Daily Report | Balancer: Multiple V2 pools have vulnerabilities, users are advised to withdraw affected LPs immediately; Crypto payment company Ramp completes $300 million financing, led by Thrive Capital and others
Curve founder: CRV buyers who violate cooperation agreements will not face negative consequences, and I believe they will adhere to the six-month lock-up commitment; Data: Well-known Twitter KOL Cobie ranks first in friend.tech royalty income with $144,400; EigenLayer reaches the staking cap of 100,000 stETH, with TVL surging by 207%.整理：Mia，ChainCatcher
"What Important Events Happened in the Last 24 Hours"
1. Balancer: Multiple V2 Pools Have Vulnerabilities, Users Are Advised to Withdraw Affected LPs Immediately
According to ChainCatcher, the DeFi protocol Balancer tweeted that it has received reports of serious vulnerabilities affecting multiple V2 pools. Emergency mitigation measures have been implemented to ensure the safety of most of the TVL, but some funds remain at risk. Users are advised to withdraw affected LPs immediately. The Balancer UI will notify all users if they hold liquidity in affected LPs and provide step-by-step withdrawal instructions. (Source link)
2. Crypto Payment Company Ramp Completes $300 Million Financing, Led by Thrive Capital
According to ChainCatcher, Ramp, a fintech company focused on crypto payments, announced the completion of $300 million in financing at a post-money valuation of $5.8 billion, led by Thrive Capital and Sands Capital, with participation from General Catalyst, Founders Fund, and other existing supporters. The new funds will be used to accelerate product development and expand hiring in the second half of this year.
According to crypto data platform RootData, Ramp is a non-custodial, full-stack payment infrastructure that allows users to purchase cryptocurrencies without leaving dApps or wallets. (Source link)
3. Researcher: Starknet Token May Experience First Unlock on November 29, Users Are Advised to Complete Necessary Interactions in Advance
According to ChainCatcher, crypto researcher Rekt Fencer analyzed that the Starknet token STRK may experience its first unlock on November 29. According to previously published tokenomics by Starknet, STRK will unlock linearly over four years.
Rekt studied the STRK token page on Etherscan and speculated through the analysis of "holder" contract information that November 29, 2023, at 22:00:00 GMT may be the time for the first unlock of investor and team tokens.
Rekt advises users who want to receive STRK airdrops to complete all necessary interactions on Starknet before November 29. (Source link)
4. Curve Founder: CRV Buyers Violating Cooperation Agreements Will Not Face Negative Consequences, Believes They Will Honor Six-Month Lockup Commitment
According to ChainCatcher, as reported by Blockworks, CRV fell by 20% this week, currently priced at $0.47, with the price drop possibly due to previous over-the-counter (OTC) trades. Previously, Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov reached a series of OTC trades with over a dozen counterparties to save his loans and prevent cascading liquidations across the DeFi space, selling a large amount of CRV for stablecoins to repay debts, with some projects' communities indirectly committing to a six-month lockup through voting to custody their CRV.
However, the lockup does not seem to be enforced by law or smart contracts. Reports indicate that some participants have transferred their tokens to centralized exchanges.
Egorov confirmed in a statement that buyers violating cooperation agreements will not face negative consequences, but he believes they will honor their commitment regarding the six-month lockup.
Previous news, DWF Lab spent 5 million USDT to purchase 12.5 million CRV from Egorov on August 1, but transferred 2 million CRV to Binance on August 19; the head of DWF Lab stated yesterday that the transfer of CRV to Binance was for trading needs. (Source link)
5. Data: Well-Known Twitter KOL Cobie Ranks First in friend.tech Royalty Income with $144,400
According to ChainCatcher, as of August 22, data from CoinGecko shows that user Cobie has the highest royalty income on friend.tech, reaching $144,400 (equivalent to 81.94 ETH). Below are the top 25 accounts ranked by royalty income and their trends.
friend.tech platform founder 0xRacerAlt ranks second with a royalty income of $101,700 (58.04 ETH). The third place goes to crypto trader HsakaTrades, with a royalty income of $100,600 (57.06 ETH).
In the 12 days since the trial operation began on August 11, other users' royalty incomes ranged from $14,900 to $75,500, equivalent to daily earnings of $1,200 to $6,300, potentially annualizing to $453,200 to $2.3 million.
Notably, Cobie, 0xRacerAlt, and HsakaTrades' royalty incomes combined account for 34.6% of the total of the top 25 accounts.
Among the top 25 users, 16 accounts were established within the first three days of the trial operation, with these early adopters leveraging their influence in the crypto Twitter space to quickly gain platform recognition.
Additionally, 9 accounts joined a week after the trial operation began, with account ages ranging from 0 to 4 days. Among them, 6 are already influential crypto Twitter accounts.
Interestingly, some non-crypto Twitter users are also gaining recognition, such as esports figures Faze Banks, 100T Nadeshot, and Faze Rain, who earned $75,500, $27,600, and $19,800 in royalty income shortly after joining the platform. (Source link)
6. EigenLayer Hits stETH Staking Cap of 100,000, TVL Surges 207%
According to ChainCatcher, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform EigenLayer reached its staking cap of 100,000 stETH just hours after raising its liquidity restaking cap to 100,000 ETH. The total value locked (TVL) surged by 207%, reaching $238 million.
It is reported that EigenLayer raised the LST (liquid staking tokens, including stETH, rETH, and cbETH) restaking cap at 7 AM Pacific Time on August 22. After the cap was lifted, users will be able to deposit any of the aforementioned tokens into EigenLayer. When any LST reaches the milestone of restaking 100,000 tokens, EigenLayer will pause accepting further staking again. (Source link)
"What Interesting Articles Are Worth Reading in the Last 24 Hours"
People initially had a beautiful vision for NFTs: NFT smart contracts enforce secondary royalties on-chain, so as long as a creator's NFT is traded on the secondary market, the creator can earn money. This is fantastic; the asset circulates on the internet, and every transfer or sale of the asset generates profit for the creator.
However, the reality is that smart contracts cannot enforce NFT royalties on-chain. In this article, I will introduce some background knowledge, discuss NFT royalties, how they work, the evolution of different royalty standards, and potential solutions to the issue we just outlined, and finally, I will provide some suggestions.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire's sense of crisis seems to be overflowing. Recently, Jeremy Allaire responded through a Bloomberg interview, stating that Circle has over $1 billion in cash to buffer against competition from non-crypto companies like PayPal. Yesterday, Circle officially announced that Coinbase will soon invest, and USDC will launch on six new chains with Coinbase's support.
For Circle, the sense of crisis likely comes not only from the invasion of Web2 giants like PayPal but also from the continuous pressure from old competitors like USDT and DAI.
Currently, one fact facing Circle is that the market value of USDC has dropped from $45 billion at the beginning of the year to about $26 billion, nearly halving and reaching a nearly two-year low . Meanwhile, the market shares of competitors like USDT and DAI have significantly increased or rebounded. Compared to the beginning of the year, USDT's market value has risen by 25.7% to $83 billion; although DAI experienced a downturn after the USDC depegging incident, it has seen over a 20% increase in market value in the past two months thanks to RWA.
Amid the crisis of USDC's declining market value, we can also see the reshaping of the stablecoin market landscape this year. On one hand, after experiencing regulatory crackdowns on BUSD and the USDC depegging crisis, there have been significant changes in the top five stablecoins; on the other hand, established DeFi projects like Curve and Aave are actively launching native stablecoins; some new forces in yield-bearing stablecoins leveraging LSD and RWA are also on the rise. With Web2 payment giant PayPal launching the stablecoin PYUSD, another important motive has been added to the stablecoin market.
In addition to the changes in the landscape of stablecoin projects, core crypto regions like the United States, Singapore, and Hong Kong are also experiencing undercurrents in stablecoin regulatory competitions. Currently, the Monetary Authority of Singapore has taken the lead in releasing the "MAS Finalized Stablecoin Regulatory Framework," providing a reference for promoting compliant stablecoins.
3. "OKX's Mutual Investment Strategy: Left Hand Exchange, Right Hand Web3 Wallet"
Literally, DeFi and CeFi are completely opposing concepts. The transformation of DeFi over CeFi has always been one of the most important narratives in the crypto market, but a series of recent industry actions indicate that the relationship between the two is undergoing many interesting and significant changes.
An obvious trend is that with the popularity of Layer 2, many established DeFi projects are competing to emphasize CeFi-level user experiences. For example, Uniswap's UniswapX focuses on gasless trading, while Synthetix's Infinex attempts to introduce a new derivatives front end, providing CEX-like functionality to cater to traders more accustomed to using CEXs. Synthetix founder Kain Warwick even directly proclaimed, "Now is the time to compete directly with CEXs."
In response to the offensive from DeFi projects, most CeFi projects have adopted a "pick and choose" strategy, incorporating decentralized products into their development strategies. For instance, Coinbase has recently joined Binance and OKX in launching its own EVM chain, attempting to transform from a competitor in DeFi to a foundational infrastructure for DeFi.
OKX has gone a step further by directly integrating a Web3 wallet into its app, allowing millions of users to quickly and conveniently experience various DeFi products. Recently, it also launched a cutting-edge account abstraction wallet, organically combining CeFi and DeFi at the product level to meet users' one-stop needs and making significant contributions to DeFi market education.
While centralization and decentralization represent two opposing extremes, each has its pros and cons, and ultimately, they are both means to an end, aimed at providing better financial services. In fact, it is not difficult to find that the breakthrough points at each important development node in the crypto industry's history are precisely the technologies that can better integrate DeFi and CeFi.
