Weekly Recommendations | A Review of Global Cryptocurrency Regulatory Policies and Important Licenses; The Controversies Behind the LayerZero Airdrop Craze
Bankless Ventures Founder’s Statement: Is RWA the Next Growth Engine for DeFi or Just a Fad?Organizer: Cookies, ChainCatcher
1. “Overview of Major Global Crypto Market Regulatory Policies and Important Licenses”
As a platform focused on the development and cutting-edge trends of the entire industry, ChainCatcher has collected the latest crypto regulatory policies from important global markets, as well as the legal and licensing guidance required to conduct crypto business locally. Overall, the mainstream regulatory attitude globally is cautious, with regulatory bodies in various countries believing that crypto asset service providers offering key functions should obtain licenses, registrations, and authorizations.
2. “Founders' Statement: Why Are We Launching Bankless Ventures?”
In early March, Bankless podcast hosts David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams planned to raise $35 million for their venture capital fund, Bankless Ventures, to invest in seed-stage Web3 companies. They have currently secured about 75% of the committed investment, with LPs from a16z, Ethereum Foundation researchers, Polygon co-founders, and NGC, aiming to close the funding by the end of May. David elaborated on his original intention and goals for establishing Bankless Ventures.
Recently, the cross-chain infrastructure LayerZero raised $120 million in Series B funding at a valuation of $3 billion, making it a hot topic in the crypto community once again. However, aside from the "traffic" brought by airdrop expectations, does LayerZero truly achieve innovation in cross-chain bridges and provide users with a better cross-chain experience?
4. “MEV 2023 Outlook: Traversing the Dark Forest”
Most reports and articles on the topic of MEV focus on issues including but not limited to the fairness of the MEV market, the negative externalities brought by MEV, and the centralization risks or censorship issues related to mechanism design. Additionally, mainstream financial institutions have begun to pay attention to the MEV space, including the regulation of the MEV market.
The author of this article believes that MEV trading means that liquidity data has unprecedented opportunities and challenges. The transparency of liquidity data can also help crypto financial institutions establish real-time risk control mechanisms based on liquidity, allowing them to recognize crises earlier. Based on this, the article aims to prompt users to pay attention to the value and risks of existing liquidity data to better protect assets or design better protocols to safeguard users.
5. “HOPE: A Vision of 'Distributed Stablecoins' Evolving from the CeFi Crisis to DeFi and TradFi”
Stablecoins, one of the "holy grails" sought after in the crypto world, have always been the most imaginative track in the industry. However, since 2022, various stablecoin solutions have faced setbacks, whether it’s the collapse of UST or the USDC reserve controversy, while the often-criticized USDT has continued to expand while maintaining its value stability.
On April 19, the new challenger HOPE officially launched on the Ethereum mainnet. As a distributed stablecoin project launched by former PayPal Financial founder Flex Yang, what innovative mechanisms does it offer in comparison?
6. “Interpreting the U.S. Regulatory Approach from the 73-Page 'Stablecoin Bill Discussion Draft'”
The U.S. House Financial Services Committee recently released a "Stablecoin Bill Discussion Draft." Although it is just a draft and does not represent the final bill, we can at least see the U.S. regulatory approach to stablecoins from this 73-page interim result that has been discussed for months.
7. “Dialogue with Multicoin: Layer2 Cannot Scale Ethereum, Optimistic About Filecoin”
MultiCoin is very interested in the intersection of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, believing that there are three major directions with opportunities, including providing token incentives for human feedback in reinforcement learning.
Additionally, MultiCoin remains skeptical about the mainstream narrative of Layer2 scaling Ethereum, citing limitations in inheriting L1 security and the importance of speed and time sensitivity. Finally, MultiCoin expressed optimism about Filecoin.
8. “RWA, the Next Growth Engine for DeFi or a Flash in the Pan?”
Regarded as the next growth engine for DeFi, RWA (Real-World Assets) is gaining traction. According to crypto data platform Rootdata, there are nearly 50 projects in the RWA sector, with many innovative projects focused on lending and real estate. Among them, notable investors in projects like Goldfinch, Centrifuge, and Maple Finance include a16z, Coinbase Ventures, and Distributed Capital.
9. “Bankless: Reviewing Centralization Pain Points in the Ethereum Ecosystem and Their Solutions”
The Ethereum ecosystem is more centralized than it needs to be. However, there is still hope, as developers often have solutions in centralized areas. This article will explore the centralization pain points of Ethereum in staking, stablecoins, and rollups, as well as the measures being taken to address these issues.
The NFT market continues to languish, with three key metrics—trading volume, number of transactions, and trading users—at their lowest levels in over a year. In this gloomy environment, NFT marketplaces are struggling, and related trading platform tokens are also declining. However, so far, no mainstream platform has declared surrender; most are still developing according to their strategies, with occasional highlights. This article is the first in a series on the survival status of NFT trading platforms, focusing on Blur and OpenSea in the post-royalty era.
11. “Research on the Survival Status of NFT Trading Platforms (2): The Dead End of Trading Mining”
LooksRare and X2Y2 are representatives of the trading mining model and were among the earliest practitioners, continuing to this day. A significant characteristic of trading mining platforms is the extremely high unit price of each transaction. In a bear market, this characteristic is profoundly reflected in the very few users, yet it supports a massive trading volume on the platform.
