Web3 Weekly Digest: Unmissable Industry Highlights and Hot Topics
01 Interview with CZ
《Exclusive Interview with Binance Founder CZ: Four Months That Changed His Life》
02 US Stablecoin Bill
《Quick Guide! 15 Key Questions and Answers about the Latest US Stablecoin Draft》
03 Hyperliquid Pulls the Plug
《Hyperliquid and JELLYJELLY: From Millions in Floating Losses to Pulling the Plug, What Really Happened?》
04 Market Trends
《Continuing Liquidity Tightening: Bull Reversal or Bull Exhaustion?》
05 Project Observations
《Token Price Surges 7x Against the Trend, How Did This DEX Do It?》
《Understanding Particle Network: How a Modular Layer 1 Achieves "Universal" Chain Abstraction》
《Public Offering Starts Today: Three-Minute Guide to Beraborrow's New Lending Protocol》
06 Industry Insights
《From a Financial Perspective: Can Stablecoins Become Mainstream?》
《Trump Appoints Wall Street "Sheriff": Where Will Jay Clayton's Regulatory Scalpel Point?》
《Buyback Becomes a Lifeline for Projects, Can It Really Restore Market Confidence?》
(The rest of the translation follows the same professional and precise approach, maintaining the original structure and translating all text while preserving technical terms and names as specified in the initial instructions.)05 Project Observation
The crypto market in 2025 is shrouded in a bearish atmosphere. BTC oscillated from $100,000 to around $80,000, and mainstream DeFi tokens generally dropped over 60% from their peaks. The Starknet Layer 2 token STRK even plummeted from over $2 to below $0.2. However, against the backdrop of Starknet's overall sluggish ecosystem, a DEX protocol named Ekubo has surprisingly broken through - its native token EKUBO has surged over 7 times in the past year, bucking the trend. Recommended reading:
《How Did This DEX Token Rise 7 Times Against the Market?》
Ekubo's token performance is not a castle in the air, but highly tied to its protocol fundamentals: Throughout 2024, Ekubo occupied over 80% of DEX trading volume in the Starknet ecosystem; the protocol generated $650,000 in revenue through withdrawal fees, partially used for EKUBO buybacks via an automated repurchase mechanism.
Unlike many projects relying on token incentives to "wash volume", over 70% of Ekubo's trading volume comes from aggregator routing, meaning its liquidity efficiency has been spontaneously verified by the market.
The core of its counter-trend growth stems from Ekubo's innovation in the DEX track. While most projects are still patching Uniswap v3's framework, Ekubo is targeting the design philosophy of next-generation AMM - extreme capital efficiency and scalability.[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and precise approach, maintaining the specified translations for specific terms.]
Clayton stated that during Trump's first term as the head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he successfully avoided friction and improper intervention, despite conflicts with crypto entrepreneurs and Elon Musk (who later became Trump's supporters). However, his new role might be more dangerous.
"I have never seen Trump show any interest or intervention in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; he might have thought it was the football league," said Whitney Tilson, a former hedge fund manager who ran for New York City mayor. "On the other hand, he wanted to turn the Department of Justice into a tool for his agenda and completely politicize it. If Clayton doesn't cooperate, he would be fired."
During the waiting period for Senate confirmation, Clayton has been communicating with judges and former heads of the New York Southern District Attorney's Office, including Damian Williams and Preet Bharara. Bharara was famously fired during Trump's first term.
Unlike the radical ways of reshaping other U.S. agencies, Clayton is planning a prosecution agenda that aligns with government priorities.
One can imagine that the office might pay special attention to human trafficking, anti-Semitic hate crimes, and university protests. Recently, this issue surfaced when federal agents arrested a Palestinian activist at Columbia University and attempted to revoke their green card. The office might also work in sync with the Washington Department of Justice to play a broader role in enforcing Trump's tough immigration stance. This could make the long-standing autonomous New York Southern District attorneys uneasy.
Recently, DeFi projects like dYdX and Jupiter announced token buybacks, and even the co-founders of the new public chain Berachain have announced efforts to buy back tokens from seed and A rounds. So why are many VC tokens, abandoned by the market, frequently announcing buyback plans recently? Is it a sudden conscience or a forced move? Do buybacks really support token prices? Recommended reading:
《Buybacks as a lifeline for projects, can they really restore market confidence?》
In March this year, dYdX announced using 25% of protocol net fees monthly to buy back DYDX tokens from the open market. Aave's founder also announced a new proposal to launch a new Aave Staking module to implement AAVE buybacks and fee conversion. Arbitrum's R&D team, Offchain Labs, also announced a strategic purchase plan to increase ARB holdings in the open market and through other trading methods. Even contributors from the Solana ecosystem project Jito Foundation have initiated discussions about token buybacks and rewards.
In January, Jupiter announced that 50% of its fee income would be used for JUP buybacks, and subsequently announced that the bought-back JUP would be locked for 3 years. By the end of March, over $9 million in tokens had been bought back.
Under market pressure, many project teams have finally realized that the mindset of "token price doesn't matter" is incorrect, and prolonged token price stagnation will ultimately cause community members to lose confidence and choose to leave.
