1. Sei Mainnet Officially Launched, Unveils Airdrop Regulations link

On August 15th, Sei launched an open airdrop query webpage, allowing users to check their eligibility for the airdrop through the official website. Whitelisted users must bridge their eligible assets to Sei. This includes networks such as Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Osmosis, and later added Optimism network, totaling 1.5 million qualifying addresses. Active users on these aforementioned blockchains in 2023 may be whitelisted and eligible to participate in the airdrop.

Furthermore, the Sei Foundation has set aside SEI tokens to reward testers, as part of the “Atlantic Rewards” Sei distribution. Once the Pacific-1 mainnet is publicly released, these rewards will be accessible. The foundation has identified and addressed potential Sybil attackers, identifying and eliminating over 7,000 clusters, with the largest cluster comprising more than 30,000 unique SEI addresses. For users attempting to unfairly exploit multiple accounts, those with the same Discord and Twitter accounts have had their progress merged. The foundation has also detected and filtered out accounts attempting to exploit backend vulnerabilities.

SEI is now listed for spot trading on exchanges like Binance and Upbit, with a current price of 0.1585 USDT and a peak price of 0.48 USDT, with a fully diluted valuation of 1.585 billion USD.

2. Opensea’s Weekly Summary

a. OpenSea to Abolish Mandatory Royalties link

On August 18th, OpenSea announced that starting from August 31st, they will begin implementing an optional mechanism for creator fees, discontinuing the OpenSea Operator Filter (a mandatory creator royalty tool). For collections that have enabled the Operator Filter before August 31st, as well as all existing collections on non-Ethereum blockchains, OpenSea will enforce creator royalties until February 29th, 2024, after which the fees will become optional.

b. Yuga Labs to Revoke Support for All Upgradeable Contracts and New Collections on OpenSea SeaPort link

On August 19th, Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre stated that following OpenSea’s announcement to discontinue the Operator Filter and implement an optional mechanism for creator fees until February 2024, Yuga Labs will begin the process of discontinuing support for all upgradable contracts and any new series on OpenSea SeaPort. Their goal is to align with OpenSea’s decision and complete this process by February 2024.

c. OpenSea Announces Termination of Support for Binance Smart Chain (BNB) link

On August 19th, OpenSea made an announcement on Twitter that they have decided to terminate their support for the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), as they believe the costs of continuing the support for BSC outweigh the benefits. Additionally, OpenSea mentioned that starting from August 19th, users will no longer be able to create new listings or place new bids for BSC NFTs. However, they can still view, search, and transfer BSC NFTs on their platform.

3. L2 Network Connext Reveals Launch Date of Native Token “Next” on September 5th link

On August 18th, the Layer 2 network Connext announced that they will be launching their native token called “Next” on September 5th. Connext also plans to airdrop Next tokens to early users on Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Gnosis Chain. In June 2023, Connext raised $7.5 million in funding at a valuation of $250 million, bringing their total funding to $23.5 million.

4. ConsenSys’ L2 Network Linea Initiates Alpha Mainnet link

On August 17th, ConsenSys’ Layer 2 network Linea launched its Alpha mainnet and deployed an ERC20 token bridge, allowing global users to bridge ERC20 tokens to Linea. Additionally, Linea has partnered with MetaMask, Banxa, Circle, and Transak to introduce a promotional activity from August 17th to 31st, allowing users to purchase USDC.e with zero fees. Furthermore, Linea has established the Linea Ecosystem Investment Alliance (EIA), consisting of over 30 investment firms including Amber Group and Animoca Brands, to support the development of the Linea ecosystem.

5. Shiba Inu L2 Solution “Shibarium” Mainnet Goes Live, Cross-Chain Bridge Experiences Glitch link

On August 17th, Shiba Inu’s Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain, Shibarium, officially went live. Shibarium will utilize the BONE, TREAT, SHIB, and LEASH tokens for applications built on the blockchain. Shibarium is particularly focused on the metaverse and gaming applications. During the Shibarium testnet phase, users have collectively created over 21 million wallet addresses.

According to Beosin monitoring, transactions on Shiba Inu’s Layer 2 solution Shibarium are experiencing pending status. As of the time of writing, 1010 ETH is locked on the Shibarium cross-chain bridge. Users are advised to temporarily cease using Shibarium.

On August 17th, Shytoshi Kusama, the developer of Shiba Inu, addressed the issue of Shibarium’s pending status in a post. He clarified that there is no issue of funds being locked in the cross-chain bridge. User funds are secure. The problem arises from the influx of a substantial number of transactions and users, prompting the team to scale up. Once the expansion is complete, the system will be restarted.

6. BNB Bridge Hack Triggers Liquidation in Venus’ Position, Leading to Substantial Decline link

On August 18th, the BNB Bridge hacker (0x48…9bec) has returned 5,638,164.25 vBNB (approximately $27.68 million) through liquidation repayment. Venus Protocol, a lending protocol on the BNB Chain, stated that the attacker’s account from the BNB Bridge attack has been brought back to a healthy state through the whitelisted liquidation method as promised by the BNB Chain. This incident did not result in a fund shortfall or further impact on $BNB.

7. Judge Rejects Partial Summary Judgment Motion by Plaintiffs in Tornado Cash Lawsuit Case link

On August 18th, in the lawsuit regarding Tornado Cash sanctions supported by Coinbase, Judge Robert Pitman stated in a document submitted to the United States District Court that he was ordering the dismissal of part of the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment. The court considered Tornado Cash to be an association in the ordinary sense, and therefore, it is an entity that can be designated under the regulations of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, stated that they still believe the plaintiffs’ challenge to OFAC’s action against Tornado Cash is valid and they will continue to support their appeal.

8. friend.tech Successfully Concludes Seed Round Funding with Participation from Paradigm link

On August 19th, friendtech tweeted that they have successfully completed their seed funding round with participation from Paradigm, although the specific amount has not been disclosed yet. Earlier this year, friendtech collaborated with Paradigm to develop a new online social interaction tool. friendtech is an invite-only Base native Web3 social application.

In another tweet, friendtech mentioned that they have already distributed the first batch of Friday Points airdrops to 44,000 users. During the six-month testing phase, they plan to distribute a total of 100 million points through weekly airdrop events every Friday. The airdrops will be based on users’ activities up until 23:59 UTC every Thursday, with the criteria for judging activities being updated weekly.

9. Unibot Achieves Consecutive Two-Day Trading Volume Surpassing 2k, Setting New Records link

On August 17th, according to data from @whale_hunter_, the Telegram trading bot Unibot has achieved a consecutive two-day trading volume of over 2,000 users, setting new records, with returning users accounting for 85% of the total. Furthermore, on August 16th, Unibot’s trading volume reached around $5.5 million USD, capturing 35.5 ETH in fees, which is the second-highest historical level. However, the majority of the trading volume is concentrated in the UNIBOT/WETH pair.

The most active trader is an address that was created only 16 days ago (0x51…a04b). This address has accumulated over $8.5 million USD in trading volume on Unibot and paid 43.36 ETH in fees. Its main holdings include Memecoins like MOG and DUBBZ.

Unibot has introduced a unified trading terminal called Unibot X and plans to decouple the web application from Telegram in the future to achieve independent access.

10. Tether Announces Halt of Support for Certain Chains

a. Tether Announces Halt of USDT Minting and Issuance on Kusama, Omni, and BCH link

On the 17th of August, Tether has declared its intention to cease the minting and issuance of USDT on the Kusama, Omni, and BCH networks. The specific process entails the discontinuation of minting USD₮-Omni, USD₮-Kusama, and USD₮-BCHSLP starting from the 17th of August. Over the following 12 months, the normal redemption of USD₮-Omni, USD₮-Kusama, and USD₮-BCH-SLP will persist. Additionally, users are granted the option to convert USD₮-Omni, USD₮-Kusama, and USD₮-BCH-SLP to other chains on platforms that support these assets, such as Bitfinex.

b. Tether CTO Actively Contributes to RGB Protocol Development for Upcoming USDT Launch on RGB link

On the 18th of August, the Chief Technical Officer of Tether conveyed that the decision to relinquish Bitcoin Omni as the initial transport layer for USDT in 2014 has been a dolorous one. However, there is currently an active engagement in contributing to the development of the RGB protocol. Upon the introduction of USDT on the RGB protocol, the world will bear witness to USDT thriving on another immensely powerful and scalable Bitcoin blockchain.

Furthermore, he has disclosed that Tether anticipates the release of three substantial products by the end of this year.

In April of 2023, the LNP/BP Association proclaimed the release of RGB v0.10, introducing comprehensive support for smart contracts on the Bitcoin network and the Lightning Network.

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