On June 27, Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, said that he had applied to the SEC for the Solana ETF. The new fund, called VanEck Solana Trust, is the first Solana ETF to be applied for in the United States. He said: "The native token SOL functions similarly to other digital commodities such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, and is used to pay transaction fees and computing services on the blockchain. Like ETH on the Ethereum network, SOL can be traded on digital asset platforms or used for peer-to-peer transactions. James Seyffart, ETF analyst at Bloomberg, posted on social media that the Solana ETF "came earlier" than expected, but the approval rate is still unknown. Whether it passes or not, it is enough to excite the dormant crypto community. After all, this round of the market can be described as an ETF bull market.

In the past two months, although there have been many hot events such as memes and Airdrops of top projects, the market has been in a rather strange depressed atmosphere - the howling of bears seems to be faintly audible, and the footsteps of bulls are not far away. The market collapse and restart seem to be only a moment away. This article aims to explore and sort out some fermentation events hidden in the market in the past two months, and at the same time look forward to the positive factors that may be overlooked in the future, and look forward to the main plot that may take up the main responsibility in the second half of the year.

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BTC spot ETF inflow turns from negative to positive The market always likes to overestimate the short-term effects of new things and underestimate their long-term influence. For the Bitcoin spot ETF, which has been launched for nearly half a year, there is a signal worth paying attention to recently: According to SoSoValue data, Bitcoin spot ETF has shown a new round of capital inflow since mid-May, which lasted for nearly a month, and on June 4th, it reached the second highest value in history of US$886 million (second only to US$1.05 billion on March 12).

Because it may not make money. Last week, Cathie Wood’s Ark Fund decided to withdraw its ETH ETF application.

Ark BTC ETF ranks 4th (6% market share, the top 3 are BlackRock, Grayscale and Fidelity), but according to market speculation, it is "not very profitable". The main reason is that the fee rate of BTC ETF is relatively low compared with traditional ETFs, many of which are in the range of 0.19-0.25%, and ETFs are also engaged in "fee rate competition".

A simple estimate shows that with the current scale of Ark BTC ETF, it can earn about 7 million US dollars in management fees a year, so the corresponding costs are probably of the same order of magnitude. Therefore, if Ark BTC ETF is still hovering near the profit line, then for Ark, pushing ETH ETF may become a loss-making business. So even Ark can only reluctantly give up ETH ETF. From a purely business perspective, mainstream coins with lower market capitalization, such as $SOL , have a market capitalization of 5% of $BTC. In order to recover the annual cost of 7 million US dollars, an ETF must manage at least 20 million SOL. BlackRock, the current leader in crypto ETFs, only manages 1.5% of the BTC in the entire network, while 20 million SOL means 4.5% of the paper circulation of $SOL .

By simplifying the user experience of blockchain, more than 1 billion users will be brought into the blockchain world.

Coinbase first announced the concept of its smart wallet at ETHDenver in February this year and provided a beta version for developers.

So, what exactly do Coinbase Smart Wallets look like from a user’s perspective? What are their capabilities? Are they secure?

What is Coinbase Smart Wallet

As a new upgraded version of the self-custodial wallet, Coinbase said that its Smart Wallet solves several major pain points in the current cryptocurrency experience, including a complicated onboarding process, high network fees, and cumbersome steps such as the need for recovery phrases.

In the early morning of June 7th, Beijing time, the Base Meme Online Summit came to an end. As a small-scale Base ecosystem Meme coin project exchange meeting, Base protocol leader Jesse Pollak issued a new call at the meeting: Calling on the Meme coin project to lead more users into the Base ecosystem. It can be seen that Meme coin is still a sector that the Base ecosystem has high hopes for, and Base’s current TVL of nearly US$8 billion and its ranking second in the L2 network TVL are precisely due to this achievement.

The history of the Base Meme coin: One person is an army

According to the latest data from Coingecko, the current total market value of Base Meme coin is about 2.27 billion US dollars, which is about 25% of the total TVL of Base ecosystem. Of course, this data has certain errors, because, firstly, this data only calculates the liquid market value of 64 Base ecosystem tokens, and nearly half of them have almost zero liquidity and market value data is missing; secondly, this data does not include the Meme coin chain projects that have emerged one after another in the Base ecosystem, so it is only for reference.

4 years ago, if someone told you that in this round of US presidential election, candidates from both parties would actively promote their recognition and support for the encryption industry, even to the extent of "comparison", would you believe it? You must think that person is crazy. But the reality is so dramatic. For the encryption industry, the 2024 U.S. presidential election has become a politician's show that is completely different from the 2020 and 2016 elections - whether it is the issue setting throughout the election cycle or the presidential candidates of both parties. The public statements of both parties have begun to involve cryptocurrency as never before, and the candidates of both parties are even "comparing" their own open attitudes. This article will briefly explore the undercurrent behind this significant variable, that is, whether the U.S. cryptocurrency policy trend is really turning the wheel, and what will the changing attitudes of many politicians and regulators mean in 2024? How will the encryption and Web3 industries be affected?

L2 beat data shows that the Base chain TVL is approximately US$7.27 billion, ranking third in layer 2, second only to OP's US$7.567 billion.

Judging from the data growth, there is no doubt that it will surpass OP in the short term.

Although the DeFi application of Base chain is not very good, it is obvious that a large amount of funds are pouring in.

Regarding Base Chain, the public has two impressions. One is that social applications are very strong, including Farcaster, Friend.tech, etc. The other is that MEME is a coin paradise, second only to Solana.

The Base chain team also values ​​MEME. Jesse Pollak, the head of the Base protocol, is the spiritual leader and leader of the Base chain MEME coin. He frequently retweets X tweets for the MEME coin project.

With the mission of bringing more users onto the chain, Base launched its mainnet in June last year. Through branding and marketing activities focused on the community, creators, and developers, it has become a consumer-facing on-chain application center in less than a year.
Base has recently seen a surge in users and transaction volume due to market factors such as EIP-4844 lowering aggregation fees and the Meme craze, coupled with internal factors such as the growth of the Farcaster community and the increase in on-chain applications.
Unlike other blockchain ecosystems that focus primarily on DeFi and infrastructure, Base provides consumer-oriented applications similar to traditional Web2 services. This is driven by its unique community and brand, and brings more applications on-chain.

The world of cryptocurrency is constantly evolving, with new players and new trends emerging almost every day. Recently, the rise of Memecoin has created a wave of excitement in the crypto community. These tokens are often inspired by online memes and pop culture, and have gone from being jokes to strong competitors in the digital asset market.
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The Rise of Memecoin 1) A Brief History As the name suggests, Memecoin is a cryptocurrency inspired by Memes, which refer to those funny and often viral pictures and videos that circulate on the Internet. The concept started as a joke experiment, but it quickly gained traction. The first major Memecoin was Dogecoin, which was launched in 2013 and was originally just a joke. However, it wasn't long before Dogecoin attracted the attention of the wider crypto community with its active online community and support from celebrities such as Musk.

In the past year, have you encountered a Rug Pull project? Have you encountered the "buy-in peak" due to the advocacy of KOLs? Or suffered losses caused by increasingly rampant phishing attacks? Or have you bought a newly launched token on a leading platform and it has been falling all the way? It is estimated that many users are sympathetic and have been hit by at least one of these scenarios. It can be said that this should be a reflection of the investment experience and true state of mind of most ordinary investors in the past period of time: whether it is on-chain security issues or asset shrinkage issues, it is hard for users to guard against it. Many pitfalls that were commonplace before have even begun to be industrialized. To put it bluntly, even the "leek roots" have been uprooted.

This year is the half-yearly decrease in Bitcoin price as part of the four-year cycle of the crypto market, but most people do not seem to be very happy, and some may be at a loss. People who are used to "looking for a sword by carving a mark on a boat" find that this bull market is obviously "not in line with expectations". As the market fluctuates and even remains sluggish, some people begin to feel a sense of frustration like "waiting for a rabbit by a tree", and are uneasy about the question of "is the bull still there?"

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Why is this bull market so different? In the past 10 years, the crypto market has experienced four bull-bear cycles, including the current one. This bull market seems to be very different from the previous ones. People who have experienced the previous three bull markets should not find it difficult to find the clues after careful analysis: 1) Differences and similarities between the previous three bull-bear cycles a. Similarities

Recently, some crypto holders cried out that they were "cheated"! They thought that the bull market had reached this point, and according to the "plot" of Ethereum, the big white horse, Ethereum should have outperformed Bitcoin. However, at this moment, facing the stable Bitcoin, Ethereum still could not be as strong as in the last round of market, so some people began to FUD, thinking that with the Bitcoin ecosystem in full swing in front and the fast competing public chain Solana blocking the way, Ethereum might not be able to survive!

Ethereum is always growing & innovating1) The number of addresses continues to grow

According to OKlink statistics, Ethereum's total number of addresses, daily active addresses, and non-zero addresses on the chain have all shown a steady growth trend since 2017.

With the constant changes of the "atypical bear market", the "halving" narrative that has never faded in the crypto world has arrived. On April 20, 2024, the block reward will be reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Everything in the past is a prologue. As one of the most important narratives in the crypto industry, "Bitcoin halving" has always been a good medicine to boost market confidence. Now that the bull market seems to be within reach, will this round of halving cycle follow the same rhyme as before?

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The historical cycle of halving is a grand event for the crypto industry. In particular, the first two halving cycles of Bitcoin have seen an astonishing increase of dozens of times (in the short term, after the two halvings, both There was a short-term decline as the profits were exhausted, but then the adjustment was completed and a long-term rise emerged). However, starting from the third halving in 2020, as the number of industry practitioners, market attention and the improvement of supporting infrastructure have all improved significantly than before, Bitcoin is no longer a niche product limited to geek circles. linkage with more external factors. Briefly summarized: before the first two halvings (2012, 50BTC to 25BTC; 2016, 25BTC to 12.5BTC), geeks in the circle were more concerned about the possibility of Bitcoin as electronic cash; the third halving (2020, 12.5BTC to 6.25BTC) During the cycle, the focus on Bitcoin shifted to its attributes as a payment tool, which also triggered a series of debates (the subsequent BCH fork was almost the top trend in the circle); and In the fourth halving cycle (2024, 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC), with the approval of the application for Bitcoin spot ETF, Bitcoin has become an alternative asset, and focusing on traditional institutions and capital layout has begun to become the main theme; so compared After the first two halvings, the popularity of Bitcoin’s third halving was also unprecedented. At the same time, the overall political and economic environment of the world during Bitcoin’s third halving also affected its performance:

Between 2015 and 2017, Bitcoin experienced an internal conflict known as the “block size war.” This was a key conflict in Bitcoin’s history, with both sides arguing over what they believed to be the correct scaling strategy for the Bitcoin network to ensure it could meet growing demand over time. The two factions in this debate were known as big blockers and small blockers. Big blockers advocated for increasing the original size of Bitcoin blocks from 1MB to 8MB. This would increase Bitcoin transaction throughput by eight times while reducing transaction costs. Small blockers advocated for keeping the block size unchanged, arguing that increasing the block size would jeopardize Bitcoin’s decentralization because it would make the Bitcoin blockchain more difficult for regular users to run and verify. Small blockers ultimately proposed an alternative path called Segregated Witness (SegWit), which would optimize the number of transactions that could fit into a block rather than directly increasing the block size. Segregated Witness would also open the door to scaling solutions outside of the core Bitcoin protocol, known as Layer 2 scaling. To better support these views, small blockers wanted to scale in two ways:

Last year, due to the popularity of inscriptions, everyone began to shift their attention from Ethereum to Bitcoin, especially institutions, which began to spend money to lay out the Bitcoin ecological infrastructure. Recently, Bitcoin Layer2 such as BEVM and BOB have completed financing ranging from millions to tens of millions. In addition, the recent launch of Nervos' RGB++ and the casting of Seal have made the popularity of Bitcoin Layer2 CKB (CKB, translated as public knowledge base, is the first layer of the Nervos Network, responsible for storing all transaction data and smart contracts) soar. Today, let's learn about Bitcoin Layer2. There are many Bitcoin Layer2s on the market. We simply divide them into four categories, namely Bitcoin sidechain, UTXO+client verification, Rollp and Taproot Consensus. This article is divided into two parts, and today we will introduce the first two categories.