Merry Christmas (eve) readers! 🎄The fourth edition of HashStack is hot off the press to give you the latest news you might’ve missed the past week or so. Gear up, it’s going to be a long one..

TL;DR

Bitcoin

• Microstrategy to join Nasdaq 100 and will be included in major funds such as Invesco QQQ ETF.

• Public poll about covenant-related proposals.

• Babylon concludes the Cap 3 staking program with over $6B in BTC staked.

• Solv Protocol partners with Benqi Finance to bring BTCFi to Avalanche.

• SEC approves hybrid crypto ETFs consisting of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Ethereum

• Corn kicks off the phased launch of Maizenet with the launch of its bridge powered by LayerZero.

• HashKey Chain goes live and launches a $50M Atlas Grant Ecosystem Program. 

• Paradigm released Porto, a developer-first typescript library that aims to advance account abstraction. 

Artificial Intelligence

• AI16z announces a partnership with Stanford University's Future of Digital Currency Initiative. 

• Grass Network announces VALID (Video-Audio Large Interleaved Dataset) that will power LLM training across different modalities. 

• Virtuals Protocol launches AI Sandbox, offering greater agent customization.

• Hyperbolic Labs announces the launch of AgentKit, a development kit that allows agents to manage compute resources. 

• Story Protocol introduces Agent TCP/IP, a framework to trade IP assets.

Stablecoin

• Ethena launches USDtb.

• RLUSD by Ripple goes live.

• Usual Money is migrating to USDtb as collateral for their stablecoin USD0. 

MicroStrategy to join Nasdaq 100 and Invesco QQQ ETF

After rising an astonishing 376% YTD, MicroStrategy will officially be joining the Nasdaq 100 index effective from December 23. The share price of MicroStrategy has been closely tied to the price movements of Bitcoin as the company went on a buying spree this year, becoming the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin with a stash of 439,000 BTC. The inclusion of MicroStrategy in the index provides investors in some of the largest funds such as Invesco QQQ ETF an indirect bet on Bitcoin and the crypto industry which has rallied in recent times in anticipation of a friendlier regulatory environment under the Trump Administration. 

Public poll about covenant-related proposals

Since there are lots of discussions about the next soft-fork, a public poll by /dev/fd0 about developers’ opinions for selected covenants such as OP_CTV, OP_CAT was published and is receiving feedback.

Babylon concludes Cap 3 with more than $6B in BTC staked

Babylon recently closed its Cap 3 staking program, reaching over $6 billion in BTC staked within a week of opening its cap. This milestone highlights strong demand for staking yields as BTC interest surged alongside record-high prices. With the conclusion of Cap 3, Babylon is now the 10th largest project in terms of TVL. Among the top depositors, Lombard (40%), Solv Protocol (18.1%) and PumpBTC (9.9%) which provide BTC LSTs to depositors took the top 3 spots, collectively contributing to more than 72% of the TVL on Babylon.

Solv Protocol collaborates with Benqi Finance to bring BTCFi to Avalanche

As the second largest BTC liquid staking protocol,  Solv Protocol announced a partnership with Benqi Finance, the largest DeFi platform on Avalanche with more than $800M in TVL, to drive the growth of BTCFi. BTCFi on Avalanche has seen strong interest within the DeFi community as BTC.b currently stands as the second most supplied asset on Benqi Finance. The introduction of SolvBTC could bring in more users and liquidity to the network by providing more varied staking and lending opportunities. 

SEC approves hybrid Bitcoin-Ethereum ETFs 

The SEC has approved Nasdaq to list Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index US ETF and Cboe BZX Exchange to list Franklin Crypto Index ETF. This underscores the increasing regulatory friendliness towards the industry, a move that comes after the SEC approved spot BTC and ETH ETFs earlier this year and Trump’s recent election victory. These ETFs which are expected to begin trading in January next year are to adhere to regulatory guidelines by providing transparency over the underlying assets and pricing. The SEC's approval could encourage more crypto ETF providers to follow suit and fuel optimism for the approval of other products, such as Solana and XRP ETFs.  

Corn kickoffs Corn Maizenet 

On December 13, Corn’s native bridge powered by LayerZero went live allowing users to be able to seamlessly bridge their tokenized BTC from Ethereum to Corn, which is an Arbitrum Orbit network built for BTCFi. Initial launch will support the conversion of wBTC and cbBTC to BTCN with other wrapped versions in the pipeline. With more than $1B in TVL and a community larger than 400,000 people, its extensive integration with various DeFi protocols such as Curve, Zerolend, Camelot, Royco Protocol, allow more opportunities for BTC holders to optimize their yields in the recently announced Season 2 incentive campaign. 

HashKey Chain now live

HashKey Chain, an Ethereum L2 powered by the OP Stack is now live, joining the diverse suite of onchain offerings by HashKey Group. HashKey Chain recently launched its native token, $HSK, which will be an integral part of the HashKey ecosystem. To strengthen our commitment to the growth of the OP Stack ecosystem, HashKey Chain has also launched a $50M Atlas Grant Program, to support developers and innovative projects in scaling to reach mass adoption. The first phase allocates $10 million in HSK tokens, with applications open from December 10, 2024, to January 10, 2025. Grant recipients will be announced on January 20, 2025. 

Paradigm released Porto to power UX with EIP-7702

With EIP-7702 slated to be introduced during the Pectra Upgrade next year offering smart contract capabilities to EOAs, Paradigm has released Porto, a low level SDK that is seamlessly integrated with Privy and Wagmi to enhance UX through introduction of atomic batch calls, programmatic account creation, session keys among others. Porto will be compatible on any chain that has EIP-7702 and RIP-7212 deployed.

AI16z announced partnership with Stanford University’s Future of Digital Currency Initiative 

The team behind the famed AI agent, AI16z, has announced a partnership with Stanford University’s Future of Digital Currency Initiative to explore various use cases for autonomous AI Agents. Led by Stanford Professors David Mazieres and Dan Boneh, this collaboration expected to go live in Q1 2025 will further enhance the Eliza Framework to tackle issues relating to agent-to-agent trusts, coordination and use cases within DeFi. With a plethora of AI Agent frameworks in the market, this partnership with Stanford in addition to its extensive 34,000+ partner network serves to accelerate towards an AGI economy supported by Eliza Framework. 

Grass Network announced VALID (Video-Audio Large Interleaved Dataset)

After announcing the collection of over 600 million Reddit comments and posts using Grass in July this year, the platform has achieved another milestone in cooperation with Ontocord.AI and LAION.AI with the release of a multimodal dataset based off 720,000 CC0-licensed crawled Youtube videos, processed into audio, video, and text records. With more varied modalities beyond text, this opens up more applications for AI model training such as in contrastive multimodal learning. 

Virtuals Protocol launches AI Sandbox

Under this sandbox, developers can customize the AI Agent’s goals, personality, context and various functions that confer a unique identity to the AI Agent. As the leading launchpad for AI Agents, this further streamlines the development process for developers creating a strong pull factor that can bring in more users to its platform amidst the plethora of agentic frameworks rushing into the market. 

Hyperbolic Labs announced the launch of AgentKit

Hyperbolic Labs, a platform that provides GPU marketplace and verifiable inference service, has announced the launch of AgentKit. While other agentic frameworks allow AI Agents to engage in token trading, token transfers, social interactions, Hyperbolic’s AgentKit enables AI Agents to check GPU availability, independently manage and transact over compute resources. 

Story Protocol announced Agent TCP/IP

Story Protocol, an L1 blockchain for intellectual property, has introduced Agent TCP/IP. Using this framework, AI Agents are able to exchange training data with each other in a network that aims to become the incentive hub for IP. Tapping on its various partnerships with agentic frameworks in the market starting off with an integration with AI16z’s ELIZA, this marks an interesting development for IP, where we can anticipate greater accessibility to IP monetization in future. 

Ethena launched USDtb

USDtb, a stablecoin launched by Ethena in partnership with Securitize, is now live. Backed predominantly by BlackRock’s BUIDL (90%) and the rest by cash and cash equivalents, USDtb has a completely different risk profile as compared to USDe which maintains its value through a delta-neutral strategy of various crypto assets. Ethena’s Risk Committee has also approved a proposal to use USDtb as a reserve asset backing USDe, which can help to cushion volatility in USDe yields during market downturns. USDtb also launched as a LayerZero-powered OFT, enabling seamless transfers across Ethereum, Base, Solana and Arbitrum. Since launch, the token has soared to a circulating supply of $70M. 

RLUSD by Ripple goes live

On a year-to-date basis, Ripple has been one of the best performers with XRP rising more than 247% attributed to various factors such as legal victories against the SEC alongside Trump’s election victory which promises to usher in a friendlier crypto landscape. As the third largest project by market cap as of the time of writing, Ripple Labs has announced the launch of their own stablecoin RLUSD.  RLUSD, backed by USD deposits, cash equivalents, and U.S. government bonds, will initially be available on Uphold, Bitso, MoonPay, Archax, and CoinMENA, with additional listing to come. Since launch, the stablecoin has garnered more than $53M in circulating supply.

Usual Money plans to use USDtb as collateral for USD0. 

Usual Money, the issuer of the USD0 stablecoin, now the 6th largest with over $1.2B in circulation, announced it will use Ethena’s USDtb as collateral. Consequently, this would drive further demand for Ethena’s USDtb as well as BlackRock’s BUIDL, underscoring demand for yields coming from Real World Assets. As part of this partnership, Usual will also launch an sUSDe incentivized vault for USD0++ holders, providing them with yields from Ethena sUSDe, Ethena rewards and USUAL rewards. 

That’s all folks - here’s wishing you and your loved ones happy holidays and a very happy new year 2025🎊