Pythians Unite | Newsletter #49

Welcome back to The Pythiad, the official newsletter of the Pyth Network. Fresh updates on all things DeFi await you. Let’s get right into it.

What’s New with Pyth

• This week, Pythians from far and wide gathered at ETHDenver, met IRL, and heard first-hand what’s next for the Web3 industry. See you at the WOW Summit and ETHTaipei next!
• The first proposal for approving the final list of Pythian Council members kicked off on Feb 22n and concluded on Feb 29 at 12:00 AM UTC. Final votes were cast on Realms, and the 8 nominees who received the most YES votes will now become the first official members of the Council.
• Blast, the new Ethereum Layer 2, launched its mainnet on February 29. Pyth Price Feeds and Entropy went live on Blast mainnet shortly after on day one. Over 20 dApps are already tapping into Pyth Data to secure their operations.

What’s New with DeFi

Regulatory

• The IRS’s most recent hires include crypto insiders and supporters. These new hires include Sulolit “Raj” Mukherjee, the former global head of tax at Consensys, and Seth Wilks, the former vice president of government relations at crypto tax software firm TaxBit.
• SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce says that regulators are stuck in an “enforcement only” mode. She expressed "frustration" with a lack of clear rules and noted the need for regulatory frameworks and clarity from the SEC.

Technology and Development

• The Delta hard fork, implemented across various Optimism-based chains, has led to a serious reduction in fixed overhead costs and fees for the L1. 
• Blast, an Ethereum L2 scaling network, officially launched on mainnet.
• AI tokens – assets that are tied to AI services or platforms – are offering new innovations. These cryptocurrencies have the potential to facilitate transactions, access services, and incentivize behaviors within AI-driven ecosystems

Stablecoins

• Finance protocol Usual introduces USD0, a permissionless stablecoin backed by real-world assets (RWAs). Holders of the stablecoin may be rewarded with yields generated by these RWAs.

Ecosystems

• Bitcoin is hitting ATHs around the world according to reports. While it has not reached its November 2021 ATH in US dollar terms, it has breached record highs in local currencies in many international markets.
• Solana’s prices hit a 22-month high and outperformed Bitcoin this past week according to commentators.
• More than 110,000 Ordinals wallets are eligible for the Runestones Airdrop. This project is led by LeonidasNFT, an Ordinals collector and NFT historian.
• Tron hits a new all time high in daily fees. As the network of choice for stablecoin transfers, the network is now generating almost $2M in daily protocol revenue.
• Bitcoin ETFs are now almost 4% of all bitcoin, according to Blockworks.

Exchanges

• Robinhood is teaming up with Arbitrum to allow the users of its Robinhood Wallet to access swaps on the L2. 
• Users across Coinbase, CoinGecko, and Robinhood are reporting outages amidst the crypto market rally.

Community Shoutout

This week, we’ve received some amazing artwork by Pythians onlyrandomwords, ROBBOT17_ART, ayo_bandara, and an anonymous contributor. Keep them coming!

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