KANGO

Katherine Ross

Eigen Labs has laid off 29 employees as it reorients its EigenCloud product, Blockworks has learned.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The product, which was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eigencloud-launch-a16z-eigenlayer">unveiled last month</a>, is a developer platform focused on off- and onchain verification. As part of the announcement at the time, a16z unveiled a $70 million investment. In total, the firm has raised $220 million — including <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/03/28/staking-protocol-eigenlayer-raises-50m-amid-crypto-winter">$50 million</a> in a Series A in 2023.&nbsp;



The decision to reduce the headcount — which impacts 25% of employees — was not motivated by financials, and the project still has financial runway, an Eigen Labs spokesperson confirmed to Blockworks.&nbsp;



The goal, as outlined by a note seen by Blockworks from Eigen Labs CEO Sreeram Kannan, is to reorganize “resources around the product and key user scenarios and streamlining our teams and leadership to give us years of runway to concentrate on building and growing EigenCloud.”



Employees from various roles and departments were impacted as part of the decision. No further reductions are planned at this time.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/a16z-series-b-eigenlayer-investment">A16z injects $100M into EigenLayer</a>



“Restructuring our organization and saying goodbye to a number of our teammates, who have given so much to the project, is incredibly painful. This morning, I spoke with impacted team members, shared my immense gratitude for their contributions, and laid out how Eigen Labs is committed to supporting their next chapter with empathy, respect, and concrete resources,” Kannan’s message said.



“These changes enable us to sustainably pursue our long-term objectives with renewed focus and energy. While today’s reorganization is painful, I’m extremely optimistic about our future. Demand for verifiable compute is growing as developers build software for the AI era, and EigenCloud is uniquely positioned to service this market need with a cloud platform backed by billions in stake and thousands of operators around the world.”



Impacted employees who’ve been with the project for more than a year were given accelerated vesting on tokens, as well as three months’ base pay. Additionally, Eigen Labs is offering career support.



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crypto hiring

Eigen Labs lays off 25% of employees, turns focus to EigenCloud

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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Does expanding to Solana give a token “the juice?”&nbsp;



Off The Grid developer Gunzilla Games is going to offer its GUN token on Solana in addition to Avalanche as <a href="https://x.com/GUNbyGUNZ/status/1942224870764589125">part of</a> its “multi-chain strategy.”



A Solana token version contract address <a href="https://x.com/GUNbyGUNZ/status/1942251893339639963">wasn’t shared</a> in the initial announcement. It’s currently unclear whether the Solana expansion changes the existing token’s supply or distribution schedule, though it’s possible an existing portion of the token supply (whether circulating or not yet circulating) may be moved to Solana.



Existing Avalanche GUN holders will be able to move their tokens to Solana if desired, according to the team. But the Gunz mainnet — which is an Avalanche subnet — and the studio’s other blockchain features are staying put (at least for now).



The Solana token version and token bridge option are <a href="https://x.com/VladK133/status/1942282952911577148">slated</a> to go live this week on Thursday.&nbsp;



An in-game Solana-branded hoodie, sunglasses, and gun skin were also shown as part of the reveal. Gunzilla CEO Vlad Korolev and Solana Gaming’s Marketing Lead both <a href="https://x.com/i/spaces/1eaKbWnPDzoGX">suggested</a> in an X Space that Solana cofounder Anatoly Yakovenko is being added to the game (“Toly” is also etched onto the Solana gun).



<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">GUNZ is Coming to <a href="https://twitter.com/solana?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@solana</a> 📅 Launching on July 10th Find out what this means for you, Zeroes! 🫵 🧵 <a href="https://t.co/NTA1L6rfqg">pic.twitter.com/NTA1L6rfqg</a>&mdash; GUNZ Official (@GUNbyGUNZ) <a href="https://twitter.com/GUNbyGUNZ/status/1942224841555492895?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 7, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“To evolve, to succeed, we at Gunzilla believe that you need to ship something today what [sic] will become very successful and famous — the product, which will be very successful and famous — and which our users and future users will love in several years ahead,” Korolev said during the Space.&nbsp;



“So today, if you are working on something [that] is popular today, from our point of view, you’re already late. This is why we made a bet with Off The Grid when investing our resources heavily in our community-driven economy,” he continued.



GUN’s price remains down about 70% from its all-time high three months ago (but is up 45% in the past two weeks). It’s also worth noting that only about 6% of the total GUN supply is currently in circulation, a component that can impact price as more tokens unlock over time.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf4SUxXG9_EyEvW7HaHvx9-mdH3JE9EyQ7JStrceBi_yErIkAJNIA03hl3DURRfqtktA1mL2pkmNZoXg3yLKKmSOgtU2XM_09b0BJZv3URak6amYh-S7kYalAaT7fayZ1zrae0Kmg?key=JWvYS_EDNcx57zyBRqzjdw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: GUN tokenomics from CoinGecko/Tokenomist</figcaption></figure>



If we’re comparing chains, Solana simply sees more activity than Avalanche alone. Total <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/avalanche">network revenue</a> combining REV from Avalanche’s C-chain, P-Chain, X-Chain, and Avalanche PAYG (Pay-as-you-go) fees was just over $1.5 million last quarter, while Solana saw an REV of <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana">over $819 million</a> in that same period, according to Blockworks Research data.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfi1hI9f94xKzU7HjI-6VWvWjI2Vqs5wrDaTA3UaJqWpMV051cED80yQj-_oGKftU4ovkTIUOVzhJKUo_8mfGImXvBx_qmu7e1ITeQ6KxCYaZ3El8DHGEwqROTQCtrSaA-Zk-3DQQ?key=JWvYS_EDNcx57zyBRqzjdw" alt=""/></figure>



Solana also saw over 8.5 billion transactions in Q1, while the Avalanche saw 32 million across that three-month period.&nbsp;



The Gunz chain’s testnet has facilitated over <a href="https://testnet.gunzscan.io/">705 million</a> total transactions, while its mainnet (still in migration) has seen over <a href="https://gunzscan.io/">8.9 million</a> transactions so far. However, in all cases, it’s difficult to say how much of the activity is inorganic.



Off The Grid’s release on the PC game launcher Steam was initially expected to occur in June, but appears to have been delayed. The team said in a <a href="https://x.com/GUNbyGUNZ/status/1941853153814626374">post</a> over the weekend that they’re still “putting the final touches” on the Steam game version.



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Gunzilla

Off The Grid studio unveils Solana cofounder-inspired skin

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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Blockchains inflate their tokens to pay their validators as rewards.



I guess this is ironic, given how much contempt the industry has for inflationary fiat.



But there’s a crucial difference:



Tokens exist in a vastly competitive marketplace; fiat doesn’t.



If a token has too much inflation, holders simply swap to a less dilutive option. Fiat users don’t get that choice.



That is what the economist Ludwig von Mises argued in his magnum opus Human Action: “Free banking keeps credit expansion within narrow limits.”&nbsp;



But of course, token issuers don’t need to read a thousand-page treatise on economics to know that their tokens don’t enjoy the same privilege of fiat’s political monopoly.



Of late, a slew of L1s are looking to reduce their inflationary token schedules in a bid to stave off sell-side pressure on their tokens.



Two weeks ago, NEAR L1 <a href="https://gov.near.org/t/reduce-inflation-for-near-protocol/41140">proposed</a> to halve its 5% annual inflation rate (60m NEAR) to 2.5%.



The proposal by HOT DAO cites the lack of fee burns (0.1% in reality vs. an expected 2-3%) as one of the main causes, claiming “high inflation without high usage is unsustainable.”



Just two days prior to NEAR’s proposal, Celestia co-founder John Adler also <a href="https://x.com/jadler0/status/1936813032140636643">proposed</a> an ambitious overhaul of the network’s consensus from proof-of-stake to “proof-of-governance.”&nbsp;



It’s a long and highly technical proposal, but here’s the rough idea:&nbsp;



Rather than having Celestia validators take a commission on delegated stake from TIA liquid stakers, the plan is to phase out liquid staking entirely, handpick validators via off-chain governance, then pay them a flat rate.



If passed, TIA issuance will plunge 20x, from 5% to 0.25%.



Earlier this year in March, Solana too attempted to cut SOL inflation by revising its fixed inflation curve as part of the widely publicized SIMD-228 proposal.



The proposal <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/what-simd-0228-failing-means-for-solana">was unsuccessful</a>. Had it passed, SOL inflation would’ve reduced from its existing ~4.4% to an ~1% per annum.



My colleague Carlos over at Blockworks Research reminded me that Galaxy has an alternative proposal (<a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/solana-april-2025-update#simd-279-mesa-vote-for-reducing-inflation">SIMD-279</a>) to reduce SOL inflation, but it doesn’t seem to have picked up much traction.



Tron, on the other hand, successfully <a href="https://www.ainvest.com/news/tron-halves-block-rewards-8-trx-aiming-1-29-deflation-rate-2506/">halved</a> its block rewards to validators. As part of Committee Proposal 102 passed in mid-June, block and voting rewards were reduced, thereby increasing its deflationary rate to ~1.29%.



How about Ethereum?



No major changes to its monetary policy in its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fusaka-ethereum-fork-updates">upcoming Fusaka</a> or Glamsterdam hard forks, it seems.



But of course, Ethereum already got the job done in 2022 as part of the Merge upgrade. ETH inflation was slashed by about ~90% — the equivalent of three Bitcoin halvings — when Ethereum moved to proof-of-stake consensus.



As far as I can tell, neither BNB Chain nor Avalanche are doing anything on the front of cutting network inflation.



What these chains are counting on, however, is reducing total supply via token burning.



(L1 blockchains typically have some kind of mechanism that permanently removes tokens from the supply the more its chain is used.)



In Avalanche’s case, 100% of C-Chain fees are burned — about 16.4% of AVAX issuance is offset by a burn in the last month.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdgjMz7IDQHU97nAmYnxKZKweZ5w98qxbaO4l-dXiPpE57AacTgLafWgA1QZX3zyjhY5y8ZG0XFbtJdqJfoAP1XofLUGGn6iZhXhq_RGMfQoIAILh33WS-yxwRSkqH1peNjuwLULw?key=AiZrvwmW0t5Aeleqe4xdVA" alt=""/></figure>



For BNB Chain, the chain conducts a quarterly burn of BNB through a series of <a href="https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/7732625721697">different burn mechanisms</a>. In the last burn event, ~1.6 million BNB ($916 million) was <a href="https://www.bnbchain.org/en/blog/31st-bnb-burn">burned</a>. Another 1.6 million BNB is slated to be burned in the next quarter, according to <a href="https://bnbburn.info/">Bnbburn’s</a> dashboards.



Since BNB’s token generation event, net supply of BNB has been cut down from 202 million to 141 million today.



Then finally, there is Bitcoin.



Obviously, the Bitcoin network has its famous block-subsidy halving every ~four years, currently at an annual issuance rate of ~0.85%.



Aside from that, no protocol mechanism burns BTC. 



But I guess Bitcoin is a special snowflake, so it’s immune from the kinds of economic laws that economists have debated for hundreds of years. (<a href="https://x.com/drakefjustin/status/1928025981270519924">Or is it?</a>)



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0xResearch Newsletter

L1s are overpaying for security, but change is coming

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



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



The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals signed off on a joint motion previously filed by both the Treasury Department and Coin Center to dismiss Coin Center’s appeal challenging the Tornado Cash sanctions.&nbsp;



It’s yet another sign of how far we’ve come, given that the government willingly removed those sanctions back in March. Attorneys for the government argued in the motion to dismiss that their willing decision made the case “moot.”



Now, while the government has clearly made strides in its acceptance of crypto, I should also point out that another case did help push it to make its decision.&nbsp;



Earlier this year, in a Western Texas court, a judge ruled that the “action is unlawful and is therefore set aside” and barred the government from enforcing the sanctions if they chose not to appeal (and that time period to appeal ended on June 28).&nbsp;



“The parties have conferred about the effect of these developments on this appeal. The government’s view is that OFAC’s rescission of the designation moots this appeal. Plaintiffs’ view is that this appeal will become moot after the Texas judgment becomes final and unappealable,” Coin Center and the government wrote in the motion.&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">This is the official end to our court battle over the statutory authority behind the TC sanctions. The government was not interested in moving forward and defending their dangerously overbroad interpretation of sanctions laws. Thank you again to our co-plaintiffs:…&mdash; Peter Van Valkenburgh (@valkenburgh) <a href="https://twitter.com/valkenburgh/status/1942262643546292443?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 7, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



All of this is great, right? Years of court battles and money on lawyers have finally ended in outcomes that push crypto forward.&nbsp;



But the big catch is that this decision unfortunately doesn’t stop the trial proceeding against Tornado Cash’s founder, Roman Storm, which is set to start next Monday, July 14.&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">To resolve any confusion, my criminal trial, led by the SDNY, is scheduled for July 14, 2025 <a href="https://t.co/C8nIVeyuEe">https://t.co/C8nIVeyuEe</a>&mdash; Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ (@rstormsf) <a href="https://twitter.com/rstormsf/status/1942327725991379155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 7, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Storm and his lawyers will have to prove to a jury that he didn’t knowingly create or operate a money-transmitting business when he and co-founder Roman Semenov wrote the code for Tornado Cash.



“The irrationality and unfairness of these charges cannot be overstated. The Treasury Department has long recognized that developers who publish software are not money transmitters,” Paradigm’s Katie Biber <a href="https://www.paradigm.xyz/2025/06/paradigm-files-amicus-brief-supporting-roman-storm">wrote</a> last month.&nbsp;



The stakes are high, she further argued, because this case could have lasting repercussions for developers in crypto.&nbsp;



So while we’re clearly making strides in the mass acceptance of crypto, it’s clear we still have a ways to go, and next week’s trial sets up a big battle. One that we all have to pay attention to.



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Empire Newsletter

Appeals court grants motion to dismiss in Tornado Cash suit

Byron Gilliam

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full 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">
“It could explain why we can go out for seafood, but seafood can’t go out for us.”&nbsp;



— Malcolm MacIver on our evolved ability to make plans
</blockquote>



Neuroscientist Malcolm MacIver&#8217;s <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34957852/">study</a> of electric fish explains a lot about how all fish think — and all humans, too.&nbsp;



The electrical currents employed by these distant cousins of ours to understand their surroundings allow MacIver to measure how far into the future fish are able to plan.



Not very, as it turns out.



Electric fish can’t see more than a few centimeters in the murky waters they swim in, so their brains have evolved to think no more than a few milliseconds into the future.



That gives them just enough time for an instinctual response when prey, predator or obstacle gets close enough to matter, but nothing else.



In that kind of environment, deliberation is a luxury, not a survival advantage, so fish have evolved a reflexive kind of brain, optimized for speed and devoid of planning.



Evolution didn’t bother with the more complex cognition that planning requires because the aquatic environment of fish didn’t reward it.



Fish that climbed up on land, however, eventually evolved the ability to see the Moon, the Sun and beyond.



Over millions of years, land-based fish were naturally selected for better eyesight because it’s easier and more useful to see through air than it is through water.&nbsp;



It wasn’t just their eyesight that improved, though — it was their ability to think, too.



MacIver <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESqI1nBMZN0">argues</a> that the expanded vision available on land created a selective advantage for planning and abstract cognition.&nbsp;



In other words, thinking ahead is useful on land in a way that it’s not in water — so the fish that climbed onto land evolved to think ahead.



“We speculated that moving onto land poured jet fuel on the evolution of the brain,” MacIver <a href="https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2020/06/hunting-in-savanna-like-landscapes-may-have-poured-jet-fuel-on-brain-evolution/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">explains</a>, “as it may have advantaged the hardest cognitive operation there is: envisioning the future.”



No land-based fish is better at envisioning the future than humans, of course.



But despite being out of the water for hundreds of millions of years now, our brains remain partly aquatic — primitive limbic and brainstem pathways still govern our fastest, reflexive responses to stimuli.



This is mostly to our disadvantage: We startle too easily, react when we should reflect and fail to plan for retirement.



But the ancient aquatic part of our brains also protects us from falling pianos, lunging snakes and hot surfaces — all the perilous situations in which there’s no time to reflect or think ahead.&nbsp;



So it stands to reason, I think, that the aquatic part of our brains may also be more useful to us when things get murky and we can’t see very far into the future.



Have things ever been murkier than they are right now?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Fish-brained investors</h2>



Jeff Bezos is a famously long-term thinker, but he sometimes cautioned against it.



“If you are planning for more than twenty minutes ahead in this kind of environment,” he <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon/dp/0316219266?adgrpid=185328955904&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvadid=748008426930&amp;hvpos=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=8257751875253664991&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=1021047&amp;hvtargid=dsa-1595363597442&amp;hydadcr=&amp;mcid=&amp;hvocijid=8257751875253664991--&amp;hvexpln=67&amp;tag=googhydr-20&amp;hvsb=Media_d&amp;hvcampaign=dsadesk">warned</a> during the dotcom boom, “you are wasting your time.”&nbsp;



At the time, the internet was evolving so rapidly that he thought it was dangerous to base a business model or an investment on any long-term assumptions.



Now, thanks to the unprecedented advance of AI, things seem even murkier — for businesses executives and investors, especially.



Will stocks and/or companies even be necessary a few years from now?&nbsp;



Will people even be necessary?&nbsp;



Technology has allowed us to see ever deeper into the universe, but it&#8217;s impeding our ability to see into the future.



One thing that does seem certain, however, is that AI will disrupt many businesses over the next few years.



A few obvious victims (like newsletter writing) aside, it’s unfortunately impossible to say which.&nbsp;



Microsoft, for example, might be a huge winner if everyone is soon using its co-pilot to write code and make powerpoints.



Or it could be a huge loser if AI eliminates white collar employment (and therefore the need to write code and make powerpoints).



I can’t imagine there’s ever been a time when potential investing outcomes have been as binary as that.&nbsp;



The world’s largest registered investment advisor, Ric Edelman, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/edelman-crypto-allocation-portfolio?utm_source=mail.blockworks.com&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=thursday-links">thinks</a> this is a reason to own fewer equities (being businesses of the past) and more crypto (being a technology of the future).



But his recommendations require a perhaps unrealistically clearsighted view of the future.



He recommends bitcoin, the appeal of which is largely based on its resistance to change — and Ethereum, which evolves in meticulously thought-out five-year plans.



Conspicuous by its absence from his recommendations is Solana, which does the opposite, aiming to iterate quickly, like a fish.



That has been an advantage in the current environment where crypto’s most active users don’t seem to care about anything other than the speed and cost of execution.&nbsp;



But this too could change.&nbsp;



Tomorrow’s users may put more value on censorship resistance and decentralization (however defined), in which case, crypto activity might migrate back to the slower-moving Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems.&nbsp;&nbsp;



I’m guessing there’s probably a happy medium between the two approaches.



Jeff Bezos, for example, concentrated Amazon’s resources on things that he could observe now and was certain would persist: Customers would always want lower prices and faster delivery, he reasoned.&nbsp;



In planning for the future, then, he argued that the most important question to ask is: “What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?”



Seems like good advice just now.



Be it crypto, equities or anything else, fish-brained investors and builders should probably focus on the things directly in front of them — and which of those are unlikely to change.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



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<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>

The Breakdown Newsletter

On thinking ahead when markets get murky

Jeff Albus

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



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I spent a decent part of today checking out Solana Compass, an independent validator and community-built scoring platform that’s been active since 2021. It <a href="https://x.com/SolanaCompass/status/1941114054183170485">ranks</a> Solana validators based on performance, reliability and decentralization.



Some validators seem to have been deliberately slowing down their nodes in an attempt to catch more high-value transactions and increase their profit by widening their transaction intake window. If you&#8217;ve ever wondered why your swap took longer than expected or why a transaction seemed to hang for no reason, a slow validator may have caught you in its dragnet.



According to Solana Compass, one epoch last week ran nearly <a href="https://x.com/SolanaCompass/status/1941114051238449642">an hour longer</a> than expected due to these nodes, meaning that every user had to wait longer for their transactions to land.&nbsp;



It&#8217;s hard to know how much is optimization vs. exploitation, but with over 33% of stake concentrated in the top 19 validators, the effects cascade quickly. The faster Solana tries to move, the more these sluggish actors slow it down.



The slowest leaders in Epoch 814 included Galaxy, Kiln1 and Kiln2, Chorus One, and several anonymous nodes. All have average block times far above the 400ms target, in some cases exceeding 800ms.



Combatting this, Solana Compass <a href="https://x.com/SolanaCompass/status/1941114051238449642">announced</a> on Friday that it will now penalize the ranking of any validator whose block times consistently exceed 420ms. It also factors in decentralization, data center diversity, uptime, skipped votes and even whether the validator has a website or a security policy.



The project <a href="https://x.com/SolanaCompass/status/1941404248077398205">aggregates</a> stats from Firedancer UIs across multiple geos and smooths them over five epochs (~10 days). That makes it difficult for validators to game the system with a single successful run. It also de-risks the noise from skipped slots or regional downtime.



In a time when performance differences are often razor thin, public trust is becoming the real differentiator.



Performance is a shared responsibility. With fewer rewards to go around, the spotlight shifts from raw yield to network alignment. It&#8217;s really thanks to tools like Solana Compass that our community has the knowledge to vote with their stake and the visibility to hold validators accountable.



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



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<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>
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Lightspeed Newsletter

Solana Compass flags underperforming validators

Casey Wagner

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



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It was a busy holiday weekend in the US.&nbsp;



The headline news was that President Trump signed his sweeping domestic policy package — the “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tax-bill-trump-congress-gop">big, beautiful bill</a>” — into law on July 4.&nbsp;



With the BBB squared away, the White House is back in tariff mode. Reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries are slated on Wednesday to move back to the higher levels set on so-called Liberation Day.



This morning, in two Truth Social posts, Trump shared letters presumably sent to Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. They stated that the US will impose a 25% blanket tariff on all imports from both countries starting on Aug. 1.



Passing the BBB was Republican lawmakers&#8217; first Trump-imposed deadline, but there’s another due date looming. The president wants a stablecoin and market structure bill on his desk by August.&nbsp;



With only three more work weeks before Congress’ summer recess begins, they’ll have to work quickly.&nbsp;



To get this done, the US House last Thursday declared the week of July 14 as “Crypto Week.” Representatives will consider three digital asset-focused bills: the GENIUS Act, the CLARITY Act and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act.&nbsp;



The GENIUS Act <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-stablecoin-act-passes-senate-vote">passed in the Senate</a> last month with a final tally of 68-30. There were 18 Democrats who voted “yea.”&nbsp;



Hailed by proponents as a milestone for the crypto industry and an important first step in bringing regulation to a facet of the market, those against the GENIUS Act argue the bill doesn’t provide enough consumer protection and unfairly benefits Trump-linked stablecoin interests. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is just one of several vocal Democrats criticizing the bill.



Other Dems admit that the bill might not be perfect, but it’s better than nothing.&nbsp;



“We weren’t able to include certainly everything we would have wanted, but it was a good bipartisan effort,” Democrat Senator Angela Alsobrooks told reporters last month ahead of the Senate vote. “This is an unregulated area that will now be regulated.”



Now House members will have a look at the bill, and they’re going to make changes. Representatives are likely to try and bring the bill more in line with the STABLE Act, a similar version of the legislation that never made it to the Senate.&nbsp;



The GENIUS Act notably calls for a tiered approach to overseeing stablecoin issuers, allowing those with under $10 billion in issued assets to be monitored at the state level. The STABLE Act establishes that the primary authorities for stablecoin regulation will be at the federal level, and state power is more conditional.&nbsp;



The CLARITY Act is the House’s stab (via the Financial Services and Agriculture Committees) at a crypto market structure bill. The proposed legislation divides authority between the CFTC and SEC and establishes a formal definition for “digital commodities.” Next week, we expect Reps. will quarrel about innovation vs. investor protection and get into decentralization thresholds.&nbsp;



The Anti‑CBDC Surveillance State Act probably ranks last in the order of most important crypto measures in the House. But it’s still an issue many Republicans feel strongly about.&nbsp;



The bill seeks to block the Fed from issuing or researching a federal central bank digital currency. Again, the market structure and stablecoin bills will “Trump” (see what we did there) the anti-CBDC bill, but the latter will be part of “Crypto Week” nonetheless.



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Donald Trump

Move over, big, beautiful bill: Crypto Week is coming

Ben Strack

CoreWeave’s pending acquisition of Core Scientific reflects the ongoing race to meet the growing demand for high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure as AI needs evolve.



A year after Core Scientific (CORZ) rejected CoreWeave’s bid to buy out the bitcoin miner — and with CORZ stock roughly tripling since that time — the combination is now deemed mutually beneficial.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coreweave-to-acquire-core-scientific">all-stock deal</a> would give CORZ stockholders 0.1235 newly issued shares of CoreWeave (CRWV) stock for each share of CORZ stock.&nbsp;



Expected to close in the fourth quarter, the transaction is valued at roughly $9 billion and comes two months after CoreWeave’s <a href="https://www.coreweave.com/blog/coreweave-completes-acquisition-of-weights-biases">acquisition</a> of AI developer platform Weights &amp; Biases in May.&nbsp;



&nbsp;While Core Scientific tallied $67 million in digital asset self-mining revenue during the first quarter, CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator made clear the company is not looking to expand its crypto market footprint.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Our lens on the physical infrastructure is that it provides us with tremendous optionality to be able to provide massive computing infrastructure for our clients,” he said during a Monday investor call.



Goldman Sachs predicts global data center power demand to increase up to 165% between 2023 and 2030. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said during a February earnings call that Amazon Web Services plans to spend $100 billion on AI infrastructure in 2025.&nbsp;



The CoreWeave-Core Scientific combination would eliminate roughly $10 billion of future lease overhead for existing contractual sites over the next 12 years, CoreWeave executives noted. It also gives the cloud provider the ability to repurpose infrastructure dedicated to crypto mining for HPC usage in the medium term, they added.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Previous bid rejected, CoreWeave’s IPO&nbsp;</h2>



The two companies last year signed various 12-year contracts whereby Core Scientific agreed to offer 200 megawatts of infrastructure to host CoreWeave’s HPC services.



CoreWeave then offered to buy all outstanding CORZ shares in cash for $5.75 per share. The company’s stock price hovered around $15 at 1:30 pm ET Monday — down 17% on the day.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Core Scientific’s board of directors determined the CoreWeave proposal last year significantly undervalued the company. The firm had <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/post-bitcoin-halving-mining-strategies">touted the value of its infrastructure</a> — noting that its HPC contracts offer a stable, high-margin revenue stream that balances out its more volatile bitcoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/mining">mining</a> business.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/core-scientific-rejects-coreweave-buyout-bid-after-big-hpc-deal">Core Scientific rejects CoreWeave buyout bid after big HPC deal</a>



Now though, CEO Adam Sullivan said the company could “accelerate the availability of world-class infrastructure for companies innovating with AI” while letting shareholders “participate in the tremendous upside potential of the combined company.&#8221;



A Core Scientific spokesperson declined to comment further.



When asked about the timing of the deal, Intrator didn’t comment on last year’s acquisition bid.&nbsp; — instead noting the importance of owning infrastructure as competition ramps up.



“We think it’s really important to present to the market options for building massive scale solutions to the most complicated compute requirements that they have,” Intrator said.



CoreWeave listed its shares on the Nasdaq exchange in March. The stock opened at $39 and peaked around $184 last month.



But the company needed scale before it could pursue “transformational M&amp;A,” said Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital assets research. CoreWeave’s post-IPO rally gave it the equity currency to get aggressive, he added.



“That said, it looks like this deal hasn’t drawn much interest from merger arbitrage funds,” Sigel told Blockworks Monday. “CoreWeave’s low float and high borrow costs make it tough to hedge, which likely explains the Core Scientific unwind and 20% drawdown post-announcement.”



CRWV shares traded around $160 at 1:30 pm ET, down nearly 3% on the day.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The VanEck Onchain Economy ETF (NODE), which Sigel manages, had a roughly 5% position in Core Scientific, as of July 3.&nbsp;



“At $14.25, CORZ looks attractive if CRWV holds steady, given the fixed exchange ratio implies meaningful upside,” he told Blockworks.



Dan Weiskopf, co-portfolio manager of the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), said it remains to be seen what such a deal means for CoreWeave&#8217;s pipeline of future data center deals. Like NODE, BLOK has allocated about 5% of its assets to CORZ.



“We believe Core Scientific has been working to expand its gigawatts of capacity outside of what has been announced, so it would not be a surprise to see CoreWeave announce additional deals with more capacity,” Weiskopf said. “The operating expertise that these two teams have together will bring synergies based upon the trust from working together for so many years.”



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Artificial Intelligence

CoreWeave’s pending Core Scientific buy gives ‘optionality’ as AI needs evolve

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



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A new ambitious shooter game is in development.



Distinct Possibility Studios has just come out of stealth after two years and revealed its flagship title: a first-person, open-world military extraction shooter game with blockchain integrations, dubbed Reaper Actual.



A pre-alpha “Foundation” version of the PC game with some onchain assets is expected “in the coming weeks,” according to a release.



Game industry veteran John Smedley is behind the new studio. Smedley is a gaming exec and developer who worked in Sony’s gaming division for over a decade. He ran two other smaller gaming studios in between his time at Sony and Amazon Game Studios, and created the 1999 MMORPG EverQuest before all of that.&nbsp;



Reaper Actual is <a href="https://reaperactual.com/">billed</a> as an “open-world persistent shooter.” This means players (Reapers) won’t be loading into copies of the same generic, untouched map with fresh randomized loot in every match like they do in Call of Duty Warzone and Fortnite.&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">Big things are brewing for gaming on Tezos! Watch this space — this is only the beginning<a href="https://t.co/fUH1O1GeM1">https://t.co/fUH1O1GeM1</a>&mdash; Tezos (@tezos) <a href="https://twitter.com/tezos/status/1940842478573326500?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 3, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Instead, the virtual world will be changeable and those changes will matter more. And when you log off and log back on, the world may be very different than when you last left it.



The game’s island map of Marova is expected to be larger than game maps we’ve seen before in CoD-like titles. It’s slated to have PvPvE action, meaning a mix of player-on-player violence and environmental targets and hazards for players to tackle.



The team is planning to charge for the game upfront at first, with plans to transition to a free-to-play model over time with rewards for early buyers.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">By the numbers</h2>



Distinct Possibility has raised $30.5 million in funding for its project in a round led by gaming-forward VC firm <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-games-shouldnt-monetize-early-nfts">Bitkraft</a> and Brevan Howard Digital.



The Tezos Foundation, Delphi Ventures, Shima Capital, Hashed and others also invested.



$30 million in funding is substantial — and pretty unheard of in crypto gaming these days. But is it enough to make an ambitious AAA-level live ops shooter game with MMORPG elements and market it to the masses, competing against titles with nine-figure budgets?&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcV8rDUrsfHiIY_JX4JJsKagQT48PG9CwsLcdZQM6Rr-3UI1s_NN-QjRQCyzMS4Mtt0RE_XLUGo_sNMcngo-TruSMUO1ZelZ2oVEboGukd2zUxgAMC64w6IA9fs7tKxbn--qlTwDw?key=Xf2yTwlyqpO8ZmiTFjRSIw" alt=""/></figure>



Based on a <a href="https://x.com/Tactrohs/status/1940817922773209425">post</a> from an engineer at third-party game development studio Iron Belly, plus Distinct Possibility’s <a href="https://www.dps.gg/about">website</a>, it looks like Distinct Possibility is using multiple outsourcing firms to build the game, including Iron Belly (which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/neon-machine-shrapnel-in-the-red">Shrapnel</a> also used), Big Moxi, and Secret Dimension, in addition to its own team of over 40 staff.



Big Moxi has 47 employees listed on Reaper Actual’s site, and Secret Dimension has half a dozen. That means at least 93 people are working on the game, if the website’s numbers are correct.



<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">Sit down with Tramell Isaac and Matt Higby as they guide you through Reaper Actual&#39;s core gameplay systems and visual style in this overview video. 📽️ From Reapers to bases and locales across Marova, get a glimpse of the world we&#39;re building alongside players! <a href="https://t.co/nYemtGZtAP">pic.twitter.com/nYemtGZtAP</a>&mdash; Reaper Actual (@ReaperActualDPS) <a href="https://twitter.com/ReaperActualDPS/status/1940772659647955277?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 3, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



There are other ways to get more cash besides VC funding, though, as we’ve seen other crypto shooters do in the past to varying degrees of success. Deadrop sold NFT avatars and in-game item packs (before it <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gaming-tokens-deadrop-shutdown">shut down</a>), and Shrapnel has sold tokens and NFTs as well.&nbsp;



That said, it’s debatable whether selling items to prospective players ahead of time is a good idea, as it increases expectations and speculation around an eventual launch.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Blockchain-optional</h2>



Reaper Actual is using the EVM L2 <a href="https://docs.etherlink.com/">Etherlink</a> (that uses Tezos rollup tech) for its blockchain elements. Gamers will be able to trade in-game items as well as custom items they create using the Etherlink rails.



The game is also using Sequence’s full stack, <a href="https://x.com/0xsequence/status/1940848992281415859">according</a> to the crypto gaming infra firm. Sequence offers software and tools for devs, including integrated wallets, custom marketplaces and other features, with a focus on supporting EVM-compatible chains.



I wonder how the mainstream gamers will react when they realize there&#8217;s a blockchain version of the game.



“We look at it as an awesome game first full stop. Then we have enabled an amazing ecosystem that is entirely optional,” Smedley <a href="https://x.com/j_smedley/status/1940893488192934141">told me</a> in response to my tweet about the game.&nbsp;



“In fact play on Steam or Epic and you never have to look at it. We think people will take notice in how we are doing it. Ethically and fairly,” he wrote.



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Could ‘Reaper Actual’ be the breakout crypto shooter?

Macauley Peterson

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



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Bitcoin held up over the holiday weekend to notch its highest-ever weekly finish on Sunday at $109,263. The move capped a strong rebound from late-June profit-taking, driven by solid institutional flows and bullish momentum.



During the shortened trading week, spot bitcoin ETFs <a href="https://farside.co.uk/btc/">posted net inflows</a> of $667 million, a strong show of demand despite quieter volumes around the Fourth of July US trading break.



Markets are now looking ahead to next week’s big macro events, with June CPI and PPI reports expected to clarify the inflation path and the Fed’s likely stance for the rest of 2025. Over the past few weeks, the consensus has <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/how-to-read-fed-dot-plot-explained">shifted</a> to two rate cuts as most probable over three. This week is lighter on data, but rates markets are pricing in minimal odds of a July move and growing debate over whether any cuts can happen at all before year end. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-close-several-trade-deals-announcements-be-made-next-days-bessent-says-2025-07-06/">intimated</a> it will postpone its tariff implementation deadline to August.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">“Crypto Week?”</h2>



On the policy front, US lawmakers are preparing for what some have dubbed “Crypto Week.” Starting July 14, House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-AR) and House Agriculture Chair GT Thompson (R-PA) will plan a <a href="https://x.com/RepFrenchHill/status/1941537464465883417">series of votes</a> related to the Digital Asset Markets Clarity Act — the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/congress-crypto-market-structure-bill-regulation-cftc">market structure bill</a> — and the GENIUS Act, also known as the stablecoin bill. The latter was already passed by the Senate with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genius-stablecoin-act-passes-senate-vote">bipartisan support</a>.



Ahead of that, the Senate Banking Committee is set to hold a <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/from-wall-street-to-web3-building-tomorrows-digital-asset-markets">hearing</a> on Wednesday, July 9, titled “From Wall Street to Web3: Building Tomorrow’s Digital Asset Markets.” The hearing is set to include testimony from Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger, Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin, Paradigm’s Dan Robinson, and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Satoshi-era coins move</h2>



Beyond policy headlines, the Fourth of July holiday delivered real <a href="https://x.com/lookonchain/status/1941126810961653780">onchain fireworks</a>. Around 80,000 BTC — worth over $8.6 billion today — held in untouched wallets dating back to 2011 suddenly moved for the first time in over 14 years. Four of eight known addresses transferred 40,000 BTC (~$4.35 billion) onchain in one of the largest-ever awakenings of “ancient” coins.



Blockchain watchers quickly noted that none of the BTC was sent to exchanges, easing fears of an immediate sale. Instead, the coins appear to have migrated from old legacy (P2PKH) addresses to modern Bech32 (SegWit) formats, boosting security and lowering future transaction fees. Bitcoin’s price barely dipped.



Analysts I’ve followed see motivations ranging from inheritance planning to consolidation under safer custody, with some even <a href="https://x.com/magnumincor/status/1942086008763207692">speculating</a> about longer-term implications for Bitcoin’s quantum resistance.&nbsp;



Charles Guillemet, chief technology officer at hardware wallet maker Ledger, had <a href="https://x.com/P3b7_/status/1942191296136835569">an interesting observation</a>: Someone had sent OP_RETURN messages to the same dormant wallets days earlier, claiming legal possession and demanding proof of ownership by October. While that prompted hack speculation, it’s also plausible the real owner may have seen those notices and proactively moved funds as a safeguard.



My colleague Jeff Albus pointed out that there’s an entire gray market economy around old wallet.dat files — copies of Bitcoin wallets known to contain funds but believed to be inaccessible due to lost keys or forgotten passwords. Although previously uncrackable, it’s possible that some of these are now being unlocked through modern techniques. A legal notice like the one sent via OP_RETURN could be an attempt to mitigate legal liability before actually pursuing these old BTC.



All told, despite a quiet macro calendar this week, crypto markets have no shortage of storylines.



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Bitcoin starts week near record high as 80K BTC moves after 14 years

David Canellis

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



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Fifteen years ago exactly, Satoshi released Bitcoin v0.3. Well, it was really yesterday, but it was in the evening, so it counts.



The version was Satoshi’s sixth going by <a href="https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/emails/bitcoin-list/">this archive</a> of the official bitcoin mailing list. It was bundled with a Mac OS X version built by <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/3-piping-hot-pizza-day-facts-for-bitcoin-connoisseurs">Laszlo Hanycez</a> and extra features including control of the nodes via the command line and a “hashmeter” performance display for mining, which was still being done with CPUs across the board.



The update notably came with 20% faster hashing. But whatever competitive edge was quickly dulled by the arrival of the first GPU miners on the network less than two weeks later.&nbsp;



GPUs were capable of much more than 20% — but that’s for another time.



In any case, you could tell Satoshi was excited. Their announcement <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=238.0">post</a> had two exclamation points, and there was even an extra one in the title: “Bitcoin 0.3 released!” It also featured arguably the most appealing tagline in Bitcoin history:



“Escape the arbitrary inflation risk of centrally managed currencies!”



Still, there wasn’t much initial fanfare. The Bitcointalk thread only received four replies, the same amount seen on the Bitcoin.org <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110522084201/http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?board=1.1800">forum</a> (that version of the thread gathered about 500 views in total).&nbsp;



We can infer from the post below that Satoshi intended v0.3 to be Bitcoin’s first official version, under v1.0. Early adopter <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/happy-bitcoin-mmo-day-tale-in-the-desert">Andrew “teppy” Tepper</a> had crowdsourced feedback on his proposed <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=234">submission</a> to Slashdot in the days leading up to the version’s release, but Satoshi walked back Bitcoin’s graduation from beta status in a reply:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdJfcVL13YUn_nnIb7GdKDpaJI7FxMWC2WklBqSN-aP0lwQm1q8jOck8sqgQnAQwB81uxEKn7fvXcGUTBhHjAd8Wv88O12Ha8fHtIByqd7qg1q9KUbQ52J4PsKi79eZqzexKUsH?key=qEqpfBJAQzbDA0OyTOO60w" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Satoshi wasn’t a big fan of teppy’s first draft</figcaption></figure>



It worked. Slashdot featured teppy’s submission on its front page on July 11, 2010 — widely regarded as the first instance of a major media platform publicizing Bitcoin (it’s even in Slashdot’s Wiki entry). Bitcoins were trading for about $0.05 at the time.



&#8220;How&#8217;s this for a disruptive technology? <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a> is a peer-to-peer, network-based digital currency with no central bank, and no transaction fees. Using a proof-of-work concept, nodes burn CPU cycles searching for bundles of coins, broadcasting their findings to the network.”&nbsp;



“Analysis of energy usage indicates that the market value of Bitcoins is already above the value of the energy needed to generate them, indicating healthy demand. The community is hopeful the currency will remain outside the reach of any government.&#8221;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdcY7HE43F1qGY7_nX7Ga_UCZrBke2l0Ns5-WEWCNi73wK-nJnThxAlt__noPF1zrafqGXzSNDxo0HlMbKiaLQDmZaKnyoQloknLIqnp-1m9Q-aUVkB29YV4dnw236qGJ8Km-9cPA?key=qEqpfBJAQzbDA0OyTOO60w" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">This was Bitcoin’s equivalent of Nirvana releasing Nevermind in 1991, feat. Smells Like Teen Spirit. It would quickly make the band a household name.</figcaption></figure>



Bitcoin’s price began its first major bull run about three months following the Slashdot post, in October 2010, and would reach dollar parity by February 2011. 



Slashdot also celebrated that milestone with another front-page <a href="https://news.slashdot.org/story/11/02/10/189246/online-only-currency-bitcoin-reaches-dollar-parity">feature</a>, which when played back-to-back showed just how important Bitcoin’s first few fans really were.



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Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s journey to the mainstream started 15 years ago

I’ve got some good news for you: Venture capital fundraising seems to be bouncing back after a slow May.&nbsp;



According to <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com">Blockworks Research</a> data, there was roughly $2.8 billion raised last month. 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="1034" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png" alt="" class="wp-image-104823" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png?w=398 398w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png?w=404 404w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png?w=339 339w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXc4dFYdIc1ShiBevb5nhSMLg4t2SjJeIVGtiFTWaJvMR51Wi-owI4iF89Lcl-Lh64XdBjm-MJhCDNsaGq78Ia8JJveu0gPF5hzG7yVjXT57jy31e0GyqsJoq-JGZR7XNhxbBLIDkQ.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>



If you remember from <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/venture-capital-funding-may-2025">the last time we took</a> a look at this data, VC funding topped off around $594 million in May. A dip from April, and quite a decline from March (which saw $2.9 billion in funding).&nbsp;



As you can see in the chart above, even last month’s impressive numbers don’t top March, but they did come pretty close.&nbsp;



The biggest rounds last month came from Kalshi (raising $185 million in a Series C), Digital Asset ($135 million), and Zama ($57 million). If you want to include private token sales, then World Liberty Financial joins the list after the UAE bought up <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/uae-fund-buys-100-million-trumps-world-liberty-tokens-2025-06-27/">$100 million</a> of WLFI and a16z bought up <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eigencloud-launch-a16z-eigenlayer">$70 million worth</a> of EigenLayer’s tokens.&nbsp;



Per Tie Terminal data, 21 projects with a focus on artificial intelligence raised roughly $116 million last month.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1126" height="696" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXd2arZZSezJr0lIyHDjWwRxHF-oV1BytxpNEVDhPVs3R1Mx_JsmynFmw5QCxZzxp_Ee3qE3IyqMhwEcqspSv3bxKPCzXRcJhLsSpFbzpRcMiBVOucaZHaZapxy0plD9vgsuG0u5eQ.png" alt="" class="wp-image-104825" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXd2arZZSezJr0lIyHDjWwRxHF-oV1BytxpNEVDhPVs3R1Mx_JsmynFmw5QCxZzxp_Ee3qE3IyqMhwEcqspSv3bxKPCzXRcJhLsSpFbzpRcMiBVOucaZHaZapxy0plD9vgsuG0u5eQ.png?w=1126 1126w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXd2arZZSezJr0lIyHDjWwRxHF-oV1BytxpNEVDhPVs3R1Mx_JsmynFmw5QCxZzxp_Ee3qE3IyqMhwEcqspSv3bxKPCzXRcJhLsSpFbzpRcMiBVOucaZHaZapxy0plD9vgsuG0u5eQ.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXd2arZZSezJr0lIyHDjWwRxHF-oV1BytxpNEVDhPVs3R1Mx_JsmynFmw5QCxZzxp_Ee3qE3IyqMhwEcqspSv3bxKPCzXRcJhLsSpFbzpRcMiBVOucaZHaZapxy0plD9vgsuG0u5eQ.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXd2arZZSezJr0lIyHDjWwRxHF-oV1BytxpNEVDhPVs3R1Mx_JsmynFmw5QCxZzxp_Ee3qE3IyqMhwEcqspSv3bxKPCzXRcJhLsSpFbzpRcMiBVOucaZHaZapxy0plD9vgsuG0u5eQ.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXd2arZZSezJr0lIyHDjWwRxHF-oV1BytxpNEVDhPVs3R1Mx_JsmynFmw5QCxZzxp_Ee3qE3IyqMhwEcqspSv3bxKPCzXRcJhLsSpFbzpRcMiBVOucaZHaZapxy0plD9vgsuG0u5eQ.png?w=416 416w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXd2arZZSezJr0lIyHDjWwRxHF-oV1BytxpNEVDhPVs3R1Mx_JsmynFmw5QCxZzxp_Ee3qE3IyqMhwEcqspSv3bxKPCzXRcJhLsSpFbzpRcMiBVOucaZHaZapxy0plD9vgsuG0u5eQ.png?w=422 422w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXd2arZZSezJr0lIyHDjWwRxHF-oV1BytxpNEVDhPVs3R1Mx_JsmynFmw5QCxZzxp_Ee3qE3IyqMhwEcqspSv3bxKPCzXRcJhLsSpFbzpRcMiBVOucaZHaZapxy0plD9vgsuG0u5eQ.png?w=354 354w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXd2arZZSezJr0lIyHDjWwRxHF-oV1BytxpNEVDhPVs3R1Mx_JsmynFmw5QCxZzxp_Ee3qE3IyqMhwEcqspSv3bxKPCzXRcJhLsSpFbzpRcMiBVOucaZHaZapxy0plD9vgsuG0u5eQ.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1126px) 100vw, 1126px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Tie Terminal </figcaption></figure>



But while it had the most deals, it wasn’t the biggest category by amount raised…not by a long shot. Instead, that award goes to Prime Services, which is basically a fancy way to sum up firms offering a variety of financial services.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1126" height="698" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXfgQB4UV4dFOm6iFuK5EAkWAQumOuONij9QqXZkQlTTPecFqjkWoWzM23KC1l6ebDqLuz-NiS0wUd14Z_xr5axGKB1IMHuiCnRn2ugMW6sus9GUeSxjryfgtqgolqkVDDpdK9R9.png" alt="" class="wp-image-104824" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXfgQB4UV4dFOm6iFuK5EAkWAQumOuONij9QqXZkQlTTPecFqjkWoWzM23KC1l6ebDqLuz-NiS0wUd14Z_xr5axGKB1IMHuiCnRn2ugMW6sus9GUeSxjryfgtqgolqkVDDpdK9R9.png?w=1126 1126w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXfgQB4UV4dFOm6iFuK5EAkWAQumOuONij9QqXZkQlTTPecFqjkWoWzM23KC1l6ebDqLuz-NiS0wUd14Z_xr5axGKB1IMHuiCnRn2ugMW6sus9GUeSxjryfgtqgolqkVDDpdK9R9.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXfgQB4UV4dFOm6iFuK5EAkWAQumOuONij9QqXZkQlTTPecFqjkWoWzM23KC1l6ebDqLuz-NiS0wUd14Z_xr5axGKB1IMHuiCnRn2ugMW6sus9GUeSxjryfgtqgolqkVDDpdK9R9.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXfgQB4UV4dFOm6iFuK5EAkWAQumOuONij9QqXZkQlTTPecFqjkWoWzM23KC1l6ebDqLuz-NiS0wUd14Z_xr5axGKB1IMHuiCnRn2ugMW6sus9GUeSxjryfgtqgolqkVDDpdK9R9.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXfgQB4UV4dFOm6iFuK5EAkWAQumOuONij9QqXZkQlTTPecFqjkWoWzM23KC1l6ebDqLuz-NiS0wUd14Z_xr5axGKB1IMHuiCnRn2ugMW6sus9GUeSxjryfgtqgolqkVDDpdK9R9.png?w=415 415w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXfgQB4UV4dFOm6iFuK5EAkWAQumOuONij9QqXZkQlTTPecFqjkWoWzM23KC1l6ebDqLuz-NiS0wUd14Z_xr5axGKB1IMHuiCnRn2ugMW6sus9GUeSxjryfgtqgolqkVDDpdK9R9.png?w=421 421w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXfgQB4UV4dFOm6iFuK5EAkWAQumOuONij9QqXZkQlTTPecFqjkWoWzM23KC1l6ebDqLuz-NiS0wUd14Z_xr5axGKB1IMHuiCnRn2ugMW6sus9GUeSxjryfgtqgolqkVDDpdK9R9.png?w=353 353w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXfgQB4UV4dFOm6iFuK5EAkWAQumOuONij9QqXZkQlTTPecFqjkWoWzM23KC1l6ebDqLuz-NiS0wUd14Z_xr5axGKB1IMHuiCnRn2ugMW6sus9GUeSxjryfgtqgolqkVDDpdK9R9.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1126px) 100vw, 1126px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Tie Terminal </figcaption></figure>



Five prime services projects raised a collective $1.15 billion in funding last month. So while AI is the hot narrative, and we are seeing folks put their money where their mouths are, clearly the bulk of the funding is still going toward projects that offer financial services.&nbsp;



Blockworks Research data also <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/deal-flow/?dashboard=190">points to infrastructure still receiving</a> a fair share of funding. Infra projects raised a whopping $881 million last month.&nbsp;



But the most interesting data — for me at least — actually comes from the breakdown of the funding. Not by category, but rather by type.&nbsp;



Looking back at Blockworks Research data, later-stage funding is on the rise. Pre-seed and seed rounds raised around $121 million, but Series B raised $127 million. And even later rounds, which go from Series C to F, raised $185 million.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="874" height="272" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXeXHpgq9ghFCY3iIQJdGt69BYIdBUMYS52IsgyL_MZTbJ1RmUcX8GnjSxw5Z2xLhHHf2Rf6gJ1MvBt6PCC2cfu9UygeqUvGauZmT3C5zygxSeCOThou8gJv6F5E4Oua3Hy2FFTReA.png" alt="" class="wp-image-104826" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXeXHpgq9ghFCY3iIQJdGt69BYIdBUMYS52IsgyL_MZTbJ1RmUcX8GnjSxw5Z2xLhHHf2Rf6gJ1MvBt6PCC2cfu9UygeqUvGauZmT3C5zygxSeCOThou8gJv6F5E4Oua3Hy2FFTReA.png?w=874 874w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXeXHpgq9ghFCY3iIQJdGt69BYIdBUMYS52IsgyL_MZTbJ1RmUcX8GnjSxw5Z2xLhHHf2Rf6gJ1MvBt6PCC2cfu9UygeqUvGauZmT3C5zygxSeCOThou8gJv6F5E4Oua3Hy2FFTReA.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXeXHpgq9ghFCY3iIQJdGt69BYIdBUMYS52IsgyL_MZTbJ1RmUcX8GnjSxw5Z2xLhHHf2Rf6gJ1MvBt6PCC2cfu9UygeqUvGauZmT3C5zygxSeCOThou8gJv6F5E4Oua3Hy2FFTReA.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXeXHpgq9ghFCY3iIQJdGt69BYIdBUMYS52IsgyL_MZTbJ1RmUcX8GnjSxw5Z2xLhHHf2Rf6gJ1MvBt6PCC2cfu9UygeqUvGauZmT3C5zygxSeCOThou8gJv6F5E4Oua3Hy2FFTReA.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXeXHpgq9ghFCY3iIQJdGt69BYIdBUMYS52IsgyL_MZTbJ1RmUcX8GnjSxw5Z2xLhHHf2Rf6gJ1MvBt6PCC2cfu9UygeqUvGauZmT3C5zygxSeCOThou8gJv6F5E4Oua3Hy2FFTReA.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXeXHpgq9ghFCY3iIQJdGt69BYIdBUMYS52IsgyL_MZTbJ1RmUcX8GnjSxw5Z2xLhHHf2Rf6gJ1MvBt6PCC2cfu9UygeqUvGauZmT3C5zygxSeCOThou8gJv6F5E4Oua3Hy2FFTReA.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/AD_4nXeXHpgq9ghFCY3iIQJdGt69BYIdBUMYS52IsgyL_MZTbJ1RmUcX8GnjSxw5Z2xLhHHf2Rf6gJ1MvBt6PCC2cfu9UygeqUvGauZmT3C5zygxSeCOThou8gJv6F5E4Oua3Hy2FFTReA.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 874px) 100vw, 874px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Types of raises from May, per Tie Terminal data</figcaption></figure>



On average, in May, the biggest type of raise came from seed rounds, so clearly there was a shift. While it’s notable, especially as crypto continues to digest Circle’s IPO, it’s a bit too early to read much into it. It is, however, a data point I plan to keep a close eye on next month.



Overall, though, this was exactly the rebound I was looking for after examining May’s data last month. It shows that there’s still a lot of strength in certain categories, while things like AI are seeing more of a pickup when it comes to VC attention.



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Venture capital funding tops $2.8B in June

CoreWeave will acquire Core Scientific, the company announced Monday morning. 



The news comes after the two engaged in a lengthy battle last year that saw Core Scientific <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/core-scientific-rejects-coreweave-buyout-bid-after-big-hpc-deal">rejecting a bid from CoreWeave</a>. 



The all-stock transaction, which will see Core Scientific shareholders receive 0.1235 shares of CoreWeave Class A common Stock, is expected to help the newly-public CoreWeave “verticalize its data center footprint to future-proof revenue growth and enhance profitability.” The deal is worth roughly $9 billion.&nbsp;



“Together with CoreWeave, we will be well-positioned to accelerate the availability of world-class infrastructure for companies innovating with AI while delivering the greatest value for our shareholders, who will be able to participate in the tremendous upside potential of the combined company,” Core Scientific’s Adam Sullivan said in a statement.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hut-8-data-center-ai-project">Bitcoin miner’s data center project to be ‘game-changer’</a>



The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025. The Wall Street Journal reported at the end of June that the two were in talks on a deal after the failed talks last year.&nbsp;



“This acquisition accelerates our strategy to deploy AI and HPC workloads at scale,” said Michael Intrator, CoreWeave&#8217;s CEO. “Owning this foundational layer of our platform will enhance our performance and expertise as we continue helping customers unleash AI’s full potential.”



Initially, Core Scientific was willing to come to the table for talks, Blockworks’ Ben Strack <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/core-scientific-rejects-coreweave-buyout-bid-after-big-hpc-deal">reported last year</a>, but they rejected the bid as being too low. 



The two <a href="https://investors.corescientific.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/74/core-scientific-to-provide-approximately-200-mw-of-infrastructure-to-host-coreweaves-high-performance-computing-services-capturing-significant-ai-compute-opportunity">announced</a> cloud provider hosting deals last year, which sparked CoreWeave’s interest in the bitcoin miner.



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Core Scientific

CoreWeave to acquire Core Scientific in all-stock deal

<a href="https://plume.org/?utm_source=blockworks">Plume</a>, the first full-stack chain and ecosystem purpose-built for real world asset finance (RWAfi), has announced a strategic integration with <a href="https://trondao.org/?utm_source=blockworks">TRON</a> to launch SkyLink across the TRON Network. TRON’s vast global user base, which generates some of the highest stablecoin volume and transaction throughput in crypto, now has direct access to asset-backed yields from tokenized U.S. Treasuries, private credit, and other real-world financial products issued on Plume. 



This marks a major development for TRON, historically known as the leading decentralized payments and settlement network in emerging markets. With SkyLink now live, stablecoins circulating on TRON can be natively deployed into RWA yield strategies and institutional-grade investment assets – while expanding Plume’s reach to one of the largest and most active DeFi user bases in the world.&nbsp;



“TRON is one of the most systemically important networks in crypto today – moving billions in stablecoins daily across global economies,” said Chris Yin, CEO of Plume. “This integration allows Plume to leverage TRON’s leading settlement network and&nbsp; provide broader access to real-world assets and real yields. SkyLink launching on TRON will enable more users and institutions to preserve dollar liquidity while earning sustainable returns.”&nbsp;



SkyLink is Plume’s omnichain RWA yield distribution protocol, enabling secure, permissionless access to institutional-grade financial products across chains. Leveraging LayerZero’s SyncPools architecture, SkyLink ensures that yield is streamed continuously and transparently to users’ wallets via mirrored YieldTokens, while underlying liquidity remains locked on each native chain – including TRON.&nbsp;



“TRON is built for speed, scale, and accessibility, and this collaboration with Plume brings a new dimension to that mission,” said Sam Elfarra, Community Spokesperson for the TRON DAO. “By integrating SkyLink, we’re enabling users around the world to access compliant and institutional-grade, dollar-denominated investment products like treasuries, corporate bonds, and structure credit directly from their wallets or custodians, unlocking a new era of financial empowerment through DeFi.”



SkyLink’s mirrored YieldTokens enable continuous, onchain yield streaming while preserving liquidity on each native network. Powered by LayerZero’s SyncPools architecture, SkyLink ensures omnichain compatibility, unified compliance standards, and native composability across supported ecosystems – including Solana, TRON, Sui, Soneium, Injective, Omni Network, and more.&nbsp;



About Plume



Plume is the first full-stack RWA Chain and ecosystem purpose-built for RWAfi, enabling the rapid adoption and demand driven integration of real world assets. With 200+ projects building on the network, Plume offers a composable, EVM-compatible environment for onboarding and managing diverse real world assets. Coupled with an end-to-end tokenization engine and a network of financial infrastructure partners, Plume simplifies asset onboarding and enables seamless DeFi integration for RWAs so anyone can tokenize real world assets, distribute them globally, and make them useful for native crypto users. Learn more at <a href="http://plume.org/?utm_source=blockworks">plume.org</a>.  



Media Contact: Leila Stein — <a href="mailto:press@plumenetwork.xyz">press@plumenetwork.xyz</a>   



About TRON DAO



TRON DAO is a community-governed DAO dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet via blockchain technology and dApps.



Founded in September 2017 by H.E. Justin Sun, the TRON blockchain has experienced significant growth since its MainNet launch in May 2018. TRON hosts the largest circulating supply of USD Tether (USDT) stablecoin, exceeding $80 billion. As of June 2025, the TRON blockchain has recorded over 316 million in total user accounts, more than 10 billion in total transactions, and over $21 billion in total value locked (TVL), based on TRONSCAN.



Media Contact: Yeweon Park — <a href="mailto:press@tron.network">press@tron.network</a>



This content is sponsored and does not serve as an endorsement by Blockworks. The veracity of this content has not been verified and should not serve as financial advice. We encourage readers to conduct their own research before making financial decisions.



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Plume Network brings real-world yield to TRON’s global payment ecosystem

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full 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">
“Since 1971, when the United States indefinitely suspended its promise to convert paper dollars into gold, we all use Massachusetts currency.”



— Dror Goldberg
</blockquote>



The American colonies won their independence from Great Britain with a weapon of their own invention: fiat currency.



In 1690, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had made monetary history when it issued 7,000 GBP in “bills of credit” to soldiers returning from a failed raid into Quebec.



The disgruntled soldiers had expected to be “paid” in plunder, and when that failed to materialize, the colony gave them newly printed paper money instead — paper that was valuable only because it was required for paying taxes.



It wasn’t the first paper currency ever — that honor belongs to the Song Dynasty, which issued paper money in China roughly 700 years earlier.&nbsp;



But those ancient notes were initially redeemable for copper coins.



The Massachusetts bills of credit, by contrast, were the first paper money in history to hold value solely because the issuing government required them for tax payments.



It was a neat trick: Print paper money and then force people to earn it (by soldiering, for example) because they needed it to pay their taxes.



The Massachusetts money was “an invention on a global scale and a great intellectual breakthrough,” as Dror Goldberg documents in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Money-American-Invention-Governments-ebook/dp/B0BXX5G7TD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1A06GRPHIJFIA&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.VxXZIFgtI1-2iniBdN3vx-Os7TFH24Sva69R6SZY-H0.qEJQBDSq5jp46XsnxeYybK2pTq2Qlg2_eNN2sLOD5u4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=easy+money+dror+goldberg&amp;qid=1751502757&amp;sprefix=easy+money+dror+goldberg%2Caps%2C141&amp;sr=8-1">Easy Money: American Puritans and the Invention of Modern Currency</a>.



“It was a fundamental change in the legal foundation of money, shifting the anchor of money for the first time in history from the intrinsically valuable goods it was made of to the circulation of money into and out of the state’s treasury.”



“Who needs gold when you have taxes?” Goldberg neatly sums up.



As simple as that idea was, however, governments were a bit slow to catch on.&nbsp;



The Massachusetts Bay Colony ended its first experiment in fiat money just two years later when it retired all of the bills it had issued (after collecting them for taxes).&nbsp;



Other American colonies followed their example, but also only in brief spurts — and there was only one such experiment outside of the colonies: a 1716 issuance of billets de banque that quickly plunged France into the financial crisis known as the Mississippi Bubble.



The world only recognized the power of tax-backed paper currency a few decades later, when the colonies collectively used it to win independence from their British overlords.&nbsp;



In 1775, the cash-strapped Continental Congress paid the rebel army it had raised by issuing paper currency backed only by the promise that the individual colonial governments would accept it for tax payments.



It didn’t go very well.



Despite the proof-of-concept in Massachusetts, people struggled with the idea of tax-backed money — so much so that the Continental Congress printed its dollars with an entirely fictional promise right on the front.



In large letters, each dollar declared that “THIS BILL entitles the Bearer to receive TWENTY Spanish MILLED Dollars or the value thereof in Gold or Silver.”



But the only thing the government ever intended to give in return for a continental dollar was a tax receipt.



Also, the Continental Congress printed far too many of them. By 1781, continental dollars had lost nearly all of their purchasing power.



But against all odds, it kept an army in the field. And in so doing, it proved that fiat currency, however unsound, could win wars — and even print a nation into existence.



“The noise of the rebels’ printing press was the stamp heard round the world,” as Dror Goldberg puts it.



After the war, however, even the victorious Americans recoiled at the thought that money could be backed by nothing more than the power to collect taxes.



“Paper is poverty,” Thomas Jefferson wrote just a decade after paper money had come to his rescue. “It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.”&nbsp;



Nearly everyone agreed.



It wasn’t until 1971 — 281 years after the Massachusetts innovation — that the United States fully accepted the idea that money could be backed by nothing more than its power of taxation.



This might not end well.&nbsp;



The American government is currently exploring the outer boundaries of just how much tax-backed currency the world is willing to accept.



But if you celebrated the American Revolution today, you should consider celebrating the great American invention of fiat currency too.



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The other American Revolution: Fiat currency

Jack Kubinec

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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Standing outside the Clase Azul loft in downtown Brooklyn, I called my mother to inform her I had just spent $2,000 on a bottle of tequila.



“Are you drunk?” came her stunned reply.



Reader: I was not drunk. I was investing. Two and a half weeks later, I had sold the bottle for $3,000 — courtesy of the blockchain.



In early June, BAXUS co-founder Tzvi Wiesel invited me to join him at a Clase Azul private tasting and bottle launch. At the event, the tequila brand’s head distiller led a tasting, pointing out notes of apple and a blue and orange bottle meant to evoke the New York skyline. Then, the gathered faithful were given the option to buy one or two bottles of “The Loft Brooklyn Collection” — available exclusively in New York.&nbsp;



For much of the event, the salespeople didn’t pay much mind to me, a schlubby crypto journalist, compared to the older, richer-looking clientele. But a few minutes later, I found myself in a cool back room, my hand shaken by an eager-looking employee clad in black. After taking a picture with my $2,000 booze, I sent the bottle home with Wiesel, who then scanned and uploaded it to BAXUS’ Solana-powered spirits marketplace.



BAXUS stores liquor in physical vaults on behalf of spirits collectors. Each bottle is 3-D scanned and paired with an NFT that can be bought or sold on BAXUS. Transactions are settled in USDC, and users can on- or off-ramp from fiat with Coinflow. BAXUS takes a 10% sellers’ fee. Collectors can make multiple swaps without physically possessing a bottle, and if they want to actually drink their liquor, BAXUS will ship it for a $25 fee.&nbsp;



I unsuccessfully listed my bottle for $3,500, but then I got a bite at $3,000, which set me up with a $700 profit after fees. (That’s a 35% return in a couple weeks. Why am I sending this newsletter out for free?)



The whole process was made possible by blockchain tech.&nbsp;



“Blockchain enabled the seamless payment via crypto, the instant settlement in your account, the owner to keep the bottle in the vault while still being able to show verifiable proof of ownership,” Wiesel said in a text. “Think about how the original process required you to go to Brooklyn, pay with a credit card, etc. [If] you wanted to resell it you would have had to go and find a buyer online (illegally) and then [try] to establish trust that you actually have the bottle and will send it to them. This eliminated all of the friction.”



It’s frequently said that crypto needs to solve real problems. In this case, crypto solved my problem of having acquired a limited edition tequila bottle for less than its market value. I hope to face this problem again sometime soon.



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