Organized by: Jerry, ChainCatcher
Key News:
- CME plans to launch SOL futures on March 17
- Ethereum Foundation developers will launch a new "Hoodi" testnet on March 17 to conduct the final testing of the Pectra upgrade
- Starknet plans to launch its mainnet between March 17 and 24
- KiloEx will conduct its TGE on March 17
- WazirX plans to vote on the proposed restructuring plan between March 19 and 28
- Babylon Foundation announces extension of airdrop registration deadline to March 19
- Coinbase International will list REZ, GRASS and RARE perpetual contracts on March 20
- BNB Chain will conduct the Pascal hard fork upgrade on March 20, supporting EIP-7702
- The U.S. SEC Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit will hold its first roundtable on March 21
- Ethereum Foundation extends the application deadline for the 2025 Academic Grants program to March 23
March 17 (Monday)
CME plans to launch SOL futures on March 17
The official Solana account posted on X platform that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) plans to launch Solana (SOL) futures on March 17.
Ethereum Foundation protocol support lead Tim Beiko updated the latest information on the Pectra upgrade.
1) A new long-term testnet Hoodi will be launched on March 17, and the Pectra upgrade test will be executed on March 26;
2) After the successful Pectra upgrade test on Hoodi, the mainnet upgrade time will be determined, which is expected to be at least 30 days after the test upgrade (April 25 or later).
3) The Fusaka plan will be implemented in parallel, with the EIP proposal deadline set for March 24 and the tentative freeze date for the upgrade scope set for April 10.
Starknet plans to launch its mainnet between March 17 and 24
Starknet announced its decentralization roadmap for 2025, aiming to become the first fully decentralized Layer 2 (L2) to massively scale Ethereum. The key focus includes staking mechanism, decentralized operation, and governance independence.
Staking: Starknet launched the first phase of staking (Staking v1) in November 2024, with over 170 million STRK staked by 63,000 delegators and 106 validators. Staking v2 to v4 will be rolled out in phases in 2025 to ultimately make validators fully responsible for network security and block validation.
Decentralized Operation: Starknet will gradually migrate from the current architecture to the fully open-source Apollo sequencer and Stwo prover, aiming to launch the distributed consensus layer on the mainnet by the end of 2025, where validators will participate in block voting to achieve decentralized operation.
Governance Independence: The Starknet Security Council will further drive the decentralized governance of core contracts and enhance the network's resistance to censorship.
Meanwhile, the latest Starknet v0.13.4 has been deployed on the testnet, bringing optimizations such as state compression, fixed L2 gas prices, and Cairo-native performance improvements. Starknet plans to launch its mainnet between March 17 and 24. The upcoming v0.14.0 will introduce 2-second block time, more efficient sequencers, and improved fee market.
KiloEx will conduct its TGE on March 17
KiloEx, a perpetual contract DEX invested by YZi Labs, announced on Twitter that its TGE will be held on March 17.
According to the Binance announcement, the Kadena (KDA) network will undergo an upgrade and hard fork on March 18, 2025 at 00:00 (UTC), and Binance will support this upgrade.
• Deposit and withdrawal suspension time: March 17, 2025 23:00 (UTC)
• Upgrade and hard fork block height: 5,659,280 (estimated to be March 18, 2025 00:00 UTC) Binance will reopen KDA deposits and withdrawals after the network upgrade is completed and stabilized, and trading will not be affected.
March 18 (Tuesday)
Initia will close its wallet extension on March 18, users need to migrate testnet data in time
Layer 1 blockchain Initia officially announced that Initia will close its wallet extension service at 3:00 AM (UTC) on March 18.
Initia wallet users must complete the migration before this date, otherwise they will not be able to access the data on the testnet, including the Jennie testnet and related data. Users can migrate their wallets through migration.initia.xyz.
Sui Foundation launches the SuiNS RFP program, with the application deadline on March 18
The Sui Foundation announced the launch of the Sui NS program, which aims to drive impactful development and strengthen community collaboration by directly funding projects that meet the needs of the Sui ecosystem and support the growth of Sui NS.
The SuiNS RFP program application channel is now open, and developers can submit their proposals. The application deadline is March 18, 2025 15:59 (UTC +8). After submission, the RFP committee will screen the candidates and vote on the final proposals to be funded. Selected developers must sign a funding agreement outlining the project's milestones, deliverables, and timeline, and proceed with development as planned. For transparency and accountability, the selected developers must also go through an identity verification process.
Sui NS aims to provide users with a simple, easily identifiable identity that can be used within the Sui ecosystem, enabling more personalized and feature-rich interactions to enhance user experience and application functionality. The RFP program aims to accelerate innovation in the Sui ecosystem, with each RFP defining a specific focus area to encourage developers to propose solutions and leverage the funding to build these solutions.
March 19 (Wednesday)
WazirX plans to vote on the proposed restructuring plan between March 19 and 28
Indian crypto exchange WazirX posted on X platform that the next key step is to vote on the proposed restructuring plan.
Voting period: Planned to be held from March 19 to March 28, 2025. Asset rebalancing distribution: After the rebalancing is completed, if the majority of creditors vote in favor, approximately 85% of the account balance (as of 1:00 PM IST on July 18, 2024) will be distributed to the scheme creditors within 10 business days after the restructuring plan takes effect.
Babylon Foundation announces extension of airdrop registration deadline to March 19
The Babylon Foundation has announced that, considering that some users have only recently been able to register for the airdrop, it has decided to extend the airdrop registration deadline by 4 days to 16:00 (Beijing time) on March 19.
March 20 (Thursday)
Coinbase International will list REZ, GRASS and RARE perpetual contracts on March 20
According to the official announcement, Coinbase International Exchange and Coinbase Advanced will list perpetual contracts for REZ, GRASS, and RARE.
The REZ-PERP, GRASS-PERP and RARE-PERP markets will be available from 9:30 AM UTC or later on March 20, 2025.
OKX will delist XR, GOAL, KP3R, LBR, LAMB, BZZ, GPT and other spot trading pairs on March 20
According to the official announcement, to maintain a healthy spot trading environment, OKX will delist several trading pairs that do not meet the listing standards. The affected trading pairs include XR/USDT, GOAL/USDT, GOAL/USDC, KP3R/USDT, KP3R/USDC, LBR/USDT, LAMB/USDT, LAMB/USDC, BZZ/USDT, BZZ/USDC and GPT/USDT.
OKX will delist the above trading pairs from 16:00-17:00 Beijing time on March 20, 2025. The platform advises users to cancel relevant orders before the delisting, otherwise the system will automatically cancel these orders, and the cancellation process may take 1-3 business days.
BNB Chain has launched the second round of a $4.4 million perpetual liquidity program, expanding from the Meme track in the first round to all outstanding native project tokens on the BNB Smart Chain. The goal is to strengthen the long-term development of the BNB Chain ecosystem by providing long-term liquidity support for high-potential projects.
This round of the competition will be held from March 13 to March 20, 2025, including daily and weekly competitions, and the most promising assets will be selected based on key performance indicators. The daily competition will be divided into two tracks: the "Potential Explosion Zone" for projects with a market cap below $20 million, and the "Mature Zone" for projects with a market cap of at least $20 million. The daily competition will last seven days, with one winning project selected from each track every day. The competition ranking will be determined based on trading volume, market capitalization and 24-hour price increase.
The weekly competition will be evaluated based on the trading volume, market capitalization and price increase of the project token over the seven days. Any eligible asset can participate in the weekly competition, regardless of whether it has won the daily competition.
Participation eligibility: The asset must be native to the BNB Smart Chain, launched after January 1, 2024, with a market cap of at least $50,000 and a 24-hour trading volume of at least $10,000.
Please note that Binance-pegged tokens, gas fee tokens, stablecoins, cross-chain wrapped tokens, liquidity re-staking tokens, and the winners of the first round of the Meme liquidity competition will not be eligible to participate in this round.
Winning conditions: The project must have a market cap of at least $1 million, a daily competition of at least 2,000 active holders, a weekly competition winner of at least 5,000, and the top 10 external holding wallets (EOAs) must hold less than 10% of the total supply; the project must be verified on BscScan or have passed a security audit.
BNB Chain will undergo the Pascal hard fork upgrade on March 20, supporting EIP-7702
BNB Chain will undergo a mainnet Pascal hard fork upgrade on March 20, 2025, to improve EVM compatibility and become one of the first public chains to adopt EIP-7702. This upgrade will introduce features such as gas abstraction, EOA wallet smart contract-ization, and batch transactions, providing users with a smoother experience and developers with greater flexibility.
Through the EIP-7702 proposal, BNB Chain will allow external owned accounts (EOAs) to temporarily have smart contract functionality during transactions while maintaining account security. This upgrade will significantly lower the barrier to entry for users into Web3. For example, gas fee abstraction will allow users to complete on-chain interactions without holding the native token for gas fees; dApps can also sponsor gas fees for users, and batch transactions will enhance the user's on-chain experience.
The Pascal hard fork has already been completed on the testnet. For the upcoming mainnet upgrade, before March 20, node operators and validators need to update to v1.5.7 (BSC) or v0.5.2/v0.5.6 (opBNB); exchanges and infrastructure providers need to ensure compatibility before the hard fork, and developers need to test and update dApps to support the new transaction types.
According to BNB Chain's 2025 technical roadmap, the community plans to conduct the Lorentz hard fork in April and the Maxwell hard fork upgrade in June, which will increase the block production speed to 0.75 seconds. The proposal is currently open for community feedback.
March 21 (Friday)
The US SEC's Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit will hold its first roundtable on March 21
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) newly formed Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit will hold its first roundtable discussion later this month as part of a series of meetings.
The SEC said in a Monday statement that the meeting, titled "Our Past and Future - Defining the Status of Securities," will be held on March 21 at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. This roundtable is part of a "Spring Sprint Seeking Crypto Clarity" series of meetings.
Hester Peirce, the Republican commissioner leading the Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, said in the statement: "I look forward to leveraging public expertise to develop a workable regulatory framework for crypto assets." Peirce said she plans to prioritize classifying some tokens as "non-securities."
March 23 (Sunday)
The Ethereum Foundation has extended the application deadline for the 2025 academic grant program to March 23
The Ethereum Foundation website has updated the information, showing that the application submission deadline for the 2025 academic grant program has been extended to 23:59 AoE on March 23.
It is reported that there is a total of $2 million in available funding for this round of grants to support academic work related to Ethereum.
