Consensys is suing the SEC to restrain the SEC's attempts to expand its jurisdiction over crypto regulation and defend the Ethereum blockchain and its community of developers and users. Consensys argues that the SEC's current approach is creating unnecessary confusion and disruption for those invested in the future and development of Ethereum and related decentralized technologies.
Stripe has announced it will allow customers to accept cryptocurrency payments on its platform. It will start this Summer with USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, showing a demo of crypto payments using Solana at their developer conference. Stripe previously supported Bitcoin in 2014 but halted crypto efforts in 2018, citing its use as a store of value instead of as a medium of exchange. It processed $1 trillion in payments in 2023.
Visa's Head of Crypto, Cuy Sheffield, recently announced the launch of Visa's Onchain Analytics Dashboard. The dashboard tracks public stablecoin data like supply, monthly active users, and transaction volume of major stablecoins across 5 L1s and 4 L2s. It shows that the adjusted onchain stablecoin volume for the past 30 days was $265 billion. Visa is looking for community feedback to make the tool better.
Ethereum's recently introduced Blobs have drastically reduced data availability costs for rollups but have volatile price movements that make future costs unpredictable. Blobspace derivatives offer an opportunity for rollups to hedge against future price changes and de-risk operational costs. Outstanding issues include physical delivery, protecting against market manipulation, and creating a proper seller incentive structure.
The hype behind Runes and memecoins has died down, indicating a potential buying opportunity. Similarly, airdrop farming has become far less popular, and the fragmentation of the market's ecosystems makes it hard for people to keep up with everything happening. For investors with lots of capital, finding a few high-conviction plays and waiting for the long term is valuable, while lower-capital portfolios are still best off farming airdrops.
Consumer-facing crypto apps with strong brands and large user bases are well-positioned to vertically integrate by launching their own application-specific blockchains, as they can provide better user experiences and capture more value compared to building on general purpose infrastructure. The current market favors crypto projects with clear narratives and product-market fit over broad infrastructure plays, many of which have struggled to gain traction.
The rise of meme coins in the crypto space has sparked concerns about their negative impact on the industry's credibility and long-term growth. Critics argue that these tokens, which often lack technical innovation and rely on hype-driven speculation, create a predatory environment that disproportionately benefits savvy traders at the expense of less experienced investors.
Forbes has defined a list of 20 zombie blockchains with over a billion dollars in market capitalization but little utility or user activity. This phenomenon can be attributed to the intangible qualities of these networks, their longevity in surviving multiple cycles, and the presence of loyal supporters promoting them. Some investors value these chains for factors beyond utility, similar to how fashion brands derive value from social status or storytelling.
Onchain data shows that Base is the hub of retail activity, Polygon is the most mature non-speculative consumer economy, and Arbitrum is the leader of institutional DeFi.
These tools range from tracking the growth of and investments into projects to aggregating crypto news, tracking testnets for airdrop farming, and analyzing potential price actions of Bitcoin with on-chain data.
Ordinals and Runes creator Casey Rodarmor has criticized the Bitcoin mining space for sharing the same transaction selection policies, hurting decentralization.
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