🤖 🫣 AI Sparks More Chaos

Plus, 😟 SUI among week’s worst performers, 🤝 Creditors to receive more payouts, 👋 EURT phased out, and more!

November 28, 2024

Good Thursday and happy Thanksgiving! I’m Juan Aranovich, managing editor of Unchained.

In today’s edition:

  • 🔗 AI-fueled memecoin season thrives on Base

  • 🔓 $200M unlock looms as Sui stumbles

  • 💵 More funds on the way for Celsius users

  • 💔 Tether halts support for EURT stablecoin

  • ⚡ New Flashbots network targets MEV centralization

  • 😓 Pump Science exposed — hack leads to fake tokens

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What’s Poppin’?

By Sage D. Young and Tikta

While memecoin activity has largely taken place on Solana, an artificial intelligence agent who goes by @Clanker on decentralized network Farcaster is helping memecoin season and onchain activity grow on Base.

The arrival of @Clanker has helped push the number of daily transactions on Base to 11.4 million, an all-time high for the Coinbase-incubated layer 2 network as well as a new record among all Ethereum layer 2s, per GrowThePie. The AI agent has created such a frenzy that many transactions on Base were reverted.

The native token for the Sui blockchain has been among the worst performers over the past seven days ahead of its $200 million unlock slated for Dec. 1.

While SUI has increased 109% in the last 30 days and more than quadrupled in the last three months, the token has dropped 8% in the past week to $3.40, the fourth-worst performance in the short timeframe out of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap, just behind POPCAT, BONK, and KAS, data from CoinGecko shows.

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Celsius to Begin Second Distribution of $127 Million to Creditors

Bankrupt crypto lending platform Celsius is set to make its second round of distributions to creditors.

In a Nov. 27 court filing, Celsius bankruptcy estate said $127 million available from the litigation recovery account would be paid out to creditors across classes 2, 5, 7, 8, and 9. These include those with claims ranging from retail borrower/depositors, general earn, withhold, unsecured loans, and general unsecured brackets.

Based on eligibility, creditors will receive payouts either in bitcoin or U.S. dollars.

Celsius has already distributed over $2.53 billion to over 251,000 creditors from the first round of payouts earlier this year.

Tether to Discontinue EURT Stablecoin

Stablecoin issuer Tether will discontinue support for its Euro stablecoin, EURT. The company has ceased minting EURT and said that new EURT issuance requests will no longer be accepted.

The decision to end support for the stablecoin aligns with its “broader strategic direction” and evolving regulations for stablecoins in the European market, said Tether in a blog post.

The move comes ahead of the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA), which comes into effect this December. MiCa was approved by parliament in April 2023 and would require European stablecoins to pass through more stringent regulations.

“Tether customers holding EURT on all blockchains should redeem their holdings within one year ending on November 27th, 2025,” said Tether in the statement.

In related news, Schuman Financial launched EURØP, a MiCa-compliant Euro-backed stablecoin to address the scarcity of Euro-focused crypto assets. It has been audited by financial services firm KPMG and stores its reserves in European regulated banks.

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Flashbots Introduces Block Building Network for Ethereum

Flashbots, a research and development entity focused on mitigating the negative effects of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) on blockchains, has launched a new solution aimed at addressing Ethereum’s centralization issues.

The new network, called BuilderNet, is a block building network for Ethereum that runs on Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and shares MEV and gas fees with users. Essentially, the network introduces a new way for multiple parties to collaborate in building blocks.

Flasbots believes that distributing the process of block building across a large network can prevent chokepoints that invite censorship and rent extraction from users.

“90% of blocks on Ethereum are built by just two parties today,” said Flashbots in the blog post.

“As Ethereum considers changing the protocol to increase its censorship resistance, we believe it must also invest in decentralizing the power structures in block building that affect those properties.”

Pump Science Apologizes After Hacker Creates Fraud Tokens

Decentralized science platform Pump Science won’t be launching any new tokens on Pump.fun ever again, the team said in a statement following an incident that resulted in a flood of fraudulent tokens being launched from its profile.

In an Ask-Me-Anything X Space hosted on Nov. 27, team member Benji Leibowitz described the incident as a “screw-up” and a “huge misstep” on Pump Science’s part.

Pump Science’s private keys linked to its Pump.fun profile were exposed on GitHub, allowing a hacker to create fraud tokens. A fake URO token created by the hacker hit $10 million in market cap before dropping to $100,000.

Pump Science has also changed its Pump.fun profile name to “dont_trust” to further dissuade people from buying these fake tokens.

Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍

  • 💼 A former Binance executive in the U.K. is suing the crypto exchange, alleging she was unfairly dismissed after whistleblowing that a colleague had solicited bribes to expedite client integration, a charge Binance denied, attributing her dismissal to poor performance and stating the issue was already under investigation.

  • 🎭 It was discovered that the suicide to promote a memecoin on Pump.fun was fake. The action had provoked public outrage and led the platform to disable livestreaming amid calls for accountability.

  • 🤝 Vitalik Buterin donated $1 million in ether to Coin Center hours after a U.S. court overturned Tornado Cash sanctions, bolstering the think tank's advocacy for crypto freedoms.

  • 🛑 DeFi derivatives protocol Cega announced its acquisition by an undisclosed "leading platform," prompting the planned shutdown of its operations by year-end.

  • 🚜 MARA Holdings acquired 6,474 bitcoin worth $615 million, boosting its total holdings to nearly 35,000 BTC after completing a $1 billion convertible notes offering.

  • 🇷🇺 Russia's upper house approved a crypto tax bill imposing a 15% income tax on trading and mining profits while exempting value-added tax, advancing toward stricter regulations.

  • 🌐 Hyperliquid will launch its HYPE token on Nov. 29 as part of its genesis event, enabling staking, governance, and decentralized trading on its platform.

  • 📈 Pendle Finance expanded to the Base blockchain, introducing yield strategies like fixed yields, yield trading, and liquidity pools for assets such as cbETH and Lombart’s LBTC.

The $$$ Corner…

  • 💰 Avant Protocol secured $6.5 million in seed funding at a $25 million valuation to expand its Avalanche-based yield-bearing 'stable-value' token, which resembles Ethena's offerings.

  • 📲 Ex-Revolut employees closed a $2.3 million pre-seed round to develop Bleap, a blockchain-based neobank offering stablecoin-linked debit cards, multi-currency accounts, and decentralized finance-powered savings, with plans for a public launch in 2025.

What Do You Meme?

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📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is up 1.5%, trading at $95,153

  • ETH is up 3.4%, trading at $3,607

  • BTC dominance: 54.59%

  • Crypto market cap: $3.46T

*All data as of today, 08:08 am ET. Source: CoinGecko

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