Sea Change 🌊

Plus, 🥦 CZ sparks memecoin madness, ⏸️ Binance delays day in court, and more!

Author

Juan Aranovich
February 14, 2025

Hi! 

In today’s edition:

  • 🏗️ OpenSea’s big reset

  • 🪙 Doodles teases a token

  • 🥦 CZ’s dog story unleashes a frenzy

  • ⏸️ Binance-SEC lawsuit goes on hold

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By Tikta

NFT marketplace OpenSea confirmed on Thursday that it will launch a native “SEA” token via a new airdrop, alongside a new platform called OS2.

The SEA token is designed to reward OpenSea's most active, loyal, and longtime users, and the airdrop will be open to U.S. users, although the OpenSea Foundation said there are “no details on timing yet.”

OpenSea's new OS2 platform expands the marketplace's capabilities, supporting more than 14 blockchains including Flow, ApeChain and Sony's Soneium BSL. OS2 will also allow trading of both NFTs and crypto tokens.

The moves come as OpenSea attempts to revitalize its position in the NFT market after trading volumes declined 90% from their peak and the platform’s Ethereum NFT market share declined from a high of more than 96% in January 2022 to a low of just 13% last June. It currently controls around 40% of the Ethereum NFT market.

“The NFT bull market changed us,” OpenSea founder and CEO Devin Finzer said on X. “We got too corporate, too web2, and let fear of risk outweigh building for users. I decided we needed a complete reset.” 

The team behind prominent NFT collection Doodles said on Thursday that it intends to launch a token named DOOD on the Solana blockchain, with a future bridge to layer 2 Base in the works.  

DOOD will serve as a governance token, allowing holders to influence the brand's future decisions. 

A 68% portion of its 10 billion unit supply will reportedly be allocated to the community, of which 25% will go into an ecosystem fund and 13% will be sent to “new blood.”

Doodles’ Head of Strategy Austin Hurwtiz said the platform intended to use “novel airdrop mechanics” that would allow holders to pre-register their Solana addresses and claim tokens directly.

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U.S. regulators may have succeeded in getting former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao to forgo any involvement with the exchange he co-founded, but that hasn’t affected the scale of his influence in the crypto community — as demonstrated by a memecoin frenzy involving his pet dog on Thursday.

CZ posted on X that he was “NOT issuing” a memecoin himself, but that it was “up to the community to do that (or not).”

“I will likely interact with a few of the more popular meme coins on BNB Chain (BSC),” he said, after sharing a story about his dog, Broccoli.

Multiple platforms were flooded with Broccoli tokens. Solana-based Pump.fun listed at least 400 Broccoli-themed coins, while BNB Smart Chain's Four.Meme featured at least 300 CZ dog-themed tokens.

At one point, a Solana-based Broccoli memecoin reached a market capitalization of $1.5 billion.

BNB Smart Chain-based decentralized exchange PancakeSwap recorded a trading volume of $3 billion — the highest value across the whole DeFi segment over the 24-hour period to 10 p.m. ET on Thursday.

A U.S. federal judge on Thursday ordered a stay in a legal fight between Binance and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission involving allegations that the exchange artificially inflated trading volumes, misused customer funds, and misled investors about its monitoring controls.

The decision by Judge Amy Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia came after Binance and the SEC filed a joint motion requesting a 60-day pause in their ongoing lawsuit earlier this week.

Judge Berman also asked for both parties to file a joint status report by April 14.

The order could influence other legal cases involving crypto firms amid an SEC pivot towards a more crypto-friendly stance.

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  • 📈 Coinbase’s full-year 2024 revenue surged to $6.6 billion, more than double the $3.1 billion it pulled in during 2023, driven by a booming crypto market, strong fourth-quarter earnings, and increasing political momentum favoring the crypto industry.

  • 🔄 The Ethereum Foundation deployed $118 million of ETH into DeFi lending protocols Aave, Spark, and Compound, potentially generating $1.5 million in annual yield.

  • ⚖️ Crypto cloud mining platform HashFlare’s co-founders pleaded guilty to running a $577 million crypto mining Ponzi scheme, admitting they faked computing power and used investor funds for luxury purchases. They are now facing up to 20 years in prison.

  • 🇮🇳 Coinbase is negotiating with Indian regulators for a potential return to the country, following Binance and Bybit, two years after exiting due to pressure from the nation’s central bank.

  • 💰 Bitcoin-focused blockchain startup Plasma secured $20 million to develop a stablecoin network offering zero-fee USDT transfers, with backing from Peter Thiel, Tether’s Paolo Ardoino, and Bitfinex.

  • 💰 DeFi.app, a platform that seeks to simplify decentralized finance trading, secured a $4 million seed extension at a $100 million valuation, backed by Mechanism Capital and Cobie’s Echo, while launching its public beta with a points-based trading tournament.

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