Another Messy Airdrop 😩

In today’s edition: 👩‍💻 Chainlink enhances developer access, 🙏 CZ apologizes amid DOJ proceedings, 😬 Bitcoin mining centralization concerns, and more!

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Union is the first sovereign interoperability layer pioneering trustless bridging between appchains, L1s, and L2s without depending on trusted third parties, oracles, multi-signatures, or MPC. Looking to future-proof blockchain bridging, it is the only protocol that fully addresses the sovereign bridging trilemma, unlocking a horizontally-scaled future.

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What’s Poppin’?

by Sam Sriram, Sage Young, and Juan Aranovich

Renzo’s ezETH Depeg Amid Criticism of Airdrop Underlines Broader Risks in Restaking

ezETH, which had been trading above $3,000, plunged to $688 on Uniswap as it lost its ether peg. The token is still trading at a discount to ether.

Chainlink Opens Up Its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol to All Developers

The move from Chainlink is expected to make it easier for developers to create cross-chain smart contracts.

Binance’s CZ Apologizes for ‘Poor Decisions’ as DOJ Pushes for 3 Year Prison Term

Changpeng Zhao apologized for not “implementing compliance changes at Binance from the get-go” in a letter to the court on Tuesday.

Bitcoin Mining Decentralization ‘Not Great,’ Says Ordinals Creator

Many large mining pools aren’t actually independent, but seem to be proxies for AntPool, according to ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor.

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Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

• 🚨 The U.S. Department of Justice arrested both the CEO and chief technology officer of Samourai Wallet, charging them with money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting service for over $2 billion in transactions.

• 📜 Representative Maxine Waters said that a stablecoin bill might soon be finalized, hinting at possible US regulation before the upcoming elections, despite previously criticizing an earlier version as problematic.

• 🔗 After community backlash and a temporary depegging of ezETH, Renzo increased the initial airdrop allocation from 5% to 7% of its tokens, with distribution set for the end of April and a subsequent phase planned.

• 🔄 Mango Markets, reinvigorated by Avi Eisenberg's market manipulation conviction, passed a governance proposal for a buyback benefiting active governance participants. The largest voter in favor of the proposal was someone who received a high proportion of MNGO tokens from the FTX estate.

• ⚖️ Do Kwon, Terraform Labs co-founder, is contesting a Montenegrin high court decision that potentially allows his extradition to the US or South Korea, labeling the interpretation as "unfounded and illegal."

The $$$ Corner…

• 💰 Aligned Layer, an Ethereum verification protocol, secured $20 million in a Series A round led by Hack VC, with an aim to make zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs faster and cheaper.

• 💸 Tevaera, a gaming firm on Ethereum's zkSync Era, raised $5 million in seed and private funding, co-led by Laser Digital and Nomura Group, to develop a layer 3 gaming chain and expand its team.

• 🌐 Peter Thiel’s VC firm Founders Fund invested in crypto accelerator Alliance, taking a minority stake to support strategic long-term growth; details of the investment were finalized in January.

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What Do You Meme?

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Recommended Reads

1. Unchained: What Are Sequencers in Layer 2 Protocols Such as Optimism, Arbitrum, and Base?

2. DL News: What do crypto lawyers really think about points?

3. CoinDesk: Do Kwon's Huge Fine Shows the SEC Is Ratcheting Up Penalties Against Crypto Firms

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📈 Your Market Update 📉

• BTC is down 4.4%, trading at $63,484

• ETH is down 5.6%, trading at $3,087

• BTC dominance: 50.86%

• Crypto market cap: $2.46T

*All data as of today, 07:00 am ET. Source: CoinGecko

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