Compilation: Luan Peng, ChainCatcher
"What Important Events Happened This Week (9.23-9.29)"
1. Trump Says He Will Not Run Again in 2024 if He Fails in the Election
According to Jin10, the Republican presidential candidate and former president, Donald Trump, stated that if he fails in the presidential election in November, he does not think he will run again in 2028.
Born in 1946, Trump, who is currently 78 years old, will be 82 years old by the time of the 2028 U.S. presidential election. Before the current U.S. President Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Trump often attacked the 81-year-old Biden on the issue of age.
According to Jin10, Pan Gongsheng, the governor of the People's Bank of China, announced at a press conference of the State Council Information Office on the 24th that the reserve requirement ratio and policy interest rates will be lowered. The reserve requirement is likely to be cut by 0.5 percentage points in the near future, releasing long-term liquidity of 1 trillion yuan. There may also be another reduction of 0.25-0.5 percentage points before the end of the year. At the same time, the central bank's policy interest rate will be lowered, with the 7-day reverse repurchase operation rate reduced by 0.2 percentage points, guiding the loan market quoted interest rate (LPR) to decrease synchronously.
3. Harris Arizona Campaign Office Targeted in Shooting
According to the New York Post, U.S. law enforcement is investigating a shooting incident at the campaign office of Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona this week.
According to the Tempe Police Department, damage from the shooting was discovered near South Rural Road after midnight on Monday at the Democratic National Committee campaign office.
Sergeant Ryan Cook, a public information officer, stated, "No one was in the office at night, but it raised concerns about the safety of those who work in the building and the surrounding area."
The police stated that detectives are analyzing evidence collected at the scene and have taken additional measures to enhance the safety of staff and people in the vicinity.
4. Harris Vows to Make U.S. a Leader in Blockchain and Reaffirms Support for Digital Assets
Vice President Harris stated during a speech at the Pittsburgh Economic Club on Wednesday that under her leadership, the U.S. will "recommit to" maintaining global leadership in defining the fields of the next century, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing, blockchain, and other emerging technologies.
During a recent fundraising event on Wall Street, Harris stated that artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies are part of her vision for the "opportunity economy."
Harris reiterated this view in an 80-page economic plan: "We will encourage innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital assets while protecting consumers and investors. We will create a safe business environment with consistent and transparent rules."
5. OpenAI CEO Announces Major Executive Changes, Will Refocus on Technology and Products
Sam Altman, the founder and CEO of OpenAI, announced on social media that there are major executive changes at the company. Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, Chief Scientist Bob, and another executive, Barret, will be leaving. Altman stated that these decisions were independent and amicable. Mark will take over as Senior Vice President of Research, leading the research team together with Chief Scientist Jakub. Josh Achiam will serve as the Director of Mission Alignment, while Kevin and Srinivas will continue to lead the application team, and Matt Knight will serve as the Chief Information Security Officer.
Altman emphasized that although these changes are sudden, the change in leadership is a natural result of the company's rapid development. He plans to refocus on the company's technology and products and will further discuss these changes at an all-hands meeting.
6. SRC20 Founder: Fractal Is Neither Bitcoin Nor L2, It's a Shitcoin
SRC20 founder Mike In Space posted on X platform stating that Fractal is neither Bitcoin nor a Bitcoin-like product or L2, but a Shitcoin.
In addition, the SRC20 project OpenStamp was launched on Fractal yesterday, and the account received attention from Mike In Space. However, due to network issues with Fractal, it was difficult to mint, and the official stopped minting and will provide full refunds to affected users.
7. Celestia to Unlock 175 Million TIA Tokens Worth Over $1 Billion on October 30
According to Token unlock data, modular blockchain Celestia will unlock over 175 million TIA tokens on October 30, accounting for as much as 17.68% of the total TIA supply, worth approximately $1.08 billion.
Earlier news revealed that Celestia announced on September 24 that it had secured $100 million in financing, but it was later exposed that the financing was completed months ago through over-the-counter (OTC) transactions.
8. Bloomberg: Former Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng Has Been Released
According to Bloomberg, former Binance leader and co-founder Zhao Changpeng (CZ) has been released two days earlier than originally planned.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons declined to provide specific information about CZ's release.
The U.S. Department of Justice had requested to extend CZ's sentence to 36 months, alleging that he intentionally violated the law for the benefit of the company and himself. On the other hand, CZ's lawyer stated that CZ has taken responsibility and "deeply regrets" his actions, and requested the court to grant him probation.
9. Trump: Will Seek to Sue Google if Re-elected as President
Former U.S. President Trump stated that if he is re-elected as U.S. President, he will seek to sue Google and accuse the company of publishing negative reports about him.
10. Zhao Changpeng Tweets "GM" After Release from Prison
Zhao Changpeng posted his first tweet "GM" on X platform after being released from prison.
11. Vitalik Releases New Article: "Making Ethereum's Alignment Clear and Visible"
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, released an article titled "Making Ethereum's Alignment Clear and Visible," discussing the issue of balancing the Ethereum client team, researchers, Layer 2 teams, application developers, and local community groups to ensure that all these projects collectively build a unified Ethereum ecosystem. He introduced the concept of "Ethereum alignment."
"This can include value alignment (e.g., open source, minimal decentralization, support for public goods), technical alignment (e.g., adopting standards across the ecosystem), and economic alignment (e.g., using ETH as a token as much as possible). Vitalik analyzes from the perspectives of open source, open standards, decentralization, security, and positive sum, and his ideal goal is to see more entities like L2beat emerge, tracking the performance of various projects in meeting the above standards and other standards proposed by the community. Instead of competing for connections, projects should compete in alignment based on understandable standards.
"Dashboard organizations" like L2beat, block explorers, and other ecosystem monitoring tools are excellent examples of this principle working successfully in the Ethereum ecosystem. If different aspects of alignment can be made clearer, without focusing on a single "overseer," this concept can be more effective and do better in pursuing fairness and inclusivity in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The 2024 Tsinghua Wudaokou Chief Economist Forum was held in Beijing on September 28. Zhu Guangyao, former deputy minister of the Ministry of Finance, attended and delivered a speech. Zhu Guangyao called for attention to research on the development of cryptocurrencies, stating, "It does have a negative impact, and we must fully recognize its risks and the harm it poses to the capital market, but we must study the latest changes internationally and policy adjustments, as it is a crucial aspect for the development of the digital economy."
Zhu Guangyao reviewed the development of cryptocurrencies, stating that for more than a decade, the United States has always believed that cryptocurrencies have had a huge destructive impact on international anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing. In addition, the drastic fluctuations in the value of cryptocurrencies have had a huge impact on the international financial market. However, this year, there has been a significant evolution in U.S. policy.
Zhu Guangyao introduced that the Trump campaign platform explicitly included cryptocurrencies, and he also publicly stated, "We must embrace cryptocurrencies, otherwise China will replace us." The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has also approved the listing of 11 Bitcoin ETFs on the stock and futures markets. In emerging market countries and BRICS countries, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, and India have also taken action.
Zhao Changpeng posted on X platform, saying, "The food tastes great, and I can eat more than one piece of fruit every day, which is really luxurious. I want to thank everyone for their support. This is of great significance to me and keeps me strong in the darkest moments.
Some quick updates/thoughts: Giggle Academy is progressing well and will be an important part of my life in the coming years. Will continue to invest in blockchain/decentralized technology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. I am a long-term investor, concerned about impact rather than returns. I will also invest more time and money in charity (and education). I have some rough ideas. Still writing my book. I think I'm about 2/3 done. Writing a book is much more difficult than I expected, but I will persevere.
"What Are Some Great Articles to Read This Week (9.23-9.29)"
1. Just Read This! TOKEN2049 WEEK Speeches and Short Essay Compilation
The highly anticipated TOKEN 2049 WEEK concluded last week, and the "Short Essay Creator Contest" about TOKEN 2049 WEEK is now online. The ChainCatcher editorial team has selected outstanding speeches from participating guests and excellent works from the "Short Essay" contest, capturing the essence for everyone to enjoy.
Hemi is a modular blockchain network designed to provide scalability, security, and interoperability, unifying Bitcoin and Ethereum as part of a single super network. The Hemi virtual machine allows developers to build smart contracts compatible with Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the Hemi Bitcoin Suite allows individuals to create proof of stake, MEV markets, and other Bitcoin-native applications by directly accessing granular Bitcoin states.
Hemi positions itself as a "second-layer network tunnel between Bitcoin and Ethereum," integrating Ethereum's advanced programmability with Bitcoin's security.
Currently, Hemi's incentive testnet is live, and its mainnet is expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Hemi's co-founders are the renowned early Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik and blockchain security pioneer Max Sanchez.
On September 18, Hemi Labs, the developer of the Hemi network, announced the completion of a $15 million financing round, with a lineup of overseas venture capital firms focused on Bitcoin, Bitcoin OGs, with Binance Labs, Breyer Capital, and Big Brain Holdings leading the round.
Breyer Capital is an early investor in Facebook, Circle, and Spotify. Big Brain Holdings is a leading Web3 fund, with investments in projects including Solana, The Graph, and Arweave. Crypto.com, Web3 Ventures, HyperChain Capital, Alchemy, SALT Fund, Kelly Investments, Sunflower Capital, DNA Fund, BitDeer founder Wu Jihan, Portal founder George Burke, Beluga founder Sonny Singh, and others also participated in this round of financing.
Community users focusing on the Solana ecosystem should be familiar with the concept of PayFi, which is basically a concept that Lily Liu, the chair of the Solana Foundation, must talk about at industry conferences this year.
At the recent Solana Breakpoint conference, PayFi remains a highlight of the Solana ecosystem, with several PayFi concept projects in the Solana ecosystem announcing their latest developments and participation opportunities.
PayFi is simply understood as using blockchain technology to innovate payment systems, achieving more efficient and low-cost transaction experiences.
PayFi emphasizes the time value of money. In simple terms, money today is more valuable than money in the future because today's money can be immediately used for investment, consumption, or savings, and may potentially generate more returns in the future. Future money, on the other hand, loses some opportunity cost due to the need to wait before use, and carries inflation risk and other uncertainties, thus its value decreases accordingly. PayFi's goal is to help users maximize the time value of money.
It may still be difficult to understand the future value of PayFi based solely on its definition and vision. However, from the dynamics of some projects at the Solana Breakpoint conference, we can learn that some PayFi projects are mainly deployed in cross-border payments, creator monetization, commercial lending, and subscription payments. However, the entry threshold for most PayFi concept projects remains high, requiring KYC and facing compliance issues.
4. Conversation with Puffpaw Founder Reffo: Smoking "Mining" Is Cool, but How Does It Land?
Smokers have good news coming, soon smoking can also make money.
To be precise, this is a project to help people quit smoking, smoking is just a behavior, and the purpose is to quit smoking, X-To-Earn is the mechanism."
- The project Puffpaw, which focuses on "quitting smoking and making money" on Berachain, announced the completion of a $6 million seed round of financing on September 5. As the first DePIN project on Berachain, Puffpaw has received support from the Berachain Foundation.
"We are currently developing our own e-cigarettes and sensor devices, which is a completely new proprietary e-cigarette brand at this stage. By exploring Web3 to enhance the consumer experience and help people quit smoking. In the future, our sensors will support more e-cigarette brands, and selling e-cigarettes and cartridges is not our ultimate business goal," said Puffpaw founder Reffo in an interview with ChainCatcher.
Reffo and two other partners are already in the e-cigarette industry, with their own brand in the United States and a complete supply chain covering production, OEM, and tobacco. After spending some time in the Web3 industry, Reffo gradually described the "smoking to earn money" - combining e-cigarettes and blockchain in e-commerce applications. So, since the end of last year, they have started to work on this idea.
Currently, Puffpaw has completed the preliminary research and development of e-cigarettes and hardware, and the team has expanded to 15 people. They will launch TG mini-games in October and conduct a cold start in the form of NFT.
Interestingly, Reffo also mentioned that they chose Berachain because its culture and community consensus matched the project, and also because of the name of Berachain's founder "Smokey," which sounds related to smoking.
- "More than 6000 tickets were sold out, with representatives from over 114 countries and regions participating, and 70+ Solana-related products shared their latest developments and actions, covering areas such as DeFi, DePIN, and Games." This is the on-site summary of the Breakpoint event by the Solana official.
At the conference, traditional financial institutions such as Franklin Templeton, the French bank subsidiary Forge, and Citibank announced that they have established partnerships with Solana. The trend of SOL tokens during the conference was also exceptionally strong, with daily gains exceeding 10%.
The large number of participants and projects at the Breakpoint conference has attracted industry attention, making it the most discussed topic at the Token2049 conference and considered the most eye-catching summit event in the crypto industry this year.
After the Breakpoint conference, a large amount of funds began to flow into the Solana ecosystem in search of new opportunities. According to the latest cross-chain data from SolanaFloor on September 23, over $50 million has been cross-chain transferred to the Solana network from various blockchain networks in the past 7 days. Among them, the amount transferred from Ethereum reached $34 million, accounting for nearly 70% of the total cross-chain amount.
However, for ordinary users, the focus is on what opportunities are available to participate in the Solana and its ecosystem after the Breakpoint conference, and how to capture more Alpha?
After native ecosystem projects such as Pyth, Jupiter, Wormhole, and Drift successively launched tokens and airdrops, the impression of the Solana ecosystem to users has mainly been dominated by meme coin speculation. However, at this Breakpoint conference, over 70 Solana-related projects participated and announced the latest developments of their products, such as Eclipse, which will launch its mainnet at the end of October, the perpetual cooperation agreement Flash Trade will launch the token FLASH later this year, and the NFT platform Magic Eden's ME token will be launched on Solana, and so on.
The report analyzed 62 airdrops on 6 chains, showing that 88% of the airdropped tokens have already declined in price, with most experiencing a sharp drop within 15 days. Price movements after the airdrop mainly occurred in the first few days. Three months later, few tokens were able to achieve positive returns, with only a few tokens able to reverse this trend.
After 4 months in prison, CZ is expected to return in a few hours. This Chinese entrepreneur, leading Binance to become a global great company, has officially passed the first "calamity" that must be experienced.
Looking back at November 22nd last year, when CZ pleaded guilty and resigned as CEO of Binance, and accepted a record-breaking fine of over $4 billion, the crypto market was in turmoil.
However, with CZ and Binance's plea, the crypto market officially ended the era of the wild west. Shortly after, the U.S. Bitcoin spot ETF and Ethereum ETF were approved, and the new crypto nobility demonstrated their financial power to compete for influence in the U.S. election, making crypto no longer a niche market.
During CZ's nearly one-year absence, Binance and the entire crypto market transitioned from the wild west to strong compliance and from the niche to the mainstream.
Under the leadership of He Yi and the new CEO Richard Teng, Binance's business has steadily developed, and in September, Binance's historical trading volume surpassed $10 trillion for the first time.
However, everything has not been as smooth as expected. Faced with the rapidly changing crypto market, Binance has inevitably experienced confusion in its strategy and has been embroiled in significant controversy over its listing strategy.
The fate of Binance is a microcosm of the crypto industry. As the new and old cycles of crypto alternate, hope and confusion intertwine.
Although the massive influx of funds from Wall Street once pushed Bitcoin to surpass $70,000, crypto innovation seems to have failed to keep pace. Participants such as project teams, VCs, and retail investors have not enjoyed the same prosperity as in the previous bull market cycle. This crypto bull market has therefore been criticized as a false bull market.
As the Federal Reserve begins its interest rate cut cycle, the return of crypto totem CZ can once again inject confidence and innovation into the confused crypto market.
- Recently, the modular blockchain Celestia, which has attracted much attention, has been embroiled in a trust crisis. The disclosed $100 million financing is actually an OTC coin sale, and it was announced just before a large unlock countdown. This series of confusing operations has put the leading modular public chain Celestia in the spotlight.
The community has questioned Celestia's behavior, suggesting that it may have colluded with VCs or institutions to raise the coin price and sell off, and just a few days before the unlock, announced the OTC coin sale proceeds as financing news to create positive news, using information manipulation and other means to guide retail investors to take over, in order to seek private gains.
In the community's view, the Celestia Foundation failed to provide necessary transparent disclosure of this off-exchange transaction, and instead packaged it as financing news, misleading investors and triggering a trust crisis.
However, as of the time of writing, Celestia has not responded to this controversy.
- Most investments in the Web3 field are essentially attention investments.
Crypto KOL @redphonecrypto once stated that the ability of a token to attract attention is more important than other indicators. This bull market once again proved the importance of this principle, as meme coins briefly outperformed "value coins."
However, in the current environment of dispersed attention and noise, it is not easy to judge the real direction of attention. Users are often misled by marketing information on platforms such as X and false TVL data from project parties.
The Web3 market also lacks a more authoritative data analysis platform to guide users in attention investments.
To address the above pain points, the Web3 asset data platform RootData has launched the first "Web3 Hot Project Ranking." This popularity ranking uses 4.3 million real user behavior data to help users capture the real pulse of attention and improve the accuracy of user investment decisions.
10. Vitalik's New Article: It's Time to "Align" the Entire Ethereum Ecosystem
In the Ethereum ecosystem, balance is one of the most important governance challenges - or more accurately, it is the integration of decentralization and cooperation. The strength of this ecosystem lies in the wide range of individuals and organizations - client teams, researchers, layer 2 network teams, application developers, local community groups - all working towards their respective visions of what Ethereum could become. The main challenge is to ensure that all projects collectively build an Ethereum ecosystem, rather than 138 incompatible territories.
To address this challenge, many in the Ethereum ecosystem have proposed the concept of "Ethereum Consistency." This may include value consistency (e.g., open source, minimizing centralization, supporting public goods), technical consistency (e.g., collaboration with standards across the ecosystem), and economic consistency (e.g., using ETH as a token where possible). However, this concept has historically been poorly defined, leading to the risk of social control: if consistency means having the right friends, then "consistency" as a concept has failed.
To address this issue, I believe that the concept of consistency should be made clearer, breaking it down into specific attributes that can be represented by specific metrics. Everyone's list will be different, and the metrics will inevitably change over time. However, I believe we already have a solid starting point.
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