Liz Coyne

In the latest episode of Blockworks&#8217; podcast &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtjsdbu_1Bg&amp;t=10s" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">On the </a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npZKHhmRAXg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Margin</a>,&#8221; Michael Ippolito, co-founder, Blockworks, sits down with Steve Van Metre who presents the other side of the popular macro narrative that inflation is coming. 



Steve&#8217;s analysis is heavily focused on quantitative easing (QE), and how that program is designed to cause lower interest and a stronger dollar. In this episode they cover how the mechanism behind QE works, why it traps dollars in the system, and how that ultimately leads to deflation.



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<iframe loading="lazy" title="Steve Van Metre on Why QE Will Cause More Deflation" width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/npZKHhmRAXg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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&#8220;On the Margin&#8221; is a two-part show.&nbsp;Once a week, Mike interviews industry experts, and then at the end of the week he is joined by co-host <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/newsletter/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tyler Neville</a> where they break down the top crypto and macro stories. Episodes go live every Wednesday and Saturday morning.



Subscribe to &#8220;On the Margin&#8221; today on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lyn-alden-explains-connection-between-inflation-bitcoin/id1558223079?i=1000513411286" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Apple</a> or <a href="https://spoti.fi/3bTa9uw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Spotify</a>, or watch episodes on <a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvER9nHSRN3xVs_p-dl7L7K_ZgL6lSudu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube</a>.

Quantitative Easing, Deflation and a Stronger Dollar

Jack Kubinec

After nine months of deliberation, the developers behind Celo have chosen OP Stack as the infrastructure for the project’s migration to Ethereum.&nbsp;



In a Monday forum post, cLabs, which is the software company behind Celo, said it would be putting the OP Stack migration up for a community vote. If successful, the layer-2 would be set to go to testnet in summer 2024.&nbsp;



CLabs first said it would migrate to a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">layer-2</a> in July 2023.



<a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/celo">Celo</a> and <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/optimism">Optimism’s</a> native tokens were both up roughly 5% amid a mostly flat day in crypto markets, according to CoinGecko.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celo-return-home-ethereum">‘Carbon-negative’ Celo to ‘return home’ to Ethereum as layer-2</a>



Celo’s layer-1 <a href="https://blog.celo.org/its-official-celo-mainnet-is-here-6a3a71763f68">went</a> to mainnet on Earth Day 2020 with a focus on global financial inclusivity and environmental health. CLabs <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/celo-3846/investor_financials">raised</a> $30 million from a16z and Polychain in 2019 to develop the project. It closed another $20 million round in 2021.



The layer-1 was Ethereum Virtual Machine (<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">EVM</a>) compatible, meaning Ethereum smart contracts could run on Celo.&nbsp;



Celo implemented EIP-1559 slightly differently than Ethereum implemented the proposal, and the cost of staying compatible with Ethereum ended up being “quite great,” cLabs Chief Technology Officer Marek Olszewski said Monday on an X <a href="https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1YqxoDgOnLjKv">space</a>.&nbsp;



Celo’s GitHub shows users paid a base gas fee and tip for transactions like with Ethereum’s EIP-1559, but small modifications were made. For instance, base fees were paid to Celo’s community fund rather than being <a href="https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/gas/">burned</a> like on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>.



“We’ve been really laser-focused on being extremely Ethereum aligned, having learned lessons before,” Olszewski added when discussing why Celo picked the OP Stack.



CLabs hopes that Celo’s layer-2 will aim to preserve certain features of the layer-1 like one-block finality, which <a href="https://blog.celo.org/why-build-on-the-celo-blockchain-9ceab3d11b70">helps</a> transactions settle quickly and prevents chain rollbacks or re-orgs — even if Ethereum itself re-orgs. Some lesser-used features may disappear with the migration, Olszewski said.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/worldcoin-teases-world-chain-layer-2">Worldcoin teases &#8216;World Chain&#8217; layer-2</a>



Besides Optimism, Celo also considered building its layer-2 with tech stacks from Arbitrum, Polygon or zkSync.



Should the migration go through, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">Optimism</a> will add another notable client to its so-called Superchain of layer-2s, which typically pay Optimism 2.5% in revenue sharing. Coinbase used the OP Stack to launch Base, and last week, Sam Altman-backed Worldcoin said its layer-2 would be built with the OP Stack.



The author of cLabs’ proposal <a href="https://forum.celo.org/t/clabs-proposes-migrating-celo-to-an-ethereum-l2-leveraging-the-op-stack/7902">wrote</a> that the OP Stack is “becoming an open standard” for layer-2s, and building in the Superchain could lead to “positive-sum partnerships” with other chains built using the tech stack.



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What’s behind Celo’s pivot to Ethereum?

Adam Efrima

EigenLayer, the biggest proponent and implementer of restaking, is starting to get rid of its training wheels. After briefly <a href="https://www.blog.eigenlayer.xyz/update-on-upcoming-lst-additions-and-restaking-unpause/">removing</a> caps on staking with liquid staking tokens (LST), total value locked soared from $2.1 billion to 11.5 billion in ETH used for “restaking.”



At its core, restaking is about increasing capital efficiency. 



ETH is a tremendously widespread and liquid asset, which makes it ideal for bootstrapping new proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols. The deal is simple: New networks get significant security from day one, while ETH stakers get to earn extra on the same assets they already hold.



Restaking is quickly achieving buzzword status, and it’s largely the cautiousness of the EigenLayer team that is, for now, keeping it relatively tame in terms of total value locked figures. As a relatively new staking mechanism, augmenting existing liquid staking protocols like Lido, Rocket Pool, Frax and others, it promises to unlock billions in additional value in the wider staking industry. But as with any new crypto primitive, there are voices of concern about how restaking might threaten the stability of Ethereum and crypto itself.



Some of these concerns are probably unfounded — for example, concerns about financial stability. Other risks, namely technical, are legitimate but vastly overblown. Critics argue that routing a majority of the ether staked into restaking protocols could lead to an unnecessary and risky stacking of these technical risks. But the truth is, there’s likely more risk in not embracing restaking.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How restaking increases the financial stability of Ethereum</h2>



Restaking offers a great way to finally unlock the potential of LSTs, which could increase the security of ETH. It’s important to remember that beyond the convenience, LSTs exist for an important structural reason that directly benefits Ethereum security.&nbsp;



In a nutshell, staking yield on Ethereum competes with DeFi yields. Lending protocols and liquidity pools can offer more significant yield than the approximate 4% of ETH staking. If the average yield for ETH is significantly higher than that figure — which can easily happen in particularly active markets — then only a small amount of ETH supply will be dedicated to staking, making the network that much more fragile.



With LSTs, ETH holders don’t need to choose: They can just earn the baseline ETH staking yield at all times, and beef it up with DeFi yields if they’re adventurous.&nbsp;



Unfortunately, holding LSTs seems to be pretty much the only thing you can do in the current environment. LSTs’ usage in DeFi is mostly limited to enabling easy swaps for regular ETH, while DeFi trading usage is extremely limited — ETH has more than 10x the trading volume of Lido’s wstETH, according to Uniswap <a href="https://info.uniswap.org">analytics</a>.



Restaking comes to the rescue here by giving another potential source of income for ETH holders, which should make staking naturally more competitive with DeFi. The end result is that the network wins, as more ETH is staked.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Are there financial risks in restaking?</h2>



It’s important to note that restaking is a strictly technical practice — assets deposited to EigenLayer remain in the system, and are never lent to anyone else. Despite sounding similar to “rehypothecation,” restaking is a completely different mechanism that simply does not offer a financial risk surface. It’s worth noting that, for now, EigenLayer is the only significant player in the Ethereum restaking space and future protocols might offer a different risk profile.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/restaking-ticking-time-bomb-eth">Restaking is a ticking time bomb</a>



EigenLayer is a decentralized protocol, and there is a risk of losing LST value if it were delegated to a faulty EigenLayer operator. The cumulative risks thus also rely on the community of stakeholders doing their own due diligence, similar to the current LST market offering.



There may be confusion coming from Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRT), which are financialized EigenLayer positions — essentially an LST of ETH LSTs deposited to the EigenLayer protocol. The EigenLayer <a href="https://docs.eigenlayer.xyz/eigenlayer/risk/risk-faq">FAQ</a> mentions LRT liquidations, and the explanation might be doing more harm than good in this case.



In practice, it’s important to note that these risks are completely external to the protocol. If a user deposits their LRT into a lending protocol to enter a leveraged position, their liquidation is a fully external event. While there is an incentive for users to deposit their LRT due to the potential of leveraging yields, this risk level is unlikely to reach catastrophic proportions.&nbsp;



Just as nobody worried about Ethereum or Lido security during the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/signs-of-next-crypto-depegging">stETH de-peg</a> in 2022, nobody should worry about EigenLayer users getting liquidated. In that case, someone else will take control of their assets, and the system will move on. Furthermore, the stETH de-peg occurred before staked ETH was withdrawable, meaning that no significant arbitrage was possible.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Are technical risks of restaking significant?</h2>



Technical concerns about restaking are legitimate. After all, a failure in the EigenLayer protocol (or others like it) could result in a significant loss to the community of ETH holders as a whole. Excessive slashing, loss of control over the stake, malicious apps, etc. are all risks that ETH holders are potentially signing up for when restaking.



But it’s important to contextualize the technical risk. New protocol implementations will always have a risk of technical failure, and that is something that the community needs to understand and mitigate. Similar concerns can be voiced about each upgrade to Ethereum — the Merge itself could’ve gone wrong due to subtle bugs in the implementation.



Constant auditing, bug bounties, training wheels and active protocol monitoring are all parts of a defense in-depth security model that works both to prevent losses and minimize them if they were to occur. Plain old redundancy through competitor solutions can also be used to mitigate risks from poor specific implementations of restaking.



Some might argue that restaking is an <a href="https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/05/21/dont_overload.html">unnecessary increase</a> in the complexity of Ethereum’s consensus. That makes sense, but this risk has to be viewed in the context of a general risk of not enough ETH being staked.



Ethereum can be <a href="https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/attack-and-defense/">progressively crippled</a> by controlling certain percentages of active stake. At over 33%, Ethereum is unable to finalize. When attackers control over 50% of the stake, they can cause minor censorship and reorganization, while controlling over 66% of the staking power grants them full control. Again, the percentage is defined in terms of the currently active stake. If there’s only 1% of ETH supply in staking, attackers would need to add just another 1% to control 50% of staking power.



With only 26% of the supply currently in <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/eth2-staking">staking</a>, it is theoretically possible for an attacker to cripple the network by just acquiring 13% of the ETH total supply to reach 33% of the staked ETH share. That equates to just over $56 billion, which is less than three days’ worth of ETH daily volume. Though there are multiple caveats to this figure — for example, $56 billion of net buying pressure would push ETH price significantly higher — these are surprisingly low numbers for a global and neutral settlement layer.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Restaking and DVT could mitigate consensus risks entirely</h2>



The great thing about restaking is that it’s an extremely modular and decentralized architecture. The entirety of the stake is siloed into their respective applications, and part of it is always kept dedicated to only validating Ethereum. It is also quite easy to implement <a href="https://medium.com/@DragonStake/understanding-distributed-validator-technology-dvt-and-its-implications-on-ethereum-staking-2d2afae91595">decentralized validator technology</a> (DVT) for the operator sets involved in each EigenLayer service (which they call AVS).



DVT enables splitting control over a validator across multiple entities in a verifiable and cryptographically-secure mechanism. Since validators are responsible for producing and accepting new blocks, they are the source of “power” in the Ethereum network. An attack requires controlling validators, and while controlling the ETH stake is an important aspect of it, entities that accept other people’s stake have more power over the network than expected.



If the validator sets tied to EigenLayer and the associated stakes are safely distributed and managed through a DVT protocol, then risks of total system failure are significantly reduced. That would also lead to a much lower risk of mass validator downtime resulting in large slashing events.



If restaking adoption results in the majority of ETH supply being staked — while being distributed to an organic and decentralized set of validators — Ethereum could be significantly more secure than now.



Like any new idea, restaking protocols will need a long break-in period to ensure their technical safety, but otherwise they are extremely promising as the next major primitive in Ethereum infrastructure — and perhaps even necessary.



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


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


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The risks of restaking are extremely overrated

Bessie Liu

Bitcoin layer-2 solution Stacks initiated the rollout of its Nakamoto upgrade shortly after the halving last Friday. This significant development is designed to enhance transaction throughput and unlock Bitcoin finality for layer-2 transactions.&nbsp;



The Nakamoto upgrade aims to enable faster block processing and ensure all settlements are finalized on the layer-1. This will allow Bitcoin to remain secure while being programmable, similar to Ethereum and Solana Virtual Machines.&nbsp;



Muneeb Ali, the co-founder of Stacks, told Blockworks that the Nakamoto upgrade and the general growth of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin">Bitcoin</a> layer-2 infrastructure may revive interest in the Bitcoin blockchain itself.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-2024-occurs">Bitcoin’s block reward slashed by 50% following 2024 halving</a>



“Users are finally separating BTC the asset from Bitcoin as the rails,” Ali said. “BTC is the only digital asset that has proved itself as a hedge or store of value. This has created nearly $1 [trillion] in capital just sitting there. I believe the significant advancements made by [layer-2s], like Stacks’ Nakamoto upgrade, are a large contributor to this resurgence.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">🧵1/12 <a href="https://twitter.com/Stacks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Stacks</a> 2.5 Activation Thread The first step with the most awaited <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24STX&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$STX</a> Nakamoto upgrade is happening on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bitcoin</a> block 840360. Here&#39;s a MEGA thread on what you need to know.☝️ <a href="https://t.co/d0AHD3DaqS">pic.twitter.com/d0AHD3DaqS</a>&mdash; Louise | CEO @Ryder (@louiseivanvp) <a href="https://twitter.com/louiseivanvp/status/1782321362037510264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 22, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



According to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stacks">Stacks</a> team, the Nakamoto upgrade rollout will continue over the next month, improving block times from the current 10-30 minutes to around five seconds. Ali notes that these improvements will enable Bitcoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-2-2">layer-2s</a> to support the growing DeFi applications that are being built.



“I think the market is awakening to the fact that Bitcoin can be the base layer for our industry. Bitcoin is the apex crypto asset, and [layer-2s] are enabling an economic flywheel around BTC through apps and smart contracts,” he said.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-layer-2-impact-stacks">Q&amp;A: What will the Bitcoin halving mean for Bitcoin L2s?</a>



In addition to improved Bitcoin layer-2 infrastructure, Ali notes that other types of innovations are also gaining significant interest in the Bitcoin blockchain. These include ordinals and BRC-20s, which saw a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-ordinals-trading-frenzy">spike in interest </a>following Bitcoin’s all-time high last month.



“Experimentation is good for Bitcoin and Bitcoin [layer-2s], so we should encourage more R&amp;D around [layer-2s], Ordinals, Runes and other innovations. I predict that post-halving we will see a [layer-2] summer where the Bitcoin developer ecosystem and competition heats up,” Ali said.



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Stacks Nakamoto upgrade unfolds a new era for the Bitcoin L2

David Canellis

After memecoin mania cycles were speed-run on Solana and Base, this weekend was Bitcoin’s turn, and a new network milestone came along with it.



For the first time ever, bitcoin miners in a single 24-hour period earned more in fees than in block rewards. On Saturday — just after the halving and the launch of token minting protocol Runes — miners raked in $80.74 million in fees and $26.28 million in bitcoin.&nbsp;



That has never happened before, according to Token Terminal data. The day after also came close, with fees making up nearly 80% of all miner revenue.



Prior to this weekend, the closest fees that had come to flipping the block reward was during the peak bull market in December 2017: $21.1 million to $27.3 million. It also almost happened on Monday, May 8, 2023, with fees making up 42.6% of the total miner revenue for the day.&nbsp;



Runes, a new protocol for minting <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/meme-coins">memecoins</a> from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ordinals">Ordinals</a> creator Casey Rodarmor, was released at the same block height <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-2024-occurs">as last Friday’s halving</a>. Not for any technical reason — just it made for a neat countdown.&nbsp;



A slew of Rune mints immediately came online, and average transaction <a href="https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3y">fees</a> hit an all-time high of nearly $130, per BitInfoCharts, more than double the previous record from the last bull market.



About 53,000 Runes-related transactions were <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/runes">recorded</a> in the first two hours, roughly one-third more than the overall network’s usual numbers across February and March.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-runes-launch">Bitcoin Runes look to spice up the halving party</a>



Runes made up more than half of all Bitcoin activity on Saturday and Sunday, which explains why fees went berserk. People were willing to splurge to use the chain, as long as it meant minting the first Runes to hit the network.&nbsp;



Now, Runes are down to about 30% of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin">Bitcoin</a> transactions and fees have fallen to about $11 for high priority.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/D3V3v4vpBvOETl0emtNn3nZD-skI-OO9inURWRhmd8DVskPb12NfdDSmq-UvFpJnMQi1S6HsYKlEBE6OtqO_A8v7Roy2QLwdxlQgOFOs-9fnF_ECcon21Wfoap_lBOjZfBrb5awygZwtxKKoIKGu8WM" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The pink columns, representing daily fees paid, are practically off the chart (<a href="https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/bitcoin">Source</a>)</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Did Satoshi want memecoins on Bitcoin? Who cares</h2>



Runes are fungible memecoins that exist entirely on-chain. With <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ordinals">Ordinals</a>, special data (images, sounds, videos, text, browser-compilable code and so on) is written to individual satoshis (sats), imbuing them with non-BTC properties to make them unique and non-fungible.&nbsp;



Those sats become Ordinals, which can then be traded on NFT marketplaces alongside other unique digital collectibles on Ethereum, Solana and other blockchains.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-crosses-200-amid-memecoin-airdrop-interest">Solana breaks $200 as memecoin and airdrop interest continue</a>



Pseudonymous developer Domo riffed on Ordinals to create an experimental token standard for fungible assets, BRC-20.



Instead of images or videos, sats are inscribed with a JSON list of variables, including a ticker and max supply, technically making those Ordinals part of a larger, independent BRC-20 supply with its own market. Domo had effectively hacked Ordinals to create lo-fi memecoins — while Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade had been hacked to create lo-fi NFTs. A cypherpunk tradition.



By contrast, Rodarmor intends Runes to be more lightweight. Instructions for Runes are attached to UTXOs rather than individual sats, which means Runes (memecoins) can be ported to the Lightning Network or other similar projects in the future.



<a href="https://www.satscreener.com/runes#">SatScreener</a>, a portal tracking the implied market caps of Runes ($4.5 billion), has listed more than 7,000 different memecoins, most of them practically worthless, including:&nbsp;



<ul>
<li>ALL-YOUR-TICKERS-SUCK</li>



<li>WADDLE-WADDLE-PENGU</li>



<li>BITCOIN-NETWORK-CONGESTION</li>



<li>IDK-HOW-TO-SELL-THIS</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Fees really can make up for the halving — this time</h2>



Bitcoin’s $130 transaction fees, even fleeting, are still absurd in crypto’s current age of low-cost prioritization before decentralization, trustlessness and even liveness.&nbsp;



Whether high Bitcoin fees are bad, however, depends largely on one’s vantage point. There are likely few complaints among miners, who as a cohort just took a 50% haircut on the block reward at the halving. On standard 10-minute block times, miners now earn 450 BTC ($29.7 million) per day, down from 900 BTC ($59.4 million).



A hypothetical trader who spent $50 to mint some Runes, which they then sold for much much more down the line largely wouldn’t care, either.



For someone using Bitcoin to protect their net worth from inflation, $100 fees would be infuriating. It’s practically impossible to know how many people fit into that scenario, but in any case, memecoins are surely pricing out those who need bitcoin most — particularly those with low balances.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-inflation-and-issuance-schedule">Why is 2140 the end of bitcoin inflation?</a>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">pissing off eth maxis and bitcoin maxis alike <a href="https://t.co/j6exdapXIB">pic.twitter.com/j6exdapXIB</a>&mdash; Eric Wall | OP_😺 (@ercwl) <a href="https://twitter.com/ercwl/status/1782029205770744125?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">High fees mean higher mining revenue</figcaption></figure>



And that may always be the reality of Bitcoin. It’s expensive to use. It might have to be to plug lost revenue resulting from the four-year halving schedule unless electricity for whatever reason suddenly becomes much less pricey.



That’s probably okay in a very broad sense; people who want to cheaply move value across borders can send and receive USDT on cheaper networks. And fees might have to rise even higher in future cycles, especially without abundant and low-cost energy.&nbsp;



Ignoring the plight of miners in favor of users, the general consensus is there’s not much anyone can do outside of pushing activity to the Lightning Network, or raising the block size limit, which is still a <a href="https://blog.bitmex.com/the-blocksize-war-chapter-1-first-strike/">touchy</a> <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roger-ver-right-bitcoin-book">subject</a>.



Bitcoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-2-2">layer-2s</a> could hypothetically help, but it’s largely dependent on the trust profiles of those networks, as well as how users operate in the future. Besides, the current crop of Bitcoin layer-2s are all in preliminary development stages, so any potential benefits are far in the future.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-impact-on-layer-2s">How will the Bitcoin halving impact Bitcoin L2s?</a>



High Bitcoin fees hurt even more with the knowledge that banal stuff like CASEYS-MOM-HAS-GOT-IT-GOING-ON is driving them higher.&nbsp;



But at this point, it just is what it is.



A shortened version of this article was included in today’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire newsletter</a>.



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Bitcoin memecoins pushed fees higher than block rewards for first time

Ben Strack

Bitcoin miner Hut 8’s diversified revenue streams could give it an edge over competitors in the long term, according to analysts at Benchmark.



The research firm started covering the stock on Monday, three days after <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-2024-occurs">the Bitcoin halving</a> — when per-block rewards dropped from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.&nbsp;



Mark Palmer, a senior equity research analyst at Benchmark, gave Hut 8 a buy rating and a price target of $12 — roughly 50% higher than the level it trades at today.



The stock was trading up 5% at $8.49 midday Monday — down 36% year to date but up 16% in the last five days.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/depressed-miner-stocks-bitcoin-halving">How the Bitcoin halving could impact ailing mining stocks</a>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/hut-8">Hut 8</a> has a 2025 enterprise value-to-revenue multiple of 2.6 — compared to the average 3.1 multiple of its competitors, according to Benchmark data. The research included the multiples of Marathon Digital, Riot Blockchain, CleanSpark, Bitfarms, Cipher Mining, Iris Energy, Hive Digital Technologies and TeraWulf when assessing the peer average.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The figures are based on consensus 2025 revenue estimates, and the enterprise values include the companies’ net debt balances.



“We expect Hut 8 to close the valuation gap with listed peers that are further along in boosting their self-mining capacity as it executes on the build-out of its platform,” Palmer told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Investors are particularly focused on self-mining right now given expectations that the price of bitcoin will rally aggressively following the latest <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">halving</a>, he noted.&nbsp;



Hut 8’s self-mining deployed hash rate stood at 5.4 exahash per second (EH/s), well behind some of the space’s largest players in that category. The leader in that category, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/marathon-digital">Marathon Digital</a>, had 27.8 EH/s of installed hash rate at that time. 



“At the same time, we believe the diversity of Hut 8’s platform will benefit it over the long-term, as its revenue streams outside of self-mining position it to weather severe downturns in bitcoin’s price better than most of its listed peers, in our view,” Palmer said.



The coverage — and buy rating — comes several months after Hut 8 and US Bitcoin Corp. underwent a “merger of equals” that closed in November.&nbsp;



The combined company — with 25.5 EH/s of hash rate and 884 megawatts (MW) of energy capacity under management — also has business lines focused on managed services, hosting, high-performance computing and AI.



Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot has said during his <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hut-8-merger-ceo-switch">two-plus months in the chief executive role</a> that he was looking at every business line to figure out how to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hut-8-mining-ceo-strategy">nix inefficiencies and reduce costs</a>.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hut-8-growth-bitcoin-halving">Hut 8 eyes growth around the Bitcoin halving — but not at all costs</a>



Hut 8 said last week it had energized a third of its 63 MW Salt Creek site in Culberson County, TX. The company had relocated miners to Salt Creek <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/marathon-digital-terminates-competitor-involvement">from its Kearney, NE and Granbury, TX sites</a>.



“With Salt Creek, we gain critical control over our miner fleet and operating costs as we head into the halving,” Genoot said in a statement. “Our outlook on energy prices at the site suggests that the potential for cost savings relative to our cost of mining at Kearney and Granbury is in line with the 30% reduction initially projected.”



Though Hut 8’s mining fleet needs more efficiency upgrades, Palmer said, its holdings of 9,102 BTC — second in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/mining">mining</a> segment to Marathon Digital — give it a solid liquidity cushion and the ability to capture upside during bitcoin price rallies.



He added: “The company’s diversified model and relative strength in bitcoin’s price should support its operating performance until new equipment is purchased and deployed.”



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Hut 8’s business diversity to give it an edge after the halving: Benchmark  

Casey Wagner

Katherine Ross

Michael McSweeney

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Hot ball of memecoin money</h2>



After memecoin mania cycles were speed-run on Solana and Base, this weekend was Bitcoin’s turn.



Runes, a new protocol for minting memecoins from Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor, was released at the same block height as last Friday’s halving. Not for any technical reason — just it made for a neat countdown.&nbsp;



A slew of Rune mints immediately came online, and average transaction <a href="https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3y">fees</a> hit an all-time high of nearly $130, more than double the previous record from the last bull market.



Nearly 53,000 Runes-related transactions were <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/runes">recorded</a> in the first two hours, about one-third more than the overall network’s usual numbers across February and March.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-runes-launch">Bitcoin Runes look to spice up the halving party</a>



Runes made up more than half of all Bitcoin activity on Saturday and Sunday, which explains why fees went berserk. People were willing to splurge to use the chain, as long as it meant minting the first Runes to hit the network.&nbsp;



Now, Runes are down to about 30% of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin">Bitcoin</a> transactions and fees have fallen to $10.60 for high priority. <a href="https://www.satscreener.com/runes#">SatScreener</a>, a portal tracking the implied market caps of Runes (over $1.7 billion), has listed more than 7,000 different memecoins, most of them practically worthless, including:&nbsp;



<ul>
<li>ALL-YOUR-TICKERS-SUCK</li>



<li>WADDLE-WADDLE-PENGU</li>



<li>BITCOIN-NETWORK-CONGESTION</li>



<li>IDK-HOW-TO-SELL-THIS</li>
</ul>



This is why Bitcoin’s fee problem is back: <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/meme-coins">memecoins</a> with amusing names.&nbsp;



Runes are fungible memecoins that exist entirely on-chain. With <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ordinals">Ordinals</a>, special data (images, sounds, videos, text, browser-compilable code and so on) is written to individual satoshis (sats), imbuing them with non-BTC properties to make them unique and non-fungible.&nbsp;



Those sats become Ordinals, which can then be traded on NFT marketplaces alongside other unique digital collectibles on Ethereum, Solana and other blockchains.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-crosses-200-amid-memecoin-airdrop-interest">Solana breaks $200 as memecoin and airdrop interest continue</a>



Pseudonymous developer Domo riffed on Ordinals to create an experimental token standard for fungible assets, BRC-20. BRC-20s are popular — the biggest has a $1 billion market cap — but they can be clunky and data-intensive at scale.&nbsp;



By contrast, Rodarmor intends Runes to be more lightweight. Instructions for Runes are attached to UTXOs rather than individual sats, which means Runes (memecoins) can be ported to the Lightning Network or other similar projects in the future.



Bitcoin’s $130 transaction fees, even fleeting, are still absurd in crypto’s current age of low-cost prioritization before decentralization, trustlessness and even liveness.&nbsp;



Whether high Bitcoin fees are bad depends largely on one’s vantage point. Miners earned a record $80.7 million in <a href="https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/bitcoin">fees</a> on Saturday, so likely few complaints there. A trader who spent $50 to mint some Runes, which they then sold for much much more down the line largely wouldn’t care, either.



For someone using Bitcoin to protect their net worth from inflation, $100 fees would be infuriating. It’s practically impossible to know how many people fit into that scenario, but in any case, memecoins are surely pricing out those who need bitcoin most, particularly those with low balances.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-inflation-and-issuance-schedule">Why is 2140 the end of bitcoin inflation?</a>



And that may always be the reality of Bitcoin. It’s expensive to use. That’s probably okay in a very broad sense; people who want to cheaply move value across borders can send and receive USDT on cheaper networks.



Outside of raising the block size limit or pushing activity to the Lightning Network, the general consensus is that there’s not much anyone can do, at least in the short term.&nbsp;



Bitcoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-2-2">layer-2s</a> could hypothetically help, but it’s largely dependent on the trust profiles of those networks, as well as how users operate in the future. Besides, Bitcoin layer-2s are all in preliminary development stages, so any potential benefits are far in the future.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-impact-on-layer-2s">How will the Bitcoin halving impact Bitcoin L2s?</a>



High Bitcoin fees hurt even more with the knowledge that pointless stuff like CASEYS-MOM-HAS-GOT-IT-GOING-ON is driving them higher. But at this point, it just is what it is.



— David Canellis



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



<ul>
<li>Fehu, etched in block 840,000, is by far the largest Runes project right now, making up about 70% of the total <a href="https://www.satscreener.com/runes">market</a>.</li>



<li>Ordinals and BRC-20s <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/runes">contributed</a> less than 1% of all Bitcoin fees on Sunday, compared to Runes’ 34.5%.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Bitcoin NFT volumes are more than double Ethereum’s over the past week: $104 million to $46 million, according to <a href="https://www.cryptoslam.io/blockchains">CryptoSlam</a>.</li>



<li>Ether is no longer only inflationary over the past week, but also over the month: 4,172 ETH ($13.3 million) has been added to the <a href="https://ultrasound.money/">supply</a> in the past 30 days.</li>



<li>Hyperliquid and Blast are gaining ground on DEX derivatives leader Arbitrum, with both above $1 billion <a href="https://defillama.com/derivatives/chains">volume</a> over the past day compared to Arbitrum’s $1.245 billion.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">It’s always tax season</h2>



The IRS on Friday released its new draft form 1099-DA, the form that &#8220;brokers&#8221; —&nbsp;a still-undefined term —&nbsp;are supposed to begin using next year to report transactions.&nbsp;



The form asks for wallet addresses and information about where the transactions in question can be found on the blockchain.&nbsp;



&#8220;Brokers must report proceeds from (and in some cases, basis for) digital asset dispositions to you and the IRS on Form 1099-DA,&#8221; form instructions read. &#8220;You may be required to recognize gain from these dispositions of digital assets.&#8221;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/irs-consensys-exec-compliance-hires">Crypto Hiring: IRS’s latest hires are long-time crypto industry colleagues and friends</a>



It looks like the industry spent the weekend dissecting the form and ruminating on the ways it falls short. But remember, this is only a draft. The rule that mandates the creation of a new 1099 hasn’t even passed yet.&nbsp;



If it feels like we’ve been talking about how the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/irs">IRS</a> defines “broker” for months, that’s because we have.&nbsp;



The IRS and Treasury <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/irs-reporting-brokers">released proposed regulations</a> for digital asset brokers last August. The Treasury Department added that its preferred rules are intended to crack down on “tax cheats” and bring players in the digital asset industry under the law.&nbsp;



The agencies suggest defining digital asset “brokers” as “trading platforms, digital asset payment processors, certain digital asset hosted wallet providers, and persons who regularly offer to redeem digital assets that were created or issued by that person.”&nbsp;



Individuals who only engage in distributed ledger validation, including miners and stakers, are exempt from broker requirements, at least under the current iteration of the rule.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/irs-new-crypto-taxes">Clarity or confusion? Crypto tax proposal earns mixed reactions</a>



Friday’s release, however, had interested parties hung up on whether or not the IRS is suggesting that wallet providers — hosted and unhosted — as well as decentralized platforms should be “brokers.”



Jake Chervinsky, chief legal officer at Variant Fund, said despite his best efforts to engage with regulators, they still don’t appear to get it.&nbsp;



“Great news: We really like filing lawsuits,” he added.&nbsp;



The IRS has once again opened the floor for public comment, but they don’t have a set deadline on when the rule and form will be finalized.&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">No end in sight?</h2>



Imagine this: You’re an executive at a crypto exchange focused on compliance. You pack a bag for a couple of days and board a plane to have meetings in a foreign country about ways your company can collaborate to monitor transactions for financial crimes.&nbsp;



Instead, you are detained and held for over a month before a court ships you off to a notorious prison in Africa.



This is what happened to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/binance">Binance</a>’s compliance officer Tigran Gambaryan, as well as his colleague Nadeem Anjarwalla.&nbsp;



The story has been stewing over in Nigeria since late February when the two were initially detained. After Anjarwalla was able to escape, the developments took a turn and now Gambaryan is being <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-comments-on-exec-nigeria-detention">held at the Kuje correctional facility.</a> The same prison was attacked by the Islamic State as part of a jailbreak back in 2022.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The scenario is unusual at best, and at worst showcases the danger of working in a space like crypto. Gambaryan, despite Binance repeatedly saying that he has “no decision-making power” in the company, is being charged with tax evasion alongside Anjarwalla and the exchange. All three were charged with money laundering.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-employees-detained-nigeria">Binance says it’s working ‘collaboratively’ with Nigerian authorities&nbsp;</a>



On Friday, the trial was postponed until May 17 because Binance had yet to be served, according to a Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/nigerian-court-adjourns-binance-executives-tax-evasion-trial-may-17-2024-04-19/">report</a>. Gambaryan appeared in court but didn’t enter a plea.&nbsp;



Punch <a href="https://punchng.com/kenyan-police-arrest-binance-executive-who-escaped-from-nigeria/">reported</a> early Monday that Anjarwalla, Binance’s regional director in Africa, was arrested by the Kenyan police, and may face extradition to Nigeria as soon as this week.



Earlier this month, a Binance spokesperson told Blockworks that the decision to send Gambaryan to Kuje was “outrageous.”&nbsp;



Binance has a legally checkered past, evident from its multibillion-dollar settlement with the US government last year. Former CEO Changpeng Zhao <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/doj-indictment-binance-changpeng-zhao">pleaded guilty to a similar charge</a> as the exchange, and US officials last year <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-settlement-message-to-crypto-industry">said</a> the settlement was meant to send a “message” to crypto.&nbsp;



— Katherine Ross



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



<ul>
<li>Regulators are stuck on the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-04-16/ghost-of-facebook-s-libra-haunts-stablecoin-rules-five-years-later?srnd=cryptocurrencies-v2">memory</a> of Facebook’s long-defunct stablecoin project, Libra, according to Bloomberg.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>



<li>Crypto VC vet Kathryn Haun said late Friday that she <a href="https://twitter.com/katie_haun/status/1781516145474023778">plans to step down</a> from Coinbase’s board of directors.</li>



<li>Germany’s central bank has <a href="https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/speeches/digital-euro-vision-advances-and-challenges-929800">begun working</a> with MIT on CBDC research.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>



<li>The NYSE seems to be nodding at crypto exchanges and stock apps by <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/31c3a55b-9af9-4158-8a49-4397540571bf">surveying</a> market participants on the merits of 24-hour, around-the-clock stock trading, the FT writes.&nbsp;</li>



<li>AI deep fakes, a long-time crypto scam tactic, are <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/india/deepfakes-bollywood-stars-spark-worries-ai-meddling-india-election-2024-04-22/">roiling</a> a national election in India, Reuters reports.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



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



We know bitcoin miners run hot, but this feels a bit on the nose.



CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/20/bitcoin-miner-gridless-backed-by-block-builds-site-at-kenya-volcano.html#:~:text=Gridless%2C%20backed%20by%20Jack%20Dorsey's,5%2C000%20households%20in%20the%20country.">reports</a> that Gridless, a company backed by Jack Dorsey of Block and (formerly) Twitter fame, has set up shop near an extinct volcano in Kenya.



The bitcoin mining sector is no stranger to geothermal power sources; places like Iceland and South America are home to firms that have tapped the earth’s heat to spin turbines and light up ASICs.&nbsp;



Maybe Gridless has cracked the code on powering through the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-outlook-for-public-miners">tough post-halving reality</a> for bitcoin miners —&nbsp;let’s just hope the volcano doesn’t decide to wake up one day.&nbsp;



— Michael McSweeney



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Empire Newsletter: Bitcoin’s turn for memecoin mania

Though demand for US spot bitcoin ETFs has slowed down, the category snapped a five-day outflow streak on the day of the bitcoin halving.&nbsp;



The 11-fund segment collectively brought in $60 million of assets during Friday’s trading hours, according to Farside Investors <a href="https://farside.co.uk/?p=997">data</a>.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-2024-occurs">The bitcoin halving</a> — when per-block rewards paid to miners dropped from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC — occurred at about 8 pm ET that night.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



US bitcoin funds had seen $319 million of net outflows over a five-day span prior to Friday.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-etf-record-outflows">Bitcoin ETF segment sees record-tying fifth straight day of outflows</a>



Overall, US spot bitcoin ETFs endured net outflows for the second straight week, amounting to $204 million from April 15 to April 19.&nbsp;



The driver of last week’s outflows was the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gbtc">GBTC</a>), which hemorrhaged $458 million.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/blackrock">BlackRock</a>’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) were unable to fully offset those GBTC asset losses — tallying net inflows last week of $165 million and $94 million, respectively.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Grayscale <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1588489/000119312524094896/d807233dprer14c.htm">revealed</a> a planned fee of 0.15% for its Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC) — substantially lower than GBTC’s fee of 1.5%. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/grayscale-new-mini-fund-btc-ticker">GBTC intends to seed the spin-off fund</a>, and a portion of the bitcoin holdings would be allocated to the new proposed fund.



Trading volumes for crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) more broadly dipped to $18 billion last week, according to CoinShares head of research James Butterfill.



These volumes represent 28% of total bitcoin volumes, he added in a Monday <a href="https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-179-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-84f3312ba409">report</a> — a significant drop from 55% a month ago.



“The data suggests appetite from ETP/ETF investors continues to wane, likely off the back of expectations that the Fed is likely to keep interest rates at these high levels for longer than expected,” Butterfill wrote.&nbsp;



BlackRock ended the week with an active daily net inflow streak of 69 days.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-extends-bitcoin-etf-inflows">BlackRock extends bitcoin ETF inflows lead as category demand slows</a>



IBIT’s daily inflow run is the 11th-best streak for an ETF, <a href="https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1780951564200395129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1780951564200395129%7Ctwgr%5E7be5de38ebd7721595b3aefcbdfb1070fc7572c3%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fblockworks.co%2Fnews%2Fblackrock-extends-bitcoin-etf-inflows">according</a> to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas.  



The BlackRock bitcoin fund’s net inflows during the first quarter represented about <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-q1-earnings-bitcoin-fund-inflows">20% of the asset management giant’s ETF inflows</a> over that span. 



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Bitcoin ETF snapshot: GBTC drives second straight week of outflows

As NFTs boomed and Meta went all-in on the metaverse in 2021, a bevy of legacy firms started working on Web3-adjacent or metaverse projects. As interest in NFTs and the metaverse stagnated, many of these brands quietly shuttered their Web3 initiatives, with project <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/08/22/brands-metaverse-leads-where-are-they-now">leads</a> either leaving or pivoting roles. Starbucks Odyssey was the latest such casualty.



Adidas, however, appears to be keeping one foot in the metaverse.&nbsp;



Move to earn app STEPN <a href="https://x.com/Stepnofficial/status/1779827559208722669">announced</a> a “long-term collaboration” with the global sports brand this week. The partnership so far comprises the launch of 1000 generative Solana-based NFTs of Adidas sneakers.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/starbucks-terminates-nft-program">Web3 Watch: Starbucks shutters its ‘Odyssey’ NFT program</a>



STEPN users must have a sneaker NFT to use the movement app, which pays out rewards in GMT and GST tokens for users’ movement.



The Adidas <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/nfts">NFTs</a> went on sale this week for 10,000 GMT apiece, worth roughly $2400 at current prices.&nbsp;



“We are ready to step into the future with @Stepnofficial,” ALTS by Adidas <a href="https://twitter.com/altsbyadidas">wrote</a> on X.



Also this month, the Web3 online survival game show Crypto The Game <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1778477025386508461">let</a> users bid on Adidas-branded tracksuits in an immunity challenge.



Adidas’ global head of Web3 strategy is Evgeniy Medvedev, who previously worked in business development at NFT company Rarible.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Justin Sun drops a Hans Zimmer track amid SEC chase</h2>



The prodigious film score composer Hans Zimmer’s catalog includes The Lion King, Dune, Interstellar and now the layer-1 blockchain <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tron">TRON</a>.&nbsp;



The three-minute “song for the Web3 generation” is “a groundbreaking collaboration between legendary composer Hans Zimmer and blockchain visionary [<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/justin-sun">Justin Sun</a>],” according to a YouTube video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lblmnZfugM">uploaded</a> by TRON. 



Sun founded TRON in 2017 but stepped down from the CEO role in 2021. He has since fallen into legal trouble. This week, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed documents claiming jurisdiction over Sun as it <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-59">pursues</a> “fraud and other securities law violations” charges against him.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-ameds-complaint-justin-sun-complaint">SEC amends case against Justin Sun to establish jurisdiction</a>



The TRON anthem was “sparked by a deep conversation between Sun and Zimmer in early 2022,” the project said in a press release.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One interesting stat:</h2>



<ul>
<li>The day before the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">halving</a>, Bitcoin digital art <a href="https://www.cryptoslam.io/">saw</a> roughly $24 million in sales volume, around triple that of Ethereum, per CryptoSlam.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Also of note:</h2>



<ul>
<li>NFTs will be <a href="https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/upcoming-policies-full?locale.x=en_US&amp;v=1&amp;utm_source=unp&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=RT002546&amp;utm_unptid=c09814e8-fbef-11ee-b99a-3cecef476576&amp;ppid=RT002546&amp;cnac=US&amp;rsta=en_US%28en-US%29&amp;cust=&amp;unptid=c09814e8-fbef-11ee-b99a-3cecef476576&amp;calc=62d42c0952025&amp;unp_tpcid=online-user-agreement-change-email&amp;page=main%3Aemail%3ART002546&amp;pgrp=main%3Aemail&amp;e=cl&amp;mchn=em&amp;s=ci&amp;mail=sys&amp;appVersion=1.246.0&amp;tenant_name=PayPal&amp;xt=145585%2C104038%2C124817&amp;link_ref=ua_upcoming-policies-full">excluded</a> from PayPal’s Purchase Protection Program, which partly serves to protect buyers from scams, after a policy change goes into effect May 20.</li>



<li>The popular NFT platform Magic Eden has a <a href="https://x.com/MagicEden/status/1781368169442980027">partnership</a> coming with the layer-2 Base on April 25.</li>



<li>Crypto The Game <a href="https://x.com/cryptothegame_/status/1780689234246107210">concluded</a> with one lone survivor taking home 80 ether, though not without <a href="https://x.com/tednotlasso/status/1780687585616306353">controversy</a>.</li>
</ul>



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Web3 Watch: Someone at Adidas likes crypto culture

It was something of an eye of the storm week for crypto funding, as the dust settled on two layer-1 megadeals last week and all of crypto braced for the fourth Bitcoin halving.



The week was nevertheless a standout one for deals in real-world assets, which refers to projects tokenizing off-chain goods like real estate or US Treasurys.&nbsp;



Centrifuge <a href="https://x.com/centrifuge/status/1780538961468825766">raised</a> $15 million for a generalist real-world asset platform. The round was co-led by ParaFi Capital and Greenfield, and follows on $7 million in strategic capital Centrifuge raised throughout 2022.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tokenized-machine-real-world-assets">Tokenized real-world assets are more than a Web3 Robinhood</a>



Centrifuge facilitates pools of tokenized real-world assets (<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/real-world-assets">RWAs</a>), including assets <a href="https://app.centrifuge.io/pools">like</a> loans, credit and real estate. These pools are designed specifically to manage RWA liquidity pools, which are assets locked in a smart contract that help facilitate a liquid market. These pools consist of assets locked in a smart contract to support a liquid market for these RWAs.



Centrifuge tokenizes assets by creating <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/nfts">NFTs</a> that embed links to detailed off-chain data. This method leverages blockchain technology to ensure transparency and accessibility while securing sensitive data off-chain, as outlined in the project&#8217;s <a href="https://docs.centrifuge.io/getting-started/products-and-ecosystem/products/">documentation</a>.



Centrifuge has also explored launching RWA liquidity pools on a variety of other chains, including Arbitrum and Base.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/centrifuge-real-world-assets-tokenization-ethereum">Centrifuge to meet demand for real-world assets with liquidity pools</a>



Centrifuge <a href="https://app.centrifuge.io/pools">says</a> $285 million worth in assets are held in its liquidity pools, a figure that increased quickly after sitting around $80 million at the end of 2022.&nbsp;



With the funding, “[w]e&#8217;ll continue to grow the team, invest in product development and support the broader tokenization ecosystem education and growth,” Centrifuge co-founder Lucas Vogelsang told Blockworks.



Also this week, tokenized real estate platform Homium <a href="https://www.avax.network/blog/homium-issues-first-home-equity-loans-on-avalanche">raised</a> a $10 million Series A to put home equity loans on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/avalanche">Avalanche</a> blockchain. The round was led by University of Utah-linked Sorenson Impact Group and Avalanche’s “Blizzard” ecosystem fund.



Homium offers homeowners “shared appreciation” loans that are pooled with other loans and converted to a tokenized security. The product aims to provide tokenized access to home appreciation at scale. Homium’s loans are currently only available in Colorado.&nbsp;



RWA Inc, which focuses on fractional assets, <a href="https://twitter.com/RWA_Inc_/status/1779842459196940558">announced</a> a $1.175 million private funding round this week.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Puffer the latest restaking protocol to close a round</h2>



As EigenLayer <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eigenlayer-restaking-protocol-on-ethereum">went to a phased mainnet</a>, liquid restaking protocol Puffer <a href="https://medium.com/@puffer.fi/dive-into-the-big-splash-puffer-finance-raises-18m-to-propel-ethereums-decentralization-62738a657019">announced</a> $18 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Brevan Howard Digital and Electric Capital.



Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Franklin Templeton and Fidelity Investments-linked Avon Ventures were among other participants in the round.&nbsp;



Puffer is rolling out a pufETH liquid restaking token that aims to offer holders exposure to yield from Ethereum staking and EigenLayer restaking. The protocol is not yet in mainnet.&nbsp;



Puffer is the third-largest liquid restaking protocol by total value locked (<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tvl">TVL</a>) behind ether.fi and Renzo, <a href="https://defillama.com/protocols/liquid%20restaking">according</a> to DeFiLlama.&nbsp;



Elsewhere in liquid restaking, Aark <a href="https://chainwire.org/2024/04/17/aark-raises-6m-funding-to-accelerate-lrt-liquidity-integration-for-high-leverage-trading/">closed</a> a $6 million seed round for a perpetual futures DEX aiming to leverage liquid restaking tokens.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Other notable funding news</h2>



<ul>
<li>Massively multiplayer online game AVALON <a href="https://twitter.com/avalon/status/1779857341317603794">closed</a> a $10 million round led by BITKRAFT Ventures and HASHED.</li>



<li>P2 Ventures <a href="https://x.com/Hadronfc/status/1780560183355212001">committed</a> $50 million via the Hadron Founders Club to support Polygon ecosystem startups.</li>



<li>Thruster, the second-largest protocol on Blast, <a href="https://x.com/ThrusterFi/status/1780946789325033739">raised</a> $7.5 million in seed funding led by Pantera Capital.</li>



<li>Andreessen Horowitz <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/a16z-seven-billion-fundraise">raised a $7.2 billion fund</a>, but not for its crypto arm.</li>



<li>DeFi for content creators startup Matera <a href="https://x.com/MateraProtocol/status/1780935590604689620">raised</a> $3.6 million.</li>



<li>Runes DEX <a href="https://decrypt.co/226954/runes-dex-secures-2-million-in-seed-investment-to-pioneer-amm-on-bitcoin">raised</a> a $2 million seed round for an exchange for the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-runes-launch">new fungible tokens</a> slated to launch on Bitcoin at the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">halving</a>.</li>
</ul>



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Funding Wrap: Centrifuge raises $15M as investors bet on RWAs

Nana Murugesan, who previously served as the vice president of business development, international and listings at Coinbase, has moved on to become the president of Matter Labs. Matter Labs is the software company developing the layer-2 zkSync, an Ethereum layer-2 focused on zero-knowledge proofs.&nbsp;



Murugesan becomes Matter Labs’ first president. Alex Gluchowski, who also founded the company, is CEO. Murugesan will be responsible for “business, marketing, communications, finance, legal and policy, people and operations functions, expanding our team and ramping up operations,” Matter Labs <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/matterlabs_former-coinbase-executive-nana-murugesan-activity-7186721353704595456-ARZz?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop">said</a> while announcing the hire.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/space-and-time-artificial-intelligence-zksync-hyperchain">zkSync welcomes AI data warehouse as latest addition to hyperchain</a>



“I&#8217;m thrilled to join the Matter Labs team to power mainstream blockchain adoption, enabling practical apps with developers &amp; bringing in the next billion users with @zkSync,” Murugesan <a href="https://x.com/NanaMurugesan/status/1780953583699321296">wrote</a> on X.&nbsp;



While <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> will have to replace an executive, the departure is not a sudden one. Murugesan <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-anti-crime-staffers-leave">announced that he would be leaving Coinbase</a> in November of last year.



Ex-Coinbase employees run some of crypto’s most notable firms. Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam co-founded crypto venture fund Paradigm. Early Coinbase hires Olaf Carlson-Wee and Dan Romero went on to start Polychain and Farcaster, respectively.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Former Disney gaming exec co-founds Web3 game publisher</h2>



UAE-based Galactic Group is launching a Web3 game publishing arm named Galactic Entertainment, the company said in a press release.&nbsp;



Mark Meyers, the company’s co-founder and chief publishing officer, rose to become the head of Disney’s gaming studios in the late aughts, leaving the company in 2012 to found an Internet of Things startup.



In a press release, Meyers extolled Web3 <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gaming">games’</a> ability to let players earn “in-game goods that they actually own.”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/immutable-polygon-web3-gaming-fund">Immutable and Polygon Labs launch Inevitable Games Fund with hopes of raising $100M</a>



The company, Galactic Entertainment Publishing, is pushing PlanetQuest, which the company describes as Star Wars-like, as its first franchise. The game is set for early access release later this year, and Galactic is planning comics and a book trilogy for the franchise as well.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Other notable hiring news</h2>



<ul>
<li>Longtime senior executives at crypto exchange OKX Tim Byun and Wei Lan left the company for unclear reasons, CoinDesk <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/04/16/okx-og-execs-tim-byun-and-wei-lan-leave-crypto-exchange/?utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=rss&amp;utm_campaign=headlines">reported</a>.</li>



<li>Franklin Bi <a href="https://x.com/PanteraCapital/status/1778832423364477401">became</a> general partner at Pantera Capital.</li>



<li>Former Coindesk editor and reporter Tracy Wang <a href="https://x.com/0x_tracy/status/1780603968910991442">joined</a> Framework Ventures as head of special projects.</li>



<li>Stephen Levin <a href="https://x.com/smlevin11/status/1778423958301184229">started</a> as head of ops, finance, people and legal at Flashbots.</li>



<li>Natalie Mullins <a href="https://twitter.com/eclecticcapital/status/1780612566017814569">became</a> an associate investor at Bain Capital Crypto.</li>
</ul>



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Crypto Hiring: Coinbase exec departs for zkSync development company

Jonathan Hargreaves

Fiat currencies are evaluated on a variety of factors from usability and integrity to interest rates and demand; ultimately, bitcoin should be assessed on a wider set of criteria.



The price of bitcoin has long been a media obsession.



Every industry milestone appears defined solely by the price of bitcoin the following day: “Bitcoin price falls 15% following launch of ETFs,” <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/99e406f0-c5af-4a67-9937-afb1ea885565">crowed</a> the Financial Times, following the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s bitcoin ETF <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-approves-bitcoin-etf">approval in January</a>. 



This is slightly unfair.&nbsp;



Between July and November last year, the euro fell 7% against the US dollar, and no one questioned the validity of the former as a means of exchange. This is because the euro — even at a 7% depreciated value — remains a useful means of payment; it is universally accepted and requires no training, knowledge or equipment to use.



This is not (yet) the case with bitcoin, but considering “price” as its only measure of value is the same as valuing traditional currencies (only) according to the current exchange rate.&nbsp;



The latter certainly contains valuable information about the opportunity cost of holding other currencies, as well as the monetary and fiscal policies associated with the currency in question. However, there are plenty of other indicators that can define a currency’s value, including interest rates and prevailing inflation. It all depends on one’s perspective.&nbsp;&nbsp;



For instance, if you are a validator, Bitcoin’s value is tied up in gas fees — the commission independent validators receive for maintaining the integrity of the network.&nbsp; Last year’s gas fees for bitcoin reached a <a href="https://archive.ph/iTQ9Z">historical high</a> of $40, reflecting unprecedented demand and transaction volumes.&nbsp;



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-is-not-scarce">If you still think bitcoin is scarce, you’re suffering from fiat brain</a>



For corporations considering using bitcoin as a medium of exchange, the idea of value is associated with the levels of security associated with the currency. When examining bitcoin&#8217;s value then, for instance, one could look at the open letter penned by a member of the US Space Force on the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonplowery_an-open-letter-to-the-defense-innovation-activity-7136779515376087040-Wq3c/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_ios">possibility</a> of using Bitcoin’s proof-of-work protocol in underpinning the country’s defense systems.



The security afforded by a currency is also partly measured in the cost of transacting in the same. With bitcoin, that would mean considering gas fees, which represent the cost of independently validating and protecting your transaction.&nbsp; While the correlation is not necessarily entirely linear, higher gas fees indicate greater levels of scrutiny and vigilance associated with a decentralized currency, in addition to demand.&nbsp;



The advent of Bitcoin staking will create yet another measure of Bitcoin’s value; the chance to earn interest (or a return) from the bitcoin tokens under management. While blockchains such as Tezos, Cosmos, Solana, Cardano and, most famously, Ethereum have traditionally enabled dormant tokens to be put to work (verifying transactions and the status of tokens, according to the corresponding smart contracts), this has never previously been possible with Bitcoin.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Bitcoin layer-2 technology will make it possible for unused bitcoin to be staked; in effect, put to work, just as fiat currencies are within a savings account. The more useful people find bitcoin (i.e. the more transactions in terms of volume and frequency), the more confidence people have in the currency. And the more uses they find for Bitcoin-denominated smart contracts, the higher the Bitcoin interest rate will climb. The opposite is also true — a plunge in confidence or sudden availability of a more convenient, safer, cheaper alternative will lead to a reduction in the Bitcoin interest rate.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



All of the above represents different measures of Bitcoin’s value beyond its price on a given day, in exactly the same way that fiat currencies are evaluated according to different perspectives and uses.&nbsp;



Ultimately, the true test of any currency is its usefulness; the ease with which goods can be exchanged using it. Bitcoin is making steps towards becoming easier to use, despite — it must be added — unprecedented levels of hostility from <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2024/html/ecb.blog20240222~0929f86e23.en.html">legacy actors</a>, including regulators and central banks. All this for a currency that no one is imposing on anyone else, requires no disclosure of personal information to third parties, and is cheaper and more accessible than most fiat-based transactions (particularly those cross- border).



To paraphrase one of traditional finance’s most enduring slogans — Mastercard’s, no less — for all these reasons, the true value of Bitcoin is “priceless.”



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


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Jonathan currently serves as the Global Head of Growth at the Web3 ecosystem, Elastos, overseeing marketing, business development, investment and ecosystem strategies. With a background in corporate communications and technology marketing from roles at Edelman, Weber Shandwick, and Burson-Marsteller, Jonathan has transitioned to focus on Web3 innovation in his recent positions at Elastos and CreDA.</div>


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Don’t let bitcoin be defined by its price

Shortly after 8 pm ET, the network underwent its fourth mining subsidy halving, with per-block rewards falling from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.&nbsp;



The 840,000th block was a notable <a href="https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000320283a032748cef8227873ff4872689bf23f1cda83a5">affair</a> unto itself. It boasted 37.626 BTC in fees —&nbsp;a cool $2.4 million for ViaBTC, the Chinese mining pool that scored the winning block.&nbsp;



According to the block explorer Mempool.space, someone <a href="https://mempool.space/tx/2bb85f4b004be6da54f766c17c1e855187327112c231ef2ff35ebad0ea67c69e">paid</a> roughly nearly $430,000 in fees in an apparent effort to get their transaction in the 840,000th block —&nbsp;a rather expensive way to become part of history, we’d reckon.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-2024-occurs">Bitcoin’s block reward slashed by 50% following 2024 halving</a>



As expected, Crypto Twitter, the social hub of the ecosystem, saw its share of celebratory posts.&nbsp;



BBQ dinners, livestream chats and countless screenshots of block explorers and countdown timers peppered our streams post-halving. At the bitcoin bar PubKey in New York City, party-goers busted out the tuxedo ties.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-market-response">Bitcoin hovers around $63,600 following the halving</a>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Which one of these things is not like the other…? <a href="https://t.co/96VtMLmmlY">pic.twitter.com/96VtMLmmlY</a>&mdash; PUBKEY (@PubKey_NYC) <a href="https://twitter.com/PubKey_NYC/status/1781469660052889625?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 19, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



We have to say: Kudos to those who opted the phrase “<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=bitcoin%20halfing&amp;src=typed_query">Bitcoin halfing</a>,” which is somehow more eyebrow-raising than the (justifiably) oft-maligned “<a href="https://twitter.com/MarathonDH/status/1781475480790565222">Bitcoin halvening</a>.” 



Our toes were tapping here at Blockworks thanks to Jonathan Mann, otherwise known as Song A Day Man, who rang in the halving with a new song.&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">someone has to write a song to celebrate the halving and it may as well be me. <a href="https://t.co/qAw47CZoxR">pic.twitter.com/qAw47CZoxR</a>&mdash; 16 years of song a day (@songadaymann) <a href="https://twitter.com/songadaymann/status/1781441455732543675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 19, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The memes started rolling in quickly, too.&nbsp;&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">crypto bros in the club tn: yeah so it depends on the time zone you’re in, but for some people the Bitcoin halving actually happened on 4/20 which is so sick <a href="https://t.co/0SUsd5gssV">pic.twitter.com/0SUsd5gssV</a>&mdash; Jacquelyn Melinek (@jacqmelinek) <a href="https://twitter.com/jacqmelinek/status/1781478077303771164?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The analysts were right, at least so far, the halving certainly seems to have been priced in. Those hoping for dramatic price moves were disappointed. It’s back to our regularly scheduled programming.&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">happy halving <a href="https://t.co/aFuNoYfRan">pic.twitter.com/aFuNoYfRan</a>&mdash; Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) <a href="https://twitter.com/HsakaTrades/status/1781477488817766640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Custodia Bank, reminded her followers that what the event really means is that bitcoin’s scarcity has increased.&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">NEVER IN HUMAN HISTORY has a good that people use as money been this scarce. Happy <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#bitcoin</a> halving, peeps! <a href="https://t.co/dLigDQj2Vi">pic.twitter.com/dLigDQj2Vi</a>&mdash; Caitlin Long 🔑⚡️🟠 (@CaitlinLong_) <a href="https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1781476490661470658?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



And really…that’s it. We might be forgiven for saying that this particular halving was, well, normal, for lack of a better phrase. Maybe it’s a little bit of the bitcoin ETF effect.&nbsp;



Anyway, we’ll catch you next time —&nbsp;for those looking to market their calendars for halving #5, Bitcoin’s next one is approximately 1,400 days away.



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Tuxedos, songs and memes mark Bitcoin’s fourth halving

Bitcoin underwent its quadrennial halving at 8:10 pm ET Friday in New York, reducing block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.



Immediately following the event, the price of bitcoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) was largely unchanged at around $63,600. It was trading 1.15% higher over 24-hours at time of publication, per Coinbase.&nbsp;



The largest cryptocurrency is now 13% lower than its all-time high of $73,000 set in March. It’s the first time bitcoin has entered a halving event so closely after hitting a new price record.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-2024-occurs">Bitcoin’s block reward slashed by 50% following 2024 halving</a>



Despite historical precedent of bitcoin reaching new highs in the months following a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">halving</a>, analysts warn this time could be different. JPMorgan researchers — along with most teams across the crypto industry — say the halving is already priced in.&nbsp;



In the months following bitcoin’s last halving in 2020, the crypto notched its former all-time high of $69,000. Similarly, in 2016, it hit $20,000.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/history-of-bitcoin-halvings-2">The history of Bitcoin halvings — and why this time might look different</a>



As Iranian-Israeli tensions persist, geopolitical tensions may still be weighing on crypto markets. On Thursday night, Israel carried out a retaliatory attack against Iran. Bitcoin crashed to below $60,000 following reports of the strike. It pared some losses Friday, trading in the mid-$60,000 range for most of the day.&nbsp;



Hashdex Chief Investment Officer Samir Kerbage told Blockworks via email that the firm believes, despite how the halving “plays out,” that “the investment case for bitcoin remains as strong as ever as institutional interest accelerates amidst a favorable macro environment and positive on-chain developments.”



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Bitcoin hovers around $63,600 following the halving

Per-block bitcoin mining rewards officially dropped at 8:10 pm ET Friday in New York, marking the arrival of a rare industry event expected to spur ripple effects.



Known as a Bitcoin halving, such events happen roughly every four years. With the 2024 halving complete, the block reward that miners collect now stands at 3.125 BTC — down from 6.25 BTC.&nbsp;



Bitcoin’s 840,000 block was mined by ViaBTC Friday evening.&nbsp;



The halving has been top of mind for industry participants due in part to the event’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/history-of-bitcoin-halvings-2">historical impact on bitcoin price</a>.&nbsp;



Despite the small sample size of such occurrences, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">Bitcoin halvings</a> have seemed to catalyze crypto bull markets.



Bitcoin’s price grew nearly 100 times from $12 on Nov. 28, 2012 — the date of the first Bitcoin halving — to $1,164 some 367 days later, Berenberg Capital Markets analysts said in a 2023 report.



After the 2016 halving, it took 524 days for BTC to rise from about $650 to a then-record $19,712, the report added. Bitcoin hit a then-all-time high of more than $69,000 in November 2021, 549 days after the 2020 bitcoin halving.&nbsp;



Read from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-different-institutions-investors">This Bitcoin halving will be different — the institutions are here</a>



Bitcoin’s price was roughly unchanged immediately following the event. It was trading at $63,783 at time of publication, per Coinbase.&nbsp;



Fineqia research analyst Matteo Greco pointed out in a research note earlier this month that BTC for the first time reached a new price record leading up to the halving — “a departure for previous cycles” that could signal <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/btc-record-monthly-growth-streak-jeopardized">uncertainty about what’s next</a>.



Bitcoin reached its latest all-time high price of more than $73,500 on March 14.&nbsp;



“If historical trends hold true, we might anticipate the peak of this cycle occurring between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first half of 2025,” Greco previously told Blockworks.



Aside from the halving’s projected impact on <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">bitcoin</a> price, the event is set to affect the mining companies that will now start collecting lower rewards per block.



Players in the industry had been preparing for the halving in a number of ways — from acquiring mining sites and machines to cutting costs and diversifying revenue sources.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/mining-firms-prepare-for-bitcoin-halving">The Bitcoin halving is just weeks away — here’s how miners have prepared</a>



Still, segment observers <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-outlook-for-public-miners">expect pain to hit a number of miners</a> in the coming weeks and months — particularly those with weaker balance sheets and higher energy costs.



Some with more capital at their disposal have signaled they could opt to acquire machines, sites or even companies in the coming months.



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Bitcoin’s block reward slashed by 50% following 2024 halving

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Four more years!</h2>



Bitcoin Halving Day is here (at least, that&#8217;s what some countdowns are projecting, sometime before midnight ET).&nbsp;



Finally!



By now, you’ve slogged through waves of halving takes from a bevy of venture capitalists, influencers, founders, proponents and, increasingly, Wall Street analysts. Even the Guardian put out an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/what-is-bitcoin-halving-price#:~:text=Halving%20reduces%20the%20supply%20of%20new%20bitcoins%2C%20which%20should%20in,its%20price%20should%20go%20up.">article</a> this morning discussing what the halving could do to bitcoin’s price.



The halving is, after all, a spectacle that only comes round once every four years, as the good folks at Resistance Money <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoins-halving-major-spectacle-satoshi">pointed</a> out this week.&nbsp;



So, like we would cheer for Olympic trampoliners or canoeists, we might rally behind bitcoin miners who have to actually <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/depressed-miner-stocks-bitcoin-halving">grapple with the consequences of the halving</a>. But when Bitcoin adds its 840,000th block sometime tonight or early tomorrow, nothing will really change for those of us watching the countdown on Twitter from our couches.



Prepare to be underwhelmed in the moment, outside of some price volatility.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/post-bitcoin-halving-price-predictions">With halving just hours away, bitcoin price predictions proliferate&nbsp;</a>



The big secret is that the whole thing just gives us all something to chat about for a while, resulting in a million different ways to say:&nbsp;



“The price has gone up before after halvings but who knows what might happen this time. And if the price of bitcoin drops too far, some miners may switch off their rigs until it’s profitable again. Traders might ‘buy the rumor’ and ‘sell the news.’ Bitcoin will be okay in any case.”&nbsp;



The actual halving itself may not exactly be thrilling. But it does close the chapter on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/history-of-bitcoin-halvings-2">four years of Bitcoin and crypto history</a>.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Seven fun facts and stats from this cycle:</h2>



<ol>
<li>F2Pool mined the last block before our current halving cycle began (block 629,999) and included a message: “NYTimes 09/Apr/2020 With $2.3T Injection, Fed&#8217;s Plan Far Exceeds 2008 Rescue.” It was a nod to Satoshi Nakamoto’s genesis block note.</li>



<li>Antpool mined the following block, the first to include a 6.25 BTC reward (block 630,000). There was no additional message attached.</li>



<li>Bitcoin’s price was $8,730 when the 2020 halving hit ($10,635 adjusted for inflation). It’s up more than 600% since then.</li>



<li>Bitcoin’s hash rate was 137.5713 exahashes per second at the start of the cycle, now 625.05 EH/s (up 350%).</li>



<li>12,634 <a href="https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/">addresses</a> contained $1 million or more bitcoin when Bitcoin last halved. Now there are more than 111,000 — nine times more.</li>



<li>Addresses with more than $1 in bitcoin rose from 22.12 million to 46.54 million.</li>



<li>Active addresses are practically the <a href="https://cryptoquant.com/asset/btc/chart/addresses/active-addresses">same</a> today as they were four years ago, around 878,000 per day. One point in February 2021 saw 1.15 million per day, the highest on record.</li>
</ol>



One more for the haters —&nbsp;some say this halving is more bullish than the others, as bitcoin for the first time hit an all-time high before issuance was cut. But that’s not completely true.



Bitcoin nearly hit $69,000 in November 2021, setting an all-time high that would stand for years. The US dollar is, however, an imperfect benchmark for bitcoin’s value: The total <a href="https://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartingamount1=68%2C997.75&amp;cinmonth1=11&amp;cinyear1=2021&amp;coutmonth1=3&amp;coutyear1=2024&amp;calctype=1&amp;x=Calculate#uscpi">inflation</a> rate from then until now is 12.37%. Bitcoin’s high was really $77,533 in today’s dollars and that hasn’t been broken.



Bitcoin only reached $73,757 last month — almost 5% short of the inflation-adjusted record.&nbsp;



Here’s to better luck after the halving.



— David Canellis



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



<ul>
<li>When this newsletter hit your inbox, there were fewer than 80 blocks to be mined before the halving.</li>



<li>The block reward will drop from about $1.76 billion BTC per month to $882.8 million after the halving, at current prices.</li>



<li>Bitcoin miners on average earned $91.6 million per month in <a href="https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/bitcoin">fees</a> over the past year.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Bitcoin DeFi has more total value <a href="https://defillama.com/chains">locked</a> than Avalanche, Polygon and Optimism heading into the next halving cycle, with $1.21 billion.</li>



<li>Foundry and Antpool are most likely to mine the halving <a href="https://coin.dance/blocks/today">block</a>, with 29% and 27% odds, followed by F2Pool with 9.7%.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Try again next year&nbsp;</h2>



Senators Cynthia Lummis and Kristen Gillibrand dropped yet another crypto bill this week. The industry reviews are in: not good.



Critics say the bill is fundamentally flawed — allowing payment stablecoins issuers to bypass paying deposit insurance premiums, for example, would rob the FDIC of essential funding, opposers <a href="https://x.com/ProfHilaryAllen/status/1780953716390039659">argue</a>.&nbsp;



The bipartisan bill proposes banning algorithmic stablecoins (thanks, TerraUSD), mandates one-to-one reserves and brings issuers under existing KYC and anti-money laundering regulations.&nbsp;



At risk of sounding terribly cynical, it doesn’t matter what you think of this bill because it’s not going to pass. It’s probably not even going to make it to committee for markup.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senators-oppose-sec-accounting-standards">Bipartisan Congressional group tries to repeal controversial SEC crypto custody policy&nbsp;</a>



For a bill to move, the chair and the ranking member of the relevant House and/or Senate committee have to sign off.&nbsp;



For crypto, that means getting the greenlight from Reps. Patrick McHenry (who is favorable toward crypto, but on the way out) and Maxine Waters (who is decidedly not favorable toward crypto) of the House Financial Services Committee.&nbsp;



Over in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/senate">Senate</a> Banking Committee, Sens. Sherrod Brown (also a vocal critic of crypto and up for reelection in a thus-far narrow race) and Tim Scott (who has been supportive of the industry in the past) will have to get on board.&nbsp;



For this latest <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/cynthia-lummis">Lummis</a> and Gillibrand bill, Sen. Brown is really who they need in their corner.&nbsp;



So far, he’s just not there. Brown this week even mused about looping in stablecoin regulation into a bigger legislative package, one that would focus on allowing marijuana companies access to the banking system and clawback executive salaries from failed lenders.&nbsp;



Either way, Brown has an election to win, so it’s doubtful anything else is taking priority.&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Who needs institutions anyway?</h2>



Let’s do a little vibe check.&nbsp;



One of the biggest narratives this year has been that the institutions are finally here, thanks, in part, to spot bitcoin ETFs. And there’s no doubt that the institutions have shown interest — but they’re waiting on the sidelines still.&nbsp;



Retail is still the “best thing at this party,” as Taylor Swift would say.&nbsp;



BitGo CEO Mike Belshe <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-interview-bitgo-ceo">told</a> Blockworks that the demand for the bitcoin ETFs is “mostly retail.” It’s a statement backed up by the slew of 13Fs that have been filed so far by institutional managers, which showed small holdings.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/macro-driver-crypto-prices-bitcoin-etfs">ETF adoption set to keep driving bitcoin price: 10T’s Dan Tapiero</a>



Goldman Sachs digital assets head Mathew McDermott, at the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/digital-asset-summit">Digital Assets Summit</a> in March, said the crypto price rally has been driven in part by retail. McDermott also noted that institutions “have started to come in.”



No one is saying that the institutions aren’t interested — just that it takes time.&nbsp;



Institutional involvement is going to be a “slow burn,” S&amp;P’s Global Digital Assets Research Lab managing director Andrew O’Neill told Blockworks.



“Because we&#8217;re so early in the adoption curve in general, we&#8217;re naturally also early to institutional adoption,” Thomas Perfumo, Kraken’s head of strategy, said.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/goldman-sachs-future-public-blockchains">Goldman Sachs head of digital assets: The future is on public blockchains&nbsp;</a>



O’Neill believes the momentum has shifted. Teams will start to take notice and will research into the potential innovations and look to get “their various investment committees over the line as well.”&nbsp;



The retail demand, however, “has been growing,” Belshe told Blockworks. In the context of the bitcoin ETFs, some of the retail folks are finally getting access to an asset class that might have been<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-interview-bitgo-ceo"> too difficult to “touch” before</a>, he added.



If the performance we’ve seen — not only in the price action but also in the ferocious appetite for a new type of product — has been any indication, then the institutions are more than welcome, though retail’s ready to rock and roll.&nbsp;



We’re not going to be having the same conversation four years down the line, so soak up what will probably be the last retail-focused halving.



— Katherine Ross



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



<ul>
<li>The New York Times explained what led to the detention of Binance compliance exec <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/technology/binance-crypto-compliance-officer-nigerian-prison.html">Tigran Gambaryan</a> in Nigeria.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Meta released a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/technology/meta-ai-assistant-push.html">new AI assistant</a> on Facebook, Instagram and other social media apps.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>



<li>Crypto trader Avraham Eisenberg was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/mango-markets-trader-guilty">convicted</a> yesterday in a landmark crypto trial after a day of jury deliberations.&nbsp;</li>



<li>A recent Federal Reserve paper <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/financial-stability-implications-of-cbdc.htm">explored</a> the financial stability implications of different CBDC designs.</li>



<li>JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank believe the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-18/bitcoin-halving-seen-mostly-priced-in-by-jpmorgan-deutsche-bank?embedded-checkout=true">Bitcoin halving</a> is “mostly” priced in, according to Bloomberg.</li>
</ul>



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



Question: Is the halving still exciting? Or is it old hat at this point?



David: The mystique around halvings is way more interesting than the halvings themselves.&nbsp;



A 50% reduction in issuance sounds like a lot, but it’s all relative: The difference between 900 BTC ($58.4 million) per day and 450 BTC ($29.2 million) is minimal for the overall market, which sees more than $52 billion in <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin">reported</a> BTC trading volume per day right now.&nbsp;



What a few mining outfits with tight operating margins do with less bitcoin doesn’t really matter to anyone.&nbsp;



Still, fewer coins on the market sounds bullish, and that’s really the most interesting thing about halvings: how markets will react to the narrative.



Katherine: The halving’s still exciting, it’s only the fourth one! We can’t be jaded about it yet.



Bitcoin’s only just hit its stride when it comes to mass adoption and, if we’re being honest, mass understanding. There’s also the fact that we’ve seen bitcoin notch new headlines, and the bitcoin ETFs are still fresh out the gate.



In 2020, the halving wasn’t something a lot of people really paid attention to, but the proof is in the pudding: People are intrigued and invested in the halving and what it means not only for the price but for the ETFs and the miners.&nbsp;



Don’t believe me? Just look at the <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&amp;q=bitcoin%20halving,halving">Google Trends</a> data.&nbsp;



— Katherine Ross, David Canellis



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Empire Newsletter: Bitcoin is halving a moment

The Securities and Exchange Commission amended its complaint against Justin Sun on Thursday evening.



The complaint, filed initially in March 2023, alleges that the founder of Tron’s network sold unregistered securities.&nbsp;



In the amended complaint, the SEC alleges that Sun traveled “extensively” to the US on behalf of Tron, BitTorrent and Rainberry.



“Specifically, Sun spent more than 80 days in the United States in 2017, more than 120 days in the United States in 2018, and approximately 180 days in the United States in 2019. During Sun’s business trips to the United States in 2019, he spent time in various cities, including New York City, Boston, Massachusetts, and San Francisco,” the SEC added to its complaint on Thursday.



As part of the regulator’s approach to establish jurisdiction, the Commission added that Sun — who is not a US citizen — broadcasted a livestream from the San Francisco office which allegedly promoted the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tron">Tron</a> ecosystem.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-sues-justin-sun">SEC sues Tron network founder for allegedly selling securities</a>



“During the livestream, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/justin-sun">Sun</a> explained that BTT would benefit TRX holders because ‘the current Tron community’ would be allocated with BTT, meaning that TRX holders would be ‘entitled’ to receive ‘the BTT airdrop.’ Sun stated that, because of the relationship between TRX and BTT, ‘the TRX community [was] tied with the BTT community,’” the complaint claims.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sec">SEC</a>’s amended filing pushes back against Sun’s lawyers, who previously tried to claim — in a motion to dismiss filed earlier this year — that the SEC’s claims were “out of the SEC’s regulatory reach.” The Commission, the motion added, failed to establish “personal jurisdiction over each foreign defendant for each claim.”



“This case originates with foreign digital asset offerings to foreign purchasers on global platforms,” the lawyers wrote.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-discontinues-usdc-on-tron">Circle cites compliance as it discontinues USDC on Tron</a>



The SEC’s initial complaint alleged that Sun distributed billions of both TTX and BTT tokens to the public, and created secondary markets to trade the assets. In an argument similar to what we’ve seen from the SEC in other cases that they’ve brought against crypto firms, the Commission said Sun needed to register the sales but failed to.



Alongside the press release at the time, the SEC accused Sun of “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading.”



The SEC, outside of its focus on Sun, settled with eight celebrities last year, including Lindsey Lohan, for promoting the tokens.



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

SEC amends case against Justin Sun to establish jurisdiction

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Ren Yu Kong

Research Analyst

Avail: A Unification of Crypto Infrastructure

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Speakers 

Balaji S. Srinivasan (@balajis) is an angel investor, tech founder, and <a href="https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1552329807437844480?ref=balajis.ghost.io">WSJ bestselling</a> author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VPKZR3G?ref=balajis.ghost.io">The Network State</a>. Formerly the CTO of Coinbase and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he is an early investor in many successful tech companies and crypto protocols, including Akasa, Alchemy, Benchling, Cameo, CoinTracker, Culdesac, Dapper Labs, Deel, Digital Ocean, Eight Sleep, EPNS, Farcaster, Gitcoin, Golden, Instadapp, Lambda School, Levels Health, Locals, Messari, Mirror, OnDeck, OpenSea, Orchid Health, Prospera, Replit, Republic, Roam Research, Skiff, Soylent, Stability AI, Starkware, Stedi, Superhuman, Synthesis, and Zora Labs, to name a few. Balaji was also an early investor in many important crypto protocols including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, NEAR, Polygon, Chainlink, XMTP, ZCash, and more. Dr. Srinivasan was the cofounder of Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), Counsyl (acquired by Myriad), Teleport (acquired by Topia), and Coin Center. He holds a BS/MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.

Balaji S. Srinivasan

Chris Dixon founded and leads a16z crypto, which invests in web3 technologies through four dedicated funds with more than $7 billion under management. He has been a general partner at Andreeseen&nbsp;Horowitz since 2013.



Chris is the author of&nbsp;<a href="https://readwriteown.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Read Write Own</a>:&nbsp;Building the Next Era of the Internet&nbsp;(Random House).



Previously, Chris was the cofounder and CEO of two startups, SiteAdvisor and Hunch. SiteAdvisor was an internet security company that warned web users of security threats. The company was acquired by McAfee in 2006. Hunch was a recommendation technology company that was acquired by eBay in 2011.



Chris has been a prolific seed investor, cofounding Founder Collective, a seed venture fund, and making a number of personal angel investments in various technology companies.



Chris started programming as a kid, and was a professional programmer after college at the high-speed options trading firm, Arbitrade. He has a BA and MA in Philosophy from Columbia and an MBA from Harvard.

Chris Dixon

Sreeram Kannan is founder of the EigenLayer project on Ethereum, which introduced the concept of restaking. Until recently he was a tenured associate professor at UW where he directed the UW Blockchain Lab, focussed on designing new blockchain infrastructure protocols.

Sreeram Kannan

Keone Hon is the co-founder/CEO of Monad Labs, a team of systems engineers bringing parallel execution and high performance to the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Keone Hon

Li Jin

Ben is a co-founder of Optimism, a leading Ethereum L2 ecosystem. He served as Chief Scientist before becoming a director at the Optimism Foundation. In his free time, he makes Ethereum-based parody songs under his stage name, Weird ETH Yankovic.

Ben Jones

Evan Cheng is the co-founder &amp; CEO of Mysten Labs, the developer behind the groundbreaking Sui layer 1 protocol. In addition to being the winner of the the winner of the prestigious 2012 ACM Software System Award, Evan has an extensive background in platform development, with more than 24 years building developer-facing technology and leading engineering teams at companies such as Apple and Facebook. Prior to founding Mysten Labs, Evan led the Novi Research at Meta developing cutting-edge blockchain technologies.

Evan Cheng

Nick White

Kristin is the CEO of the Blockchain Association, the Washington, D.C.-based trade association representing more than 100 of the industry’s leading companies. She also serves as a board member of the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. Kristin serves as a liaison between policymakers and the cryptocurrency industry to assist in the creation of legislation and regulation that promotes the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the U.S. She is also a leading, public voice advocating for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry through top-tier media interviews, op-eds and letters to the editor, and global speaking engagements. Kristin is a renowned voice for the industry, having been featured on Fortune’s 2020 40 under 40 list, CoinDesk’s 2021 50 people who defined the year in crypto, and CoinTelegraph’s 2022 top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. Prior to leading the Blockchain Association, Kristin helped blockchain and technology companies achieve their public policy objectives in Washington. She served as a Senate and congressional aide on Capitol Hill for nearly ten years, much of which was spent focusing on technology policy.

Kristin Smith

Eli&nbsp;is a co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, and Chairman of its Board of Directors.



He has been researching cryptographic and zero knowledge proofs of computational integrity ever since he received his Phd in Theoretical Computer Science from the Hebrew University in 2001.&nbsp;Eli&nbsp;is a co-inventor of the STARK, FRI and Zerocash protocols and a Founding Scientist of the Zcash Company. Over the years he held research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Harvard and MIT, and, most recently, was a Professor of CS at Technion, which he left to co-found StarkWare.

Eli-Ben Sasson

Luca is the CEO of Pudgy Penguins, a next-generation IP company.

Luca Netz

Vance Spencer is the co-founder of<a href="https://framework.ventures/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> Framework Ventures,</a> one of the largest VC firms in the blockchain industry. Under the leadership of Vance and his co-founder Michael, Framework was arguably the first VC firm to <a href="https://decrypt.co/16943/why-framework-ventures-is-going-all-in-on-defi" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“go all in”</a> on the emerging Decentralized Finance (“DeFi”) ecosystem, notching up major early investments in several multi-billion dollar apps and networks like Chainlink, Aave, Synthetix, The Graph, and more. Over the last year, the firm has raised $400M for its third fund, and has also expanded into additional maturing verticals like web3 gaming, real world assets, and social crypto. Before Framework, Vance and his co-founder Michael launched and sold Hashletes, a digital collectible startup with official licensing from the NFL. Prior to entering the crypto space, Vance worked at Netflix in Los Angeles and Tokyo, where he was part of the team responsible for the relaunch of the Japan business, eventually joining the team leading corporate development for most of northern Asia.

Vance Spencer

Santiago Roel Santos (CryptoPunk #9159) is an investor focusing at the intersection of DeFi and the Web3 metaverse (NFTs/gaming). Most recently was a Partner at ParaFi Capital, one of the largest crypto funds specializing in DeFi. Prior to that, he was at Sageview Capital investing in Internet and software and, before that, at JP Morgan investment banking. Santiago began investing in crypto in 2012.

Santiago Roel Santos

Bryan Pellegrino is a co-founder of LayerZero. He is focused on building an interoperability solution that scales to every chain while maintaining the core principles of censorship resistance, permissionlessness, and immutability. Before LayerZero, Bryan worked in AI research and ranked among the best poker players in the world.

Bryan Pellegrino

Lucas Bruder is the CEO of Jito Labs, which builds high performance MEV infrastructure for Solana. Jito Labs' main products, Jito-Solana and the Jito Block Engine, are running on more than 27% of Solana stake. Before co-founding Jito Labs, Lucas worked on robotics control systems for self-driving bulldozers and embedded firmware at Ouster and Tesla. He has a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Lucas Bruder

Kyle Samani is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital, a thesis-driven cryptofund that invests in tokens and companies reshaping entire sectors of the global economy. Prior to Multicoin Capital, he co-founded Pristine (Upskill, 2017), an enterprise software company that enables deskless workers with solutions for smart glasses. Based in Austin, Texas, Samani is widely recognized as a thought leader on blockchain and cryptoeconomics. He holds degrees in Finance and Management from NYU Stern and has been programming since he was 10 years old. Follow him on Twitter @KyleSamani.

Kyle Samani

Congressman Tom Emmer was sworn in for his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 6, 2015. He is currently serving his fifth term.



After serving as the Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee for the 116th Congress and again for the 117th Congress, Tom was elected by his fellow Republican colleagues to be the House Majority Whip. Currently, he sits on the House Financial Services Committee.&nbsp;



Born in 1961, Tom grew up in Minnesota and attended St. Thomas Academy. He received his BA in Political Science from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and his JD from William Mitchell College of Law.



After practicing law for several years, he opened his own law firm. The next 20 years were spent balancing family, business, coaching hockey, and serving on the city councils in Independence and Delano.



Before coming to Congress, he served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2004-2008.



He and his wife Jacquie have been married for over 30 years and have seven children. They reside in Delano.

Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN)

Prior to founding Ikigai Asset Management in 2018, Travis spent 10 years in traditional finance. From 2008-2010, he was an investment banker at Simmons &amp; Company in Houston, focusing on energy M&amp;A. From 2011- 2015, he was a senior analyst at Magnetar Capital in Chicago, investing in long/short energy equities and non-control private equity and debt. From 2015-2017, Travis was a Portfolio Manager at Point72 in New York, where he managed a L/S portfolio of energy and materials equities. Travis has a BS in Accounting and a MS in Finance from Texas A&amp;M University.

Travis Kling

Zaki Manian is a Co-Founder of Sommelier, the most powerful coprocessor yet for DeFi traders and Liquidity Providers. He’s also a Co-Founder of iqlusion, which provides infrastructure like a data center and a Cosmos validator for next-gen crypto technologies. Previously, Zaki helped build the Cosmos ecosystem, including launching the first public Cosmos testnet, and served as a director of Tendermint. Zaki has been a leading developer in the blockchain space since 2014, when he taught himself cryptography and began contributing to projects including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, and Tendermint. Having studied history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, Zaki’s skill sets in software engineering, programming, and computer science are largely self-taught.

Zaki Manian

Ceo @ <a href="http://helius.dev/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">helius.dev</a>, co-host of the Ligntspeed podcast.

Mert Mumtaz

Sandy Kaul is senior vice president, Franklin Templeton, providing advisory consulting for the firm and thought leadership as part of the Franklin Templeton Institute. She delivers actionable intelligence and insights on the future of the investment and wealth management industry for the firm and its clients. Ms. Kaul has cultivated deeply informed insights and has an extensive background in driving market leading research, thought leadership and predictive models centered on the evolution of the investment and wealth management industry. She identifies and champions opportunities to address industry advancements and drive transformation, with a focus on innovative distribution trends and digital disruption. She delivers strategic insights to inform the firm's decision-making on partnerships and investments, including within Franklin Templeton's growing digital asset business. Ms. Kaul has over 25 years of well-rounded industry experience and is a frequent speaker at industry events and a widely published author. She combines her unique blend of sell-side, buy-side and consulting insights to drive her research and thought leadership around what constitutes best practices and where innovation is occurring. Ms. Kaul joined Franklin Templeton in 2022 from Citi, where she served as Managing Director and Global Head of Business Advisory Services, and launched and built out the Citi's Business Advisory Services practice, a market leading provider of industry thought leadership spanning Citi's Markets and Global Wealth organizations. Ms. Kaul rejoined Citi in 2009, after originally starting her career there in 1985 as a Futures Research Analyst covering the soft commodities markets with Citi's predecessor firm, Shearson Lehman Brothers. She joined Commodities Corporation/Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 1995 as a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) and Portfolio Manager. After managing money for nearly six years, Ms. Kaul shifted her attention to consulting where she led the strategy practice within the Financial Services division of the renowned dot.com firm, Scient, and then went on to become a Partner at the capital markets niche management consulting firm m.a.partners/Detica. Ms. Kaul holds a bachelor's degree in history and political science from Colgate University.

Sandy Kaul

Matt Hougan is one of the world’s leading experts on crypto, ETFs, and financial technology. He is Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise Asset Management, a pioneer in cryptoasset index funds with more than $1.2 billion in assets under management. He was previously CEO of ETF.com, where he helped build the world’s first ETF data and analytics system, the leading ETF media site, and the world’s largest ETF conference, Inside ETFs. Hougan is co-author of both “A Comprehensive Guide to Exchange-Traded Funds” and “Cryptoassets: The Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies for Professional Investors” from the CFA Institute’s Research Foundation. He is a crypto columnist for Forbes, and a three-time member of the Barron’s ETF Roundtable.

Matt Hougan

Muneeb Ali is the Co-Founder and CEO of <a href="https://trustmachines.co/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Trust Machines</a>, the company building out the Bitcoin economy. Earlier, he co-created <a href="https://stacks.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stacks</a>, a Bitcoin layer for smart contracts. He received his Ph.D. in Distributed Systems from Princeton. He is one of the main characters in George Gilder's book Life After Google and was a technical advisor to the HBO show Silicon Valley.

Muneeb Ali

3LAU

<div class="wp-block-group">
Mike dudas is a founding partner of <a href="https://www.6thman.ventures/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">6th man ventures</a>, an early stage crypto vc firm. mike is also founder of <a href="https://linksdao.io/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">linksdao</a>, a community-first, nft-membership enabled golf &amp; leisure clubpreviously, mike was the founder &amp; ceo of <a href="https://www.theblockcrypto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the block</a>, a leading research &amp; media company in cryptodudas earned a ba from Stanford and an mba from kellogg
</div>

Mike Dudas

Mr. van Eck joined the Firm in 1991 and its Executive Management Team in 1998. He serves as the President, Chief Executive Officer and an owner of Van Eck Associates Corporation. Additionally, he is the President and CEO of Van Eck Securities Corporation. Furthermore, Mr. van Eck is a Trustee, the President and Chief Executive Officer of VanEck ETF Trust, VanEck Funds and VanEck VIP&nbsp;Trust.



Furthering VanEck’s mission to anticipate asset classes and trends, Mr. van Eck has created strategic beta, tactical allocation, emerging markets, and commodity-related investment strategies in mutual fund, ETF, and institutional formats. Mr. van Eck founded the Firm’s ETF business in 2006. One of the world’s largest ETF sponsors, the Firm offers ETFs, branded VanEck, globally across equity and fixed income asset&nbsp;classes.



Mr. van Eck holds a JD from Stanford University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams College with a major in Economics. He has registrations with the National Futures Association and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Mr. van Eck is a Director of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. He routinely appears in the media, including CNBC and Bloomberg Television.&nbsp; Mr. van Eck was a 2013 Finalist for Institutional Investor's Fund Leader of the Year and was a finalist for ETF.com’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 and 2022.

Jan F. van Eck

Soona Amhaz is founder and managing partner of Volt Capital, a venture firm that backs early-stage crypto startups including many leading protocols and companies like Nansen, Sound, Magic Eden, Squads, Farcaster, LayerZero, and Magic. Prior to starting Volt Capital, Soona co-founded On Deck and operated in the big data/AI space, scaling companies from seed stage to post-Series C.

Soona Amhaz

Tom is a Partner at Dragonfly Capital. He previously led product at 0x, worked as a product manager at Facebook and Instagram, and worked in software engineering at Apple and Microsoft.

Tom Schmidt

Michael Anderson is the co-founder of<a href="https://framework.ventures/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> Framework Ventures,</a> one of the largest VC firms in the blockchain industry. Under the leadership of Michael and his co-founder Vance, Framework was arguably the first VC firm to <a href="https://decrypt.co/16943/why-framework-ventures-is-going-all-in-on-defi" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“go all in”</a> on the emerging Decentralized Finance (“DeFi”) ecosystem, notching up major early investments in several multi-billion dollar apps and networks like Chainlink, Aave, Synthetix, The Graph, and more. Over the last year, the firm has raised $400M for its third fund, and has also expanded into additional maturing verticals like web3 gaming, real world assets, and social crypto. Before Framework, Michael and his co-founder Vance launched and sold Hashletes, a digital collectible startup with official licensing from the NFL. Before entering the crypto space, Michael served as a product manager at both Snapchat and Dropbox, where he helped build out their monetization platforms.

Michael Anderson

Sam is the Head of Product and Strategy at Skip, a team building cross-chain infrastructure for application-specific blockchains. He is also Co-founder of Timewave, an organization that creates tools for intelligent on-chain resource allocation and trustless cooperation.

Sam Hart

Haseeb is a Managing Partner at Dragonfly. He was previously a partner at Metastable Capital, and has a background in software engineering at Airbnb and Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase).

Haseeb Qureshi

Joe McCann is the Founder, CEO, and CIO of <a href="http://asymmetric.financial">Asymmetric</a>, a modern-day crypto fund. Asymmetric is backed by Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, and Circle Inc., as well as the founders of Solana, Multicoin, CoinFund and many other reputable investors and entrepreneurs.



With over 24 years of experience working on Wall Street to Silicon Valley and with skills ranging from systematic and quantitative trading to fundraising and running a venture-backed, open-source enterprise software company, McCann's perspective on technology and finance is rather unique. McCann is a frequent speaker on the global conference circuit, actively promoting emerging technologies and relevant business use cases to bring pragmatism to futurism.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Most recently, McCann was a Senior Director at Microsoft in the Cloud and AI organization focusing on incubations, M&amp;A, and startups. McCann also ran Quantitative and Systematic Trading for Cryptocurrencies at Passport Capital, a San Francisco-based hedge fund.  Before that, McCann was the Founder and CEO of NodeSource, The Node.js Company, the most popular and widely adopted open source project of the last decade.   McCann is also an advisor to a handful of companies like <a href="https://dharma.io/">Dharma</a> (a decentralized finance app on Ethereum, acquired by <a href="http://opensea.com">OpenSea</a>) and <a href="https://voltage.cloud/">Voltage</a> (Bitcoin lightning nodes-as-a-service), and <a href="http://zebec.io">Zebec</a> (a money-streaming protocol on Solana) and is frequently mentioned in publications ranging from <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/18/the-unbundling-of-everything/">TechCrunch</a> to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/09/22/the-meteoric-rise-of-open-source-and-why-investors-should-care/#3fbdc35d5484">Forbes</a> and the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-firms-grapple-with-how-to-make-open-source-pay-1457031731">Wall Street Journal</a>.

Joe McCann

Colleen Sullivan is Co-Head of Ventures at Brevan Howard Digital. Prior to joining Brevan Howard Digital, Colleen co-founded and served as CEO of CMT Digital, where she was also a partner with the broader CMT Group and commenced activities in the crypto industry in 2013. Prior to starting CMT Digital, Colleen co-founded Sullivan Wolf Kailus, a boutique law firm that specializes in hedge fund, private equity, venture capital, digital assets, and other alternative investment products. Colleen also previously practiced law in the Investment Funds and Derivatives group at Sidley Austin LLP and, at age 25, co-founded a company called iOptions Group LLC, which developed hedging and monetization strategies for holders of employee stock options. Ms. Sullivan currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.

Colleen Sullivan

Avichal is a successful entrepreneur with executive experience at Google and Facebook, which acquired his previous company. As an angel investor, Avichal has invested in 15 unicorns and 5 decacorns including Airtable, Boom Supersonic, Color Genomics, Cruise, Deel, Figma, Newfront Insurance, Notion, Nova Credit, Pulley, and others. He co-founded Electric Capital in 2018 and has grown it to one of the largest crypto venture firms globally. Electric is an investor in many of the leading web3 protocols and companies such as Bitwise, Bitnomial, dYdX, Frax, Kraken, Magic Eden, NEAR, and Solana.

Avichal Garg

Vanessa Grellet is a Managing Partner at Aglaé Ventures. Vanessa is a Global Executive with over 20 years of expertise in the Financial Services and Tech industry. At Aglaé Ventures she manages the Web 3 focused fund. Prior to joining Aglae she was Head of Portfolio growth at CoinFund and Executive director at ConsenSys where she focused on driving adoption for Ethereum based products,  Strategic initiatives, Alliances and Channels.  She was involved in setting up the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the Accounting Blockchain Coalition (ABC) and the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition (BSIC). Prior to ConsenSys she was a Strategy Executive at NYSE focused on investments and M&amp;A and a key member of PwC’s global wealth management team. Vanessa is a Founding Board member of AABC focused on Blockchain and Art, a member of the Advisory Council of ConsenSys, a Milken Institute Associate, a contributor to the  World Economic Forum Digital Future Council and part of <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/top-people-in-crypto-and-blockchain-2022/vanessa-grellet">Cointelegraph’s list of 100 most influential people for 2022</a>. Mrs. Grellet graduated Cum Laude from Law School (Paris II Assas) and Business School (HEC).

Vanessa Grellet

Stani Kulechov is a thought leader in blockchain technology, smart contracts, decentralized finance and web3 social. From an early age, he became fascinated with using technology as a tool to solve problems, empower people, increase access and enable stronger human connection.&nbsp;



Stani is a pioneer in decentralized finance. While still in college, he created one of the first decentralized, peer-to-peer protocols on Ethereum. He then went on to found Aave Companies, a technology company that develops decentralized protocols, developer tools and consumer applications powered by blockchain, smart contracts and token-based economies.&nbsp;



The Company is best known for creating the Aave Protocol – one of the largest and most popular, fully decentralized liquidity markets in the world. Users of the Aave Protocol supply and borrow cryptocurrencies while earning yield. In 2022, the Company introduced Lens Protocol – the social layer for web3.&nbsp;

Stani Kulechov

Barry is the cofounder of <a href="https://events.trustifi.com/api/o/v1/click/65c23bc8f626382a3afbcd5b/fff0f6/330618/38c45c/eb3beb/0a1240/119436/f394ce/c4bf49/e8666a/ef542d/85972d/627493/9a11d6/1f4096/1d247f/d58d79/c530d9/839df2/bdfa01/7316c5/c788a3/f74902/a30c45/38dabe/f58113/4f8f27/36d8f7/9ee4f4/99129c/db2655/8d1e66/9e626e/290212/fc3550/6d7b1f/38082b/616b1b/af8c50/8ebcbb/0df7b0/6423c4/c07c0b/e6dd1c/ba8ce6/6803c4/c37876/920221/297bc7/5a440b/f85ffc/ca2926/bacf60/3d1195/dc47d9/40aefc/e48a96/0052d7/57fa75/8cf655/c16b6b/f92718/0e7d73/abcb55/0dd73b/1b064a/069f8a/d5bc25/7c51b1/b0bcbd/28ac11/48d164/a0df45/7476ec/8558c8/dbcc78/521501/f2f211/13e330/aab4a2/b0ca1a/dd21ab/280ef4/e749da/debe9d/4974dc/0fb4a3/78f438/fb99c5/187646/4b3a51/0845db" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Skip</a> — the leading infrastructure platform for app chains. Skip's products deliver users, tokens, and data to the best app chains in crypto — Osmosis, Stride, dYdX, Celestia, and many more.

Barry Plunkett

Over the last decade, Meltem has become a trusted, prescient, and influential investor in crypto. After helping to successfully build two asset management firms (Digital Currency Group and CoinShares), she is striking out on her own as an aspiring cult leader.

Meltem Demirors

Anand Iyer is a venture capitalist with a focus on AI x blockchain infrastructure. He is the Managing Partner of Canonical Crypto and Venture Partner at Lightspeed. With over 2 decades of experience in the tech industry, Anand has a deep understanding of the blockchain ecosystem. Prior to Canonical and Lightspeed, Anand was a Venture Partner at Pear where he focused on their blockchain investments. And prior to that he was the CEO &amp; Founder of Trusted, which was acquired in 2018. Anand has held leadership roles at startups as well as technology giants such as Microsoft and Cisco. He holds a degree in computer engineering Purdue University.

Anand Iyer

Sunny Aggarwal is the Co-Founder of Osmosis Labs, the core team responsible for developing Osmosis, an appchain that serves as the DeFi hub for the Cosmos ecosystem. Sunny dropped out of UC Berkeley to join Tendermint, where he served as a Core Developer of the Cosmos SDK and Gaia blockchain, and contributed to the development and launch of Cosmos and IBC. Sunny then decided to build on top of the core infrastructure he had developed at Tendermint, and co-founded Osmosis with the goal of developing a DEX appchain that rivals even the most robust centralized exchanges.

Sunny Aggarwal

Alex is a software architect with over 15 years experience in engineering and startups. He is the co-inventor of zkSync and currently serves as the co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs. At Matter Labs, he leads a talented team focused on addressing blockchain scalability challenges using zero-knowledge proofs. Alex's passion lies in using technology to advance personal freedom, self-ownership, and decentralization.

Alex Gluchowski

Tarun is an alumni of D. E. Shaw Research (DESRES), Vatic Labs, an HFT firm, and Cornell. He fell into the blockchain world in 2011, when he was working on ASICs at DESRES and observed Bitcoin ASIC mining rigs substantially delay DESRES’s ASIC production. He has spent the last seven years working on simulation-based R&amp;D at the intersection of high-performance computing and AI and is applying this knowledge to the blockchain ecosystem.

Tarun Chitra

Jim Bianco is President and Index Manager at Bianco Research Advisors. He is also the President of Bianco Research LLC. Since 1990, Jim’s commentaries have offered a unique perspective on the global economy and financial markets. Unencumbered by the biases of traditional Wall Street research, Jim has built a decades long reputation for objective, incisive commentary that challenges consensus thinking.



 Jim appears regularly on CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business, and is often featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Grants Interest Rate Observer, and MarketWatch. Jim has a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Marquette University (1984) and an MBA from Fordham University (1989).

Jim Bianco

Hart is the Co-Founder of Risk Labs, the foundation supporting the UMA and Across protocols. UMA is an optimistic oracle that can verify arbitrary data on-chain. Across is a "intents-based" bridge offering cheap and near-instant cross-chain interoperability.



Hart studied computer science before working as an interest rate trader at Goldman Sachs through the financial crisis. In 2013 he co-founded Openfolio, a personal finance tracking platform that was acquired in 2017 by an asset manager. He now leads a team of oracle and interoperability researchers at Risk Labs.

Hart Lambur

Aidan Salzmann is the co-founder of Stride and Stride Labs. He has a background in product and engineering, having built multiple software startups before founding Stride. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Aidan Salzmann

Anish Agnihotri

Ben Fisch is co-founder and CEO of Espresso Systems, the developers of the Espresso Sequencer network which brings decentralization and improved interoperability to L2s. Espresso Systems are also the developers of the CAPE data privacy application. Ben is additionally an assistant professor of computer science at Yale. Previously, Ben earned his PhD at Stanford working in the applied cryptography research group. His research on Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) sparked a multimillion dollar industry initiative (see VDF Alliance) and plays an important role in several blockchains including Ethereum 2.0, Chia, and Filecoin. His research on Proofs of Replication is the basis of Filecoin's incentive layer and consensus protocol. Filecoin is a live distributed storage system that already has reached a storage capacity exceeding 1.5 exabytes.

Ben Fisch

Jill is co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Espresso Systems, working on bringing interoperability and decentralization to rollups. Previously, Jill ran crypto investments for early stage venture capital fund, Slow Ventures. Jill was also a co-founder of the Open Money Initiative, a non-profit organization that researches how those without access to a free and open financial system manage their money. Jill has also conducted academic research on the use of cryptocurrencies in emerging markets as part of her graduate studies at Oxford University. She started her career as a fixed income trader at Goldman Sachs. She received an A.B. in Classics from Harvard University.

Jill Gunter

Scott Sunarto is the Founder &amp; CEO of Argus Labs, a crypto game developer/publisher behind the World Engine, backed by Haun Ventures. Scott was also the co-creator of Dark Forest, the category defining fully on-chain MMORTS game on Ethereum built using zkSNARKs

Scott Sunarto

A seasoned open-source developer with over 25 years of experience, Greg is the founder of&nbsp;Akash, an open network that provides permissionless access to cloud resources. Greg is also the CEO of Overclock Labs, which is the creator and largest contributor to&nbsp;Akash.



Before&nbsp;Akash, Greg founded AngelHack, the world's largest hackathon organization, which boasts over 200,000 developers across 164 cities worldwide. Greg began his career at IBM and later designed Kaiser Permanente's first cloud architecture in 2008.



With expertise in massively distributed systems, Greg is recognized for his contributions to widely adopted cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes, Terraform, and Nomad. His work has been featured in top-tier publications, including The New York Times, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Forbes, TechCrunch, and Yahoo! Finance. Greg was instrumental in the passing of California's first Blockchain law, providing the first expert witness testimony at the Senate.

Greg Osuri

Sam MacPherson, co-founder and CEO of Phoenix Labs, significantly contributes to Spark, a leading platform in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. His extensive experience with the MakerDAO Protocol Engineering team provided him with a deep understanding of the technical and economic intricacies of the Maker ecosystem. Sam leverages this expertise to drive innovations at Phoenix Labs, influencing the broader DeFi landscape.

Sam MacPherson

Jake Brukhman is CEO and Founder at CoinFund, among the world’s first cryptonative investment firms. Born to two computer scientists, Jake learned how to code at the age of fourteen and achieved degrees in mathematics and computer science. Jake has expressed his passion for cutting edge, frontier technologies by being an early visionary advocate for decentralization and blockchain. At CoinFund, he’s made exciting investments in blockchain scalability and interoperability, DeFi, NFT infrastructure, zero knowledge proofs, and the intersection of web3 x AI.



Jake spent the prior 10 years of his career in pure and financial technology, serving as Partner &amp; CTO at Triton Research, a technical product manager and engineer at Amazon.com, and financial technologist at Highbridge Capital Management. He studied mathematics and computer science at the Rutgers College Honors Program, the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and University College London.

Jake Brukhman

Robert is the CEO of Superstate, an asset management firm modernizing the infrastructure of investment funds. Additionally. he is an investor at Robot Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in fintech and crypto. Prior to starting Superstate, Leshner founded Compound Labs, which developed one of the first DeFi applications, in 2017. He has a degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Robert Leshner

Mike Silagadze is the founder and CEO of&nbsp;<a href="http://ether.fi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ether.fi</a>, the first ETH staking protocol that allows stakers to maintain full control of their keys throughout the entire staking process, making it the only truly decentralized liquid staking platform. Prior to founding&nbsp;<a href="http://ether.fi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ether.fi</a>, Mike was CEO and co-founder of Top Hat, which he grew into the market leader in student engagement software, with 500 employees and $60 million in annual revenue.



He is also an active speaker and lecturer in the higher education, technology, and startup communities, having lectured at the Rotman Commerce Entrepreneurship Organization, the ASU GSV Summit, MaRS, Tech Fest Toronto, SAAS North and T­E­Dx­Laurier­University, among many others.

Mike Silagadze

Adrian joined Tendermint/Cosmos in 2017 as the 3rd core developer and became later the head of partnerships. After Tendermint, Adrian joined the Web3 Foundation as a technologist. Before Anoma &amp; Namada, Adrian co-founded with Awa and Christopher Cryptium Labs a proof-of-stake validator (sold to Chorus One) and Metastate, an R&amp;D organisation that developed the largest upgrades of the Tezos protocol in addition to ZKP cryptography.

Adrian Brink

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Data Availability. Appchains. ZK Proofs. Chain Abstraction. Rollups. VM Optimization. Modular Money. Intents. Fee Markets. Interoperability. 

Modularity

Onchain Verifiability. Decentralized GPUs. DePIN. Agents. Inference. Co-owned AI. Open Source Models. Incentivized Training. 

AI x Crypto 

Shared Security. AVS Ecosystems. Liquid Restaking. Oracles. Scaling. Modular Services. Restaked Rollups. Casading Risk.

Restaking

Gaming NFTs. Studios. Fully Onchain Games. Next Gen Infra. AAA Games. AI x Gaming. In Game Items and Marketplaces. Up and Coming Games. 

Gaming

Layer 2. BitVM. Drive Chains. Spot ETFs. Ordinals. Bitcoin Restaking. Yield Opportunities. Macro Adoption. Scaling Solutions. 

Bitcoin

Bitcoin NFTs. Onchain Marketplaces. PFP Collections. Lending. Fractionalization. Web 3 IP. Creator Economy. Inscriptions. Onchain Art. Compressed NFTs.

NFTs

Universal Shared Composability. Scaling. EVM Optimization. Shared Sequencing. Bridging. Based Sequencing. RaaS. Tech Stacks. 