TLDR Crypto 2024-05-07

Robinhood Crypto received a Wells Notice from the SEC, signaling a potential enforcement action for alleged securities violations. The notice is one of many that the SEC has recently issued to crypto firms (e.g., UniSwap & Consensys) challenging the classification of digital assets on their platforms.

Ethereum's daily ETH burn rate has hit a yearly low, mainly due to significantly reduced gas fees (gas on Ethereum is now 5 to 10 gwei). The decrease in gas fees, the lowest this year, is affecting the network's deflationary mechanism established by the London hard fork.

Hermetica is launching the first Bitcoin-backed synthetic dollar, USDh, in June, offering a 25% yield to users. It argues the yield is sustainable because it is based on futures funding rates and a demand for Bitcoin futures. The company says that USDh will be a pivotal asset for increasing liquidity and functionality in Bitcoin DeFi.

3Jane is a derivatives protocol that allows users to collateralize yield-bearing ETH in options contracts, earning options premiums on top of staking and restaking yield. By sourcing yield within DeFi derivatives, 3Jane mitigates the opportunity costs of holding restaked ETH and alleviates the burden off AVS security budgets. It is a proof of concept of the potential of tokenizing cryptoeconomic security and derivatives on a shared ledger.

This article discusses EigenLayer's "Universal Intersubjective Work Token" ($EIGEN) and its significance, breaking down its key features and complexities into 30 tweets. It explains how $EIGEN transforms Ethereum's $ETH into a universal objective work token, allowing for validation of external services and addressing intersubjective faults through a dual-token model while incorporating mechanisms like forking and social consensus.

Modularity is a horizontal scaling technique that breaks blockchain down to its core components to make block creation more efficient. Vertical scaling involves increasing the hardware requirements of nodes and optimizing on the software level. Both modular and monolithic chains can employ horizontal and vertical scaling techniques. The endgame of Ethereum scalability will combine horizontal scaling through sharding and vertical scaling through parallelized VMs, which the =nil; L2 is working towards by incorporating modularity, zkSharding, and intra-shard parallelization.

Fantasy Top is a new game on Blast that turns crypto influencers into NFT trading cards. It allows players to compete based on the real-world Twitter engagement of their NFT trading card lineups. The game offers crypto and in-game rewards and is rapidly gaining popularity on Crypto Twitter.

The memecoin ecosystem has expanded dramatically since 2020-21, when the only options were DOGE, SHIB, and a few other Ethereum-based tokens. New tooling has made creating memecoins significantly easier, requiring no coding skills, and new token standards like Runes and DN404 create more opportunities for unique designs. Supply far outstrips demand, making memecoins a high-risk, low-reward opportunity.

Ethereum developers are actively integrating EIP-3074 to simplify wallet usability.

Stablecoins are expected to pass $4 trillion in volume in Q2 2024, barely surpassing Visa's processing volume.

Fantasy Top, a new social finance game that allows players to draft teams of Twitter influencers, rewards players with crypto or native platform rewards based on the engagement metrics of the team members during set competition periods, turning Twitter activity into a competitive and potentially profitable venture.

Prominent Bitcoin mixers such as Samourai Wallet, Wasabi Wallet, and hardware wallet Trezor are exiting the U.S. market or ending mixer services to avoid potential legal challenges.