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Layer 1 Berachain will airdrop just under 80 million of its BERA tokens to ecosystem and exchange users as the decentralized finance (DeFi)- focussed network goes live later on Thursday, per a release.
The total initial supply of BERA is 500 million tokens, with 48.9% allocated for community engagement, including airdrops, ecosystem development, and research. The airdrop distribution included testnet users, social media participants, and other community members. Token allocations can be viewed on the Berachain airdrop checker as of Thursday morning and can be claimed using various EVM wallets like Metamask and OKX Wallet.
“The BERA token distribution includes an airdrop of 15.75% to Berachain community members, applications, liquidity providers and more as recognition of their contributions to an incredibly robust pre-launch ecosystem, and their role in helping to make the fake chain real,” a Berachain post reads. Pre-launch markets for BERA values the token at $8, giving the airdrop a value of $632 million and the network a $4 billion market capitalization based on current speculation. These values are expected to shift wildly within 24 hours after BERA goes live.
The upcoming blockchain uses a proof-of-liquidity consensus mechanism to reward liquidity provision. In the past year, it has gained a cult following and an engaged social media community — with a catchphrase questioning if the chain "was even real?"
A pre-deposits application meant to bootstrap liquidity on Berachain racked up over $3 billion from users in under a week, as CoinDesk reported, indicative of the massive investor interest in the network. |
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Czechs End Cap Gains on Crypto |
Czech President Petr Pavel signed a bill on Thursday exempting crypto users from paying taxes on long term gains, a spokesperson from the country's Ministry of Finance told CoinDesk on Thursday. "The principle is if cryptoassets are held for more than three years, their sale will not be taxed, or transactions up to CZK 100,000 [$4,136] per year will not be obliged to report in the tax declaration, similar to securities," the spokesperson said. The Czech Republic's Digitalization of the Financial Markets Act is now at the final stage of the legislation process and will take a week or two to be officially published. The country is a member of the European Union (EU). One week ago, a proposal by Czech National Bank Governor Aleš Michl that the central bank consider adding additional assets, like bitcoin, to its reserves was approved by the bank board. The move was not well received by the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, who said she's confident bitcoin won't be entering the reserves of any of the EU central banks. |
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Net inflows to spot XRP tokens turned positive early Thursday after days of outflows, putting the token in focus following a record-breaking month for its native decentralized exchange (DEX).
Over $15 million in XRP flowed to centralized exchanges on Thursday led by deposits to Bybit and Kraken, Coinglass data shows. Spot inflows to exchanges may mark an intention to sell tokens on the open market, dampening chances of a rally. Meanwhile, 8-hour funding rates in the XRP perpetual futures markets stood at -0.0065% as of Thursday morning, implying a bias for short positions that profit from price drops. Notably, XRP's funding rates were more negative than ETH and BTC. Negative funding rates mean traders holding short positions are willing to pay a small fee to those with long positions to keep their bearish bets open. XRP trades below several key moving averages, with the 10-day exponential moving average (EMA) at $2.84 and 21-day EMA at $2.88. Trading below these moving averages suggests a bearish short-term outlook.
However, the 100-day simple moving average (SMA) is just above $2, and the 200-day SMA is at $1.30, both below the current price, indicating a bullish longer-term trend. Moving averages help identify trends by smoothing out price data, and the period readings used above are popularly used by retail traders. Meanwhile, immediate resistance at $2.49, followed by the $2.60 level. A move past these levels would revive the bullish outlook, setting the stage for a run to the $3 mark, which it breached in January for the first time since 2018.
XRP's 14-day relative strength index (RSI) — which measures magnitude of price changes — was just over 36 in Asian hours, placing it in the neutral zone. Traditionally, RSI values above 70 indicate overbought conditions, while values below 30 suggest oversold conditions. An RSI around 50 is considered neutral. |
Pump.Fun Hit With Token Desist Letter |
Two law firms that are involved in a proposed a class action suit against Pump.fun say they are now victims of tokens that are impersonating the firm's likeness, and are demanding in a cease and desist letter that the memecoin factory immediately remove them.
At the center of the controversy is a token called 'DOGSHIT2' a Solana-based memecoin that's up almost 200%, according to CoinGecko data.
It might be confusing to those not terminally online why a law firm would claim a canine excrement-themed token would violate its intellectual property, but references to the token being tied to one of the firm's wallets were found in exhibits initially filed by Burwick against Pump.fun which sought to demonstrate how easy it was to launch tokens on the platform. "Our firms have no affiliation, endorsement, or ownership interest in the Dogshit2 token or any related assets," Burwick Law wrote in a post on X. "Simply put, our firms have not launched any memecoins onchain."
Burwick Law also wrote on X that PumpFun launched tokens that it claims were designed to "intimidate our clients and interfere with ongoing litigation."
"These efforts include the creation of memecoins that impersonate our plaintiffs. These acts represent the use of blockchain technologies as a tool for disrupting justice and due process," Burwick Law wrote.
Burwick Law previously represented investors in a lawsuit against the creators of Hawk Tuah ($HAWK), alleging they exploited Hailey Welch’s internet fame to promote an unregistered security. |
The Takeaway: Fixing Ethereum |
By Hart Lambur, Risk Labs The Ethereum ecosystem stands at a pivotal moment. Over the past four years, scaling challenges have been addressed through Layer-2 (L2) solutions, rollups, and technological breakthroughs, expanding from processing 15 transactions per second to thousands, with costs dropping from $50 per swap to mere cents. The rollup-centric roadmap worked – it worked almost too well. This success has introduced an unexpected challenge: fragmentation. With over 50 L2s and more in development, Ethereum has become a maze of isolated chains. Users now juggle multiple networks, bridge assets, and navigate complex processes to perform basic actions. The irony? Transactions may be faster and cheaper, but the overall user experience sucks! Fragmentation is more than a minor inconvenience – it’s becoming an existential threat to Ethereum’s future. Users face the daunting tasks of managing multiple networks, bridging assets, and executing intricate processes. A simple action, such as buying a token, may require switching networks, bridging assets, and multiple transactions. Each step introduces friction, confusion, and opportunities for error. The impact on liquidity is even more severe. Capital becomes trapped in silos, reducing market efficiency and increasing costs for all participants. DeFi protocols struggle to maintain deep liquidity across multiple chains, forcing users into worse prices or convoluted multi-step processes. For developers, the situation is equally challenging. Choosing which L2s to support, managing multiple deployments, and building complex bridging infrastructure stifles innovation and raises barriers to entry for new projects. This is why we at Across, alongside Uniswap Labs, have proposed ERC-7683, a standard that allows Web3 apps to express complex multi-step crosschain transactions as a single user request that is executed by a shared network of relayers. By standardizing how these requests are expressed, ERC-7683 enables any crosschain action in the Ethereum ecosystem – irrespective of origin or destination chain – to feel as seamless as operating on a single chain.
ERC-7683 standard has undergone multiple rounds of community feedback and is broadly supported by over 50 protocols including major projects like Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism and it has the support of the Ethereum Foundation's L2 Interop working group.
At its core, ERC-7683 simplifies cross-chain operations. Instead of manually managing network switches and bridges, users express what they want to achieve. For example, swapping tokens on Base using funds from Arbitrum becomes a one-click process. Behind the scenes, a network of competitive solvers races to fulfill these intents within seconds, handling all the complexity. This intents-based architecture separates the user’s desired outcome from the mechanical execution, eliminating the need for users to understand or interact with bridges. The result is a “home base” experience, where users can interact with the entire Ethereum ecosystem as if it were one chain. Some argue that users don't care about cross-chain – they just want things to work. They're absolutely right. This is precisely where ERC-7683 comes into play. It enables developers to abstract away all the chain complexity while still leveraging the scale and efficiency of a multichain ecosystem. Users benefit from the best of both worlds: the simplicity of one chain with the power of many.
ERC-7683 is not theoretical, it is already being used in production through Across implementation, which has processed over $18B in cross-chain volume. The standard builds upon years of development of Across' solver network, extending it into an open and flexible framework that others can build upon.
Read the full op-ed here. |
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