A look at the most noteworthy industry events and project developments to watch for in the coming week.
- Usual will launch the "Revenue Switch" function on January 13.
- The cryptocurrency-themed film "Crypto Man" will be released on January 15, 2025.
- HECO Network will be taken offline on January 15 and some HRC20 assets will be withdrawn.
- Celo will migrate to Celo L2 on January 16, 2025.
- Approximately $67.68 million worth of ARB will be unlocked on January 16 at 21:00.
Don't miss the major Web3 events this week (December 9 - December 15, 2024). The image below previews the exciting events:
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Important Events
A pre-trial conference between Gemini Trust and the US CFTC on the charges will be held on January 13, with the trial expected to begin on January 21. The CFTC sued Gemini in June 2022, alleging "false or misleading statements about material facts", and Gemini Trust has agreed to pay a $5 million fine to settle the CFTC's charges, without admitting or denying the agency's allegations.
Google's new advertising policy, which requires crypto ads targeting the UK to be registered with the FCA, will take effect on January 15, 2025.
The cryptocurrency-themed film "Crypto Man", directed by Korean director Hyun Hae-ri, will be released on January 15, 2025. The film is based on a real-life cryptocurrency collapse incident that caused over 50 trillion won (about $349 billion) in losses, and stars the late actor Song Joong-ki.
Ian McGinley, the enforcement director of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), announced that he will be leaving the agency on January 17.
The Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has released a draft of proposed SEC rules for crypto asset service providers and is accepting public feedback until January 18, 2025.
Project Updates
Coinbase will not support the Celo blockchain migration, and users need to withdraw their CGLD from the platform by January 13, 2025.
Overlay Protocol announced that it will launch the OVL token presale on Fjord Foundry on January 13. The TGE will create 88,888,888 tokens, with 52.36% allocated to the community, 39.77% to early investors, 4.52% to the Overlay Foundation, and 3.36% for services.
Usual will launch the "Revenue Switch" and "1:1 Early Unstaking" functions on January 13, allowing users to exchange USD0++ at a 1:1 rate but forfeiting some accrued rewards as a penalty.
BuidlPad, a community sales platform, announced the launch of the Solayer community sale event, where participants have a chance to receive 100% of the LAYER token allocation without locking. The sale period is from January 13, 18:00 to January 15, 7:59.
Shiba Inu's ecosystem token TREAT will be launched on January 14, as the utility and governance token for its new privacy Layer3 blockchain built on the Shibarium Layer2 network.
The first wave of the Artela Network community airdrop will be available for claiming from January 17 to January 23.
The grace period for KYC submissions on the Sophon blockchain, built on ZKsync, will end on January 14.
The Polygon zkEVM mainnet beta will be upgraded to Fork 12 on January 14, 18:00, with the upgrade expected to take 2 hours.
The Puffer Finance (PUFFER) airdrop claim deadline is January 14, 19:00.
The Renzo Protocol will open minting for its bzSOL staking token on January 14, 21:30.
The on-chain options protocol Derive may launch its DRV token on January 15, 2025.
HECO Network will be taken offline on January 15, 2025, and some HRC20 assets will be withdrawn.
The US government plans to negotiate with several PACs by January 15 to reclaim $13.25 million in political donations from former FTX executives.
The Layer 1 blockchain Celo will migrate to Celo L2 on January 16, 2025.
The TON ecosystem Layer 2 project DuckChain will launch its DUCK token on January 16.
Binance will support the Fantom (FTM) token swap and rebranding to Sonic (S). Binance will delist the existing FTM spot trading pairs and cancel all pending FTM spot trading orders on January 13, 2025 at 03:00 (UTC). Binance will open S/BTC, S/BNB, S/ETH, S/EUR, S/FDUSD, S/TRY, S/USDC, S/USDT trading pairs on January 16, 2025 at 08:00 (UTC).
The on-chain AI layer EternalAI will release an on-chain AI agent PFP collection, which will be available for free minting on January 17.
The Artela Network community airdrop Wave #1 will be open for claiming from January 17 to January 23.
Bitget will list Solv Protocol (SOLV), with trading to be opened on January 17, 2025 at 18:00.
Upcoming Events
Virtuals' first offline gathering for the Chinese community, Virtuals First CN Community Meetup, will be held in Shanghai from 13:30 to 17:30 on January 13.
The application deadline for the 9th season of the BNB Chain MVB program is January 14 at 07:59, with a focus on AI First. This includes but is not limited to the following categories: Decentralized applications: Intention-based DeFi, AI-first Game, DeSoc, AI Agent and Companions, Data labeling, DataDAO; Infrastructure and tools: Identity, MPC Wallet, Social Graph, AgentKit, Agent Hosting, and DevTools. Data-related Privacy Computing and Streaming Indexing.
Story will host the "Story China Tour | Shanghai Station" offline event from 14:00 to 18:00 on January 14.
The application deadline for the Solaries Accelerator, a joint initiative by Solar and HackQuest, is January 15, 2025. This incubation program will select 5-7 teams in the Chinese-speaking region for a three-month incubation period, during which Solana ecosystem project founders will serve as mentors to provide guidance for the selected teams. The accelerator will combine online and offline components to support the teams' growth. Selected teams will receive mentor guidance, ecosystem resources, and Solana Mini Grants.
Solana will host the Solana x Alliance Ideathon in New York on January 15.
BTC Inc. and Stand With Crypto will host the inaugural CRYPTO BALL on January 17 to celebrate the inauguration of Trump and Vance. The event will be held at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., with tickets priced at $2,500 each.
Token Unlocks
According to Token Unlocks data, this week will see large-scale token unlocks for ARB, STRK, and SEI, totaling over $100 million in value:
Arbitrum (ARB) will unlock 92.65 million tokens on January 16 at 21:00, worth approximately $67.68 million, representing 2.2% of the circulating supply;
Starknet (STRK) will unlock 64 million tokens on January 15 at 8:00, worth approximately $27.47 million, representing 2.65% of the circulating supply;
Sei (SEI) will unlock 55.56 million tokens on January 15 at 20:00, worth approximately $21.23 million, representing 1.32% of the circulating supply;
ApeCoin (APE) will unlock 15.6 million tokens on January 17 at 20:30, worth approximately $17.02 million, representing 2.16% of the circulating supply.
Governance Votes
The Gitcoin community vote on hiring Avantgarde for strategic asset management of the matching pool will end on January 15.
The Arbitrum DAO Stability Treasury Donation Program 2.0 vote will end on January 17, authorizing the transfer of an additional 35 million ARB to the STEP multi-sig for the next iteration of the Stability Treasury Donation Program (STEP) to diversify the Arbitrum DAOs' treasury with value-stable, high-liquidity, and yield-bearing crypto assets.
