Weekly Crypto Recap (April 29th - May 6th)

Here's a weekly recap from Metaverse.SG, highlighting the most notable crypto events this week:
 

• Market Overview
• CZ Trial
• The power of community
• LayerZero Snapshot
• Multiple Airdrops Distribution
• Free Airdrop Guide from our Friend

Let’s dive headfirst into the main crypto news of this week!

MARKET OVERVIEW

1. 1. BTC:
   
   Bitcoin ETF trading has launched in the Hong Kong market. The six new crypto ETFs’ total trading volume at the closing bell on day one in Hong Kong was 87.58 million Hong Kong dollars ($12 million USD). This number pales compared to the first-day trading volume of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, valued at $4.6 billion USD.
    

2. 2. CZ Trial:
   
   A contrite Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has been sentenced to four months in federal prison, for his apparently limited role in the illegal activity at Binance, the crypto exchange he founded in 2017. U.S.
    

   

   
   District Judge Richard Jones in Seattle specifically noted CZ’s many contributions to charity, as well as willingness to accept responsibility, all while downplaying the idea CZ had any foreknowledge that Binance was intentionally committing crimes.
    

3. 3. ETF Bitcoin Flow:
    

• Monday: -813.66 BTC (-$51,500,000)
• Tuesday: -2679.17 BTC (-$161,600,000) 
• Wednesday:-9803.28 BTC(-$563,700,000)
• Thursday: -577.49 BTC (-34,360,000)
• Friday: +5990.48 BTC(+$378,300,000)

THE POWER OF COMMUNITY

EigenLayer is a protocol built on Ethereum that introduces restaking, a new primitive in cryptoeconomic security and has over $16B TVL.
 

FUD began after the team announced the airdrop.
 

Here are some reasons why it all started:

• 15% of the initial 1.67 billion EIGEN tokens will be set aside for the community and distributed over multiple “seasons.” Early users who accrued “points” will be airdropped the first 5% of those reserved tokens — with one point equating to one token. 
• EigenLayer team and investors are getting 55% but stakers are getting only 5% and even that will not be transferable at the beginning
• Many users from few countries aren’t barred from interacting with the platform, but they are being excluded from the reward.
• Team spend a lot of effort banning VPNs
• Those who used partner Dapps (Renzo, Puffer, Pendle) and earned 'points' were not included in the first token distribution round.

After numerous complaints and widespread attention in the crypto space, the team listened and revised its token distribution approach.
 

Some key changes:
 

• Protocol announced that it would allocate 15% of the total supply of EIGEN tokens to the community
• EigenLayer said that once transferability is enabled, private investors and team members will face a one-year lock-up period.This ensures regular users can transfer their tokens well before core contributors.
• EigenLayer has increased its EIGEN token airdrop by 28 million tokens due to community feedback, benefiting over 280,000 prior users.
• The protocol plans to reevaluate eligibility for users affected by geographical restrictions.

LayerZero SNAPSHOT

The most anticipated airdrop candidate stated that the first “Snapshot” has already been taken. 

At the time of the snapshot, more than 6M people were interacting through the Layer Zero protocol.
 

Bryan Pellegrino (CEO of Layer Zero) came up with a great strategy to fight against Sybils:

• Phase 1: Self-report for 15% of intended allocation
• Phase 2: LZ Labs sybil report. Sybil caught get 0
• Phase 3: Bounty hunter program. Catch a Sybil, get 10% of their intended allocation.

Transactions fell over 50% post Snapshot.

• Merkly transactions:
  May 1: 78,000
  May 2: 42k
  Fell by 46%
   
• Stargate transactions:
  May 1: 114,000
  May 2: 50,000
  Fell by 56%
   

MULTIPLE AIRDROP DISTRIBUTIONS

1. 1. Friend Tech:
   Friend Tech is a socialFI project where you interact by purchasing and holding keys from others to earn points.
    

   

   
   
   Some interesting facts about airdrop:
   
   a. 100% airdrop to community 
   b. The price of the token dropped from $5 to $0.8 in first day and came back to $2.5 later
   c. After the airdrop was announced, the price of most keys dropped by more than 60%
   
    

2. 2. Drift Protocol
   
   The team announced the airdrop, but there were a few odd details:

• Accs with 1 point: 200 $DRIFT
• Accs that have borrowed $1: 200 $DRIFT
• Accs with 500 points: 200 $DRIFT

It seems that DRIFT team favored sybils instead of whales
 

FREE AIRDROP GUIDE

Our good friend 0x_Doomer has agreed to share his threads with us. You can access these airdrops at no cost.

1. 1. TAIKO

Taiko is a decentralized Ethereum-equivalent ZK-EVM and general-purpose ZK-Rollup. Its purpose is to allow developers and users of dApps developed for Ethereum L1 to be used on Taiko without any changes.

• Raised $37M in investments from Sequoia, KuCoin Ventures, GSR, OKX, Hashed, and other funds.

2. Particle Network

Particle Network is a pioneering Web3 infrastructure project, featuring key offerings such as zkWaaS (Zero-Knowledge Proof Wallet as a Service) and the Intent Fusion Protocol.

• Particle Network has raised about $9M from HashKey Capital, Animoca Brands, Alibaba Group and others.

CONCLUSION

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