🤑 $10 Billion in a Month 🔝
In today’s edition: 🚨 NYAG's $3B DCG lawsuit, 💥 ERC-404 rise and fall?, 🛠️ Solana's outage explained, 🪂 Pyth's 100M token airdrop, and more!
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Last Tuesday, Solana suffered a network outage, just shy of a year since its last shutdown. The blockchain had to quickly get a new version out and notify its validators to upgrade to it and restart their systems before blocks could be produced again, resulting in downtime of roughly five hours. While Solana has struggled with outages in the past, this issue seemed to have largely been addressed over the past year.
Lucas Bruder, the CEO of Jito Labs, joined Unchained to discuss what caused the outage, whether it’s something that builders on Solana should be concerned about for the future, recent improvements Solana has made to its technology, whether the implementation of Firedancer would have prevented this incident, and the promise of the Solana phone.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or watch it on YouTube.
What’s Poppin’?
by Nelson Wang, Sam Sriram, Brandy Betz, and Sage Young
Bitcoin ETFs Surpass $10 Billion in AUM
The combined value of assets under management across spot Bitcoin ETFs surpassed the $10 billion mark, just one month after they began trading.
NYAG Expands Fraud Lawsuit Against DCG to $3 Billion
The New York Attorney General’s office now says that DCG and its affiliate Genesis defrauded customers and institutions of more than $3 billion, up from the initial charges of $1.1 billion.
ERC-404 Tokens Decline After Sending Ethereum Gas Fees Soaring
The unofficial and experimental Ethereum token standard called ERC-404 sparked a trading frenzy last week that saw gas prices reach a peak of 377 gwei. Now, tokens across the sector are down over 30% after seeing a decline late on Sunday.
Pandora Token Based on ERC-404 Is Both Fungible and Non-Fungible at the Same Time
Pandora’s newly launched token is novel because crypto denizens can trade it on both a decentralized exchange and an NFT marketplace.
Solana Explains What Caused Its 5-Hour Outage This Week
The bug, previously identified in a test network, caused Solana validators to enter into an “infinite loop” that made them stall on a block and prevent consensus agreement.
Pyth Network Airdrops 100 Million Tokens to Dapps; PYTH Rises More Than 7%
In the second phase of its airdrop, oracle network Pyth is sending out about $52 million worth of its governance tokens to decentralized applications that use its price data.
Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️
💼 FTX seeks to sell its subsidiary, Digital Custody Inc., to CoinList for $500,000, significantly lower than its initial $10 million acquisition cost.
💰 Farcaster’s revenue surged to $600,000 during its recent popularity spike.
📈 EigenLayer's total value locked (TVL) crossed $6 billion, ranking it among the top 5 protocols in TVL following the removal of its deposit cap.
🏈 Dapper Lab's NFL All Day digital collectibles brand saw high-profile sales as part of Super Bowl promotions, with Joe Montana and John Elway involved in marketing efforts. An NFT featuring Tom Brady sold for over $40,000.
📊 US spot bitcoin ETFs accumulated over 200,000 BTC in assets under management within their first month of trading.
🔍 The UK's planned stablecoin regulations face criticism from crypto industry groups, urging the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority to revise their proposals.
📖 Venture capitalist Chris Dixon's book, “Read Write Own,” included an NFT offering, but only a small fraction of the 5,000 available NFTs have been claimed by readers.
📸 During the COPA v. Craig Wright trial, the judge warned of pulling the livestream after a prohibited photo of Bitcoin influencer Hodlonaut was taken in the courtroom.
🔄 Franklin Templeton changed its profile picture from a laser-eyed Benjamin Franklin to a more reserved design, following the approval of its bitcoin ETF.
Today in Crypto Adoption...
⚡ Chinese crypto mining companies are flocking to Ethiopia, enticed by low electricity costs and favorable conditions, despite the country's complex political landscape and a partial ban on cryptocurrency trading.
The $$$ Corner…
💡 Balaji Srinivasan announced The Balaji Fund, focusing on diverse tech sectors, marking a shift from his previous stance on hyperinflation and the US economy.
What Do You Meme?
Crypto: The Game captivated a large swath of the crypto community this past week. The game, modeled after “Survivor,” was the brainchild of Dylan Abruscato, Tyler Cagle and Bryan Lee. The intention of the game, which was played virtually but also unfolded in real life, was to ruthlessly vote people off to determine a single winner. Throughout, multiple psy-ops operations created chaos. Despite all that, the competition ended up fostering numerous friendships (including for Unchained reporter Sage Young, whose coverage is below) and resulted in a shocking, but heartwarming ending.
On Friday afternoon, after the winner was announced, we hosted a Spaces with Dylan, the winner, and some of the more notable players, which we’re releasing here. In the discussion, we cover the inspiration for the game, some of the behind-the-scenes surprises, who was causing chaos for various teams and how, and why the winner may be one of the winning-est contestants ever.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Recommended Reads
Unchained: What Is ERC-404? A Guide to the New Semi-Fungible Token Standard
Blockworks: Traditional gaming needs Web3 more than ever
DL News: Wrapped TAO on Ethereum soars to $82m — but it’s all controlled by one person
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down .2%, trading at $47,986
ETH is down 1.3%, trading at $2,483
BTC dominance: 50.03%
Crypto market cap: $1.88T
*All data as of today, 05:45 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
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