Blocking Daily Report | Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Increased by 3.22% to 49.55T; LayerZero Launches Bug Bounty Program of up to $15 Million

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty now at 49.55T (+3.22%). LayerZero offers up to $15M in bug bounties.

Today’s News Summary:

1. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission officially unveils its new name

2. Hong Kong Monetary Authority launches digital yuan pilot scheme, 16 selected companies will conduct first-round tests this year

3. LayerZero Labs partners with Immunefi to launch up to $15 million bug bounty program

• DeFi on Bitcoin: Is BTCFi a breakthrough or a bubble?
• From the perspective of “de-dollarization” in Web3, speculate on the ultimate form of currency in the future
• Layout for many years but little known? Exploring the full picture and opportunities of the Japanese Web3 encryption market

4. Grayscale and Bitwise have withdrawn their Ethereum futures ETF applications

5. Circle adjusts USDC reserve assets, sells off US Treasuries and increases overnight repurchase agreements by $8.7 billion

6. Qiming Venture Partners completes fundraising for its seventh RMB fund, raising a total of 6.5 billion yuan

7. OP token worth $278 million will be unlocked on May 31, accounting for 3.6% of the total supply

8. Bitcoin difficulty increases by 3.22% to 49.55 T, hitting a new all-time high

Regulatory News

China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission officially unveils its new name

According to the Beijing News, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission was officially unveiled on the 18th, marking an important step in China’s new round of regulatory reforms in the financial sector.

According to the reform plan, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission was established on the basis of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, and it is responsible for the supervision of the financial industry except for the securities industry, strengthening institutional supervision, behavioral supervision, functional supervision, penetration supervision, and continuous supervision. The People’s Bank of China’s daily regulatory responsibilities for financial holding companies and other financial groups, its responsibilities for protecting financial consumers, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s responsibilities for protecting investors are all transferred to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission.

Establishing the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, optimizing and adjusting the institutional responsibilities in the financial regulatory field, is of great significance for strengthening and improving modern financial regulation, and solving prominent contradictions and problems in the financial field.

Hong Kong Monetary Authority launches digital yuan pilot scheme, 16 selected companies will conduct first-round tests this year

Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced today on its website the launch of the “Digital Yuan” pilot scheme. 16 selected companies from the financial, payment, and technology sectors will conduct first-round tests this year to explore the potential use cases of the digital yuan in six areas, including comprehensive payment, programmable payment, offline payment, tokenized deposits, third-generation internet (Web3) transaction settlement, and tokenized asset settlement.

It is worth noting that AliBlockingy Financial Services (HK) was selected for programmable payment use cases, Ripple Labs was selected for tokenized asset settlement use cases, and Visa and Mastercard were selected for tokenized deposit and Web3 transaction settlement use cases.

NFT

The proposal of ApeCoin community to launch Ape Launchd platform has been approved by vote

The Snapshot voting page shows that the AIP-209 proposal of ApeCoin community to launch the ecological project incubator “Ape Launchd” has been approved by vote, with a final support rate of 59.09%. The proposal aims to further strengthen the ApeCoin and BAYC ecosystems by incubating and promoting projects that contribute to the growth of the ApeCoin and BAYC IP ecosystems. APE and BAYC ecological NFT holders can access Launchd and invest in projects, and ApeCoin DAO contributors will also have the opportunity to participate in promising Ape projects as early as possible.

The proposal was initiated by Forj, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands. According to the proposal, Ape Launchd will be deployed on the ETH network first, and ApeCoin and BAYC ecological NFT holders will have exclusive rights to participate in and support NFT sales projects. The Launchd participation is based on a hierarchical structure, and the level is determined by the amount of APE pledged by the user in the pledge pool and the qualified NFT owned by the user. Users need to pledge APE in the pledge pool for at least 14 days to be eligible for the level, and a snapshot will be taken one day before the sale to verify the eligibility. Users with higher levels can enjoy priority sales, higher purchase limits, and better allocation of rare NFTs.

The project is expected to release its minimum viable product (MVP) within 2.5 months, including smart contract development and audit, Launchd UI/UX, integration of APE pledge pool, and community recognition. In the following 2 weeks to 1 month, the project can submit transaction proposals, and the first Ape Launchd sale will be held within the next month, with a total estimated time of 3 months.

Project Updates

A new proposal from the Uniswap community proposes to deploy V3 to the Coinbase L2 network Base

According to the Uniswap governance page, she256, Michigan Blockchain and GFX Labs jointly proposed a proposal in the Uniswap community, proposing to deploy Uniswap V3 to Base when the Coinbase L2 network Base mainnet is launched. The proposal believes that Base has great potential to generate high TVL and mobilize a large number of new users to Uniswap. The proposal has not yet entered any voting stage.

FTX has filed three lawsuits: seeking to reclaim FTX stock from SBF and others, and recover funds from former Embed shareholders and founders

Twitter user @AFTXcreditor cited several court documents related to the FTX case on May 17th, in which FTX (especially WRS & Alameda) sued former Embed shareholders, seeking to recover $6.9 million. FTX has also made similar recovery requests to Embed founder Michael Giles, seeking to recover $156 million, with other parts involving shares, options, and securities. Embed was acquired for $220 million in March 2022, with $157 million going to founder Michael Giles, while FTX’s recent Embed auction ultimately had a final bid of only $1 million.

In addition, FTX has sued former management SBF, Nishad Singh, and Gary Wang, seeking to reclaim FTX stock. This is FTX’s new CEO John Ray’s first formal action against former management.

ConsenSys New Terms of Service: Platform reserves the right to withhold user taxes when necessary

1inch co-founder Anton Bukov tweeted that blockchain software technology company ConsenSys updated its terms of service in April, with section “4.3 Taxes” stating that its products “will be responsible for determining and paying all taxes and other government fees and charges (including any fines, interest and other additional fees) due on all payments made by such party in connection with or related to transactions in accordance with applicable law. Unless otherwise stated, all fees payable by you do not include taxes. We reserve the right to withhold taxes when necessary.”

Radiant Capital has passed a proposal to distribute about 3.35 million ARB tokens, with 70% going to dLP lockers

According to the official Twitter account, multi-chain lending protocol Radiant Capital announced that the “RFP-18: Radiant DAO Treasury ARB Distribution Strategy Application” proposal has been voted through with an 89% approval rate. In addition, the first snapshot was taken on May 18th at 2:00 am, and the second snapshot time will be announced in the next 30-60 days. dLPs that meet the airdrop conditions must be locked for 6-12 months on Arbitrum and BNB Chain after the first snapshot and before the second snapshot.

Under the proposal, 40% of the 3,348,026 ARB tokens granted to Radiant DAO Treasury by the Arbitrum Foundation will be airdropped to dLP lockers on Arbitrum and BNB Chain for new 6 and 12 month periods, 30% will be used for long-term incentives and will be distributed to dLP lockers on Arbitrum next year, and 30% will be held as strategic reserves for future DAO use.

Lido community proposes the introduction of LDO staking module and buyback plan

Lido, a liquidity staking protocol, has released a new proposal to introduce an LDO staking module and buyback plan which allows token holders to stake LDO in exchange for a portion of Lido DAO revenue (via LDO buyback and distribution plan), including 20-50% of future Lido DAO revenue (specific parameters based on governance decisions) distributed weekly to LDO stakers via a buyback and distribution mechanism.

Turbos Finance announces refund of funds from public sale participation

Sui ecosystem decentralized exchange Turbos Finance announced on Twitter that, following community feedback, it will refund funds from users who participated in the public sale.

The project had completed its public sale on May 14th, with the token sold at a price of 0.005 SUI (approximately $0.0058 USD based on current SUI prices), and the TURBOS token has continued to decline in price since its launch on May 16th, currently at around $0.0042 USD, below the public sale price.

It is reported that Turbos Finance received investment from Msyten Labs and Jump Crypto in March this year, with the investment amount undisclosed.

New type of coin theft appears abroad, with malicious programs implanted in shared charging treasure to steal private keys

Michael, the Chief Brand Officer of TokenPocket, tweeted: “I have discovered a new way of stealing coins. Fraudulent gangs have quietly modified and implanted malicious programs into the shared charging treasures of KTVs abroad. Guests in KTVs sing and drink for a long time and their phones easily run out of battery. They then borrow the charging treasure, thinking they are charging their own phones, but in fact it is reading data from the phone and stealing the private key from the wallet.”

Visa deploys two sets of Blockingymaster contracts on Ethereum Goerli test network to study account abstraction use cases

Payment giant Visa recently published “Rethinking Digital Transactions with Account Abstraction”. The article stated that in order to better understand the Ethereum account abstraction proposal ERC-4337, the Visa team has deployed two sets of experimental Visa Blockingymaster contracts on the Ethereum Goerli test network, demonstrating how to redesign gas fees on the blockchain to improve user convenience.

Both tests used the launch code provided by the Ethereum Foundation and the ERC-4337 core team. Through the first set of Visa Blockingymaster contracts, Visa explores whether users can pay transaction fees with other tokens, such as USD, stablecoins, or even central bank digital currencies. In this case, the payer receives equivalent generic ERC-20 tokens, which are then used to pay the transaction fees in ETH. The test settings include deploying smart contract wallets and sending them to users.

Visa is also using another set of Visa Blockingymaster contracts to explore how to fully sponsor user transaction fees. In this test, Visa added a whitelist that only allows authorized users to interact with the Visa Blockingymaster contract and successfully implemented sponsored transaction fees for users on the whitelist.

Borderless Capital and others launch a $50 million cross-chain ecosystem fund supported by Wormhole

According to Businesswire, more than 20 blockchain teams and venture capital funds have jointly launched a $50 million cross-chain ecosystem fund, focusing on supporting and developing new startups that use the Wormhole cross-chain messaging protocol. The cross-chain ecosystem fund is managed and operated by Borderless Capital, a leading risk capital company in the Web3 field. Investors include Jump Crypto, Aptos Labs, Polygon Ventures, Solana Foundation, Algorand Foundation, GSR, Arrington Capital and other institutions.

Ripple announces the launch of Ripple CBDC platform

According to Businesswire, Ripple has announced the launch of the Ripple CBDC platform, which allows central banks, governments, and financial institutions to issue their own digital currencies. Using blockchain technology used on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), the Ripple CBDC platform aims to address a variety of use cases, including wholesale and retail CBDCs or stablecoin issuance on private ledgers, providing customers with ledger technology that enables issuers to manage the entire lifecycle of their fiat digital currency, allowing financial institutions holding large amounts of digital currency to manage and participate in inter-institutional settlement and distribution functions.

Ripple says that from minting and distribution to redemption and destruction, all of this is done using the built-in multisignature functionality of the XRP Ledger. The CBDC service platform allows users to seamlessly mint, manage, trade, and exchange CBDCs and stablecoins.

LayerZero Labs partners with Immunefi to launch up to $15 million bug bounty program

According to Techcrunch, the team behind LayerZero, a cross-chain messaging protocol, has partnered with bug bounty and security service platform Immunefi to launch a $15 million bug bounty for its protocol. The $15 million maximum reward also makes it the largest bug bounty program in the crypto ecosystem, surpassing MakerDAO’s previous $10 million bug bounty program.

Coinbase to list Sui (SUI) on May 19 at 0:00

Coinbase has announced that it will add support for Sui (SUI) on the SUI network. If liquidity conditions are met, trading will begin on or after May 19, 2023 at 0:00 Beijing time. The SUI-USD trading pair will be phased in.

Grayscale and Bitwise have withdrawn their Ethereum futures ETF application

According to Cointelegraph, Grayscale has amended the documents submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to remove references to an Ethereum futures ETF. The Ethereum futures ETF was one of three new ETF registration documents submitted to the SEC by Grayscale last week.

In addition, the US SEC has requested that Grayscale withdraw its FIL trust application, stating that “FIL meets the definition of a security.”

Circle adjusts USDC reserve assets, sells US Treasuries and increases overnight repurchase agreements by $8.7 billion

According to CoinDesk, stablecoin issuer Circle is adjusting the reserve assets used to support USDC in response to the risk of default on US government debt. According to the Circle Reserve Fund website managed by BlackRock, as of May 16, the fund has added $8.7 billion in overnight repurchase agreements to its portfolio. Tri-party repurchase agreements involve banking giants such as BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and Royal Bank of Canada. A Circle spokesperson wrote in an email, “While the plan has been brewing for months, including these highly liquid assets also provides additional protection for USDC reserves against a US debt default.” The Circle spokesperson said the company’s reserve fund had sold Treasury bills maturing after May 31 and shifted assets into cash and overnight repurchase agreements. Meanwhile, US lawmakers are discussing raising the debt ceiling with the Biden administration.

Bitget, a cryptocurrency exchange, plans to hire another 300 people

According to Forkast, Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitget announced on Wednesday that it plans to hire 300 more employees in its operations, compliance, research and development, and customer support departments. Bitget’s first-quarter report showed that the company had around 1,300 employees. Unlike many exchanges that laid off staff during the “crypto winter,” Bitget announced in November last year that it wanted to increase its workforce by 50%. The company said in its quarterly report that its spot trading volume reached $59 billion in the first quarter of 2023, an 8% increase from the previous quarter. Futures trading volume reached $658 billion, up 27% from the previous quarter.

Funding News

Qiming Venture Partners has completed the fundraising of its seventh RMB fund with a scale of 6.5 billion yuan

According to An Yong Waves WeChat public account, Qiming Venture Partners has officially completed the fundraising of its seventh RMB fund with a scale of 6.5 billion yuan. Compared with the sixth RMB fund completed at the beginning of 2021, the funds raised this time have increased by nearly 128% in scale.

Since raising its first US dollar fund in 2006 and its first RMB fund in 2010, Qiming Venture Partners has become a Mega fund with an AUM (assets under management) of $9.5 billion through managing 18 funds.

It is reported that Qiming Venture Partners has invested in many Web3 projects, such as NFT data analysis platform NFTGo, DeFi protocol Crema Finance, metaverse UGC platform BUD, Web3 infrastructure provider InfStones, and decentralized wallet imToken.

Azteco, a provider of bitcoin vouchers, has completed a $6 million seed round of funding, led by Jack Dorsey

Azteco, a provider of bitcoin vouchers, has announced the completion of a $6 million seed round of funding, led by Jack Dorsey, with participation from Lightning Ventures, Hivemind Ventures, Ride Wave Ventures, Aleka Capital, Visary Capital, Gaingels, David Van Der Weele, Sunil Rajaraman, etc. The new funds will be used for product development and market expansion in Latin America and Europe. Through Azteco, people can easily save, spend, and send small amounts of bitcoin.

Airstack, a Web3 developer platform, has raised over $7 million in funding, led by Superscrypt

According to CoinDesk, Airstack, an AI-supported Web3 developer platform, has raised $7 million in funding, led by Superscrypt, with participation from Polygon, Hashed Emergent, NGC, Primal Capital, UOB Ventures, and Signum Capital, among others.

Important data

Data: Do Kwon’s wallet has transferred $2.15 million worth of cryptocurrency since May 16th

According to KSB NEWS, it has been confirmed that cryptocurrency worth about KRW 2.86 billion ($2.15 million) has been transferred from Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon’s wallet since May 16th, and on May 16th, the Montenegrin Prosecutor’s Office appealed the decision to grant bail to the court. The report said that this may have been to help someone extract the cryptocurrency for Do Kwon, who is currently in jail.

Bitcoin difficulty has increased by 3.22% to 49.55 T, reaching a new all-time high

According to data from the OKLink multi-chain browser of Ouke Cloud Chain, the mining difficulty of bitcoin has been adjusted at block height 790272, with a 3.22% increase to 49.55 T, reaching a new all-time high. The current average network hash rate is 364.29EH/s.

Data: OP tokens worth $278 million will be unlocked on May 31st, accounting for 3.6% of the total supply

According to Token Unlocks, Optimism will unlock 154,618,822.65 OP tokens, equivalent to about $278 million, or 3.6% of the total supply, on May 31. Of these tokens, 81,604,379 OP will be unlocked for core contributors and 73,014,444 OP will be unlocked for investors.

In addition, the Optimism governance account tweeted that the circulating supply of OP will increase on May 31, and users may notice a large number of on-chain transfers in the two weeks leading up to this date, which are planned transactions for distribution. Details can be found in the estimated circulating supply distribution.

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