DigiByte is a modification of the Bitcoin protocol design that adjusts confirmation speeds and security assurances when transacting on the base layer. 

DigiByte

Katherine Ross

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>.



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We finally have Circle’s <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1876042/000119312525070481/d737521ds1.htm#rom737521_1">S-1</a> and, honestly, it’s just as juicy as I had hoped.&nbsp;



It looks like Circle, which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-files-s1-ahead-of-ipo">plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange</a> under ticker CRCL, is aiming for a valuation of around $4 billion to $5 billion.&nbsp;



Some folks — including PitchBook’s Robert Le — have noted that it’s a rather low valuation. In Le’s case, he thinks it could be purposefully low.



Coinbase, when it went public in 2021, kicked off trading with a nearly $100 billion valuation. Obviously, the two companies, while very intertwined, have different business models, so don’t get too excited about Circle getting anywhere near those levels.&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">Circle earned ~$1.7b revenue in 2024 and paid out $900M+ to <a href="https://twitter.com/coinbase?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@coinbase</a> as a distribution partner That ~$1B going to Coinbase likely comes with little to no cost/opex to serve. At 10x earnings = $10 B mkt cap and likely contributes ~25% of <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24COIN&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$COIN</a> valuation For perspective -… <a href="https://t.co/2Et3yaSgas">pic.twitter.com/2Et3yaSgas</a>&mdash; James Ho (@jamesjho_) <a href="https://twitter.com/jamesjho_/status/1907187974594240647?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Especially if stablecoin legislation is passed.&nbsp;



But the roadshow will be the real test for the stablecoin issuer, Le told me.



“My guess is, if it all goes well, that valuation should push up much higher toward the end of their roadshow. And then that would be a positive signal,” especially if interest is higher than anticipated.&nbsp;



As Wyatt Lonergan of VanEck Ventures noted, the issuer will face questions around the market evolution and what could possibly be the beginning of “stablecoin wars,” which would see everyone, including big banks, look to issue their own stablecoins.&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">Partner costs are probably the biggest line item to pay attention to, but also the most misunderstood line item, coming out of Circle’s IPO filing. Today, Coinbase takes the lion share of USDC revenue as the primary distribution partner. $900m ish of that $1 billion number.… <a href="https://t.co/z7sFKTJRKw">https://t.co/z7sFKTJRKw</a>&mdash; Wyatt Lonergan (@Wyatt_Lonergan) <a href="https://twitter.com/Wyatt_Lonergan/status/1907191801884102978?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



It’ll “come down to how the market evolves and begins using stablecoins at scale. If that stable is USDC, then they’ll get a strong multiple even as their take rate declines, because the potential markets they can grow into are massive.”



But on the venture capital front, strong demand for the listing could open up a new exit path for crypto investments, and that would be a “shift that might encourage additional capital inflows into crypto startups.”



Circle could — and so far looks to be — just the start of a crypto IPO boom, with others like Kraken, Chainalysis and Fireblocks in the wings. Add in the pick up in M&amp;A activity and the liquidity routes are wide open for a lot of folks.



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Circle’s valuation could top $5B post-roadshow

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I’ve got a dose of optimistic news for you this morning: From a venture capital perspective, the first quarter wasn’t so bad!



Preliminary data from PitchBook suggests that the quarter saw roughly $4.5 billion in VC spending, with half of that coming from Binance’s deal with Abu Dhabi’s MGX. To put that figure into context, we saw a little over $2 billion per quarter last year.



If we continue at this pace — and I know it’s early to say this — we could see spending hit $18 billion. That number is still nowhere near the $33 billion raised back in 2021, but it shows that the sector’s bouncing back, and it’s not looking frothy.



Back in December, PitchBook’s Robert Le told us he wouldn’t be surprised if we saw “multiple” $5 billion quarters and, clearly, we’re not too far off.



He told me that part of the momentum is coming from the larger deals, $100 million or bigger, that we haven’t seen too much of so far this cycle.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeWujWcpvtylZESfIjiXWqcWUsoLWLhWUoxihTHwb0m513yhP9dyKbUfRLAo5C_d0XgsjvZd0Hsa0P5b2tNZynI9NsDb0kRbUCdURtKgQ5yeLMch3pDu4GPj3x27CYqqHEObfzOjg?key=NB0rP1ohR988jmRNVbyn1kF2" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: TIE Terminal</figcaption></figure>



Right now the average deal size in March sits at roughly $60 million, though — looking at the chart above — that’s clearly a jump from the deal sizes we saw last year.



“I think as the mega funds come back to market, we&#8217;re going to expect to see a lot of those larger deals get funded, and that&#8217;s going to really [show in the] amount of venture capital dollars being invested,” he said.



There’s preliminary evidence to support that, too. Le said he’s heard that Katie Haun’s not having a hard time raising $1 billion for two new funds, which was first reported by Fortune. The interest shows that limited partners are looking to invest in some of the so-called mega funds.



“Overall sentiment” is good for crypto VCs across the board, even emerging partners focused on seed or pre-seed funding.



Speaking of those smaller rounds, we might be seeing more of them at the moment, but Le thinks that larger deals will pick up as companies scale; it’s just a matter of where we are in the cycle. Per TIE data, the seed stage round is currently the most active round type.



It should come as absolutely no surprise that Le expects projects focused on institutions to garner the most interest right now.



One thing that’s “great for startups in this space is that these institutions are more likely to partner or buy rather than build internally.” Le expects this to drive a “large chunk of venture funding” going forward.



On the flipside, Le doesn’t think we’re going to see a flock to app-layer spending — anything that serves retail, he clarified.



“The general view is that retail hasn’t come back to the market,” though Le admitted that this mindset might be “short-term thinking.” The “holy grail” for crypto is to integrate retail users who are using crypto apps with real-world value. They’re not going to come in just for the tokens, and some may not even interact with tokens.



In fact, social media projects could potentially be the winners in the sector. Look at Farcaster, for example. Le said the project’s doing an “okay job,” but he wants to see them focus on a larger audience outside of the crypto native crowd.



Given that they raised $150 million last year, he thinks they have the capital to start winning over a broader audience.



Let’s start onboarding.



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Venture capital spending topped $4.5B in Q1: PitchBook

AI firm Sentient Labs, founded by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, is preparing to launch Open Deep Search (ODS), a new framework designed to rival closed-source AI search products such as Perplexity.



ODS aims to boost Sentient Chat’s capabilities, with Sentient co-founder Himanshu Tyagi telling Blockworks that the “goal is to have all these different agents which are building on our models to be integrated there.”



<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">**Why we released ODS: the Open Deep Search framework that outperforms Perplexity** Deep research offerings are most useful of AI agents. These agents answer your queries by consulting multiple data sources and using multiple tools for reasoning over them. The response takes…&mdash; Himanshu Tyagi (@hstyagi) <a href="https://twitter.com/hstyagi/status/1907068387962089981?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 1, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



It’s currently limited to select testers, though a full public release is expected in the next few months.



Sentient Chat is the platform in which users can “​​experience not only our models, but all the applications built on model collecting.”&nbsp;



“That&#8217;s why we have both these things going, but our value proposition is just models. So our claim is that even though great models … may come, we are in a sort of age of abundance for the next one to two years, especially because of this very interesting geopolitical play.”



The team designed ODS to be owned by the community, which means it can be modified and allows developers to “build domain-specific plug-ins, private search agents and alternative reward mechanisms,” the press release added.&nbsp;



Sentient is focused on building “loyal” AI models, such as its flagship model Dobby.



When scored against a benchmark called FRAMES, Sentient’s accuracy was higher than both Perplexity’s Sonar Reasoning Pro and GPT-4o Search Preview, according to a press release.&nbsp;



The team wants to make AI more accessible across the board through decentralization. Tyagi told Blockworks that he’s “absolutely” bullish on the intersection of AI and crypto.&nbsp;



“Open-sourcing a framework that outperforms industry leaders like Perplexity throws down the gauntlet to closed-source AI developers while giving developers access to a powerful primitive that frees them to create the applications they’ve always dreamed of,” Tyagi said.



Decentralization is key, he added, because it’s hard to know what centralized entities are missing in terms of data.&nbsp;



“I am very bullish on decentralizing data sources itself” because it solves the problem, he explained.&nbsp;



While some have compared Sentient to Perplexity, Tyagi dismissed this, saying Sentient doesn’t have a direct competitor. Rather, he says the team is more focused on building models.



Currently, there’s a waitlist of nearly two million for Sentient Chat, and roughly 700,000 users of its loyal AI model Dobby.



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Peter Thiel-backed Sentient to launch Open Deep Search 

Jack Kubinec

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Miller Whitehouse-Levine, former CEO of the DeFi Education Fund, yesterday announced his latest venture as founder and CEO of the Solana Policy Institute.&nbsp;



Then, this afternoon, Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith said she would become the fledgling non-profit’s first president in May.



The non-profit’s launch and big-name hires in the crypto policy space will grow Solana’s small-ish footprint in Washington DC. The new Institute joins Solana infrastructure venue Jito and venture capital firm Multicoin as the most public Solana organizations doing business in Washington.  



Smith started as CEO of the Blockchain Association — perhaps DC’s most well-known crypto policy organization — in 2018, according to her LinkedIn page. Whitehouse-Levine got his start in crypto policy working under Smith at the Blockchain Association.



“This isn’t goodbye to the industry I love – just a shift in perspective,” Smith said in an X post announcing her departure and new role.



After working at the Blockchain Association, Whitehouse-Levine served as CEO of the DeFi Education Fund from 2021, until a couple weeks ago, when he stepped down to launch the Solana Policy Institute. Whitehouse-Levine only began working on the Institute in mid-January, he told me in an interview.



Whitehouse-Levine said market structure legislation — which the Republican-led House of Representatives is currently <a href="https://www.cryptoinamerica.com/p/house-to-hold-hearing-on-crypto-market?selection=8a48c439-2a4d-4e76-8fde-cffd7a29327a&amp;triedRedirect=true#:~:text=Miller%20Whitehouse-Levine%2C%20the%20founder%20of%20the%20DeFi%20Education%20Fund%20%E2%80%93%20D">working</a> on proposing — is “critically important” for the crypto industry. He balked at listing Solana-specific policies for 2025.&nbsp;



“Our objective is not to establish some regulatory capture or tech-specific policies,” Whitehouse-Levine said.



Still, not everyone looked favorably upon the Solana ecosystem’s foray into the decidedly-not-cypherpunk realm of US federal policy.



“L1s trying to influence politics is the exact opposite kind of energy that brought me and so many others into crypto,” David Hoffman, co-host of the popular Ethereum-leaning podcast Bankless, wrote on X.&nbsp;



But for better or worse, having boots on the ground in DC may be table stakes for blockchains in these heady days for the US crypto industry. Congress has its Bitcoin bulls. Ripple built up its DC infrastructure through years of regulatory battles. 



After a year of dramatic <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/how-solana-became-the-peoples-chain">usage and developer growth</a>, Solana is entering the political fray.



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‘Solana Policy Institute’ nets CEOs of Blockchain Association, DeFi Education Fund

Casey Wagner

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US equities slipped early in today’s session on February’s disappointing Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (<a href="https://www.bls.gov/jlt/">JOLTS</a>) report. 



The release shows that job openings continued to drop, while quits also declined. Hiring and firing rates were mostly unchanged. Layoffs, however, were on the rise. 



The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes fell as much as 0.7% and 0.8%, respectively, after the report was published.&nbsp;



Job openings came in at 7.56 million — a four-year low — compared with a projected 7.63 million. Additional DOGE-related layoffs and slowdowns in federal hiring are likely not included in February’s figures.&nbsp;



Odds of a May interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve ticked up slightly on the report. Those odds now sit at 15.2%, per data from CME Group.&nbsp;



Friday’s March employment report will give markets, and central bankers, a better look at current labor market conditions. If inflation continues to inch higher and the employment situation deteriorates further, the current pause may not last much longer.



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US equities slip after job openings disappointment

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The countdown to President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” is on, and the White House remains tight-lipped about what will be in his tariff announcement tomorrow.&nbsp;



Bulls are optimistic Trump will put an end to the back-and-forth trade policies that have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tariff-trade-overshadows-earnings-season">unnerved markets</a> since he took office. The logic goes: No matter what the levies actually are, at least the policies will be set in stone.



I’m less certain tomorrow will bring, well, certainty. Trump yesterday hinted that he would be open to negotiations with foreign nations, so the pattern — in which harsh and sweeping policies are announced, then either <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-revokes-colombia-tariff-threat">quickly walked back</a> or delayed — may continue after all.&nbsp;



Most of the conversation around tariffs has been about how higher levies will impact consumer prices (i.e. inflation and Fed policy). But the bigger impact of tariffs is arguably that doing business with the US is going to get more expensive, which in turn is bad for growth.&nbsp;



Trump and his team maintain that short-term pain is to be expected, and they say it’s a small price to pay for bringing manufacturing back to the US.&nbsp;



Tomorrow’s announcement will likely focus on global reciprocal tariffs, which we’ll be watching. But personally, I’m most interested in seeing if the administration targets copper imports.&nbsp;



The US currently produces about half the amount of copper it consumes annually, meaning roughly 1 million metric tons are imported. Copper is virtually in everything: wiring, plumbing, motors, medical devices, personal electronics — you get the picture.&nbsp;



“Dr. Copper” may be a dated economic indicator, but expect to see the metal dominating headlines should tariffs come down the line.



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What ‘Liberation Day’ could mean for US equities, growth

Ben Strack

Stablecoin issuer Circle has taken a step toward going public.



Circle plans to list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange pending SEC approval, a Tuesday filing shows. It would trade under the ticker CRCL.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We think that we can create a new defining internet platform company that is built on the internet financial system,” Circle wrote in its S-1 — a form used to register securities offerings with the SEC. “And we believe that we are still in the very early stages in the development of this new financial system.”&nbsp;



Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said that the stablecoin firm’s journey is complex, having to navigate an “evolving ecosystem where innovative technology and highly regulated, legacy financial services are intersecting in ways that will give rise to challenges and uncertainties.”&nbsp;



Allaire added: “Building a new internet financial system, creating major new infrastructure for money and economic activity, shaping and responding to policy, and operating this infrastructure in a complex global macro environment — well, it’s hard.”



The filing represents the first time Circle’s finances are available for public review.



Circle reports minting roughly $504 billion of USDC and redeeming about $464 billion of USDC from Jan. 1, 2021 to Dec. 31, 2024 — “redemptions that have always been one-for-one with the US dollar,” the company wrote.&nbsp;



Adjusted earnings before income tax, depreciation or amortization (EBITDA) for 2024 came out to $284 million, per the filing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



In the risk factors section of the filing, Circle warned that it operates in a “rapidly changing and highly competitive industry, and our results of operations and future prospects depend in part on the continued growth of the Circle stablecoin network, our ability to monetize the Circle stablecoin network, and our ability to innovate and create successful new products and services and improve existing products and services.”



Risk factor sections are normal in these types of SEC filings.&nbsp; Circle’s filing comes about a week after trading platform eToro filed for an IPO.



10T Holdings CEO Dan Tapiero said at last month’s Digital Asset Summit that he’s expecting “a crypto IPO, M&amp;A, SPAC boom” <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ipo-boom-etoro-kraken">in the coming months</a>.&nbsp;



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Circle files S-1 ahead of long-awaited IPO

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



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You’ve heard again and again about the crypto industry “maturing.” More M&amp;A deals are likely to be an ongoing byproduct.



The quarterly number of M&amp;As in crypto is building, reaching a record level during the first three months of 2025. While momentum could snowball from here, the economy’s stability remains a wild card.&nbsp;



There were 62 crypto M&amp;A transactions in Q1, according to advisory firm Architect Partners — up from 59 deals in the final quarter of 2024.&nbsp;



Each of those totals is nearly double that of Q3 2024 (33 deals). The end of 2024, of course, had lots of crypto optimism: Donald Trump’s election <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/donald-trump-declared-president-2024-election">win</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/new-sec-crypto-task-force">regulatory</a> progress/promises, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-actions-timeline">a softening SEC</a>, and rising crypto prices.



“I see larger financial players stepping in to add crypto platforms, markets and custodians to their already-diversified financial services offerings, now that the risk of negative outcomes is greatly reduced,” Baker Botts partner Samuel Dibble told me.



During Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit last month, 10T Holdings CEO Dan Tapiero alluded to an M&amp;A boom coming alongside <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ipo-boom-etoro-kraken">an expected pick-up</a> in crypto IPOs.&nbsp;



The Q1 crypto M&amp;A activity was unprecedented in more ways than one, noted Architect Partners founder Eric Risley. Aside from the record deal count, there were seven transactions over $100 million and the largest in crypto history: Kraken&#8217;s $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader.&nbsp;&nbsp;



So-called “bridge transactions” — made between crypto and non-crypto companies — will remain a theme going forward, Risley said. The Kraken buy was a bit atypical, given it was a crypto exchange that acquired a traditional foreign exchange and futures business.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The Kraken-NinjaTrader deal also touches on another trend likely to continue — companies seeking out regulatory compliance and licensing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“NinjaTrader is registered with the CFTC and has a lot of regulatory ‘stamps of approval’ that acquirers see as a fast track to expanding — or simply bolting on — crypto capabilities to their existing businesses,” Dibble noted.



Related to that, Dibble said he expects more non-US companies swooping in to acquire US-licensed operators to quicken business plans in what is now a more attractive market.&nbsp;



“We will see what ultimately unfolds, but I think it has all the signs of being a feeding frenzy,” Dibble noted.



Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said on the company’s earnings call last week that a lot of private crypto firms probably want to sell.



“They see [TradFi] companies coming in with big balance sheets,” he noted. “And most crypto businesses, fortunately or unfortunately, are tied to the overall index of crypto prices.”



Indeed, economic uncertainty is the counter to a pro-crypto Trump administration, Risley argued. Crypto price performance has proven to be highly correlated with traditional assets, which have taken a hit given tariff unknowns and even the possibility of a recession.&nbsp;“The state of the global economy matters, and crypto will be buffeted by economic weakness if it develops,” Risley said. “Economically stressed market participants simply withdraw or take less risk.”



He added: “Skew toward optimism. But perhaps not as strongly, as the economic and foreign policy uncertainties have emerged.”



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‘Feeding frenzy’ possible as crypto M&A picks up

Kate Irwin

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



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The shooter game Off The Grid has faced some disapproval — and some praise — over a purported confidential letter.



The letter in question was reportedly emailed to Gunzilla Games’ private investors in regard to its GUN token that became tradeable on Binance this week. GUN launched on Monday and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gunzilla-games-gun-token-launch">hit a $68 million</a> market cap within hours of launch, but that number has since fallen to $40 million.&nbsp;



The <a href="https://x.com/pixiekate13/status/1906777971005829541">letter</a> references a SAFT, or a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, that means investors gave the company money upfront for tokens at a later, future date.&nbsp;



The copy-pasted text of the letter was posted on X yesterday by a crypto trader and got over 115,000 views in less than a day. The larger post also included the trader’s scathing criticism of the decision. We don’t know more about the specifics of the SAFT yet, though.&nbsp;



The supposed text of that email also references a change to GUN’s vesting tokenomics — and offers investors a chance for a refund if they don’t want to agree to the new terms.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeRnExDMneGra87-nxiF_LMsC_Rqwi-NJsDLFab0L7gsGEMhBxWcl4X8UOhP55BLz7hCXmV2XUrt7RsViNNND1emY-lX02ZBLAH-Yfmy8zvJZcxTLBVe7y470pA8LDZwY9Up6OyUw?key=eiHP8XU0o4ADlGCoXjX4cQe7" alt=""/></figure>



What exactly might these changes be? The trader who leaked the purported letter, Grail.eth, <a href="https://x.com/graildoteth/status/1906737689191473480">claims</a> seed round investors were supposed to get 5% of their GUN tokens unlocked on launch day, while strategic round investors were supposed to see 2% of their tokens unlock on launch.&nbsp;



According to the public GUN whitepaper, the strategic round is seeing 0% of tokens unlocked on launch. The Private A and B rounds have been granted the same. This means these groups’ tokens won’t be unlocked for at least a year because their tokens have a 12-month cliff, with 18 months of vesting.



Some traders on Twitter speculate that the changes may be in order to fund the token’s listing on Binance, though this has not been confirmed by Gunzilla or Binance.&nbsp;



&#8220;We do not charge listing fees to projects listing on Binance,” a Binance spokesperson tells Blockworks. “Regardless, deposits from project teams are refundable and designed to help protect users by ensuring that projects are serious about building their projects, keeping them alive and continuing to build after listing on Binance. The deposit also serves to help protect users in situations where projects harm them by failing to deliver on their commitments.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfy0oO4-u2jb-Gae6lELR0Rmlgzr6ycjF5jtd-DhwFlZ0tnU50XGDHoi7LWhAA_AuNfm7aku0Da3TTDeYBxB0h4P_qwa-JXtnkxtrN8qAWS710KnGqEZ1-BdX_Og3SHF0rB4KYmlw?key=eiHP8XU0o4ADlGCoXjX4cQe7" alt=""/></figure>



Others have <a href="https://x.com/0xAkina_/status/1906731320849641653">criticized</a> GUN’s tokenomics for allotting a significant amount to investors in the first place.&nbsp;



But not everyone’s seeing these tokenomics in a negative light.&nbsp;



I’m personally a fan of any project that makes investors wait longer to unlock their tokens. The “dump on retail” price action isn’t fun for anyone, and it can kill excitement around a new project fast if it happens shortly after a token launches.&nbsp;



“A rare instance where the project chooses its users over VCs,” <a href="https://x.com/avery_bartlett/status/1906738335428587882">wrote</a> Ava Labs Marketing Lead Avery Bartlett in response to the post with the letter, while also admitting he understood the criticism around it (Gunzilla is using its own Avalanche L1).



In a DM, Bartlett told Blockworks: “The people I know didn’t get [a letter]. I got nodes on secondary and didn’t get it,” suggesting validator investors did not see a change to their tokenomics.



Theodore Agranat, Gunzilla’s Director of Web3, told Blockworks he was “not sure” when asked about the letter’s legitimacy.



“I do know that whatever letter was sent out had [a] confidentiality clause attached to it. So not sure,” he said, adding that he would speak with his team.



Agranat’s response indicates a letter was sent confidentially — we just don’t know with 100% certainty if this copy-pasted text matches it.



When Blockworks reached out a day later to follow up regarding the letter, Agranat did not respond by time of publication.&nbsp;



Blockworks has reached out to Gunzilla for additional comment.



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Off The Grid confidential letter sparks speculation around tokenomics

Donovan Choy

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



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If you ask the average person in crypto what problems the industry faces today, “too many chains, not enough apps” quickly comes up as a common gripe.



This complaint has a striking parallel to the days of the early internet.



During the dot-com boom of the late 90s and early 2000s, skeptics similarly criticized the perceived overinvestment in excessive infrastructure, particularly fiber optics.



Telecom companies (Global Crossing, WorldCom, AT&amp;T) spent billions laying undersea cables and long-haul fiber networks based on the belief that internet traffic would grow exponentially.



Even internet pioneer Bob Metcalfe criticized this perceived overinvestment, arguing that there simply wouldn’t be enough demand.



With the luxury of hindsight, we now know that Metcalfe was wrong (Metcalfe <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1d1xg1/til_robert_metcalfe_predicted_in_1995_that_the/">literally ate</a> his words in 2006 after he conceded his error).



The explosive surplus of bandwidth is what makes amazing products like YouTube, cloud computing, and Netflix possible today.



Netflix, for instance, was a mail-based DVD rental business for years until it slowly began its transition to streaming in 2007 — thanks to the foundations of bandwidth infrastructure that had been laid prior.



In short, the bet that “if we build it, demand will come” eventually proved true for the internet, though it took a decade and the bankruptcy of internet infrastructure companies like Global Crossing.



Ethereum is (kind of) placing its chips on a similar bet today.



Per its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-scaling-interop-sequencing">rollup-centric roadmap</a>, the Ethereum L1 today in effect gives up execution fees to L2s.



But Ethereum plans to eventually reap the profits in data availability (DA) fees through its upcoming upgrades to scale the supply of DA. The idea is that Ethereum DA will eventually be so abundantly plentiful that it would induce eventual user demand.



Just like the early internet builders, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake <a href="https://youtu.be/yvP39-EOADU">believes</a> that “if we build it, demand will come.”



Drake’s moonshot math looks like this: At 10 million TPS, with each transaction paying $0.001 in DA fees to Ethereum, that comes up to ~$1 billion per day of revenue for Ethereum.



(This assumes L2s use the Ethereum L1 for DA, as opposed to an alternative DA layer like Celestia or EigenLayer. But Drake believes the benefits of synchronous composability will make it so.)



It’s a bold thesis, considering DA consumption today; Ethereum’s blob gas fees came up to about a mere $272k in March.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcwR4OD-izr37fe2tJxfQPEgMPmGLChD4Lq9RPqgXfte5MCKTMg5C8Ad-_O40CKd9H1PDqa2tmA4ZWZITRVDEW9CsUuqtwI4UaxsFcgSRSecsLbRkl63O1TG98sLgEXNpZnZqt_YA?key=kRoqvm_ZUgyHO1lsNH38B_Eu" alt=""/></figure>



Maybe Ethereum bulls believe Web3 will play out similarly to the history of Web2, but Ethereum doesn’t exist in a silo, and it faces stiff competition from other chains.



We also still have so few guesses as to the kinds of onchain applications that will dominate blockchain usage. Will the world need that much data availability?



But I digress. The claim that there are “too many chains” may eventually be true. But it’s too early to tell, as it was in the early days of the internet.



If true, markets are serving to curb further wasteful spending. Case in point: The L1 premium has been rapidly compressing.



The days of $300-$500 million dollar raises for an L1 are over. L1/L2 blockchain raises in 2024 ranged from as low as $14 million (<a href="https://x.com/initia/status/1838929323954200974">Initia</a>) to as high as $100 million (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/evm-compatible-layer-1-blockchain-vc-interest">Berachain</a>) and $225 million (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/evm-compatible-layer-1-blockchain-vc-interest">Monad</a>).



The high costs of running an L1 and a lack of value capture sends a feedback signal to markets to stop funding these things.



In comparison, L2s are much cheaper to launch, about $5-$15 million, per <a href="https://x.com/JasonYanowitz/status/1846936073382809626">estimates</a> by Blockworks’ Jason Yanowitz.



That may explain the Celo L1’s recent transition into an L2, or what Kydo, EigenLayer’s head of special projects, <a href="https://x.com/0xkydo/status/1906050837186584983">calls</a> Ethereum’s “inevitable gravity toward efficiency.”



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Can Ethereum win big with data availability?

David Canellis

Pete Rizzo

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



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Few things are built to stand the test of time. Bitcoin is.



Engineers design bridges to last only around 100 years. Modern-day dams might be built that only make it to half that. 



Perhaps regular maintenance could stretch those numbers by a few decades. They would still crumble much sooner than Bitcoin was ever intended to.



Today is the 11th anniversary of a testament to exactly that: BIP-42, the clutch proposal that averted a potential supply crisis 240 years from now.



Bitcoin Core contributor <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1880616287363059980">Pieter Wuille</a> submitted BIP-42 on April Fool’s Day, 2014, years after Satoshi Nakamoto’s last post. BIP-42 was based on a solution proposed by <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1878079505052413965">Gregory Maxwell</a>. Fittingly, it was both very serious and deeply unserious at the same time.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcxexSwe6D6Dhm0k2ObNvIs8ip8LXwulYlpFsHj7RnslBpy5T5ITyr6oDzmLEi3sbexIIAONmCO811Ta6XOTdTHKQs3rrpRmcZefPRMGtkb3l6KGj_7NtHThZ5Bcf8c6oqRP_j-Mg?key=OWOEEWME-Gq6nfqaq74dza6b" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">BIP-42 doubled as a roast of Satoshi Nakamoto (<a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawiki">source</a>).</figcaption></figure>



As it turns out, Satoshi had made a grave but obscure error when coding the logic for bitcoin halvings.&nbsp;



The block reward had been correctly set to halve every 210,000 blocks, all the way down to an unspendable fraction of a sat by the year 2140 or so. This is what makes the BTC supply predictably and provably finite.



But the code was written in such a way that it determines the mining reward using the current block height. And when the block height gets too high — much higher than it is today — Satoshi would’ve had to write special rules informing the software how to process such a calculation safely.



The exact impact of the bug isn’t really knowable, but the largest of unintended consequences would have been that the block reward reverted to its original state of 50 BTC. BTC’s supply issuance curve would be rebooted to 2009.



Left unchecked, the bug would return again and again every two and a half centuries, making for potentially infinite bitcoins over the millennia.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdjMI40BjNZZ0vsmV8py9UXnvBjp6ClH_kHUnIPe0yIFLdhoOvkQZAYWKbJSYMnUuzBWoQ5kxzAVX8e3-lUPN-agTUHcKfVj9BLdg38Y-zX1f0AgKB8PJlh3SUh8rzlbmSEk_-Riw?key=OWOEEWME-Gq6nfqaq74dza6b" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Bitcoin’s circulating supply would hit 126 million in the year 3417, without fixing the supply bug.</figcaption></figure>



“Although it is widely believed that Satoshi was an inflation-hating goldbug, he never said this, and in fact programmed Bitcoin&#8217;s money supply to grow indefinitely, forever,” Wuille wrote.



What’s humbling is that BIP-42 aborted a cataclysmic event that would’ve occurred 10 generations from now — in the approximate year 2265, when the block height should reach 13.44 million (today, it’s under 890,000). That’s over a century after the last slice of spendable bitcoin is expected to be mined, in 2140.&nbsp;



So, I suppose our great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will have Wuille and Maxwell to thank for making sure that’s so.



— David



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Rizzo’s view, as the Bitcoin Historian</h2>



It’s nice that David can have a laugh over BIP-42. It is one of the more objectively quirky events in Bitcoin development history. That said, a more sober assessment raises thorny questions about the management of the Bitcoin software.&nbsp; One that I always linger on is the natural tension over what defines a “bug” in Bitcoin. Should we consider BIP-42 through the lens of jurisprudence, it helped enshrine two interesting views.&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>First is the assertion that the code which BIP-42 patches is indeed a “bug” because it contradicts what Satoshi wrote, namely, that Bitcoin would have a fixed supply. </li>



<li>Second is the view that the code is a “bug” because it contradicts what he told users to expect (creating a kind of social contract). </li>
</ul>



There’s a truth to both assertions, but it seems to get more problematic when compared to how other code debates were handled. Take the infamous “block size,” for instance. In this case, Satoshi said it would be raised over time, and it’s also what most (if not all early users) expected.



Ergo, the unchanged block size checks similar boxes as BIP-42. Yet no action was ever taken to change it. How to square this circle? Perhaps there’s the issue of safety. It’s true that eliminating the block size could lead to DDOS attacks, block withholding attacks, and potentially contribute to Bitcoin’s ultimate centralization. Equally, it could be said that rebooting the Bitcoin supply would constitute economic attacks. So, perhaps this was what swayed the decision.



I talked to Luke Jr. about this, and here’s what he had to say: “It was the behaviour everyone expected. And also there was no guarantee future CPUs would have the previous behavior for the existing code either.” Unfortunately, due to the tone of the patch, however, we might never know what all the participants had to say.



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126 million BTC? How Bitcoin’s absolute scarcity was saved

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>.



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There’s no denying that North Korea’s Lazarus Group is a threat, especially as crypto works overtime to be seen as a safe and acceptable industry (sorry degens, there are still corners for you).&nbsp;



Paradigm’s samczsun <a href="https://www.paradigm.xyz/2025/03/demystifying-the-north-korean-threat">highlighted</a> the good, the bad, and the ugly, a month after the Lazarus Group pulled off the biggest digital heist in history. Oof, that hurt to write.&nbsp;



The upside is that only one bad actor (which, I guess on the downside, is North Korea) has been so successful in stealing funds.&nbsp;



But “there’s more to the DPRK than just the Lazarus Group,” he warned.



Unfortunately, the team would later find out that the group had managed to compromise SafeWallet’s own infrastructure, deploying “a malicious payload specifically targeting Bybit. This was a level of sophistication that no one had considered or been prepared for, and it was a major update to many of our threat models.”



But there are ways to stay safe, samczsun noted. He urges caution across the board for individual folks like us. And organizations should “install Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software” on work devices for security prior to any hack and to ensure visibility afterwards.&nbsp;



Samczsun’s tune was slightly more optimistic than Paradigm advisor ZachXBT, who earlier this month said the effort to try to freeze funds tracked to the Bybit attack had been an “eye-opening” experience.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXet4pzhRcDbBuh26UAGIlTfK496-5aWkZP-pf6T7Co25HZfgKVz4kLRHLtch_p3Gc5YKjdRtaQNedw7fmsNMUeVj-1mDgM_yQfYjAWiz3t9a4u9wPRIn1otLodLOr-hOdc4O1VmYw?key=Uyw_GkgyI-NUIl5ahE5nEq4m" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">From ZachXBT’s Telegram group.</figcaption></figure>



“The industry is unbelievably cooked when it comes to exploits/hacks,” he wrote.&nbsp;



Samczsun’s holding out hope that the FBI’s unit dedicated to both tracking and preventing DPRK attacks is strong, an encouraging sign given his recent work with them.



Whether or not the FBI paired with super sleuths such as ZachXBT and samczsun — alongside members of Seal 911 — remains to be seen.



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<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>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
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Paradigm’s Samczsun warns there’s ‘more to the DPRK than just the Lazarus Group’

Bill Barhydt, the CEO of Abra and an early Bitcoin adopter who famously bought bitcoin when it was <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1763544742862762180">trading below $5</a>, has sharply criticized Michael Saylor&#8217;s plan to render his substantial personal bitcoin holdings inaccessible to anyone else forever. In a new interview on the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mastercard-building-venmo-crypto-blockchain-digital-assets-2025-3">Supply Shock podcast</a> with <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_">Pete Rizzo</a>, Barhydt expressed his frustration, stating Saylor&#8217;s strategy &#8220;makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.



Saylor, known for his bullish stance on Bitcoin and his company Strategy&#8217;s substantial bitcoin investments, recently hinted <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1904555177077514482">in a CoinDesk interview</a> that he might send his personal stash of over 17,000 BTC to an &#8220;unsendable wallet&#8221; for eternity.



Barhydt acknowledged Saylor&#8217;s perspective that this move would benefit the Bitcoin community by reducing the total supply (and potentially increasing the value of remaining coins) but offered a spirited rebuttal.&nbsp;



&#8220;His perspective is that this is a gift to the Bitcoin community because if you lower the denominator and the numerator, it helps everybody else in terms of the purchasing power. My take is, the Bitcoin community does not need that gift,” he asserted.



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/496uF9L7LOg?si=AnlW8s4OALbq0xfd" 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>







Before founding Abra, a global cryptocurrency wealth management platform, Barhydt held roles at companies like Goldman Sachs and Netscape. He gave the first-ever Bitcoin TED Talk when the price of Bitcoin was just $5.



Instead, Barhydt suggested Saylor could use his bitcoin to fund educational services for low-income individuals, establish bitcoin-based banking operations in developing markets, or develop bitcoin-based remittance services.&nbsp;



He emphasized that these initiatives would provide long-term benefits in terms of increasing the total number of the technology’s users.&nbsp;



Barhydt drew a comparison to the early days of Bitcoin, when enthusiasts like himself gave away bitcoin to promote its use and understanding. &#8220;When we were giving away bitcoin, it wasn&#8217;t like we were telling people, ‘Here, go build your financial fortune.’ It was like, no, you need to understand how this decentralized system allows you to move value between two parties without some trusted third party in the middle,&#8221; Barhydt explained.



He contrasted this with Saylor&#8217;s plan, which he sees as primarily focused on increasing the value of existing bitcoin holdings. &#8220;[Using the money] is a very different perspective than saying, ‘I&#8217;m gonna help the value of your bags by burning my bags,’&#8221; Barhydt stated.



Elsewhere Barhydt questioned Saylor&#8217;s comparison between his own actions and those of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, arguing that Michael Saylor doesn’t need to make a benevolent exit from the software project in quite the same way.&nbsp;



&#8220;Saylor is not perceived to be a benevolent dictator of Bitcoin,&#8221; Barhydt said, arguing that Saylor&#8217;s decision carries different implications for the network.



Listen to the full interview on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=496uF9L7LOg">YouTube</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/supply-shock/id1558223079">Apple Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2yFL2nSsQucf1rzdEKbFZY">Spotify</a>.&nbsp;



Editor’s note: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tooling.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
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Investor who bought bitcoin at $5 says Saylor is making a $1.5B mistake

Jeff Albus

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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Following Hyperliquid&#8217;s $13 million <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-jelly-short-blockworks-research">brush with disaster</a>, some in Solana&#8217;s orbit are wondering: Could Jupiter&#8217;s JLP vault — a similar product to Hyperliquid’s vulnerable vault — face a similar exploit?



Nope.



That&#8217;s my short but genuinely confident answer. Let&#8217;s unpack why.



To recap briefly: Last week, some unknown trader thought they&#8217;d get cute by manipulating the price of thinly-traded Jelly-my-Jelly (JELLY) memecoin on decentralized perp exchange Hyperliquid. The presumed goal was to mobilize a massive short squeeze, allowing them to profit from leveraged long positions while forcing the protocol to absorb the loss from their short.&nbsp;



The attacker’s leveraged long positions quickly created over $13 million in unrealized losses to Hyperliquid’s HLP risk vault and an emergency shutdown that forcibly closed all JELLY positions at a price favorable to Hyperliquid&#8217;s balance sheet.



Now, we can argue <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-decentralization-validator-put">whether it was a bailout</a>, anathema to a decentralized ethos, or just pragmatic damage control another time. The point is, it worked.



By forcibly settling all JELLY positions at the exploiter’s short entry of $0.0095, the protocol basically reversed the attack. Which is to say that Hyperliquid actually, hilariously, ended up posting a profit of around $700,000 while the attacker walked away with less than they deposited. The Hyperliquid team promptly assured users they would be made whole through the Hyper Foundation, and everyone lived happily ever after.



Hooray.



But if perps DEXs can be attacked, that raises questions about Jupiter, Solana&#8217;s biggest DEX aggregator and perps exchange. Like Hyperliquid, Jupiter&#8217;s platform is powered by a vault that acts as the counterparty to all trades. This would be the very creatively named (/s) Jupiter Liquidity Provider pool, or JLP. The JLP collects trading fees and earns big when traders lose but takes a hit when they win.



HLP. JLP. It sounds pretty same-same. So with that in mind, could this vault be squeezed in a similar way? In theory, yes. Anything&#8217;s possible. I&#8217;m not going to call the Titanic unsinkable. But Jupiter&#8217;s architecture makes it an improbable outcome in practice.



First, consider its asset list. No offense to JELLY, but the token had very little liquidity, making price manipulation easier. Hyperliquid listed it because it prioritized volume, novelty, and a wide-open asset strategy to attract degens.&nbsp;



Jupiter doesn&#8217;t do that. Its perpetuals are limited to major assets like SOL, ETH, and wrapped BTC. That decision alone eliminates the kind of thin-market vulnerability that made JELLY so exploitable. A Jupiter representative said the platform’s maximum order size is much smaller than Hyperliquid’s as well.



Second, price execution. Hyperliquid relies on its internal orderbook to match traders directly against each other. Users submit their own limit orders, giving them more flexible, dynamic pricing. However, that also leads to a plethora of exploitable scenarios. A motivated attacker can influence the price displayed on the platform, setting up artificial moves that trigger cascading liquidations and/or dislocations. No bueno, compadres.



Jupiter&#8217;s perp markets operate in a totally different way, choosing instead to execute at oracle prices from external sources like Pyth. Even if a trader tried to pump the spot price of SOL on another exchange, they&#8217;d still be trading against the median on-chain price, not a manipulated in-platform quote.



Frankly, it&#8217;s just harder to game the house when the pricing comes from outside the casino.



Third, Jupiter handles risk with guardrails, not emergency exits. JLP is always the counterparty. If a trade gets liquidated, the levers for that would pull automatically at the set Oracle price. As far as we know, there&#8217;s no handoff to a second vault, no delay that a bad actor can game, and no pause for a team call or validator vote. Losses go straight to the pool.



Again, one could argue this makes the system blunt or unforgiving, but it&#8217;s something LPs accept as part and parcel (and the reasons why should now be pretty clear).



That&#8217;s not to say that JLP is immune to risk, because it&#8217;s not. It regularly takes losses in the case of a one-sided market where most traders win, for instance. But Jupiter bakes in defenses for that, too. Traders pay borrow fees to open leveraged positions, which go straight to the pool. If everyone piles into longs, funding rates rise to balance the associated risks.&nbsp;



Could some unforeseen scenario force Jupiter to intervene someday in a way that its users find questionable? Yes. Every protocol has an edge case. But in this specific scenario, Jupiter seems to have designed JLP to absorb such hazards. While Hyperliquid had to delist a token to save its vault, Jupiter has taken the opposite approach: limit risk at the door.



So, with that in mind — rest easy, Lightspeeders.&nbsp;



Jupiter isn’t playing the same game Hyperliquid nearly lost.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
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Jupiter’s risk vault unlikely to face Hyperliquid-style attack

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>.



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There’s a new institutional-grade DeFi yield platform in town, we’ve exclusively learned.&nbsp;



Upshift, which aims to give retail access to yield opportunities typically available for hedge funds, is being spun out of prime brokerage firm August and is coming out of stealth.&nbsp;



The platform already has around $250 million in deposits, the team told me.



“If you look at the value prop today, DeFi’s super complicated,” Upshift CEO and August co-founder Alexandre Elkrief explained to me.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s across three main axes: It&#8217;s fragmented, it&#8217;s hard to access, and it&#8217;s a lot more complex to manage fragments, obviously, because we&#8217;ve gone from one chain to a gazillion chains. It&#8217;s clear that it&#8217;s not gonna stop today. [August supports] 15 chains, right? And so the retail user is not gonna rebalance their position across that many different opportunities, and it&#8217;s becoming a full-time job,” Elkrief continued.



Elkrief and fellow co-founder and CEO of August, Aya Kantorovich, are no strangers to this space. Kantorovich was part of the founding team for brokerage firm FalconX, and Elkrief spent some time running the books for a DeFi hedge fund. The two initially started working on Fractal, later rebranded as August, and began fundraising right before the FTX collapse and closed the deal “the week that FTX collapsed,” Kantorovich told me.



She admitted both founders felt like they lost a couple of years off their lives after that, but it also solidified their belief in the need for both an August and an Upshift in crypto.



And so far, their work has paid off. August <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/03/06/crypto-prime-brokerage-august-raises-10-million-dragonfly-ventures/">raised</a> $10 million in a round led by Dragonfly earlier this month. It focuses on giving institutions DeFi access by connecting them to networks like Aave or Uniswap, and facilitates roughly $7 billion in monthly volume.&nbsp;



Upshift, which has been in beta since last September, is focused on the retail side of things. That was a focal point for me given that we haven’t seen retail activity levels return just yet.



“Our hypothesis is that it’s a question of complexity,” Elkrief said. Retail’s really been forced to focus on things like memecoins, which are obviously out of style now.&nbsp;



And this market is focused on “rewarding simple products,” Kantorovich noted.



“If you just zoom out for a second, the value proposition of yield is generally the onboarding mechanism for all types of new financial products. Crypto aside, Marcus by Goldman Sachs started attracting users by having a 4% savings account, right? … We&#8217;re giving every asset issuer the opportunity to augment their product with a yield-bearing option.”



Essentially, asset issuers can then partner with hedge funds or managers to curate and package the product to offer yield. Hopefully, on the flip side, also driving onboarding to said product.&nbsp;



While the August roadmap is about integrating a custodian, Elkrief said, Upshift’s going to become a product by itself. The team is “working through” the motions to split the August and Upshift teams apart currently, with Elkrief taking the helm.&nbsp;



Thanks to the lack of regulation currently, Upshift isn’t something that can be offered to US users, though both Kantorovich and Elkrief are eager for the day that path opens up.



But for now, Upshift’s focused on “making some noise” and getting to $1 billion in deposits. Then, in the next 18 months, the plan is to hit $2 billion or $3 billion.&nbsp;



Easy peasy.



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<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>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
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Exclusive: DeFi yield platform Upshift exits stealth

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



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The word “bitcoin” appeared once in BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s 2024 letter to investors.&nbsp;



The asset (and tokenization too) got a bigger shoutout this time around.



Fink’s sole mention of BTC last March came when bringing up BlackRock’s recent bitcoin ETF launch. That was part of a broader effort to “bring better liquidity and price discovery to more opaque markets,” he wrote.



The CEO’s 2025 letter, published today, included seven “bitcoin” references. He again addressed the aforementioned IBIT product, which has notched net inflows of $40 billion to date.



More than half of that demand has been from retail investors, Fink noted, with three-quarters of those investors never owning an iShares product before.



But more interestingly, Fink wrote there’s no guarantee that the dollar will forever serve as the world’s reserve currency.  



“If the US doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like bitcoin,” he explained.



He added: “Decentralized finance is an extraordinary innovation. It makes markets faster, cheaper and more transparent. Yet that same innovation could undermine America&#8217;s economic advantage if investors begin seeing bitcoin as a safer bet than the dollar.”



Fink gives this warning while clarifying that he’s “obviously not anti-digital assets.” He has, after all, called <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-tokenization-investment">tokenized securities</a> “the next generation for markets.” And we’ve reported on BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund, which earlier this month <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-yield-funds-complement-stablecoins">hit $1 billion in AUM</a>.



Fink reaffirmed this sentiment, arguing that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-tokenization-blackrock-galaxy-das">tokenizing</a> every stock, bond and fund would “revolutionize” investing.



“Markets wouldn&#8217;t need to close,” Fink wrote. “Transactions that currently take days would clear in seconds. And billions of dollars currently immobilized by settlement delays could be reinvested immediately back into the economy, generating more growth.”



Solving for digital verification will be critical if tokenized funds are to become as familiar to investors as ETFs, he added. A TradFi giant like BlackRock continuing to focus on these categories should no doubt make such a thing possible.&nbsp;



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



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.</li>
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