It Seemed Like a Good Deal at the Time
There’s so much going on in the world, that I barely noticed that we were up on the week. It still feels like we are floating in a raft in the middle of the ocean, shooting off flares, but no one’s coming to rescue us. Mastercard and Nasdaq are getting in deeper with crypto. It still feels like everyone has all of these great plans to announce, but are stuck waiting for the CLARITY Act, which some think may not even pass by the end of April. We need to get this passed the finish line, or else we can run into even more roadblocks.
We’ve seen small peaks of how we could rip on the right news, but we are stuck waiting. There are some walls we need to bust through. Immediate/near-term resistance for $BTC is around $73,000–$73,700. A break above this could target higher areas like $95,000+ in bullish scenarios. $SOL is floating at resistance at $92. The next potential resistance if it breaks higher: $93–$95, or toward $100+.
Clearly the biggest news this week is that DeFi the system did a total UI/UX overhaul to our website DeFi the System and the Solana Mobile App. We added a live DeFi rates tracker, Encrypt/Decrypt game of chance, Solana Wallet connect, an Alberti Cipher Disk randomizer to make your own secret codes. Swaps, a List of Protocols and even Prediction Markets. If you haven’t checked the site or app lately, it’s totally re-vamped.
Weekly Charts
The United States Department of the Treasury admits crypto mixers have legitimate privacy uses on public blockchains
This is great news, but they are still retrying Roman Storm (@rstormsf). They sanctioned Tornado Cash, and arrested people from Samurai Wallet. On March 9th, SDNY prosecutors filed a letter requesting a retrial date in October. The prosecutors want to retry Roman on 2 counts the jury couldn't unanimously decide on. A jury of 12 Americans heard 4 weeks of evidence and deadlocked: no verdict on money laundering, and no verdict on sanctions violations.
The government's response? Try again to make writing code a crime. Want to help? You can donate to Roman’s legal fund at Free Roman Storm
Jupiter is now letting you loan your assets and set the terms
Jupiter Offerbook (@jup_offerbook) launched in private beta this week. It is a peer-to-peer lending protocol for every asset on Solana. Tokens, NFTs, RWAs, and everything in between. Borrowers and lenders create fixed-term loans, setting their own collateral, APR, loan size, and duration.
You may be thinking this sounds a lot like Rain Fi. That’s because it is. Jupiter acquired them a year ago.
19x for Pinocchio(P-Token)
SIMD-266, has been approved for the P-Token standard on Solana. Anza (@anza_xyz) introduced it almost a year ago and it’s officially passed, for a more compute efficient token model. Now we just need to see it adopted. What’s it mean for users? An almost 50% reduction in transaction costs! Solana is already cheap to transact on, but it will be getting even cheaper. Expected to hit mainnet in April. 98% less compute per transaction, 19x more efficient and 12% more block space saved. TLDR: Cheaper, faster transactions that take up less space. Helius did a great deep dive on it.
20 Months of Dominance
Thanks to this video posted by @FabianoSolana, we get to see how much Solana has really taken over Application Revenue for the past 2 years. Ethereum hasn’t been in the number one spot since May 2024.
Would you swap $50m for only $36k?
A user, with a freshly funded wallet from Binance tried to swap $50 million of aEthUSDT into aEthAAVE on Aave V3's interface via CoW Swap. What did they get? 327 AAVE tokens worth about $36k (over a 99% loss). You may be asking how the hell something like this can happen?
The MEV bots and block builders ate well. They extracted $46.8m, and the block builder kept $33m. The user would have seen the trade showing 99.9% price impact. They checked a box stating: "I confirm the swap with a potential 100% value loss." The user confirmed on mobile.
Aave posted their post mortem Was it someone not thinking or noticing they were swapping into a low liquidity pool? Washing stolen funds? One side of permissionless is that people can trade what they want, when they want. The other side is things like this, but there are red flags all over the place here.
$AVAX hits Solana
Sunrise DeFi (@Sunrise_DeFi) continues on their mission to put everything on Solana and added $AVAX this week. Cool I guess? I still have my Avax from last cycle just sitting in staking.
Proof of Ending
If you have no idea what a POAP is, you weren’t around last cycle. The Proof of Attendance NFT was a pretty cool concept back when going to events was all the rage and gave you crypto nerd street cred. The problem is they never broke out of their hyper niche of EVM users. Starting March 16th, they are going into maintenance mode. Your old POAPs are safe, but no new ones can be made. They are shifting directions, but didn’t say what they will become.
Encrypted High
$ZEC may be down from the big push a few months ago, but the amount of shielded ZEC just hit a new high, meaning hodlers are hodling in private. Tachyon is underway (scale + quantum protection), new miners are coming on board and a new payments SDK is in the works. If Bitcoin doesn’t get their stuff together, Z Cash could be the chosen alternative. They have insanely talented people working on it to push it forward.
X marks the Stock
xStocks framework will be powering a new gateway connecting Nasdaq’s tokenized equity markets with blockchain networks. xStocks aren’t available in the US, so although you may be geo-blocked, it can open up access globally to real stocks 24-7. I’d like to see this really open up DeFi on stocks onchain.
I am your Master
Mastercard (@Mastercard) is embracing the tech. They introduced the Mastercard Crypto Partner Program — a global initiative that brings together more than 85 crypto-native companies, payments providers, and financial institutions. Their goal is to fuse the speed and programmability of digital assets with established card rails so payments feel seamless to end users.
Degen Extreme
Do you love gambling on crypto moving a sliver? Moonshot (@moonshot) rolled out 250x Leverage for long/shorts via Apple Pay. Don’t lose your head.
Agent Smith needs your APIs
Agent Cash (@agentcashdev) rolled out agent access to 250+ premium APIs from a single USDC balance on Solana. What’s a premium API? LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, TikTok, Frontier image + video generation, Email, file hosting, travel search, and more using x402.
More Privacy Options
Always happy to see more privacy getting baked in for swaps. Titan Exchange (@Titan_Exchange) integrated VanishTrade (@vanishTrade, enabling instant private trading for any token.
Stay Free • Ebullition
