1. "Dr. Doom" Nouriel Roubini: Most US banks are technically close to bankruptcy
Nouriel Roubin, a well-known economist who is opposed to cryptocurrencies and known as "Dr. Doom", asserted in a recent MarketWatch column that most US banks are technically close to bankruptcy. Hundreds of US banks are completely insolvent in terms of capital quality. Rising inflation reduces the true value of bank liabilities (deposits) by increasing banks' "deposit franchise" (an asset that is not on their balance sheet). The experience of regional banks in the United States, such as Silicon Valley Bank, shows that deposit stickiness is not guaranteed. When banks sell securities to meet withdrawal demand, unrealized securities losses become reality, leading to bankruptcy.
2. An NFT whale sold 87 CryptoPunks at one time, with a total sales amount of 5261 ETH
Well-known NFT trader Cirrus posted on social media that the address starting with 0x3Ac708 will sell 87 CryptoPunks at an average price of 60 ETH at one time, with a total sales amount of 5261 ETH (about 9,575,000 US dollars). A few weeks ago, the address also sold dozens of CryptoPunks at a high price to Huang Licheng.
3. SignalPlus: The amount of funds flowing into money market funds has stabilized
Inflows into money market funds have stabilized, with institutional funds receiving $54 billion in the past week, down from the $100 billion average in the previous two weeks. Inflows into retail money market funds have also stabilized, at around $11 billion per week, compared with the $15-20 billion level in previous weeks.
4. Jack Dorsey-backed Lightning Network project Spiral releases new LDK roadmap
Spiral, a Bitcoin open source development entity supported by Jack Dorsey's company Block, has released a new roadmap for the Lightning Development Kit (LDK). LDK is different from the most commonly used software implementations of the Lightning Network, LND and C-lightning. Its goal is to be more modular and flexible, and to make it easier for developers to build (especially mobile) Lightning wallets and applications by adopting BOLT 12. A key feature on the new roadmap is LDK Node Mobile, which provides a simpler setup for creating nodes; another unique feature is the so-called "asynchronous payment", which will be the main focus of LDK next year.
5. XRPL second-layer smart contract platform Evernode releases Hooks V3, mainnet may be launched in Q3/Q4
Evernode, a second-layer decentralized permissionless smart contract platform built on XRP Ledger, announced the release of Hooks V3, the latest version of the platform's Beta test. Relevant users will be invited to switch from Hooks v2. It is reported that the registration for the third iteration of the test network will be open in the next 7 days, so users have enough time to reinstall the Evernode software and migrate to the new version. The main network is expected to be launched as early as the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2023.
6. Vitalik: Using multiple open ZK-EVMs will face two major challenges: latency and data inefficiency
In his latest blog post, Vitalik suggested taking multiple open ZK-EVMs to create a "multi-client" ecosystem, but at the same time he pointed out that this solution will face two major challenges: latency and data inefficiency. A malicious attacker may delay the release of a block and a proof that is valid for a client. If the time is long enough, it may create a temporary fork and interrupt the chain of several slots. In addition, if you want to be able to generate multiple types of proofs for a block, you need to actually publish the original signature, which will cause data inefficiency.
7.Dune releases large language model roadmap, query explanation function has been integrated with ChatGPT4
Blockchain analysis platform Dune has released a large language model (LLM) roadmap in the community. It has now launched the first LLM feature and is preparing a full set of LLM features and integrations for users. Dune has released Query Explanations and integrated ChatGPT4. Users can click a button to display the natural language explanation of any query to simplify SQL queries. Dune also helps users transition to Dune SQL through LLM. At the same time, Dune supports natural language queries using LLM. Users can ask questions in English and query Dune datasets without any SQL knowledge. In addition, Dune is also committed to researching new ways to solve how to select the right table among more than 700,000 tables and views on Dune.com; plans to use LLM to optimize search and filtering; and release a chatbot to help users quickly browse the Spellbook and Dune Docs knowledge bases.
8. The US SEC's lawsuit against Ripple was not concluded by the end of March, and the ruling may be postponed for 2 months
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit against Ripple has not been ruled by the judge, so it was not closed on March 31 as predicted by legal experts. John Deaton, the attorney for XRP, clarified that March 31 is not the deadline for the judge's ruling. It is uncertain when the judge will decide, but it may happen in the next 30 or 60 days. If the SEC wins and classifies XRP as a security, many other digital assets and certain treatments of cryptocurrencies will be included in its jurisdiction, and U.S. lawmakers may also authorize the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to handle cryptocurrency derivatives and transactions.
9. zkSync Era is more active than Immutable X and Optimism
zkSync Era, which is still in the Alpha stage, has become the second most active L2 in just one week, second only to Arbitrum One. According to l2beat data, zkSync Era's TPS in the past day was 4.02, while Immutable X was 3.21 and Optimism was 2.50. Historical data shows that the highest single-day TPS on the zkSync Ear chain occurred on March 23, when the indicator value was 31.64. In addition, the total locked amount on the zkSync Ear chain has reached 96.12 million US dollars.
10. The US government has suspended the sale of Voyager to Binance.US to submit "substantial evidence based on the case"
According to court documents from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the U.S. government showed "a substantial case on the merits" in its proposal to suspend Voyager's sale of its assets to Binance.US, and that failure to suspend the transaction would cause irreparable damage. The document concluded that Jennifer Rearden, a district judge at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, decided to expedite the briefing and ruling on the appeal and set a deadline for the sale of Voyager to Binance.US to avoid too much delay, requiring the government to submit its brief by April 7, the Voyager Debtors and Creditors Committee to submit a brief on April 14, and the government to respond to Voyager by April 18. Note, "on the merits" means that the decision of a case depends on the law applicable to the specific evidence and facts presented in the case, as opposed to cases where the decision is made on procedural grounds. Typically, a decision "on the merits" is considered final. As previously reported, on March 28, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rearden of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York approved the U.S. Department of Justice’s plan to suspend Voyager’s sale of its assets to Binance.US pending an appeal of the sale that was previously approved by a bankruptcy judge.
11. Injective Grant DAO is officially launched on DoraHacks.io
Injective Grant DAO, which provides long-term funding for innovative DeFi applications, has been launched on the open source developer incentive platform DoraHacks.io. The first round of project submissions has been opened, with a total funding amount of US$1,000,000. The first round of project information submission will be held from March 30 to May 4. Injective Grant DAO is based on the ecological advantages of the decentralized exchange protocol Injective in financial applications. The first round of funding activities has four tracks, namely DeFi, Tooling&Infra, Pyth Bounty Program, and Notifi Bounty Program. Wormhole and Eclipse will also provide developer bounties.
12. WeWork founder's new real estate company Flow is considering launching in Saudi Arabia
Flow, the real estate company founded by former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, is considering launching in Saudi Arabia. At a conference in Miami Beach, Florida on Friday, Neumann was interviewed by a16z founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz about their $350 million investment in Neumann's new company Flow and their shared passion for the oil-rich country. Horowitz praised Saudi Arabia as a "startup country." It was previously reported that Flow, a real estate company founded by former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, plans to launch a digital wallet. Davidson Goldin, a spokesman for Flow, said the digital wallet cannot be used to pay rent for apartments managed by Flow, but can be used for external purchases like other wallets, and Flow's tokenized rewards program may involve cryptocurrency.
13. zkSync: Database failure caused downtime, decentralization is the only long-term solution
According to official news, the zkSync team announced the cause of the outage on Twitter. Block production stopped due to a failure in the block queue database. Despite this, the server API was not affected. Transactions continue to be added to the memory pool and query services are normal. Although all components have comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerts, no alerts were triggered because the API was operating normally. When the accident occurred, the entire team was not online. The repair was implemented within 5 minutes. To solve similar problems, zkSync gives database monitoring agents a special role, enabling them to connect to the database and continuously collect metrics. At the same time, the team introduced an alert mechanism that will sound an alarm when the database monitoring agent fails or cannot establish a connection with the database. In addition, if the situation escalates seriously, the team on call will be notified immediately through multiple channels. But the only long-term solution is decentralization.
14. Musk: In the next few weeks, almost all the source code that helps display tweets will be open sourced. Elon Musk announced on social media that Twitter's recommendation source code is now open to everyone on GitHub. Twitter will update the recommendation algorithm every 24-48 hours based on user suggestions. In the next few weeks, Twitter will open source almost all the source code that helps display tweets so that at least a rough estimate of the output can be made.
