StarkWare Scales Bitcoin

Alpha Team
June 05, 2024

🚀 Bitcoin Scaling Plan by StarkWare

StarkWare's Scaling Vision: StarkWare plans to scale Bitcoin using a $1 million fund for research into OP_CAT, an opcode initially proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto. CEO Eli Ben-Sasson emphasizes the potential unlocked by the 2021 Taproot upgrade.

Controversy and Support: OP_CAT, allowing data concatenation in transactions, has mixed support. Udi Wertheimer and Ben-Sasson support it for scaling without altering Bitcoin's core, but some, like Robin Linus, warn of new security risks.

Community Response and Testing: Testing on Bitcoin's testnet began in April 2024. The community must decide on OP_CAT's revival, balancing scaling benefits with potential risks. Ben-Sasson's team remains committed to their ambitious vision. Read More.

️ On today's Top Picks:

🔜 zkSync v24 Mainnet deploys on June 6th.
🪂 Taiko launches $TAIKO airdrop.
🚀 BlackRock & Citadel to launch stock exchange.
💰 Avail raises $43M in Series A funding.

Read time: ⏰ 8 minutes

Crypto News

• ⭐️ StarkWare plans to scale Bitcoin with ZK-STARKs & transform Starknet $STRK into both an Ethereum & Bitcoin L2.

• US Lawmakers urge President Biden to bring Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan home from detention in Nigeria.

• US CFTC adds Aptos $APT Labs CEO Mo Shaikh to digital assets subcommittee.

• Dapper Labs settles NBA Top Shot Moments lawsuit for $4M.

• Watford Football Club to sell 10% of club as digital equity to investors & fans.

• Worldcoin $WLD suspends operations in Spain until end of 2024 or until GDPR audit is complete.

• Paxos launches yield-bearing stablecoin Lift Dollar $USDL in Argentina as its first market.

• Thailand's SEC approves first Spot Bitcoin ETF.

• MoonPay cuts 10% of its staff citing high cost structure & below-expected operating margins.

Alpha

• ⭐️ zkSync to move forward with v24 Mainnet deployment on June 6th.

• Taiko details Trailblazers Program with a blog post on Mirror.

• Superseed posts "TESTNET LOADING... ✱ ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░ 97%" on X.

• Bebop launches support for Taiko Mainnet.

• Jumper May XPs of the Jumper Loyalty Pass will be updated by this weekend.

• RedStone launches 1st RedStone Sprint on Zealy.

• Lava Network advises users to connect Twitter to their Magma account to crack down on bots.

• Snapshot potentially hints at $SNAPSHOT token with post on X.

Airdrops

• OG Of Airdrops by Olimpio.

• ⭐️ Taiko launches Phase 1 of $TAIKO airdrop until July 5th.

• Loopring launches Taiko $TAIKO airdrop for Loopring users.

• Swell outlines $SWELL airdrop & governance plans in The Road to Decentralized Governance blog post.

• Sanctum introduces $CLOUD token, its tokenomics, & airdrop details.

• Aethir outlines $ATH airdrop details in Aethir Cloud Drop: An Airdrop for the Community blog post.

• Pirate Nation introduces $PIRATE token with TGE scheduled for June 13th.

• ionic extends $ION airdrop claim period for 4 weeks.

Finance News

• ⭐️ BlackRock $BLK & Citadel Securities plan to start new national stock exchange in Texas.

• NVIDIA $NVDA surpasses a $3T market cap & briefly surpasses Apple $AAPL.

• Elon Musk reallocates thousands of Nvidia chips from Tesla $TSLA to X & xAI.

• Intel $INTC & Apollo Global Management $APO strike $11B deal for chip-manufacturing facility in Ireland.

• Epoch Times CFO arrested in alleged $67M money-laundering scheme.

Security and Exploits

• SlowMist Weekly Security Report highlights over ~$312M in losses.

• Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino posts that a prominent email vendor used by crypto companies might have been compromised.

• DMM Bitcoin crypto exchange outlines funding plan to cover $300M hack.

• Fuel launches $1.3M Attackathon in partnership with Immunefi.

• Aleo launches $155K ARC-0041 Audit Contest in partnership with SHERLOCK.

Token Unlocks

• Euler / 60.56K $EUL / ~$277K / JUN 06
• Hashflow / 13.62M $HFT / ~$4M / JUN 07

Funding

• Bain Capital Crypto raises money for second fund; first fund worth $560M.

• ⭐️ Avail, a unification layer for web3, raises $43M in Series A funding led by Founders Fund, Dragonfly, & cyber Fund.

• M^0, a decentralized money middleware, raises $35M in Series funding led by Bain Capital Crypto.

• XREX Group, a blockchain-enabled financial institution, raises $18.75M in Strategic funding from Tether.

• Fhenix, an Ethereum L2 powered by FHE, raises $15M in Series A funding.

• Nubit, a Bitcoin-native data availability layer, raises $8M in Seed funding led by Polychain Capital.

• GoPlus Security, a Web3 cybersecurity company, raises $10M in Private funding.

• Cookie3, a MarketingFi & AI data layer, raises $5.5M in Seed & Strategic funding led by The Spartan Group & Animoca Brands.

• Stashh, an omnichain NFT hub, raises $3.3M in funding.

• El Dorado; a Latin America-focused payments platform, raises $3M in Seed funding led by Multicoin Capital.

• Starpower, a decentralized energy network, raises $2M in Pre-Seed funding.

• CARV, a modular data layer for gaming & AI, raises an undisclosed amount in Strategic funding from Intella X.

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PROTOCOL	ASSETS	APY
Ramses CL (Arbitrum)	USDCUSDC	70.19%
Abracadabra Spell (Arbitrum)	MIMUSDCUSDT	69.96%
KiloEx (Op_bnb)	USDT	66.11%
Avantis (Base)	USDC	56.48%
Notional V3 (Ethereum)	NUSDC	55.54%
Velodrome V2 (Optimism)	USDCSUSD	40.88%
Orbit Protocol (Blast)	USDB	38.54%
Indigo (Cardano)	IUSD	37.19%