Dickbutt

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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Truth Arts, the company behind the Goblintown NFTs, has plans to continue its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/goblintown-drivers-license-nfts-game-dmv">gaming push</a> and launched a Solana memecoin this week.&nbsp;



“Memecoins are clearly broken&#8230;so we built a new token design in attempt to fix them and make them more healthy + sustainable,” Truth CEO and cofounder Alexander Taub wrote in a <a href="https://x.com/ajt/status/1942757825333125628">post</a>.



“We spent 6+ months analyzing what made coins succeed and fail. We studied every failure and flaw in memecoins we could possibly find, broke down the root causes, and added mechanisms that are attempting to fix them,” Taub said.



The team <a href="https://blog.trutharts.com/greenpaper/">says</a> they put measures in place to prevent “snipers, MEV bots, misaligned incentives between team and token holders, investor allocation dumps, pump-and-dumps, whale dumps, unchecked supply, lack of reinvestment — you name it.”



The token’s being slowly unlocked over time and allocated to Goblintown NFT holders as well as owners of Illuminati, The187, Big Inc, and Grumpl NFTs.&nbsp;



They’ve also implemented a “token tax” of 2.5% on every GOB transaction.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1222" height="880" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-1.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-105105" style="width:628px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-1.png?w=1222 1222w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-1.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-1.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-1.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-1.png?w=357 357w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-1.png?w=362 362w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-1.png?w=304 304w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-1.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1222px) 100vw, 1222px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: CoinGecko.</figcaption></figure>



Despite this, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/gob">GOB</a> is down roughly 60% in the past two days since its launch and has lost about 18% in the past 24 hours, with its market cap falling from a $30 million high to about $7 million as of Friday morning.



But it’s not over yet — and only about 10% of the total token supply is in circulation, according to the project’s “<a href="https://blog.trutharts.com/greenpaper/">greenpaper</a>.”



“It hasn’t even been 72 hours but that feels like a lifetime in Web3/crypto. Two thoughts about the future,” Taub told me in a DM. “The first is one thing I’ve heard from a few people is that we are trying to be too smart about all this stuff for our own good and should just get back to the goblin vibes. The second is we released a TikTok filter in conjunction with $gob and it feels like it has REAL mainstream potential.”



Regardless of what GOB’s price is doing, I do think the Truth team continues to find creative and funny ways to capture moments in crypto culture. That may continue to have some appeal.&nbsp;



The original NFTs came around a time when some traders were starting to embrace the chaotic degeneracy of the market and the volatility of NFT mints. The “WAGMI” NFT era was waning. Some Goblintown holders took to roleplaying as goblins at the time, posting about their obsessions with urine (yes, really).



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfskF-WrCS2aeLL754CIMBsYm5w9_Kas8biaQRCdvYD5B-6kCbdNiJ_0dn2VxTZQOwZL1ZhpOuCEVJEBDZf9bM8LSogPvsoKgOSiRUwVPPzixHO7GtSM6pwJrlc-OCv29YX_Q_mAg?key=aP8BIrV79ZtGK9V8cHy8yA" alt=""/></figure>



For their Goblintown: Really Hard Driving Game, the team set up a DMV waiting simulator that was quirky and frustrating in equal measure.



If upset about GOB for whatever reason, there’s a hotline that lets callers complain. I called it, and all I’ll say is it’s real, and expect a long wait.



“Feel free to call our $gob Hotline on Telescram at (954) 869-4462(4GOB) and try to reach us,” a <a href="https://blog.trutharts.com/introducing-gob/">blog post</a> reads. “We are open 24/7/365, but good luck getting an employee to pick up.”



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Gaming

Goblintown launches hotline to complain about its memecoin

Macauley Peterson

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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The race to make Bitcoin programmable without a soft fork has turned into one of the most creative arms races in crypto.&nbsp;



At the center is BitVM, a framework for proving off-chain computation on Bitcoin via fraud proofs. Its first iteration, now known as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-virtual-machine-smart-contracts-ethereum">BitVM1</a>, used a multi-round interactive protocol. <a href="https://bitvm.org/bitvm2">BitVM2</a> simplified this to a single-round fault proof using a split SNARK verifier, and is already proving practical for early adopters like Build on Bitcoin (BOB), Citrea and Bitlayer.



Now, BitVM3 proposes to go even further by cutting onchain fraud proof costs by ~1000x. But there&#8217;s a catch: It’s still in the research phase, with critical security, complexity and data availability challenges to solve before becoming production-ready.



“The overall design of the BitVM bridge between BitVM2 and BitVM3 remains the same,” BOB co-founder Alexei Zamyatin told Blockworks. “The key difference is swapping the SNARK verifier (BitVM2) with a garbled circuit (BitVM3), he said, adding “we are exploring incorporating elements of the latest BitVM design in our customised hybrid BitVM bridge.”



Garbled circuits are a term for cryptographic gadgets that allow one party to pre-commit to a computation that another can verify without learning the private inputs. In theory, this reduces Bitcoin’s onchain burden to tiny commitments per logic gate. While it holds great promise, it’s far from proven at scale and research is ongoing to address shortcomings before deployment.



Meanwhile, existing bridges are moving ahead on BitVM2. BOB recently launched its latest BitVM2-based bridge testnet with major DeFi partners to enable Bitcoin-backed assets on other chains. BitVM2 is being audited and is expected to be ready for mainnet soon.



“Garbled circuits are an exciting development but they still need quite a bit more research before they could be considered practical to implement,”&nbsp; Zamyatin explained. “It is important to note that the majority of the work to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-zk-rollups-debate">build a bridge</a> using BitVM stays the same [when] using BitVM2 or BitVM3.”



BitVM2’s current costs aren’t trivial: Zamyatin estimates a worst-case onchain fraud proof at around $16,000 in transaction fees. But even that is cheaper than Ethereum’s OP Stack fault proofs, which require 14 ETH or more (over $40,000 today) for bonds, and can run into hundreds of ETH to actually prove fraud onchain.&nbsp;



Meanwhile, other teams are experimenting with different flavors of garbled circuits, as Robin Linus said in the BitVM Builders Telegram group this week:



“Citrea is exploring a classic approach of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbled_circuit">Yao-style garbling</a> combined with a cut-and-choose method for verifying the circuits&#8217; correctness. That comes at the expense of higher communication and storage cost, but it is nicely simple and relies on very conservative assumptions. In contrast, Alpen [Labs] is exploring a designated-verifier SNARK, which reduces the communication overhead, but comes at the expense of more exotic cryptography, which isn&#8217;t battle-hardened yet and doesn&#8217;t work as well with off-the-shelf tooling.”



In simpler terms, Citrea’s method is like making lots of sealed envelopes (“garbled circuits”) that hide each step, then letting the checker randomly open some of them (“cut and choose”) to confirm you didn’t cheat. It’s straightforward and built on time-tested ideas, but you need to send and store piles of envelopes, which is bulky and slow.



Alpen’s method shrinks everything into a single, tiny postcard (“designated-verifier SNARK”) that the checker can read quickly, saving bandwidth and space. The catch is that this postcard relies on newer, more experimental “cryptographic ink” that hasn’t faced as many real-world stress tests and isn’t yet compatible with the standard stationery most developers keep on their desks.



Ultimately, the entire effort gets <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-rollups-closer-than-expected">dramatically easier</a> if Bitcoin Core can agree on new opcodes in a soft fork — like CTV or TXHASH — that would let these protocols enforce covenant-like spending conditions without relying on elaborate multisig setups. But a periodic glance at the Wiki-style page that tracks <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Covenants_support">stakeholder views</a> on new opcodes shows that consensus building is a painfully slow process.



“One thing that’s looking more and more likely is CTV — but it also depends on the flavor,” Zamyatin told me. For instance, a <a href="https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/5wLThgegha4">new proposal</a> just two days ago is not as favorable for BitVM, he said, and therefore unlikely to win support from most L2 builders.



So, BitVM3 remains a highly promising but deeply experimental approach. Meanwhile, BitVM2 bridges and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-defi-without-upgrades">other approaches</a> look set to be Bitcoin’s next major step toward trust-minimized layer-2 scaling.



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0xResearch Newsletter

BitVM3 promises cheaper Bitcoin bridges — but not yet

David Canellis

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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If you won the lottery, how would you spend it?



A new house, maybe, or a car. A warm summer holiday to a sunny beach, at least.



I’d bet good money, however, that using it to attack Bitcoin would be low on the list.



Well, ten years ago, someone burned good money doing just that.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">On This Day: 2015</h2>



You would already know that the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae_V0upRlGk">debate over transaction filtering</a> has been going on for years. More than a decade, even.



It was around this time in 2015 that a mysterious user, or group of users, decided to take matters into their own hands.



An entity going by CoinWallet.eu had begun executing what it <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1094865.0;all">described</a> as the “Ultimate Bitcoin Stress Test.” They were going to systematically spam the chain with dust transactions and fill each block to the brim, driving fees sky high in the process while drastically increasing wait times for legitimate users.



CoinWallet.eu hoped to demonstrate that Bitcoin’s 1MB block size limit was too small, and ultimately convince the community to raise it. After all, if spammers could cheaply overload Bitcoin’s blocks as they were, then so could anyone else at any time.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe3ygB_RZOuzI6CYVbUWaKHsAnM0jY5nm2jQmdkVp1IaPeV3OaJNbq5_NJ-yQPRYFGlntAHzGA_A-d6F3noeqeLHb-j80-4Cl7PPrhR2DZ8BIASTD5qRFoIdloM4C1vgxeVi869?key=i8o9LS5veR-8RvED07BMPg" alt="" style="width:758px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The campaign caused havoc for the network, with the line showing the number of unconfirmed transactions. (<a href="https://damonmccoy.com/papers/bitcoin16-final22.pdf?ref=blog.lopp.net">Source</a>)</figcaption></figure>



In a recent <a href="https://blog.bitmex.com/the-2015-spam-attacks/">blog post</a>, BitMEX Research wrote:



“The logic was that at a fixed fee rate, filling up an 8MB block with spam would cost a lot more than filling up a 1MB block. The small blocker retort to this argument was that the larger blockers had it backwards, if there is spam, letting it all go onchain quickly and cheaply wasn’t stopping the spammer, but letting the spammer win.”



“Besides, if the blocksize limit was increased, fees would decline, making the spam cheaper. However, a key metric to the large blockers was how much money it would cost in fees to fill a block. This number was considered far too low for Bitcoin to be secure and raising the blocksize limit would help increase this value, making Bitcoin more resilient, in their view.”



CoinWallet.eu waged its campaign across four attacks between June and September 2015.



The first actually failed. It was supposed to generate 1MB worth of transaction data every five minutes, causing a backlog of transactions 241 blocks long (1.67 days). The mempool would contain 241MB unconfirmed transactions by that point.&nbsp;



But after spending 2 BTC ($500 then, $235,800 now), their servers began to crash under the weight of a mempool that was just 12MB.



The second came five days later and was more effective, and even managed to seemingly convince one user that the big blockers could have a point.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd9gtmJ1zP2jiPlvDvRkYPB2c4kw5zCwhk9MsBr7vCG6rWTnXfRe9FYqG4iQIVfdjRoYSUz6rFVeFGXp8dsf_yeoJonta0QwcrJA5tkMS-H1T3rkYQDvbD8O_Pfi3Tmo4_4Jr1N?key=i8o9LS5veR-8RvED07BMPg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Marecek666 was not happy about the spam campaign.</figcaption></figure>



CoinWallet.eu never explicitly took responsibility for the third wave, but it’s assumed the group was responsible.&nbsp;



The attack, between July 7 and 11, resulted in a backlog of between 27,000 and 80,000 transactions, with many of the dust transactions (0.00001 BTC) sent to well-known wallets like WikiLeaks and Voat, as well as generic public key addresses generated from simple key phrases, like “cat” or “dog.”



Motherboard calculated that the attackers in total spent 30 BTC to flood the network for that third wave, worth $8,000 then but more than $3.5 million right now. Undoing the backlog meant F2Pool would need to consolidate the bulk of the spam outputs with a number of 1MB transactions.



CoinWallet.eu’s fourth attack arrived months later, in September, when it posted thousands of private keys to Bitcointalk, each one lining up with an address containing a slice of 200 BTC.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdememZQIHnSSfNyK0C365l4WEemdsC5e3YdtTTLUpsNWNVpIcxdYTrs6oWF8GaFf4VvEZeUpKJKZJRrhys8LwGIHa13isrQPxvGrmeEAQO1GDZ3-xRc6UzVr3TIO4kNVRLwVc_eQ?key=i8o9LS5veR-8RvED07BMPg" alt="" style="width:756px;height:auto"/></figure>



Users rushed to collect the free coins, submitting 90,000 transactions. Many of them related to the same bitcoin, so they could easily be discarded by miners, reducing the attack’s effectiveness.&nbsp;



CoinWallet.eu gave up after that, with the actions of miners, pools and key players, including <a href="https://x.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1878079505052413965">Gregory Maxwell</a>, largely mitigating any adverse effects over a short enough time.&nbsp;



As BitMEX pointed out, the situation closely rhymes with the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Ckiw4nI_E">modern-day discussion</a> over the role of node runners in filtering out certain types of transactions, with Luke Dashjr at the time pushing for widespread usage of filters to suppress CoinWallet.eu’s spam.&nbsp;



It’s still unknown who was behind CoinWallet.eu, with theories including Gerald Cotten and big blocker Craig Wright. In any case, an academic <a href="https://damonmccoy.com/papers/bitcoin16-final22.pdf?ref=blog.lopp.net">study</a> concluded that a little less than a quarter of transactions across a 10-day period at the peak of the campaign were spam (385,256 out of 1.65 million). It increased fees by 51% (45 to 68 sats/byte) and processing delay by 7x(about 20 minutes to 2 hours and 45 minutes).



“This shows that an adversary who is willing to expand modest amounts of bitcoin (at least $49,000 USD), to pay higher fees, can DoS Bitcoin,” the authors found.



And there’s the kicker. The four attacks indeed cost only about $49,000 worth of bitcoin to execute — in 2015.&nbsp;



Today, with bitcoin at all-time highs, those 201 BTC would fetch almost $24 million, equivalent to a jackpot lottery prize and enough to buy a house, a car and multiple vacations to far-off exotic beaches. Oops.



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Bitcoin

How Bitcoin survived a DoS attack now worth $24M

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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Coinbase has made its sixth acquisition of the year, we’ve exclusively learned.&nbsp;



This time, the publicly-traded company made an acqui-hire, meaning that they’re specifically acquiring Opyn CEO Andrew Leone and its Head of Research, Joe Clark.&nbsp;



“The Opyn team has been building in DeFi since the early days; they were the first DeFi options protocol, the inventors of Power Perpetuals, and the team behind Squeeth. The team brings a rare combination of deep onchain technical expertise, strong understanding of traditional market structure, and hands-on experience building decentralized products from the ground up,” Coinbase said in a blog post.&nbsp;



Opyn was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/defi-cftc-crypto-derivatives">one of the DeFi projects charged by the CFTC</a> in 2023 for allegedly operating an unregistered trading platform. The two settled.&nbsp;



A Coinbase spokesperson explained that they made the talent-only acquisition because the company operates with “a build/buy/partner/invest framework. Each path depends on where we see the most leverage — whether that’s through technology, market presence, or talent. In this case, we were especially impressed by [Leone] and [Clark’s] deep experience building in DeFi and their vision for the future of onchain markets. This is something we’re really excited about and putting a lot of energy towards – and that means having the best talent in every seat working on these efforts. Andrew and Joe bring that talent.”



Leone and Clark will now join the Onchain Markets team, which operates in Coinbase’s institutional organization, to concentrate on Verified pools and other development initiatives focused on the onchain markets offerings.



&#8220;From the start, our vision has been to connect the fundamental forces of financial markets. We do this because connected and efficient markets improve the real world by allowing individuals to hedge out things they don’t care about and focus on what they’re good at. That’s what we’re going to do at Coinbase, keep focusing on what we’re good at, building the connective tissue of finance on immutable public ledgers,” Clark told me.



Coinbase’s plans include moving more of its exchange business onchain, something that both Leone and Clark will be aiding.&nbsp;



“It’s a move that aligns with where the market is going, and where we believe it should go,” Coinbase’s Aklil Ibssa, Head of Corporate Development and M&amp;A, said.



As I said above, it’s been a busy year for Coinbase so far. The company acquired browser product Roam and onchain attribution platform Spindl in January, the team behind Iron Fish back in March, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-to-acquire-deribit-in-2-9b-deal">Deribit in May,</a> and most recently, Liquifi.&nbsp;



That’s very nearly an acquisition a month at this rate, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep the pace up.



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Coinbase

Exclusive: Coinbase acquires Opyn’s leadership team

Byron Gilliam

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read more editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown">subscribe</a>.



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one.”



— Doc Brown
</blockquote>



<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3fs6Zdaudo5imtc03z0zfE?si=ecd1e486993b4fe1">Capitalism is time travel</a>



In the latest EconTalk podcast, Russ Roberts and Mike Munger ask some basic questions — What are markets? What is capitalism? Why do they matter? — with some surprising results.



Munger defines markets as “a set of institutions for reducing the transactions cost of impersonal exchange.”



To help us understand why that matters, Munger starts with the most basic possible example: If I have a banana and you have an apple, but I like apples better than bananas and you like bananas better than apples, we trade.



This leaves the amount of apples and bananas unchanged, but makes us both better off.&nbsp;



Every voluntary exchange, therefore, makes the world a better place — and markets enable more voluntary exchanges.



But not just that.



The next step in people becoming better off is the division of labor: Instead of everyone trying to grow the food they want, everyone grows only what they’re best at and then trades for everything else.



This “puts the production process on steroids,” creating more apples, bananas and everything else.&nbsp;



The only limit to that process is how many people are involved, and that is why we need markets. The “impersonal exchange” of markets allows people who don’t know each other to participate in the division and specialization of labor.



This is to everyone’s benefit: “We want to find more and more people to exchange with,” Munger explains, “not because it makes them wealthier, but because it makes us wealthier.&#8221;



This first-principles explainer sets up Munger’s unconventional definition of capitalism: “A set of market institutions that allow time travel.”



It’s a surprisingly intuitive thought.



You might, for example, have an idea for a product that you’re sure people will want to buy; but you probably don’t have the money required to build a factory to start making it for them.&nbsp;



“What capitalism does is solve that problem through time travel,” Munger explains. “We’re going to travel forward into the future to a time when this factory is operating and is producing substantial profits. I’m going to take some of those profits and get in my time machine and go back in time and invest it in the resources that create the capital that now allows me to [build the factory].”



Selling equity is the time machine that empowers you to do that.



Buying equity, by that logic, is what enables all new things to come into the world.&nbsp;



To recap, the three functions of markets are exchange (things go where they’re most wanted), specialization (the production of things increases) and time travel (all new things are created).



People tend to think of markets primarily as a place to make money, but that is their real purpose — and their benefits are limited only by their size. “The division of labor,” Adam Smith wrote, “is limited by the extent of the market.”



Crypto did not get a mention in the podcast, but I think it offers a good way to look at it: The highest purpose of permissionless crypto markets, open to everyone, is to make markets better by making them bigger.



<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/475ca245-bd04-4a56-b848-b88ea3b4ef13">Crypto treasury companies are anti-capitalism</a>



The CEO of Metaplanet has an interesting explanation for why it chose to become a bitcoin treasury company: “We’ll get cash that we can use to buy profitable businesses, cash-flowing businesses,” he told the FT.



This is a departure from competitors like MicroStrategy, whose stated purpose is simply to stack crypto as fast as it can.



I think it’s a telling departure, because holding a non-productive asset now so that you can buy productive assets later is the opposite of how capitalism is supposed to work.



Per Mike Munger, capitalism is meant to pull investment out of the future and into the present.



Metaplanet is doing the opposite, hoovering up investment capital now so that it can do something productive with it later.



This is anti-capitalism.



Surprisingly, the capitalist stock market seems happy with this: Metaplanet trades at nearly <a href="https://metaplanet.jp/en/analytics">11x</a> the value of its bitcoin holdings.



<a href="https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/07/07/copyleft.html">Vitalik says Ethereum is important to the world</a>



Listening to Vitalik is always a welcome reminder that crypto can be more than memecoins and treasury companies — it could help make the future a good one, even.&nbsp;



“The Ethereum ecosystem going well is a very important thing to particular parts of the world going in the right direction,” he told Epicenter this week.



Specifically, the Ethereum co-founder cites finance, identity and governance as areas that can benefit from the “neutral layers” only crypto can create.



For that to happen, though, he thinks the industry needs to be more mission-driven: “The thing we need to shift gears on is from saying something is by default worth building because it uses blockchains.”



Instead, he says, the industry should be “properties first,” not &#8220;technology first.”



I’d offer the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/701272/jack-dorsey-bitchat-bluetooth-messaging-app">bluetooth messaging app</a> that Jack Dorsey announced this week as a prime example — it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention because there’s no crypto involved, but it embodies crypto’s original cypherpunk values.



Vitalik noted that the Ethereum Foundation has shifted its focus toward applications in order to better promote crypto’s original intentions: “We think that building is a much healthier way of achieving those goals than just complaining.”



Some of that complaining has been about ether’s underperformance vs. Solana’s and he seems to have heard it: “If Ethereum gets sucked into directly playing the HFT game as an L1, to me, that will just fundamentally destroy Ethereum’s soul.” Ethereum’s competitors, he implies, are over-optimizing for the wrong things (like speed of execution), and to illustrate the risk that entails, he asked a rhetorical question: “Should we destroy humanity in exchange for a 1% chance of giving really good lives to 500 trillion shrimp?”



Only a correctly optimized Ethereum can prevent it.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pump-revenue-sharing-token-holders">The pump.fun token launches on Saturday</a>



This weekend, the memecoin launchpad pump.fun will pull $1.3 billion of its future profits into the present with an initial coin offering.



You might, like me, be thinking that the present has quite enough memecoins as is. But pump.fun <a href="https://x.com/pumpdotfun/status/1942947267436056740">says</a> it’s not just about that: “Anyone can use pump to build whatever they want. It’s more than memes.”



What pump says it is building is “a global network of instant money &amp; attention” that will disrupt the big social media platforms: “Our plan is to Kill Facebook, TikTok, and Twitch.”



That is a worthy goal, I guess, although I shudder to think what pump will replace them with.



Whatever the odds of that happening may be, the ICO at $0.004 per token does not appear to be pricing it in.&nbsp;



In a <a href="https://x.com/_ryanrconnor/status/1943348190381543769">note</a> for Blockworks Research, Ryan Connor says the token’s $4 billion valuation is “very reasonable,” based strictly on the outlook for memecoins. “With Pump.fun annualizing at $750m revenue for 2025, and 25% going back to the token, this puts the token valuation at ~5x 2025 annualized revenue and ~20x 2025 annualized token buybacks.”&nbsp;



Valuation is a bit less reasonable in <a href="https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/trade/PUMP">pre-market trading</a> on Hyperliquid, where the token was already changing hands 30% above the ICO price this afternoon.



(It’s also traded an incredible $130 million of volume over the last 24 hours, which might go a long way in explaining the giant valuation of Hyperliquid.)



Connor cites several risks to the investment case, including the risk that it’s not a traditional investment: “Buyers should keep in mind that the equity entity ultimately governs this project’s value flows today.”



Translation: Token holders will just have to hope that pump will choose to share its future profits with them.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

Thursday links: Time travel, anti-capitalism, ETH, pump.fun

Jack Kubinec

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



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



Former Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith has spent nearly two months as president of the newly-formed Solana Policy Institute. I caught up with her to get the latest on the Solana and policy front in Washington.



This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.



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



Jack: Give the US regulatory outlook a report card grade.



Kristin Smith: I would give it an “A” on the report card. If you look at the past six months, there’s been tremendous progress in undoing the bad policies of the last administration. We’ve seen a turnaround on debanking of crypto companies, we’ve seen the end to the litigation, we’ve seen a pullback on different regulations, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hester-peirce-reveals-sab-121-rescission">like SAB-121</a>, that were preventing new entrants into the crypto space.



So that in and of itself has been incredibly successful. But the fact that we have a “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-bills-in-congress">Crypto Week</a>” in Washington next week … it looks like we’re on track to get a stablecoin regulatory framework actually <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-stablecoin-act-passes-senate-vote">signed into law</a> by President Trump. I think it’s evidence that we’ve come incredibly far in turning around from where we were even just a short six months ago.



Jack: Looking forward into the future, what’s on your wish list on the Solana side of things <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-policy-institute-ceos-political">as you advocate</a> for that ecosystem?



Kristin Smith: One of the things we’ve been doing a lot of thinking on is what changes need to be made, if any, at the regulatory level to ensure that Solana or any other public blockchain can become the home of internet capital markets.



And we’ve gone in to see the SEC and have been submitting some comments on something <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/project-open-sec-proposal-solana">we’re dubbing as “Project Open,”</a> and basically encouraging [the SEC] to issue statements and guidance and potentially exemptive relief, and consider a time-limited sandbox so that we can get more equities issued onchain.



Jack: Solana is very diverse, and there’s a lot of different visions of what people should build. I know that you guys did a DePIN summit and that’s an exciting, kind of tangential thing. What sector of Solana are you spending most of your time on? Or has the most to gain or lose through engagement with policymakers?



Kristin Smith: It’s a little bit of all the above. The issues around tokenized securities are probably where I’m spending the bulk of my time, but when it comes to basic education of Congress…I would say out of all the use cases, the DePIN use cases are the ones that resonate the most.



It depends on the policymaker we’re trying to find the connection with, but I do think that from a policy perspective, I think the work that we’re doing with Project Open and the SEC, and trying to find the best way to help make the internet capital markets a reality, from a regulatory perspective, is probably one of the more meaningful things we could do.



But you know, that’s not a message that really resonates with your rank-and-file member of Congress who’s just trying to understand what a blockchain is. Something like DePIN is better in that context.



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Kristin Smith

Solana Policy Institute wants to see more equities issued onchain

Pump.fun announced its first acquisition on Thursday.&nbsp;



It acquired Kolscan, a wallet tracker that “monitors the activities of top onchain traders. it provides realtime transactions, token PnL, and a leaderboard ranking their performance,” according to a post on X.



<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’re excited to announce that pump fun has acquired <a href="https://twitter.com/kolscan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@kolscan</a> Kolscan is a wallet tracker that monitors the activities of top onchain traders. it provides realtime transactions, token PnL, and a leaderboard ranking their performance our integration will not only enable better… <a href="https://t.co/V4VDcOwVeG">pic.twitter.com/V4VDcOwVeG</a>&mdash; pump.fun (@pumpdotfun) <a href="https://twitter.com/pumpdotfun/status/1943399910189207851?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 10, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Kolscan said that the two will be “able to deliver a better experience and work on totally new projects at the intersection of social media and onchain trading.”



Pump.fun said in its ICO announcement that it plans to “kill Facebook, TikTok and Twitch.”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pumpdotfun-token-sale">Pump.fun plans $1B token sale at $4B valuation: Sources</a>



“For those reasons, we believe that products that provide social insights/tools and gamify the trading experience are key to growing our ecosystem,” pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen <a href="https://x.com/a1lon9/status/1943400267669467231">said</a> in a post. He previously teased a pump.fun acquisition.&nbsp;



The new product could also cause more users to trade tokens on pump.fun’s frontend rather than going to third-party platforms to trade.



Kolscan is pump.fun’s first acquisition and comes just days before its planned ICO, which will take place on Saturday, July 12.&nbsp;



According to the tokenomics, 33% of PUMP will be sold in the ICO, while 13% was allocated to existing investors. In total, the fully diluted value is around $4 billion.&nbsp;



Blockworks <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pump-revenue-sharing-token-holders">previously reported</a> that it plans a 25% revenue share with token holders, according to sources.



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Pump.fun

Pump.fun acquires wallet tracker Kolscan

Felix Jauvin

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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We’re all navigating the crosscurrents of the next leg of the tariff war, dollar positioning, and rates.



With the “Big Beautiful Bill” now <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-bills-in-congress">signed and passed</a>, the Trump administration’s gaze is now shifting back toward tariffs.&nbsp;



The true tariff rates are ever-changing these days, and the exact number keeps fluctuating.&nbsp;



That said, based on actual freight container volume transactions, we can approximate a current effective tariff rate of 21% on US imports — down from 54% at the peak of Liberation Day.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="624" height="351" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcYX6aPxcEwJgLdVnzIpwrqy-TVv7zJciBgRd_9aMmJAtMETcZq0-6-7LAwWvMwZc914lBrlCrzfQiDQpgNxZQ4rHoh4X9IIVktk2SjI5LHroOmjPcLQnuDZyv2eh2IFR8f-0qZ?key=u07awB4k3PM-z9ro_PmiBg">



This dynamic is further muddied by the delayed effect in place for the collection of these duties at the border. It takes time to fully ramp up and operationalize this kind of surge in collections, and so actual tariffs collected are approximately half of the stated rate right now.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdFOMR-7e5vDbR3jxfU4Ts-wmlrXXP92v1F7LKd9GMP12kGAGS9ytUKJj2xPm-nZFvR5SUeuOqb2YPkeMJ4NoaQ24rf0GWfLEB-FqnNtm12OIuFGcmAqbegBA9cq6O4mrOn7zHlEQ?key=u07awB4k3PM-z9ro_PmiBg" alt=""/></figure>



It’s evident that some form of a tariff strategy is in place. But assuming they will go back to the pre-election rate of 5% is unrealistic.



Putting this all together, it’s time to think about how this crosscurrent situates itself alongside currencies and the path of monetary policy. As we can see below, the dollar is now down 10.7% year to date, one of the largest-ever drawdowns for the first half of the year.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe4Uk9WghVSBVsEmoIVvusdLjnWVQlWNJxRCMmTRcupeLfOu4pkBJJYuzlef49nLem8BNSV4sQltSWwLrG5wxVJQrjnp0c1K-6GLIPnenZi8Xzfnu1_NjKQM0MkpK3_q9UcEzWbFg?key=u07awB4k3PM-z9ro_PmiBg" alt=""/></figure>



Mechanically, it makes sense for the dollar to be the primary exhaust valve for the impact of tariffs since it aggregates interest rate differentials and the path of monetary policy. Those are driven by inflation expectations, as well as cross-border capital flows.



The broad consensus is that these dynamics will continue to drive the dollar meaningfully lower, and that this could become turbocharged once it becomes evident who will replace Jerome Powell <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fomc-june-powell-term-end">as the chair</a> of the Federal Reserve. 



If the new Fed Chair is someone committed to the 300-basis point cuts Trump is touting — and if that person can convince the committee to follow them — the dollar is destined for further weakness.



This framework all makes fundamental sense. The issue: This is the consensus view in markets right now, as we head into summer doldrums that often test positioning as volatility compresses.&nbsp;



Looking at current CFTC data, dollar positioning is the most bearish it’s been in years:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeGRs4AC78BU87jv3Rk-xpIgVpTE5k63_BH4-J-8oWRbTFfor5AvEhHKdKxMe2Dy6wQFHPu9bOdcrrjq7uE1cjVUwkv9Rn0WYsqaNp412uzhX_KHAjQZV2ENLIf-XBZh7YbA7JfdA?key=u07awB4k3PM-z9ro_PmiBg" alt=""/></figure>



So, despite fundamentals pointing toward meaningful dollar devaluation continuing, I have a feeling the thesis will be tested over the summer, given it being such a crowded trade.



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Dollar

All signs are pointing to the dollar heading lower. Will it?

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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A recent <a href="https://institutional.fidelity.com/app/proxy/content?literatureURL=/9919383.PDF">report</a> by Fidelity Investments proposes valuing blockchains on the basis of GDP:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“&#8230; it is more appropriate to compare decentralized blockchains to sovereign nations and their economies rather than web2 companies or products because of the embedded currency.”
</blockquote>



Here’s the GDP formula: C + I + G + (X-M)



C is consumption, I is business investment, G is government spending, X is exports and M is imports, so X-M is net exports.



Fidelity uses ETH as an example. So, when you transpose the GDP formula onto Ethereum blockchain metrics:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>C = What users are spending as gas, to use Uniswap or mint an NFT.</li>



<li>I = The quantity of staked assets or capital in liquidity pools.</li>



<li>G = Ethereum Foundation expenditure, issued ETH to validators.</li>



<li>X-M = How much stablecoins are minted/burned, bridge flows to/from other chains and DePIN rewards.</li>
</ul>



You can see the entire table here:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfyTJf0piPqpmVIcMBsyMfofyMbY6wWS1zKLD6mgrA-h-svRVRnh5hRnSEJYXVFUim1lp0NZkQ-GjoXtZ2i7ij_vDcgkBpCB-Wg5hxDGE9_5Z7HI58hmVhh6vA2YDeRMNakHG-Dkw?key=H7PIMkWaKDi-W3xgFCjV2w" alt="" style="width:691px;height:auto"/></figure>



It’s a comprehensive effort by Fidelity, but it provokes some questions.



GDP is a measure of domestic production. Think “the value of everything made here.” When a country exports, that’s domestic production. When it imports, that’s spending. That’s why we “net” imports for GDP.



But if millions of stablecoins are bridged onto (import) or off of (export) Ethereum, that bloats a blockchain’s “GDP” even though nothing productive occurs onchain.



Contrast that to when a stablecoin is minted onchain, or when a Helium miner is paid in tokens for providing a useful mobile cellular service. These are productive “imports” that would rightfully count toward a blockchain’s “GDP.”



So measuring “net exports” by bridge flows is conceptually sound, but it needs to account for CEX cold-wallet sweeps, as Blockworks’ Dan Smith aptly pointed out.



<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">Fidelity’s buildout of blockchain GDP in its recent report is interesting, certainly the most robust I’ve seen I think the biggest challenge id net exports. This category is heavily impacted by CEX cold wallet rebalancing, and it’s very unclear how impactful this truly is on… <a href="https://t.co/k5IV0FS0hE">pic.twitter.com/k5IV0FS0hE</a>&mdash; Dan Smith (@smyyguy) <a href="https://twitter.com/smyyguy/status/1942942668079652922?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Explicit in Fidelity’s valuation model is also the claim that L1 tokens should be valued on the basis of “money,” or more specifically: a medium of exchange and store of value.



Fidelity argues: “Ether is the dominant trading pair on exchanges and serves as a primary asset to borrow against.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcDt-cXfhDnuFXFxkEUEn7ADy2AVyXIjhEdaXOGPyVctA3Lmk7tMmSPwie4EQIP8iDAZ6Sfj8t6SKgMCyaUqBfu2_afJrpShwMKAAthpPRtEWuQf4wjsvLsLvqiJon8fuf4v5G1cA?key=H7PIMkWaKDi-W3xgFCjV2w" alt=""/></figure>



I think that at best justifies the “medium of exchange” aspect of money, but is silent on the “unit of account” aspect.



Early crypto investors have questioned the ability of L1 tokens to serve as a unit of account. As John Pfeffer <a href="https://hostingfilesonline.co.uk/An%20Investor%27s%20Take%20on%20Cryptoassets%20v6.pdf">wrote</a> back in 2017:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“It is thus overly simplistic to assume that people will hoard that which they use to make payments as opposed to converting their store of value via the payment rail at the time of payment in the exact amount needed and for as little time as possible.”
</blockquote>



Account abstraction (ERC-4337) even formalizes this reality, since it enables paying gas fees in any ERC-20 token. That vastly improves the user experience but it removes the need to hoard ETH, thereby undermining the “monetary premium” of the L1 token.



<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">wow, we&#39;re really peddling the eth = digital oil narrative at a time when account abstraction is taking off and ETH is being disintermediated by stablecoins as payment and trading asset practically everywhere?&mdash; Hasu⚡️🤖 (@hasufl) <a href="https://twitter.com/hasufl/status/1942928343495508027?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The final aspect of why I think the GDP analogy is somewhat strained looks to accounting for staked ETH under the “Investment” bucket of GDP.



Staking locks up existing assets, but no new productive capacity is created.



In economist jargon, it doesn’t push the “production possibilities frontier” in the same way investment does in the real economy.



So the “I” in blockchain GDP loses its predictive link to future growth.



Even worse: LP deposits can migrate and earn purely extractive airdrops or MEV.



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Fidelity is valuing ETH as money

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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Remix, which began under the name Farcade, has closed a seed funding round led by Archetype bringing its total funding thus far to $6.75 million, Blockworks has exclusively learned.&nbsp;



Variant, Coinbase Ventures, Lemniscap, and Zynga cofounder Justin Waldron also participated in the $5 million seed round.&nbsp;



Remix is part vibe-coding gaming tool, part consumer-facing game platform. The mini app has seen over 570,000 players so far across 800 live <a href="https://x.com/NeonCrypto8/status/1939206160898498702">games</a> that have been played over 17 million times, the team says.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Farcade began about eight months ago when its cofounders initially thought they wanted to build a Mario Party-style experience.&nbsp;



“We built this tool internally to help us build games. And we ended up building about five or six games in the first day,” Remix cofounder Charlie, who prefers not to share his last name publicly, told me in an interview.



“The craziest part was, like, how little hand-holding we needed to do. The AI basically wrote all of the code. And so there was basically this, like, epiphany moment where we just thought that was gonna be the future of gaming,” he said.&nbsp;



“That really inspired this idea of building a social network for games, or a TikTok for games, where instead of scrolling a feed of videos, you&#8217;re scrolling a feed of games, and you can just instantly play those games as they come into your feed.”



Last week, the startup officially <a href="https://x.com/RemixGG_/status/1940136705086132259">rebranded</a> to Remix in part because the platform itself has expanded beyond just Farcaster (and isn’t affiliated with the Farcaster team).&nbsp;



Game creators using <a href="https://remix.gg/">Remix</a> can type in their own prompts or, ultimately, “remix” others’ games by combining elements together or making modifications to “ship” a new version. Charlie described the process as a bit like a game of telephone.



This turns mobile game development into something fast and fun, not to mention virtually free, for creators. Of course, the final products are AI-reliant and could have bugs or might feel repetitive for players if they encounter many in a row that are the same style.&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">last week we hosted our first game jam with @farcade_ai and the results are in: &#8211; 110+ games submitted &#8211; 150,000 sessions in &lt;1 week &#8211; 2,700+ hours played Doodles is everywhere. new formats = new ways to experience the Doodleverse. grab the 🍿 &amp; get ready for what’s next. <a href="https://t.co/5KSBDEUn8a">pic.twitter.com/5KSBDEUn8a</a>&mdash; doodles (@doodles) <a href="https://twitter.com/doodles/status/1932129588911460648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



But Remix is tapping into the current vibe-coding trend that’s gained attention across crypto and AI.



Remix plans to eventually monetize by taking a cut from ads and in-app purchases in the games it hosts.&nbsp;



On the creator side, game makers will be given the ability to sell in-game items and pay to boost the discoverability of their games in the Remix feed.&nbsp;



“When anyone can build apps,” Charlie said, “we think the demand for eyeballs is really just going to go exponential from here. And that demand for eyeballs is already extremely high. And so if you can have a platform that solves that for people — or if you&#8217;ve created a game and Remix is the best place for you to get your first 100 gamers or 1,000 gamers — we think there&#8217;s a lot of opportunity to monetize it from that side.”



<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">Imagine if Remix was 1,000 apps Today we’re launching Snap Apps, individual apps for our best games It&#39;s a new way for creators on Remix to release their games across many platforms like World, Farcaster, Base, and more. <a href="https://t.co/N2gtFR9rEb">pic.twitter.com/N2gtFR9rEb</a>&mdash; Remix (formerly Farcade) (@RemixGG_) <a href="https://twitter.com/RemixGG_/status/1942632356508229977?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Currently, Remix’s main onchain element is that users can connect their Farcaster and World identities to the mini app. But their onchain monetization toolkit is slated to launch in a few weeks.&nbsp;



Remix is available on Telegram (using TON) and the EVM-powered World app as well. It will also launch on Coinbase’s new wallet app, right now referred to as TBA, when that goes live.&nbsp;



Based on the upcoming Coinbase event next week on July 16, it’s likely the Coinbase Wallet overhaul will be unveiled then. This bit supports what we’ve heard and seen about the new Coinbase Wallet so far — that it goes far beyond just trading tokens and has social and gaming elements.



“Remix comes at a pivotal moment at the intersection of rocket-speed AI capability, endless digital distribution, and robust token mechanisms that allows users to totally own the ways they engage,” said Archetype Principal Katie Chiou.



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Exclusive: Remix raises $5M in seed funding to become ‘TikTok for games’

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.”



— Jensen Huang, on building resiliency
</blockquote>



The history of the world’s most valuable company is a study in how improbable its survival was, let alone its success.



In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+nvidia+way&amp;crid=N16XBIMZV1DG&amp;sprefix=the+nvidia+way%2Caps%2C179&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1">The Nvidia Way</a>, Tae Kim tells the story of how Nvidia, founded in 1993, emerged from the small and volatile market for graphics chips — an industry in which everyone was always &#8220;thirty days from going out of business,&#8221; as Jensen Huang constantly reminded his employees.



That was more or less true for much of Nvidia’s existence, not only because money was tight for most of its existence, but because graphics chips were so interchangeable that one poorly designed product could sink the company.



After Nvidia’s first two chips were poorly designed, the company really was just weeks away from insolvency.



“We were just bad at our jobs,” Jensen told Kim, who refers to Huang by his adopted first name throughout.



(Born in Taiwan, Jen-Hsun Huang anglicized his first name because his parents sent him to a reform school for juvenile delinquents in Kentucky under the mistaken impression it was a boarding school for high achievers.)



Nvidia’s third chip only happened because Jensen took what little venture capital the company had left and gambled it all on an accelerated production process to get it done while he could still make payroll.



It was a hit and the company survived another cycle.



No one was more surprised than the industry leader at the time, 3dfx, which was forming plans to buy Nvidia out of bankruptcy.&nbsp;



But shortly thereafter, Nvidia was the industry leader and 3dfx was bankrupt.&nbsp;



(Nvidia bought 3dfx’s patents out of bankruptcy and hired 100 of their engineers.)



Nvidia would continue to &#8220;oscillate between near-death experiences and market-defining success,” Kim writes, which does much to explain the company’s culture — the world’s largest company still operates as if it’s 30 days from going out of business.



Much of that is a reflection of Jensen’s personality.



As Kim documents, the billionaire tech founder spends nearly all of his waking hours working, including weekends and holidays.



“Work is how I relax,” he explained to employees who asked why he was bombarding them with emails from a beach.&nbsp;&nbsp;



He expected his employees to do the same and they mostly did: Local competitors took notice that the employee parking lot at Nvidia’s Santa Clara headquarters was typically full on nights and weekends.



Even so, Jensen was tough on them.



His method of managing people, in his own words, was to &#8220;torture them into greatness.&#8221;



That wasn’t always appreciated.



Jensen used to save his most scathing performance reviews for all-company meetings, believing that a public dressing-down was an opportunity for everyone to learn from someone’s mistake.



(“Feedback is learning. For what reason should you be the only person to learn from this?”)



Many talented engineers left the company because of that kind of treatment: “It was the most embarrassing, humiliating thing I’ve ever seen,” an executive told Kim of one such incident.&nbsp;



But Jensen was equally hard on himself: &#8220;I look in the mirror every morning and say, ‘You suck.’&#8221;



Nvidia adopted that harsh personality — the “Nvidia way” of Kim’s title is essentially the mindmeld between Jensen and the company he co-founded with two friends.



(One co-founder quit the company in 2000 and sold his entire stake for about $30 million. His 3.5% of the company would be worth about $140 billion today.)



That may have made Nvidia the most unpleasant place to work in Silicon Valley, but it’s made it a survivor.



Even when Nvidia had survived long enough to IPO in 1999, people doubted its chances of holding on much longer.



“Why would we invest in a graphics company?” one investor asked. “You would be the 40th we’ve backed, and all the others have gone out of business. Why would we do this?” The reason, Kim’s story makes clear, was Jensen.



His maniacal work habits, adopted by the whole company, kept Nvidia alive in the early years, and his uncanny ability to see around corners kept Nvidia at the cutting edge of technology.



Jensen was among the first to recognize that PC gaming would be a bigger market for graphics chips than business workstations.



He was among the first to recognize that graphics chips, like CPUs, could become programmable “general processing units” by running software, which Nvidia went on to invent.



(Nvidia contracted Mythbusters to create a <a href="https://youtu.be/Ge-g3xZ5bb8?si=SPTyEY68TD6unfYd">fun explainer</a> on the difference between GPUs and CPUs.)



Most importantly, he was among the first to recognize that GPUs would become the enabling technology of AI.



The same GPUs that Nvidia had optimized to do the math behind the arc of an arrow in Zelda turned out to be uncannily well-suited for the matrix math that powers today’s AI models.



From afar, it seems like Nvidia lucked into it: GPUs just happened to be good for AI and Nvidia just happened to make them.



But Kim&#8217;s account shows that Jensen spotted the breakthrough progress in deep-learning AI while it was still an academic curiosity.



It’s hard to imagine any other CEO being that early to such a deeply technical trend — and impossible to imagine any of them betting their company on it.



“Deep learning is going to be really big,” he told Nvidia executives in 2013, nine years before the release of ChatGPT. “We should go all in.”



Only with hindsight was that an obvious thing to do.



At the time, Nvidia sales were stagnant, its market capitalization was just $8 billion and its shares traded on 10x P/E, net of cash.



Nvidia’s own investors were so low on the company’s prospects that they badgered Jensen into spending $1 billion of the company’s cash buying back shares; they thought there was nothing else to do with it.&nbsp;



Fortunately, Jensen was simultaneously investing billions in getting Nvidia ready for the AI moment that hardly anyone else saw coming.



In many ways, Jensen created that moment.



Without the billions that Nvidia invested in optimizing its chips and software for AI (years before they could show investors any return on it), the ChatGPT phenomenon would not have happened how and when it did.



Nvidia’s GPUs made large-scale deep learning feasible and they wouldn’t have made them with any other CEO.



“Jensen Huang is surely the only person who could have gotten Nvidia to where it is today,” Kim concludes.



There was a lot of pain and suffering along the way.



But there’s no other way a graphics chip startup becomes the world’s most valuable company.



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The first $4T company

Pump.fun plans to share 25% of platform revenue with holders of its token, four sources familiar tell Blockworks. 



The team allegedly told insiders about the arrangement leading up to its public announcement, multiple people said.



Earlier Wednesday, pump.fun said that the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pump-fun-token-ico-date">initial coin offering for its PUMP token</a> would go live on Saturday, July 12.&nbsp;



Dragonfly Capital’s Haseeb Qureshi posted on X regarding the PUMP revenues, noting that it’ll be “one of the highest gross revenue tokens in crypto.”&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">Wow, this video&#8230;<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24PUMP&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$PUMP</a> is going to be getting 25% of Pump revenues, so beyond one of the largest ICOs ever, this will be one of the highest gross revenue tokens in crypto. (not an investor) <a href="https://t.co/MYS0NlUxiY">https://t.co/MYS0NlUxiY</a>&mdash; Haseeb ＞|＜ (@hosseeb) <a href="https://twitter.com/hosseeb/status/1942948311545307303?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



In June, 6th Man Ventures’ Mike Dudas <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozFYpCovPdY">told</a> Blockworks’ Lightspeed podcast: “So I would imagine there&#8217;s going to be some element of putting revenue to work on behalf of token holders. I won&#8217;t get too specific about that and that there&#8217;s also going to be some component of a token that rewards folks who use the platform.”



6MV is an <a href="https://x.com/mdudas/status/1942951510742016109">investor</a> in pump.fun.



Pump.fun didn’t immediately return a request for comment.



According to the tokenomics shared by the team, 33% of PUMP will be sold in the ICO, while 13% was allocated to existing investors. In total, the fully diluted value is around $4 billion.&nbsp;



Of that 33%, an initial 18% goes to institutional purchasers, with 15% going to a public sale.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gate-publishes-removes-pump-fun-token">Gate publishes then removes pump.fun token sale page</a>



“Both private sale and public sale purchasers are on the exact same terms,” the team said. Doing some napkin <a href="https://x.com/whosknave/status/1942956245331370390">math</a>, that works out to be $720 million from private investors at the $4 billion FDV.



<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 href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24PUMP&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$PUMP</a> will have a maximum supply of 1,000,000,000,000 and will be distributed as follows: 33% will be sold in the Initial Coin Offering 24% reserved for community and ecosystem initiatives 20% to the team 2.4% to the ecosystem fund 2% for the foundation 13% to existing investors… <a href="https://t.co/0SmmEK16O9">pic.twitter.com/0SmmEK16O9</a>&mdash; pump.fun (@pumpdotfun) <a href="https://twitter.com/pumpdotfun/status/1942947291083493495?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“While the token will be fully functional at launch, we’re giving thorough consideration to utility mechanisms like fee rebates, token buybacks, or other incentives and promotions,” the pump.fun team said in the announcement on X.&nbsp;



US and UK investors will not be able to participate in the ICO, the team added.



Blockworks <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pumpdotfun-token-sale">previously reported</a> that pump.fun planned a $1 billion token sale at the $4 billion valuation.&nbsp;



Jack Kubinec contributed reporting.



Updated Wednesday, July 9 at 4:13 pm ET: Added additional source confirmation.



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Pump.fun plans 25% revenue share with token holders: Sources

Casey Wagner

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>.



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



It’s July 9. The 90-day pause on most of President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs was supposed to end today, but the start date has once again been pushed back. Color me surprised.&nbsp;



The White House now says most countries have until August 1 to secure trade agreements, or else the new levies go into effect. For real this time.&nbsp;



Investors seem decently optimistic that deals will materialize. Markets were modestly in the green this afternoon, with the S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite up 0.3% and 0.6%, respectively, at 2 p.m. ET. Similarly, BTC was flat, up 0.1% at that time.&nbsp;



To recap the current tariff situation: Trump posted copies of letters he sent to 14 countries — including Japan and South Korea — on Monday. He said that seven more letters should go out today.&nbsp;



During yesterday’s cabinet meeting, Trump also revealed a new tariff on copper of 50%. The president did not specify when, exactly, this rate will go into effect.&nbsp;



US copper prices had already been on the rise on expectations of higher levies, but Tuesday’s announcement sent premiums to new highs. The US price premium over the global benchmark reached 138% yesterday.&nbsp;



US copper prices closed Tuesday 13% higher, the largest single-day increase in decades.&nbsp;



We <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tariff-changes-market-volatility">wrote about copper</a> in the lead-up to Liberation Day as analysts speculated about what new tariffs could mean for metal markets.&nbsp;



As a reminder: The US currently produces about half the amount of copper it consumes annually — meaning around 1 million metric tons are imported, according to the US Geological Survey. Copper is in virtually everything: wiring, plumbing, motors, medical devices, personal electronics, you name it.&nbsp;



The tariffs have so far had a limited impact on inflation, and there are a few theories as to why. First, companies were expecting tariffs, so it’s likely they increased inventories to prepare (in which case they have not had to raise prices for consumers yet). Many sectors have also experienced lower demand, making price increases less likely.&nbsp;



That said, I think we could see a bigger impact on consumer prices from these copper tariffs. Domestic copper production has remained relatively steady over the past few years. Glencore, a top international producer, expects global demand for the metal to rise going forward.



The problem with bringing production onshore is that it’s a slow process. It takes, on average, about 18 years for a copper mine to move from discovery to production, according to S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence. That’s assuming rich deposits are found in the first place.&nbsp;



We’ll be keeping an eye on metal markets and how they’re impacting equities and crypto assets.&nbsp;



Stay tuned.



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Donald Trump

Tariff deadline comes and goes, copper feels the pressure

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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Story, an IP-focused EVM L1 blockchain, is adding Tools for Humanity’s World ID tech in a move to increase transparency around who’s human on its <a href="https://portal.story.foundation/">IP Portal</a> licensing database currently in open beta.



“We’re just coming out of an age where the big AI companies, right, basically scraped the whole internet, and rather than ask for permission, they’re just asking for forgiveness,” Story Foundation President Andrea Muttoni told me in an interview.&nbsp;



“We haven&#8217;t really fully understood the magnitude of it. You know, the whole concept of like, the dead internet theory, right? It&#8217;s going to be so challenging in the future — the better the AI models get, the more content is being produced by AI models — to distinguish what is human and what is not,” he added.



The upcoming integration means users can connect their World IDs to verify their crypto wallets when they engage with the platform. They can then register a piece of content and set it up for fee-based or royalty-based licensing, including by adding a legally-binding Programmable IP License (<a href="https://docs.story.foundation/concepts/programmable-ip-license/overview">PIL</a>).



The goal is that the World ID tie-in can add an extra layer of verification and trust that creators are who they say they are on Story. World currently has 13 million verified humans, meaning people with accounts who got their irises scanned at an Orb.



<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">In a world where AI can generate content at scale, Story is building the infrastructure to prove who created what with <a href="https://twitter.com/worldcoin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@worldcoin</a> . Authorship matters more than ever—and Story is where verified human identity meets programmable IP. Proud to partner with <a href="https://twitter.com/worldcoin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@worldcoin</a> to bring… <a href="https://t.co/7exkzJulTD">https://t.co/7exkzJulTD</a>&mdash; S.Y. Lee (꧁IP꧂) (@storysylee) <a href="https://twitter.com/storysylee/status/1942965345100443759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Muttoni sees Story as a place not only for licensing all types of art, but also for real-world assets and data for AI training and even individual people, too.



“We&#8217;re definitely going to see humans scaling themselves,” he said. “Anyone who has a name, image, and likeness that might want to be licensed, I think, is a huge untapped IP angle.”



Tools for Humanity is the primary for-profit builder working on the World blockchain, which was cofounded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, while the World Foundation is behind the WLD token.&nbsp;



Ajay Patel, Head of World ID at TFH, told me that he met the founders of Story about six or eight months ago and saw a potential for collaboration.&nbsp;



“It’s really this underlying primitive of the internet,” Patel said of World ID.



World ID’s profit mechanism is still in development at the moment, with plans to roll out a fee system at some point next year.&nbsp;



“The key problem to solve there is tying utility to the economics. And so what’s going to happen is that any relying party to World ID, based on their usage of World ID, will end up paying back into the protocol. And so that’s kind of how the system would work,” Patel told me.



“That entire kind of infrastructure for how that would work is something that we&#8217;re actively working on right now,” he added.



When asked, he said TFH did not receive any kind of grant from Story in exchange for the integration.&nbsp;



TFH has increasingly ramped up its blockchain-powered software push this year, from updates to its World app to adding World ID to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/world-id-verification-gaming">Razer accounts</a> to unveiling the “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sam-altman-worldcoin-orb-mini-eye-scan">Mini Orb</a>” and a US launch.



The integration with World ID is slated to go live at some point this fall.&nbsp;



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The Drop newsletter

Story Protocol, World prepare for AI-saturated ‘dead internet theory’ future

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



Phantom wallet announced yesterday that it was integrating Hyperliquid perps right into its wallet interface.



<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">Introducing: Phantom Perps 👻 ♾️ Go long or short in just a few taps. 100+ markets. Up to 40x leverage. All in your pocket. Powered by <a href="https://twitter.com/HyperliquidX?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HyperliquidX</a> <a href="https://t.co/YDKjUGBdEn">pic.twitter.com/YDKjUGBdEn</a>&mdash; Phantom (@phantom) <a href="https://twitter.com/phantom/status/1942628993636917311?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



This is <a href="https://x.com/hyperliquidbull/status/1942630523408351446">surprising</a>, mainly because Phantom is Solana’s marquee wallet and far ahead of competing wallets like Solflare or Backpack, with 15 million monthly active users (MAUs).



If Phantom wanted a cut of the perps market, I suppose one would’ve naively expected it to partner up first with a native Solana perps DEX like Drift or <a href="https://x.com/DefiSolar/status/1942657673994068081">Jupiter</a>.



But though Drift or Jupiter might be hometown favorites, Hyperliquid is where the money already is.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcFE4l4Km4H4mpQpTG8JLhnqumZMyAFqEgNLpMaiAKAF0towGfMZANz_aUCNsS6FI74YF77MmZLj-O3C7wY6vq8uxf-plujUo1HLgHr7uG85vviI-iyDQgiyYoxiFVFNDBrA03dvg?key=D8S8VRimuiNq_D7bNzCT1w" alt=""/></figure>



Source: <a href="https://dune.com/uwusanauwu/perps">Dune</a>



So the wallet that onboarded millions to Solana is now shepherding flow to a rival venue, which doesn’t boost Solana fees or TVL at all.



Just this morning, Kraken and Backed announced that xStocks would also be launching on BNB Chain.



<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">Welcome Kraken, Backed and xStocks to the <a href="https://twitter.com/BNBCHAIN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BNBChain</a> ecosystem. 🤝<a href="https://t.co/gg2k8SEsgE">https://t.co/gg2k8SEsgE</a>&mdash; CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) <a href="https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1942933592541110398?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Soon, eligible Kraken customers will be able to deposit and withdraw those BEP-20 stock tokens straight from the exchange.



xStocks is Kraken and Backed’s tokenized stock product that debuted on Solana less than two weeks ago (I wrote about it <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-stocks-good-bad">last week</a>).



Tokenized stocks may have been Solana-first, but they will be fiercely multichain. <a href="https://x.com/Bybit_Official/status/1939626244728840498">Bybit</a> is also integrating xStocks.



xStocks’ move to BNB Chain is no surprise, given Backed co-founder Adam Levi’s <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250522493630/en/Kraken-Partners-with-Backed-to-Launch-xStocks-on-Solana-Bringing-Tokenized-Equities-to-the-Masses">stated goal</a> for the product to “be a neutral, public good asset class” and eventually “expanding xStocks to other exchanges and chains.”



What investor mental model do these pieces of news affirm?



The Phantom x Hyperliquid news seems to simultaneously affirm both the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/battle-for-wallet-supremacy">Fat Wallet</a> thesis and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-infrastructure-bloat">Fat App</a> thesis.



<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">This Phantom x Hyperliquid integration is: • Bullish for Phantom (validation of fat wallet/super app thesis) • Bullish for Hyperliquid (validation of fat protocol thesis) • Bearish for Solana (they have no good perp dex, distribution moat is much smaller than perceived)&mdash; Uma Roy (@pumatheuma) <a href="https://twitter.com/pumatheuma/status/1942669033771536640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Build a great wallet like Phantom, because wallets, not apps, own the users.



Or build a great app like Hyperliquid, because users follow the app, not the underlying chain.



But if you can, you should most definitely build a Fat Exchange like Robinhood or Kraken, because then you can take your users to whichever chain you want.



Kraken is a Fat Exchange, but it’s not quite as Fat as Robinhood’s 14 million MAUs.&nbsp;



That may explain Kraken’s decision to go multichain fast and cement its position on each respective blockchain.



There was never really a reason to believe that wallets, apps or CEXs would be loyal to any particular chain to begin with.



Time to totally disabuse that notion.



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



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The winners and losers of Phantom’s Hyperliquid integration

Ben Strack

An overhaul of financial market infrastructure is set to occur, according to Franklin Templeton innovation head Sandy Kaul&nbsp; — and likely faster than many people expect.&nbsp;



“I think our entire product suite will be onchain at some point in the future,” she told me. “It is simply [about], ‘What is the migration path to getting there?’”



Financial institutions, central banks and corporations using account-based infrastructure are set to move to wallet-based systems on top of blockchains for efficiency and other benefits, Kaul argued.&nbsp;



Estimates that the roughly $240 billion stablecoin market could increase by 10 times over the next several years might be conservative, Kaul argued. But she made clear that it won’t be the crypto-native players driving this growth.



“I think banks are going to realize their future is going to be wallet-based, and they’ll begin to issue their own stablecoins and different versions of tokenized cash in an effort to remain competitive,” she said. “That is where trillions and trillions of dollars of deposits sit, so I think it will grow very, very quickly.”&nbsp;



As stablecoins (checking account equivalents, as Kaul labeled them) become “a foundational piece of financial infrastructure,” she explained, tokenized money market funds — acting like savings accounts — will take off in tandem.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-yield-funds-complement-stablecoins">Tokenized yield funds, stablecoins a “powerful” combo</a>



Franklin Templeton launched its OnChain US Government Money Fund in 2021. Its assets under management were $740 million as of June 30.



Illiquid, difficult-to-process assets — like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/janus-henderson-clo-token-1b">CLOs</a> and private credit — are heading onchain to create operational efficiencies, Kaul said. More <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-iceberg-rwas-mature-ondo">public equities and ETFs</a> will be tokenized too — and in a less convoluted way than some of the “wrapped workarounds” currently available, she added. 



“And if you move an ETF onchain, in essence you almost eliminate the need for the ETF wrapper over time,” Kaul noted. “Because the smart contract does all the work that the ETF wrapper does today.”



Keep reading for more excerpts from Blockworks’ interview with Kaul.



Blockworks: So you expect Franklin Templeton’s whole product suite will end up onchain. How far into the future could that be? 



Kaul: I think within a decade. I don’t think this is decades away.&nbsp;



One of the really amazing attributes of technology innovation in the last 20 years has been how rapidly it is speeding up. If you think about the fact that Ethereum is just 10 years old, I think things will happen much more quickly than people anticipate. Our CEO is on record saying [she thinks] we will see more transformation in the financial market infrastructure in the next five years than we’ve seen in the last 50. People are going to be surprised, because I think a lot of people are skeptical that it’s going to happen at all.



Blockworks: What is it like to be at a traditional financial company that is also leaning into a disruptive technology like blockchain?&nbsp;



Kaul: We’re very fortunate in that we have a CEO, an executive team and a board who are highly supportive and enthusiastic about the opportunities that we’ve uncovered, the infrastructure we’ve built and the opportunity they see ahead of them.



Now that we’ve reached the point of maturity in the infrastructure we’ve built — where we can issue and program our own tokens, where we have our own transfer agent on blockchain, where we can administer our shareholder records and offer brand new functionality like intra-day yield and peer-to-peer transfers — we’re identifying the spots where we’re integrating it into our own ecosystem.



We’re talking with our vendor management group and our treasury group about ways that we can start to experiment and show the use cases around tokenized money market funds. We’re looking at ways that we can work with our fund boards to see if we can’t introduce new innovations into the way they manage their cash in our traditional mutual funds.&nbsp;



It may take us 10 years to move onto these new rails, but we will do it one step at a time, one set of products at a time, one set of use cases at a time. But that infrastructure that we need to compete in the future, I think we’re one of the first asset managers to really have that in place.



Blockworks: What do you view as the biggest hurdle to overcome in ensuring continued progress in this segment?&nbsp;&nbsp;



Kaul: There’s been a very long, established way of doing know-your-customer and anti-money laundering screening of clients. That is at such foundational conflict with this whole idea of a permissionless ecosystem, and I think the final answer is going to sit somewhere in between. It’s not going to be the same rigidity with which we have to do and maintain and affirm KYC and AML today in the traditional world, where every firm has to do it itself and maintain their own. But I don’t think it’s going to be permissionless either.&nbsp;



“What is the right blend of protection required to ensure that this new financial ecosystem works in a way that protects consumers and discourages bad actors?” is the piece that I don’t see people doing enough work and thinking on.



Blockworks: You were a speaker at a May SEC <a href="https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/meetings-events/tokenization-moving-assets-onchain-where-tradfi-defi-meet">roundtable</a> focused on tokenization. What was your <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/van-eck-crypto-tokenization-sec">takeaway from that event</a> and from broader conversations with the SEC?



Kaul: There’s a much more receptive environment for the many, many people within the SEC who have been trying to drive responsible, effective policy for these crypto ecosystems for years. But they weren’t getting the support organizationally to bring all that great thinking and recommendations to the forefront. What we’re most excited about is really defining the regulatory pathway to being able to intermix both securities and tokens. I think that’s where the distribution really opens up. There still has not been the regulatory clarity that’s going to allow someone to just distribute an ETF or just distribute a mutual fund on a blockchain set of rails.



Blockworks: When you mention mixing securities and tokens, what exactly are you envisioning?



Kaul: Why wouldn’t I have Apple stock…and Ethereum in the same portfolio? They’re basically providing very similar, kind of competitive services — and if I was a relative-value trader I might want to trade Ethereum versus Apple.&nbsp;



Right now, I couldn’t put a portfolio together like that unless I got the exposure to Apple in a very convoluted way. But all I need is some regulatory clarity from the SEC and I would be able to do that.



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<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thebreakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>

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