Adam Efrima is the SSV Core team Co-founder. He has been active in the crypto industry since 2013. Over eight years living in China working in the financial industry and fintech space, Adam has worked in CITIC Bank covering outbound investments for Chinese SOEs, he was also in charge of setting up the eToro Shanghai operation. Since then, Adam has been deeply involved in Ethereum staking, co-founding top performing staking project Bloxstaking as well as co-founding SSV Network, a decentralized validator infrastructure for ETH staking.

Adam Simmons is Chief Strategy Officer at RDX Works, a key contributor to the Radix public ledger. He has over 13 years of experience in building &amp; growing businesses in a range of industries including online video, blockchain &amp; digital marketing. With experience in both senior leadership &amp; hands-on roles, he has repeatedly recruited, managed, and trained highly successful teams within marketing, customer success and operations functions. Adam is also a previous member of the UK Paralympic Sprint Kayaking Team and has competed in multiple World and European Championships.


Adam Swick is the Chief Growth Officer at Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to joining Marathon, he served as a principal at Refinery Ventures, where he was responsible for identifying and recommending business strategies to accelerate the growth of all companies in Refinery’s portfolio. Before Refinery, Swick was the director of strategic finance at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, where he managed the company’s balance sheet, debt program, investor relations, and all forecasting activities. Prior to Kraken, he founded Swick Capital, a crypto-asset hedge fund, worked at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Swick holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BS in finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Adrian Brink is the co-founder of Namada and Anoma, where he focuses on building privacy-preserving systems that are resilient to global crises. Previously, he was a core developer at Tendermint (Cosmos) and worked at the Web3 Foundation. He also co-founded Cryptium Labs, which was later sold to Chorus One, and Metastate, where he contributed to major upgrades to the Tezos protocol​.

Adrien Stern is the founder &amp; CEO of Reveel, the omnichain payments infrastructure that enables one-click cross-chain payments to connect people across borders and networks. Before founding Reveel, Adrien led digital transformation efforts at BNP Paribas CIB. He was also previously a venture builder, and owns Bridge Music, a record label and recording studio. Adrien has a Bachelor’s degree in Sciences of Management from The University of Lausanne and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Esade. 

Alex Hoffman is Head of Ecosystem at Superposition Finance. Superposition is revolutionizing DeFi by addressing its core challenges through robust risk management powered by Concordia’s best-in-class risk engine, omnichain functionality, and transparency.

Alexei Zamyatin is a co-founder of BOB, a first-of-its-kind hybrid Layer-2 powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum. He has been a Bitcoin and interoperability research contributor since 2015 and is most known for his work on trustless cross-chain bridges and L2s. Alexei holds a PhD in computer science from Imperial College London.


Alison Haire is the CEO and founder of Lilypad, a serverless, decentralized compute network that democratizes access to computational power by providing scalable infrastructure for AI, machine learning and other high-demand processes. Before founding Lilypad, she held roles at companies such as Filecoin, IBM and Accenture. Under her leadership, Lilypad leverages idle GPU capacity worldwide to fuel an open AI economy, providing cost-effective and scalable compute resources. Her work focuses on making high-performance computing accessible to more developers and researchers, while challenging the dominance of large centralized cloud providers​​.

With over 20 years of experience leading and designing games and tech companies, Alun is well-versed in creating innovative products that tackle experiential and developer challenges. In addition to his stewardship of LAOS Network, he is CEO and co-founder of the company building LAOS, Freeverse, which focuses on building scalable blockchain infrastructure. His history as the co-creator of ‘Barcelona World Race - THE GAME,’ a cutting-edge video game enabling virtual participation in real-world events, and his wider passion for gaming, have fed into his vision for LAOS Network as a solution for the intersection of Web3 tech with both gaming and real-world applications. Alun also led Shar3d.io, a pioneering company enabling collaborative 3D web applications, and served as CTO of Bodypal.com, a virtual garment services company. He holds a Ph.D. in Medical Physics from University College London.



Amanda Cassatt is the founder and CEO of Serotonin. Amanda previously served as Chief Marketing Officer of ConsenSys from 2016 through 2019. Joining one year after the launch of Ethereum, Amanda played a crucial role in defining, creating, and growing the narrative for ConsenSys, Ethereum, and blockchain overall.

Amanda stewarded the ConsenSys brand through its global expansion across enterprises, governments, developers, and consumers. She created and scaled the marketing team to over 50 people, serving both the ConsenSys brand and 50+ portfolio companies such as MetaMask, Infura, Truffle, and Gitcoin; managing teams in product marketing, growth, design, content, community, events, email, analytics and SEO. Amanda’s contributions to some of the most successful product launches, token sales and fundraises landed her on Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016. Amanda is the author of the world's first web3 marketing book, Web3 Marketing: A Handbook for the Next Internet Revolution.

Amanda Keleher currently serves as Chief People Officer at Consensys, one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space. A well-rounded business leader with an over 25-year career in the technology space, Amanda is the driving force behind the human element of Consensys where she is responsible for overseeing all of the aspects of people, from building and maintaining the company culture to harnessing human capital as a key driver of business. 

Before joining ConsenSys, Amanda served as the Head of People at ThoughtWorks, a global technology consultancy company, for nearly ten years, where she led the global scale expansion by opening offices around the world and recruiting a diverse workforce at a time when the DevOps movement had just been born and a new skill set were yet to be developed. After her time at ThoughWorks, she served as the Executive Vice President, People &amp; Culture of Index Exchange, one of the world’s premier ad tech organizations; and as VP of People at Little Bits and Intent Media where she excelled in designing effective and creative strategies to attract and retain world-class talent in hyper competitive environments

Andrea Berry is a seasoned online video strategist with 15+ years of experience in transformative media partnerships. 

Her early successes include helping to launch Qello Concerts, the first direct-to-consumer live-music OTT service, later transforming it into Qello Media Services and Vimeo’s OTT channels offering across various industries as their first strategic sales director for their enterprise.

Currently, as the Head of Business Development at Theta Labs, Andrea leverages her expertise in online video and blockchain to drive strategic partnerships and growth opportunities for the company. She helps enterprises take advantage and lean into the opportunities Web3 presents. 

Andrew Redden is the CEO and CTO of Last Network, a blockchain platform focused on sustainable cash flow and reinvestment. Previously, he worked at Gitcoin and has contributed to numerous DeFi and Web3 projects. Redden's career reflects a commitment to developing technologies that prioritize long-term viability and community engagement​.

Andrew Thurman is a Data Editor based in Washington, DC. He previously wrote for CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, and worked in various roles for Chainlink and Nansen. His analysis has been quoted in The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters, The BBC, CNBC, and elsewhere. Contact Andrew at andrew@blockworks.co.

Andrey Sergeenkov writes educational articles as a freelancer. His works have been published in Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Entrepreneur and CoinMarketCap. He believes that transforming society towards lifelong learning, combined with decentralization in government and business, will lead to exponential social development.

Andy Bromberg is CEO of Beam and Contributor to the Eco Protocol. Eco has raised more than $90 million from an array of leading investors, including a16z Crypto, L Catterton, Activant Capital, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and others. Prior to Eco, Andy was Co-founder and President of CoinList. Andy is also a founding board member at FreeWorld, a non-profit seeking to end institutionalized poverty in the United States by providing access to living-wage jobs for people with criminal histories. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Stanford University and co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Group.

An established and versatile Financial Executive with over two decades of experience running multiple trading businesses across top-level banks such as HSBC, Barclays, and UBS. After running the top Agency and SSA business for both UBS and Barclays, he took over Emerging Markets macro trading for Barclays. In 2018, wanting to go deeper into Emerging Markets he took a role as Head of Latam local markets trading where he was responsible for trading activities across Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. In 2021 DeMartino moved into Crypto when he became CEO and founder of Coinbase Risk Strategies focused on DeFi and Derivatives trading. More recently he started Trident Digital Group, a crypto-native solutions firm that is focused on lending and safe yield generation and stablecoin adoption.


Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio.

Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman in 2001. Earlier, he worked in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs &amp; Co.

In 2022, Scaramucci was ranked #47 in Cointelegraph’s Top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. In 2016, he was ranked #85 in Worth Magazine’s Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. In 2011, he received Ernst &amp; Young’s New York Financial Services “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award.  Anthony is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a board member of the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation. He is the author of five books.

Scaramucci served on President Donald J. Trump’s 16-person Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee, and in 2017 briefly served as Chief Strategy Officer of the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank and White House Communications Director.

Scaramucci, a native of Long Island, New York, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Antoni is a co-founder of Aleph Zero Foundation (Switzerland), an organization overseeing the development of the Aleph Zero blockchain, and a Managing Partner of Cardinal Cryptography (Poland), firm focused on core development of the Aleph Zero ecosystem.

Ari Juels is the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor in the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion and a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University. He is a Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He is also Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. He is the author of crypto thriller novel The Oracle (Talos Press), which was released on 20 February 2024.

Austin Alexander is co-founder of LayerTwo Labs, a company focused on advancing the Bitcoin ecosystem through innovative solutions and specializing in the development of Drivechain, a specific type of blockchain sidechain designed to foster creativity and scalability within Bitcoin.

Austin Campbell is the founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Previously, he has run portfolio management at Paxos for the stablecoins as well as being the chief risk officer of Paxos National Trust, has managed fixed income trading desks at JP Morgan and Citi, and has been a portfolio manager and structurer at Stone Ridge, the parent of NYDIG. He holds a BS in Mathematics from CSU Chico and a MBA from NYU Stern.

Ben Mills is the co-founder of Meso, a payments platform connecting banks and blockchains. Prior to Meso, Ben spent a decade building payments products as an early team member at Braintree (acquired by PayPal), as Head of Product at Venmo, and working on Solana Pay at Solana Labs.

Ben Rubin is the CEO and co-founder of Towns, a decentralized messaging platform dedicated to redefining online communication. Rubin has a rich background and a decade of experience in creating digital spaces that build trust and foster human connection. Prior to founding Here Not There Labs, the developer of Towns, Ben founded two venture-backed startups, Meerkat and Houseparty, both of which reimagined how people interact digitally. He scaled his communication products to hundreds of millions of users and raised over $70M in funding from Sequoia Capital and Greylock. After Houseparty was acquired by Epic Games in 2019, Ben went on to found Here Not There Labs, a venture-backed startup with over $30M in funding from a16z crypto and Benchmark Capital.

Ben Strack is a senior reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and DeFi into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism.

Contact Ben via email at ben@blockworks.co

Bessie is a Brooklyn-based reporter covering DeFi and technology. Bessie worked as a tech journalist for The Org prior to joining Blockworks and was a management consultant for KPMG in another life. She is originally from Melbourne, Australia and holds an MA from New York University. She is also the mother of a bratty cat named Mochi. You can reach Bessie at bessie@blockworks.co

Bezalel Eithan Raviv, an ex-member of IDF Cyber Unit 8200, is a seasoned entrepreneur with deep expertise in technology and innovation. He now leads Lionsgate Network, a blockchain analysis firm specializing in professional money recovery services for digital asset investors in the +$2.5 trillion market. Prior to this role, Bezalel founded an investment banking firm supporting AI startups and developed Halleluiah, a pioneering web3 migration pattern for global music copyrights.

Billy Luedtke is the CEO and founder of Intuition, an information protocol powering a more trustful internet. Billy previously served as senior technology advisor at EY, a leading global professional services organization providing assurance, tax, audit, strategy and transactions. At EY, Billy created the company’s blockchain consulting practice, leading the technical development of blockchain-enabled distributed systems. Billy later became a senior token engineer at Consensys, a leading Ethereum developer (MetaMask, Infura, Linea). Billy continues to serve as an advisor at Consensys and MetaMask.

Billy Sebell is the Executive Director of the XDC Foundation and an early contributor to the XDC Network. Since early 2018, Billy has worked to develop the XDC community, focused on ecosystem and network growth and implementing use cases in trade finance. Billy previously spent more than 25 years in manufacturing and consumer products, dealing with the challenges businesses face in capital markets and international trade.

Bob Bodily is the Provo, Utah-based CEO and Co-Founder of Bioniq, a BTC Ordinals wallet and marketplace. He has a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and a Ph.D. in educational/instructional technology from Brigham Young University, with 25 articles and 1K citations. He is a data engineer with 100K+ lines of production Python code, and he has two previous software startups, including an EdTech SaaS that sold in 2021.


Bogdan is the Co-Founder and CTO of Tenderly, the full-stack infrastructure solutions provider powering Web3 developer teams with the essential tools and services throughout their development journeys. 

Prior to co-founding Tenderly, Bogdan worked as a software engineer for major software platforms such as MVP Workshop and Go Daddy where he was responsible for constructing and managing the development of distributed cloud systems before realizing the lack of infrastructural support for Web3 developers. With his vast experience in constructing, expanding, and overseeing extensive distributed cloud systems, he is well-versed in the intricacies of blockchain technologies and their practical applications. 

Brandon Truong is lead product contributor for ZetaChain. He previously co-founded social platform Yada (which was acquired in 2020) and spent time building products for BuzzFeed and Udacity. 


 Brian Pak is CEO &amp; Co-Founder of ChainLight, an award-winning blockchain security firm that specializes in smart contract audits and on-chain monitoring. He is also a co-founder of Theori, an established US-based offensive cybersecurity company, since 2016, which he still leads today, having now amassed trusted partners including Microsoft, Google and Samsung. Brian’s early career started when he co-founded and developed Kaprica Security, inventing and patenting the Skorpion Charger, an Android mobile charger that can detect malicious software with no user action required. He has worked on research and development projects with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US. Brian is also a founder of the team PPP (Plaid Parliament of Pwning) which won DEF CON CTF, one of the most prestigious hacker competitions held in Las Vegas, in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023. Brian graduated with a Masters Degree in Software Security Research from Carnegie Mellon University.

Three years ago, his act of burning a physical Banksy ignited global discourse on NFTs and Web3, exposing the industry's flaws. Now, through XION, founder Burnt Banksy leads a mission to democratize Web3 to the masses, making ownership accessible to all by removing unnecessary barriers and complications through chain abstraction. To date: XION has raised over $36M in funding with the goal of "making crypto disappear." Ultimately, Burnt Banksy wants to provide the benefits of crypto to people without requiring them to know anything about crypto.

Byron Donalds grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and he is also the proud son of a hardworking and loving single mother. His mother dedicated her time instilling in him that greatness requires sacrifice, which drives him as a devoted family man and United States Congressman.  

Byron is a graduate of Florida State University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in finance and marketing. Byron's career led him to Southwest Florida, where he worked in the banking, finance, and insurance industries. Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2016, Byron represented Hendry County and east Collier County in the State Capitol. During his tenure in the Florida House, Byron served as the PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee Chair during the 2018-2019 Legislative Session and served as the Insurance &amp; Banking Subcommittee's Chairman 2019-2020 Legislative Session. While serving in the Florida House, primarily focused on elder affairs, criminal justice reform, and ensuring that each child has access to a world-class education. 

Byron is committed to serving and giving back to the community that gave him so much. He has served Southwest Florida in many ways, including previously serving on the Board of Trustees for Florida Southwestern State College after being appointed by then-Governor Rick Scott. Byron continues to volunteer in his church as a youth leader and a mentor. He also enjoys volunteering as a coach in youth football and basketball leagues.

Congressman Byron Donalds lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Erika, and their three sons: Damon, Darin, and Mason. Byron has spent his entire adult life serving others, whether it be through volunteering, business, or leadership. He is committed to representing Florida's 19th Congressional District's conservative values in Washington DC to ensure a stronger Florida and a stronger nation.

Cameron B. Pick is a partner and patent attorney at the Chicago-based intellectual property boutique law firm Marshall, Gerstein &amp; Borun. He prosecutes patents for emerging technologies, including blockchain and crypto, among other innovative areas. He may be reached at cpick@marshallip.com. 

Candace Kelly is the Chief Legal and Policy Officer for the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world's financial infrastructure. She leads the team responsible for SDF’s legal affairs and the policy team that is focused on bridging the gap between the public and private sectors. Previously, Candace worked for Uber Technologies, Inc., where she helped navigate the company’s response to regulatory investigations and advised on safety, security, privacy, consumer protection, and law enforcement response. Prior to that she served for 17 years at the United States Department of Justice.

Carlos Mercado is a data scientist at Flipside Crypto, specializing in the convergence of data science, cryptocurrency, economics, and open-source research. His expertise spans the Ethereum ecosystem and over 20 other blockchains, where he leverages SQL, R, Python, and Solidity to develop innovative data models and analytics tools. Carlos's notable contributions include the creation of the True Freeze DeFi primitive and leading the production of the 2023 Crypto Users Report, generating significant industry impact. Prior to Flipside, he applied his skills in AI strategy and product development at Guidehouse and offered data science consulting services.


​​Casey Wagner is a Senior Reporter based in New York. Casey covers crypto regulation, markets and central banks. Prior to joining Blockworks, she reported on macroeconomics at Bloomberg News. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Media Studies. Contact Casey via email at casey@blockworks.co

Charles Hoskinson is a Colorado-based technology entrepreneur and mathematician. He attended Metropolitan State University of Denver and University of Colorado Boulder to study analytic number theory before moving into cryptography through industry exposure.

His professional experience includes founding three cryptocurrency-related start-ups – Invictus Innovations, Ethereum and IOHK – and he has held a variety of posts in both the public and private sectors. He was the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and established the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013.

His current projects focus on educating people about cryptocurrency, being an evangelist for decentralization and making cryptographic tools easier to use for the mainstream. This includes leading the research, design and development of Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency that launched in September 2017.

Chris Barrett serves as the Director of Communications at Chainlink Labs and has been involved with Chainlink since 2017. Chainlink is the only on-chain data and cross-chain platform that enables financial institutions to develop customized, flexible, compliant, and future-proof blockchain applications and tokenized assets. Before this role, he founded a leading PR agency for technology startups, where he worked with over 1,000 innovative companies. Chris is also an avid runner, having maintained a streak of running for over five consecutive years. 

Chris Brooks founded CryptoAssetRecovery.com in 2017 to help digital asset owners recover lost assets. Chris was a programmer at Fidelity Investments, VP of Technology at venture-backed Carescout (which sold to GenWorth, a spinoff of General Electric) and has founded and sold three bootstrapped internet companies. 

Chris Swenor is a seasoned entrepreneur and blockchain pioneer with a 20-year career that kicked off as a self-taught programmer at age 13. He swiftly moved from corporate roles into startups, leading several to successful acquisitions. Chris started venturing into blockchain and cryptocurrency in 2013, founding Reach in 2019, a platform that has since attracted over $13M in funding and onboarded more than 8,000 developers.

In recent years, Chris founded Humble, a decentralized exchange on Algorand, and Alloy, a blockchain gaming platform acquired in 2023. He is currently working on Voi Network, a layer 1 blockchain empowering its community with user-centric governance and economics. 

Christopher Perkins is President of CoinFund, a web3 focused Registered Investment Advisor.  He is also a member of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee and its Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee.

Ciarán Murray is a seasoned veteran of the blockchain industry. Aside from advising on numerous blockchain projects over the years, and releasing a synthetics assets proof-of-concept last year, Ciarán previously worked in the media industry for British Sky Broadcasting. He is not only well placed to understand the issues facing the media industry but also how to apply blockchain and other distributed technologies to remedy them.

Da Hongfei is the founder of Neo, an open-source, community-driven blockchain platform designed to welcome developers into the Smart Economy. Hongfei operates as CEO of Neo Global Development (NGD), the executive arm of the Neo Foundation that is committed to developing the Neo protocol and its supporting ecosystem. He is seen as a luminary in the Web3 space and as a blockchain pioneer in Asia. Hongfei received his education at the South China University of Technology, receiving degrees in technology and English.

Damian Alvarez is a communications professional helping Web3 clients get their stories heard. He is currently the Head of Communications at Aori, an omni-chain logic layer that leverages off-chain data storage to enable high-frequency on-chain trading. He has worked at agencies such as Edelman and YAP Global to assist a variety of emerging and established clients to engage in industry-wide narratives surrounding technology. He may be contacted at damian@aori.io.

Dan Keeler is Editor-in-Chief at Blockworks. Prior to joining Blockworks, he was Frontier Markets Editor at the Wall Street Journal where he managed the Journal’s coverage of smaller emerging markets as well as created a number of high-profile events and a highly regarded newsletter. Before joining the WSJ, he was the Editor of Global Finance magazine. He is also the founder of New York’s FM Network, a group that hosts gatherings of finance professionals focused on smaller emerging markets.

Contact Dan via email at dan@blockworks.co

Daniel Batten is a ClimateTech investor, Bitcoin environmental impact analyst, CEO advisor and author. He is most widely known for his data-driven approach to Bitcoin mining research.


Daniel Cawrey has been involved full-time in the crypto space since 2013, including as an editor at CoinDesk. He is author of 2020’s “Mastering Blockchain” and 2023’s “Understanding Crypto” books, both available on Amazon.

Daranee Ganesh is a publishing and production manager based in Washington, DC. She holds an LLB with a focus on emerging technologies. Prior to Blockworks, Daranee worked on several legal and non-profit projects aimed at integrating decentralized solutions in the social justice framework, specifically within immigration and environmental law. Contact Daranee at daranee@blockworks.co.

Darren Kleine is an Alberta-based reporter covering podcast content at Blockworks. Previously reporting for Cointelegraph, he wrote feature content and a weekly series focused on the personal stories of influential figures in the Web3 space. He has been an active participant in the NFT art scene since 2020, creating works on curated platforms including SuperRare and KnownOrigin and hosting an NFT art-focused podcast called NFP with DKleine. Contact Darren Kleine at darren@blockworks.co.

David is an Editor based in the Netherlands focused on data-driven journalism. Previously, he wrote for TheNextWeb's crypto vertical before launching Protos in 2021. He's a reformed hardline Bitcoiner passionate about permissionless and decentralized networks. Contact David at david@blockworks.co

David Schwed serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Halborn, an elite blockchain security firm. Prior to Halborn, he was the Global Head of Digital Assets Technology at BNY Mellon, the world's biggest custodian bank, where he integrated the IT strategy for the company's digital asset services. David was also CISO for Galaxy Digital, where he led the development of information security and IT infrastructure, and served as a risk committee advisor, evaluating emerging threats in financial services. He also founded the Cybersecurity Master's Program at Yeshiva University’s Katz School of Science and Health, sharing his expertise as a practitioner-in-residence.


Delphine Forma is the policy lead for Europe &amp; UK at Solidus Labs, a leading market compliance and market integrity firm in digital assets. With a career spanning roles in major banks and blockchain ventures, she brings extensive experience in compliance and legal across sectors. She is the founder of the crypto compliance and legal TG group with 1,400 members. A Sciences Po Lyon alumna, Delphine also holds advanced degrees in European Criminal Business Law and anti-money laundering.

Denelle Dixon is the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting changemakers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology. She leads the teams that help maintain Stellar's codebase, support the communities around Stellar, and advocate on behalf of the network with international stakeholders. Before joining Stellar, Dixon served as COO of Mozilla, one of the most successful mission-driven open-source organizations.. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for net neutrality and the global effort to ensure that people can control their personal data.

Dermot O’Riordan serves as a Director at the POKT Network Foundation where he helps steer product development and strategy. From Ireland to Silicon Valley, Dermot’s career ranged from advising tech companies and VC firms to leading marquee industry events. His interest in Web3 was sparked in 2016 with the rise of DAOs, leading him to dive deeper into the blockchain space, where he served as an advisor to projects like Radix and Dusk, and later, spearheading growth at Eden Block.

Donovan is a reporter based in Singapore. He previously worked in editorial at Bankless and is a huge fan of spaghetti Westerns and the Wu-Tang Clan. Contact Donovan at donovan@blockworks.co.

Elena leads product marketing at Hiro Systems, a developer tooling company bringing smart contracts to Bitcoin. She has spent the past six years working in blockchain and cryptocurrency startups. Elena co-founded Blockchain Latinx, an online community that explores what blockchain means for Latinos and for Latin America. She has an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Eli Cohen is a corporate lawyer with 25+ years of experience in commercial transactions, financial services and regulatory matters and has worked in Asia, Europe and the United States. He is the General Counsel for Centrifuge, a real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and securitization platform and Chief Compliance Officer for Anemoy Capital SPC Limited a British Virgin Islands fund company issuer of the tokenized Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund 1. He is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, has a Masters in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Eli Zeger writes about democracy and its relationship with technology. His work has been published in the Boston Review, Noema Magazine, Strange Matters, Zora Zine, among numerous other publications.

Elliot is the Head of Climate Strategy at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, where he is helping unlock Bitcoin's clean energy potential by bridging sustainable miners and climate-conscious investors. In his role at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, Elliot educates policymakers and NGOs on Bitcoin’s relationship with the energy system. He is a climatetech operator focused on alleviating energy poverty, bridging the digital divide, and promoting financial inclusion through technologies such as Bitcoin. Elliot was previously a Schwarzman Scholar and has served in the military, US Department of Energy, Clinton Foundation, and more. 

Evan Thomas is General Counsel for Alluvial, a software development company supporting the Liquid Collective liquid staking protocol. He was previously at Wealthsimple, Canada’s largest consumer fintech, where he was Head of Legal for Wealthsimple’s crypto trading platform. While at Wealthsimple, Evan helped launch Canada’s first regulated staking product. Before Wealthsimple, Evan was a litigator at Osler, Hoskin &amp; Harcourt LLP for nearly 15 years. Among other notable cases, Evan was hearing counsel to 3iQ Corp. in its appeal securing regulatory approval for Canada’s first publicly traded bitcoin fund in 2019.

Felix Jauvin is the host of the On the Margin podcast. Based in British Columbia, Canada, he lives and breathes where crypto and macroeconomics intersect.

Felix Xu, crypto geek, early adopter, and NFT collector. Felix graduated from NYU Stern and founded two crypto projects, ARPA and Bella Protocol, among the global top 500 by market cap. Felix previously worked at Fosun Investment, Sackler family office, and Vertical Research in New York and Beijing. Felix loves sailing, kitesurfing and was featured in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for his NFT collection.

Frank has a diverse career that spans creative writing, day trading, and a 12-year stint in financial planning. After experimenting with blockchain and being an early adapter to the Solana ecosystem, Mathis co-founded GenesysGo in 2021 to create a faster, more reliable and more secure decentralized data storage protocol. Their flagship product, shdwDrive is built on Solana and aims to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and traditional business infrastructure. GenesysGo is powered by a new type of decentralized data storage consensus mechanism, built from the ground up by the GenesysGo team.

Fraser is co-founder &amp; CTO of Cubist and an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is an expert in software correctness: her research focuses on systems security, automated bug finding, and formal verification, from verifying (parts of) production systems like browser JITs, to finding exploitable bugs in real codebases. Her tools have found many zero-day bountied bugs and CVEs in the Chrome and Firefox browsers and multiple operating systems. Fraser received her BA in English and her MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.


Garrett Harper is the producer for the Empire podcast. Garrett worked in private equity and product management before jumping into crypto full-time in 2021. His favorite thing about crypto? It conflates art, gaming, finance, software, and psychology into one hyper-growth industry.

Gijs op de Weegh is the CEO and Founder of StablR, where he leads the strategy, business operations, and investor relations. He founded StablR out of his passion for implementing blockchain technology in the financial industry and exploring its possibilities. Before founding StablR, Gijs co-founded Payvision, an e-commerce payment service provider, in 2002. Under his leadership, Payvision grew to over 300 employees and achieved a turnover exceeding €4 billion.

Gísli Kristjánsson is co-founder and CTO of Monerium, the first company to issue fiat onchain. He fell in love with programming at the age of 13. After working as a bonds broker, Gísli saw the inefficiencies of securities settlements firsthand and recognized the potential of Bitcoin. Prior to co-founding Monerium in 2015, Gísli founded and sold a platform to give users access to geo-blocked content. Fun fact: Gísli’s Ethereum address is among the 1% of the oldest addresses.

Haden Patrick is Director of Business Operations of Cordial Systems, a provider of institutional-grade self custody software using a Zero Trust security model.  Haden has executive experience in team leadership, engineering and education originating from his 24 year career as a Naval Officer. After co-founding SoloKeys, the first open-source security key company, he went on to manage projects connecting web3 to traditional finance at a cryptocurrency trading firm before joining Cordial Systems.

Hadley Stern, Advisor to MPCH, has extensive experience in leadership roles within TradFi and digital asset industries. As Global Head of Custody at the Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) from 2021 to 2023, Hadley spearheaded the creation of the industry’s first bank-grade crypto-custody platform. Hadley also previously served as Chief Operating Officer at Bloq where he was responsible for the P&amp;L, product roadmap, and general operations. Hadley was Founding President of Fidelity Digital Asset Services where he led Fidelity's Blockchain Incubator and Digital Currency group and was pivotal in early product launches, including activating Bitcoin donations to Fidelity Charitable and building and running Fidelity first Bitcoin mining Operation.



Hannah Finnerty is Blockworks' editorial operations manager and is based in the US. Hannah previously worked in podcast production for The National in Abu Dhabi. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in multiplatform journalism and Middle Eastern politics. Contact Hannah at hannah@blockworks.co.

Hatu Sheikh is the co-founder and CMO of DAO Maker, the largest on-chain funding platform with 1.5M+ users. The platform's contracts have distributed over $600M, with a cumulative return of around 10x. Hatu has a strong background in marketing and strategy and has played a pivotal role in driving the success of various blockchain-based projects and tokens, crafting effective marketing strategies, and forging powerful synergies within the industry.

Harry Duckworth, a law graduate, embarked on a unique journey that led him to become the youngest trader at global commodities giant Trafigura. He then went on to set up desks for several hedge funds worldwide, accumulating over a decade of experience in trading, hedge funds, and emergent technologies. 

Through his work, he became fascinated by the revolutionary power of blockchain tech soon after the inception of Bitcoin. Years later he founded AgriDex International, to provide digital marketplaces and supply chain information for all participants in the global food chain. 

Hind Kurhan is a Co-Founder of Thesis Defense, a decentralized technology security auditing company whose mission is the facilitation of broad adoption of decentralized technology by improving security and audit consistency throughout the blockchain sphere.


Ian Rogers is the Chief Experience Officer at Ledger, leading the consumer-facing business delivering the world’s #1 way to buy and secure cryptocurrency.  Prior, Ian was the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH for five transformative years, working with a portfolio of nearly one hundred brands across luxury including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Sephora, and Hennessy.  Ian also sits on the boards of Dr Marten’s and Lyst.

Ian spent twenty years bringing digital music to the mainstream, first with Winamp then Yahoo!, Beats, and Apple.  Ian contributed to the 2015 launch of Apple Music including Beats 1, their digital streaming channel. Ian graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Indiana University in 1994.  Ian built some of the earliest music-related Web sites in the early 90s and has been working with Beastie Boys since 1993.

Igor Telyatnikov is the CEO and co-founder of the blockchain and financial services technology company AlphaPoint. Headquartered in New York, AlphaPoint supports over 10 million users, powering marketplaces and wallets in over 35 countries. With 15 years of experience in tech and innovation, Igor has empowered over 150 clients, including CME Group and Scotiabank. In 2022, he partnered with the Government of El Salvador to upgrade its Chivo Wallet into a national Bitcoin and dollar wallet, creating the first nationalized crypto ecosystem. Igor previously held roles at Cvetlo, LiftDNA, and Ingersoll Rand/Allegion, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing from Penn State University. He is a frequent speaker at industry events.

Ishan is a University of Texas McCombs School of Business graduate with a BBA in Finance &amp; Marketing. He founded and managed a Private Equity Fund that reached an eight-figure Assets Under Management (AUM) and has also gained experience with many top 200 projects of crypto market cap. In 2022, he helped found SCRIB3, a Web3 Marketing and PR venture. He was notably among the first to raise an alert about potential deceptive and unethical business practices by FTX. Ishan contributes as a DeFi analyst, an active angel investor, and an advisor in projects like Polygon Technologies.

Jack Kubinec is a Solana ecosystem reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. Jack previously interned at Blockworks before joining full-time. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a degree in sociology. Contact Jack at jack.kubinec@blockworks.co.

Jag is the CEO and co-founder of re.al, an L2 build to facilitate deep onchain liquidity for tokenized RWAs. re.al seeks to redefine how RWAs are integrated into DeFi, using yield-generating real-world assets as novel building blocks in existing DeFi primitives.

James Cirrone is a breaking news reporter based in New York. Prior to joining Blockworks, James was a reporter and newsletter writer at Bloomberg News. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism. He also played trumpet in the university’s marching band. Contact James via email at james.cirrone@blockworks.co.

Jason Allegrante is the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Fireblocks. He is an experienced Counsel with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry with both large, traditional financial institutions as well as early stage fintech startups.



Jason Dehni is the co-founder and group CEO of Credbull, a leading DeFi platform offering structured high fixed yield solutions in SME private credit. Jason has over 25 years of senior management experience in asset management, private banking, SME lending, insurance, risk management, and crypto across North America, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. His background includes serving as group COO &amp; MENA CEO of a publicly traded crypto asset management company, co-founder &amp; CEO of an SME trade finance platform, and senior leadership roles in asset management, wealth management,  insurance, and management consulting. Jason holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an Honours BA in Economics &amp; Political Science from the University of Toronto. 

Jean-Marie Mognetti is Chief Executive Officer of CoinShares, a publicly listed investment firm that manages over five billion in digital assets on behalf of a global investor base, and an experienced commodities trader with a background in quantitative strategies. A veteran of the Global Advisors group of companies since 2011, Jean-Marie has served in various leadership roles throughout his tenure, most recently as CEO of Global Advisors (Jersey) Limited and director of GABI, the world’s first regulated Bitcoin fund. In addition to his management responsibilities as CEO, Jean-Marie oversees the firm’s proprietary trading arm, capital markets portfolio, and risk management practices – areas in which he has developed unique expertise over his career. Prior to joining Global Advisors, Jean-Marie was a quantitative strategist with Hermes Commodities Fund Managers, and an Energy Trader Assistant at Lehman Brothers. He holds Master of Science degrees in Mathematical Trading and Finance from Sir John Cass Business School in London, and Bank-Finance-Insurance from Université Paris Dauphine in Paris, in addition to a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Finance from Université Paris Dauphine.

Jeff is an editor at Blockworks, based in the United States. He has been a part of the blockchain space for over a decade, most recently working as US news editor at Cointelegraph. His areas of focus include empowering artists and creators through technology, using proof-of-participation methods to reward self-improvement, reducing the effectiveness of Sybil attacks, seeking transparent equity for disadvantaged communities, and exploring fairer models of world governance. Contact Jeff at Jeffrey@blockworks.co.

Jesper Johansen is the founder and CEO of NORTHSTAKE, a regulated custodial staking company specialized in building regulatory compliant crypto staking products for institutional investors and financial institutions. The team holds backgrounds from financial institutions, pension funds, large investment companies to consulting, technology and audit firms, such as Accenture, Deloitte, PwC as well as blockchain and crypto projects e.g. DAI Foundation (MakerDao), Ethereum and L1/L2s. 

Prior to NORTHSTAKE, Jesper held leadership positions with Accenture Strategy and Deloitte Consulting advising clients in heavily regulated industries to implement new technologies and drive business transformation. He holds a MBA from Copenhagen Business School and a B.Sc. in International Business. 

Jess Sun is an independent writer and content strategist. She loves bringing good ideas to light, helping the people behind them shine, and bridging gaps in understanding. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn. Go to her website to learn about working with her.

Jesse Knutson is the head of operations at Bitfinex Securities, where he is responsible for expanding the platform’s issuance pipeline, overseeing distribution and building its user base while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. Prior to this role, Knutson served as vice president of financial products at Blockstream, and held roles at prominent investment banks including Macquarie Group and Barclays.

Jim Myers is an engineer, early-stage investor, and the CTO &amp; Co-Founder of Flipside Crypto, a leading blockchain data analytics and business intelligence platform. Prior to co-founding Flipside, Jim developed the core technology that took products from 0 to 1 at companies such as Mylestone, Pluralsight, and Smarterer. Jim’s journey into the crypto industry began in 2015, eventually co-founding Flipside Crypto in 2017 to help empower crypto communities to create and share data-driven insights on the projects they care most about. Jim's passion for building extends to the broader startup community via his developer event series, Stack Dive, and as an angel investor to several local Boston-area startups, including AdHawk and LinkSquares. In a previous life, Jim developed advanced models to quantify risk and abnormal returns in the market for Financial Transmission Rights, a type of energy derivative.

JJ is an advisor, mentor and co-founder working across Bitcoin, mining and web3. He currently mentors for Outlier Ventures new Bitcoin Base Camp program and has co-founded a new protocol operating in stealth mode.

Joey is ranked by Chambers and Partners as one of the top 12 lawyers in the world, advising many of the largest platforms around the globe in the space. He co-chaired the Gibraltar Government’s working group on Blockchain for 3 years, which was established to develop the infrastructure to accommodate a DLT regulatory framework. Joey is also a specialist consultant to the United Nations and trains and assesses authorities primarily around South East Asia in virtual asset developments, DeFi and regulation. He is a member of several think tanks including the prestigious global ‘Wharton Reg@Tech’ initiative, the Blockchain Industry Parliamentary Roundtable on Blockchain Technologies at Parliament in the UK, and also contributed to the UK Law Society on the Blockchain Legal and Regulatory Guidance publication. He was the Xapo Representative on the Libra/Diem Association and has also contributed to various stablecoin and CBDC developments. 

Joeyz Yu is an entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in product design and development. He co-founded Sending Labs to revolutionize communication protocols and social applications for Web3, leading the development of their flagship products SendingMe and SendingNetwork. Previously, Joeyz co-founded MoboTab, where he created the Dolphin Browser, used by over 200 million users and later acquired by ChangYou. Joeyz's passion for empowering users and building exceptional teams drives his mission to shape the future of the internet. 

John is the Editor of Evergreen Content at Blockworks. Before Blockworks, he was the producer and founder of an explainer studio called Best Explained. As Evergreen Editor, he manages the production of explainers, guides and all educational content for anything crypto related. He is passionate about making digital asset education more accessible for degens and fence-sitters alike. Contact John at john@blockworks.co

John Woods is the CTO of the Algorand Foundation, which supports Algorand’s rapidly growing ecosystem by providing a best-in-class developer environment, supporting key infrastructure and setting technical standards, offering comprehensive support to builders and entrepreneurs, and providing the framework for decentralized governance.

Prior to joining the leadership team at Algorand, John worked as Chief Architect of Cardano at IOHK. He has held roles leading software architecture and applied cryptography at a number of firms including Informatica, ConsenSys and Central Bank of Ireland.

John Wu is President of Ava Labs, an Andresseen Horowitz backed technology company building the next-generation blockchain platform: Avalanche. John’s objective is to open up financial services and products to all. In this role, he leverages his expertise from over 20 years as a fintech executive and technology investor to create a blockchain-enabled solution for originating, issuing, and trading financial assets.  

Jeff Albus

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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Yesterday marked the five-year anniversary of <a href="https://explorer.solana.com/block/0">Solana&#8217;s genesis block</a>. To celebrate, we&#8217;re taking a look back at half a decade&#8217;s worth of accomplishments within our ecosystem.​



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The beginning</h2>



You&#8217;ve heard all about the ups and downs of Solana&#8217;s early days from us already — its architectural breakthroughs, the major downturn post-FTX, and its return to form as a comeback king. You can read more about it in our recent three part series <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-network-origins?utm_source=lightspeed-4bed7b.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=part-2-solana-skyfall&amp;_bhlid=67e2736479a2b44ab275cf3b18df07ed702336da">here</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-origins-ftx-alameda">here</a>, and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/how-solana-became-the-peoples-chain">here</a>. We also recently wrote about the technical innovations behind the network&#8217;s proof-of-history mechanism <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-proof-of-history">here</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data and analytics</h2>



Activity has boomed over the past five years. Just to name a few number-heavy milestones, Solana has processed over 400 billion transactions, facilitated DEX trading volume approaching $1 trillion, and expanded its validator network to thousands of active nodes. The network&#8217;s total value locked (TVL) reached an all-time high of $14.2 billion on January 18, 2025 — though global market downturns have brought its TVL below $9 billion at time of publication. Even so, Solana remains one of the most patronized blockchains, with a 30-day volume reaching $110 billion. The network&#8217;s native token, SOL, achieved an all-time high of $295.40 in January 2025; a remarkable increase from its initial seed sale price of $0.04 in 2018. As of March 17, 2025, SOL is trading at approximately $127.45.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Technical evolution</h2>



From 2020 to 2024, the implementation of features such as Gulf Stream, Turbine, and Sealevel have allowed for rapid transaction processing and parallel execution, distinguishing Solana from other layer-1 networks. Firedancer, an independent validator client developed by Jump Crypto, is on track to further solidify performance. Similarly, state compression has redefined what’s possible for onchain data storage, significantly reducing costs for NFTs and tokenized assets. And of course, the introduction of priority fees and the QUIC protocol has alleviated network congestion, transforming a once-pressing issue into a non-factor.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Concepts that defined the culture</h2>



Culture has probably shaped Solana&#8217;s identity just as much as its codebase. Back in 2021, the NFT marketplace Magic Eden became a cornerstone of the then-booming NFT ecosystem. Projects like DeGods and Mad Lads emerged in 2022, pushing Solana NFTs into the mainstream. The launch of BONK that same year turned speculation into mass excitement, laying the groundwork for an <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ai-pushing-memecoins-into-next-phase">explosion of memecoin</a> assets in 2024. Fast forward to 2023 to find Solana Mobile&#8217;s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-phones-sold-out">introduction of Saga</a> — a first-of-its-kind attempt to bring crypto-native experiences to a smartphone. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have also flourished, with platforms like Realms providing frameworks for decentralized governance.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Problems and failures</h2>



Not everything comes up roses, of course. The ecosystem has faced frequent challenges from rugpulls, hacks, scams and spam, with proliferation of these issues growing in tandem with the community&#8217;s popularity. On the technical side, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-price-dips-outage-restart">early outages</a> were a persistent critique, and while recent fixes have dramatically improved stability, those past failures are not forgotten. The 17-hour outage in September 2021, caused by transaction overload, and the multi-hour downtimes in 2022 due to bot spam, offline transaction bugs, and consensus failures, highlighted the network’s early instability. Meanwhile, the memecoin explosion in 2024 brought on a wave of pump-and-dump schemes, mostly exploiting platforms like pump.fun. There&#8217;s always going to be growing pains that reflect the challenges of rapid adoption. These difficulties have led to stronger fraud detection measures, better security tooling and (perhaps this is generous, but) a more cautious investor mindset.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s next?</h2>



Looking ahead, Solana remains poised for growth. The upcoming launch of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cme-planned-solana-futures">Solana futures</a> by CME Group on March 17, 2025 (that&#8217;s today!) signifies increasing institutional interest and provides new avenues for investment and hedging. The <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitwise-ceo-solana-ncredible-emerging-asset">potential approval</a> of Solana-based ETFs is additionally likely to open the doors for broader market participation. Continuing enhancements to the network&#8217;s scalability will likely also attract more developers and projects to the ecosystem. Firedancer, which has already demonstrated significant performance improvements in test environments, is on track to launch, promising to further plus-up efficiency and fortify against congestion and outages.&nbsp;



As we celebrate this milestone, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate how far Solana has come — from an ambitious experiment to one of the most battle-tested and dynamic ecosystems in the space. Through crashes and comebacks, Solana has continually defied expectations. So let’s all raise a glass to five years of resilience, reinvention and relentless forward momentum. Here’s to the next five years and beyond.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily">Blockworks Daily</a>: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>
</ul>

Solana turns 5: Celebrating ecosystem milestones

Ben Strack

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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You’ve probably heard about Blockworks’ <a href="https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2025-new-york/home">Digital Asset Summit</a> by now. Well, it kicks off tomorrow. It seems to be a good time for a conference, given the mix of optimism and uncertainty — in crypto and the broader economy. That hopeful-volatile blend should spur more interesting discussion.



So we have some dichotomies to work through. Like BlackRock adding bitcoin exposure to its alternatives-focused model portfolios as bitcoin ETFs have endured $5 billion of net outflows in recent weeks.&nbsp;



Or a president who wants to build “the crypto capital of the world” while simultaneously implementing policies that are sending <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/investors-bitcoin-narrative-confusion">the stock market</a> (and BTC price) lower. Not to mention the whole <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-memecoins-rock-solana">Trump memecoin</a> launch that made eyes roll around the industry.&nbsp;



Bo Hines, Executive Director of the White House’s Presidents Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, can hopefully share insight when he hits the DAS stage tomorrow. US Rep. Tom Emmer will speak 24 hours later on what it’ll take to get crypto legislation across the finish line this year.&nbsp;



The institutional presence at DAS will be ample. A step like walking back <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hester-peirce-reveals-sab-121-rescission">the SEC’s SAB 121</a> is already set to pave the way for banks and brokers to custody spot crypto — and legislation (on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senate-advances-stablecoin-bill">stablecoins</a> and market structure) is apparently on its way.&nbsp;



Command + F the event agenda…type in “inst” and you’ll get plenty of hits:



LMAX Group CEO David Mercer is set to sort through headwinds and tailwinds in the new era for institutional crypto. Eric Peters, who leads Coinbase Asset Management and One River Asset Management, will detail which institutions are actually buying this cycle.&nbsp;



Bloomberg Intelligence’s James Seyffart will guide a discussion on the next wave of institutional crypto products. Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul and Visa’s Catherine Gu are headliners on the “Institutionalization of Crypto” session.



BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has called tokenization “the next generation for markets.” The panel I’m moderating Thursday is likely to feature a debate on which assets are worth bringing onchain, and broader TradFi adoption there.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily">Blockworks Daily</a>: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>
</ul>

DAS to spotlight institutional era of crypto

Casey Wagner

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



We hope you got some rest over the weekend, because US equities are already off to another tumultuous start this week.&nbsp;



After entering a correction last week, but then hitting a year-to-date high on Friday, the S&amp;P 500 whipsawed today. At 2:30 pm ET it had managed to get back into the green, trading 1% higher.&nbsp;



The Nasdaq Composite was also faring pretty well, trading 0.8% higher at that time.&nbsp;



With recession fears mounting (and signals flashing), it begs the question: Have US stocks bottomed?&nbsp;



The data (mostly) says no. Let’s take a look:&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The VIX is hovering around 21</h2>



Any value at or above 27.3 (one standard deviation above the long-running average) indicates heightened volatility. Generally, stocks perform well after volatility spikes.&nbsp;



In mid-December, the VIX hit 27.6 after the Fed <a href="https://www.blockworks.com/news/fed-dovish-hawkish-2024-conduct">cut interest rates</a> by 25 basis points. A week later, the S&amp;P 500 had gained almost 3%. Volatility today is hovering around 19, but a bigger selloff in Big Tech and/or disappointing inflation data could send the VIX higher.&nbsp;



We actually saw almost this exact scenario play out last week. The VIX hit 27.9 on Monday afternoon, and then the S&amp;P 500 corrected later in the week.&nbsp;



The volatility indicator is still hovering higher than its long-running average (19.5). But it’s going to have to remain elevated for a lot longer (think months) for this to really signal a low for stocks.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The S&amp;P 500 is trading 19.9x forward 12-month earnings estimates</h2>



 In other words, the S&amp;P 500 today is trading around 20x the projected earnings of its companies in the next year.&nbsp;



For context, pre-2008 crash, the forward P/E for the S&amp;P 500 was around 15x. During the crisis, it had dipped to around 10-12x. In 2022, when recession fears were on the rise, the S&amp;P 500 was trading about 15x forward earnings estimates.&nbsp;



So we’re still in OK territory here. Or, at the very least, the market has priced in a slowdown, to some extent. This was the case during the 2020 recession because earnings estimates decreased so much when the pandemic hit.&nbsp;



On the other hand, we know consumers are worried. Consumer sentiment fell 11% in March and is down 22% since December, per University of Michigan data.&nbsp;



I haven’t heard much talk of it recently, but perhaps we are inching back toward “vibe-cession” territory, à la 2022.



While I’ll never be the one to tell you when it’s time to buy stocks, I feel confident in saying you should not expect the Fed to come in and save the day — at least not this week. The March Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting kicks off on Tuesday, and central bankers are <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/analysts-fed-put-fomc-2025">overwhelmingly expected </a>to hold interest rates steady.&nbsp;



The question thus remains: How long will this pause last? And, relatedly: How low will stocks have to go for Powell to step in? We know Trump <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/treasury-scott-bessent-not-worried-stock-market-selloff-rcna196608">isn’t planning</a> any bailouts.&nbsp;



Come talk markets with us in person this week at the Digital Asset Summit in NYC.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily">Blockworks Daily</a>: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto&#8217;s hottest networks.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.</li>
</ul>

Is this the bottom?

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Gaming tech firm Razer has teamed up with OpenAI founder Sam Altman’s crypto venture Tools for Humanity to prevent unauthorized bots in video games.



They’re calling their solution Razer ID Verified by World ID. Once you have a verified Razer ID, you’ll be a verified human and games opting into the program will check that status.&nbsp;



It becomes part of your Razer account, and the gaming-focused brand will first offer verified Razer ID logins on the upcoming <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/immutable">Immutable</a> battler game Tokyo Beast, a game I <a href="https://x.com/thedropnft/status/1894833712371769767">wrote about</a> last month. The game will offer pooled NFTs and use the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/immutable-and-polygon-join-forces-to-attract-web3-game-developers">Immutable zkEVM</a> blockchain.



I asked Razer whether this might be used at some point to also prevent shopping bots from sniping products from their site or other sites (meaning, you’d have to have a verified Razer ID to buy something from them online).&nbsp;



Instead, they’re “hyper-focused” on providing in-game identity verification. Tokyo Beast is the only game they’ve announced that will use this tech so far, but they’re hoping to add more games to this program in the future.



Here’s how the verified Razer ID works: You can use your existing Razer ID account, when logged in, to get the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/world-chat-payment-features">World App</a>. From there, you create a World ID account, and then verify yourself as human and not an AI bot. You can do this by either going to an <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/sam-altman-worldcoin-launches-deep-face-new-eye-scanning-orb">IRL shiny Orb</a> or by adding your NFC-enabled passport to your account.



Does this process remind you of anything else we have to do in crypto? Yeah, it’s like KYC, or Know Your Customer, that’s happening here.&nbsp;



Tools for Humanity, the for-profit company building on the World Network, says ZK proofs are used to keep your data safe. In simple terms, a <a href="https://www.blockworks.com/tag/zero-knowledge-proof">ZK proof</a> is a cryptographic way to verify that information is true without revealing the information itself. And VPN users, don’t worry — Tools for Humanity Chief Product Officer Tiago Sada tells me the new feature has been designed to work even if your VPN is on. Human VPN users are sometimes flagged across the internet as potential bots and can be asked to complete CAPTCHAs, so this is an important part of the conversation if you’re trying to protect your digital privacy while also proving you’re human.



For some, it may still feel like too much to have to hand over your passport or get your eyeballs scanned just to play a video game, though.&nbsp;



For others, it might feel like a necessary step into an AI-filled future. Bots are indeed a challenge for both traditional non-crypto games as well as blockchain games, where financial rewards can be at stake.&nbsp;



“We get a lot of feedback from gamers that in gameplay, gamers don’t want to be playing against bots,” Razer Chief Corporate Officer Wei-Pin Choo tells me.&nbsp;



World also conducted a survey that found that 59% of gamers who participated in the survey said they “regularly encounter” unauthorized bots in the games they play. 71% of those surveyed said they feel bots are wrecking the competitive gaming experience.



World Network, formerly known as Worldcoin, is a blockchain that’s intended to “verify humans.” There’s a corresponding native token, Worldcoin, which is given out to those who get their eyeballs scanned. Those in Kenya were paid 25 Worldcoin at the time, or $50 at the time, to get their irises scanned (today, 25 Worldcoin are worth about $21).



World has faced some controversy over biometric data privacy concerns and has been <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/">accused</a> of <a href="https://icj-kenya.org/news/worldcoin-case-postponed-amid-concerns-over-data-privacy-and-ethical-biometric-use/">exploiting</a> users in developing countries.&nbsp;



Regulators in Hong Kong, Brazil, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/spains-high-court-upholds-temporary-ban-worldcoin-iris-scanning-venture-2024-03-11/#:~:text=Spain's%20High%20Court%20upholds%20temporary%20ban%20on%20Worldcoin%20iris%2Dscanning%20venture,-By%20Emma%20Pinedo&amp;text=MADRID%2C%20March%2011%20(Reuters),privacy%20concerns%20in%20several%20countries.">Spain</a>, Kenya, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/frances-privacy-watchdog-says-worldcoin-legality-seems-questionable-2023-07-28/">France</a>, and other countries have taken issue with World’s practices. Spain, Kenya, and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/hong-kong-regulator-directs-worldcoin-cease-operations-citing-privacy-concerns-2024-05-22/#:~:text=The%20Office%20of%20the%20Privacy,as%20%22unnecessary%20and%20excessive%22.">Hong Kong</a> chose to shut down World’s operations, at least temporarily, in their respective countries.



While it could help verify gamers aren’t bots, World ID isn’t a bulletproof solution to ensure all of its users are actually who they say they are, though.&nbsp;



Last year, Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong <a href="https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/parliamentary-replies/2024/written-reply-to-parliamentary-question-on-risks-relating-to-worldcoin-in-singapore">confirmed</a> that police were investigating seven people suspected of buying or selling World ID accounts and warned that the accounts could “then be misused for criminal activities such as money laundering and terrorism financing.”



Ultimately, though, I’m glad tech firms are recognizing that bots can be genuinely disruptive in video games — and are willing to try something, even if very experimental, to see if it could combat the problem.



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Razer and Sam Altman’s World add ID verification to video games

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Centralized firms are like mini-dictatorships.&nbsp;



They’re not perfect, but their corporate model has worked well on the basis of economic efficiency.



Firms reduce transaction costs, which is why they exist at all, argued the Nobel Laureate economist Ronald Coase in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm">1937</a>.



Are DAOs centralized companies? Yes and no.



DAOs are centralized in the sense that there are typically figureheads or a set of actors who command disproportionate power to influence changes. Yet DAOs are not quite like centralized traditional companies, because even the founders of DAOs cannot snap their fingers and push any proposal through.



Here’s a perfect example. Last Thursday, Aave Labs <a href="https://x.com/aave/status/1900188291418513783">announced</a> “Horizon,” a permissioned instance of the Aave v3 codebase by which “qualified” institutions could use tokenized money market funds to tap into stablecoin liquidity.



Despite the proposal’s plans to share revenue with the DAO (at an annual declining rate of 50% in the first year, 30% in the second, and 15% in the third), the mere mention of a potential Horizon token drew near-unanimous <a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/temp-check-building-horizon-s-rwa-product-an-aave-licensed-instance-for-institutions/21384/6">negative feedback</a> from DAO members, including Aave-chan Initiative (ACI) founder <a href="https://x.com/CoinerHermes/status/1900937176206242192">Marc Zeller</a>.



The <a href="https://x.com/litocoen/status/1901210336696352978">complaint</a> in a nutshell: If Aave Labs plans to use Aave tech to create new business, then please give that value to AAVE tokenholders rather than some new token of which Aave Labs will hold a big bag.



The strong backlash prompted Aave Labs leadership to gracefully accept the community’s consensus. It abandoned the possibility of a Horizon token launch, though it will move forward with the Horizon product.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Overall consensus across the Aave DAO is that there is no interest on other tokens. The consensus will be respected, Aave DAO is a real DAO. RWA exploration will continue once a right approach is found. There is only <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24AAVE&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$AAVE</a>. <a href="https://t.co/tQSb51gmvw">pic.twitter.com/tQSb51gmvw</a>&mdash; Stani.eth (@StaniKulechov) <a href="https://twitter.com/StaniKulechov/status/1901090678123176216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Aave Labs probably anticipated such a reaction. Had a Horizon token been launched, 15% was even promised to be allocated to the DAO, but that carrot failed to stave off fears of token dilution.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcCREngifX9cL3su-RDHzPwZctBuLTBD2Kls0xO8Myue02Ul03uKPlbfU8zy02cTMXWrBLcnze6jYrYQjBTJgdOyoERvRpLEdXCCFaxzKcRufkN8R-fZ2DiBfBXDvHnl8M3B02ZaA?key=Omefi5RqF7RQ96MwuIVdxXMX" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/temp-check-building-horizon-s-rwa-product-an-aave-licensed-instance-for-institutions/21384">Aave governance</a></figcaption></figure>



There’s a striking parallel between the backlash to Aave’s Horizon announcement and Uniswap Labs’ reveal of its Unichain L2.



Recall that when <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-uniswap-layer-2">Unichain was announced</a> by the Uniswap Foundation last October, Uniswap DAO was caught off guard and felt left out of the decision-making process behind such an integral launch.



Jay Yu, president of Stanford Blockchain Club and a Uniswap delegate, <a href="https://x.com/0xfishylosopher/status/1844540868264591681">argued</a> that the announcement left “DAO delegates in the dark.”



Though Unichain proceeded with the launch (unlike Horizon), the consequences are catching up to it.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfJRiAzkgpi7V91V9aqUuXENK4IG3CUmkd1clzkAJ6c2D2O28NzO2mvTwNVhCy9dOX3oUByN7WNJ8Se2m2uUDBKJjw-9MJ5-JeEloHAWr-DObB8qMJTSPK2EzQ50mgYb_swhcAQRA?key=Omefi5RqF7RQ96MwuIVdxXMX" alt=""/></figure>



In response to Unichain’s poor market performance after a month of being live (Unichain has a mere ~$9 million in TVL), Uniswap Foundation <a href="https://snapshot.box/#/s:uniswapgovernance.eth/proposal/0xe7fb39bd6f16b65d0847cdd6ab6ecef3a6c1e89bd523cf895f3d806c4bb4b1cf">proposed</a> two weeks ago to spend $45 million worth of UNI tokens from the DAO treasury to spur activity.



But if Unichain is decidedly a “Labs” product, then dipping into the DAO’s coffers to fund that product is a big <a href="https://x.com/0xPEPO/status/1891870091609841792">no-no</a>.



Uniswap DAO delegate GFX Labs also <a href="https://gov.uniswap.org/t/gfx-labs-delegate-communication-thread/24194/11">points out</a> that most Uniswap v4 hooks (such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/uniswap-v4-goes-live">Flaunch and Bunni</a>) effectively disallow the DAO from monetizing v4 activity through <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/uniswap-token-pumps-fee-switch-proposal">a fee switch</a>, due to the use of a “No-Op” hook which bypasses v4’s core contract logic.



“While this could mean Uniswap Labs and DAO lose a monetization strategy, Uniswap could always choose to turn on the protocol fee-switch on pools without hooks,” <a href="https://x.com/rostyketh">Rostyslav Bortman</a>, co-founder of Hookrank.io, told Blockworks.



“Yet, most popular hook teams work in close collaboration with Uniswap Foundation, and we don’t see Bunni or Flaunch turning off the ‘protocol fee’ logic inside their hooks. Hopefully most hook teams will follow this example.”



In the cases of both Aave and Uniswap, you have centralized leadership teams behaving like startups absolutely should — that is, pivoting and launching fast to survive and succeed.



Yet DAO leadership is encumbered by the decentralized norms of DAO governance, limiting the agility and nimbleness that a startup requires.



To get anything done, a DAO has to behave in certain ways:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The DAO has to post a request for comment (RFC) to invite community discussion</li>



<li>After a reasonable level of discussion, the DAO commences an early temperature check</li>



<li>If the DAO has problems with the proposal, the discussion inevitably spills over into the anarchy of Crypto Twitter</li>



<li>The DAO eventually takes a final vote to finalize the proposal</li>
</ul>



That entire process brings up transaction costs rather than down, so do we really want DAOs? Do the ethical benefits of decentralization outweigh the burden in transaction costs?



DAO governance is a strange animal.



If Ronald Coase was still alive, I wonder if he would think DAOs are such a good idea after all.



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Making sense of DAOs in 2025

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://bitcoinhistorynl.beehiiv.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.&nbsp;



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



The arc of crypto is long, but it bends toward ₿itcoin.



Pete Rizzo, the Bitcoin Historian, has just launched a brand-new Bitcoin podcast with Blockworks, Supply Shock.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/introducing-supply-shock-new-bitcoin-brand?utm_source=bitcoinhistorynl.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=50-000-btc-sold">Read more about the Supply Shock vision</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">WE ARE LIVE! Supply Shock, the best Bitcoin podcast in crypto, drops today. Hosted by The Bitcoin Historian <a href="https://twitter.com/pete_rizzo_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@pete_rizzo_</a>, Supply Shock is for everyone who wants to stay on top of the biggest cryptoasset in the world and understand the lore that got it there. <a href="https://t.co/R8vGq5orKd">pic.twitter.com/R8vGq5orKd</a>&mdash; Supply Shock (@SupplyShockBW) <a href="https://twitter.com/SupplyShockBW/status/1895116065861955651?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 27, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Now, time to run through the most memorable Bitcoin moments from the past week:



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Zero to 13</h2>



Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis has been plugging Bitcoin from as long as it was — or at least <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/07/senator-cynthia-lummis-discloses-a-bitcoin-purchase-worth-up-to-100000.html">since</a> 2013 when she bought her first bitcoin.



Now, Lummis’ passion for Bitcoin is coalescing. Last Tuesday, Lummis <a href="https://www.lummis.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/BITCOINAct.pdf">reintroduced</a> her monumental <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-reserve-proposal-live-again">BITCOIN Act</a> to the Senate, which if passed, would expand Trump’s strategic reserve by buying 1 million BTC ($83.6 billion) over five years — “mirroring the scale and strategic importance of US gold reserves.”



Lummis first <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senator-lummis-bitcoin-reserve-bill-crypto-policy">introduced</a> the bill last July with no co-sponsors. This time around, there were five — all Republican — while Alaska representative Nick Begich <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feFSR93NLdg">told</a> the National Press Club that he would be introducing Lummis’ bill to the House of Representatives along with six co-sponsors, bringing the total number of sponsors across both bills to 13.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">The BITCOIN Act is back. <a href="https://t.co/WNeU6SWPj3">pic.twitter.com/WNeU6SWPj3</a>&mdash; Senator Cynthia Lummis (@SenLummis) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenLummis/status/1899449083628036177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



There’s still a long road ahead before the bills would pass with majority votes in both the House and Senate. Then again, nothing says Bitcoin like steady, incremental progress.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Honest work</h2>



Bitcoin mining is everything, everywhere, all at once: a multi-billion dollar industry covered by Wall Street; a techno-vocation to uncensorable peer-to-peer cash; a critical revenue stream for communities <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bhutan-btc-mining-operations">big</a> and <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/gridless-is-mining-bitcoin-while-fostering-human-flourishing-in-africa">small</a>.



It’s also a lottery system for hobbyists. And it’s paying out again. Early last week, yet another bitcoin miner running DIY equipment discovered a block to immediately earn 3.125 BTC ($262,000), plus an additional ‎0.025 BTC in fees ($1,950).



Data logs indicate the miner was using an open-source BitAxe capable of up to 480 GH/s of hash rate — which is a measly 0.000000894% of the hash rate wielded by industry giant Marathon.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">A miner of this size has only less than a 1 in a million chance of finding a block per day, or put alternatively, would take 3500 years to find a block on average.&mdash; Dr -ck (@ckpooldev) <a href="https://twitter.com/ckpooldev/status/1899211027943915691?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 10, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The BitAxe was pointed to <a href="https://solo.ckpool.org/">Solo CKPool</a>, which despite its name is not a pool but more of a web proxy which facilitates bitcoin mining without running a full node. This was the <a href="https://mempool.space/mining/pool/solock">sixth</a> block mined by a SoloCK participant in the past six months.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Cold War II: Bitcoin Boogaloo</h2>



On the world stage, Bitcoin is no longer a theoretical construct. Case in point: Some Russian oil companies are now using BTC during trade with India and China, alongside ETH and USDT, according to a Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-leans-cryptocurrencies-oil-trade-sources-say-2025-03-14/">report</a>.



It goes like this: A Chinese buyer of Russian oil pays yuan into the offshore account of a middleman, who converts the yuan into crypto before sending it onto a second and then finally a third account in Russia, where it’s converted into Russian rubles.&nbsp;



In one case, tens of millions of dollars in oil are reportedly traded in this way every month. Bolivia’s state energy provider YPFB meanwhile told <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/bolivia-turns-crypto-energy-imports-amid-dollar-fuel-shortages-2025-03-12/">reporters</a> that it will use crypto to pay for energy imports as dollar and fuel shortages persist.



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ixKDLBKV0gM?si=NeM_Td-zkO1TaEqJ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







Separately, guests on this week’s Supply Shock roundup wondered whether BTC could be adopted by BRICS nations as both the pricing and settlement system for global oil trade separate from the US, “because then you&#8217;re not allowing any country to take over the oil market and America could live with that,” said Nolan Bauerle.



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Support grows for Lummis’ plan to buy 1M BTC

Katherine Ross

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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At Empire, we recently covered momentum investing strategies in crypto. Speaking of momentum…Empire’s Jason Yanowitz spoke to Carson Cook and James Roth of Membrane Labs for <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/bcaef934-0128-11f0-afbf-3bcd690799ed">this week’s podcast.</a>&nbsp;



The three delved deep into what went wrong with crypto lending last cycle (shocker: a lot), and gave their thoughts on lending this cycle.



Putting aside the bad from the last cycle, Yanowitz asked if we might see something akin to the numbers that companies like Genesis were putting out (for example: half a billion in loan originations way back in the fourth quarter of 2021).&nbsp;



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3x-pDCXukLE?si=d-DuzAuhBhS6VDnT" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







Roth seemed to think so…as long as the markets behave.



“ I do think that, over time, you&#8217;ll have more and more money coming in, more and more safety being provided to folks around how they lend… and more providers stepping in like custodians, et cetera,” he said.&nbsp;



But what really made me perk up — and perhaps this is because I just wrote about it — was Cook’s response, which is that it’s a momentum-driven game in crypto and not a fundamentals game…yet.



 ”As soon as markets go in one direction, the demand for leverage and lending exacerbates those moves. So they&#8217;re sort of the flywheel connects…As James was saying, if it gets going on the price movement side, you&#8217;re going to see a lot…I think you could blow through those numbers,” Cook said.&nbsp;



The biggest way to grow the lending and credit parts of the market is through custodians, Cook continued. That’s how you unlock “massive potential” and encourage folks to move out of qualified custody or their cold wallets into the market.&nbsp;



We’re still early here, and the medium to longer-term issue is not necessarily the markets (though they’ll always have an impact). It goes back to a very familiar subject: regulatory clarity. 



Man, I can’t wait ‘til I don’t have to write those two little words again. But for now, we still have a long haul ahead.



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How to unlock ‘massive potential’ as crypto lending comes back

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Crypto markets have a natural tilt towards momentum investing, a fairly popular tactic in equities.&nbsp;



But is it worth it?&nbsp;



A recent Kaiko <a href="https://marketing.kaiko.com/hubfs/Research/VHASHMOM%20Index%20in%20Focus.pdf?utm_campaign=Research%20newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz--FsjP8nurK9HUY4kBZ7GlVi82cFS4PFiF7Gm_9XaZY55F2cCHNRosMzWEYEM9dyWKGE-cLlWxu8VUxEmE-shUHi5AOkA&amp;_hsmi=105929091&amp;utm_content=105929091&amp;utm_source=hs_email">report</a> delved into the subject, which I admittedly hadn’t really considered in a crypto context. But as the report points out: “Crypto markets, driven by sentiment and network effects, offer strong momentum opportunities. Network effects drive value by attracting more users, developers, miners, and investors, reinforcing growth and adoption.”



The team put together the Vinter Hashdex Risk Parity Momentum Index, which backs the Momentum Factor ETP offered by Hashdex. Kaiko’s Adam McCarthy noted that they distributed risk in this approach to prevent a single asset from weighing over 30%.&nbsp;



Oh, and if you’re not so sure about this yet, keep in mind it’s been a few years of the team keeping an eye on this.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcXWcJjOQX88msM7eqfcHyu6kDjuJbJ-holZSAlRfpq853qGzuyDzBJwSGjRqLJLWq-4AEVflAPiGm9oM5dW4joKye39zSPrASge8FAmvefzgtJkYjcLNXgsSeCA_rPLHIIuh4W0w?key=AnRV4jzkcOho4pBRlJiUPEJL" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Kaiko Custom Indices, VHASHMOM &amp; Kaiko Benchmark Rates, BRR</figcaption></figure>



While I’m not necessarily surprised by the sizable beat the index had over bitcoin last cycle, I am slightly surprised that the index was able to stay on top of bitcoin during this cycle —&nbsp;especially as we watched the bull take off like it was participating in the Running of the Bulls.&nbsp;



As of February, Bitcoin has the largest weighting, which should come as no surprise. Then you have litecoin, XRP, and tron.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdjsoVNcWblsXd4xTVmYwGruKz3DEw3nn9A4efjCwKDE_CjgBNKQxyBV9MRStnOsD5YVBquwNmKdg9HSjM-7uwbFoGtHOL5KVidvW94JC2of6IHMvGTOaxYboZIhnnYPGhmnhyI?key=AnRV4jzkcOho4pBRlJiUPEJL" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A look at some of the more popular assets. Source: Kaiko Custom Indices, VHASHMOM</figcaption></figure>



Taking rebalancing into account here, litecoin is actually a big outperformer, “benefiting from increased anticipation of a potential ETF approval, leading to a higher allocation.”



“Polkadot, which is preparing for a major 2025 upgrade aimed at enhancing scalability, flexibility, and developer accessibility, has also gained traction.”



Going back to the index’s performance, there is a question about the longevity of this strategy. Especially in a market like the one we’re currently in, where the macro environment takes center stage even if there are plenty of reasons to be bullish on the industry.&nbsp;



“In 2025, crypto-specific narratives, such as growing institutional adoption and a friendlier regulatory environment, could provide tailwinds for crypto momentum strategies, even as equity momentum shows signs of exhaustion,” McCarthy wrote.



The report notes that it was fairly successful in “identifying and capturing returns from emerging winners” instead of going with the flow and trying to keep up with trends.&nbsp;



The “ability to rotate capital into promising opportunities, while maintaining diversification, represents a dynamic approach to momentum investing in digital assets.”



What I’m personally curious about is how this strategy compares to a more fundamental-based strategy as that develops this cycle.&nbsp;



Clearly, momentum’s paid off so far…but as the market matures, I wonder if it’ll continue to be such an out-performer.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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Crypto markets offer ‘strong momentum opportunities’: Kaiko

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Imagine for a moment that you view the world financial system as one big centralized hornswoggle that benefits the few at the expense of the many — perish the thought.



Eventually, you come around to the idea that a fairer system might be possible by decentralizing authority among many independent participants. Instead of a trusted central entity validating transactions, these contributors would run their own nodes, verifying and maintaining the network through distributed consensus.



But here’s the challenge: How do you get thousands of decentralized actors — each highly incentivized to cheat for financial gain — to agree on the validity of each other’s work? If even a small group were to successfully deceive the network, confidence in the system would collapse.



Satoshi Nakamoto’s solution was proof-of-work (PoW), wherein miners repeatedly hash block data with varying nonce values, aiming to find a solution that meets specific difficulty criteria. The first to succeed gets to propose a new block and earns a reward paid in bitcoin. No one can cheat because every other node quickly verifies or rejects each block before it is added to the chain.



This system has worked pretty well for BTC, which has had some modest success (lol) in establishing itself as a globally recognized, censorship-resistant store of value. However, it’s not without its trade-offs. Bitcoin’s PoW model results in slow transaction speeds and high energy consumption. The network processes just seven transactions per second (TPS) on average, far below modern digital payment systems <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-mass-adoption-as-priority">like Visa</a>.



While layer-2 solutions like the Lightning Network help <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dont-forget-lightning-network-bitcoin">scale Bitcoin’s capacity</a>, its base layer remains limited. Mining <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-cycle-miners-energy-strategy">also consumes energy</a> on the scale of entire nations, drawing criticism from <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/renewable-energy-bitcoin-mining-halving">environmentalists</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-firms-eia-lawsuit-mining">regulators</a> alike.



As limitations go, though, none of this has been a dealbreaker. But when Ethereum emerged with the goal of programmability via smart contracts, scaling became a much bigger issue. Executing code onchain is far more computationally intensive than executing simple transactions, and Ethereum’s base layer (before rollups) manages only 15-30 TPS, leading to congestion, high fees, and slow confirmations during peak demand.



Enter Solana’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-beginner-level-explainer">2017 breakthrough</a>: proof-of-history (PoH).



PoH isn’t a consensus mechanism — it’s a cryptographic timekeeping system. Instead of validators constantly communicating to determine transaction order, PoH pre-establishes a verifiable sequence of events using continuous hashing (SHA-256) to create an immutable timeline of transactions.



Pause. I know this is a lot. The main takeaway here is that PoH theoretically allows Solana to validate 50,000 to 65,000 TPS. That’s a lot more than Bitcoin and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-ethereum-tps">Ethereum</a>, y’all. Transactions settle almost instantly, making Solana <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-blockchain-tps-testing">one of the fastest</a> public L1s.



The network combines PoH with proof-of-stake (PoS) to balance speed, security and decentralization. Unlike traditional PoS networks, which require validators to continuously agree on timestamps, Solana’s blockchain structure inherently encodes transaction order. That lets validators focus purely on verification and security, eliminating a major bottleneck in consensus.



Of course, PoH has its own downsides.&nbsp;



Its high computational demands require powerful hardware and bandwidth, meaning that only well-funded entities or data centers can efficiently run validators. While Solana’s Nakamoto coefficient (~30-40) is better than some chains, a small number of entities do control the majority of stake. This pretty inarguably undermines the network’s decentralized ethos and makes it way more susceptible to collusion.&nbsp;



Solana also introduces a different set of security risks due to its extreme speed. Slower blockchains process transactions in a mempool before finalization, providing more time for automated validation and anomaly detection. In contrast, high-speed chains like Solana must mitigate front-running, spam and manipulation at the protocol level rather than relying on mempool-based filtering. Solutions like stake-weighted quality of service (QoS), QUIC networking, and local fee markets have been introduced to mitigate these issues, with mostly positive results.



At the end of the day, though, Solana’s proof-of-history represents a radical shift in blockchain validation. By solving speed and scalability challenges without entirely sacrificing decentralization, it proves that blockchains can compete with traditional financial systems, making near-instant, low-cost, onchain transactions a reality.



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Solana deep dive: Unpacking proof-of-history

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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As Blockworks kicks off the Digital Asset Summit in New York, Fed officials will be gathering for their March Federal Open Market Committee&nbsp;(FOMC) meeting in Washington.&nbsp;



The central bank is overwhelmingly expected to hold interest rates as-is, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/the-fed-committed-to-pausing-rate-cuts-why">continuing a pause</a> to its rate-cutting schedule. After next week, the Fed won’t have another rate-setting meeting until May; odds of a cut then are only around 30%, CME <a href="https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html?redirect=/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html">data</a> shows.&nbsp;



Betting on a “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/strike-price-trump-put">Trump put</a>” at this point is, dare I say, wishful thinking. President Trump announced additional tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the administration is going to proceed with the duties even if it means pushing the economy <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/february-cpi-print-tariffs">into a recession</a>.&nbsp;



A “Fed put” may not be entirely off the table, but it’s not coming anytime soon. Jerome Powell has made it clear that it will take substantial weakening in the labor market for central bankers to rethink the current pause.&nbsp;



HSBC analysts said in a note this week that the Fed isn’t budging until the data does. Of course, worse data means increased recessionary fears and lower asset prices. We’re between a rock and a hard place here, they added.&nbsp;&nbsp;



So it’s all a bit of a waiting game for now. The labor market looks okay, but tariffs could weigh on hiring and further anticipated <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/economic-strains-for-growth-outlook">DOGE layoffs</a> have not yet been reflected in the data.&nbsp;



Instead of doom-scrolling next week, we recommend coming to DAS, where you can spiral and speculate in real life.



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Analysts warn we aren’t yet in ‘Fed put’ territory ahead of FOMC meeting

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Given yesterday’s stablecoin bill progress and BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund hitting $1 billion AUM, I thought it’d be a good time to highlight the expected growth of these segments in tandem.



The <a href="https://x.com/Blockworks_/status/1900279952630579432">asset milestone</a> for BlackRock’s BUIDL — a fund investing in cash, US Treasury bills and repurchase agreements — comes a week before its first birthday. The tokenized treasury category (with other contributors like Ondo, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-hashnote-deal-tokenized-money">Hashnote</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoin-with-yield-franklin-templeton">Franklin Templeton</a>) has grown to roughly $4.4 billion.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeT-XmV4qiKctL8epFj-zbyeq-m6fVysZ92SAJbafk6tPA7g35xAPURv1GN9NGE6fIKvqqHDBJszKnY00MOF_5I5NJ_Hrbt3PVIOUK853fiFCApyUZ6j8X8LjKyiG3KzHuNsrS0gQ?key=9vug5HNinnhDCt5RzlYyp6b8" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: rwa.xyz</figcaption></figure>



BlackRock’s Robbie Mitchnick told me during Wednesday’s Blockworks <a href="https://blockworks.co/roundtable/tradfi-is-ready-to-embrace-crypto">roundtable</a> that a majority of those using BUIDL are crypto-native.&nbsp;



They’re firms, for example, seeing the value prop in generating yield on holding cash balances in an efficient yield-generating way. Perhaps shuffling capital between countries or making quick global payments. And then getting liquidity faster via stablecoin exit ramps.



Waqar Chaudry, Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets, financing and securities services, pointed to some industry watchers initially believing tokenized money market funds could <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-funds-stablecoin-market-impact">replace stablecoins</a>.&nbsp;



Many might prefer tokenized funds for collateral management, Chaudry added. But they’ll co-exist with stablecoins, as he’s seeing money market funds being subscribed and redeemed via stablecoins on a 24/7 basis.



“I’m not saying it’s 50/50 or 80/20,” he said of the stablecoin/tokenized MMF mix. “We’ll see how it develops over the next few years, but they’re definitely complementary.”



Michnick agreed, noting he sees tokenized money market funds as the predominant cash savings vehicle. Stablecoins, meanwhile, “will retain their dominance” as the instrument for payment and transaction. “Both are a little bit better than the other at those respective use cases, as long as you keep the frictions down to an extremely low or near-zero level to be able to move between them,” Mitchnick said. “Then you can use them in duality in a really powerful way.”



While tokenized treasurys are gaining steam, stablecoins are a much larger segment — sporting a roughly $220 billion market cap.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd5berIiBUTyAH9QLJ1fdXdj533kVphE6u-0u5Qwu3rQXSqgFPFAqOpPDPTsn_4IyagpLHqckjH_XiYcqyD2JbGMt4tTvti03Jt_PtFVK699iHsv2xET_eCZQ7My3Tr03aYEg3A?key=9vug5HNinnhDCt5RzlYyp6b8" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: rwa.xyz</figcaption></figure>



US lawmakers see the value of stablecoins. Casey yesterday detailed how a bill aiming to establish <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoin-legislation-update">regulatory guidelines</a> for stablecoin issuers <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senate-advances-stablecoin-bill">advanced to the Senate floor</a>.



But Mitchnick noted: “What we haven’t seen happen to date in really any arena of tokenization is broad-based uptake from investors and holders who have always lived in the traditional assets base and on those rails.”



That speaks to the potential growth for BUIDL in the years ahead as the TAM expands.



Tokenized bonds’ story is “still not gelling well in terms of commercial viability,” Chaudry said.



As for why there’s likely to be “limited traction” for tokenized equities, Chaudry added, those markets are pretty efficient already. Then there are efforts to tokenize more illiquid asset classes (i.e., real estate and private equity).



Execs from BNY, Ondo Finance, Securitize (the firm that worked with BlackRock on BUIDL), and Nomyx will join me on a Blockworks Digital Asset Summit panel called “Tokenization: Rebooting the Global Financial System” to chat more about this.



See you there?



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Tokenized yield funds, stablecoins a ‘powerful’ combo

Macauley Peterson

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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The move to replace Holesky with Hoodi as Pectra&#8217;s main testing grounds was one of four options <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/byrC-fdTOvE">debated</a> on Thursday’s All-Core Developers call. Some protocol teams specifically related to staking infrastructure lobbied for a quicker, but riskier option, and were effectively overruled by core devs.



With <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-push-to-save-holesky-testnet">Holesky hobbled</a> by a validator exit queue of over a million — which could take more than a year to clear — developers had to find an alternative test environment for Pectra, particularly for exit-related features. Four options were considered:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Option A: Launch a new testnet (Hoodi), replacing Holesky.</li>



<li>Option B: Use DevNet 6 as a temporary testnet.</li>



<li>Option C: Spin up a short-term shadow fork of Holesky.</li>



<li>Option D: Implement a hard fork that clears Holesky’s exit queue.</li>
</ul>



For protocols like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/lido">Lido</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a>, Option D — despite its hacky flavor — was the clear preference. Since staking infrastructure and integrations were already built around Holesky, this option would have allowed Lido to skip redeployment of tooling, oracles and other dependencies, and focus only on Pectra-specific testing.



Lido’s Ivan Metrikin estimated that Option A, migrating to a new testnet, will require two months — several weeks for contract deployment and tooling, followed by additional time for testing.



Matt Nelson at Eigen Labs echoed this concern, noting that every week spent redeploying infrastructure delays their ability to ensure compatibility with Ethereum’s next hard fork. Given that Lido and EigenLayer collectively manage billions in staked ETH, their green light for Pectra’s mainnet rollout is critical.



The topic of ether staking is one likely to come up at Blockworks’ DAS session, <a href="https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2025-new-york/agenda">Ethereum’s Appeal for Institutional Builders</a> on March 20.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Core Devs prioritize stability (and Fusaka)</h2>



Despite these concerns, Ethereum client teams opposed Option D. Their reasoning was twofold:



Hard-forking Holesky would require “hacks” that introduce risk. Making one-off modifications to the execution queue could inadvertently create code paths that affect mainnet stability.



Any delays from debugging a Holesky fix would eat into <a href="https://blockworks-research.beehiiv.com/p/return-to-fundamentals">Fusaka development</a> time. Core teams argued that an extra two weeks spent on a Holesky patch could spiral into months of cumulative delays.



Geth’s Marius Van Der Wijden even suggested that client teams could &#8220;chill for a bit&#8221; while waiting for LST teams to complete their testing on Hoodi — a comment that drew pushback from those in favor of a faster Fusaka path to mainnet.



As a consequence, the Pectra mainnet fork is now officially delayed to mid-May. Hoodi is set to go live Monday, March 17, with Pectra activating there on March 26. Ethereum’s rule of thumb is to wait at least 30 days before choosing a mainnet block, but liquid staking teams like Lido and EigenLayer now face an extended migration timeline.



Meanwhile, client teams will use the extra time to refine their code, laying the groundwork for Fusaka.



The deadline for submitting EIPs for Fusaka is now March 24, giving teams a short window to finalize proposals. By March 31, core teams are expected to share their feedback, leading to a final scope decision on either April 3 or April 10.



To streamline future ACD calls, Ethereum Foundation coordinator Tim Beiko suggested moving more EIP proposal presentations to an asynchronous process, with only those requiring deeper technical discussions being reviewed live. Plus there’s a new EIP status: declined for inclusion (DFI), reserved for EIPs that teams feel should be deferred to a future fork, but not rejected outright.



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Ethereum core developers choose stability over speed

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">subscribe</a>.



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SEGA’s Code of Joker game series is coming to the gaming-focused L1 blockchain Sui via a new game.



SEGA licensed the IP to the third-party firm Jokers, Inc., which is developing the upcoming title.



The new game based on the Japanese anime-style arcade IP is called Code of Joker: Evolutions. Players will be able to open card packs and collect cards onchain as Sui NFTs.&nbsp;



“We knew that we wanted to match the physical feeling of opening a new card pack,” Takashi “Gin” Mizouka, cofounder of Jokers Inc., said in a statement.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfSDahsmHop1VxaaTKJCV7JTq46QUzkkQbMaYZYvM8nEWFjAhQUjw_n0nmgoc1vJ4Yl9xCI0gax7Mjj6AALw_oti0knem9Xm57ML9dueCbRxy-AE5TZvCh_CQ4eXK99Rufx4jk4UA?key=ol5HDb6qZlZyLmQIZnbucMXW" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Screenshot from Code of Joker, showing Sonic the Hedgehog as a character. Source: Sonic Team Argentina on YouTube.</figcaption></figure>



While Sonic the Hedgehog, one of SEGA’s most famous characters, appears in footage of Code of Joker gameplay, I think it’s very unlikely the quick blue mammal will pop up in Code of Joker: Evolutions.



Mysten Labs didn’t respond to my question about whether Sonic will be in the new game, but I do remember that roughly two years ago when I was covering blockchain gaming, SEGA co-COO Shuji Utsumi said SEGA won’t license its biggest IPs for third-party blockchain games and won’t develop its own in-house crypto games, either.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf6lahns3RNZ_K_VMMIou-afojHVYwGyqN4jMsR2W8uQFWA8YUX1aLOfdIsfg1-Ikg2-m8IIvbZVsc2xWj0Blp1V90Ql69FSlhivHg2OBV360SppZARB8X5WYQoY_Jk_aYDGPGDew?key=ol5HDb6qZlZyLmQIZnbucMXW" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Screenshot from Code of Joker Pocket, a mobile version that’s no longer being updated </figcaption></figure>



That said, SEGA is obviously still open to licensing some of its other game brands.&nbsp;



Two years ago, it licensed the Sangokushi Taisen brand for a third-party blockchain military card battle game on Oasys, developed by Double Jump Tokyo.



By the way, that game is finally launching on March 25. You can preorder Battle of Three Kingdoms on iOS and Android — and yes, this one is available in English on the US App Store. It’s a bit funny the app store descriptions omit any mention of the game’s crypto elements, though. This game has NFT cards, and its website also mentions staking the game’s SGC token.



To be honest, it was hard to find any details about Code of Joker online in English. It’s a game from 2013, and I wasn’t able to find any recent YouTube videos about it. The most recent one I found was from six years ago. The Code of Joker Pocket mobile game ended service back in 2018, according to a message on its website and a <a href="https://x.com/cojpocket_sega/status/986107820088049665">post</a> on its X account.



Ultimately, the character art looks detailed and appealing for those into anime style, but the IP doesn’t seem to have crossed over to US audiences yet. Regardless, I think existing fans of the game could get a kick out of this installment of the series.



I asked the team whether the game will be released in English (as opposed to only in Japanese), and they weren’t ready to share that yet:&nbsp;



“More details forthcoming,” a PR rep replied. If the game doesn’t release in English, I imagine it’d be tough for it to reach a broader audience.&nbsp;



But maybe that’s not the point — Asia has been proven to be an important market for Web3. In 2023, 50% of global mobile gaming revenue came from the Asia-Pacific region with over 1.5 billion mobile gamers there, according to data from Grandview Research.



Tiger Research has also pointed out that recent regulatory moves in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia are positioning those countries for continued blockchain participation. We’ve seen Sony’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sony-astar-ethereum-rollup-soneium">Soneium</a> throw its hat into the ring, who recently announced that <a href="https://thedrop.beehiiv.com/p/another-one-bites-the-dust">four mini-app games</a> will be using Soneium as part of a deal with the messaging app Line.



We don’t know much more about Code of Joker: Evolutions yet, but it’s expected to launch at the end of this summer for iOS, Android and as a web version.



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SEGA’s ‘Code of Joker’ launching as NFT card game on Sui

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://bitcoinhistorynl.beehiiv.com/">subscribe</a>. 



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Today, we’re reliving the journey of Nayib Bukele, the laser-eyed president of El Salvador who made bitcoin legal tender in a world first.



It was one year ago today that El Salvador wisely moved its strategic bitcoin reserve into cold storage. Now, the country is sitting on over half a billion dollars in BTC.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Fix the money</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXctuANstQWf2wwuTlxB83nFqQzBSVbbPiVAZHXTZEsEM6H5LTc3S8esDSNewkazuMAZndBzCOuC-Mndh4g4DcmrbATZVij2rodAbRu3s2nk4kr3qdR0Nqq8SpLQ0QUvX6eAm5XdKA?key=VdO7BbQm1Q9LLJfuZ9b4-wUr" alt=""/></figure>



The old adage goes, “do you wanna be right, or do you wanna make money?”&nbsp;



El Salvador president Nayib Bukele has proven it’s possible to do both.



Bitcoin was first and foremost freedom money to Bukele, as it was for activists like <a href="https://protos.com/navalny-bitcoin-donations-surge-protests-cryptocurrencyrussia/">Alexei Navalny</a> and Canada’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/podcast-bitcoins-role-in-the-freedom-convoy-protests-alex-gladstein-greg-foss-jeff-booth">Freedom Convoy</a>, among others.



In late 2017, as Bukele was preparing to run for president, electoral authorities had <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/el-salvador-central-bank-bitcoin-summit">reportedly</a> threatened to freeze his campaign funds. His new party, Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas), was initially labeled a “movimiento ciudadano,” or “citizen movement,” which sought to disrupt the two-party political machine that had been in power since El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s.



But the government had <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20171118165848/https://www.contrapunto.com.sv/politica/sociedadcivil/bukele-lanza-el-movimiento-nuevas-ideas-/5031">pushed</a> to ban donations to citizen movements for political purposes. Even after those efforts stalled, citizen movements were told to adhere to the same laws as political parties that required them to be formally approved before legally raising money.



Bukele had supposedly suggested that Nuevas Ideas would accept bitcoin instead. And when the central bank shared a notice on Twitter reiterating that bitcoin is not legal tender in El Salvador, and that unauthorized individuals or companies cannot legally collect funds from the public in cryptocurrency, Bukele <a href="https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/927663239013511168?s=20&amp;t=YQmbipn26thl3RS_DL6lkA">replied</a>:



“When they cannot stop a movement and they use all the state machinery to achieve it.”&nbsp;



One day later, Bukele <a href="https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/927755938244759552?lang=en">tweeted</a>, “well yes, it&#8217;s official, we will use Bitcoin,” and tagged the Salvadoran central bank’s official account.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeFeySEmuf_WoBu9U9VHxsHUQr_zATG7EH3vIFkd1Cb3hcC3YNgqqE79DFTwJNStDuyfNQQqrm3MgP23A_gI-_lGdFjiHymJDmVy5jIinnXp0PIC4PlAkoWb13gx70o_trtCye6YA?key=VdO7BbQm1Q9LLJfuZ9b4-wUr" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Under Bukele, El Salvador has bought bitcoin through both bear and bull markets. The orange line is the price of bitcoin and the orange shaded area is El Salvador’s BTC balance.</figcaption></figure>



Nuevas Ideas was successfully registered about six months before the election. It <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190209123845/https://elmundo.sv/tse-aprueba-176076-firmas-a-nuevas-ideas/">collected</a> 200,000 supporting signatures in just three days, well above the required 50,000.



In February 2019, Bukele <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190204141044/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/americas/salvador-bukele-election.html">won</a> with 54% of the vote and was inaugurated by June, becoming the youngest president in the nation’s nearly 200-year history.



Meanwhile, bitcoin was at the very bottom of a grueling bear market, having retreated from almost $20,000 to under $3,200 in 14 months.



It was around this time that the second domino was set up for Bukele.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bitcoin for good</h2>



As California surfer and local volunteer Michael Peterson <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/07/14/this-el-salvador-village-adopts-bitcoin-as-money/">tells</a> it, he was approached by an anonymous donor in early 2019 who was eager to spawn a Bitcoin-based circular economy in the Salvadoran beach town of El Zonte, where the overwhelming majority of citizens and small businesses were unbanked.



Over time, bitcoin was increasingly accepted as payment around town and El Zonte would become known as “<a href="https://x.com/Bitcoinbeach/status/1171604827803140096">Bitcoin Beach</a>.”&nbsp;



Peterson helped distribute funds to support youth work programs which paid BTC to local youngsters for picking up trash, fixing damaged water systems and repairing roads.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Satoshi is alive and well in El Zonte &#8211; He is living a quiet life selling pupusas and continuing to stack sats <a href="https://t.co/se22lqjWee">pic.twitter.com/se22lqjWee</a>&mdash; Bitcoin Beach (@Bitcoinbeach) <a href="https://twitter.com/Bitcoinbeach/status/1859352231784677830?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 20, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Bitcoin Beach also funded educational grants, bus rides and snacks for commuting high school students and even universal basic income for 600 families during the pandemic, which had closed borders and forced unemployment to record highs.&nbsp;



In June of the following year, at Bitcoin Miami 2021, Bukele <a href="https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1401327906178191366">announced</a> his radical plan for El Salvador to adopt bitcoin as legal tender alongside the US dollar, having been directly inspired by Bitcoin Beach.&nbsp;



The next day, Bukele <a href="https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1401391067350581248">donned</a> laser eyes in his Twitter profile pic, capping off his evolution into full Bitcoiner. El Salvador’s legislative assembly approved the Bitcoin bill in that same week.&nbsp;



Three months later, the Bitcoin Law came into effect, making El Salvador the first country in the world to adopt BTC.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfbRNrsh5ETbW_f7IPorJQKJGOvbtX-9p8o8_TbAX2qVsuplDKj6n2pZraXiovB6dtXfMyXrqeNAjQNXCLlU_-GFN3nV-C7dEgyoaZzIbmt95K_X6NIY8xeS6Je78nuQSlzYdZv?key=VdO7BbQm1Q9LLJfuZ9b4-wUr" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">El Salvador mined bitcoin with volcano energy shortly after bitcoin became legal tender</figcaption></figure>



Despite a rocky rollout amid <a href="https://apnews.com/article/technology-elections-bitcoin-nayib-bukele-el-salvador-b4ca6f06417074dbd254a205a452b426">protests</a>, more than 1.1 million users had still <a href="https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1439062924534943753">downloaded</a> the official Chivo wallet in its first 11 days. Each one was eligible for $30 worth of bitcoin for free, Bukele’s way of helping onboard the nation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Main character energy</h2>



All great protagonists need antagonists. For Bukele, on the world stage that’s the International Monetary Fund (IMF).



Less than five months after the Bitcoin Law passed, the IMF was urging El Salvador to drop bitcoin as legal tender — halting loan talks and warning that it would be difficult to secure financing in the future.



Those moves led to worries that El Salvador would default on its loans. Fitch even downgraded El Salvador’s debt following the one year anniversary of the Bitcoin Law.



Undeterred, Bukele soon announced El Salvador would start buying 1 BTC every day, indefinitely. El Salvador now holds 6,114 BTC worth $507 million and is ahead by 78%, according to <a href="https://nayibtracker.com/">NayibTracker</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeyHaZPOLxGykX9jco4jdngMhwwglrTd7W5WHUhUFoXj_1OKGPJ0NJtiTZJqgWcZ0FcfbuJNx0j4Z0VXQAvjy_lJ6WJS48DzD7n_DpJl0TLJdw1IjbPsMc6e-LLs_qG0391rAtX?key=VdO7BbQm1Q9LLJfuZ9b4-wUr" alt=""/></figure>



El Salvador eventually <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-says-it-has-repaid-800-million-bond-maturing-january-2023-01-24/">repaid</a> an $800 million bond as a sign of its financial strength.&nbsp;



Fitch bumped up El Salvador’s debt by three notches in response, stating that default “no longer appears likely,” and Bukele was re-elected in a landslide victory nine months later in February 2024.&nbsp;



Late last year, El Salvador bonds largely outperformed other emerging market debt as bitcoin rallied past $100,000. Bukele <a href="https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1864765287305822604">remarked it was</a> the “first time in history that Bitcoin has driven sovereign bonds up in traditional markets.”



Bukele’s Bitcoin tale, as it stands, is then bittersweet. The IMF had been negotiating the terms of a $1.4 billion loan to El Salvador ever since it adopted bitcoin, with the deal finally coming to a head in February.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">🇸🇻BLOOMBERG: EL SALVADOR BONDS RALLY AS BITCOIN JUMPS PAST $100,000 MARK Bloomberg credits the bitcoin rally for driving El Salvador bonds even higher, making them among the top gainers in emerging-market debt. President Bukele put El Salvador on the path to prosperity. 🤑🚀 <a href="https://t.co/inNV1fO9pF">https://t.co/inNV1fO9pF</a>&mdash; Stacy Herbert 🇸🇻🚀 (@stacyherbert) <a href="https://twitter.com/stacyherbert/status/1864744400560988496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The IMF required El Salvador to drop bitcoin as legal tender, reverting it to an optional payment method for the private sector and forcing taxes to be once again paid only in US dollars. Arguably history’s biggest Bitcoin experiment to date had ended far too soon.



Bukele and El Salvador continue to buy bitcoin, on most days at least. The IMF <a href="https://archive.fo/4QG0G">apparently</a> knows about it and doesn’t mind, which implies that it’s not being purchased with public funds, but we don’t know for sure.



All things considered, Bukele is actually not the main character of this story, something with which even he would surely agree.&nbsp;



Bitcoin is the real antagonist. Bukele simply understood that earlier than any other world leader.



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How Bukele went from mayor to most powerful Bitcoin maxi on Earth

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



We don’t really talk about SOL too much at Empire. Part of that is because, obviously, Blockworks already has a whole <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">newsletter and podcast</a> dedicated to it, and Jeff and Jack are far better at discussing Solana. I’d even go so far as to say Jack’s sense of humor rivals mine… But I’m not sure I want him to hold that over my head. 



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">1/ <a href="https://twitter.com/solana?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@solana</a> proposal SIMD 228 has reached quorum, with 70% voting yes. Voting will end at Epoch 755, in approximately 52 hours. &#8211; What is SIMD 228? &#8211; What are the arguments in favor? &#8211; Why are some pushing back? Let&#39;s dive in 🧵 <a href="https://t.co/omZTODBXsd">pic.twitter.com/omZTODBXsd</a>&mdash; Carlos (@0xcarlosg) <a href="https://twitter.com/0xcarlosg/status/1899570952943387023?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Anyway, I took a shallow dive down the SIMD-0228 lane, as I was curious to see what has some folks up in arms about the proposal.&nbsp;



(If you’re nosy like me, you can also <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-proposal-could-spook-institutions">check out Jeff and Jack’s reporting</a> on the SIMD here.)



Thankfully, I didn’t have to dig too deep before <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com">Blockworks Research</a>’s Carlos Gonzalez Campo picked up the phone and filled me in.



Basically: Solana’s inflation rate sits at 4.6% right now, which — some argue — is too high. It’s set at 8% to start, with a yearly decrease of 15% (with a terminal rate of 1.5% in 2030). 



The resolution didn’t pass with the vote closing late last night, though Gonzalez Campo was leaning in favor of the proposal because he thought that the benefits outweighed the potential concerns.&nbsp;&nbsp;



When asked what it means for SOL, Gonzalez Campo told me: “You continue to overpay for security and dilute naked SOL holders. SOL emissions also add selling pressure through what Max Resnick calls the ‘leaky bucket,’ defined as transfers lost due to taxes or middlemen with market power (e.g., validators like Coinbase or Binance that charge high commissions).”



The other side, he added, is that the so-called leaky bucket can be “viewed as a distribution spend, especially to institutions” which take a percentage of the staking yield but aren’t exposed to the underlying asset.&nbsp;



So that’s your snapshot into Solanaland. If you want something more in depth, may I recommend the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a> newsletter this afternoon?



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What SIMD-0228 failing means for Solana

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



“Memecoins are stress-testing infra,” Empire co-host Santiago Santos said on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/79cbe5e4-0049-11f0-ace8-a7afc2312731">Empire roundup</a> this morning.&nbsp;



Santos compared it to the porn industry stress-testing the internet. Good times.&nbsp;



“ I get really excited about the fact that we&#8217;ve come such a long way in building infrastructure … [and you] see a line of sight into actually becoming the future of finance, like tokenizing stocks,” he continued.&nbsp;



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s84mEm-ZFIU?si=iTRoYuN1Ccj8QmvP" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







The point Santos makes is a personal favorite of mine, as I’m sure you’re aware.&nbsp;



We’re seeing a lot of developments happening, and I’m speaking to a new founder almost every day about their projects and raises. It’s hard not to — even as an objective bystander — respect the amount of work that’s gone into getting crypto to this point.&nbsp;



It’s also just so inherently “crypto” for the space to use memecoins as a stress test. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they seem to have a use case after all (but don’t tell the SEC).



With the <a href="https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2025-new-york">Digital Asset Summit</a> next week, my assumption is that we’ll see more bullishness, given that DAS is offering something that a conference like ETH Denver couldn’t: a look behind the scenes of what the institutions are up to. And we know that’s going to play a big part this cycle.



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