• ByBit suffers a $1.4 billion hack.

• The SEC drops lawsuit against Coinbase.

• Lens Chain proposal to join Elastic Network.

• Zora introduces tradable coins.

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Bybit, a top-five centralized crypto exchange, suffered a $1.4 billion hack early Friday morning, with over 400,000 ETH and 90,000 stETH in stolen assets. Attackers were able to manipulate a transaction from Bybit's multi-sig ETH cold wallet. It is suspected that the hackers compromised the devices used by the signers to display the correct addresses but altered the tx signing message. Despite the substantial loss, Bybit committed to covering the losses for its users. Further analysis by ZachXBT identified the attackers as the Lazarus Group, a notorious North Korean hacking group. Following the attack, the hackers converted stETH and cmETH into native ETH and dispersed the funds across numerous wallets.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced that the SEC is dropping its lawsuit against Coinbase, resulting in no fines, settlements, or changes to Coinbase. The victory marks the end of nearly two years of costly legal battles that began when the SEC sued Coinbase in June 2023, alleging the exchange operated as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency. Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, emphasized that Coinbase will continue to advocate for clear legislative measures to avoid similar challenges in the future. He affirmed that Coinbase will persist in working with Congress and the SEC to foster the growth of the crypto industry in the U.S. The official confirmation from the SEC to dismiss the case is expected next week.

Lens Chain submitted a ZKsync Improvement Proposal to include Lens Chain in the Elastic Network. Upon deployment, all existing user data, including profiles, followers, and publications, will be seamlessly migrated from Lens V2 on Polygon PoS to the new Lens Chain.  The Elastic Network enables interoperability, secure bridging, and unified liquidity for all chains on the network. The migration to Lens Chain will allow users to automatically access their profiles and data immediately upon launch. In the coming weeks, the migration proposal will go up for a vote on the ZK governance portal. Lens Protocol, a web3 social graph, has over 600,000 profiles and 45,000 weekly active users.

Zora introduced tradable NFT coins represented as ERC-20 tokens. When users publish a post on Zora, their NFT will automatically have a total supply of one billion coins with 10 million coins immediately allocated to the creator. Additionally, creators earn a 1% commission on every secondary market trade of their coins. Users can buy, sell, and trade these coins through a Uniswap liquidity pool.

• Farcaster introduces a wallet

• Pectra $2m audit competition

• Firefly spins out of Mask Network

• ACD Feb 2025 wrap up

• EOF introduces complexity

• Obol announces RAF1 results

• Lido V3 is live for Early Adopters

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• The Stateless Ethereum Book.

• Succinct introduces OP Succinct Lite.

• The EF seeks a Social Media Manager.

• Reth team outlines what's next after Fusaka.

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StatelessEth released "The Stateless Ethereum Book," a comprehensive guide that discusses protocol upgrades on the path to a Stateless Ethereum. The book explores the technical, operational, and strategic elements involved in transitioning Ethereum to a stateless model, including explainers on trees and data encoding, BLOCKHASH state, gas cost remodeling, and state conversion. In a stateless model for Ethereum, nodes are not required to store the complete state of the chain for transaction processing. Instead, each block is equipped with all necessary information, provided in the form of proofs, allowing for independent validation without access to the entire chain's history. The method significantly reduces the storage and computational demands for nodes. The book will be updated on an ongoing basis.

Succinct Labs introduced OP Succinct Lite, a simplified iteration of OP Succinct that facilitates the adoption of Zero-Knowledge Proofs on OP Stack rollups without fully transitioning to ZK rollup specifications. Launched in September 2024, OP Succinct merged Kona—a Rust-based implementation of the OP Stack's state transition function—and the SP1 zkVM, allowing any OP Stack chain to upgrade from an optimistic to a ZK rollup. The "Lite" version targets improvements in the dispute resolution module, providing lightweight, cost-efficient dispute resolution, and faster finality times. OP Succinct Lite lowers the barrier to integrating ZK proofs, designed to operate without interfering with key components such as sequencers or batch processors.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is looking to hire a Social Media Manager to help manage the EF’s social media accounts, which include accounts representing the broader Ethereum ecosystem. The roles involve collaborating with EF leadership, tracking significant developments within the Ethereum ecosystem, and organizing complex campaigns with multiple contributors. Qualifications for the role require excellent writing skills, a deep engagement with the Ethereum ecosystem, familiarity with X, Farcaster, and Lens, and experience managing high-profile social media accounts. EF positions are fully remote, welcoming candidates from any location.

Paradigm’s Reth team outlined its views for Ethereum's forthcoming Fusaka upgrade, anticipated for late 2025. The team suggested a consistent schedule of 1-2 hard forks annually to maintain competitiveness and advocated for separating the processes of shipping, scoping, and research to facilitate timely and effective upgrades. Beyond Fusaka, the team emphasizes the importance of remaining focused on scaling both Layer 1 and Layer 2.

• Built on Ethereum merch store

• Moonwell introduces virtual accounts

• Staking issuance discourse 

• Obol begins governance

• Lowering costs to prove Ethereum blocks

• dDocs weekly update

• Milei supports Devconnect in Argentina

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• EF Open Intents Framework.

• Bitwise donates $100k to Ethereum development.

• The SEC dismisses its dealer rule.

• Privacy Pools initiates its ZK Circuit Ceremony.

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The Ethereum Foundation launched the Open Intents Framework, a modular stack designed to standardize intents and enhance the cross-chain user experience on Ethereum. Intents are signed constraints that allow users to outsource their orders to a network of independent fillers. Intents enable fast and frictionless asset transfers, enabling a unified experience across chains. The framework provides developers with modular components like solving and settlement, enabling them to build custom intent-based applications. Key features of the Open Intents Framework include a suite of composable smart contracts, a production-ready implementation of ERC-7683, and an open-source solver application. The framework is a community-driven effort supported by over 30 teams, including Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, Polygon, ZKsync, Gnosis, and Namechain.

Bitwise donated $100,000 to the Protocol Guild and the Proposer Builder Separation (PBS) Foundation, marking its first annual contribution for 2024. The donation follows a commitment made last year by both VanEck and Bitwise to allocate 10% of their profits from their Ethereum ETFs to support Ethereum development over the next decade. The Bitwise ETHW ETF was launched on the NYSE Arca in July 2024, offering investors a way to invest in Ethereum without having to own the asset directly. The fund currently holds more than 100,000 Ether. The Protocol Guild is a collective comprised of over 150 Ethereum core contributors.

The SEC voluntarily withdrew its appeal against a lawsuit concerning the dealer rule, initially brought by the Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas and the Blockchain Association. A Texas court had previously sided with the Blockchain Association in November, which argued that the rule unfairly targeted entities in the DeFi markets. Introduced last year, the dealer rule aimed to extend broker regulatory requirements to DeFi protocols. However, the rule was deemed unenforceable by the court. The SEC's decision to step back today represents a significant victory for DeFi, following a series of challenges under the previous administration.

Privacy Pools, a tool designed to facilitate anonymous transfers, initiated its ZK circuit ceremony. The ceremony is open for 9 days and invites participants to contribute signatures to the protocol’s trusted setup, To participate, individuals must have a GitHub account.  Privacy Pools enables users to deposit ETH into a smart contract and withdraw it later using a zero-knowledge proof, which keeps the deposit and withdrawal addresses unlinked. Privacy Pools offers configurable privacy sets, allowing users to avoid association with known bad addresses during withdrawals. 

• Fluent raises $8m

• Superfluid unveils $SUP token

• Binance U.S. restores USD services

• Superchain Interop on devnet

• Ohara Base app creation tool

• SEC acknowledges staking for ETFs

• Introducing Y crypto app

• KAITO claim goes live tomorrow

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