strategic financing. Laser Digital, the digital asset subsidiary of global financial services giant Nomura Securities, participated in the investment. The purpose is to accelerate MANTRA's goal of building an RWA Layer 1 blockchain for the Middle East and Asian markets. The specific amount of financing and valuation have not yet been disclosed.
Plume Network Completes $10 Million Seed Round Led by Haun Ventures
RWA Layer 2 network Plume Network announced the completion of a $10 million seed round of financing, led by Haun Ventures, with participation from Galaxy Ventures, Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel, Portal Ventures and Reciprocal Ventures, as well as angel investors including Anthony Ramirez of Wormhole Labs and Calvin Liu of Eigenlayer. Plume is a modular, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible second-layer network that currently focuses on the RWA field. (TheBlock)
Fantom Foundation Completes $10 Million Strategic Financing, Led by Hashed
The Fantom Foundation announced the completion of a $10 million strategic financing led by Hashed, with participation from UOB Ventures, Signum Capital, SoftBank, Aave Foundation, etc. This round of financing will be used to support the newly established Sonic Foundation and Sonic Labs, as well as strategic growth and ecosystem development, with a particular focus on enhancing the liquidity of automated market makers and money market blue chip pools. This move is aimed at attracting users from Ethereum and other layer 2 networks. (Theblock)
Security incidents
Degen: 3.6 million DEGENs have been refunded to users who lost funds due to Degen chain failure
Degen announced on the X platform that it has refunded 3.6 million DEGEN to users who lost funds on the Reservoir Relay bridge due to the Degen chain failure. Degen said it will continue to support all users affected by the failure.
