🚀⏳ Earning Some Last-Minute Points?
In today’s edition: Blast soars to record activity pre-airdrop, 🔥 Ethereum gas fees plummet, 🛑 CoinStats temporarily shuts down following wallet hack, and more!
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LayerZero Fought the Sybils and Airdropped Its Token. Did the Team Win?
LayerZero’s token claims went live on Thursday, and as with every recent airdrop, there was plenty of controversy.
In this episode, Bryan Pellegrino, co-founder and CEO of LayerZero Labs, joined to discuss their ambitious anti-Sybil campaign and the subsequent token distribution. He delved into the challenges of ensuring genuine user participation, the decision to offer a self-report option for Sybil attackers, and the complexities imposed by industrial-grade farmers. Bryan shared what he would have done differently and why a mandatory donation to Protocol Guild was imposed.
Also, are airdrops dead? How can the industry improve this not-so-effective distribution method?
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or watch it on YouTube.
What’s Poppin’?
by Sage Young, and Sam Sriram
Ethereum L2 Blast Posts All-Time High in Daily Transactions and Users Ahead of Airdrop
Airdrop season continues as Blast’s token generation event is set to occur on June 26, about a week after interoperability protocol LayerZero and rival blockchain network ZKsync opened up claims to their airdrop.
Ethereum Gas Fees At ‘Rock Bottom’ as Network Activity Soars
The average gas fees on the Ethereum mainnet dropped under three gwei as transactions across the layer 1 and layer 2 protocols are at an all-time high.
CoinStats Temporarily Shuts Down After 1,590 Wallets Drained
Crypto portfolio manager CoinStats confirmed that a security incident had impacted some wallets, despite claiming to have “military-grade encryption.”
Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍️
💰 Mt. Gox will start distributing $9 billion in bitcoin and bitcoin cash repayments to creditors beginning in July, as announced by rehabilitation trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi.
🇳🇬 Reps. French Hill and Chrissy Houlahan visited Tigran Gambaryan, a Binance executive detained in Nigeria, and urged the US embassy to secure his humanitarian release.
🚔 Four Vietnamese members of the FIN9 cybercrime group were charged with hacking US companies and causing $71 million in losses.
🔓 Turkish crypto exchange BtcTurk was hacked, affecting some hot wallets, with Binance freezing $5.3 million of the stolen funds.
🔗 Aave DAO members voted unanimously to support deploying the lending protocol on the Ethereum layer 2 network ZKsync.
💸 The Winklevoss twins, who are the founders of crypto exchange Gemini, announced they each donated $1 million to former President Trump's campaign.
📊 An affiliate of asset management firm Fidelity made a $4.7 million seed investment in its Ethereum ETF, purchasing 125,000 shares as detailed in an amended SEC filing.
📉 Solana's decentralized exchange volumes hit their lowest levels since March, with a significant drop in trading activity and active wallets over the past week.
Today in Crypto Adoption...
🌏 Hong Kong’s Legislative Council established a subcommittee on Web3 and crypto to gather global policy feedback and propose regulations, chaired by lawmaker Johnny Ng.
💼 Standard Chartered is planning to launch a London-based trading desk for Bitcoin and Ethereum, becoming one of the first global banks to offer spot cryptocurrency trading.
🇯🇵 A survey revealed that 54% of Japanese institutional investors plan to invest in cryptocurrencies within the next three years, viewing them as a diversification opportunity.
The $$$ Corner…
💰 Pantera Capital is reportedly raising funds for a new investment in TON tokens, following its largest-ever investment in the token earlier this year.
🔐 Verida raised $5 million to enhance user data protection in response to growing privacy concerns associated with generative AI and big tech.
💸 Infrared Finance, a Berachain liquid staking protocol, secured strategic funding from Binance Labs in a private token round to support its development.
What Do You Meme?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down 4.7%, trading at $61,306
ETH is down 5.2%, trading at $3,315
BTC dominance: 51.76%
Crypto market cap: $2.36T
*All data as of today, 06:30 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
Recommended Reads
The Defiant: Is the Bear Market Back? Data Says Yes
Blockworks: The memecoin mirage is a speculative sideshow threatening DeFi
The Impact of the Ethereum ETF by Mechanism Capital’s co-founder Andrew Kang on X
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