Eventful Week in Crypto
It has been an eventful week in crypto. A significant network outage took Solana offline for a few hours, and EigenLayer experienced a remarkable TVL surge after removing its staking limit. Let’s learn more.
Bitcoin
Traditional stock markets home to crypto-related stocks, such as Microstrategy (MSTR) and Coinbase (COIN), are potentially about to start their next price climbs.
Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s Bitcoin-friendly president, has won re-election, securing a landslide victory amidst unconfirmed claims he has secured 85% of the votes.
Ethereum
Ethereum developers announced the date for the long-awaited and highly anticipated Dencun upgrade, which has been scheduled for March 13.
SVV.Network has just launched a new Distributed Key Generation tool, which enables distributed nodes to operate more efficiently and can be used to build safer non-custodial staking services.
DeFi
The SEC has adopted rules that widened the scope of entities that needed to register with the regulatory body.
Ethereum-based liquid staking protocol EigenLayer has seen its total value locked (TVL) surge by $1 billion after it removed its staking cap.
Technology
The Solana Network is back online following a major outage that resulted in the network being unable to process transactions and advance blocks.
Business
The Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Solana Foundation to drive the adoption of blockchain technologies.
Bakkt, the cryptocurrency platform backed by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has warned it may not have enough funds to stay in business over the next 12 months.
BlockFi and Three Arrows Capital (3AC) have finally reached an understanding; however, the terms of the settlement are to remain sealed as per court order.
The world’s largest domain registrar, GoDaddy, and the Ethereum Name Service have announced a strategic collaboration to link domain names and blockchain addresses.
NFT
ERC-404, a novel and experimental token standard on Ethereum combining the attributes of NFTs and cryptocurrencies, has rocketed to a $170M market cap, generating $87M in trades.
Renowned NFT collector GMoney has taken a seven-figure loan, borrowing $1 million USDC against one of the rarest assets in the PFP (Profile Picture) collection, CryptoPunk 8219.
Web3
The non-profit organization NEAR Foundation will partner with interoperable domain company D3 Global to apply for the .near top-level domain (TLD).
Disney has partnered with Fortnite creator Epic Games with a substantial $1.5 billion investment to create an immersive metaverse experience within Fortnite.
Security
The UN sanctions monitors have claimed that North Korea conducted mass cyberattacks to siphon away $3 billion of crypto to fund its nuclear weapons program.
Binance has sought to calm fears regarding its data and code being compromised, stating its security team had determined there was no leak in the exchange’s systems.
Regulation
The Hong Kong government has launched a public consultation as it looks to regulate over-the-counter (OTC) virtual asset trading.
The Thai ministry has relaxed tax regulations by suspending the requirement to remit a 7% VAT on profits generated from cryptocurrency and digital token trading.
The testimony of a former developer at Terraform Labs pointed out the deliberate securities law violation by co-founders Do Kwon and Shin Hyun-Seung.