Headlines
Matter Labs abandons ZK trademark application
Matter Labs, the entity behind zkSync, announced on the X platform that it has decided to abandon all trademark applications for the term ZK. After discussion, the team found that it was impossible to reach a consensus on a group of people that almost everyone believed to be credible and neutral. The solution that works for Ethereum may not work for the entire world.
Earlier news, Matter Labs proposed to create a community-led ZK trademark holder entity and will provide financial support.
After the release of the US PCE data, the interest rate swap market pricing remained stable, and it is expected that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at least once in 2024. (Jinshi)
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has updated the list of virtual asset trading platforms. According to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance, 11 platforms including HKbitEX, PantherTrade, Accumulus, DFX Labs, Bixin.com, xWhale, YAX, Bullish, Crypto.com, WhaleFin, and Matrixport HK are considered to have been licensed; only 6 platforms including BGE, HKVAX, VDX, bitV, HKX, and bitcoinworld are left on the application list and have not been considered to have been licensed.
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission reminds that all virtual asset trading platform applicants listed in the list have not been licensed and may not comply with the requirements of the Securities and Futures Commission. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has recently reminded the public that the non-violation period for virtual asset trading platforms operating in Hong Kong under the Anti-Money Laundering Ordinance will end on June 1. From June 1 this year, all virtual asset trading platforms operating in Hong Kong must be licensed by the Securities and Futures Commission in accordance with the Ordinance, or be virtual asset trading platform applicants who are deemed to be licensed. Operating a virtual asset trading platform in Hong Kong in violation of the Ordinance is a criminal offense, and the Securities and Futures Commission said it will take all appropriate actions against any illegal acts. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission also stated that before the actual implementation and effectiveness of the policies, procedures, systems and monitoring measures of the platform applicants deemed to be licensed are satisfied by the Securities and Futures Commission and formally licensed, the Securities and Futures Commission does not expect the platform to actively promote its services or establish business relationships with new retail customers. (Ming Pao)
Industry News
The U.S. core PCE price index in April was 2.8% year-on-year, in line with expectations and the previous value of 2.80%.
The U.S. core PCE price index rose by 0.2% month-on-month in April, in line with expectations of 0.30% and the previous value of 0.30%.
The U.S. core PCE price index recorded a monthly rate of 0.2% in April, the lowest since December 2023. (Jinshi)
US SEC: Will discuss AI regulation at meeting on June 6
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said its investor advisory committee will study new areas of investment consulting and discuss artificial intelligence regulation at its June 6 meeting.
According to official news, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has noticed that some criminals have used projects related to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), such as the Digital Hong Kong Dollar (e-HKD) Pilot Program and the Cross-Border Wealth Management Connect Mechanism, to conduct fraudulent activities. The HKMA solemnly reminds the general public that the public (whether mainland residents or Hong Kong residents) need to be vigilant and guard against being deceived. The HKMA has received inquiries from the public claiming that a certain company was selected for the Digital Hong Kong Dollar Pilot Program and would release digital Hong Kong dollars, equity and dividends to attract public investment. The HKMA has reported the incident to the Hong Kong police.
Project News
According to The Open Network, data aggregators will track the market value of TON tokens in a different way in the future, and will exclude TON tokens held by Telegram, the Foundation, and the TON Believers Fund. According to Coingecko, with the implementation of this change, TONs market value shrank by more than $7 billion in an instant. According to the latest data from Coingecko, TONs current market value is $15.46 billion, ranking 11th in the market. (Decrypt)
Polymarket data: Trump has a 17% chance of going to jail before the November election
Data from the on-chain prediction market Polymarket shows that bettors believe there is a 17% chance that Trump will go to jail before the November election, and bets on this prediction have now reached nearly $900,000, a slight drop from the 25% odds given by bettors in early May.
OP Labs published a post on X saying that OP Stack has now released a test version of the custom gas token function. Layer 2 or Layer 3 based on OP Stack can enable this function during deployment and startup, and use ERC 20 tokens other than ETH to pay gas fees.
Aevo officially posted on the X platform that it has updated the relevant data information on @coingecko and @CoinMarketCap. After the recent token unlock, AEVOs current circulating supply is about 85%. The team has re-locked 15% until the end of the year to fulfill its long-term commitment. AEVOs circulating supply will reach 100% by the end of 2024. Of all the projects launched through Binance Launchpool this year, AEVO is one of only two projects that will achieve full circulation by the end of 2024.
BNB market value surpasses Meituan
According to 8 Marketcap data, Binance Coin (BNB) currently has a market value of $87.65 billion, ranking 206th in the global asset ranking; Meituans current market value is $83.3 billion, ranking 221st in the global asset ranking, and BNBs market value is about $4.35 billion higher than Meituan. Earlier on May 22, during the Pizza Festival, Binance co-founder He Yi posted on the X platform that BNBs market value was about $5 billion lower than Meituans, and joked that both are delivering food.
Bybit confirms several executives have changed positions after Notcoin deposit delay incident
Crypto exchange Bybit has confirmed that several executives have “switched positions” following the failed Notcoin (NOT) launch that resulted in $23 million in compensation for 320,000 users.
A Bybit spokesperson said: We are aware of the recent news regarding executive changes. Bybit regularly updates its organizational structure to align with our strategic goals. We share a commitment with the team to put the right people in the right positions. Bybit prioritizes customer interests and has conducted a thorough internal review to enhance the customer experience in the future. This improvement has resulted in changes in some leadership roles, which we believe are essential.
Earlier news, users encountered delays when depositing newly issued Notcoin into Bybit, which prevented them from selling assets immediately and caused losses. The exchange received 370,000 on-chain transactions; 70% of the deposits were received before the market opened. (Coindesk)
Bybit’s Hong Kong virtual asset trading platform license application has been withdrawn
The official website of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission shows that Bybit’s application for a virtual asset trading platform license was withdrawn on May 31.
Bybit first submitted an application for a virtual asset trading platform license to the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission on January 31, 2024, showing that the company name of the virtual asset trading platform operator is Spark Fintech Limited.
As of now, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has announced that 10 applicants have had their virtual asset trading platform licenses withdrawn and returned, 1 has been returned, and the number of virtual asset trading platform applicants on the waiting list is 16.
Stablecoin issuer Agora will launch its stablecoin AUSD on Sui Chain
Stablecoin issuer Agora recently announced that it will launch its stablecoin AUSD on the Sui chain, making AUSD the second stablecoin launched on Sui after FDUSD.
AUSD is scheduled to be launched in June and will be supported by bank deposits, U.S. Treasury bonds and repurchase agreements, and its reserve funds will be kept by Van Eck. In addition, Agora plans to incorporate companies that support AUSD into its business model and share the revenue products of stablecoin operations with them.
It is reported that Agora previously announced that it would push AUSD to Ethereum, Arbitrum and Optimism. Sui is the first non-EVM blockchain for AUSD issuance. (Bitcoin.com)
Earlier in April, Agora announced that it had completed a $12 million seed round of financing, led by Dragonfly, with participation from General Catalyst and Robot Ventures.
Ultiverse: ULTI airdrop claim website is now online
Ultiverse posted on the X platform that the ULTI Token Generation Event (TGE) is coming soon. The ULTI airdrop claim link is: rewards.ultiverse.io. Note:
- If you have an OKX account, you can claim ULTI tokens before others;
-Users can now destroy Gold Chip NFTs to receive ULTI airdrops;
-The official will take a snapshot of ES holders at 20:00 Beijing time on June 3.
FTX bankruptcy-related legal costs exceed $700 million, and has sold remaining Anthropic shares
The FTX bankruptcy estate is selling its remaining stake in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic as bankruptcy-related legal and administrative costs exceed $700 million.
According to the latest filing, FTX sold the remaining 15 million shares of Anthropic at about $30 per share, with a total sale price of more than $450 million. This makes FTXs initial $500 million investment worth about $1.3 billion, with a profit of about $800 million.
The largest buyer was global venture capital fund G Squared, which paid $135 million for about a third of its remaining shares (4.5 million shares). Among the other 20 buyers of Anthropic shares, venture capital funds accounted for the majority. (The Block)
Earlier news, as bankruptcy costs continue to rise, FTX lawyers and consultants have approved more than $500 million in fees from the bankruptcy estate. The agency responsible for overseeing bankruptcy proceedings has requested more than $700 million in fees and expenses, although many requests have been cut by 20% and some requests have not yet been approved. According to court documents, Sullivan and Cromwell, special counsel in the FTX bankruptcy case, topped the list with approved fees of $254 million (although its bill was $360 million), followed by financial advisory firm Alvarez and Marsel, with approved fees of $133 million. Other law firms and consultants include legal investigation consultant AlixPartners, special counsel Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Sullivan, investment banker Perella Weinberg Partners and joint counsel Landis Rath Cobb, who collected a total of $57 million in fees.
Velocore released an analysis report on the vulnerability incident, which pointed out that the incident is unlikely to spread to other protocols, so other users of Linea and zkSync can rest assured.
Velocore is investigating and tracking down the hacker, while attempting on-chain negotiations and requesting various protocols and CEXs to cooperate in investigating the attacker’s activities.
For affected users, Velocore has completed a pre-incident snapshot and will implement an appropriate compensation plan once operations are restored.
Character*Voice
EOS CEO: New Token Economics Proposal Passed
Yves La Rose, CEO of EOS Network Foundation (ENF), posted on the X platform that the new token economics proposal for the EOS network has been officially passed. The proposal will shut down inflation and destroy 80% of the total supply of EOS in the future. The code deployment will take effect on June 1. The total amount of EOS in the future will be fixed at 2.1 billion.
US Presidential Candidate Robert Kennedy Jr.: Bitcoin Can Keep Us from War
Bitcoin Magazine published an article on the X platform citing the remarks of US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., who said that all wars in the past 100 years have been caused by fiat currencies, and Bitcoin allows us to deliver on our promises.
V God: The block size dispute is a one-sided capability trap
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote in his personal blog that the dispute over Bitcoin block size is a one-sided capability trap.
When he personally experienced the Bitcoin block size debate, he usually sided with the big blockers because: 1) one of the key original promises of Bitcoin was digital cash, and high fees could kill that use case; 2) dont believe the meta-level story of the small blockers; 3) the segregated witness proposal proposed by the small blockers to increase the block size slightly is overly complicated and unnecessary compared to a simple hard fork block size increase; 4) the small blockers are indeed engaging in very uncool social media censorship to impose their views.
Among other things, he said, “Conflict should be reduced and technology should be enhanced. Moreover, the reason I care about examining the successes and failures of Bitcoin is not because I want to elevate Ethereum by disparaging Bitcoin; in fact, as someone who loves trying to understand social and political issues, I find that one of the characteristics of Bitcoin is that it is socially complex enough to provoke internal debates and divisions that are rich and fascinating enough to write two entire books. Instead, I care about analyzing these issues because Ethereum and other digital (and even physical) communities that I care about have a lot to learn from understanding what happened, what was done well, and what could be done better.”
PayPal Senior Vice President: Solana is very suitable for payment scenarios
According to SolanaFloor’s post on the X platform, @PayPal’s senior vice president Jose Fernandez said in an interview with Coindesk that Solana is very suitable for payment scenarios. He also explained that they are bringing mainstream cryptocurrency use cases through a remittance company called @Xoom, which supports billions of dollars in transaction flows each year. Earlier, PayPal announced that it had chosen the Solana blockchain to expand its stablecoin PayPal USD (PYUSD).
NYSE Group President: The liquidity brought by Bitcoin ETF is indisputable
In an interview with CNBC, Lynn Martin, president of the New York Stock Exchange Group, said that the success of the Bitcoin ETF and the liquidity it brings are indisputable.
Regarding the Uniswap postponement of the UNI staking and delegation reward vote originally scheduled for Friday, Paradigm researcher Dan Robinson wrote on X: It is disappointing that a large VC tried to manipulate the token governance process and postpone the community proposal at the last minute to advance their own pet project.
Dan Robinson did not specify which VC it was.
Earlier news, the Uniswap Foundation postponed the UNI staking and delegation reward vote originally scheduled for Friday because a stakeholder discussed some issues that needed attention with the foundation and required additional due diligence for a comprehensive review. Due to the immutability and sensitivity of the proposal upgrade, it was decided to postpone the vote.
Investment and Financing
According to BSCN Headlines’ post on the X platform, Bitcoin financial services company UNCHAINED has partnered with the University of Austin to establish a $5 million endowment fund that will be used to invest in Bitcoin.
BitDeer and Tether reached an equity subscription agreement of approximately US$150 million
According to official news, BitDeer announced that it has reached an equity subscription agreement of approximately US$150 million with Tether International Limited (Tether), designing 8,587,360 Class A common shares and warrants. Tether intends to purchase up to 5,000,000 additional shares at a price of US$10.00 per share. This round of private equity subscription transactions will be completed on May 30, 2024. It is reported that BitDeers transaction will generate a total proceeds of US$100 million from the stock issuance, and if the warrants are fully exercised, it may provide an additional US$50 million.
Security incidents
Beosin: Total losses from hacking, phishing scams, and rug pulls totaled $154 million in May
According to the monitoring of blockchain security audit company Beosin Alert, in May 2024, the amount of losses from various security incidents increased compared with April. In May 2024, more than 27 typical security incidents occurred, and the total loss amount caused by hacker attacks, phishing scams and Rug Pulls reached 154 million US dollars, an increase of about 52.5% compared with April. Among them, the attack incidents were about 54.51 million US dollars, an increase of about 3.7%; the phishing scam incidents were about 97.4 million US dollars, an increase of about 754%; the Rug Pull incidents were about 2.04 million US dollars, a decrease of about 94.5%.
This month, there were two hacker attacks with losses exceeding 10 million US dollars: the gaming platform Gala Games lost 22.5 million US dollars due to private key leakage, and Sonne Finance lost 20 million US dollars due to contract vulnerabilities. This month, phishing scams increased significantly, with multiple phishing scams with losses exceeding one million US dollars, including one address poisoning scam with a loss of 72 million US dollars. Crypto crime cases continued to increase this month, with many crimes involving more than 100 million US dollars.
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange DMM Bitcoin suffered a $305 million hack, with 4,502.9 bitcoins reportedly stolen from the exchange. DMM Bitcoin said it would guarantee the full amount of the stolen funds, and all spot purchases are currently subject to temporary restrictions, and customers withdrawing yen may face delays.
It is reported that this is the second largest hacker attack loss amount in Japans cryptocurrency exchange. In 2018, Coincheck was hacked and lost 58 billion yen. (Coindesk)
Velocore was suspected of being attacked on zkSync and Linea chains, and all liquidity was drained
Yu Xian, the founder of SlowMist, posted on the X platform: Velocore seems to have been hacked, and it looks like the loss is quite large. The cause is being analyzed.
According to the tweets forwarded by the company, Officers Notes revealed that Velocore may have been attacked on zkSync and Linea chains, resulting in a loss of approximately $10 million (USD) and all LPs were depleted. The hacker has transferred part of the ETH across chains to the Ethereum mainnet. In addition, the Linea chain once stopped producing blocks, but has now returned to normal.
It is reported that Velocore is based on zkSync Era and Lineas veDEX.
