Two more restaking-related protocols announced funding rounds this week, as venture investors look to gain exposure to EigenLayer’s burgeoning ecosystem.



Aligned Layer announced a $20 million Series A led by Hack VC. The round also drew participation from a spate of smaller crypto-focused venture firms. 



Aligned Layer plans to launch as an actively validated service (AVS) on EigenLayer. AVSs are products secured via EigenLayer’s restaking, which is a means of putting staked ether to use outside of securing Ethereum, drawing an extra layer of usage out of the capital providing Ethereum’s security. 



Read more: What was behind the run on Renzo’s liquid restaked ETH?



AVSs can be any kind of blockchain-related protocol or service, and the few already live on EigenLayer’s mainnet encompass things like data availability, rollup creation and oracle data. Notably, these AVSs have struggled to turn a profit so far, as EigenLayer is yet to enable in-protocol payments.



Aligned Layer is an EigenLayer-secured protocol for verifying zero-knowledge proofs, which are cryptographic proofs showing a statement to be true without revealing the contents of the statement. 



Aligned Layer hopes to make zero-knowledge proof verification cheaper. In a blog post explaining its decision to invest, Hack VC likened Aligned Layer to a data availability provider for zero-knowledge proofs.



Read more: 0G Labs raises $35M for data availability, spurring competition with Celestia, EigenLayer, others



Also this week, Othentic announced $4 million in seed funding led by Finality and Breyer Capital. Othentic offers a software stack that helps AVS developers spin up a distributed system based on EigenLayer’s shared security model.



Othentic “simplifies AVS development on EigenLayer with pre-built components, reduced engineering overhead and a faster time to market,” Nader Dabit, the director of developer relations at Eigen Labs, said on X. 



Movement Labs raises

Funding Wrap: Investors place more EigenLayer bets

The huge sums of money lost to crypto scams and frauds is probably the biggest financial looting in the history of the USA. 



The FBI recorded losses over $12.5 billion in 2023, 22% more than the previous year. The agency’s Internet Crime Center received a record 880,418 complaints from Americans about potential crypto and online thefts. Considering that most of the targeted individuals do not report their cases to law enforcement, these statistics imply an even more chilling reality. 



We need collective action to resolve this situation, from robust security solutions to innovative regulatory and policy frameworks. It’s the only way out — and many already affected are on borrowed time. 



We call upon community leaders, politicians and policymakers to step up and protect vulnerable communities. The present circumstances necessitate proactive and enduring measures from them. This is a battle between good and evil, where regulators and crypto innovators should be allies, not adversaries. 



Whether one likes it or not, crypto is here to stay: but it cannot persist in its current form. We must prioritize accountability and transparency to enable this groundbreaking technology to thrive and ensure that more people prosper in a secure financial landscape.



Let’s make crime illegal again. 



Strategic interventions are mission-critical



Washington DC must urgently take decisive action to protect consumers from the rampant frauds plaguing the crypto realm. 



With another bull cycle underway, the influx of new users and capital only heightens the risk. 



The US, the biggest financial superpower, is in dire need of a robust and unambiguous regulatory framework to effectively combat crypto-related crimes. The current lack thereof has left investors, traders and consumers vulnerable to significant risks. The fragmented oversight by agencies like the SEC, CFTC and IRS has created loopholes ripe for exploitation by hackers. Enforcing anti-money

Crypto crime is too easy

Anyone who says that cryptocurrency is useless needs to spend $50 in crypto to buy a goat in Kenya.



All the talk about creating a new type of finance — throwing off the shackles of Wall Street once and for all — boils down to how easy crypto has made it to sit in my apartment in New York City, push a few buttons on my phone, and name a goat after a post-Impressionist painter.




Vincent van goat is here pic.twitter.com/RsDAVgY4hl— richard opany (@OpanyRichard) April 24, 2024




But the story of Vincent Van Goat starts much earlier than that.



At the beginning of April, Twitter user Richard Opany responded to a Worldcoin promotional tweet with an interesting bit of information: “I use the coins to buy myself a goat during this Easter.” He then posted a picture of said goat, adding “thanks.”



Crypto Twitter was tickled by the idea of someone using what aims to be the future currency of a universal world income for its intended use case. Twitter personalities Nic Carter and Zack Voell responded to Opany with queries about how to buy more goats, and the goat race was on.



By checking the crypto wallets that Opany has posted to solicit goat donations, he seems to have received about $2,900 in 15 different tokens so far. That would break down to about 58 goats, if he had unlimited space in his goat house. To be clear, we don’t know that he doesn’t, as he recently shared that only 30 goats can be safely housed in his new, expanded goat enclosure. 



But who exactly is Richard Opany, crypto’s newest goat maven?



While the expected goat-themed memecoins have popped up around Opany’s goat business, he had maintained that he had no affiliation with any goat coins up until yesterday, when he shared his new role as marketing director at Goat Dzaddy, which, worriedly for Vincent Van Goat, has a GOAT MEAT token affiliation.



Speaking to Opany via DM, the most important thing that I wanted to get straight was the specifics of his new crypto

Crypto’s best use case? Buying goats on Twitter

It’s a sleepy Thursday morning in the West Village as I slip into Fairfax, a corner restaurant and bar where taxidermied game adorns the walls and patrons pick at $18 egg sandwiches. 



But instead of pulling out my credit card, I pull up my Blackbird Breakfast Club NFT and tap my phone on a small black device sitting next to the register to claim my free coffee.



The restaurant doesn’t serve drinks to go, so I sit alone with my laptop at a table set for two, working on an article as a server periodically refills my water glass. After finishing my coffee, I leave without paying, offering the wait staff an awkward smile in parting.



This may be the groundwork for mass crypto adoption.



Read more: NFTs are the new cookies



Blackbird is a blockchain-enabled restaurant loyalty app. Conceived by Resy co-founder Ben Leventhal, the app offers “airline points, but for restaurants” through its native token, FLY. FLY is generated when patrons do things like check into restaurants or pay their bill. FLY emissions are split 50/50 between the diner and the restaurant.



The tokens can currently be used like regular restaurant points for things like redeeming free appetizers, but Blackbird wants to “eventually allow users to take the points they earn anywhere they go on public blockchains.” When reached for comment on its plans to release a token amid the US’ fraught regulatory climate, Blackbird said it would be updating its white paper to address FLY’s utility “in the coming months.”



Blackbird raised $24 million in Series A funding led by a16z in October. 



In March, Blackbird began selling memberships to its so-called Breakfast Club. For $60, the pass, among other things, promised free coffee for a year (albeit only until 11 am ET) at a half-dozen Blackbird-enabled restaurants in New York City, with the promise of more locations to come.



Never one to pass up a good deal, I snagged a Breakfast Club membership before they sold out the next

I bought an NFT and all I got was free coffee for a year

US equities bounced Friday as positive big-tech earnings reports outweighed a disappointing inflation print that showed higher prices are proving more persistent than the Federal Reserve had hoped. Cryptocurrencies were little changed. 



The Fed’s preferred inflation measure showed prices increased 2.7% year-over-year in March. Analysts had called for a 2.6% increase. Excluding food and energy, the personal consumption expenditures price index showed a 2.8% annual increase last month, the Commerce Department reported Friday. 



The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes were trending 1% and 2% higher, respectively, midway through Friday’s session. Analysts say big tech stocks were the market’s saving grace as solid earnings reports from Alphabet and Microsoft had shares up 10% and 3%, respectively. 



Read more: Federal Reserve holds interest rates, expects three cuts by end of year 



“The share price reaction, although relatively muted, isn’t to be sniffed at,” analysts at Hargreaves Lansdown wrote in a note Friday on Microsoft stock. 



“The recent GDP reading from the US was bleaker than expected, and didn’t lend itself well to growth-stock sympathism,” Hargreaves Lansdown analysts added. “To that end, the market’s reaction to these results mean more than in usual times.”



Tech and growth stocks have underperformed recently and yields have increased, Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research said, so a correction was due. 



Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, moved sideways Friday after a fairly tumultuous week. Bitcoin (BTC) was trending 0.4% higher to sit around $63,600 at time of publication while ether (ETH) dipped 0.3% lower to $3,100, per Coinbase. 



Bitcoin, which hit as high as $67,200 earlier in the week, is now down about 1.5% in the first week since the halving. Ether on the other hand has managed to stay in the green, gaining just under 1% in the past seven days. 



Traders are looking ahead to next week’s

Stocks bounce, cryptocurrencies trade sideways despite disappointing inflation data 

Take it to the courts 



Headlines about yesterday’s legal salvo by Consensys against the SEC focused on what the tech firm’s complaint said about Ethereum. 



But the lawsuit has two major claims: 




Consensys wants a ruling that ETH is not a security and an injunction that says the SEC has to leave it alone when it comes to any ETH-as-a-security-related claims and charges; and  



Consensys wants a ruling that its MetaMask product is not a broker-dealer. 




The complaint further confirmed a few things the industry has been speculating about for months:




The SEC served Consensys several subpoenas in 2023 relating to ETH and the company’s involvement in improvement proposals and Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake, known as the Merge.  



Consensys received a Wells notice stating the SEC wanted to pursue an enforcement action against them for alleged securities law violations via its MetaMask Swaps and Staking products. 




The Wells notice, according to the complaint, didn’t seem to mention any charges against Consensys relating to ETH specifically. It begs the question, which I posed to X yesterday: why? 




q for the legal minds... we know the SEC likes to name some tokens as securities in separate lawsuits (like SOL in the Binance and Coinbase suits)if they really are targeting ethereum, as Consensys and others say, why not name ETH?— Casey Wagner (@caseywagnerr) April 25, 2024




As some pointed out, the SEC in 2018 said ETH was a commodity. (Thanks, Hinman.) In its complaint, Consensys said they planned their entire business strategy based on this “regulatory consensus” (excellent word choice.) 



Read more: SEC seeks to regulate ETH as a security, Consensys alleges in lawsuit



But since then, Gary Gensler has been coy. He refused to give a “yes” or “no” when asked point-blank if ETH was a security during a 2023 hearing before Congress. 



Another person chimed in that the statute of limitations on ICO charges — five

Empire Newsletter: Unpacking the Consensys legal salvo

A choice of programming language is not the be-all and end-all of smart contract development. But it does influence the security, efficiency and accessibility of blockchain applications.



Each language comes with its own set of capabilities and limitations that can impact how contracts are executed, the potential for vulnerabilities, and the ease of finding and fixing errors. 



Algorand is becoming the first layer-1 blockchain to adopt Python as its canonical language, in what the Algorand Foundation Chief Technology Officer John Woods calls a “seismic change.”



"Python is a massive step forward on the roadmap towards removing all barriers to entry for developers," said Woods.



With over 10 million developers worldwide, it’s perhaps surprising that the language has been historically overlooked by smart contract platforms, given that the total pool of specialized smart contract developers remains relatively tiny.



Read more: Electric Capital finds veteran Web3 devs are on the rise



Mariano Dominguez, software developer at Vestige.fi, an Algorand-based DeFi dapp, told Blockworks there are a few reasons for this.



For one, “most chains that have a smart contract execution layer operate in a resource constraint scenario that isn't typical in modern development environments,” Dominguez said. “Because of this, it's oftentimes easier and cheaper to build a Domain Specific Language (so Solidity, PyTEAL/TEAL, or Move for example), than it is to integrate a "normal" language since you can exercise these limitations from the get go.”



TEAL was Algorand’s earlier smart contract language and PyTEAL was a mechanism to call TEAL instructions from a Python file.



The difference now, the Foundation told Blockworks, is that native Python is compiled to the bytecode of the Algorand Virtual Machine (AVM), making it compatible with Python-native tooling, including testing suites.



That sets it apart from both PyTEAL and languages like Vyper for the

Algorand courts Python devs in ‘seismic change’

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN) project MapMetrics will leave the Solana ecosystem and migrate to peaq, a layer-1 solution designed specifically for DePIN and Machine real-world assets (RWAs).



MapMetrics is a drive-to-earn project that rewards users with tokens and NFTs for providing anonymous live traffic and map data. Similar to DePIN project Hivemapper, the team hopes to create a decentralized global map using Web3 technology. 



Read more: ‘Drive-to-earn’ app aims to bootstrap ‘dynamic maps’ with crypto rewards



Brent van der Heiden, co-founder at MapMetrics, told Blockworks that the decision was made as peaq offered a variety of modular DePin functionality.



“Peaq ID, a decentralized multi-chain machine identity, enables the network to prioritize real machines in times of high load,” Heiden said. “The Modular Functions, such as the DePIN data verification framework, will also help us further expand our DePIN's own features.”



Additionally, Heiden notes there are a handful of potential synergies in the wider peaq ecosystem, including with other DePINs and its enterprise partners, which may enable the team to secure new partnerships to build out demand for the project. 



“Peaq's community includes thousands of DePIN enthusiasts, which will help us grow, and the Machine Composability that comes with using the same identity standard across the ecosystem will help us tap into the pool of devices already on peaq,” Heiden said.



The transition process will be completed over multiple phases, beginning with smart contract deployments on peaq, followed by moving core business logic over to the layer-1. Afterwards, native token minting will also be available on peaq, and a bridging option will be available to existing holders. 



Despite MapMetric’s decision to leave the Solana ecosystem, the blockchain remains a popular home for many DePIN projects today. 



Read more: DePin projects have gained momentum on Solana

MapMetrics ditches Solana blockchain for peaq

Consensys, the company behind MetaMask, filed a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Texas court on Thursday.



The complaint alleges regulatory overreach by the SEC.



“The US Securities and Exchange Commission seeks to regulate ETH as a security, even though ETH bears none of the attributes of a security — and even though the SEC has previously told the world that ETH is not a security, and not within the SEC’s statutory jurisdiction,” Consensys wrote in the filing. 



The SEC, under Chair Gary Gensler, is allegedly attempting to make a power grab, the company argued. 



“In August 2021, within months of becoming the SEC’s Chair, Gensler vowed to ‘take [the agency’s] authorities as far as they go’ in pursuit of crypto. Soon thereafter, the SEC doubled the size of its crypto enforcement unit and ramped up investigations of participants in the digital asset market,” Consensys said.



Read more: Ether is the Schrödinger’s cat of crypto



The SEC, Consensys continued, already declared that ETH was not a security in 2018. At the time, then-SEC employee William Hinman gave a speech that clarified ETH didn’t constitute a security under the regulator’s rules.



“Recognizing Ethereum’s lack of any centralized managing authority, the SEC’s director of corporation finance stated that ‘current offers and sales of Ether are not securities transactions,’” the suit said. 



“Hinman’s representations about ETH reflected the considered judgment of the SEC and its leadership,” the suit claimed.



The Texas suit also reveals that Consensys was served with a Wells Notice earlier this month, revealing that the agency could take potential action against the company at a later date.



“On April 10, 2024, the SEC staff sent Consensys a ‘Wells Notice’ stating its intent to imminently recommend that the Commission bring an enforcement action against Consensys for violating the federal securities laws

SEC seeks to regulate ETH as a security, Consensys alleges in lawsuit

Global payments company Stripe announced that it was going to start allowing crypto payments on Thursday at the company’s Global Internet Economy conference. 



Speaking at the final keynote, titled the Future of Payments, Stripe’s president John Collison,  said, “our history with crypto goes back a long time.” He cited the company’s now-defunct bitcoin support back in 2018 because it wasn’t being used. 



“We're excited to announce that we're bringing back crypto as a way to accept payments, but this time with a much better experience,” he announced.



Due to the fact that crypto has more use cases and, as Collison’s presentation said, “crypto’s back,” Stripe decided to bring back crypto payments. 



“Crypto is finding real utility,” Collison said. “With transaction speeds increasing and costs coming down, we’re seeing crypto finally making sense as a means of exchange.”



The feature, he added, will be available later this summer. 



The company hasn’t made any crypto-centric announcements since last year. 



Read more: Payment company Stripe enables crypto payouts in USDC



Collison told Axios last spring that the company saw potential in crypto, though it wasn’t going to switch its strategy to focus more on the space.



Collison said at the time that, despite the fact that some of their early crypto products faced a lack of demand, the company was still interested in the role crypto could play in the future.



Just last May, Stripe debuted a fiat-to-crypto onramp.



“The embeddable onramp is helpful for Web3 companies that want to fully customize the branding and customer experience, while the Stripe-hosted option provides an even easier way for users to get started,” the company said in a press release at the time.







Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Stripe to bring back crypto payments in the next few months

Cryptocurrencies and US equities slipped Thursday morning as economic data fueled concerns of stagflation. 



Gross domestic product (GDP), which broadly measures goods and services produced in the first quarter, increased at 1.6% year-over-year, missing analysts’ expectations of 2.4%, data from the Commerce Department showed. This latest reading is a sharp decline from the fourth quarter of 2023, which showed GDP increased 3.4%. 



Consumer spending also trended lower, increasing 2.5% between January and March, a decline from the 3.4% gain posted in the last quarter of 2023. 



Bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) dipped on the report, losing as much as 2% each in the hour after the release. Stocks similarly declined, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes trading 1.3% and 1.7% lower, respectively. 



“The GDP miss likely took investors off-guard — particularly with how solid some of this year’s economic reports have been and with strength in the labor market,” Bret Kenwell, US investment and options analyst at eToro, said. “It’s not necessarily a report to panic over, but it’s one to pay attention to.”



Traders are now looking ahead to Friday’s Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge. Expectations are that the headline index will increase 0.3% month-over-month, the same change clocked in February. 



Read more: Former NY Fed compliance chief joins Binance US board



Year-over-year core PCE inflation is supposed to dip slightly from 2.8% to 2.6%. Another disappointing surprise, though, is not unlikely. The Cleveland Fed’s model is showing real-time inflation is closer to 3%. 



Central bankers are not looking terribly optimistic; they opted to increase their economic projections in March to put core PCE annual growth for 2024 at 2.6%, up from their previous prediction of 2.2%. 



“Even the Federal Reserve, yes, they of the ‘transitory’ camp, see no change in

Cryptocurrencies, equities slide on slowing economic growth 

A federally chartered bank is now offering settlement of US dollars and crypto assets for buy- and sell-side institutions. 



Crypto-focused Anchorage Digital unveiled its new settlement network, called Atlas, in a Thursday announcement. Atlas has already settled hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto since its “early access launch” earlier this year, the company said.



Atlas users can access counterparties that include clients of Anchorage Digital and its Singapore subsidiary. On-chain settlement ensures the assets are not commingled and don’t leave on-chain addresses until settlement occurs, according to the bank.



“Atlas participants are not reliant on settlement providers’ books,” a spokesperson told Blockworks. “Our regulatory status and security profile represent a major unlock for institutions, with Atlas advancing a new era for safe and secure settlement across the industry.” 



Initial users of the network include venture capital firm CoinFund and the clearinghouse affiliate of institution-focused crypto exchange EDX Markets, as well as crypto brokerage firm Nonco.



CoinFund President Chris Perkins said in a statement that the network mitigates counterparty risk while “cultivating deep, liquid and accessible markets.”



“Atlas offers the greatest level of security, paired with the best speed and efficiency,” EDX Clearing CEO Tony Acuña-Rohter added. “These features allow us to minimize delivery risk for time-sensitive transactions.” 



Anchorage Digital became a bank chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in January 2021 — a distinction the company’s executives and users of the bank have highlighted in recent months.



Anchorage meets the Securities and Exchange Commission’s definition of a “qualified custodian,” CEO Nathan McCauley has said — a term included in the regulator’s February 2023 proposal that would “entrust safekeeping of client assets” to such entities.