Cobo Argus Weekly Digest #12
Runes Protocol, Aerodrome's AMM Slipstream, Quilibrium, and Heroglyphs for Fairer Ethereum PoS
Welcome to the Cobo Argus Weekly Digest #12 ! This edition covers:
Highlights from the 2024 Hong Kong 'BTC Old Friends' Event
An Overview of the Runes Protocol
Noteworthy New Launches: Aerodrome's Slipstream AMM, Runes, Quilibrium, and Heroglyphs to decentralize Ethereum validation by incentivizing solo validators.
Airdrops, Rewards, and Points on $PRCL, $MERL, $BB, $STONE, and Optimism's Retro Funding 4
Let's dive in!
Week’s Highlight
2024 Hong Kong 'BTC Old Friends' Event Highlights
At the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Cobo and Antalpha Prime hosted the "BTC Old Friends" event. Veteran miner and Cobo co-founder/CEO DiscusFish recounted Bitcoin mining's evolution, highlighting its changing landscape from migration across China, US to Africa/South America.
On "Views on AI and how Cobo would react to it", DiscusFish stated AI development hinges on blockchain middleware and infrastructure progress. Solving blockchain's performance issues would significantly reduce on-chain costs, enabling AI agents to conduct on-chain digital asset transactions with limited permissions and likely become the main smart contract wallet users. For the human side, they would only need to authorize AI agents and pre-define simple risk policies for autonomous execution. Mature prototypes are expected within 3-5 years.
Antalpha Prime introduced an innovative bitcoin mining financing solution. Users can collateralize mining rigs to obtain loans of around 50%, and secure variable cost loans like electricity fees based on their hashrate. As a close Bitmain partner, Antalpha Prime can procure the latest mining machines from Bitmain and provide access to its mining pools and facilities.
What You Need to Know About Runes Protocol?
On April 20th, the Runes Protocol is expected to launch simultaneously with the Bitcoin halving event.
Runes Protocol introduces a new fungible token standard on Bitcoin's base layer, improving upon the current BRC-20 standard. Unlike BRC-20, Runes is a simple, UTXO-native fungible token protocol, with each Rune being interchangeable, similar to ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. As a UTXO-native protocol, Runes extends UTXOs to store both Bitcoin and Rune balances, leveraging Bitcoin's security framework. This allows users to create and trade Runes through regular Bitcoin transactions.
Compared to BRC-20, this approach has minimal impact on the Bitcoin chain, is more efficient, and avoids the excessive UTXO bloat that BRC-20 causes, leading to network congestion.
As stated by Casey Rodarmor, the developer behind Ordinal Theory, Runes Protocol is not a token itself but "a venue for people to create [tokens] on Bitcoin."
➡️ The Quilibrium token reward lookup is now live. Early users participating in providing node services can currently check their reward amounts on this page by simply entering their wallet address.
Quilibrium is a decentralized MPC platform-as-a-service. According to its founding developer Cassie Heart, Quilibrium can be viewed as an end-to-end encrypted & decentralized version of AWS, allowing users to port data between apps without permission. For developers, however, they need to obtain user permission to build applications based on data from other applications.
Quilibrium, developed by Farcaster engineer and former Coinbase employee Cassie Heart, had a fair launch with no equity financing or pre-allocated team tokens. Like regular node service providers, the team earns tokens solely through participating in node services.
Quilibrium has no Twitter presence, using only the official /quilibrium channel on Farcaster for announcements.
➡️ Optimism's Retro Funding 4 allocated 10M OP tokens to reward on-chain builders.
➡️ The decentralized data lake and query engine Subsquid Network launches the $SQD Points program. Before the snapshot on May 13, 2024, complete specific on-chain and off-chain tasks at points.subsquid.io, and participants in any 2024 CoinList sale are eligible for extra points.
➡️ $ATH, a memecoin on Degen Chain, airdropped 20% total supply to holders and rewards them when $DEGEN hits new highs.
➡️ StakeStone upgrades Omnichain Carnival Wave 1, introducing the STONE-W1 points system. Users holding or using STONE on Scroll can earn both Scroll's Session Zero and STONE-W1 points.
➡️ The claim checker for the initial community allocation of PRCL is now live on Parcl users’ Points pages.
➡️ The Merlin Chain airdrop page has revealed the claimable token amount, with an initial estimate of 1 token for every 68 points.
➡️ BounceBit reveals token economics, with 35% allocated for staking rewards.
➡️ Heroglyphs Protocol releases v0 whitepaper ahead of official launch this Friday. It introduces PoW to Ethereum's PoS, aiming to incentivize Ethereum solo stakers with new tokens. Co-author and Sushi contributor 0xMaki believes fair token distribution lacked since Ethereum's PoW to PoS merge last September. Heroglyphs mining ensures all validators earn rewards, regardless of stake size or block proposer selection.
➡️ Highlight adds Creator Rewards (50% mint fee share for free NFT creators) and DEGEN token minting for NFTs.
➡️ Rainbow Wallet adds support for token trading on Zora Chain and Degen Chain.
➡️ Aerodrome will launch the new AMM Slipstream on April 22nd. Based on UniV3's trusted contracts, Slipstream focuses on low-volatility, high-volume currency pairs to achieve optimal capital efficiency by concentrating liquidity.
➡️ Generalized ZK Compression is Coming Soon to Solana
➡️ Aavegotchi's $GHST token is now live on Base, with plans to deploy the Base-secured L3 Gotchichain before June.
➡️ Worldcoin plans to launch the World Chain, a layer 2 network this summer.
➡️ Lagrange Labs announces the 'Euclid' testnet, enabling Ethereum's first verifiable database and ZK coprocessing. With Testnet Euclid, developers can build dApps using efficient, inexpensive queries on a verifiable ZK database of blockchain history. Unlike typical ZK coprocessing that proves extraction of small data chunks expensively, Lagrange's ZK Coprocessor verifiably indexes the full blockchain into a proof-friendly database, then runs efficient parallelized computations and proofs on top.
➡️ The SAFE token becomes transferable on April 23rd. Maximum supply: 1 billion, initial circulating supply: 427 million. Vesting schedule up to 8 years. Approximately 143.4 million SAFE tokens (14.34% of total supply) are non-treasury circulating supply.
➡️ Lido's sDVTm module, powered by Obol Network's DVT, is ready to launch on mainnet, adding 72 new node operators. It allows solo and community stakers to run validator nodes through Lido protocol, using Obol and SSV DVT solutions. Initially capped at 0.5% of Lido's total staked ETH (votable), it enables an expected 250 new node operators. Unlike Lido's regular 5%/5% splits, sDVTm rewards 2% to treasury, 8% to node operators and DVT providers, providing direct income to Obol and SSV from Lido.
More to Know
➡️ Centrifuge proposes an RWA focused lending market on Base for borrowing/lending against eligible pool tokens.
➡️ Beware of phishing website scams related to "Degen" in Google Ads. The top-ranked paid ad for the "Degen" keyword search on Google is a phishing website that redirects to other phishing sites. Be cautious.
➡️ Hong Kong's first spot Bitcoin ETF is set to launch as early as late April, with a spot Ethereum ETF to follow shortly after.
About Cobo Argus
Cobo Argus is an institutional-grade on-chain digital asset management solution. Built on top of Safe{Wallet} (previously Gnosis Safe), Cobo Argus provides unparalleled security, workflow efficiency, and risk management for interacting with DeFi protocols. Cobo Argus offers a comprehensive suite of powerful features including multi-signature security, on-chain role-based access controls, granular permissions at function and parameter levels, advanced DeFi bots, single-signature authorizations, automated risk monitoring, and more. Cobo Argus supports all open-source DeFi protocols on compatible blockchains.
Website: https://www.cobo.com/argus
Twitter: @Cobo_Global
Telegram Channel: Cobo’s Narratives
Disclaimer: All information provided by Cobo Argus on or via this publication is for information purposes only and is not, and does not constitute or intend to constitute, investment advice or any investment service. The information provided comes from the best sources, however Cobo Argus cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions that may emerge. Readers and recipients are requested to consult with professional legal, tax, accounting, investment advisors before making any material decisions.