The Dawn of the Council | Newsletter #51

Welcome to the Pythiad, the official newsletter of the Pyth Network. Biweekly updates on all things DeFi await you below. Let’s get started.

What’s New with Pyth

• On March 29, the inaugural Price Feed Council was elected and approved by the Pyth DAO, selecting the 7 Pythians who will be signers of the Price Feed Multisig Wallet. Learn more here.

• As of March 20, over 300 dApps are now officially powered by the Pyth Network. 

• As of March 19, Pyth powers more than 90% of TVS on 10 chains and more than 50% on another 7 chains.

What’s New with DeFi

Regulations

• The SEC is attempting to classify Ether as a security. If the SEC moves forward with regulating Ether, it could potentially put the regulator in conflict with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

• Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, is sentenced to 25 years in prison.

• Litecoin becomes the second best-performing cryptocurrency after being declared a commodity by the CFTC.

Technology and Development

• Vitalik explains at ETH Taipei that a primary challenge for Ethereum’s proof-of-stake mechanism is potential centralization stemming from general staking activity.

• Starknet, an Ethereum L2, plans “parallel execution” to mimic Solana’s speed feature.

• The 13,900 nodes supporting the Ethereum network are now running more than 1 million validators, with 26% of the supply staked.

Stablecoins

• Gyroscope, a Galaxy Ventures-backed stablecoin project, is introducing a high-yield liquidity pool that seeks to generate returns from trading, rehypothecation of assets, and loyalty points.

• Decentralized stablecoin project Frax Finance moves forward in reinstating protocol fee switch by introducing a new proposal.

Ecosystems

• Solana leapfrogs Ethereum on DEX volume – all thanks to memecoins.

• Ethereum L2 adoption is soaring after the much-anticipated Dencun upgrade that went live on March 13.

• Etherescan is giving Google data that now shows Ethereum Name Service wallet balances in search results.

• BlackRock debuts BUIDL, its first tokenized fund on Ethereum. Coinbase is chosen as a key infrastructure provider for the new fund.

• Daily volume on Base network sees 51% surge to $356 million, and its total value locked has also reached a new all-time high: $745 million.

• The daily total net inflow for the spot bitcoin ETFs in the United States was $183 million as of March 28.

Exchanges

• According to a blogpost from Galaxy Asset Management (GAM), the firm reported over $10 Billion in AUM. This is a result of skyrocketing institutional interest in digital assets.

• The Bitcoin crash on BitMEX on March 18 showed $BTC valued under $9K for 7 minutes. Now, the exchange is under an “unusual activity” investigation.

Gaming

• Yield Guild Games announces the launch of its token on the Ronin Network to reach more gamers in the Web3 community.

• Immutable’s Mobile Ethereum RPG, “Guild of Guardians,” will be released in May.

• Aptos Labs has announced the launch of Aptos GameStack: a development suite that eases crypto game production – with Google Cloud’s help.

• Solana-based shooter “Nyan Heroes” is offering double the rewards in its current play-to-airdrop campaign starting March 30.

Community Shoutout

This week, we’ve received some amazing artwork by Pythians greg_vzla, drops2021, @kais7sol, and @leeland_sol. Keep up the good work, everyone!

We want to hear your feedback. Join the Pyth Discord and Telegram and follow Pyth on X. You can also learn more about Pyth here.