According to an announcement from China’s national-level blockchain initiative, the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), blockchain technology will be used to verify the real-name identities of the country’s 1.4 billion citizens. This move is likely to raise concerns among proponents of data privacy. With assistance from BSN, the RealDID initiative was led by China’s Ministry of
In its biggest transaction since July, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest sold an additional 335,860 shares of Coinbase (COIN), a cryptocurrency exchange.In three exchange-traded funds (ETFs), ARK offloaded shares of COIN.ARKK, the Innovation ETF, provided the majority.At the closing price on Coinbase, the deal would have brought in $49.2 million.. During the past few weeks, while bitcoin has been rising, the investment manager based in St. Petersburg, Florida, has been selling Coinbase stock on a regular basis.It sold 480,000 shares for $50.5 million back in July, making this Friday’s the largest since then. For each of its ETFs, ARK sets a target weighting that keeps the weightings of the individual composite holdings between 2% and 10% of the fund’s value, respectively.The COIN stock has been comfortably above 10% in each of the three ETFs due to its recent run, which has seen it hit highs not seen since April 2022.ARKK, the Next Generation ETF (ARKW), and the Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) comprise more than 11%, 13%, and 11%, respectively, of COIN, despite the sale. With a daily gain of 7.66%, COIN finished at $146.62 on Friday.Additionally, for almost $3.6 million, ARK sold 102,672 shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).8.33% of ARKW is comprised of GBTC.
Club Penguin, move over. The NFT-connected toys known as Pudgy Penguins, which made an appearance at Walmart earlier this year, are now advancing into the online gaming market.Their hangout will be “Pudgy World,” an interactive virtual playground accessible to both non-fans and Pudgy Penguins NFT holders and owners of toys.The Pudgy Penguins CEO, Luca Netz, announced on Saturday at the contemporary art conference Art Basel in Miami that the platform’s early-access version will launch before April of next year, providing players with both narrative-driven and open-ended gameplay choices. “Pudgy Penguin fans have long been waiting for more ways to interact with their characters,” Netz said in a statement. “Having a place like Pudgy World will allow players to take their fandom to the next level.” Launched in July 2021, the NFT project of fat, non-flying Antarctic creatures suffered from internal backbiting and management changes for a while before rebounding and, in September, announcing a line of real, tangible toys, such as plush toys and figurines, that would be available for purchase at 2,000 Walmart stores nationwide.One of the NFT brand’s first significant forays into popular consumer culture occurred with this arrangement. According to Netz, TechCrunch, the toys are anticipated to generate sales of over $10 million in the second half of this year.The release of Pudgy World coincides with toy companies releasing more physical toys that are connected to virtual games for a generation of kids who grew up with technology.Toy manufacturer Spin Master introduced Bitzee, a virtual pet that resembles a tamagotchi and comes in a portable box, last summer.In the meanwhile, users of Hot Wheels’ toy-car kit can enter an immersive virtual environment called Rift Rally Game, which was introduced earlier this year.As previously reported by CoinDesk, every Pudgy Penguins toy will include a scannable code that contains a birth certificate for a digital “Forever Pudgy,” or a special character that resides inside Pudgy World. According to Pudgy Penguins, players can explore Pudgy World as their own customisable characters.According to the firm, Pudgy and Peaches, the brand’s original “Hero Characters,” will also be present in the virtual world.When the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection debuted in July 2021, it sold out in a matter of minutes.According to Open Sea data, since then, the collection has expanded to 8,888 NFTs owned by over 4,000 individuals.The floor price of the collection has increased from $90 more than two years ago to about $27,000.According to CoinGecko data, the market capitalization of the collection is around $250 million.
Blast’s staking strategy has increased its total value locked at $823 million despite technical difficulties and investor scrutiny. DefiLlama data shows that Web3 protocol Blast has gained 26.5% in the last seven days, bringing its total value locked (TVL) to $823 million, just weeks after its contentious launch in mid-November. Blast’s distinctive business strategy is
In just six hours after the start of an early-access period, Chainlink, the largest blockchain data-oracle project, saw a strong uptake for its expanded crypto-staking programme, bringing in over $632 million worth of its LINK tokens and filling up to capacity. About 32.8 million LINK had been staked in less than 30 minutes after the
More than 1.8 billion STRK tokens will be distributed “soon,” according to a tweet released on Friday by the Starknet Foundation, the organization in charge of advancing the Ethereum scaling technology known as StarkWare technology. StarkWare uses ZK rollup technologies, which bundle hundreds of transactions off the main blockchain to decrease computational burden, to solve the sluggish throughput and transaction fees of the main Ethereum network.Fifty million STRK tokens were set aside by the Starknet Foundation in October for the new Early Community Member Program, or ECMP for short. According to Starknet, the foundation’s Provisions Committee has been given about 900 million STRK to honor past and future contributions made by users and community members.It stated that 900 million more tokens are set aside for user reimbursements. Regarding the user rebates, Starknet said: “Planning for this initiative is currently underway and a new committee is being formed to oversee the distribution of STRK to reward users for their vital transactions on the network.”
In some corners of the cryptocurrency world, airdrop season is back. Developers of LayerZero confirmed long-running speculations on Friday morning, announcing their intention to launch a token sometime in the first half of 2024. This news immediately led to an increase in the metrics of certain projects based on the network. The network is an
The well-known American brokerage firm Robinhood (HOOD) began allowing its clients in the European Union (EU) to trade cryptocurrency on Thursday, praising the EU’s extensive regulations governing digital assets. In an effort to entice users to use the service, Robinhood announced on Thursday that it would reimburse users for a portion of their monthly trading
The popular token airdrops into the recently revived Solana ecosystem continued on Thursday with the release of the JTO token by Jito, a Solana-based cryptocurrency staking project. On a number of decentralised exchanges based in Solana, the new asset started trading at a price of $1.20 and gradually increased in value towards $2. On the
Bitcoin-focused project Babylon raised $18 million in an investment round led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC. Babylon is a platform that lets proof-of-stake chains get funding from the massive amounts of capital held in the biggest cryptocurrency by providing bitcoin (BTC) as a staking asset. Babylon recently shared an email statement stating that the
EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), a new stablecoin centered in Europe, will be market-made by Flowdesk, according to an announcement made by Societe Generale’s (GLE) Forge.By functioning as a middleman to ease trades between buyers and sellers and ensure more seamless and effective transactions, market making contributes to liquidity in financial markets.The absence of market makers would result in periods of extreme price volatility since it could be difficult to locate a buyer or seller for a particular financial instrument at a given time and price. “Looking ahead as we approach 2024, we envision a transformative impact where compliant blockchain-based operations by institutions will drastically increase in volume – and this is what we have been preparing since the inception of Flowdesk,” Guilhem Chaumont, CEO and co-founder of Flowdesk, said in a release. According to the statement, Flowdesk is one of the chosen organizations approved by SG-FORGE to trade EURCV. As a market maker, Flowdesk will be responsible for providing liquidity for EURCV-EUR and EURCV-USDT trading pairs on Bitstamp and other platforms.Although not the original stablecoin with a euro value, EURCV is the first with significant institutional backing. On-chain data indicates that although Circle and Tether have both introduced Euro stablecoins, their trade volumes are rather low.
On Monday, Mantle, the Ethereum layer-2 project linked to a $2.3 billion Treasury, announced the launch of Mantle LSP, a new liquid-staking protocol.As per a press statement, Mantle LSP was implemented on Ethereum and is set to become the second essential component of the Mantle ecosystem.According to L2 Beat, the primary Mantle Network, which debuted in July, presently has more over $220 million in deposits known as total value locked, or TVL. Staking ETH on Mantle LSP for the first time allows users to obtain $mETH tokens, which are intended to be a representation of the ETH that has been staked.The press release also states that users will be able to earn yield using $mETH. Jordi Alexander, chief alchemist at Mantle, said in an interview that Mantle’s treasury “has to be successful in its own right. We want it to be like, the third-largest eventually after Lido and Rocket Pool.” “We’re targeting the No. 3 spot pretty aggressively and quickly,” Alexander added.
Blockchain research company Lookonchain has shown that major players in the cryptocurrency space, FTX and Alameda Research, are actively transferring a significant amount of digital assets worth a whopping $22 million.UNI, $SHIB, $BAL, $LOOKS, $WOO, $IMX, $GMT, $ETH, and $UNI make up the varied cryptocurrency mix.After filing for bankruptcy, FTX and Alameda Research were among the first to move quickly in the cryptocurrency space, moving substantial amounts to well-known exchanges.From October 2023 to the present, the business has arranged incredible deals totaling $551 million in 59 different tokens. In their most recent transaction, $10.8 million was transferred through websites including Coinbase, Binance, and Wintermute.Eight tokens received the most recent $10.8 million transfer: $2.58 million in StepN, $2.41 million in Uniswap, $2.25 million in Synapse, $1.64 million in Klaytn, $1.18 million in Fantom, $644,000 in Shiba Inus, and minor amounts in Arbitrum, ARB, and Optimism, OP. A single wallet address received $10 million on October 24 from the FTX and Alameda wallets; this money was then moved to Coinbase and Binance accounts.The Kraken and OKX exchanges experienced a surge in cryptocurrency assets of $24 million on November 14, 2023, marking another peak in the market.They are now able to sell digital assets for up to $100 million at first, with the potential to go up to $200 million with special committee permission, according to a scheme that was approved by a U.S. court. The initial notes of this financial song were played in March 2023, coordinating a deft move of $145 million in stablecoins to exchanges including Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken.Even with assets recovered that exceed $5 billion, FTX has a difficult situation because of liabilities that exceed $8.8 billion.As FTX and Alameda manage ongoing liquidations, the severity of this financial burden becomes apparent, illustrating a tremendous effort to handle significant obligations while offering some relief to creditors. The cryptocurrency community is keenly awaiting the resolution of this financial composition because the outcome of this liquidation saga is yet unknown
The cryptocurrency mining firms Hut 8 Mining Corp. and US Bitcoin Corp. (USBTC) have merged through an all-stock merger of equals to become Hut 8 Corp (New Hut), a new company with US domicile.The merger was finalized on November 30, and Jaime Leverton, CEO of New Hut, branded it the “largest mergers and acquisitions transaction” in the cryptocurrency space. Hut 8 is situated in Canada.Leverton led Hut 8 as CEO for more than three years prior to the merger. Due to the transaction, Hut 8 common stocks will be delisted by no later than December 4 from both the Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange.New Hut common stocks, ticker symbol “HUT,” will replace it.A share of New Hut common stock was awarded to Hut8 shareholders for each Hut 8 share they held during the delisting and relisting process.The company’s preparations for the impending Bitcoin halving were disclosed by Asher Genoot, president of New Hut.As a result of pooling resources, the release states that “New Hut has access to approximately 825 MW [megawatts] of gross energy across six sites with self-mining, hosting, and managed service operations.” The Supreme Court of British Columbia gave Hut8 final permission to merge with USBTC in September. Still, the planning started in February.The combination required legal and regulatory permission at the time from US and Canadian authorities.In addition to the legal complexities, USBTC was involved in “a legal dispute” with the City of Niagara Falls, New York, on complaints from locals regarding noise pollution caused by the mining activities. On April 7, the disagreement was resolved. Decentralization of Bitcoin mining operations is being advocated by X (formerly Twitter) and Block co-founder Jack Dorsey.New decentralized Bitcoin mining pool Ocean, whose goal is to give miners more transparency into the process and allow them to get block rewards directly from Bitcoin instead of mining pools, just raised $6.2 million in a seed round led by Dorsey for Mummolin, the business’s parent company.
Legislators working behind the scenes are looking to 2024 as the year when digital asset bills may get passed by that Republican-controlled chamber, though the efforts still face an uphill climb in the Senate where Democrats hold the majority. This is in contrast to months of hope that U.S. crypto legislation could win approval in the House of Representatives this year.The head of the House Financial Services Committee’s subcommittee on digital assets, U.S. Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), stated that the House’s deliberations on two significant cryptocurrency bills—one pertaining to U.S. stablecoin issuer regulation and the other establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto markets—have most likely been moved to “early 2024.” Hill stated at a Blockchain Association event in Washington on Thursday that the House Republicans’ recent dispute over choosing a new speaker—which temporarily forced key crypto negotiator Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) to serve as stand-in speaker—delayed the floor time legislators needed for the legislation. “That, I think, set us back a little bit,” Meanwhile, at the same occasion, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).Lummis, who has been pushing for her own comprehensive crypto legislation in the Senate, also predicted that next year will see more advancements with the stablecoin bill in particular.“That is an area that could come early in 2024.”The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), withdrew her support for the bills, and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), who has also played a leading role in the House negotiations, suggested the industry counter what House Democrats are hearing from outside groups and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, a devoted industry critic. A small group of Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee defied the ranking member of their party and supported both of this year’s cryptocurrency proposals.As of late, Waters has made it clear that she is still willing to pursue legislation, and Himes stated on Thursday that “a Democratic Senate sits up and takes notice” if Waters supports a bill and the House as a whole passes it. “On the other side of the Capitol, the weather is uglier,” Himes said of the crypto views of some Senate Democrats, including Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who runs the Senate Banking Committee. “You could see a path, but I think it probably starts
Early in the upcoming year, Abu Dhabi will see the launch of a digital equities brokerage service by cryptocurrency custody and trading startup Copper, the company announced on Wednesday.The Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of the emirate is collaborating with Copper Securities, the new company providing execution and custody services, to ensure that the required licenses are in place by the beginning of 2024. The transfer has been made easier by Copper’s recent acquisition of Securrency Capital, an Abu Dhabi-based branch of the tokenization platform for cryptocurrencies that was not part of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s (DTCC) October acquisition of Securrency Inc. Copper has joined the increasing number of cryptocurrency companies who are turning to the United Arab Emirates because it provides more legislative clarity for digital assets than many other countries.Referring to Abu Dhabi as “the capital of capital,” Copper CEO Dmitry Tokarev highlighted the region’s amassing of institutional wealth. “Abu Dhabi is more institutional and more focused around asset management, and that’s exactly what Copper is; we only have institutional clients,” Tokarev said in an interview. “While there isn’t a huge retail market here, you will find all the big institutions, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds.” The movement by banks and asset managers to tokenize traditional financial assets is causing a progressive convergence of blockchain technology and traditional financial (TradFi) plumbing. Over the course of the upcoming year, Copper Securities expects to launch securities financing, lending, and payment apps in addition to providing automated processing of corporate activities, settlements, top-ups, and rebalancing.
A collaborative effort between central banks has demonstrated that using national digital currencies for payments can still protect privacy.The Bank for International Settlements’ (BIS) Innovation Hub in Switzerland is investigating payer anonymity with central bank digital currency (CBDC) under Project Tourbillon.The central banks examined payment methods where customers can make purchases without disclosing personal information to any third party, including the retailer, according to a project final report released on Wednesday.To lessen tax avoidance and illegal payments, the merchant’s identity would be given to their bank at the time of payment. Privacy has become a major public worry as countries all over the world ponder issuing digital versions of their national currency. “Privacy is an important user requirement but it is the most difficult to solve. The difficulty lies in ensuring privacy protection technologically rather than just promising it, and at the same time ensuring that such a high level of protection cannot be abused,” Thomas Moser, alternate governing board member at the Swiss National
A $5 million seed round lead by venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) was invested in Setter, a consumer app that lets brands experiment with Web3-powered commerce.In an email statement on Tuesday, New York-based Setter stated that its software will assist firms in innovating their strategies for promoting unique products and offering customers limited edition drops. According to the statement, Setter seeks to address “the complexity and unfriendliness of current wallet technologies,” facilitating a more seamless introduction into Web3 for a greater number of users. “It looks and feels like a Web2 app, but it is a full-blown smart contract wallet under the hood,” CEO Juan Hernandez told CoinDesk in an interview. Web2 refers to the existing, centralized Web-based technology. “We’re trying to make it really seamless, where the Web2 and Web3 objects are just sitting right next
As the biggest validator on the TON blockchain, Animoca Brands, a venture capital business specializing in gaming and metaverse, has invested in the TON ecosystem.An announcement on Tuesday stated that Animoca Brands, based in Hong Kong, is sponsoring TON Play, the network’s gaming infrastructure initiative, in order to help other gaming ventures integrate into the ecosystem. Telegram’s 800 million users are a possible target audience for TON-based initiatives as they were endorsed as the blockchain of choice for Web3-related advancements in September.
As the first bitcoin hedge fund to receive a license from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), Nine Blocks Capital Management is taking pride in this fact.Additionally, the hedge fund said on Monday that Dubai will become its global headquarters.Due to a thorough set of regulations covering everything from advertising to issuance and exchange services, a thriving community of cryptocurrency firms has established itself in Dubai, seemingly a world apart from the obscurity and unpredictability of U.S. regulations. “I think what’s interesting is that VARA has really created an ecosystem for crypto in Dubai,” Nine Blocks co-founder Henri Arslanian said in an interview. “Many of our hedge fund’s counterparties are one minute walk away from my office. Everybody is in this one square kilometer, which makes it easy to meet up, have
The Chinese central bank’s digital currency, the digital yuan (CBDC), is now exchangeable at the multinational bank Standard Chartered (STAN).An announcement on Monday stated that the bank’s China business is collaborating with City Bank Clearing Services to provide users with access to the digital yuan’s interconnection platform, which offers redemption and recharge options. Standard Chartered said that it is among the first international companies to participate in the CBDC’s business pilot program. At 1.8 trillion yuan ($250 billion) in transaction volume as of the end of June this year, China’s digital yuan, or e-CNY, is the most sophisticated CBDC among those being explored or created by major nations. Customers of just few banks are able to conduct business with China’s CBDC.It was claimed in May that by connecting the wallets of its corporate clients to bank accounts, the French bank BNP Paribas (BNP) was encouraging the usage of China’s digital yuan.
Events surrounding the cryptocurrency exchange Binance has generated a lot of discussion over the US government’s crackdown on cryptocurrency companies. Omid Malekan, a writer and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, claims that the American Department of Justice’s strategy in this case is very different from conventional financial practises. Malekan posted on X (formerly Twitter):
A traditional bullish continuation setup could see the price of XRP rise by more than 20% in the upcoming weeks. After a significant increase, the price consolidates inside a parallel channel, forming the so-called bull flag pattern. It ends when the price climbs to the height of the prior upswing and breaks over the upper
After a $16 million hack in 2021, Indexed Finance, an Ethereum-based project, was able to successfully thwart two attempts at hijacking. The founders of the project will regain control of the decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), with the intention of distributing the leftover money to the victims of the 2021 hack. Former core contributor Laurence Day
California Governor Gavin Newsom stressed in a recent report the need to get ready for the next generation of skills needed to succeed in the GenAI economy. Governor Gavin Newsom of California has emphasised the significance of learning new skills and familiarising oneself with cutting-edge technology in order to stay ahead of the curve in
Investment managers in the UK are moving away from traditional record-keeping systems by using blockchain technology to tokenize funds with regulatory support. The Investment Association stated in a recent research that the financial industry will become more transparent and efficient as a result of fund tokenization, which is the process of issuing tokenized units or
In response to a dilutive $39 million NFT minting that happened in June, the DAO had earlier suggested filing a lawsuit against Zagabond, the creator of Azuki. In the midst of dropping a planned lawsuit against Zagabond, the founder of the NFT collection, over a $39 million minting scandal, Azuki DAO, an unofficial community decentralised
The native token of ChainFlip, a cross-chain swapping platform, increased in value by over 100% on its first day of trade.With multiple exchanges listing it, including as Bybit, Crypto.com, Kucoin, and Gate.io, the currency saw a 150% increase, reaching a high of $5.94.CoinMarketCap reports that since its introduction, trading activity has reached $79 million across all venues. Based on the Ethereum blockchain and Uniswap’s V3 concept, ChainFlip was created using the Rust programming language.With the goal of increasing trading efficiency and lowering slippage, it bills itself as a “JIT (Just In Time) automated market maker.”When big orders are processed, a lack of liquidity may result in slippage, which is the difference between the price a trader expects to pay and the price they actually pay. In August, ChainFlip sold 4.5 million tokens for $1.83 each. At $2.50, they began trading on Friday.There is no need to bridge or wrap assets while using ChainFlip and other cross-chain swapping platforms.Rather, after a trade is done on a conventional centralized crypto exchange, the market makers instantly buy an asset.The bought assets are then sent by ChainFlip validators to the wallet address that the trader initially supplied. Decentralised liquidity protocol THORChain praised the protocol, stating on X that it will collaborate with ChainFlip to “dethrone the centralized gatekeepers of today.”Lead by Framework Ventures, ChainFlip raised $6 million in a 2021 funding round.
A Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request filed in New York by several prominent news outlets has been met with initial support from Tether and Bitfinex. In response to CoinDesk’s FOIL request earlier this year, the USDT stablecoin issuer and cryptocurrency exchange assured Cointelegraph that they would provide information transparently.Additionally, the corporations said that the method was inconsistent with their business standards and that they would not be publicly disclosing documentation. “It’s essential to clarify that transparency does not mean a wholesale release of all our documents.” Tether and Bitfinex have decided not to file an appeal against the FOIL request that was submitted by journalists Ada Hui, Shane Shifflett, and Zeke Faux, who they claim are engaging in “certain behaviors.”Faux’s previous investigations on Tether and Bitfinex, according to the firms, have “extended beyond the boundaries of professional journalism.”In addition, they allege that journalists from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, whose publications are taking part in the current FOIL request, have been “one-sided and inaccurate.” The statement emphasizes that both businesses “adhere to ethical reporting standards and respect data privacy boundaries,” and that they are dedicated to transparency and will continue to be accessible for interaction with the media and government agencies.Noting that their attempts at transparency do not “equate to unrestricted public disclosure of all documents,” Tether and Bitfinex also demanded “responsible document review” prior to any information being made public. The deal that Tether and Bitfinex reached with the New York Attorney General (NYAG) in February 2021 is the subject of the current FOIL request.The arrangement, which was first revealed by CNBC, called for paying a $18.5 million fine in order to resolve a lawsuit that had been pending for two years over the purported misappropriation of $850 million in customer and company assets.As part of the settlement, Tether and Bitfinex agreed to provide the NYAG with quarterly transparency reports for a period of two years.Following the completion of these duties, CoinDesk filed a FOIL request in New York, requesting the public release of Tether’s first quarter submission papers that it had provided in accordance with the settlement agreement. Tether stated in June 2023 that it had rejected the FOIL request in order to stop “sensitive commercial information” from being used and “confidential customer data” from being made public because it was concerned that “malicious actors” might take advantage of it.
Despite the doubts of many cryptocurrency investors, Blast, a layer-2 blockchain that is slated to launch in March, has amassed more than $225 million in staked ether, stETH, and stablecoins since Monday.Blast, which is billed as the first layer-2 network with native staking, intends to eventually produce yield by staking Ethereum (ETH) and using real-world assets (RWAs).Developed on top of layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum, layer 2 networks aim to reduce transaction costs and increase transaction speed. Leading the protocol is the anonymous @PacmanBlur, a co-founder of the well-known NFT marketplace Blur.A portion of the network’s appeal can be ascribed to its supporters, which include well-known cryptocurrency fund Paradigm and a group of investors known as “eGirl Capital,” among others.One important note is that until the Blast bridge goes active in February, staked assets cannot be withdrawn.Users can redeem an airdrop slated for May by using their “Blast points,” which they get in the interim.By referring other users via special referral links, users can earn extra Blast points.Consequently, as of Thursday, Blast is invite-only and requires a code from an active user to access. According to Etherscan, Blast is currently the seventh-largest ether holder, having staked the majority of the $225 million that it has received on Lido, a liquid staking protocol.But the cryptocurrency community has taken issue with the concept of restaking on Lido in exchange for giving away obscure Blast points. “Blast is actually insane,” one crypto trader wrote on X. “Use points to attract TVL to a chain that doesn’t exist, convert the deposited ETH into stETH on a 5-person multisig of anon devs,” referring to total value locked, or the overall value of assets deposited in the protocol. According to some analysts, Blast points resemble a pyramid scheme in that early users can increase their point total based on how many new users they refer.According to technical papers, users receive an extra 16% points for each user they invite to bring in more participants, and an additional 8% for each additional person the second level brings in. Another topic of dispute is whether additional layer-2 networks are necessary in the congested decentralized finance (DeFi) area.DeFiLlama claims that there are currently 232 blockchains overall, many of which share users and services.Out of all of them, Ethereum is the biggest, holding 55% of the locked value, followed by BSC at 6% and Tron at 17%. Although it’s important to note that Blast’s $225 million total value locked is quickly nearing that of Coinbase’s Base, which has $284 million, cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase (COIN) and Kraken have lately emerged with their own layer-2 networks.Despite the uncertainty surrounding Blast points, investors are still willing to invest in the platform, even if the Blast blockchain will not be operational for a further four months.
