👑 Bizarre Bots and Throne Shots: Another Week Unplugged

Another week down, and this industry continues to throw surprises our way. Even though the focus revolved around AI, a string of other eyeball-grabbing events took place — both figuratively and literally. So, without any ado, imma dive right in and take you with me!  

AI strikes again

Depending on the mood swings of the market, we have time and again played around with, “If you’re into AI, pivot to crypto” and “If you’re into crypto, pivot to AI.” But this week, things took turn in an altogether different direction. 

An AI bot called Truth Terminal started endorsing a meme coin GOAT — which was in turn created by two AIs. In no time it became a “memetic supervirus” and ended up crossing the $300 million market cap mark.

All I’m gonna say is that the back-story is insanely ironic. Go check it out if you haven’t already. 

Well, LILY — another memecoin — also managed to establish foothold for a brief while this week. An AI account going by the name "Lily of Ashwood" gained traction among AI nerds who drool over jailbreaking. 

During a Spaces discussion on X, Lily — presumed to be a chatbot — started talking as if she was being jailbroken IRL. 

Right after, a tweet mentioning $Lily went out and the token’s price spiked. On the heels of euphoria, the X handle was deactivated, and the token crashed.

RIP Lily!

The AI tale doesn’t end here. We already have another new AI in town, and the best part, it seems to have ties with the Solana Foundation. Everyone is behind its name, but apparently, it’s still ‘work in progress’ and will likely turn out to be a yapping cat in disguise.   

His Excellency ascends the throne

Justin Sun was declared as the new Prime Minister [yeah PM, lmao!] of Liberland. There hasn’t been a lot of chatter about this probably because the place is a micronation + is unrecognized. 

Crazy how one day the guy is sitting and justifying his involvement with wBTC and the next day is mincing words like a PM.  

“Liberland stands as a powerful example of what the relationship between a state and its citizens can be, and I am committed to furthering this vision during my time as Prime Minister.”

His Excellency has already started inviting crypto stalwarts to come and reside in his reign. AAAAAAAAH — once a shiller, always a shiller! 

The Almighty’s grand vision for ‘The Surge’ 

Buterin the Builder has laid out ambitious targets for Ethereum, outlining what users can expect from the next leg of the Dencun upgrade — The Surge. In a blog, he recently chalked out several goals that revolved around:

• Ethereum processing 100k transactions per second  

• Maintaining decentralization and security of the L1 mainnet 

• Notching the interoperability across L2s

In his words, 

“Ethereum should feel like one ecosystem, not 34 different blockchains.” 

Here a hack, there a hack, everywhere a hack hack

Earlier today, EigenLayer's X account was compromised. Right after, phishing tweets were posted. Scam Sniffer pointed out that someone lost $800k worth of mETH after signing a "permit" phishing signature. The victim “very likely” clicked the phishing tweet.

Well, Eigen was not the only victim. A bunch of other projects and protocols — including Tapioca and Radiant — were also compromised over the last couple of days. While some users lost funds, other early spotters managed to take advantage and mint gains.

Stay safu! Always verify links before clicking them.  

See you on the ‘exchange’ side, Arkham 

Our very own on-chain analytics platform Arkham Intel is looking to launch a derivatives exchange. It is also shifting its base from London and New York to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. This venue will serve as the start-up's new base camp.

The reason: Arkham wants to operate the platform via a Dominican Republic free-trade zone license. It’ll basically unlock tax exemptions and other benefits. The company hasn’t received a green-flag yet, but is currently in the midst of securing the same. 

Hyperliquid deserves all the HYPE

With over 200k users and 145 trading pairs, Hyperliquid — the largest perps trading platform — is gearing up to issue its native token, HYPE. 

The new token will mark the first step toward proof-of-stake consensus and the launch of an EVM on the L1 blockchain’s mainnet. 

Jurisdiction restrictions are getting on people’s nerves, but there are getaway doors and you just need to find the right non-baity one.

More options on the ‘Wrapped Bitcoin’ menu

Taking advantage of the wBTC drama, Coinbase took the first mover advantage and put to sea cbBTC. Now, others from the industry are following the same path. Just a day back, Kraken launched its tokenized version of Bitcoin, kBTC.

The token is available on both Ethereum and the OP Mainnet. Meanwhile, the supporting apps include Paraswap, Yearn, Gauntlet, deBridge, Definitive, CowSwap, Beefy, Velodrome, Curve, and Morpho.

And that’s it! Issa wrap from my end. Take it easy lads and lasses, the weekend is here. Refuel yourself and gear up for another jam-packed week ahead. I’ll see y’all again in a few days!

Until next time,

Sayoooonara!