headlines
Azuki plans to launch a Beanz-based game and luxury brand within this year
NFT project Azuk announced that it will expand its IP into three branches: animation, physical and game. It is expected to launch a new luxury brand featuring golden Beanz soon. A casual mobile game also based on Beanz will also be released this year. . Additionally, Azuki also announced a partnership with Fenwick West, who has previously worked with Yuga Labs, Rug Radio and others to develop the token, following on from its partnership with Code Geass director Goro Taniguchi and leading Japanese advertising and production agency Dentsu.
Binance New Coin Mining is now live with the 44th phase of the project - Manta (MANTA), a modular second-layer solution (L2) for zero-knowledge proof (ZK) applications. MANTA can be mined for a total of 2 days, and the website is expected to be updated within approximately five hours of this announcement before the mining activity opens. Binance will list Manta (MANTA) at 18:00 on January 18, 2024 (Eastern Eighth District time), and open the MANTA/BTC, MANTA/USDT, MANTA/BNB, MANTA/FDUSD and MANTA/TRY trading markets, applicable Seed Tag Trading Rules.
The Peregrine spacecraft, originally planned to land on the moon, is on a reentry trajectory. Peregrine is currently about 234,000 miles from Earth and is expected to burn up in the Earths atmosphere. Astrobotic, the company responsible for the project, will hold a press conference with NASA on January 18 to announce the details of the Peregrine crash.
As previously reported, Peregrine was launched from Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida on January 8, with the vehicle carrying a physical Bitcoin. BitMEX, in partnership with multiple companies, plans to send Bitcoin to the moon, aiming to demonstrate the potential of Bitcoin and blockchain technology in establishing a borderless financial system beyond the Earth. It was originally scheduled to arrive on the moon on February 23.
Industry news
CoinShares: Digital asset investment products saw a net inflow of $1.18 billion last week
According to the latest weekly report from CoinShares, digital asset investment products saw an inflow of $1.18 billion last week (based on T+ 2 settlement), although it did not break the record set when the futures Bitcoin ETF was launched.
Last week’s trading volume was $17.5 billion, a record high, and the average weekly trading volume in 2022 was $2 billion. Additionally, the United States dominated inflows last week with $1.24 billion, while Europe saw minor outflows.
South Korea’s financial sector plans to formulate regulatory rules for virtual asset mixers
South Korean financial authorities have begun formulating regulatory rules for crypto-asset mixers that are abused by illegal organizations as a means of money laundering. The industry revealed that the Financial Commission’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) is considering introducing regulatory measures for currency mixers.
The FIU said money laundering through mixers makes it more difficult to track funds and monitor crimes.
Moodys: Tokenized fund adoption grows while bringing technology risks
A report released on Monday by ratings agency Moodys Investor Services warned that adoption of tokenized investment funds is rising but that technology providers have limited track records, leading to increased risks.
Statistics: 407 chain games will cease operation in 2023, accounting for 31%
The Big Blockchain Game List created by Jon Jordan shows that of the 1,322 blockchain games included in the list in 2023, 407 have stopped running, accounting for 31%.
Of the 407 games closed, the majority were closed in the first half of last year: 248 games were closed in the first half of 2023, while 162 games were closed in the second half. Of the 407 games closed, the majority were closed in the first half of last year: 248 games were closed in the first half of 2023, while 162 games were closed in the second half.
DeFiLlama data shows that the trading volume of DEX on the Ethereum chain on January 14 was US$996 million, a sharp drop of nearly 60% from the high two days ago (US$2.482 billion).
In addition, Solana on-chain DEX ranked second with a trading volume of $707 million on January 14; Arbitrum ranked third with $405 million.
Circle CEO: U.S. lawmakers are “very likely” to approve a stablecoin bill in 2024
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said that the United States may pass a specific law related to the stablecoin industry in 2024. He pointed out that regulatory developments in the cryptocurrency industry are accelerating globally and stablecoins are still blockchain technology. ’s killer app, usage continues to expand around the world, and the United States is more likely than ever to approve stablecoin laws.
Project News
Etherscan and Starkscan on-chain records show that Starknet is suspected to be experimenting with cross-chain transfer of STRK from Layer 1 to Layer 2 on the mainnet.
More than ten hours ago, there were multiple small-amount transfers of STRK tokens on the Ethereum mainnet. Later, multiple STRK transfers of the same amount also appeared on Starkscan. It is suspected that the team was testing bridging STRK from Layer 1 to Layer 2.
The 1inch team address sold 1.76 million 1INCH and then purchased 80.39 WBTC
On-chain data analyst Ember Monitor pointed out that in the past 12 hours, the 1inch team address sold 1.76 million 1INCH for 814,000 USDT at a price of $0.46, and then spent 3.437 million USDT to buy 80.39 WBTC, with an average price of 1.76 million. $42,760.
The community-driven ZK L2 network ZKFair announced that it has now opened gas fee profit dividends on the ZKFair chain. All ZKF pledgers can view their personal benefits in real time through the ZKFair official website. As the first L2 network in the industry to distribute Gas fee profit dividends, ZKFair officially launched the ZKF staking function on January 10. As of press time, a total of 2.5 billion ZKF has been pledged (accounting for 25% of the total Token supply), and the number of independent pledge addresses has reached 34,871 , these users will share 75% of the total profits according to corresponding rules, and the remaining 25% will be distributed to DApp developers.
Do Kwon appeals Montenegro High Courts decision to uphold extradition request
Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon has appealed for the first time against the Montenegrin High Court’s decision to uphold extradition requests from the United States and South Korea. His lawyer said that the local court was under pressure and the new appeal was filed because the Montenegrin High Court’s ruling “seriously violated legal provisions, the European Convention on Extradition and the bilateral extradition treaty with the United States.
Manta releases token economics: 1 billion creation supply, airdrop distribution ratio 5.6%
Manta Network officially released token economics. The genesis supply of MANTA tokens is 1 billion, the annual minting rate is 2% starting from Token Genesis, and the initial circulation is 251 million MANTAs.
Layer 2 project Taiko launches final testnet Katla before mainnet release
The final testnet Katla of the Layer 2 project Taiko is launched before the release of the mainnet. Its mainnet is expected to be online at the end of the first quarter of 2024. Katla is the sixth Taiko testnet of Taiko developers and introduces a new Rollup design. It is called a contestable rollup based on multiple proofs.
Trends on the chain
Investment institution Arca is suspected of having converted $17 million worth of ETH into MKR
Spot on Chain monitoring pointed out that investment institution Arca deposited 6,500 ETH (approximately $17 million) into Coinabase yesterday, and withdrew 8,385 MKR (approximately $17.13 million) from Coinbase today.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, in the past month, 10 addresses purchased a total of 32,759 MKR from major exchanges, worth approximately US$66.66 million, accounting for 3.55% of the circulating supply. MKR prices have risen nearly 70% in the past month.
Ordinals’ cumulative fee income exceeds 5,700 BTC
Dune data shows that the cumulative fee revenue from minting of the Bitcoin NFT protocol Ordinals reached 5,708.5884 BTC, which is approximately $243,241,043. The current total number of minted inscriptions reaches 55, 472, 543.
Total locked-up volume of Metis hits $1 billion, a record high
The total locked-up volume of Metis, the second-layer network of Ethereum, reached US$1 billion, with an increase of 51.93% in the past seven days, a record high, second only to Arbitrum One (US$11 billion) and OP Mainnet (US$6.06 billion), ranking Ethereum L2 Ranked third in lock-up volume.
Investment and Financing
Renzo, the EigenLayer ecological liquidity re-pledge protocol, announced the completion of a US$3 million seed round of financing. This round of financing was led by Maven 11, with participation from SevenX Ventures, Figment Capital and IOSG.
According to reports, the core of Renzo is ezETH, which is a Liquid Restaking Token (LRT). Users can mint this token by depositing Ethereum or LST into Renzo. ezETH can be further used in other DeFi protocols to earn compounding returns.
Renzo abstracts all the complexity for end users, allowing them to participate in re-staking in the EigenLayer ecosystem with a low threshold. (The Block)
