Week Ahead Industry Previews: First Week of December 2023

  • BlockFi’s international customer debt proof submission deadline is December 9th.
  • Kava 15 mainnet is set to launch on December 7th.
  • Polygon Labs will host the Polygon Connect event in India on December 7th.
  • Pudgy Penguins will announce their collaboration details with Nouns on December 9th.
  • Etherscan proposed a yearly budget of $1 million at the ENS DAO forum.

Key Events

  • Hut 8 Mining and USBTC Merger: Following the merger, the new company’s common shares will begin trading on December 4th on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “HUT.” For every Hut 8 share held, shareholders will receive 0.2 shares of New Hut common stock. USBTC shareholders will receive 0.6716 shares of New Hut common stock for each USBTC share.
  • BlockFi Bankruptcy Liquidation: After the fallout from FTX, BlockFi faced bankruptcy liquidation, with the process officially commencing on October 24th. The company notified creditors of the ongoing liquidation supervised by Bermuda’s Supreme Court. For international clients, the final deadline for submitting debt proofs is set for December 8th, 2023, at 16:00 ADT (December 9th, 3:00 Beijing Time).
  • Overpayment and Refund by Antpool: An overpayment occurred on November 23rd, where a transaction of 139.42 BTC (approximately $5.23 million) sent to bc1qyf…km36t4 paid an excessive fee of 83.65 BTC (about $3.136 million), 120258 times the required fee. Subsequently, Antpool announced refunding 83 BTC transaction fees to the affected user. Users impacted by this overpayment have until December 10th, 2023, to verify their identity with Antpool, after which the fees will be refunded.
  • KyberSwap Security Breach and Resolution: KyberSwap faced an attack on November 22nd, resulting in a loss of approximately $54.7 million in user funds. The KyberSwap team agreed to pay the hacker 10% of the bug bounty. However, the attacker demanded control and all assets of the company in exchange for resolving the issue. They proposed a set of compensatory measures, including fair buyouts for executives, doubling employee salaries, offering a 12-month severance package with full benefits for departing employees, and ensuring the token value for investors. The attacker threatened to break the resolution agreement if their demands weren’t met by December 10th or if contacted by any sovereign nation’s representatives. KyberSwap intends to compensate users via the KyberSwap Treasury, potentially reimbursing up to the stolen amount.

Project Updates

  • Bittrex Closure: Cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex has decided to cease operations. Starting December 4th, 2023, all trading activities on Bittrex will be disabled. Customers will only be able to withdraw their assets during the liquidation process. The platform advises all customers to log in to their accounts and withdraw their assets promptly. It assures that all funds and tokens on the Bittrex platform are secure and can be withdrawn at any time according to applicable laws and terms of service.
  • Dark Forest Game Launch: Dark Forest, an online game by game developer Argus Labs, will distribute its first batch of limited game keys on December 5th. Pre-registration is open on the Dark Forest website. Scott Sunarto, the founder of Argus Labs, was previously involved in creating the well-known online game Dark Forest.
  • Kava 15 Mainnet Upgrade: The Kava 15 mainnet will launch on December 7th. This upgrade will reduce KAVA’s inflation to zero by December 31st, allowing only burning of KAVA. The Kava chain will shift to a sustainable model driven by transaction fees, the release of native projects, and temporary allocations from the Kava Foundation. Additionally, the Kava 15 upgrade includes enhanced developer support via the testnet and improvements in staking reward mechanisms.
  • Chainlink Staking v0.2 Migration: The migration will commence for early access on December 8th at 01:00. Community holders meeting predefined eligibility criteria can stake up to a maximum of 15,000 LINK. General access will open on December 12th at 01:00.
  • ApeCoin DAO Rewards Distribution: The fourth batch of staking rewards by ApeCoin DAO will be distributed until December 10th, with ApeCoin DAO allocating 1500 APE tokens to stakers. Of this, 4.5 million APE will be distributed to the APE pool, 7,065,750 APE to the BAYC pool, 2,859,000 APE to the MAYC pool, and 575,250 APE to the BACK pool.

Upcoming Events

  • Polygon Connect: Polygon Labs is set to host Polygon Connect on December 7th in India. Originating from India, Polygon Connect will be a global gathering of developers and tech enthusiasts. Polygon’s founder, Sandeep Nailwal, announced that on December 14th, Polygon Labs will publicly demonstrate the next-generation ZK product. Additionally, on December 20th, they will release information regarding products adopted by RWA and institutions.
  • BLOCKFESTA 2023: Scheduled for December 7th, BLOCKFESTA 2023 will take place in Seoul, South Korea. It marks the fifth edition of BLOCKFESTA, which commenced in 2018. The event will focus on themes including blockchain, digital assets, NFTs, metaverse, artificial intelligence, investments, and more.

Token Unlock

According to Token Unlocks data, from December 4th to December 10th, LQTY, GAL, HFT, EUL, 1INCH are set for one-time unlocking.

  • Hashflow token HFT will unlock 13.62 million tokens (approximately $4.39 million) on December 7th at 08:00 UTC. This release constitutes 5.57% of the circulating supply.
  • Galxe token GAL will Unlock 2.03 million tokens (approximately $3.08 million) on December 5th at 08:00 UTC. This amounts to 2.26% of the circulating supply.

Governance Voting

  • The Arbitrum community’s “ArbOS 11 version” AIP proposal voting will conclude on December 5th at 06:11 UTC. This proposal introduces various improvements to Arbitrum, including the EVM Shanghai upgrade, support for the PUSH0 opcode, and multiple bug fixes. These improvements have been audited and are available for adoption by platforms like Arbitrum Orbit Chain, Arbitrum One, and Arbitrum Nova, the latter two being involved in this proposal. The proposal notes that the ArbOS upgrade can be considered a hard fork for Arbitrum.
  • The Cosmos Hub community’s proposal regarding the allocation of 600,000 ATOM for liquidity staking growth for pSTAKE will end on December 5th. This proposal aims to allocate 600,000 ATOM as liquidity owned by the Cosmos Hub protocol (stkATOM Hub POL) on Astroport (Neutron) and Dexter (Persistence) to increase pSTAKE’s stkATOM ATOM liquidity staking. In return, pSTAKE Finance (through PSTAKE governance) has committed to sharing 15% of its total revenue from ATOM liquidity staking with Cosmos Hub and exempting the protocol fee charged on 300,000 ATOM liquidity staking (currently set at 5%).
  • The third round of retroactive public goods funding voting for Optimism ends on December 7th. 30 million OP tokens will be distributed among 643 contributors in the Optimism ecosystem, with the results and token distribution set to be announced in early January 2024.
  • The blockchain explorer Etherscan proposed a $1 million annual budget in the ENS DAO forum to fund continuous development, support, and related hosting costs for ENS on Etherscan and associated block explorers operated by the team. The related voting is set to commence on December 10th.

NFT Mint

Pudgy Penguins has announced a collaboration with Nouns, set to be revealed at 9:00 AM on December 9th, Beijing time. There’s a possibility of introducing a new NFT series. Within 24 hours of this announcement, Pudgy Penguins’ trading volume surged by over 35%. The NFT series by Pudgy Penguins is limited to 8888 NFTs, hosted on the Ethereum blockchain network. Nouns, on the other hand, is a generative NFT project on the Ethereum network featuring 32×32 pixel characters composed of numerous combinations of bodies and accessories, including 242 heads, 140 accessories, 30 bodies, 23 glasses, and two backgrounds.