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Markets

ARB Airdrop

Traders Bet Arbitrum Will Have the Second-Biggest Layer 2 Token

Some Are Using Optimism’s OP As a Reference

By Aleksandar Gilbert

Traders are betting Arbitrum tokens will trade above $1 when they hit users’ wallets on Thursday.

Derivatives for ARB tokens, to be issued on March 24, are trading from just above $1 to as high as $9.

These markets offer an indication as to how the leading Ethereum scaling protocol will be valued in liquid, public markets. These early bets would make Arbitrum the second-largest Layer 2 token, with a market capitalization of more than $1B.

Read the full story in The Defiant

News

Layer 2

Polygon and Immutable Team Up On Gaming Focused zkEVM

Zero-knowledge Technology Promises To Boost Ethereum Scaling

By Samuel Haig

Polygon and Immutable, two of Ethereum’s top scaling teams, are joining forces to launch an Ethereum-compatible rollup powered by zero-knowledge proofs designed to support web3 gaming.

Immutable zkEVM, the forthcoming Layer 2 solution, combines Polygon’s zkEVM technology with Immutable’s gaming-focused blockchain architecture. Polygon says the teams will launch Immutable zkEVM “in the coming months.”

Polygon is set to launch its zkEVM on March 27, while rival teams Matter Labs, Scroll, and Consensys are readying to launch their own zkEVMs in the coming months.

Read the full story in The Defiant

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DeFi

Aave Community Rallies Behind Proposed Metis Deployment

Metis Offers $3M In Liquidity Mining Incentives

By Samuel Haig

The community of Aave, the leading DeFi lending protocol with $8.5B in total value locked, is rallying behind a proposal to deploy the protocol’s v3 iteration on Metis Andromeda, an Ethereum Layer 2 network.

Metis Andromeda is the fifth-largest Layer 2 network with a total value locked (TVL) of $127M, according to L2beat.

Should the proposal pass, Metis has offered 100,000 of its native METIS tokens as liquidity mining incentives for Aave users on the network over six months.

Read the full story in The Defiant

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Corporate Dispute

DeFi Llama Team Resolves Conflict Over Token Plans

Forked Domain Redirects To Original Website

By Owen Fernau

The infighting that engulfed DeFi Llama, a popular data website, over the weekend appears to be at an end.

The episode serves as another reminder of the lack of clarity in terms of who controls what in the crypto space. While decentralization is often lauded as the holy grail and key value proposition of DeFi, the idea of shared ownership of a project doesn’t always elegantly map onto real-world assets like a Twitter handle or Discord server.

In a sign that the dispute has been settled, the llama.fi domain, which lead developer 0xngmi launched as a fork of DeFi Llama, now redirects to the original website.

Read the full story in The Defiant

Regulation

Digital Assets

Hong Kong To Release Licensing Details For Virtual Asset Businesses In June

Stablecoin Regulation Expected In 2024 As Hong Kong Looks To Become Regional Crypto Hub

By Samuel Haig

Hong Kong is moving quickly to regulate and foster a digital asset industry, with plans to introduce stablecoin regulations next year.

Hong Kong’s secretary for financial services and the treasury, Christopher Hui, broke the news during the Aspen Digital Web3 Investment Summit on Monday. Hui also said Hong Kong is targeting June of this year to launch its licensing framework for Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs).

Despite Hong Kong’s supportive stance, however, mainland China is showing no interest in changing its prohibitive cryptocurrency regulations.

Read the full story in The Defiant

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Trends

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Podcast Video

How To Decentralize a Fortune 500 Company