Weekly project updates: STEPN to airdrop GMT, OKX to launch OKBChain, etc
Colin Wu . 2023-02-18 . Data
1. ETH’s weekly summary

a. Ethereum client teams to launch Shanghai upgrade on Sepolia testnet on Feb 28 link

The Geth (EL) client team ran into an unexpected issue with their nodes on the Zhejiang testnet on February 16. Since discovering this bug, the team has issued a fix. Chair of the ACDE calls Tim Beiko asked whether other client teams were vulnerable to the same bug. During last week’s ACDC call, Ethereum client teams agreed to launch the Shanghai upgrade on the Sepolia testnet on February 28th.

b. Vitalik: Ethereum’s roadmap emphasizes sharding, Rollup focuses on L2 solutions link

Vitalik stated in a recent interview that the main focus of Ethereum’s roadmap is sharding, which aims to create a system that supports more transactions than can be verified by a single node while still adhering to rules; whereas Rollup’s roadmap is more focused on being developer-friendly for building L2 solutions.

2. Lido’s weekly summary

a. Lido warns on DeFi challenges after SEC’s Kraken crack down link

“I have been getting a lot more questions about ‘does this (US SEC regulation) impact Lido, what are your thoughts on this?’” said Jacob Blish, head of business development at the DAO that manages Lido Finance. “I personally think this is a net benefit for on-chain permissionless liquid staking or staking providers, but it really depends on what the final resolution is.” If the U.S. regulators ultimately conclude that no U.S. person can interact with any pledge service, then there may be different issues and he personally, as a U.S. person, may not be able to work for Lido.

b. Lido community discusses whether to sell treasury ETH link

The Lido community is discussing a governance proposal submitted by Steakhouse Financial, the financial arm of the Lido DAO, which would require the project to hold, sell or stake ETH held in its treasury. The community currently holds a total of approximately $60 million in assets in the Aragon contract, primarily 20,304 ETH (approximately $30 million).

3. Aave’s weekly summary

a. Aave community launches proposal to freeze BUSD on Aave V2 link

The proponent believes that the circulating supply of BUSD will tend to zero and there is no prospect of future growth, thus the most reasonable way for Aave is to freeze BUSD on Aave V2 and invite users to switch to another stablecoin in Aave.

b. Lens Protocol has seen a lot of user activity over the past week link

Perhaps influenced by recent rumors of a potential airdrop, Lens Protocol, a Web3 social protocol from Aave, has seen heavy user activity over the past week, averaging over 20,000 posts and 7,000 comments per day, with the combined number of comments, posts and retweets hitting an all-time high on Feb. 14.

4. Blur’s weekly summary

a. Coinbase will add support for Blur (BLUR) on the Ethereum network link

Trading will begin on 14 February 2023, if and when liquidity conditions are met.

b. Blur opens Care Packages claims to eligible participants link

NFT Marketplace Blur will open Care Packages to eligible participants on February 15. Coinbase, OKX, Bybit, Gate, MEXC, Kucoin, Bitget, Huobi, Bitmart and other exchanges have announced that they will go live with Blur tokens.

c. Blur officially launches BLUR token link

BLUR peaked at $8.36 on OKX after its launch and was at $1.09 as of Feb. 18, with 93% of the 360 million BLUR airdrops claimed (about 330 million) and the maximum number of airdrops at 3.2 million BLURs.

d. Blur announced tokenomics alongside the release of the airdrop link

BLUR is used for community governance and has the power to control the protocol’s value accrual and distribution. The initial 4 to 5 year allocation is as follows: 51% to Blur community members; 29% to past and future core contributors; 19% to investors; 1% to advisors.

e. Blur recommends creators disable OpenSea link

Blur, the NFT trading marketplace, has published a blog post for NFT creators about the differences in royalty payment options between it and OpenSea. Today, creators can’t earn royalties on Blur and OpenSea at the same time. Instead, they can only earn full royalties on OpenSea, or Blur, but not both together. Blur will enforce full royalties for any NFT projects that do not use OpenSea.

f. OpenSea fee to 0% for a limited time link

Opensee tweeted that due to a massive shift in the NFT ecosystem, the team decided to make some big changes: OpenSea will reduce fees to 0% for a limited time; OpenSea will move to optional creator earnings (0.5% min) for all collections without on-chain enforcement (old & new); marketplaces with the same policies will not be blocked by the operator filter.

5. Polygon’s weekly summary

a. Polygon Labs announced the launch of Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta on March 27 link

Over the next few weeks, Polygon Labs will be releasing more details about Mainnet Beta. According to Polygon Labs, proof costs for a similarly large batch of transactions are down to about $0.06 (less than $0.001 for a simple transfer).

b. Siemens issues first digital bond on the Polygon blockchain link

Siemens (SIE), Germany’s third-largest listed company by market capitalization, has issued its first digital bond on the Polygon blockchain, a €60 million ($64 million) bond with a one-year maturity and an undisclosed interest rate. The company said the blockchain bond could reduce paperwork and reach potential buyers directly.

6. STEPN to conduct a huge airdrop to Genesis sneaker holders link

The P2E project STEPN announced that it will conduct a huge airdrop to Genesis sneaker holders. The airdrop for gray shoes is 4000 GMT, green shoes 8000 GMT, blue shoes 16000 GMT, purple shoes 32000 GMT. This airdrop is expected to drain treasury funds for unknown reasons.

7. OKX to launch a new Blockchain OKBChain link

The exchange OKX said it will launch a new Blockchain OKBChain, which will be launched in Q1 and independent with current Okxchain. Okxchain is a POS chain and co-build by communities. OKBChain is developed and operated by OKX company.

8. zkSync announces availability of zkSync Era Mainnet link

zkSync announced the full open source with the freedom to view, modify and fork the code and its Mainnet is open to let registered projects deploy on mainnet. Mainnet will remain closed to end users during this stage.

9. Filecoin’s weekly summary

a. Filecoin to launch smart contracts on March 23 link

Filecoin announced that it will launch smart contracts, making it a fully-fledged L1. FIL rose by 23% in 24 hours. There are currently 3,785 active miners on the Filecoin network, storing 18.767 EiB of information, and staking 134,023,969 FIL.

b. Filecoin introduces three major project updates for 2023 link

Filecoin’s virtual machine (FVM) will gradually upgrade its protocol in 2023, continuing to drive its programmability roadmap. Bacalhau, the data computation system, will provide a fully distributed data processing system by the end of 2023 that can run on all types of devices everywhere. The retrieval market will bring more use cases for decentralized retrieval in 2023.

10. Avalanche’s weekly summary

a. High-risk loans in Benqi have increased significantly to ~ $2.3 million link

Loans at high risk (collateral values within 5% of the liquidation line) in Benqi, TVL’s second largest agreement on Avalanche, have recently increased significantly to approximately $2.3 million, the highest point since early November last year, representing approximately 5.3% of total lending.

b. Attack on Platypus stablecoin USP results in ~ $9 million in losses link

Platypus, a stablecoin exchange platform on the Avalanche chain was attacked, and the attacker made a profit of approximately $8.5 million. However, the attacker did not implement the withdrawal function in the contract, so that the profit was locked in the attack contract.

c. Platypus salvages $2.4 million in hacked funds with BlockSec’s help link

The hacker who exploited Platypus only made off with a small portion of the initially stolen funds. Blockchain security firm BlockSec was able to take advantage of a loophole in the attacker’s contract and call back 2.4 million US Dollar Coins into Platypus’ address with an upgrade proxy implementation.

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