1. Pepe Token Market Value Reaches $6 Billion, Becoming the Largest Meme Coin Launch in 2023
The Pepe (PEPE) token has a market cap of $6 billion, becoming the largest memecoin launch of 2023. The recent surge in PEPE’s value is partly attributed to its use as a leveraged bet on the growth of the Ethereum ecosystem, with traders anticipating the approval of a spot ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States. Earlier this week, the “beta bet” narrative boosted the frog-themed token’s value by nearly 40%, swiftly moving it into the top 20 tokens by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap data. The PEPE token was launched in April 2023 and quickly surged to a market cap of $1 billion a few weeks after going live. Since then, it has become one of the leading memecoins, reaching a market cap of $6 billion on Thursday.
2. Farcaster user daily interaction data has hit record highs since the 21st
According to Dune data, the decentralized social protocol Farcaster has repeatedly hit record highs in daily user interactions (posting, liking, etc.) since the 21st. As of yesterday, Farcaster had 69,901 unique reactions and 60,387 unique casts. On May 22, Farcaster completed a $150 million financing led by Paradigm, with participation from a16z crypto, Haun, USV, Variant, Standard Crypto, etc. The announcement stated that this year will focus on daily active user growth and adding developer primitives to the protocol, such as channels and direct messaging.
3. Federal Reserve: 18 million Americans used or owned cryptocurrencies last year
The Federal Reserve's latest annual household survey showed that the number of American adults who reported owning or using cryptocurrencies fell to about 18 million last year. According to the Federal Reserve's Household Economic and Decision Making Survey (SHED) released on May 21, 7% of American adults surveyed said they had used cryptocurrencies in the 12 months ending October last year, down from 10% in 2022 and 12% in 2021. Only 1% of adults said they used cryptocurrencies as a payment method or remittance, down by half from 2022, while 7% of adults bought or held cryptocurrencies as investments.
4. Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) trading volume on the 21st hit a new high since May 2021, reaching US$680 million
On May 23, according to data from The Blcok, the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) had a trading volume of US$687 million on the 21st, a new high since May 21. The previous high was US$842 million on May 19, 2021.
5. Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 1.48% to 84.38 T
According to BTC.com data, the difficulty of Bitcoin mining has been adjusted at block height 844,704 (2024-05-2314:18:50), with the mining difficulty increased by 1.48% to 84.38T. The current network computing power is 612.18EH/s.
6.Vitalik: L2 is consistent with the underlying scaling method of sharding, but key challenges such as coordination need to be addressed
Vitalik Buterin published an article today titled "How do layer 2s 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 blockchain. But when you look at the underlying technology, you'll find a puzzle: the actual underlying scaling methods are exactly the same. You have some data shards. You have fraud provers or ZK-SNARK proofs. You have 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 ecosystem centered on L2 is a very real sharding in the technical sense, but in this sharding, you can create your own shard with your own rules. This is powerful and supports a lot of creativity and autonomous innovation. But it also faces key challenges, especially in coordination. For an L2-centric ecosystem like Ethereum to succeed, it needs to understand these challenges and address them head-on in order to gain as many benefits of an L1-centric ecosystem as possible and get as close to the best of both worlds as possible.
7.Consensys CEO: Ethereum ETF approval has "huge U.S. political problems"
Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin said that early applications to launch an Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) are "almost complete" in the United States. Several 19b-4 applications filed by companies like BlackRock will be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, the process of launching them to the public may be longer and may be delayed for some time, which is a huge U.S. political issue. Lubin also revealed that Donald Trump's campaign team has been in contact with the cryptocurrency ecosystem for two months, trying to develop a strategy to support cryptocurrencies. With the U.S. presidential election approaching, the SEC is under pressure to take a neutral stance, and the approval of the ETH ETF may make the SEC a "thoughtful regulator." In addition, Consensys filed a legal lawsuit against the SEC in April, opposing the undisclosed decision to classify ETH as a security. Lubin criticized the current SEC Chairman Gary Gensler for more stringent regulation. Consensys has provided more than 100,000 pages of documents and is ready to invest tens of millions of dollars in the legal battle to deal with the SEC's regulation of MetaMask, staking and the Ethereum protocol.
8. Uniswap front-end transaction fees exceed $30 million
DefiLlama data shows that as of May 22, Uniswap front-end transaction fees (revenue) reached US$30.24 million.
