🪂Weekly Recap: STRK Claims Title Of Largest Airdrop Ever

Happy weekend Defiers!

Cryptocurrencies rallied to fresh multi-year highs early in the week, with ETH trading above $3,000 and BTC tagging $52,900 for the first time in 22 months and 26 months, respectively. However, the markets quickly found resistance at the local price highs, with bears now threatening to dictate the next market move as digital assets consolidate.

Uniswap’s UNI governance token surged 60% on Friday after a proposal was floated by the Uniswap Foundation to turn on the protocol’s ‘fee switch.’ If passed, UNI stakers would be able to claim a portion of trading fees generated by Ethereum’s leading DEX.

Worldcoin was among the week’s top gainers after the price of WLD surged by more than double. The move comes as World App surpassed 1M in daily users for the first time.

Starknet’s long-awaited airdrop dominated headlines, with the $2B drop comprising the largest on record. However, the event also attracted controversy, with the STRK token’s allocations and unlock schedule garnering backlash from the Starknet community. StarkWare responded by revising the project’s unlock schedule, reducing the number of team and investor projects scheduled to unlock in April from 64M down from 1.3B.

Ethereum restaking persists as a leading narrative in DeFi, with Gerabox introducing leveraged restaking as a new primitive for the sector. EigenLayer also closing a $100M Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz after emerging as the fourth-largest DeFi protocol with a $7.7B TVL.

Ethena Labs’ launch of its yield-bearing stablecoin, USDe, ruffled feathers from across the web3 community. The token purports to offer 27% annual yields from a combination of ETH staking rewards and short funding rates, but many onlookers remain wary following the collapse of Terra UST in 2022.

Many of the users impacted by the widespread CeFi failures of 2022 are beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. A U.S. court ruling allows Gemini to begin selling $1.6B worth of GBTC shares it holds as collateral backing $900M worth of loans taken out from its Earn users by Genesis, the insolvent CeFi broker.

An Aave proposal to distribute quarterly airdrops to users is gathering momentum. Aave wants to reward users whose actions help achieve its strategic objectives with wETH and GHO tokens, starting with users depositing liquid staking tokens and minting GHO. Aave and Gauntlet are also parting ways after a four-year partnership.

High gas fees on Ethereum drove Ether’s supply to a new post-merge low. The milestone follows $63M worth of ETH getting burned over the past two weeks.

Wormhole partnered with AMD, the major semiconductor and computer processing hardware manufacturer, as part of its zero-knowledge roadmap. ADM will provide hardware and also help develop light clients for Wormhole per the deal.

Plus, Reddit’s IPO filing reveals the company holds crypto, Uniswap v2 is live on six new chains, and Euler Finance is back from the dead with a new “modular” lending protocol.

And don't miss our podcast with Brendan Farmer, the co-founder of Polygon, for a deep dive into the project’s vision for scaling Ethereum.

Enjoy!

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Zora Airdrop Guide

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PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Polygon's Plan for a Simplified Blockchain Experience

Cami Russo sat down with Brendan Farm, the co-founder of Polygon, to learn about the project’s work towards scaling Ethereum. His contributions have been instrumental in the research and development of Polygon's core scaling solutions, including Polygon PoS, Polygon zkEVM, and Polygon Miden

The conversation begins with an exploration of the foundational elements that constitute the Polygon ecosystem. Farmer then dives into zero-knowledge technologies, discussing the advantages they offer over optimistic scaling solutions. The discussion also explores Polygon's Aggregation Layer and CDK, focusing on the efficiency gains associated with blockchain aggregation.

VIDEO

AI + Crypto: It’s Time To Pay Attention

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In this video, we walk you through nine of the most exciting projects at the forefront of the convergence between AI and web3, and answer some of the most important questions surrounding the burgeoning artificial intelligence sector.

Friday

• UNI Soars 60% On Fee Switch Proposal If passed, the upgrade to Ethereum’s leading DEX proposed by the Uniswap Foundation will enable UNI stakers to collect a portion of protocol fees.
• Pudgy Penguins Announces Unstoppable Domains Partnership and Walmart Expansion Pudgy Penguins, the surgeon NFT collection, has partnered with Unstoppable Domains to introduce “.pudgy” domain names. The news follows Pudgy Penguins posting impressive floor price gains and expanding its partnership with Walmart.

Thursday

• StarkWare Revises Token Emission Schedule After Community Backlash The StarkWare team has revised its token emission schedule after backlash from the crypto community. Only 64M STRK will unlock on April 14, rather than the previously planned 1.3B tokens.
• Reddit Invested In Bitcoin and ETH: IPO Filing Reddit, the popular social media platform with over 70 million users, disclosed that it holds some ETH, BTC, and MATIC on its balance sheet.
• EigenLayer Raises $100M Series B Led By a16z EigenLayer, the surging Ethereum restaking protocol, closed a $100 million Series B funding round led by a16z. The round follows EigenLayer’s TVL rocketing to more than $7.7B.
• Ondo Brings Treasury-backed Stablecoin to Aptos Ondo has launched its yield-bearing USDY stablecoin on Aptos, the fifth network supported hosting the token.
• Euler Finance Seeks Redemption Arc With V2 Deployment Euler introduced a “modular” lending architecture with the launch of its v2 iteration. The deployment marks the first time Euler has emerged from “hibernation” mode after suffering a $197M hack one year ago.
• Chiliz Onboards PSG Football Club As Network Validator Paris Saint Germaine, winners of nine of the past 11 French soccer championships, has become the first sporting club to operate as a validator for Chiliz Chain.
• Vitalik Remains Wary Of Overly Complex Layer 2s Vitalik Buterin believes the Ethereum ecosystem would benefit from complex features being built into Layer 2, rather than the base layer.

Wednesday

• Starknet’s $2 Billion Airdrop Is Crypto’s Biggest Yet Ethereum Layer 2 network Starknet launched its long-awaited token yesterday with an airdrop of 700 million STRK worth $2.1B for developers and early users.
• Avalanche Stages Comeback Amid Growth In Memecoins, GameFi, and RWAs Avalanche’s on-chain activity and TVL have posted significant gains since the start of Q4 2023.
• Ethena Stablecoin’s 27% Yield is Triggering Terra-Induced PTSD USDe, a new yield-bearing stablecoin from Ethena Labs, is attracting controversy are claiming to offer annual yields of 27% from ETH staking and short funding rates.
• Wormhole Inks Partnership With AMD Amid Zero-Knowledge Embrace AMD will provide advanced hardware and develop light clients for the Wormhole ecosystem as part of the cross-chain interoperability protocol’s zero-knowledge roadmap.
• Burn Rate Surges Amid Spike In Ethereum On-Chain Activity The supply of ETH is at a new post-merge low after nearly $63M worth of Ether was burned in two weeks amid high gas fees.
• Gauntlet Quits As Aave Risk Steward Citing Clashes With Community Gauntlet and Aave are severing ties after a four-year partnership, with Gauntlet citing differences of opinion between it and large Aave stakeholders.

Tuesday

• ETH Pushes Past $3,000 For The First Time Since April 2022 ETH tagged a 22-month high while BTC changed hands for $52,900, its highest level since December 2021.
• Optimism Airdrops $40M To Artists and Creators The fourth airdrop from the second-largest Layer 2 will see 10M OP tokens distributed to 22,998 addresses.
• Uniswap Launches v2 Across Six New Chains Optimism Uniswap has launched its older v2 iteration across six new chains. The news comes despite the leading DEX gearing up to launch its fourth version later this year.
• MetaMask Completes Roll-Out Of Blockaid Security Alerts MetaMask has completed an integration with Blockaid to provide security alerts to its users across multiple networks by default. The wallet provider estimates crypto users lost $1.7B to exploits and scams in 2023.
• Worldcoin Surpasses 1M Daily User Milestone As WLD Rally Continues Worldcoin’s World App surpassed 1M daily users for the first time after the price of its WLD token tripled in two weeks.
• Gearbox’s Leveraged Re-Staking Trade Attracts Over 2,600 ETH in One Day Gearbox filled the cap for its new leveraged restaking pool within a single day, with users piling more than 2,600 weETH worth $7.9M into the protocol.

Monday

• Y Combinator Calls For Stablecoin Startups “We would like to fund great teams building B2B and consumer products on top of stablecoins, tools, and platforms that enable stablecoin finance, and more stablecoin protocols themselves,” Y Combinator said.
• Users Still Disgruntled After Starknet Airdrop Fix Targets Mostly Validators Many users expecting to qualify for the STRK token drop based on previously leaked documents were unhappy to find out they would not qualify for an airdrop allocation.
• Farming Game Pixels Token Lands in Binance’s Top 10 After Launch Pixels, a Ronin-based farming and social crypto game, launched its native token at a $500M market cap.
• Aave Moves To Launch $5M Quarterly Incentives Program Merit proposes a quarterly airdrop mechanism designed to reward users in the form of its wrapped Ether and Aave’s native GHO stablecoin for activity contributing towards the protocol’s strategic objectives.
• U.S. Court Allows Gemini To Sell $1.6B In GBTC Shares A court overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings for Genesis paves the way for Gemini Earn users to soon access their frozen assets.
• FIL Rockets After Filecoin Integrates With Solana Filecoin will host Solana’s block history moving forward, providing a decentralized solution for Solana infrastructure projects.