Opening Pandora's Box ($)
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🔥 Catching fire again! Bitcoin had a standout week, climbing 10% in 7 days and momentarily surpassing the $48K mark, a peak not seen since the introduction of BTC ETFs in the U.S. Also on the rise, though? DeFi’s aggregate TVL, which, if you include liquid staking projects, just breached $100B for the first time in around two years. Is this the start of a new DeFi renaissance?
| Prices as of 9am ET | 24hr | 7d |
|
Crypto $1.78T | ↗ 0.3% | ↗ 7.9% |
|
BTC $47,337 | ↗ 0.4% | ↗ 9.9% |
|
ETH $2,493 | ↗ 0.1% | ↗ 8.2% |
1️⃣ Pandora's tokens go parabolic
The biggest newcomer on the block this week was “ERC-404,” a new unofficial Ethereum token standard designed to merge the characteristics of fungible (ERC-20) and non-fungible tokens (ERC-721) to allow for native fractionalization in NFT projects.
Developed by the Pandora team, the effort has generated controversy for sidestepping the official Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) process, which poses risks and sets a bad precedent.
Regardless, degens have quickly aped into Pandora’s initial PANDORA token and Replicant NFTs, with both currently trading near the ~$25,000 mark upon tripling in value over the past 3 days. Already, the buzz here has inspired a handful of new NFT projects to embrace ERC-404, so it seems there’s no going back for now.
2️⃣ Solana springs back from latest outage
In line with many some predictions for 2024, Solana experienced an outage this week, stopping block production for roughly five hours. Following a swift and coordinated response, validators successfully restarted the network with an upgrade to address the issue.
Released yesterday, the official post-mortem report explains that the network stopped working because of a program error in a part of its system that deals with old software. This error caused the system to get stuck in a continuous cycle of trying to fix itself, which made it impossible for the network to continue normal operations.
The first major outage since February 2023, this incident took many by surprise, trumping expectations that major events like the Jupiter airdrop would be the likeliest cause of the next outage.
3️⃣ SEC tightens grip on DeFi
In a significant regulatory move, the SEC just broadened the definition of a dealer—“a person engaged in the business of buying or selling securities for their own account”—to pull a wider range of financial activities under its oversight, explicitly those including they believe to be “crypto securities.”
This expanded definition sees the SEC seeking to ensure market-making activities, irrespective of the security type, comply with their registration and regulatory standards. Set to go into full effect in April 2025, this effort, though primarily geared toward those in treasury markets, has raised concerns among some SEC commissioners and the crypto community, especially regarding its implications for DeFi.
4️⃣ A date is set for the Dencun upgrade
Mark your calendars—Ethereum's Dencun upgrade is officially set for March 13th!
Notably, this upgrade to Ethereum will introduce proto-danksharding, aiming to reduce transaction costs for rollups by providing dedicated data storage space, called blobs, on mainnet. The date was set following the Dencun upgrade’s successful deployment on the Holesky testnet, the third in a set of three testnet trial runs.
With this update, Ethereum's rollup-centric vision is coming into focus like never before.
5️⃣ Crypto The Game concludes Season 1
The Tribe has spoken, and congratulations are in order for M.F.L., the winner of the first season of Crypto The Game—a Survivor-inspired team competition that’s taken crypto by storm.
To win a prize pool of 41 ETH, 410 contestants participated in daily challenges, both online and off, ranging from arcade games to digital scavenger hunts. Prominent builders, founders, and VCs all participated, but it seems they were no match for M.F.L’s beautiful, Google-translated poems. Hats off to the champ, and watch out for the arrival of Season 2!
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One guest, two identities. Beff Jezos (Guillaume Verdon) is a founding father of the e/acc movement, a physicist, a quantum researcher, and the founder of an AI startup called Extropic.
Beff thinks AI doomers are not only wrong, but they’re taking humanity in the worst possible direction. Growth. Acceleration. Progress. These are the core pillars of the e/acc movement. Instead of slowing down on AI progress, Beff explains why we should be speeding up.
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