Bitcoin Price: US$ 63,098.89 (+3.19%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 3,036.23 (+2.09%)
Franklin Templeton’s report highlights Base’s strong position in the Ethereum L2 sector, capturing a significant share of SocialFi activity, accounting for about 46% of transactions, largely attributed to support from Coinbase. Launched by Coinbase last August, Base is seen as having infinite interoperability potential with Ethereum and USDC, setting the stage for a future where a billion customers use decentralized applications on millions of blockchains. Meanwhile, Digital Currency Group (DCG) experienced a 51% year-over-year revenue increase to $229 million in Q1 2024, despite a significant outflow from its Bitcoin fund following its conversion to an ETF in January. However, DCG is grappling with regulatory challenges in the U.S., as the NYAG has expanded a fraud lawsuit against DCG, its CEO Barry Silbert, and Genesis Global Capital’s former CEO Soichiro Moro, seeking $3 billion in restitution. In a separate development, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) imposed a $4.4 million penalty on Binance for failing to register and report large transactions in digital assets, adding to Binance’s legal woes in other jurisdictions, including a $4.3 billion penalty settlement in the U.S. and ongoing tax evasion and money laundering charges in Nigeria.
In the face of market manipulation allegations brought by The Wall Street Journal, Binance co-founder Yi He and DWF Labs have staunchly defended their positions. He criticized the media bias, while DWF Labs asserted their commitment to integrity and transparency. Despite the Wall Street Journal’s report of DWF Labs, a major Binance trading client, engaging in market manipulation, Binance stood by DWF Labs, citing insufficient evidence. Meanwhile, Rob Durscki of the Stellar Development Foundation envisions a future where tokenization blurs the lines between payment and investment assets, enabling payments using shares of tokenized funds. This transformative process, which converts rights or ownership of an asset into a digital token on a blockchain, is seen as a key to unlocking new utilities across financial products. On another front, Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade has led to the Ether supply turning inflationary for the first time since the Merge transitioned Ethereum to a proof-of-stake consensus model. However, Cryptoquant CEO Ki Young Ju underscores that Ethereum’s strength lies not in its status as “ultrasound money,” but in its decentralized applications (DApps). Amid these developments, the MarketVector Meme Coin Index, launched by VanEck subsidiary MarketVector, has seen a surge of over 137% since the beginning of 2024, outperforming the S&P 500 index by over 15x. Yet, the recent sell-off of the six largest memecoins has raised concerns of a potential end to the memecoin season.
Starknet, an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain, is set to introduce AI agents that can autonomously perform on-chain activities, with Giza leading the initiative after raising $3 million in a pre-seed round. These AI agents, which will first focus on yield aggregation, are expected to be deployed on Starknet by the end of June and will eventually become completely permissionless through the Giza Protocol. Meanwhile, Near Protocol’s official X handle posted several unusual tweets, including a Morse code video that read “Darkness is coming,” leading to suspicions of a possible account hijack. While some supporters see the tweets as a sign of something bigger coming to the ecosystem, Near Protocol has not responded to requests for comment. Analysts from K33 Research report that crypto users are eager for the next big thing in the Social Finance (SocialFi) sector, despite it being plagued by “perverse incentives”. Following a recent Friend.tech airdrop, users are looking to a new SocialFi app called Fantasy Top as the next potential opportunity. In parallel, Optimism, an Ethereum scaling solution provider, is planning to onboard layer-3 applications on top of the OP Stack to further enhance its blockchain throughput. Despite some scepticism about the necessity and security risks of layer-3 networks, Optimism aims to make the Superchain more accessible to developers by offering layer-3 features and functionality.
Source: https://cointelegraph.com
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