Weekly Project Updates: JUP Token's Airdrop, Polygon Labs layoffs, Worldcoin Under Investigation in Hong Kong, etc

Feb 03, 2024

1. Ripple Co-founder Chris Larsen Loses 237 Million XRP in Theft link

Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s 4 wallets were targeted in a hacking incident, resulting in approximately 237 million XRP (about $117 million) being stolen. Of this amount, around 212 million XRP (approximately $105 million) were transferred to exchanges, while 2,500 XRP (about $12.35 million) remain in the wallet address “rHVjfY”.

Binance CEO Richard Teng tweeted that the Binance team has frozen approximately $4.2 million worth of XRP stolen from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s personal wallet. The team pledges ongoing support for Ripple’s investigation and fund recovery efforts, monitoring the majority of the funds still held in external wallets by the attackers to prevent them from being transferred to Binance.

2. BNB Chain Unveils 2024 Outlook Introducing the Concept of One BNB link

BNB Chain has unveiled its outlook for 2024, introducing the concept of One BNB. One BNB embraces a multi-chain paradigm seamlessly connecting BSC, opBNB, and Greenfield, offering a unified solution to meet decentralized computing and storage needs. BNB Chain will focus on optimizing EVM states for peak performance and scalability through opBNB Connect, facilitating the widespread adoption of specific dApps.

3. Polygon Labs to Lay Off 60 Employees, Constituting 19% of the Team link

Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron announced that 60 employees, accounting for 19% of the team, have been laid off. Polygon Labs will provide a severance package and health benefits to the terminated employees, effective until the end of February. Additionally, Polygon Labs has increased the total compensation for employees by at least 15% starting from January 1, 2024, and new hires will receive a 5% salary increase. Polygon Ventures, which became independent from Polygon Labs at the end of 2023, has been renamed P2 Ventures. The Polygon ID team will also operate independently from Polygon Labs in the coming months.

4. Starknet to Collaborate with Celestia to Establish a High-Throughput Layer 3 Network link

Starknet announced a collaboration with Celestia to achieve high throughput Layer 3 network capabilities. Leveraging Celestia as a modular data availability (DA) solution on Starknet to establish high throughput application chains represents a game-changing combination. The partnership involves porting Celestia Blobstream to Cairo for utilization on Starknet.

5. Zksync and Optimism Both Propose Treasure Chain Built on Their Stack link

Ben Jones, the co-founder and Chief Scientist of Optimism, proposed that Treasure join the Optimism Superchain and build the Treasure Chain based on the OP Stack.

Omar, the Business Development lead at Matter Labs, proposed in the TreasureDAO community that the Treasure Chain use ZK Stack as Layer2, enabling TreasureDAO to vertically scale through game or application-specific Layer3 chains. Furthermore, Matter Labs stated that they are collaborating with the Lambda Class team to enable ZK Stack chains to have their native Gas token, allowing Treasure Chain to use MAGIC or any other ERC-20 token as Gas token.

Previously, Karel Vuong, the co-creator of TreasureDAO, revealed that TreasureDAO is building a game chain, planning to use MAGIC as the Gas token; potentially based on Arbitrum or Cosmos chains. The release of the Treasure Chain Litepaper is expected on February 5th.

6. Avalanche: Wallet Services Set to Cease in March 2024, Migrating to Core Stake link

Avalanche has announced that its wallet services are scheduled to cease in March 2024, with migration to Core Stake underway. Core Stake integrates advanced staking features aimed at enhancing user experience. Avalanche will determine the specific cessation date based on user feedback. Core, launched by Ava Labs in 2022, offers web applications, mobile wallets, and Chrome browser plugins.

7. OpenSea Claims Over 100,000 Users Have Created Embedded Wallets via Email link

OpenSea claims that since the launch of its easy onboarding experience three weeks ago, over 100,000 users have created embedded wallets using their email addresses. However, according to @hildobby_ data dashboard, over the past three weeks, there has been little change in OpenSea’s weekly transaction volume and the number of weekly transaction users, which remains at its lowest level in over two years. However, it is worth noting that in terms of daily transaction users, OpenSea still leads other markets.

8. NFT Marketplace Magic Eden Officially Launches Multi-Chain Self-Custody Wallet link

The NFT marketplace Magic Eden has officially launched a multi-chain self-custody wallet supporting the Solana, Bitcoin, Polygon, and Ethereum blockchains. The platform introduced the wallet’s beta version in November 2023. Developed in collaboration with Exodus, this wallet supports instant cross-chain exchanges, NFT portfolio management, and direct NFT trading from the wallet. To incentivize early users, Magic Eden plans to offer limited-time wallet minting events for NFT projects like Claynosaurz, Degenerate Ape Academy, and BoDoggos in February, along with airdrops and other benefits.

9. Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner Investigates Worldcoin Project Operations in Hong Kong link

On the 31st of January, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data in Hong Kong conducted investigations at six locations across Hong Kong associated with the Worldcoin project, situated in Yau Ma Tei, Kwun Tong, Wan Chai, Cyberport, Central, and Causeway Bay, pursuant to a court order. It stated that the operation of Worldcoin in Hong Kong posed significant risks to personal data privacy, and the collection and processing of sensitive personal data by relevant entities may potentially violate the provisions of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance.

10. JUP Releases Airdrop and Its Co-Founders Respond to the Massive Sale of Tokens Reason link

Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter’s co-founder Meow announced via Twitter plans to conduct the JUP token airdrop on January 31st at 10:00 AM Eastern Time (23:00 Beijing Time). Prior to this, the team aims to accomplish five key areas of work: testing the new launch platform, including two major test launches; publicly executing significant ceremonies, especially detailed tracking of token minting and transfers; kickstarting the J.U.P. working group and DAO vision; completing major product updates; and finalizing the Jupiter whitepaper.

Within 24 hours on February 1st, the trading volume of Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter exceeded $1.2 billion, ranking first among all decentralized exchanges (DEXes). Mainstream exchanges have listed the JUP token.

Addressing concerns about the “Jupiter team’s large-scale public sale of tokens on the day of listing being a disguised fundraising,” Jupiter’s co-founder Meow stated that it is fair. The team only sold 250 million JUP tokens, while users had the opportunity to sell 1 billion tokens. Meow also mentioned that choosing traditional OTC or regular IDO might have garnered more funds, but with the current method, airdrop recipients can receive a large number of tokens and continually sell them, while potential buyers can ensure a large token reserve pool to absorb massive selling pressure from the airdrop. He pointed out that the team took risks, assuming that the selling pressure from the airdrop might be too high, and if there was not enough demand, the price would drop below 0.4, reducing the team’s revenue. Currently, the JUP pricing is a result of market behavior, and the team has reduced the sell ratio from 20% to 5%, and then to 2.5%. Meow believes this is a good system that forces the team to price reasonably. Later, Meow tweeted that the team would no longer sell tokens after 7 days, and all tokens in the launchpool (including USDC/JUP) would enter the team treasury or be used for LP.

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