The Empire Newsletter

Kick off your day with essential news, insights, and information about the world of crypto, brought to you by the Blockworks News team.

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How Arch Labs plans to deploy $13M raise

11 hours ago | blockworks.co | Katherine Ross

ICYMI: Arch Labs announced a $13 million raise with the goal of launching a bitcoin virtual machine. The Series A round was led by Pantera Capital. "We're at a pivotal moment-both for Arch and for Bitcoin. Bitcoin has seen massive growth and institutional acceptance, but the mempool tells a different story: Not enough on-chain activity is driving sustained fees for miners," CEO Matt Mudano told me. "This raise allows us to scale engineering, grow our community and support a new wave of builders.
Restaking goes 'universal'

1 day ago | blockworks.co | Macauley Peterson

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, . Restaking is evolving. What started as an Ethereum-native capital efficiency play is now transforming into a cross-chain economic coordination layer that spans protocols, assets and use cases. Symbiotic announced today a $29 million Series A, led by Pantera Capital, to launch its Universal Staking Framework. The move goes toward supporting any asset securing any network - L1 or L2, modular or integrated.
What Bitcoin's Satoshi and Patrick Bateman have in common

1 day ago | blockworks.co | Pete Rizzo

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, . The final known Satoshi email was sent to Mike Hearn, one of the earliest Bitcoin contributors and former Google engineer, in April 2011. By that point, Bitcoin had been running for 840 days, or less than two and a half years. Satoshi previously said they had been working on Bitcoin's design since 2007 - so at most they were active in Bitcoin development for about four years.
What Jesse Pollak would've done differently in launching 'Base is for everyone'

1 day ago | blockworks.co | Katherine Ross

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, . Since last week, Base's Jesse Pollak has been very busy posting about content coins and prompting folks in his replies to coin everything, though that's come with some mixed results. Before we get into Pollak's bullish thought process, I asked him about the now-deleted post promoting an image of a girl from Hinge being coined.
Memecoins are 'objectively' the most successful crypto product: Analyst - Blockworks

2 days ago | blockworks.co

Dek: Zora's announcement that its token is for "fun only" sparked a debate about the need for such tokens.
A year after the Bitcoin halving, how much does 1 BTC cost to mine?

2 days ago | blockworks.co | Pete Rizzo

We all know halvings double the cost of production, a fact the media tends to dress up as an existential threat to Bitcoin every four years. Miners seeking profit must also contend with fluctuating difficulty and energy costs. But if the price goes up, at least they'd get more money for every coin they mine. At $88,500, bitcoin is ahead by 36% since the halving.
Kado Software acquired by Swapped.com

3 days ago | blockworks.co | Katherine Ross

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, . M&A szn is still going strong. Kado Software, the Web3 payments infrastructure company, was acquired by Swapped.com. The team declined to disclose the terms of the deal, but it plans to grow the US operations for Swapped.com, which is a Denmark-based firm. Emery Andrew, Kado's founder, told me that the team's been weighing its options for a while - from debating a fundraise to looking for the right fit to acquire it.
Inside a16z Crypto's $55M ZRO purchase

3 days ago | blockworks.co | Katherine Ross

"I think the industry a year ago was messy, was very competitive," LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino told me. But it's been "cleared up" thanks to the friendlier environment and overall adoption. Last month, the company saw $6 billion in transfers, he added, and $100 billion worth of assets were built on LayerZero. Admittedly, Pellegrino added, he still thinks of crypto as an underdog industry, one that's fairly small.
How Strike is rewiring global money

6 days ago | blockworks.co | Pete Rizzo

Rizzo, the Bitcoin Historian here, back this week with the story of one of the younger Bitcoin legends - I'm talking about the one, the only Jack Mallers. If you've seen Jack in any of the dozens of interviews he's given from his large, empty closet, you know he's an eloquent defender of Bitcoin. You may not know his long road to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Before his work on Strike, he had a few Bitcoin startup ideas that didn't quite work.
DeFi Education Fund advocates for safe harbor

6 days ago | blockworks.co | Casey Wagner

As new leadership prepares to take over the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a crypto advocacy group believes now is the time to revive a 2020 proposal, Blockworks has exclusively learned. The DeFi Education Fund is asking the SEC to establish a "safe harbor" for token issuers, allowing them a limited registration exemption while they develop decentralized networks. It's an idea Commissioner Hester Peirce first floated five years ago.