👀Weekly Recap: EigenLayer's Airdrop Saga Unfolds
Happy weekend Defiers!
EigenLayer’s long-awaited airdrop was announced this past week, but many early adopters of the pioneering Ethereum restaking protocol were unhappy with its terms.
Users slammed EigenLayer for its linear distribution allocating few tokens to smaller users, EIGEN being non-transferable at launch, and its claims platform blocking VPN users and points holders from major jurisdictions including the United States and Canada. In a further sign of protest, around 14,000 wallets had executed withdrawals from the protocol within just a few days.
However, EigenLayer capitulated on May 2, announcing that users who interacted with the protocol before April 29 would receive additional allocations of 100 EIGEN each.
EigenLayer was not the only project to suffer backlash in response to a highly-anticipated airdrop, with Friend Tech copping flak for its token distribution and v2 rollout. Many users were left unable to claim their tokens while the price of FRIEND plummeted, while others slammed the project for seeding the token’s liquidity pool with minimal assets and placing heavy restrictions on FRIEND transfers.
In other airdrop news, LayerZero announced it also took a snapshot informing its airdrop on May 1. LayerZero described the capture as “snapshot #1,” suggesting additional snapshots will be taken in the future.
It was a volatile week for market action, with Bitcoin sliding to its lowest level since February amid bearish anticipation of the latest Federal Reserve meeting, U.S. economic data, and weak performances in the crypto ETF sector.
However, the markets most a strong bounce at the end of the week after The Fed chose to keep interest rates steady and reaffirmed its commitment to easing rates later this year.
Aave unveiled a new three-year plan, including the launch of the Aave v4 protocol and Aave Network. The upcoming iteration of the top DeFI lending protocol by TVL will feature a “cross-chain liquidity layer” aggregating assets from multiple networks.
Base, the Layer 2 network from Coinbase, announced its second annual “Onchain Summer” hackathon. Up to $2 million worth of prizes will be available to developers participating in the event.
SynFutures v3, a surging decentralized perpetuals exchange on Blast, is now the top DEX by daily volume after overtaking Uniswap v3 and dYdX v4, despite hosting just $51 million in TVL. The spike in volume follows SynFutures launching a points campaign.
Plus, Binance founder CZ sentenced to four months in prison, Bitcoin transaction fees normalize after Runes normalize, Moonbirds soar as Yuga moves to restore IP rights, Solana deepens Google Cloud partnership, pension funds eye crypto assets, and PayPal’s U.S. customers with access more than 100 cryptocurrencies.
Enjoy!
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Friday
- EigenLayer Airdrop Outcry Shows Points are Raising Traders' Expectations EigenLayer airdropped tokens this week to huge backlash, but are the protocol’s early adopters justified or entitled?
- Poisoned Wallet Address Loses $70 Million in ‘Very Suspicious’ WBTC Transaction An unsuspecting user lost $69 million in WBTC today after suffering an address poisoning attack. The attacker mimicked a transfer of 0.05 ETH, or $150, resulting in the heavy loss.
- Fidelity Reveals Pension Funds Are Exploring Crypto Manuel Nordeste, Fidelity’s VP of digital assets, said that pension funds are “starting to talk to their investment committees” about crypto assets.
- Crypto Markets Surge on U.S. Jobs Report Crypto markets rose on Friday morning following the release of the US government's jobs report for April, driving a 4% increase in the combined digital asset market cap.
- Wasabi Wallet To Eliminate Coinjoin Amid U.S. Regulatory Fears Wasabi Wallet will discontinue its Coinjoin privacy service in response to recent U.S. regulatory action targeting privacy protocols and non-custodial wallets.
- Bitcoin Fees Normalize After Runes' Coming Out Party Abruptly Ends Runes’ on-chain activity and Bitcoin transaction fees dropped more than 97% in two weeks.
- Friend Tech Token Tanks After Shambled Debut Friend Tech’s community was up in arms after many users struggled to claim their airdrop while the price of FRIEND fell.
Thursday
- EigenLayer Increases Minimum Airdrop Allocation More than 280,000 EigenLayer users will receive an additional 100 EIGEN tokens after the protocol copped backlash for its airdrop allocations.
- Saylor Unveils Decentralized Identities on Bitcoin Microstrategy Michael Saylor unveiled plans for decentralized identities (DIDs) built on Bitcoin, ruffling feathers among old-school Bitcoin maxis.
- PayPal Integrates With MoonPay And Brings Hundreds of Tokens To U.S. Users Payments behemoth PayPal integrated with crypto buying app MoonPay, giving its 426 million U.S. customers access to over 100 cryptocurrencies.
- Crypto Markets Bounce After Fed Leaves Interest Rates Unchanged Bitcoin and Ether rallied 4% in the past 24 hours, while Solana surged 12%.
- Base Unveils Second Onchain Summer Hackathon Base will offer up to $2 million in rewards and incentives to builders during the event.
- Helium Mobile Introduces New $20 Group Plans Offering Unlimited Data Helium onboarded more than 62,400 subscribers to its unlimited plans since the start of 2024.
- LayerZero Labs Sets Stage for Airdrop With Snapshot LayerZero noted that the capture was its first snapshot, meaning there will likely be others in the future.
- Solana Launches GameShift API on Google Cloud Solana has steadily deepened ties with Google Cloud since onboarding the company as a validator in November 2022.
Wednesday
- EigenLayer Withdrawals Accelerate After Airdrop Backlash Nearly 14,000 wallets have triggered withdrawals from the Ethereum restaking protocol since April 29.
- Aave Proposes V4 Iteration With Cross-Chain-Liquidity Layer The leading DeFi lending protocol also plans to launch Aave Network in the next three years.
- Crypto Markets Dive Ahead of Fed Meeting Crypto markets continued to slide on Wednesday morning, hours in anticipation of the Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate decision.
- Witness Chain Soars Past $5B In Delegated ETH Amid Polygon DePIN Push Witness Chain is the third-largest AVS on EigenLayer with 1.82 million staked Ether delegated.
- SynFutures v3 Overtakes Uniswap and dYdX By Daily Volume SynFutures v3, a Blast-based decentralized exchange for perpetual futures, has emerged as the top DEX by 24-hour trading volume with $1.47 billion after launching a points campaign.
Tuesday
- Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao Gets 4-Month Prison Sentence A Seattle court sentenced the former Binance CEO to four months in jail over Bank Secrecy Act violations.
- Crypto Markets Bleed on Underwhelming Hong Kong ETF Flows The six debuting Bitcoin and Ether ETFs that debuted in Hong Kong drove just $11 million in trading volume on their first day.
- Coinbase Rolls Out Bitcoin’s Lightning Network The integration was made possible thanks to a partnership with Lightspark, a private firm focused on enterprise-grade Lightning payments.
- Kamino Finance Debuts Token With 70% Drop In Price The price of KMNO, the token from Solana’s largest lending protocol, plummeted from $0.11 to $0.04 in less than ten minutes after launching.
- Consensys Court Docs Reveal SEC Investigation Into ETH The SEC approved Ether futures ETFs in October 2023 after launching an investigation into whether ETH comprises a security seven months earlier.
- EIGEN Airdrop Elicits Pushback From EigenLayer Community Critics decried the EigenLayer airdrop’s linear allocation, initial lack of transferability, and geoblocked claims platform.
- 0xMaki Proposes Ordinals-Inspired 'Heroglyphs' To Incentivize Solo Stakers Heroglyphs facilitates the creation of tokens that only solo Ethereum validators can mine in a bid to promote the proliferation of independent validators.
- Moonbirds Soar as Yuga Labs Looks to Restore NFT Holders’ IP Rights The floor price of Moonbirds NFTs increased by 30% in the past 24 hours after Yuga Labs said it ditched the collection’s Creative Commons copyright licensing.
Monday
- EigenLayer to Drop Token on May 10 EigenLayer earmarked 5% of its token supply to Season 1 airdrop recipients.
- Ethereum Foundation Wants To Use AI to De-Risk ETH Ecosystem The Ethereum Foundation wants to stave off hacks targeting its Layer 2 ecosystem by using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
- Bitcoin Jesus is Back – Roger Ver Wants to Clear His Name Roger Ver’s new book claims that Bitcoin was “hijacked” amid the block size wars nearly a decade ago.
- Bitcoin, Ethereum Continue to Slide Amid Renewed Inflation Fears Crypto markets continue to drift lower on renewed US inflation fears after last week’s GDP data showed the US economy grew at the slowest pace in two years last quarter.
- Omnity Introduces Cross-Chain Transfer Functionality For Runes Runes users can now move their assets across Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks.
- DoJ Opposes Motion to Dismiss Charges Against Tornado Cash Developer The Department of Justice said Roman Storm profited to the tune of millions while working on Tornado Cash.
