Weekly Report | Pepe founding team's identity exposed; Binance implements "Continuous Risk Management Plan" for low market cap projects on its platform
Base and Optimism jointly release revenue governance sharing protocol; Bit browser server-side cached data was hacked, posing a risk of user wallet theft.整理：饼干，ChainCatcher
"What Important Events Happened This Week (8.21-8.27)"
1. Coinbase: Will Invest in Circle, USDC Plans to Launch on 6 New Chains
According to official news, Coinbase announced on social media that it will invest in Circle to continue its long-term success adjustments and investments in stablecoins, particularly USDC.
Coinbase added that it has streamlined Circle's operations and governance, with Circle as the issuer of USDC taking on all responsibilities and obligations. For Coinbase customers, there will be no changes to USDC on Coinbase, and Coinbase will continue to support USDC across all its platforms. USDC also plans to launch on 6 new blockchains. (Source link)
2. Pepe Founder’s Identity Exposed, Official Discloses 3 Former Members Sold PEPE Privately and Deleted Multi-Signature Permissions
CryptoPhunks, the founder of the NFT market Not Larva Labs, PAULY, revealed the identities of the Pepe team members, stating that the founder of Pepe is American landscape photographer Zachary Testa, born in 1997, who graduated from Arizona State University in 2018 with a degree in marketing. He has a record of legal violations in several wilderness areas, sacred indigenous areas, and other drone-restricted zones. PAULY had helped the PEPE team connect with the listing teams at Binance and Sushi.
Zachary used PEPE income to purchase a purple Lamborghini worth $865,000, while his team did not pay any copyright fees to Matt_Furie, the original creator of Pepe the Frog.
Earlier on August 25, the PEPE multi-signature wallet changed its threshold from 5/8 to only 2/8, meaning it no longer required 5 out of 8 wallets to sign transactions, but instead only needed 2 out of 8 wallets. Over 16 trillion PEPE (approximately $155 million) flowed out of the PEPE multi-signature wallet to addresses associated with Binance, OKX, and Bybit.
On the 26th, the official Pepe account posted to reveal the truth behind the multi-signature sale of 16 trillion PEPE: 3 former team members secretly returned on the 25th, logged into the multi-signature, stole 60% of the tokens in the wallet, which is that 16 trillion PEPE, and transferred them to exchanges for sale. They then removed themselves from the multi-signature, attempting to absolve themselves of any association with Pepe. The official Pepe account stated that the remaining 10 trillion PEPE is safe. (Source link)
3. Balancer: Multiple V2 Pools Have Vulnerabilities, Users Urged to Withdraw Affected LP Immediately
According to ChainCatcher, the DeFi protocol Balancer tweeted that it has received reports of serious vulnerabilities affecting multiple V2 pools. Emergency mitigation procedures have been implemented to ensure the safety of most of the TVL, but some funds remain at risk. Users are advised to withdraw affected LP immediately. The Balancer UI will notify all users if they hold liquidity in affected LPs and provide step-by-step withdrawal instructions.
Balancer recommends that Avalanche LST liquidity providers, BENQI, Yield Yak, and GoGoPool users withdraw liquidity from Boosted pools and migrate it to non-Boosted versions. These pools have been paused and are safe.
Subsequently, Balancer stated that over 98.7% of the funds at risk are now safe, the vulnerability has not been exploited, but 0.42% of the total TVL (approximately $2.8 million) remains at risk, and users are advised to withdraw using the UI as soon as possible. (Source link)
4. dYdX Founder: Crypto Builders Should Prioritize Markets Outside the U.S.
dYdX founder Antonio Juliano tweeted that cryptocurrency builders should temporarily abandon serving U.S. customers and try to re-enter in 5-10 years, experimenting in other markets and returning to the U.S. once the timing is right.
Juliano stated that for builders or startups, it makes more sense to focus on finding PMF overseas and then return to the U.S. with a large user base's "leverage." "This doesn’t mean that U.S. crypto policy work isn’t important. It absolutely is, because it takes a long time (must be prepared for re-entry), and many places in the world will follow the U.S. model."
Considering the slow progress of the U.S. government in establishing cryptocurrency regulations, Juliano suggested that the cryptocurrency industry needs to develop further to have a greater impact on U.S. policy. (Source link)
5. Binance is Promoting Low Market Cap Projects on Its Platform to Increase Liquidity as Part of a "Continuous Risk Management Plan"
In the past week, Binance staff contacted multiple projects to inquire about their relationships with market makers and whether they would consider funding the exchange's savings products. Specifically, Binance asked these projects if they would consider depositing 1%-5% of their circulating tokens into their savings accounts to earn interest. Reports indicate that if the relevant projects have no relationship with market makers or do not wish to fund their savings products, Binance would seek explanations.
A Binance spokesperson stated that this promotion is part of a "continuous risk management plan" targeting a few cryptocurrencies listed on the exchange, which either have low trading pair liquidity or are relatively small in market cap. The spokesperson noted that such projects could pose risks to users, "including potential market manipulation." (Source link)
6. Base and Optimism Jointly Release Revenue Governance Sharing Protocol
Optimism stated that the collaboration between Optimism and Base has two main components: first, protocol governance, a joint commitment to OP Chains upgrades and ordering rules; second, economics and governance. Sharing fees with the Optimism Collective and granting long-term tokens to Base.
Regarding protocol governance, if the proposed framework Law of Chains launched by Optimism last month is approved, the next step will be to transfer the responsibility for upgrading Base, OP Mainnet, and other OP chains to a decentralized security council. The foundation aims to submit a governance proposal to execute this transition by early 2024. Before adopting the blockchain law, Base and OP Mainnet will also share upgrades.
Regarding economics and governance, transaction revenue from Base will be split and directed to the Collective through on-chain contracts. Specifically, the larger of 2.5% of Base sequencer's total revenue and 15% of Base chain sequencer's net revenue (L2 transaction revenue minus L1 data submission costs) will belong to the Collective.
The Optimism Foundation has also provided Base with the opportunity to earn up to approximately 11.8 million OP tokens over the next six years, aimed at retroactively rewarding Base for its contributions to scaling Ethereum and the OP Stack. (Source link)
7. U.S. Department of Justice Charges Tornado Cash Founders with Money Laundering and Sanctions Violations
According to an official announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice, Tornado Cash founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, violating sanctions, and operating an unlicensed money transfer business. The indictment states that the two are accused of creating, operating, and promoting Tornado Cash, facilitating over $1 billion in money laundering transactions, and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for the sanctioned North Korean cybercrime organization Lazarus Group.
Currently, Roman Storm has been arrested in Washington State and will appear in court today in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, while Roman Semenov remains at large. Additionally, Roman Semenov has been placed on the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Specially Designated Nationals list.
Subsequently, the lawyer for Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, Brian Klein, stated that his client has been released on bail. (Source link)
8. Former Vice Chairman of Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference, Xiao Yi, Sentenced to Life Imprisonment in First Trial
According to China News Service, the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court in Zhejiang Province publicly sentenced Xiao Yi, former member of the Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference and vice chairman, to life imprisonment for bribery and abuse of power. The defendant Xiao Yi was sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, deprived of political rights for life, and had all personal property confiscated; he was sentenced to six years in prison for abuse of power, with the decision to execute life imprisonment, depriving him of political rights for life, and confiscating all personal property; the property and its proceeds seized in the case will be recovered and turned over to the national treasury.
The trial found that from 2008 to 2021, the defendant Xiao Yi used his positions as the director of the Jiangxi Provincial Government's Beijing Office, secretary of the Fuzhou Municipal Committee of Jiangxi Province, and vice chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference to provide assistance to relevant units and individuals in project contracting, project development, and job promotion, illegally accepting property totaling more than 125 million yuan, of which over 57.82 million yuan had not been actually obtained; from 2017 to 2021, while serving as the secretary of the Fuzhou Municipal Committee, Xiao Yi violated the new development concept and national regulations, providing assistance to enterprises engaged in virtual currency computing production in terms of financial subsidies, funding support, and electricity guarantees, causing significant losses to public property and national and people's interests, with particularly serious circumstances and particularly adverse effects.
Previous report, former vice chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference Xiao Yi was expelled from the party for abusing his power to support enterprises engaged in virtual currency mining activities. (Source link)
9. Bit Browser: Server Cache Data Hacked, User Wallets at Risk of Theft
PeopleDAO core developer 0xAA posted on social media that Bit Browser has announced that its server cache data has been hacked, and Bit has reported the incident. Users who have enabled extended data synchronization may have their wallets at risk of theft and are advised to take immediate action to transfer their wallet assets until the official notifies users after thoroughly fixing the breach.
ChainCatcher previously reported, according to community news, several members of the crypto community have reported that their private keys were stolen, with speculation that this situation was caused by using the Bit Fingerprint Browser. In response, the official Bit Fingerprint Browser stated in the community that some versions of WPS For Windows have a remote code execution vulnerability, which attackers can exploit to execute arbitrary code on the victim's target host and control the host, etc. (Source link)
10. Data
- Total trading volume of friend.tech exceeds 50,000 ETH
- Grayscale GBTC's negative premium rate reached 23.9% last week, the highest since April 26 last year
- Total market cap of stablecoins has dropped to about $123.3 billion, the lowest level since September 2021
- Uniswap Q2 spot trading volume reached $110 billion, surpassing Coinbase for two consecutive quarters
- EigenLayer reached the staking cap of 100,000 stETH, with TVL surging 207%
- SUI will unlock 70.89 million tokens on September 3, accounting for nearly 10% of the circulating supply
- Paxos is still holding over 90% of the PYUSD supply
- Starknet network TVL exceeds $140 million, with a 7-day increase of 29.17%
"What Exciting Articles Are Worth Reading This Week (8.21-8.27)"
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire's sense of crisis seems to be palpable. Recently, Jeremy Allaire responded through a Bloomberg interview, stating that in the face of competition from non-crypto companies like PayPal, Circle has over $1 billion in cash to buffer the pressure. And yesterday, Circle officially announced that Coinbase will soon invest, and USDC will launch on 6 new chains with Coinbase's support.
For Circle, its 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.
The fact facing Circle is that the market cap of USDC has dropped from $45 billion at the beginning of the year to about $26 billion, nearly halving, reaching the lowest level in nearly 2 years. Meanwhile, the market shares of competitors like USDT and DAI have significantly increased or adjusted. Compared to the beginning of the year at $66 billion, USDT's market cap has risen by 25.7% to $83 billion; while DAI, after experiencing the USDC de-pegging crisis, has gone through a period of low but has seen its market cap rise over 20% in the past two months thanks to RWA.
In the face of the USDC market cap decline crisis, 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 de-pegging crisis, there have been significant changes in the top five stablecoins; on the other hand, old blue-chip 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 factor has been added to the stablecoin market.
In addition to the changes in the landscape of stablecoin projects, core crypto regions like the U.S., Singapore, and Hong Kong are also experiencing undercurrents in the stablecoin regulatory race. 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.
2. Temasek Web3 Fund Superscrypt: What Valuable Changes Exist in Web3 Social?
To understand the feasibility of Web3 social, the best way is to first understand how past waves of innovation were formed and assess whether Web3 social has similar characteristics. Innovation waves emerge at the intersection of technological innovation and new consumer/business values; they change the way our world operates, and in hindsight, these impacts are often obvious. Just like in the real world, after a tsunami, there are often several waves that follow. Silicon chips and the internet are the tsunami, while personal computing, e-commerce, digital financial services, and Web2 social platforms are the subsequent waves.
In the Web3 field, blockchain is the new tsunami, followed by waves of decentralized finance, dapps, and NFTs. Will Web3 social platforms become the new wave? Can they provide more added value than previous revolutions? Temasek's Web3 fund Superscrypt analyzes this in the article.
However, apart from Axie Infinity, there is not much reporting on the Vietnamese market, leading to a lack of understanding among users, who have long regarded it as a mysterious existence.
Since Vietnam has grown into an important region in the crypto industry that cannot be ignored, quickly understanding the layout of Web3 projects and related enterprises in this market has become urgent. As exchanges are often the first point of contact for users with the crypto world, the trading activity of their users is often used to measure the popularity of crypto activities in the local market. So, what is the development status of the crypto exchange track in Vietnam?
In China, there are leading exchanges like Binance and OKX, and in South Korea, there are Upbit and Bithumb. What trading platforms exist in the Vietnamese market? What are the criteria for local users when choosing exchanges? This article will systematically sort out the current development status of the Vietnamese crypto market and the landscape of crypto exchanges.
People initially had a beautiful vision for NFTs: NFT smart contracts enforce secondary royalties on-chain, so as long as the creator's NFT is traded in the secondary market, the creator can earn money. This is fantastic; this asset circulates on the internet, and every time the asset is transferred or sold, it brings profit to the creator.
However, the reality is that smart contracts cannot enforce NFT royalties on-chain. In this discussion, I will introduce some background knowledge about 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.
5. Web3 Version of ChatGPT Product Review: Basic Understanding Competent, Overall Unsatisfactory
Although the current hot topic of "AI + Web3" still revolves around identity networks like Worldcoin, Telegram Bot narratives like Unibot and Lootbot, as well as zkML technologies that may further connect with scaling solutions in the future, AI-driven chatbots like MinMax, QnA3, and Web3 Analytics have emerged in the community, proving that teams have noticed the gap in knowledge transmission in Web3 and want to create a chatGPT for Web3 professional fields. This article will evaluate the aforementioned three Web3 chatbots, comparing their understanding, generation, learning, and optimization capabilities from multiple perspectives, and comprehensively assess the user experience and intelligence level.
6. Base Ecosystem Map: Traffic Explosion and Overview of 100+ Projects
This article will summarize the Base ecosystem for readers. According to incomplete statistics, the number of projects in the Base ecosystem has exceeded 100, with a relatively complete scale, where infrastructure occupies a significant portion, including but not limited to bridges, on-ramps, wallets, oracles, and node providers; Base's native DeFi projects also account for a large proportion of locked value and trading volume, with many multi-chain DeFi projects like Uniswap and Sushi expanding here; currently, mainstream NFT markets and minting tools like OpenSea and ZORA have also integrated with the Base mainnet.
Have you ever wondered how Rollups generate such astonishingly high revenue levels? @BuildOnBase achieved over $2 million in revenue in less than 3 weeks… Inspired by @DavideCrapis's recent post titled "Rollup Economics 2.0," let's delve into the economic model of Rollups.
Key points of this article: 1) The "old-school" business model of Rollups; 2) How Rollup design has become more complex; 3) Interoperability between them; 4) The role of Layer 3.
Roman Storm and Roman Semenov have been indicted on charges including conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transfer business. So far, not all relevant facts have been fully disclosed, but at first glance, the limited factual allegations in the indictment do not show any obvious violations of relevant laws. Regarding other allegations related to this new case, we may have follow-up discussions, but it is currently necessary to discuss what constitutes money transfer and what constitutes "pure" software development or communication services. This is a key issue in this case and at the core of American citizens' rights to build and release software.
9. The Rise and Fall of PEPE: Unequal Distribution of Spoils or Premeditated Exit?
In recent days, the meme project PEPE has staged a "mysterious" crash. The PEPE team's multi-signature address transferred over 16 trillion PEPE (approximately $16 million) to 4 centralized platforms for sale, and it wasn't until a full day later that the PEPE team responded: 3 former members privately deleted multi-signature permissions to sell tokens, and the remaining tokens are currently safe and will be planned for future destruction.
Since the launch of the national cryptocurrency Sango Coin, the asset tokenization process in the Central African Republic has been ongoing for a year, making it one of the most crypto-friendly countries in the world’s underdeveloped regions, as well as one of the most active areas for cryptocurrency innovation. The "decentralization" in the crypto world is a rebellion against the centralization of this world, and the emergence of crypto technology provides new technological weapons for weaker countries to resist the economic domination of hegemonic nations. Cryptocurrency and resource tokenization have also become powerful tools to break this inequality.
