Blockchain & cryptocurrency market summary news – May 16
The state of Wisconsin invested more than $163 million in shares of Bitcoin Spot ETFs
The Wisconsin State Investment Board (SWIB) has revealed its investments in Bitcoin Spot ETFs, specifically SWIB purchased 2,450,400 shares of BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) worth 99,000 shares. 1 million USD and 1,013,000 shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) worth 63.6 million USD, totaling more than 163 million USD invested in Bitcoin Spot ETFs in the first quarter of 2024, which is considered a step SWIB's strategy to diversify its investment portfolio and take advantage of the potential benefits of cryptocurrencies, and SWIB also owns shares of other cryptocurrency companies such as Coinbase, Marathon Digital, Riot Platforms, Block, Cipher Mining, Cleanspark and MicroStrategy, this move could become a model for other state investment councils to refer to.
Collaborator Cypher stole the hack reimbursement fund and took it to gamble
In August 2023, the DeFi Cypher protocol belonging to the Solana ecosystem was hacked, losing nearly 1 million USD. Afterwards, Cypher recovered $600,000 and set up a separate wallet to refund victims of the hack. However, recently, a key Cypher collaborator, Hoak, admitted to stealing part of this recovered money and gambling. Hoak siphoned off ETH, WSOL, BONK and several other cryptocurrencies through 36 transactions from Cypher's redemption contract, totaling about 300,000 USD. This incident was discovered by another contributor, Barrett, who contacted law enforcement. After 1 day of being accused, Hoak confessed, admitted his wrongdoing and said he was having mental health problems due to gambling addiction. Cypher is currently still trying to raise money to repay victims as well as restart the exchange.
Aave announces layer-2 Lens Network based on zkSync technology
Lens Protocol has just announced the launch of Lens Network, a SocialFi network based on zkSync technology. Lens Network will be built on Matter Labs' modular ZK Stack infrastructure, to increase transaction speed while maintaining low costs. It will also use account abstraction to provide gas-free and login-free transactions for users.
Momoka, the layer-3 Optimistic developed by Lens, will continue to operate. However, applications are encouraged to migrate to Lens Network as the project plans to discontinue Momoka. Lens Network is expected to solve the scalability limitations of blockchain, improving user experience.
Lido and Paradigm invest in EigenLayer's staking competitor
Lido and Paradigm, two major investors, are investing in the new project Symbiotic to compete with EigenLayer in the field of staking. Symbiotic will allow restaking of liquid staking tokens such as Lido's stETH and other assets not yet supported by EigenLayer. The difference is that Symbiotic supports many ERC-20 tokens, not just limited to ETH and ETH liquid staking versions.
Many projects on the EigenLayer platform started reaching out and wanted to integrate with Symbiotic as well as other liquid staking protocols. However, Symbiotic is still in development and not much information is available.
Lido is the largest DeFi project on the market, but Lido's position has been challenged by EigenLayer and the new staking model. Symbiotic is expected to become a new competitor of EigenLayer in this field.
