Top crypto stories of week 6, 2025
Mon 3 to Sun 9 February 2025
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 3 to Sun 9 February 2025, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 95 comments in total. Most-shared sources: paragraph.xyz, hackmd.io, x.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- WHY FARCASTER SHOULD LEARN FROM VOLDEMORT? (Farcaster 2026 writing contest) (paragraph.xyz)
This essay, submitted to a Farcaster 2026 writing contest, argues that Farcaster should add art, memes and degen culture to its builder-focused network, using the Artcoin project as the vehicle. It says Farcaster's strength in a concentrated network of founders and developers trading attention also limits it, and it points to Higher and Clanker as communities whose social tokens briefly boosted daily active users and engagement. The author also contends that NFTs once promised a freer artistic ecosystem but scarcity and gatekeeping returned, and that Artcoin is presented as a way to inject an artistic dimension into the ecosystem.
- Rewriting the Rules: A Call to Action for Farcaster’s Next Era (paragraph.xyz)
The author, a Farcaster user writing for a 2026 contest, argues that the platform should give more agency and delegation to communities outside the original group and developers, and should stop fighting those trying to build there. They say new users are being pushed out: they describe being marked as a spammer and shadowbanned after returning, and say many people they invited have left for other places. They also call for visible account labels distinguishing hybrid accounts, AI agents and bots, and for trusted seed circles to expand, citing Chris Dixon's book Read Write Own and noting that Dan and V are working to stop gaming of the ranking system.
- 2026 Farcaster: Growth Is About People, Story, & Onboarding (paragraph.xyz)
bradq.eth argues that Farcaster growth depends on people, story, and onboarding rather than an exact script. He says the metrics like DAUs matter but represent people, and he suggests the value prop should open the door to a fuller Farcaster story in which the prospective member is the hero. He also proposes a group of about 50 friendly, patient members on a weekly retainer to help newcomers, budgeted like Rewards, and says the recent steps by Dan and Merkle are exciting for the future.
- Tools for 2025 (yosemitesam.ch)
Samuel Hierholzer's January 2025 post recommends three tools he believes should replace current standards: Oils, Radicle and Simplex Chat. Oils is a reimplementation of Bash with an incremental upgrade path, and he says its Bash-compatible part is in "late beta" with a 1.0 release targeted for 2025. Radicle is a decentralized git hosting tool that he calls superior to GitLab and GitHub because it is fully decentralized and federated. He describes Simplex Chat's reusable and one-time addresses as a model that should replace or inspire email.
- Daily discussion thread 2025-02-04 (hackmd.io)
- Daily discussion thread 2025-02-03 (hackmd.io)
- super is joining warpcast (warpcast.com)
- Kraken to delist Tether USDT, 4 other stablecoins in Europe (cointelegraph.com)
Kraken is delisting Tether's USDT and four other stablecoins in the European Economic Area to comply with the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). According to the exchange's announcement, USDT will be fully delisted on March 31, with PayPal USD (PYUSD), Tether EURt (EURT), TrueUSD (TUSD) and TerraClassicUSD (UST) also being removed. The process is staged, beginning with "reduce-only" margin pairs on Feb. 13, moving to "sell-only" mode by Feb. 27, and halting spot trading on March 24. Kraken says the changes ensure it remains compliant for European clients, and that the delistings affect clients in 30 countries.
- DarkFi App — First Major Alpha Release (dark.fi)
DarkFi has released the alpha of its DarkFi App, its first user-facing release and first add-on to the planned super-app, an anonymous peer-to-peer chat called DarkIRC. The app runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, with iPhone support promised for the next release. According to the article, the chat has no centralized servers, messages cannot be traced to their senders, and Tor is opt-in for network-level anonymity. The article also says Tor was previously the default but was unreliable for mobile users on poor connections, and that Nym support is experimental and disabled by default.
- Farcaster’s Path Forward (paragraph.xyz)
This contest entry argues that Farcaster has reached the limits of its initial growth drivers and should adopt a network token model and a builder-focused identity to retain developers. It proposes a network index token paired with community and project tokens, with holder rewards, revenue sharing and buybacks, and says the platform's $180 million war chest could fund initiatives such as quick-seed grants, with 1% ($1.8M) cited as a starting point. The author also calls for professional investor relations and clearer communication, saying Farcaster's challenge is perceptual rather than technical.
- Why using Sepolia when you can deploy on L2s instead (x.com)
- No, I do not feel good at all hearing these things (x.com)
The author, writing in a short personal post, says that hearing crypto Twitter and VC voices defend a PvP "degen casino" product as crypto's best achievable product-market fit, or hearing outsiders with no knowledge of Ethereum Foundation internals demand who should be removed and added within two weeks, does not feel good. Each time it makes them want to quit, but they say they are reminded that the fight is worth it and urge readers to find things worth fighting for within themselves.
- If a 'ZK'-prover network asks for your data. don’t give it to them. (blog.icme.io)
The article argues that many zero-knowledge prover networks prioritize speed and cost over privacy, so users who send them witness data in the clear may expose sensitive information. It describes the standard model of untrusted delegated SNARKs as fast but leaving witness data exposed to the prover. It presents private delegated approaches, including zkSaaS, oblivious issuance, CoSNARKs and delegated Spartan, as alternatives that trade off privacy, efficiency and trust assumptions differently. The author says NovaNet works on local client-side proving with folding schemes and has experimented with delegated Spartan, and that Remco at Worldcoin is also trying it.
- Marketing for the Frontier (paragraph.xyz)
Farcaster should market itself as a frontier town rather than a polished city, leaning into its wild, early-stage character to attract people who want to be on the bleeding edge of crypto. The author compares social networks to cities and says Farcaster's replies are open even for large accounts, with Vitalik getting dozens rather than thousands of comments. The piece points to 2024, when Frames, airdrops and token launches such as DEGEN, HIGHER and CLANKER let many residents earn tokens, and it suggests telling stories of riches, danger and open building, and courting crypto x AI, DeSci, PolitFi and InfoFi communities.
- Daily discussion thread 2025-02-05 (hackmd.io)
- Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev Leaving Prison on Supervised Release (decrypt.co)
Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev is being released from prison on Friday, ending his pretrial detention while he prepares an appeal of his money laundering conviction. Pertsev, who has been detained since 2022, was sentenced to 64 months in May 2024, and his appeals lawyer Judith de Boer said his release means the defense can fully engage in preparing the appeal. A Dutch court suspended his detention under electronic monitoring, after months of unsuccessful bail requests. Prosecutors allege the mixer enabled laundering of more than $1 billion in illicit funds.
- Daily discussion thread 2025-02-07 (hackmd.io)
- Blockchain: The Defibrillator Journalism Needs (ctrlx.world)
CTRL+X, a protocol built by former WIRED editor Arikia Millikan and a global team, aims to give journalists ownership of their work, licensing terms and readership regardless of where they publish. It is live on Solana devnet, with a private alpha planned for Q3 2026 and applications open for alpha test users. The article describes features including timestamped on-chain proof of authorship, licensing terms enforced by the protocol for AI agents, and per-read payments of as little as a cent per article with only a small protocol fee instead of a 10% platform cut.
- Daily discussion thread 2025-02-06 (hackmd.io)
- EIC04 | Winter '25 Ethereum Quarterly Magazine (x.com)