Finishing: Mars Finance
Mars Crypto Daily April 10, 2024
1. Today's news
On April 10, according to Tencent Finance's "Frontline", the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission urgently updated the list of virtual asset management funds in the early morning of April 10 because it planned to announce the list of the first batch of spot bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong on April 15.
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission originally planned to approve a total of 4 spot bitcoin ETFs in the first batch, including ChinaAMC, Bosera Fund and Value Partners in addition to Harvest International. However, Bosera Fund and Value Partners have not yet appeared in the list of virtual asset management funds updated by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission in the early morning of April 10.
According to the Hong Kong process, after the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission approved the first batch of spot bitcoin ETFs on April 15, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange needed about 2 weeks to prepare for the product listing and other matters, but the entire spot bitcoin ETF project had detailed communication and planning with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in advance, and it was expected to be completed in about 10 days. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission originally planned to list spot bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong around April 25, but no later than the end of April.
CyberConnect announces the launch of Cyber Restaking, an innovative feature powered by EigenLayer and a liquidity restaking protocol. This feature allows users to participate in the re-staking of ETH in advance through a dual-staking model on CyberL2, the first social and mass-adopted re-staking Ethereum Layer 2. Starting April 9, users can start earning Cyber Restaking Points by depositing liquid staking token (LRT) assets from Renzo (ezETH), Puffer Finance (pufETH), and ether.fi (weETH).
Cyber Restaking Points are designed to incentivize early stakers and communities, helping to direct native liquidity to CyberL2. Users can earn yield and points on their deposits, including ETH staking yields, ETH staking yields, EigenLayer points, LRT points, and Cyber Restaking points.
Users can deposit repledged assets to earn additional Cyber Restaking Points from today, and the first 2 ETH staked by users will receive double points, as well as an invitation revenue share. Cyber will leverage EigenDA as a DA solution to bring an inexpensive and scalable on-chain web3 social experience. The mainnet is scheduled to go live in Q2 2024.
According to Tencent Finance's "Frontline", the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission updated the list of fund companies for virtual asset management on its official website, adding Harvest International Asset Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Harvest International) and China Asset Management (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Asset Management), that is, on top of the original traditional asset management business of these public funds, a new virtual asset management business has been added.
Harvest International and China Asset Management are among the first batch of Hong Kong-based public funds to be included in the list of virtual asset management fund companies.
Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings Inc., a US-listed miner, said in an interview: "I think the Bitcoin spot ETF was a huge success, attracting money and essentially precipitating an upside that should not have occurred three to six months after the halving." It also said: "This halving event will reduce the supply of bitcoin by about 450 coins per day, which may have some small impact on the price." As Bitcoin miners, we are very excited about the upcoming halving, and this time the price did not go down before the halving, but went up. So everybody is obviously maximizing that. ”
Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, said in an interview that investors do not need to over-read bitcoin's recent breakout failures, which may represent the nervousness ahead of the release of the US consumer price index (CPI). It added that Wall Street's tech-heavy Nasdaq rose on Tuesday, providing a positive signal for bitcoin and other risk assets, meaning that Bitcoin's decline could be short-lived.
Note: The National Bureau of Labor Statistics will release CPI data for March 2024 at 20:30 today.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said that while negotiations are still ongoing, she expects to introduce new stablecoin legislation with Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, later this week or next week. Gillibrand calls its goal "to unlock the potential of cryptocurrencies, as well as to achieve the initial goal of Bitcoin as a payment instrument." We work with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the New York State Department of Financial Services to allow non-depository institutions to issue stablecoins while promoting the safety and soundness of the industry. Last year, Senate Banking Committee member Lummis and Senate Agriculture Committee member Gillibrand reintroduced the Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act, creating a comprehensive regulatory framework for all cryptoassets. In terms of the new standalone stablecoin legislation, Gillibrand said: "We are ensuring that state and federal regulators have regulatory powers to weed out bad actors while fostering growth and innovation. We ask all issuers to ensure that the reserves return to a 1:1 ratio. ”
Etherscan data shows that the current Ethereum network gas fee has been reduced to 14 gwei.
ERC404 project Pandora posted on the X platform that it has launched the second of the three strategies, the ERC-404 trading marketplace Box Protocol. Pandora calls it "OpenSea For ERC-404" in a promotional video, and it has the ability to trade, manage, and analyze ERC-404 assets.
More than $1.35 billion worth of BTC options and more than $770 million in ETH options contracts with a notional value will expire on Friday (April 12), according to Deribit data. Among them, the biggest pain point price of BTC is $69,000, and the biggest pain point price of ETH is $3,400.
Saga posted on Platform X that the first snapshot of SAGA stakers will be taken in April.
According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, nine hours ago, the Uniswap team/early investor associated wallet sold 15,000 UNI on the chain, worth $167,000, with an average selling price of $11.18. The address has sold 265,000 UNIs since 2024 for a total value of $2.48 million, and still holds $3.84 million worth of UNI.
EigenLayer, an Ethereum restaking protocol, announced the official launch of Ethereum mainnet and the launch of EigenDA, a data availability (DA) service on mainnet.
EigenDA is an active verification service (AVS) developed by Eigen Labs to help other blockchain protocols store transaction data and other information.
The initial release of EigenLayer will limit some features. Eigen Labs CEO Sreeram Kannan called the protocol's initial release a "beta beta" in an interview last week.
It's worth noting that AVS outside of Eigen Labs' EigenDA will be able to "register" with the protocol, but they can't be fully deployed at this time.
EigenLayer posted on the X platform: "This mainnet launch does not include: (1) in-agreement payments from AVS to operators, and (2) slashing". Slashing refers to the method that EigenLayer will use to ensure the honesty of AVS operators, who (also known as validators) are at risk of having their stake revoked if acting in bad faith.
"We are allowing the EigenLayer marketplace to grow and stabilize before introducing in-protocol payment and slashing features, which will go live on mainnet later this year," EigenLayer said. ”
The NFTfi Foundation, launched by NFT lending protocol NFTfi, has announced the tokenomics details of the governance token NFTFI, which is reported to be a native ERC-20 token with a supply of 2 billion and an estimated initial circulation of 220 million, and the token is expected to open the NFTFI claim portal later in April, and the token will be distributed as follows: 1. Community and rewards; 2. Foundations and ecosystems; 3. Early strategic supporters and strategic supporters 4. Core contributors. In addition, the NFTfi Foundation also said that it will soon announce and establish an NFTfi Council as the first step towards a decentralized governance system.
People who have registered for a World ID can request the iris scan to be removed, which the Worldccoin project says will do after a six-month "cooling-off" period, in addition to implementing "on-site age verification checks" to prevent people under the age of 18 from registering. Worldcoin is reported to have assigned World IDs to nearly 5 million people who have agreed to undergo iris scans to prove their "personality," or that they are human.
According to official sources, ZetaChain said that just two months after the release of its mainnet beta, the total number of weekly active users has reached 2.56 million, in addition to distributing 120,000 ZETA to 21,000 qualified testnet users on Galxe, and launching the BTC NFT claim task.
a16z Crypto has released a zkEVM solution called Jolt to provide a framework for EVM-compatible rollups using SNARKs. "In addition to the increased speed, because Jolt is based on a new design paradigm, it's easier for developers to scale and it's easier to audit, which improves security," a16z Crypto said. ”
With about 10 days left until the expected Bitcoin halving, BTC could rise by more than 160% after the halving, reaching a cycle top of more than $150,000, according to a research report shared by Bitfinex analysts. "Using a simple regression model, it is predicted that the price of BTC will soar by 160% in the next 14 months after the halving, bringing the price to between $150,000 and $169,000," the report reads. ”
2. Selected articles
The authors believe that personal opinions should not be relied upon as the basis for investment decisions. The policies of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department will bring a new round of fiat liquidity, supporting cryptocurrencies and stocks. The discount window is a lifesaver for banks, but the rules are not very attractive at the moment. Central banks have a range of tricks to print money, but there will also be periods of slowdown in liquidity growth, negatively impacting risk markets. The May 1 meeting decided to reduce the pace of QT by $30 billion per month, which is good for dollar liquidity. As the tax day approaches, the TGA balance is expected to be well above $750 billion, which will boost the market. The author decided to abandon trading before May, but is still enthusiastic about the cryptocurrency market.
LRT is a liquidity repledge token that can provide liquidity on centralized exchanges. They trade at a price close to ETH's, but at a slight premium. The liquidity of LRT is important and affects the trust and transaction value of market participants. As LRTs enter the broader DeFi ecosystem, their importance will increase. Liquidity and fee structures can make the difference between winning and losing, and token incentives may play a role in this. As LRTs enter the lending market, liquidity will become even more important.
EigenLayer announced the launch of the EigenDA data availability service on the Ethereum mainnet and rolled out in phases to ensure security and performance. Several projects are ready to become AVS, including Ritual and Fhenix. EigenLayer received $100 million investment from a16z, and TVL exceeded $13.3 billion. The mainnet launch is still not final, restricting some features such as AVS payments and slashing. The market is focused on EigenDA's competition in the crypto space.
There are many ways to classify stablecoins, most of which are not fully collateralized, but there are exceptions. USDe is a fully collateralized, semi-centralized stablecoin whose collateral value changes with changes in spot prices and futures position values. Ethena offers two methods: delivery contracts and perpetual contracts, which have different yields, but both can obtain low-risk returns. The USDe market is capped at $12.8 billion, with 500% room for growth. Funds are held in escrow by a third party, eliminating the risk of centralized exchanges. Other risks include contracts, liquidations, operations, exchanges, etc., which are detailed by Ethena and Chaos Labs.
3. Project interpretation
BORED is an anti-Memecoin token that was launched by KOL Bored and attracted the support of more than 8,000 addresses during the fundraising phase, raising about $5.3 million. After the launch, the price opened high and went low, and finally soared 4 times. Early participants panicked selling, and later realized the hype, causing the price to rise again. Currently, BORED is still trading on the Farcaster platform. The project was not advertised until word spread. The Farcaster platform was where Bored first released projects and built a community, but limited its reach. The BORED token price has fallen, but it may develop into part of the on-chain reputation system in the future and be used for community activities. As an anti-Memecoin project, BORED's development expectations are not yet clear. We are all boring travelers in search of wealth and freedom.
The cryptocurrency project Arkham sparked community discussions due to the top of the list, and recently transferred 25 million tokens from the wallet address, of which 6 million were transferred to the Binance address, and it was rumored that the project party cashed out and smashed the market. Arkham bills itself as the world's first on-chain intelligence exchange, with investors including the founder of OpenAI. The recent cold AI concept and community rumors have led to the price of ARKM halved. Data analysis shows that the team may unlock the tokens in advance and transfer them to the exchange for sale. The project team responded that the token transfer was in line with governance norms and voted to establish a fund pool. The team denied that the 25 million ARKM unlock came from the locked tokens, but 6 million ARKM flowed into Binance, which may be the team's early lock-in revenue that caused the 20% drop yesterday.
The a16z cryptographic team has released a new SNARK design method, Jolt, which is 2x faster than existing technology and can be used for both blockchain and non-blockchain. Jolt is an emerging zkVM with 2x faster performance than SP1 and a codebase of less than 25,000 lines, providing guidance and roadmaps. Jolt is an open-source public good that accelerates zkVM and SNARK research and advances the development of the web3 industry. Jolt's performance has reached state-of-the-art levels, but there is still room for improvement, and there are plans to add RISC-V support for integer multiplication and division and the use of continuations for chunk calculations. The Jolt validator effectively verifies constant-size Groth16 proofs on-chain.
In 2024, the Bitcoin ecosystem will be the focus of attention, and the price of Bitcoin has soared many times, and the L2 track has attracted much attention. BVMnetwork stands out for its innovative solutions and powerful technology, with the price of BVM's native token rising by 64.1% in a week. Merlin Chain, as a popular BTC L2 project, has a TVL of $330 million, and has launched MERL tokens and M-Tokens. Nubit is a scalable Bitcoin data availability layer that solves data capacity limitations. MERL tokens will be released once in April, and users can exchange M-tokens for original assets by burning them. Mirror Staking Protocol provides a decentralized staking solution for Bitcoin's layer-2 network, utilizing a multi-signature group algorithm to achieve consensus. Anduro aims to build a Bitcoin Layer 2 multi-chain network and guarantee the economic incentives for Bitcoin mining. UniPort.Network is a Bitcoin repledge chain built on the Polygon CDK and UPSD stablecoin systems, allowing BTC holders to earn restaking rewards.
4. Investment and financing
Mars Financial News, on-chain investment project Storm Labs closed a $3 million funding round, led by Electric Capital, with participation from Accomplice, Robot Ventures, Daedalus and well-known angel investors in the industry. Storm Labs will use this round of funding to build Cove, an on-chain portfolio manager. Cove allows users to build and manage custom DeFi portfolios without manual effort, addressing issues such as loss and rebalancing. Cove Boosties, launched in the first phase, is a Yearn-centric platform that increases APRs and provides early access to Cove's governance tokens. Cove is optimized by Gauntlet and moderated by Trail of Bits, Quantstamp, and yAudit.
Monad Labs, a Layer 1 blockchain, announced the closing of a $225 million funding round led by Paradigm with participation from Electric Capital and Greenoaks, among others, in a project that aims to challenge competitors such as Solana and Sui.
Web3 beauty startup Kiki World has announced the closing of a $7 million seed round with participation from a16z Crypto, Estée Lauder's New Incubation Ventures, as well as OrangeDao and 2Punks Capital, among others. Kiki World is only helping consumers co-create products with the help of Web3 technology, allowing community members to vote on the features they want before beauty products are produced.
NuLink, a data privacy solution, announced a new round of funding on platform x, with participation from Web3 investment firm DWF Labs.
OpenTrade, a UK-based on-chain institutional lending and yield product platform, raised $3.2 million in a seed round with participation from a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX). Other investors include CMCC Global, Draper Dragon, Ryze Labs, and Plassa Capital. Jeff Handler, co-founder and chief commercial officer of OpenTrade, said: "With a total funding of $4.45 million to date, OpenTrade intends to use the new funding to grow all of its key functional teams.
Web3 beauty startup Kiki World has announced the closing of a $7 million seed round with participation from a16z Crypto, Estée Lauder's New Incubation Ventures, as well as OrangeDao and 2Punks Capital, among others. Kiki World is only helping consumers co-create products with the help of Web3 technology, allowing community members to vote on the features they want before beauty products are produced.
On-chain RWA portal project Zoth Closes $2.5 Million Funding Round Led by Blockchain Founders Fund with Borderless Capital, Mindativity Capital, YAP Capital, Momentum6, Singularity DAO, Aztlan Capital, Outlier Ventures, Decubate, Wormhole Ecosystem Fund and others. Zoth is an ecosystem that connects liquidity between TradFi and OnchainFi, aiming to provide sustainable yield backed by RWA and build an RWA ecosystem powered by multi-chain stablecoins to bring native sustainable yield to DeFi. Its first product, Zoth-Fixed Income (Zoth-Fi), is a chain-agnostic, institutional-grade platform that provides institutional and accredited investors with access to secure fixed-income assets through stablecoins. Zoth covers a wide range of asset classes, including accounts receivable, trade finance, treasury bills, sovereign bonds and green finance, permissionless DeFi products, and more.