Top crypto stories of week 11, 2024
Mon 11 to Sun 17 March 2024
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 11 to Sun 17 March 2024, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 11 comments in total. Most-shared sources: youtube.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Blobscan - Blob transaction explorer for the EIP-4844 (blobscan.com)
- Kiwi News is launching "Connect with Passkeys" (twitter.com)
- Superchain Dev Console (console.optimism.io)
- Bullish on Nouns DAO (metaversal.banklesshq.com)
Metaversal author William M. Peaster argues that Nouns DAO is the standout NFT project on Ethereum, and he says no NFT project has more potential to reach people over the long term. He reports that the Nouns protocol has generated 1045 Nouns since August 2021, with the last 10 daily auctions settling at an average of 5.7 ETH. Three forks under the Nouns V3 Fork functionality have returned nearly 600 Nouns, about 57% of the total, to the treasury, and the DAO's holdings still stand at roughly $22M. The article also highlights Prop House, Nouns Builder, and a shift of community discussion to Warpcast's /nouns channel after the Discord server was shuttered.
- holders.at: NFT holder snapshots tool (holders.at)
holders.at is a tool that takes token holder snapshots of NFT collections at a chosen block, then lets users copy or export the wallet list or share a snapshot link. The site says it supports ERC721 and ERC1155 collections on Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Smart Chain, Arbitrum, Optimism, Zora and Base. The stated uses include building lists for future airdrops and allow lists. An example snapshot link is given for the Based Ghouls collection on Ethereum at block 15400000.
- Grok AI source code and weights (github.com)
This repository provides JAX example code for loading and running Grok-1, an open-weights model, with its weights available via torrent or the HuggingFace Hub. The model has 314B parameters and uses a Mixture of 8 Experts architecture with 2 experts used per token, 64 layers, and a maximum context of 8,192 tokens. The text notes that the MoE implementation is not efficient and was chosen to avoid custom kernels when validating model correctness, and that testing requires a machine with substantial GPU memory. The code and weights are licensed under Apache 2.0.
- The Airdrop ROI Equation (newsletter.auditless.com)
- Old versions of popular websites (youtube.com)
- Lines of Drift (wysr.xyz)
The author argues that willpower is too unreliable to win the daily fight against distraction, so attention needs structural fixes, and describes applying the military concept of "natural lines of drift" to their own focus. Over a period of logging distractions, they found three main patterns: distractions usually begin mid-task when a notification or email interrupts, they tend to pull them into further content streams, and they are most likely during unstructured time, abstract goals, or moments of discomfort like hunger or tiredness. In response, they label risky actions such as opening their Farcaster feed or changing their YouTube soundtrack as high risk, predefine their morning routine, and start each two-hour work block with a concrete task tied to a metric.
- Something Smells Fishy (rekt.news)
This anonymous REKT investigation argues that SushiSwap's governance and fund management have been opaque and troubled, and it leaves the final verdict to readers. It says Jared Grey, the CEO, oversaw a series of shelved products and a diverted treasury, including the Arbitrum airdrop of 4.25M ARB landing in the Ops multisig. It also notes that the SEC served a subpoena around the time Sushi created a Legal Defense Fund asking for $3-4M, and that about 3.5M Sushi was released from the Merkel Distributor on March 11 after a ten-month standstill. The article does not confirm the accusations and says some questions remain unanswered.
- NFT platform Zora is offering a novel way for AI model makers to earn money (techcrunch.com)
Zora, an NFT-based social platform, has launched a way for creators to use AI to mint NFTs, letting AI model makers earn passive income from their models' outputs, according to co-founder Dee Goens on TechCrunch's Chain Reaction podcast. Goens said the payouts are split in half automatically, and that creators on Zora made over $1.3 million in the last 30 days by posting content. Goens argued that crypto and AI are complementary, since AI needs access to information and crypto wants information on-chain.
- MetaMask Tests On-Chain Card on Mastercard Payment Network (unchainedcrypto.com)
MetaMask is reportedly testing an entirely on-chain payment card, issued by Baanx and running on Mastercard's network, that would let users spend crypto at any venue that accepts cards. According to a CoinDesk report citing promotional materials and a testing platform it reviewed, the card would be "the first ever truly decentralized web3 payment solution." The report comes after CoinDesk reported in October that Mastercard was exploring collaboration with self-custody wallet firms like MetaMask and Ledger, based on a pitch deck about stablecoin on-chain settlement.
- Summer of Protocols 2024: Call for Applications (summerofprotocols.com)
Summer of Protocols has announced its 2024 program, which focuses on downstream applications, experimentation and field testing of existing protocols rather than clean-sheet design. The program has three tracks: Protocol Improvement Grants, offering $90,000 each to 5 two-person teams to prototype and field-test improvements to a real-world protocol; the Protocol PILL Challenge, offering small grants of $1,000 each to creative works that make protocols accessible to lay audiences; and a Partner Program with institutions such as the Centre for Strategic Futures in Singapore and Edge City. The application deadline for the PIG and PILL grants is April 12, 2024, and the program begins May 8.
- The Vultures are Circling (youtube.com)
- The Ethereum Cypherpunk Manifesto (hackmd.io)
The Ethereum Cypherpunk Manifesto declares a commitment to privacy, security, and censorship resistance as core principles for the Ethereum ecosystem, modeled on Eric Hughes's original Cypherpunk Manifesto. It names immutability, decentralised governance, open access, global collaboration, and continuous evolution as pillars built on those principles. The text was published on-chain in 2024 as a Base64-encoded transaction carrying a blob, and it thanks Micah Zoltu, Paul Dylan-Ennis, Vitalik Buterin, and Zooko for feedback, noting they do not necessarily agree with all of it.
- Proposal for a Massive Headless Brand (anquetil.substack.com)
The author proposes building a fully decentralized, crypto-native brand that could reach mainstream audiences, modeled on Nouns DAO but without a founding team like the "Nounders." The brand would start as a Nouns fork built with the 1-Click Nouns Builder that the author is working on with the Zora team, auctioning one NFT per day with the auction frequency decreasing exponentially. Early members would define the brand's identity and use its treasury, which starts small, to make decisions by voting. The author argues Nouns has a strong visual identity but is associated mainly with crypto, with its pixel art and "inventor of the Nouns DAO model" identity limiting appeal to non-crypto people.
- Optimism Foundation Reveals “We Love The Art” Contest Winners (nftnow.com)
- Issue 53 – Choose rich (citationneeded.news)
This issue of a crypto newsletter argues that the current price rally has brought the same underlying problems as the last bubble, and that more people will be hurt when it ends. Bitcoin passed its previous all-time high on March 5, 2024 and crossed $70,000 on March 8. Other items cover Roman Sterlingov's conviction on four money laundering and unlicensed money transmission charges, and Changpeng Zhao being ordered to surrender his Canadian passport. The newsletter also reports that Christopher Harborne has sued The Wall Street Journal for defamation in Delaware over a March 2023 article.
- ETHDenver '23 top hackathon projects (ethdenver.com)
- How did Dogwifhat go from 0 to $2 billion in 3 months? (tpan.substack.com)
Dogwifhat (WIF) became a memecoin that reached a peak market cap of about $2 billion, and the author attributes part of its rise to the composability of its meme. The meme began in 2019 as a viral photo of a Shiba Inu wearing a beanie, and gaming communities created variations by swapping the hat, while the "wif" wording and the hat itself spread across crypto. The author also cites prominent influencers and traders who held significant amounts and promoted the coin early. The article notes that 6 memecoins were in the top 100 by market cap, three of them from the current cycle.
