Macauley Peterson

Offchain Labs, the company behind Arbitrum, has acquired smart account infrastructure provider ZeroDev in a move that signals its ambitions beyond scaling infrastructure.&nbsp;



The deal, which brings ZeroDev’s five-person team fully into Offchain Labs, represents what CEO Steven Goldfeder calls “a very logical next iteration” of the company’s mission.



Founded in 2018, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/offchain-labs">Offchain Labs</a> initially focused on scaling Ethereum with optimistic <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollups</a>. But Goldfeder says the broader goal has always been “to solve the hardest problems that are standing in the way of bringing blockchain technology to mass adoption.”



In that light, the acquisition isn’t a pivot, Goldfeder told Blockworks. “We started off [with] layer two, we went down to layer one, and now we&#8217;re going a little bit further up&#8230;in the smart contract layer,” he said. “We can make these tools work seamlessly together.”



ZeroDev, whose platform powers <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vitalik-buterin-eip-account-abstraction">smart account</a> infrastructure for projects like ApeChain, <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/lightspeed/1bd088c0-3f45-11ef-8d0e-33cba733fb4d">Infinex</a>, and Crossmint, fits neatly into that stack-wide ambition. “They’re the leaders, the innovators in the smart account space,” Goldfeder said. “It fit very well with the profile of our team.”



With smart accounts enabling features like gas abstraction, programmable security, and automated transactions, Offchain sees them as critical to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/if-we-dont-make-crypto-invisible-it-will-never-reach-the-mainstream">onboarding the next wave</a> of users. The challenge today, according to Goldfeder, is not just the technology but the fractured developer experience; he flagged “wallet integration and wallet support” as a bottleneck.



“Often the user experience doesn&#8217;t seamlessly pull these all together in a way that&#8217;s abstracted away from the user,” Goldfeder said.



He offered a familiar metaphor: “When I go on YouTube to watch a video, I don’t get a pop-up that says, ‘Do you wanna watch this video on AWS or on GCP?’ I just want to watch my video.”



Chain fragmentation remains a UX hurdle, even within the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/arbitrum">Arbitrum</a> ecosystem. “If I&#8217;m a user on Arbitrum One and I want to go and buy an NFT on ApeChain…The gas on Arbitrum is ETH, the gas on ApeChain is APE, maybe I&#8217;m holding ARB, but there&#8217;s just a lot of manual steps.”



ZeroDev’s smart account tooling could help streamline this, and other of the “harder problems.”



“Everyone says Ethereum has a fragmentation problem,” Goldfeder said, “This is just another tool in our toolbox.”



That tooling focus doesn’t mean Offchain Labs is losing sight of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/scaling">scaling</a> fundamentals. The company is still exploring hybrid rollup architectures, including <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/zk-proofs-escape-velocity-eth">eventual ZK proof integration</a>.



For now, Offchain is betting that improved UX, smart accounts, and deeper vertical integration will push Ethereum’s most-used rollup into a new phase. “It’s not only about the raw technical components,” Goldfeder said, “but how do we actually package it up?”



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



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</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/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



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Arbitrum

Arbitrum’s next chapter: Smart accounts, UX, and Offchain Labs’ ZeroDev bet

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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A16z and the DeFi Education Fund are asking the SEC for a safe harbor for blockchain technology. Simply put, this means that projects wouldn’t have to pursue broker registration for DeFi apps.&nbsp;



“While decentralized blockchain systems underlying apps are clearly excluded from the SEC’s broker-dealer registration regimes, apps face regulatory uncertainty because they are typically developed and maintained by centralized actors. The SEC has previously taken the position — through enforcement actions and Wells notices — that developers of apps could be deemed brokers if they enabled users to transact in securities,” a16z wrote in a blog post this morning. 



In order for an app to qualify, a16z and DEF proposed four criteria: underlying protocols have to be decentralized, it has to be non-custodial, there can’t be investment recommendations, and no discretion. 



“The guiding principle of the safe harbor is that only those Apps which do not engender the risks that the Exchange Act’s broker-dealer regulatory regime was designed to address should be eligible; in such cases, registration as a broker under the Exchange Act is unwarranted and inappropriate,” the two said in their official proposal to the SEC.



So, all in all, they have to be credibly neutral and permissionless. Makes sense, right?&nbsp;



Both DEF and a16z have made it pretty clear that they’re looking out for projects in crypto. Heck, if you missed it earlier this week, a16z’s Miles Jenning and Eddy Lazzarin even went on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/5f38c3ec-749c-11f0-96bf-4bef818bfbd7">Empire podcast</a> to discuss safely launching tokens. 



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zfqASHqSTl0?si=77yyTwKO1PPfGLSg" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







“Developers shouldn’t have to guess whether building public, neutral, and non-custodial software exposes them to the risk of being treated like financial intermediaries,” a16z said. 



The push comes roughly a week after Tornado Cash’s Roman Storm <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roman-storm-guilty-one-count">was found guilty</a> of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter business by a jury in a trial that’s left all of us <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/opinion-tornado-cash-conviction-raises-alarm">wondering about</a> potential implications. This push from a16z and DEF would help to clear some of the current murkiness.&nbsp;



“This proposal aims to be flexible to account for the ever-evolving nature of early-stage tech development and is grounded in the understanding that most apps are fundamentally non-custodial, passive software tools that allow users to interact directly with public, decentralized network and protocol infrastructure — and, therefore, should not be subject to broker-dealer registration requirements,” DEF’s Amanda Tuminelli said. 



Despite the fact that it’s very clearly a new era at the SEC, there’s work to be done to allow projects and developers in the space to continue to innovate safely.&nbsp;



Now to see how the SEC plans to approach this topic.&nbsp;



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</ul>

Empire Newsletter

A16z and DeFi Education Fund propose ‘safe harbor’ policies for DeFi apps

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">
“Just because you can doesn&#8217;t mean you should.”



—&nbsp; Aristotle, your conscience, your mom, and Jurassic Park
</blockquote>



We don’t usually get data on Americans’ retirement accounts, but a congressional request once prompted the Joint Committee on Taxation to <a href="https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/7.28.21%20JCT%20Mega%20IRA%20Data1.pdf">reveal</a> just how big some can get: In 2019, just 156 Roth IRAs held $15.6 billion in assets.



This begs an obvious question: Who needs a tax break on their $100 million of retirement savings?



$80 million of post-tax money seems like plenty to get by on after the age of 60 (even for all the tech moguls planning to live to 120).



But some have quite a lot more than that.&nbsp;



In 2021, ProPublica <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank">reported</a> that Peter Thiel held more than $5 billion in a single, giant Roth IRA account.&nbsp;



Helpfully, it also detailed how he did it.



While you and I max out our Roth IRAs with $7,000 worth of index funds, others opt for more exotic investments — like early-stage equity.



In 1999, for example, Thiel used $1,700 of Roth IRA funds to buy 1.7 million shares of PayPal. Three years later, PayPal IPO’d at $13 a share — a 13,000-fold gain on his cost basis of $0.001 per share.



Because it was in an IRA, he owed no tax.&nbsp;



Better yet, he was able to roll those winnings, tax-free, into 10.2% of Facebook — acquired for $500,000 (still held in his Roth IRA), and an undisclosed portion of his stake in Palantir (now worth many billions).



Thiel was a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and the first outside investor in Facebook, so the rest of us would never have had access to those kinds of deals. 



But President Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/democratizing-access-to-alternative-assets-for-401k-investors/">proposed</a> last week that everyone be given access to alternative investments in their retirement accounts, crypto included. 



In response, critics have warned that crypto is ill-suited for retirement savings because it’s too risky.



But it’s already available to a small sliver of people — and at virtually no risk — via “Token Launch Roth IRAs,” an entertainingly extreme edge case in the debate over crypto in retirement accounts.



While equity founders like Peter Thiel have long been able to stash early-stage investments in their Roth IRAs, crypto founders could not — because how do you get a blockchain token into a brokerage account?



You couldn’t, until AnchorZero built the systems to add even pre-launch tokens to traditional retirement accounts, and Anchorage Digital Bank figured out how to custody them.



Simply put, AnchorZero’s Token Launch Roth IRAs are “the first and only solution for pre-launch tokens to eliminate capital gains taxes.”



This is not a problem I ever imagined needed solving.



In its enthusiasm for helping founders not pay taxes, AnchorZero’s website reads like a Scrooge McDuck parody of robber baron excess.



“Until now,” its <a href="https://anchorzero.com/insights/anchorzero-launches-token-optimized-roth-iras-for-tax-free-gains-on-digital-assets/">product announcement</a> explained, ”the only way to include tokens in an IRA was to wait until they were listed on a public exchange, by which time their value had often increased exponentially. AnchorZero’s solution is the first to support private, pre-launch tokens and derivatives, ensuring that founders can take advantage of the low-cost basis at token creation.”



The website offers an illustrative example, seemingly written by someone who doesn’t quite know how to read the room:



“Consider Alice, a crypto founder launching a new token. At creation, before public trading, the token’s market cap is a modest $10,000. As a savvy tax strategist, Alice allocates a portion of the token supply to her Roth IRA. When she decides to sell, her token interest is worth $50 million, which is entirely tax-free. Had she chosen to forgo the IRA approach, Alice would have owed $18.5 million in capital gains taxes, leaving her with $31.5 million — a staggering difference of millions in tax savings.”



If its website had ears, they’d have to be plugged while I yell at it: ALICE DOESN’T NEED A TAX BREAK!!!



But she was only just getting started.



“AnchorZero’s solution allows investors to reinvest tax-free gains into new tokens, startups and venture funds. Over time, the compounding benefits of the Roth IRA become even more pronounced. In Alice’s case, her IRA could grow to $815 million over 20 years, compared to $190 million without the tax advantages.”



These kinds of “Alice” examples are usually something like, “Alice sends $5 to Bob.”



But (to paraphrase Spinal Tap) this one goes to $815 million.



Gaming the byzantine US tax system is hardly a novel idea, but seeing it spelled out at that scale and on a public website feels different — as if hedge funds were running TV ads to gloat over how much money the carried-interest loophole was making them. Or Big Pharma put up billboards to crow about its Ireland tax dodges.



Bury it in euphemisms! Hide it in the fine print!! Do some dog whistling!!!&nbsp;



Or make the numbers 100x smaller, at least, please.



Because it’s one thing to exploit a loophole and it’s another thing to celebrate it. Especially one as egregious as this.



Has there ever been a more narrowly targeted tax dodge? 



The carried-interest loophole for hedge funds is pretty bad, but I’d guess there are more hedge fund managers in the US than there are crypto founders.



And pre-launch crypto tokens are sure to be priced even cheaper than pre-IPO PayPal shares.&nbsp;



On the one hand, AnchorZero is only offering to help those founders do something that the law allows.



On the other hand, why???



I marvel at the time, effort and investment it must have taken to build the complex systems required to help this tiny sliver of people who don’t need anyone’s help.



Even if you think every loophole deserves exploiting, is that really what you want to do with your limited time on Earth?



Personally, I’m not sure I’d sleep too much worse if I spent my days engineering new ways to telemarket fake tech support to seniors or catfish lonely bachelors.&nbsp;



Ethical considerations aside, these kinds of things can backfire, as we learned from <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1at69qj/your_scientists_were_so_preoccupied_with_whether/">Jurassic Park</a>. (“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn&#8217;t stop to think if they should.”)



The danger here, I think, is that crypto already has an image problem.



Thanks to cabal memecoins, low-float-high-FDV project tokens and digital asset treasury companies, there’s a growing perception that most of the industry’s profits accrue to a small number of insiders at the expense of its retail investors.&nbsp;



This is especially unfortunate because a big part of crypto’s original appeal was that bitcoin was fair-launched and equally accessible to all.&nbsp;



If Token Launch Roth IRAs catch on — and how can they not? — we’ll have strayed further than ever from that ideal.



People will notice. Inevitably, we’ll get an exposé on a $5 billion Token Launch Roth IRA and it will make half of America hate crypto even more than it already does.&nbsp;



I could hardly blame them, if so.



The US government is currently in the process of handing the crypto industry everything it&#8217;s ever asked for.



The least we could do in return is pay our taxes!



Even Peter Thiel thinks the US tax system has “fairness problems” — because, he said, “you have super rich people paying a lower rate than people in the middle or upper middle class.”



Putting pre-launch tokens in retirement accounts would supercharge that problem.



And crypto’s image problem, too.



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The Breakdown Newsletter

When $100M isn’t enough: Token Launch Roth IRAs

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>.



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



Corporate blockchains have never looked so good.&nbsp;



In rapid succession, news broke that both payments giant Stripe and stablecoin darling Circle would be building their own layer-1 blockchains. While major companies coming onchain theoretically poses a competitive threat to all existing L1s, there may be reason to believe the news is particularly troublesome for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pK5JGHHrEk">Solana’s vision</a> that “everything can fit in one computer.”



Stripe and Circle’s chains — named Tempo and Arc, respectively — are set to be EVM-based, which some Ethereum <a href="https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1955258607353684386">boosters</a> were quick to chalk up as bullish for Ethereum. That’s mostly engagement bait nonsense, in this newsletter writer’s view.&nbsp;



The EVM is a software environment. In my mind, the only way it directly implicates ETH the asset is by way of gas fees, but Circle is <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/366540/circle-stablecoin-focused-evm-compatible-layer-1-blockchain-arc">using</a> USDC for gas fees. In Stripe’s case, it’s hard for me to imagine that the online payments behemoth won’t fight tooth and nail to pay as little in Ethereum gas fees as possible. Plus, both Stripe and Circle could put in jeopardy Ethereum’s mantle as the blockchain for stablecoins.



You have to squint a little bit to see why initiatives like Robinhood’s layer-2 would necessarily be bullish for ETH the asset. You may have to close your eyes fully to argue these EVM L1s are bullish ETH.



Still, Tempo or Arc seeing significant success could also turn out to be pretty bad for Solana, which is now 0/2 in the sweepstakes for big fintechs coming onchain this market cycle.



“Big companies launching L1s is kind of a rejection of the L2 thesis, but it&#8217;s even more of a rejection of the Solana thesis,” said mteam, the pseudonymous co-founder of Ethereum infrastructure firm Spire Labs.



When I asked them to elaborate further, mteam added: “I think the Solana thesis is more like this: Apps will want a shared state layer and thus will choose not to launch their own chains if they don&#8217;t need to. Any sort of L1 OR L2 premium being important to apps/infra/institutions looks to me like that thesis is even further from the truth vs. Ethereum&#8217;s L2 thesis.”



Basically, if major firms launch blockchains rather than launching apps on Solana’s blockchain, then the L2 thesis — which basically says most blockchain activity will take place on layer-2s settling to Ethereum — is less wrong than the Solana thesis.



“[This] is nonsense,” Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz said in response to mteam’s post. “It’s like saying ‘Yeah, the girl I love didn&#8217;t marry me, but she also didn&#8217;t marry another guy I don&#8217;t like and that&#8217;s worse for him!’&#8221;



I also think the bullish EVM L1 story lacks a value accrual mechanism for ETH — why would Stripe or Circle care about ether as money or a reserve currency? But, sure: The Solana thesis has not exactly been vindicated by where institutions have been deploying recently.



Although it may not really matter. Large firms approach blockchain with a range of seriousness and technical chops, and just because a big name announces a chain does not mean that chain will be a commercial success. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/soneium-mainnet-censorship-complaints">Remember Soneium</a>?



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Circle

Do Stripe, Circle L1s refute the Solana thesis?

Ben Strack

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



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



The most-repeated words on Circle’s first earnings call as a public company came from analysts: “Congrats on the IPO.”



But another prevailing sentiment related to the stablecoin issuer’s upcoming launch of a layer-1 blockchain called Arc. USDC will be the native asset for transaction fees; the blockchain’s litepaper notes the network would also support other local stablecoins.&nbsp;



Designed to let financial institutions build products and services onchain, Arc is set to go live by the year’s end, executives said.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“[With] Arc, we want to underpin all stablecoin finance — payments, FX, capital markets applications,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said on this morning’s call.&nbsp;



This follows a Fortune <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/08/11/stripe-blockchain-tempo-paradigm/">report</a> that Stripe is building a payments-focused layer-1 blockchain of its own (you might remember <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/08/11/stripe-blockchain-tempo-paradigm/">Stripe’s purchase</a> of stablecoin platform Bridge last year). And Robinhood <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/robinhood-l2-staking-us">revealing a layer-2 blockchain plan</a> too.&nbsp;



It’s becoming harder to find people denying the growth potential of a stablecoin market that currently stands at $260 billion. USDC in circulation grew to ~$61 billion at the end of Q2 — a 90% year-over-year increase. That figure was ~$65 billion on Aug. 10.



Allaire mentioned more trading firms, asset managers and the like wanting to move between tokenized yield-bearing collateral and digital cash. Our readers have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-yield-funds-complement-stablecoins">heard that before</a>.&nbsp;



Circle got into this game in January via <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-hashnote-deal-tokenized-money">its buy of Hashnote</a>, issuer of the US Yield Coin (USYC). It more recently revealed last month that Binance institutional customers could use USYC as off-exchange collateral for derivatives trades.&nbsp;



“We hope and expect that we will deploy this kind of architecture in more digital asset exchanges and ultimately on major traditional clearinghouses,” Allaire said.



More broadly, Circle’s Q2 revenue/reserve income totaled $658 million. The company attributed its quarterly net loss of $482 million to IPO-related non-cash charges. Circle’s adjusted EBITDA of $126 million was 3% above Wall Street expectations.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



CRCL shares were trading around $166 at 1:30 p.m. ET — up 3% on the day. The stock <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-shares-nyse-day-one">quickly surged</a> way above its IPO price but has dropped more than 40% from the nearly $300 peak it reached on June 23.



Compass Point analysts Ed Engel and Abdullah Dilawar said in a Tuesday note that they expected Circle to notch a higher gross margin than the $251 million it tallied in Q2. That was because of Binance’s USDC balances dropping and Coinbase’s on-platform USDC being down from Q1, they noted.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcldVIdgacTgvGtlNfg0uPsREEiZ2InIPT7jLbykaZHbOYhJEH6UceZ_nJ9lP-EXrxndaO6n7gq4AQu7W_R4NTx7CWJyPaNBa8yFM3VuDMj-yh3AeDf-oApYPXqtyuKW11KckeRJQ?key=DujvNo2W2nzBFlIV8EXMUw" alt="" style="width:673px;height:auto"/></figure>



Alongside the Binance USYC news, Circle last month <a href="https://www.circle.com/pressroom/circle-and-okx-partner-to-deepen-usdc-liquidity-worldwide">linked up</a> with OKX and fintech <a href="https://www.circle.com/pressroom/fis-partners-with-circle-to-unlock-stablecoin-money-movement-functionality-for-financial-institution-customers">FIS</a>.&nbsp;



“While CRCL&#8217;s lower margin guidance could be due to conservatism, CRCL&#8217;s recent partnerships don&#8217;t seem to benefitting the near-term margin outlook,” Engel and Dilawar wrote.&nbsp;



Clearly the company continues to build products, with its Circle Payments Network launch in May, and now Arc. As for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-ma-mergers-feeding-frenzy-kraken">inorganic growth via M&amp;A</a>, Allaire said the company would be “careful and deliberate.”



He added: “I don’t think our strategy here is to go try and do big, complex acquisitions to kind of throw additional business lines next to what we do. I think we take a full-stack integrated platform view…and so we only want to do things that really fit clearly in that kind of product mandate.”



Circle obviously remains a top stock to watch amid a growing universe of public crypto firms.



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Takeaways from Circle’s first post-IPO earnings call

For most Starknet dapps, attracting EVM users requires getting over a UX speed bump: set up a Starknet wallet, bridge assets over, and learn a new account system.&nbsp;



Extended, a decentralized <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/perpetuals">perpetual futures</a> exchange formerly called X10 and built by a team of ex-Revolut developers, decided to skip that playbook. The exchange today announced it has migrated from StarkEx to Starknet <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/extended-hybrid-derivatives-exchange">as planned</a>, and now offers more than 50 markets and leverage up to 100x.&nbsp;



But that’s table stakes these days; its real hook is that traders coming from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">EVM</a> DEXs don’t have to bridge to Starknet at all.



“With Extended EVM users don&#8217;t need to touch [or] interact with Starknet,” CEO Ruslan Fakhrutdinov told Blockworks. “If you deposit from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/arbitrum">Arbitrum</a>, you can withdraw to any other EVM chain, but if the wallet under which the account was created is an EVM wallet, you will not be able to withdraw to Starknet.”



Starknet wallet users — such as Ready (formerly Argent) and Braavos — are also welcome but will deposit and withdraw only to or from Starknet.



It’s a hard split no other Starknet dapp is running today, and it works because of Starknet’s native <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-devs-debate-account-abstraction">account abstraction</a>, according to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/starkware">StarkWare</a> CEO Eli Ben-Sasson.



“You can support any kind of signatures. So you&#8217;re still using <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/metamask">Metamask</a> and these things to sign on your transactions,” Ben-Sasson told Blockworks. Hardware wallets, EVM wallets, even Bitcoin wallets can connect if dapps want to manage such an integration.



Under the hood, Extended is temporarily running two versions — the original StarkEx, StarkWare’s earlier scaling engine, and the new Starknet one — but will nudge users over in a three-phase process: two weeks of dual operation, two weeks of reduce-only on StarkEx, and then a final freeze with forced position closures.



Points and trading history carry over, and new accounts now spin up directly on Starknet.



Extended is arriving with some early momentum — average daily volumes of $319 million, open interest above $55 million, and a 55% repeat depositor rate in its Community Vault program, the team reports.



For EVM traders, it’s an unusual offer: a Starknet-settled perp venue you can reach from six major EVM chains.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeEO-gIfduJkmBv_w4b_q9FLroYujEalA8Yr4uGHGdZMts8TFprRESWM3d4J_KWUONaMJFvbeTdsUEbyMutQx5tZvCb9_3sSOQD_3nj3TrgGQVkE3-McFN6OnfSr5DkClAsRLqh?key=i_QzdzulFbDnwJUC7Ppvjw" alt=""/></figure>



Source: extended.exchange



The offering includes TradFi pairs like EUR/USD, gold, oil, and an SPX index. Arbitrum rival Ostium <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ostium-dex-points-rwa-arbitrum">has been touting the same</a>. On Starknet, Extended competes with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/starkware-appchain-defi-cefi">Paradex</a>, with both angling for a CEX-like user experience.



The Extended team says the migration sets up a bigger product roadmap, including unified margin, integrated lending, and eventually spot.



By walling off the Starknet side from the EVM side, Extended is betting it can capture both audiences without forcing either to change habits. For Starknet, that means more on-chain volume. For EVM traders, it means tapping into a new set of markets with the same wallet, networks, and flows they already use.&nbsp;



If the model sticks, it could be a template for how non-Ethereum chains court EVM liquidity with less friction.



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Ethereum

EVM in front, Starknet in the back

Kate Irwin

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



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Remember Bigcoin?&nbsp;



If you don’t, I don’t blame you. Its bubble popped fast.&nbsp;



The Abstract-based crypto “mining” game saw a sudden surge of activity back in April, reaching a cumulative user count of nearly 70,000 <a href="https://dune.com/Marcov/bigcoin">according</a> to some <a href="https://dune.com/hawkyang/bigcoin">dashboards</a>.&nbsp;



Players had to buy a virtual room and spend the game’s token, BIG, to add passive BIG mining rigs. Those rigs take the form of pixelated computers, GPUs, animals like Pudgy Penguins, or other objects. The rigs earned players more BIG over time.



The original game loop was about earning BIG and expanding their facilities. To get a larger room that can fit more mining rigs, players also have to — you guessed it — pay with BIG.



But initial hype around the game didn’t last. By June, the game was seeing less than 40 new users joining daily.



BIG’s price remains <a href="https://www.geckoterminal.com/abstract/pools/0x4e8e8cc1c6548aa41ecb187967d377bf15673c15">down 93%</a> from its April 11 all-time high.&nbsp;



But it’s climbed about 290% in the past month.



What gives? Its creator, an anon who goes by “Bigtoshi,” announced his departure from the project last month and has <a href="https://x.com/satoshibigmoto/status/1944756770121175159">handed</a> it over to a small group of community members.



One of Bigcoin 2.0’s core contributors is a crypto entrepreneur (and reported ex-game developer) who goes by the pseudonym <a href="https://decrypt.co/138765/how-elon-musk-parody-twitter-account-spawned-gaming-startup">BoredElon</a>.&nbsp;



Bored, who takes protecting his real identity seriously, describes himself as a Bigcoin whale. He’s tried his hand at a few different crypto projects in recent years, from his BoredBox crypto gaming lootbox idea to his Edison metaverse project. Neither of those projects are currently active.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdVoMCsZjPrmZWCCyID4jEv6PNnHoJ-NHeg4zqc2-UUlFTEdOwKIwAtQK-Bt0cuMX-UyyFBHx4-wR9THWY6nZ8wVEEOmMfh5PSKH8IDV68-q7hfmmRNn_lrZQJD_Pu464ZE8Hv9ag?key=Gx3OHwQaZj763ylvmQcyCQ" alt="" style="width:558px;height:auto"/></figure>



The <a href="https://docs.bigcoin.tech/">new Bigcoin</a> is being overseen by a “handful” of community members, including Bored, plus a trader who goes by EJR, and a few others. They’ve just <a href="https://x.com/bigcoinmining/status/1954936991285453017">turned</a> the pixelated “mining” rigs into over <a href="https://opensea.io/collection/bigcoin-miners">29,000 Abstract NFTs</a> on OpenSea in a way that generates royalties so the new team can build up a treasury to reinvest into further building out the game.



The new team also wants to be able to add more BIG liquidity so that buyers won’t have to pay a lot in slippage.



Of course, BIG’s price crash was nothing new. Like many, many low-cap tokens before it, BIG’s price spiked upon launch, only to dump and trail downward for months after. That price action, plus the fact that those who started “mining” early got more rewards, spurred (arguably valid) accusations that the whole thing was just a Ponzi.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1548" height="1020" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-106017" style="width:720px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=1548 1548w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=390 390w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=396 396w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=332 332w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/image-1.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1548px) 100vw, 1548px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: BIG price history via GeckoTerminal.&nbsp;</figcaption></figure>



Bored said this week that BIG’s price “got out of control” when it first launched.&nbsp;



As a result, that created some unrealistic expectations. And, like with most tokens, the price plunge spurred anger from those who bought the top.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The problem with a lot of tokens today is they can be created in seconds,” Bored said during a <a href="https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1MnGnPYYoyjxO">livestream</a> of the game yesterday, where he displayed his “mining” facilities onscreen.



“I think the first iteration of Bigcoin definitely felt like a Ponzi,” Bored told me when I asked him during the stream if the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bigcoin-mining-game-faces-ponzi-allegations-amid-token-price-swings">“Ponzi” accusations</a> were fair. “I don’t think the current version of Bigcoin is a Ponzi at all,” he said.



Over half of the BIG that&#8217;s been mined has already been burned, with over 9 million burned out of 16.9 million mined (BIG has a capped 21 million supply).



Michael Lee, co-inventor of Abstract and former VP at Activision Blizzard, confirmed to me in a message that Bored and Bigtoshi aren’t the same person.



“Bigcoin’s handover to its community mirrors Bitcoin — its success depends on outgrowing its founder and becoming a project owned by everyone, yet no one. In this story, notable members like Bored step into the role of Michael Saylor.” Lee said.



He added: “With merge mining, Bigcoin’s promise is to evolve into a fair token launcher — free from KOLs, whales, cabals, bundlers, and market makers — for the people. Like Bitcoin, put in the work and mine the tokens.”



Whether Bigcoin 2.0 succeeds in this way is still up in the air, of course. But about 215 unique wallets have already bought into the new NFTs, suggesting at least some believe it can happen.



Update 8/12/2025 at 3:50 pm E.T.: wording around token burning changed for clarity.



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Abstract mining game Bigcoin plots comeback after BIG crash

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">
“The limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modern times.”



— Nicholas Butler, Nobel Laureate
</blockquote>



When the novel but seemingly innocuous idea of “limited liability” came before parliament in 1856, it proved surprisingly contentious.



It’s hard to fathom now, but before then, investors were typically on the hook for the debts incurred by the companies they invested in.



Imagine getting a bill in 2008 for your share of the $619 billion of debt that Lehman Brothers defaulted on, just because you bought the stock in 2007.



In the 1850s, though, many in the House of Lords thought that was exactly how investing should work.



Lord Monteagle, for example, <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1856-03-14/debates/c537cbb3-78b9-49f9-a288-e0fa2f06eee1/LimitedLiability">warned</a> that limited liability was a practice &#8220;of a most dangerous character” because it would “excite speculation and gambling.&#8221;



Lord Overstone agreed, predicting that limited liability would “stir up the terrible demon of speculation” and “make trade more like a vast lottery wheel than that field of steady honesty and cautious enterprise.&#8221;



Earl Grey even put down his cup of tea long enough to warn that speculators starting limited liability companies would recruit “dupes to join him in the most absurd projects.&#8221;



In the end, the Joint Stock Companies Act passed with relative ease, but the concept of limited liability made even the businessmen who stood to benefit uneasy.



Would creditors still lend if companies could simply walk away from their debts?



They would, as it turned out — and at a scale previously unimagined.&nbsp;



Limited liability made it possible to raise giant pools of capital from thousands of small investors, who no longer had to fear putting their personal wealth at risk.



As corporations grew larger and more complex, however, so too did the problem of governance: Shareholders had no binding authority over those who managed the companies they nominally owned.



Fortunately, the mid-19th century also saw Acts of Parliament in the UK and general incorporation laws in the US that made it standard for shareholders to have a binding say in how companies were managed.



This marked a shift from shareholder input as a courtesy to shareholder power as law.



By the turn of the century, the combination of limited liability and shareholder governance had proven to be a genuine revolution.



“I weigh my words,” Nicholas Butler declared in 1911, “when I say that in my judgment the limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modern times.”



“Even steam and electricity are far less important than the limited liability corporation,” he added, “and they would be reduced to comparative impotence without it.”&nbsp;



But it wasn’t only big industrial corporations that stood to benefit from these ideas.



Decades later, the same principles of limited liability and shareholder governance were finally extended to small, closely held businesses.



Not in London, this time, but Wyoming.



In 1977, the sparsely populated Cowboy State became the first place to establish the limited liability company (LLC) — to not much reaction. Few knew what to make of this part-corporation, part-partnership hybrid entity at the time.&nbsp;&nbsp;



LLCs only caught on in the 1990s after the IRS finally ruled on their tax treatment, and the other 49 states finally recognized them.&nbsp;



With those hurdles cleared, LLCs proved wildly popular because they extended the liability protections and legal powers of a corporation to smaller, more flexible groups — without the formalities of corporate governance.



Now, LLCs outnumber corporations in the US by more than 10 to one.



In 2024, Wyoming made corporate history again by extending that same liability shield and legal recognition to decentralized crypto communities.



The Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association (DUNA) was created to give DAOs legal standing without forcing them to sacrifice decentralization.



A DUNA can do things that would normally require a hierarchy of executive decision makers — enter into contracts, appear in court, pay taxes —&nbsp; but remain governed entirely by its community of token holders.



Importantly, DUNAs shield governance participants from personal liability for collective decisions.



They also make those decisions legally binding: DUNAs make onchain token holder votes enforceable off-chain, so insiders can’t ignore them.



Like previous innovations in governance, DUNAs have been slow to catch on.&nbsp;



DAOs have so far preferred to incorporate in the Cayman Islands, become a Swiss foundation or just forgo legal existence entirely.&nbsp;



This afternoon, however, the Uniswap Foundation <a href="https://gov.uniswap.org/t/rfc-establish-uniswap-governance-as-duni-a-wyoming-duna/25770">proposed</a> that UNI token holders adopt a Wyoming-registered DUNA, with the new entity to be known as “DUNI.”



DUNI, the proposal says, would be “purpose-built to preserve Uniswap’s decentralized governance structure, while enabling engagement with the offchain world.”



In other words, UNI token holders would continue to govern the protocol and the purpose of the DUNA would simply be to ensure that their decisions are executed.



The proposal offered some examples: “Governance can turn on the protocol fee, fund innovation, form partnerships and navigate legal obligations with confidence.”



That first of these — the protocol fee — will get the most attention.



But I don’t think it should, simply because the “N” in DUNA stands for non-profit.



That doesn’t mean DUNI will be a charity — DUNAs are permitted to earn and distribute revenue.



It does, however, mean that DUNI is intended for something other than maximizing profits for token holders.



Wyoming law puts “a ceiling on the value that a blockchain network can extract from users and compensate members with,” as Miles Jennings and David Kerr wrote in their <a href="https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/duna-for-daos/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">intro explainer</a> on DUNAs.



They note that some may “balk at hurdles to value extraction.”&nbsp;



But that, presumably, is what the crypto-inspired law intended: Crypto was meant to be about creating value, not extracting it.



If DUNAs become as significant as LLCs, it will be because it also enabled new kinds of communities to operate in the legal and financial system without adopting its old hierarchies — but also because it gives legal standing to “open blockchain networks that function more like public infrastructure than proprietary technology,” as Jennings and Kerr write.



I’m not sure how popular that will prove — much of crypto may have gone too far toward the “speculation and gambling” that Lord Monteagle warned us about.



But if Uniswap token holders vote to become a Wyoming DUNA, it will at least make an alternative trail to decentralization plain for all to see.



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</ul>

Did crypto just have its LLC moment?

Donovan Choy

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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ORCA is up 19.6% on the week as the Orca DAO prepares to deploy its treasury assets toward a token buyback initiative.



The governance <a href="https://v2.realms.today/dao/66Du7mXgS2KMQBUk6m9h3TszMjqZqdWhsG3Duuf69VNW/proposal/7tCCK3wSWvbRcQwvSuVRgvBFDqsZRNRSB9xZLjST5tKd/overview">proposal</a>, which opened for voting last Wednesday, would see the staking of treasury assets into the Orca validator node.&nbsp;



Then the Orca Council will withdraw assets when “deemed appropriate” to conduct buybacks over the next 24 months.



As of today, Orca’s <a href="https://solscan.io/account/DWo8SNtdBDuebAEeVDf7cWBQ6DUvoDbS7K4QTrQvYS1S">treasury</a> holds 55,127 SOL ($9.9 million) and 503k USDC.



The vote for the proposal ends in about 24 hours, and is likely to pass with currently a 100% “yes” response and a 51% quorum already met.



Orca is Solana’s third-largest DEX, with about $19-20 billion in July trading volumes.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfP5yYyYHcGNpHtbtSQ_NqLzNqoJagS8KYCzZEwz6LJcjnaU1Tvh3T49hWFks2QtJul3E9JbTevgoZRebjxDI5rmbL6KPMnzwcNDfh6vtTgKduRAzPN_e4O3RuBZBfJOA7zaIhL?key=B-8owsZhO3CYf42-JzF2GQ" alt=""/></figure>



On a YTD basis, Orca has generated about <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/fees/orca">$115 million</a> in fees.



50% of these fees go toward protocol development, while 30% are directed to the treasury wallet that fuels ORCA buybacks should the aforementioned governance proposal pass.



The remaining 20% of fees are allocated to a separate ongoing ORCA buyback initiative that will eventually go toward ORCA staking.



The Orca team told me that staking is slated for launch in September, so that’s two potential value accrual streams for ORCA token holders in the near term.



On a market cap-to-revenue basis, ORCA trades about 24% lower (7.36x) than RAY (9.63x), which may suggest some relative upside for ORCA if revenues are consistent.&nbsp;



But that’s a big if when you take into account the rise of <a href="https://lightspeed-4bed7b.beehiiv.com/p/seek-peek">prop AMMs</a> on Solana that points to an increasingly hyper-competitive and commoditized DEX landscape.



Orca isn’t resting on its laurels, though. The team also launched <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/orca-solana-token-launchpad">Wavebreak in beta</a> two weeks ago, a memecoin launchpad built on Orca’s own proprietary in-house tech stack.



Compared to your average launchpad, Orca’s Wavebreak is <a href="https://docs.orca.so/wavebreak/what-is-wavebreak?utm_source=chatgpt.com">designed</a> to be “human-first,” meaning tokens in the bonding phase are designed to be protected from sniper bots.



Outside of Solana, Orca is also the dominant DEX on the SVM-based Ethereum L2 chain, Eclipse. Orca’s Eclipse deployment has far lower usage than Solana, though — about <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/dexs/orca">93 million</a> in July volumes vs. 20 billion on Solana.



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Lightspeed Newsletter

Orca DEX plans buybacks and token staking

Vitalik Buterin thinks Ethereum’s ZK proving stack is turning a corner, and wants the ecosystem to use that momentum to eliminate one of its most persistent UX roadblocks: week-long L2 withdrawals on optimistic <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollups</a>.



Fraud proof windows — a requirement for canonical bridging from rollups like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/base">Base</a> back to Ethereum — are “simply far too long for people,” Buterin wrote in a <a href="https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1953131251436818684">post</a> on X last week.



“This creates large incentives to instead use solutions with unacceptable trust assumptions (eg. multisigs/MPC) that undermine the whole point of having L2s instead of fully independent L1s,” he said.



The centrality of Ethereum mainnet as an economic link will be a key factor going forward, Buterin has suggested in a new <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNSnYIjoqOM">interview</a> published today.



“The thing that keeps the L1 relevant is where assets — even if most of the activity happens on L2s — are issued on the L1,” Buterin said, adding, “Encouraging assets to actually be issued on L1 and making it economically viable to do that…is one of these really important pieces in terms of keeping the L1 central.”



Historically, optimistic proof systems required multi-day challenge periods. Getting rid of that limitation requires <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/brief-history-zk-tech">a shift away from optimistic proofs</a>, as some validity proof-based rollups already have. The technological lift is much lower today.



“ZKVMs are, like, almost production-ready this year in a way that was totally not true…even one year ago,” Buterin said.



Against that backdrop, last week’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/0xresearch/da41bb88-4f69-11ef-b450-077f7ab33a70">Succinct Prover Network</a> mainnet launch is more than just another infra story.&nbsp;



Succinct’s decentralized marketplace lets applications submit proof requests while independent provers compete to fulfill them, receiving payments in the new <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/prove">PROVE</a> token. The network already supports more than 35 protocols and has fulfilled over five million such requests securing $4 billion in value, according to Succinct Labs.



Developers are able to access global proving power using an API call, with no custom infrastructure required. That will help commoditize proof generation, co-founder Uma Roy said, with the goal to make verifiable computation “the standard for how crypto integrates with the broader internet,” making the kind of frequent validity proofs Buterin describes more economical.



Tarun Chitra, <a href="https://x.com/SuccinctLabs/status/1953139765345435992">speaking</a> on the Succinct Labs launch stream, framed the long-term impact in terms that go beyond “faster and cheaper” L2s:



“If ETH mainnet has ZK as a first-class citizen, you&#8217;ll be able to do this type of stuff, like using your collateral on mainnet somewhere else without bridging,” Chitra said.



Buterin also outlined a path beyond the one-hour target: “In the longer term, we can solve this with aggregation: N proofs from N rollups (plus txs from privacy-protocol users) can be replaced by a single proof that proves the validity of the N proofs. This becomes economical to submit once per slot, enabling the endgame: near-instant native cross-L2 asset movement through the L1.”



If these developments become reality, the capital efficiency gains could be significant. Faster canonical exits reduce reliance on trusted bridge operators, free up liquidity for market-makers and asset issuers, and concentrate settlement activity — and ETH demand — back on the base layer.



Steven Goldfeder, co-founder of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/offchain-labs">Offchain Labs</a> building <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/arbitrum">Arbitrum</a> is less confident that a pure ZK approach is ready for prime time, however.



Despite the work to accelerate progress on validity proofs, “we haven&#8217;t reached the tipping point yet where ZK technology — particularly in the form that it&#8217;s packaged up in these full-on ZK rollups — is competitive with optimistic technology, and that&#8217;s in terms of speed cost and maturity, basically the technical parity,” Goldfeder told Blockworks.



Even so, Arbitrum’s cryptography team is top-notch and has endeavored to take a non-biased view on the competing architectures over time.&nbsp;



“We&#8217;ll probably integrate a more hybrid variant of zero knowledge proofs at some point,” Goldfeder said. “So rather than go all in, and say this is ZK rollup only, it&#8217;s more of an optimistic rollup that can be closed out more quickly by ZK proof.”



Over the weekend, ETH closed at its third-highest weekly close ever, and it’s now within 10% of its (non-inflation-adjusted) all-time high. Part of that bid may be macro and <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/7ffa3c40-6e62-11f0-a847-7f882b11347f">DAT driven</a>, but part may also be the market starting to price in the key technical pieces falling into place: maturing ZK tech, decentralized proving capacity, and a clear path to solving interoperability and UX woes.



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ZK proofs hitting escape velocity — and ETH may be feeling it

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Crypto gaming and investment firm Animoca Brands now has a <a href="https://x.com/animocabrands/status/1953789549437452740">financial stake</a> in Cool Cats, that 2D pastel cat PFP collection from the 2021 NFT boom that most of you probably forgot about a couple of years ago.



Cool Cats, considered by some to have been at one point a “blue chip” NFT collection, will now be part of the Mocaverse. The <a href="https://ysiu.medium.com/the-meaning-of-tokens-and-the-purpose-of-the-mocaverse-22b134ca3bc7">Mocaverse</a> is Animoca’s ambitious vision to give everyone their own crypto-powered identity and tie that into games and other experiences.



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcutHV4eyLtILpktRaxiqfRYsk9ekXBFjmYhVk0UB01S3japweFkc76tbVzDs2sQj_rIFnTouaPXtCaYl2c1ZjIHOFOKF3iCisTqMhPOgmNgbrEgMXHc8s2XPhMA3hQHNVYlIMDTA?key=zU2bGX4hrwcEG8YhzIEcdA" alt="" style="width:537px;height:auto"/></figure>



Animoca’s investment (of an undisclosed amount) means that Animoca and Coin Operated Group now own a majority interest in Cool Cats Group. Cool Cats community member Ken Cron is the chair and CEO of Coin Operated Group.



“We share a vision for a future where Web3 fuels creativity and community,” Cron said in a statement.



The NFT collection’s total volume traded has spiked roughly 400% in the past week, per NFTPriceFloor data. It also saw an expected floor price spike in the day after the announcement.



But that’s still just a blip in the grand scheme of things:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd3mXW-qwPdHvhHdj_WIljshYB08es6J4qZeVu8mkAbB1ozv-dLHYKFRVAGRp0qU4U0bL1ZxTYBOOeIUTHojCZrVft8uNKEIjdwMDsu_ubyR6Tx5dBmG3ofR-ndT2uHmR4fzC7hSA?key=zU2bGX4hrwcEG8YhzIEcdA" alt="" style="width:657px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Cool Cats floor price over time in USD. The collection has a $22 million market cap as of Monday morning.</figcaption></figure>



If I’m being honest, the news isn’t all that surprising, considering Animoca and the Cool Cats worked together <a href="https://x.com/coolcats/status/1578419928830726145">before</a> back in 2022.



In a statement, Animoca executive chair and cofounder <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/animoca-brands-yat-siu-crypto-gaming-comeback">Yat Siu</a> framed the move as a way to connect the Cool Cats’ community to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/animoca-moca-chain-mainnet-launch">Moca Network</a>.



“Cats have always been the darlings of the Internet, and Cool Cats is one of the most recognized digital brands out there, perfectly exemplifying the global appeal of digital felines,” Siu said in a press release.



Siu and Moca Network project lead Tyler Durden are also joining the Cool Cats board.



If you ask me — a self-proclaimed crazy cat lady — I’d argue the Cool Cats don’t lean into their feline inspiration nearly enough.



Yes, there was Cooltopia, a basic web game with a MILK token years ago. But otherwise the Cats could really stand to benefit from a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pudgy-penguins-luca-netz-nft-comeback">Pudgy Penguins</a>-esque social media brand building blitz to re-establish themselves as cute, relevant and actually about cats (their Instagram hasn’t posted a reel since February).



Back in 2022, Cool Cats’ future looked promising when it signed with top Hollywood talent agency CAA. But the collection also faced some <a href="https://decrypt.co/102920/what-happened-cool-cats-rise-fall-future-ethereum-nfts">controversy</a> around its then-CEO, who some community members believed wasn’t very in-touch with what the NFT owners wanted.



You also have to get people who don’t already own one of the 9,999 2021-era NFTs to care about the Cool Cats, too, in order to bring the brand back. 



As Animoca builds out its “Mocaverse” plans — which pivoted away from being a “metaverse” per se in recent years — it’ll absolutely have to compete with the Pudgy Penguins and the consumer-focused Abstract ecosystem.



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Animoca

Could Animoca Brands’ investment bring the Cool Cats back?

Westie

Even the best dashboard can only take you so far.



Sometimes you need direct access to the numbers in your own environment: feeding models, powering tools, automating the boring stuff.



Your models, dashboards, and reporting pipelines are starving for rock-solid onchain data, yet you’re still babysitting CSVs and wrestling with unreliable sources.



We’re unclogging that pipe today. Blockworks Data API connects our entire warehouse straight to your stack so you can build, ship, and iterate at lightning speed.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Why Data API?</h2>



Earlier this year, we promised two flavors of access: customize inside, retrieve outside. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dashboard-builder">Dashboard Builder</a> nailed the first, Data API will deliver the second.



With Data API, you’ll be able to:



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<li>Go deep when it matters. Pull the complete onchain story in a single call, powered by proprietary metrics that reveal what really drives a protocol.</li>
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From daily reporting to backtesting to automating investor updates, the possibilities are wide open.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A measured rollout</h2>



We’re starting small:



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If you want to be part of the first wave beyond our beta testers, <a href="https://blockworksco.typeform.com/api-waitlist">join the waitlist</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What’s next</h2>



Coming soon, we’re shipping Chart Builder, a no-code workspace inside Blockworks Research that lets you pick the exact metrics you want and turn them into custom charts or tables in seconds. No coding, no extra infrastructure, just immediate insights.



Together, these tools will make Blockworks Research more than a platform: It will be your complete crypto analytics workspace.



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



Blockchain transparency should make rigorous analysis easier.



Today, data collection and cleanup still waste too many hours.



Data API is our next step in removing that friction so you can spend less time wrangling and more time acting.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://blockworksco.typeform.com/api-waitlist">Join the waitlist</a></h2>



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Data API: Blockworks Data, Anywhere

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I’m right.”&nbsp;



— Molière
</blockquote>



US equities returned to their all-time highs this week despite all the worrying politics: tariffs, Fed-bashing, the BLS drama.



Or are markets up because of politics?



A <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5375473">new research paper</a> finds that a high level of political disagreement is predictive of positive returns for stocks.



The authors used a large language model to create 216 “virtual investors” with differing political and social views, asked them how they’d react to years of stock market news, and found that the stocks sparking the most disagreement delivered better returns.



This explains a lot: Disagreeing about politics is at an all-time high, so maybe it makes sense that stocks are, too?



If so, there should be many more gains to come.



Another <a href="https://collaborate.princeton.edu/en/publications/you-cannot-be-serious-the-impact-of-accuracy-incentives-on-partis">academic study</a> found that “many partisans interpret factual questions about economic conditions as opinion questions,” and that they answer such questions accordingly.



This also explains some things: Economists despair that people’s views of the economy are increasingly just a function of their politics. As it turns out, that’s because they think questions about the economy are about politics.



When the researchers offered a monetary incentive to answer the questions factually, the responses got much more accurate.



Perhaps that’s what happens in markets, as well: Prices fall on the initial wave of disagreement, then rebound as the drop incentivizes people to revisit the facts.



But this isn’t a case of clear-eyed professionals taking advantage of biased retail investors — <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5324623">another study</a> finds that even the pros are misled by their politics.



“Republican-affiliated forecasters project 0.3-0.4 percentage points higher growth when Republicans hold the presidency, relative to Democratic-affiliated forecasters,” the researchers found.&nbsp;



“Forecast accuracy shows a similar partisan pattern: Republican-affiliated forecasters are less accurate under Republican presidents, indicating that partisan optimism impairs predictive performance.”



I’m sure it works in the other direction, too, so there should be plenty of opportunity for unbiased investors…no matter who’s in the White House.



Could rising partisanship usher in a golden age for investors then?



When even the mundane Bureau of Labor Statistics is a point of political disagreement, investors may have a lot to look forward to.



Let’s see if we can help out by disagreeing over some charts.



Sales up, profits down:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcc6BVwdcC6qXfkZ9_pn8I9J9Kaoe-V0M_Eu-g6kxAWRBsg3e_HrIjJ-MjcK5ESSsmXgL8o--Lx8Fccu2LGmdsIDtSd24aCVX-l-nu2YhVf_dSsuI3fThkFPh9n8EC4wrlhJfYs1A?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



Meta said last week it’s making a high return on its giant AI investments because it makes its ads more effective. The rest of corporate America doesn’t seem to be benefiting just yet.



If you’re not paying for the product, the product is you:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfch309WeSHP-YtCLjaMrOEwaYtQUIuWhtn92lJrIMSTK0JxXquJ-qr_RDjH5iWGmeqlgtsO0mQjwvDVN7ubsBdlEUCMYm5eX4arNuFIDBUmaLijnbQbxoFTSj0FcpqUGwKuI4yAw?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



Meta is so good at targeting ads, it makes $25 of revenue off of each and every one of its users, each and every month.



The not-so-magnificent 493:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe96ogGUMEkYizSP8NigI8KgsgyLPd9HRP-JlAT99LDx4fcJi16vypWu_TAChy0j0ygyJcbndRYhWt-Fn8vN18yddMaxvNGl1AWu_gZOT4zd-r6vl_So-gQYsAfqZvWo92vDZNHkQ?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



The Mag 7 continues to grow earnings at a double-digit pace, but the rest of the S&amp;P is expected to grow at 3% or less over the last three quarters of the year — less than the rate of inflation.



The US stock market is narrow and expensive:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf89RjCRmgrUFf52qkrA2hrEiqyRa-G7QqE9uPwE1hsgiXmzSUAMNvfFRqa8maiJvCok08d_TqqczzzIk_oUgINTBVAslEHc0Tro6Bpd3wbvVuGmljuXG-AvXjDaD1A6GD_4sOwcQ?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



Nvidia now makes up almost 8% of the S&amp;P 500 and trades on 58x P/E. In 1994, the largest stock was GE, which was only 3% of the S&amp;P 500 and traded on just 8x P/E.&nbsp;



Fewer college kids:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcjiOpuvIgvONtrSLGkKC69Jseexr5xzBd1y0zDjGs5SedY2Zt9-pclkceQZCxTFX1g9aBd2ZeszgHY_VAbWyi3mPiSPHcBAgH5X89Ze64Syn9gHEAi1XePx1bP_d0_lVb3XGT7dw?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



The Association of International Educators estimates that new international enrollment to American universities will be down as much as 40% in the upcoming semester.



Fewer immigrants, fewer jobs:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdC1xXCG4ITDnbGL_WTqD5AsLbugX3_GguUHySDYAjxSJGYYdTcARa7y572mfFBRxdEuIFjrf1HHUnIVw8bwtii7i6YmJ84j-MhWrgMzZ0RPsPLjCT4SDeJoMIL9dJejnQvE60yUQ?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



Claudia Sahm <a href="https://stayathomemacro.substack.com/p/job-growth-has-slowed-sharply-the?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=280281&amp;post_id=169996648&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=false&amp;r=6g77v&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email">says</a> “reduced labor supply is likely the key driver” of the weak jobs growth reported last week. That is bad news, but maybe less bad than if weak demand was more to blame.



Kids today, ugh.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeBiP1ajFIvkPQ9IMJIfeAnIOhIuLNKhEO57GG88M3xGFYMZLtafaeemz5ePTljBxZLOCPGxyzJeyX0uTEDsf77dgzCLEnzKGMvJN7aj4wQ0q3N-4uN_NZP3tcl9kMIw9gBIGrCBQ?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



The FT’s John Burn-Murdoch <a href="https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1953811277463122162">runs the numbers</a> on Gen Z and millennials and….one sec. Sorry, I thought I had a notification on my phone. Anyway, kids today, right? The good news for young job seekers is that it won’t be hard to look good by comparison.



Looking good by comparison:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfmdKLPbnDPfqrlooE-wjTFptbOTTTp51LIFwXfY-qsU6G8DEjGkrB55lyCUCGdFt7vWxa7Cs959CbO-pEM7W__KpstetKAJpQ5Y3G9E892v5HaP_DzN3-8OB7w6fN1xbBuPcNHZg?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



In the US, we’re worried that interest on the national debt is now eating up a record high 18% of government revenue. In China, though, one-third of provinces spend over 100% of revenue on debt repayments. I feel better now — it’s always nice to have a friend doing worse than you are.



ChatGPT usage is booming:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeGtreRAvIuQxud_WrjeYfmt7Q2WjdirRW-N8PQKdPPsCOCZjNYChh5ZPj9xT_GRCG7eHrbj8oizwVrVPZ9b9zTTYAkyxpQAToaPGa0pnRc2Ch1NSjrxFqMZIr6sZKec4hilFDQCQ?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



And GPT-5 is even better — an excellent but incremental and non-threatening evolution of the LLM. Is that enough to justify the $500 billion valuation that OpenAI has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/openai-eyes-500-billion-valuation-potential-employee-share-sale-source-says-2025-08-06/">reportedly</a> assigned itself? That would put it on a rich but not ridiculous valuation multiple of about 25x this year’s sales.



It’s not very good at charts, though:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe071xrge4Z4l2vH5p9JlMcJ-XGwQ9zV-YinoznGo0g9v3Ck9qLw6dcf8V56jxjDTnBXe6fhlo_fHJQj77ZK-iZH1vpkSz500FY2vdPK-gRtT5cp9IFwQE5WZxpFBzoAk8tCLccRg?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" alt=""/></figure>



This misproportioned chart crime was <a href="https://x.com/sama/status/1953513280594751495">included</a> in this week’s GPT-5 livestream. I take that as evidence AGI is further away than Sam Altman would have us think.&nbsp;



Google is pulling back ahead:<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXco1vEPQA8pEsG0VQRHdRrG6KMeOEasPcqzKYOkckwo-b-7eTSuT9FeGUGfMQXStKQkJaXO_Zj6AqKUGC0ddKnJ2jt5XY5SL3Pfrxb3GRZDrVi9xK7lP0Lg4o_vydlmcHK_6yFRqg?key=5-eVEGFcHvy-X-YBv0-I7g" width="624" height="315">



As good as GPT-5 is, Google’s Genie 3 LLM, also released this week, was even more impressive. <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/which-company-has-best-ai-model-end-of-2025?tid=1754675807754">Polymarket odds</a> now give Google a 53% chance of having the best AI model by the end of the year, vs. OpenAI at just 17%.



Disagree? It might be better if you do.



Have a great weekend, agreeable readers.



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Friday charts: Feel free to disagree

Casey Wagner

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



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President Trump yesterday got the ball rolling on allowing alternative assets in 401(k)s and other employee retirement plans.&nbsp;



The <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/democratizing-access-to-alternative-assets-for-401k-investors/">executive order</a>, signed Thursday afternoon, directs the Labor Department to “reexamine” its guidance on fiduciary responsibilities around alternative assets. This includes real estate, private equity and cryptocurrencies.&nbsp;



The Labor Department is also tasked with working with the SEC and other federal agencies to evaluate regulations and determine which changes should be made.&nbsp;



“Burdensome lawsuits that seek to challenge reasonable decisions by loyal, regulated fiduciaries, and stifling Department of Labor guidance issued since my first term, however, have denied millions of Americans opportunities to benefit from investment in alternative assets,” Trump wrote in Thursday’s order.&nbsp;



“Such assets are an increasingly large portion of the portfolios of public pension and defined-benefit retirement plans and offer competitive returns along with diversification opportunities.”



Reports that Trump was due to sign the order started circling hours before he actually put pen to paper, so investors (crypto, mostly) began trading the news well in advance.



Bitcoin, as expected, rose on the news, gaining close to 3% Thursday before paring gains on Friday. As of 2 p.m. ET, BTC was trading 0.6% lower over 24 hours. ETH gained as much at 6% yesterday and was still in the green today, trading 3% higher over the day at 2 p.m. ET.&nbsp;



Hedge funds and PE firms were also excited about the executive order, which kickstarts a regulatory change many of them have been seeking for years.&nbsp;



The federal agencies have 180 days to complete their evaluations and give recommendations. Should new regulations be proposed, the process of writing, soliciting public comment and finalizing rules will likely take several months.&nbsp;



401(k) and other account providers will also have to get on board. Even if alternative assets get the official green light, brokerages aren’t required to offer it. We saw something similar with bitcoin ETFs, which are still unavailable for trading on some major platforms, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tradfi-crypto-vanguard-stands-apart-bitcoin">including Vanguard</a>.&nbsp;



And, even if providers do want to offer alternative assets, creating the infrastructure and clearing legal and compliance hurdles is going to be expensive and time-consuming.&nbsp;



Speaking of Vanguard, I will mention that the asset manager <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Live/major-401k-trumps-new-crypto-private-equity-rules/story?id=124461859">told ABC news</a> yesterday that some alternative investments offer diversification and high return potential for investors, but education is crucial.&nbsp;



In a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/guaranteeing-fair-banking-for-all-americans/">separate executive order</a> on Thursday, Trump took aim at banks, directing federal regulators to crack down on institutions that “discriminate against customers and businesses” based on political beliefs.&nbsp;



The practice, known as “debanking,” has become a <a href="https://mail.blockworks.com/p/debanking-debunked">hot topic</a> recently, especially in the crypto industry as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-teams-analyze-debanking-narrative">companies report</a> being denied access to baking services due to a perceived “unsavory” reputation.&nbsp;



The order requires Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “develop a comprehensive strategy” for combating politicized and unlawful debanking activities. Federal banking regulators are also asked to review any past or current banking activities that may have violated these principles.&nbsp;



All in all, it was a big day for federal financial regulation. Although like I said, don’t expect changes to happen too quickly. We’ll be watching.



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401(k)

Crypto investors hopeful amid new regulatory orders

Ethereum’s next major upgrade, Fusaka, is still officially aiming for a November 2025 mainnet fork — but a surprise intervention on yesterday’s All Core Devs Consensus (ACDC) call revealed consensus-client teams want four extra weeks before release candidates are cut.



The request surfaced when Lodestar’s Matthew Keil warned the current September 1 deadline to finalize releases is “aggressive.”



“The timeline that we’ve been talking about is basically 4 extra weeks,” he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU4DgyH662c">told the group</a>. The proposed change would move the release-cut date from early September to the end of the month. Mainnet would still target November, although its full effect won’t be felt until early 2026.&nbsp;



Prysm’s Manu Nalepa backed the suggestion, stressing that “testing really close to mainnet regarding private [mempools]” is critical.&nbsp;



“Prysm has also &gt;4k lines of code yet to merge into our unstable branch,” Nalepa wrote his peers in the live chat.



The extra time would allow teams to merge large feature branches, resolve conflicts, and run stability testing on the exact code that will go live. This matters because merging late can introduce subtle bugs that earlier devnet runs never encountered, although testing processes have been <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/testing-bottleneck-next-ethereum-upgrade">beefed up over time</a>.



Fusaka is set to deliver a package of improvements aimed at <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-ethereum-tps">scaling Ethereum’s data availability</a> and streamlining validator duties. Headline <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/fusaka-ethereum-fork-updates">features include</a> PeerDAS to improve how blob data is distributed across the network, raises to the maximum blob limit per block from six to nine, reduction of the target blob count to five to help smooth gas prices, and the addition of new opcodes and precompiles aimed at making the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">Ethereum Virtual Machine</a> more efficient.



Two areas of testing are especially important: non-finality and private mempool behavior. In non-finality tests, validators stop finalizing blocks — for example, because of outages or mass exits — which leaves recent blocks open to reorganization. Engineers then measure liveness (how quickly the chain resumes finalizing) and safety (ensuring no conflicting histories are finalized) once validators return.



Private mempool testing checks how well transactions, including blob data, are handled when they’re intentionally kept out of the public mempool, a common scenario for block builders using <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tool-middleware-execution-ethereum-fast">private order flow</a>.



The stakes extend beyond Fusaka itself. This fork enables PeerDAS, Ethereum’s next step in scaling blob (data) availability for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollups</a>, and introduces Blob Parameter Updates (BPOs) — a mechanism to raise blob capacity without another hard fork. The first three BPOs, tentatively set for mid-December, January and February, can only happen after Fusaka ships. Any slip to the fork pushes the entire scaling schedule back.



Some frustration bubbled up over the way the delay request landed. Tim Beiko, who leads the full All Core Devs coordination calls, noted:



“It would have been more productive for each team to individually voice this async ahead of the call. We should minimize the element of surprise in these things as much as we can.”



Ethereum Foundation research Ansgar Dietrichs looked for options to speed up the process on the margins but stressed that people should be free to speak their minds.



“There should obviously never be hesitancy to voice concerns on here,” he wrote in the chat.



No one argued for moving Mainnet past November, but the discussion underscored the trade-off between hitting public milestones and, as Keil put it, making sure the code is “well reviewed, battle tested and hardened and ready.”



For now, the plan is to get Holesky — the long-lived testnet <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-hard-fork-updates">slated for deprecation</a> — live in September, and push toward November, with the goal of wrapping up the testnet phases ahead of Ethereum’s major developer conference Devconnect, held this year in Buenos Aires, Argentina from November 17 to 22.



The consensus takeaway: When it comes to shipping Fusaka, confidence in the code will outweigh the calendar.



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blockchain

Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade may face delay

A proposed deal to take a Joe McCann-led Solana treasury company public via a SPAC has been called off, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.



The situation regarding the digital asset treasury company is still fluid, said one source, who noted the DAT may try to find a different path forward.



The reason behind the current deal’s demise was not immediately made clear. The news comes two weeks after a limited partner in Asymmetric, which is McCann’s hedge fund, <a href="https://x.com/SOLBigBrain/status/1947684482657505372">posted</a> on X that the fund is down nearly 80% on the year.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/appetite-for-dats">Why the appetite for DATs isn’t waning yet</a>



Following last month’s post, McCann announced on X that Asymmetric LPs had been given the choice to exit or “roll over available capital into a specific illiquid investment,” presumably referring to the Solana DAT.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/should-spacs-go-crypto">The practice and theory of DAT SPACs</a>



McCann did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



The DAT was set to be called Accelerate, according to an investor pitch deck viewed by Blockworks. The firm had ambitions to raise up to $1.5 billion, according to Unchained, which <a href="https://unchainedcrypto.com/new-solana-treasury-company-raising-1-5-billion-to-be-led-by-joe-mccann/">first reported</a> on the deal. Accelerate planned to go public via a SPAC with Gores Holdings X, which is a blank check company, Unchained added.



According to the pitch deck, McCann was set to serve as Accelerate’s co-founder and CEO. Komal Sethi, who the deck says is a board member at CoinList, would also be a co-founder and chief strategy officer. Sethi did not immediately respond to a LinkedIn message asking for comment.



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