Weekly hot project updates: Ethereum's stablecoin supply hits all-time high, Polygon plans $100 million funding to expand into stablecoin payments, Across becomes a U.S.-based company, and more (April 5 - April 11)

1. Ethereum's stablecoin supply surpasses $1.8 trillion, reaching an all-time high

Ethereum's stablecoin supply surpasses $1.8 trillion, reaching an all-time high, growing by 150% over the past three years; currently, Ethereum holds 60% of the market share in the stablecoin sector. Token Terminal forecasts that, under the most optimistic scenario, $17 trillion could be on-chain within the next four years, and even if Ethereum's market share drops to 50%, inflows of approximately $8.5 trillion may still occur by 2023.

2. Circle's L1 chain Arc releases quantum-resistant design and roadmap

Circle's L1 blockchain Arc releases quantum-resistant design and roadmap, proposing a phased approach to achieve full-stack quantum resistance, covering wallet authorization, private state, validator authentication, and infrastructure, while introducing a quantum-resistant signature mechanism on the mainnet using an opt-in approach to avoid forced migration. The roadmap outlines advancements in quantum-resistant private state protection, infrastructure upgrades (including TLS 1.3), and validator signature reinforcement. Circle notes that quantum computing may pose a threat to public-key cryptography by 2030 or earlier and warns about the 'harvest now, decrypt later' risk.

Polygon Labs plans to raise up to 100 million USD to expand into the stablecoin payment business

Polygon Labs is in preliminary discussions to raise up to 100 million USD, with plans to launch a new stablecoin payment service aimed at boosting stablecoin trading volume on its blockchain. This marks a rare move for a blockchain development entity entering the regulated payments sector. In January this year, Polygon Labs partnered with Coinme and Sequence, positioning itself to compete with companies like Stripe.

The number of BNB Chain wallets reaches 800 million

BNB Chain's official Twitter announced that the total number of wallets on its chain has now reached 800 million, with millions of users, applications, and bots interacting on-chain. As of February this year, BNB Chain reported that its cumulative active addresses had surpassed 2 billion.

The market capitalization of tokenized assets on BNB Chain has reached 16.6 billion USD, setting a new all-time high. The leading core assets are stablecoins, including USDT, USYC, USD1, and USDC. The largest tokenized stock asset is CRCLon, ranking 9th in terms of market capitalization on the chain.

THORChain: Privacy coin Monero is expected to go live on the mainnet within 1-2 months, with Bittensor being developed in parallel

Privacy coin Monero is expected to go live on the mainnet within 1-2 months. The chain client has passed simulation testing and entered the code review and testnet phase. Meanwhile, Bittensor is under parallel development, with plans to launch alongside XMR, while Zcash aims to integrate by the end of April. The core challenge in this integration lies in observability issues with privacy chains, which the team plans to address by introducing a multi-signature mechanism based on Frost and a dedicated validation node structure.

TON successfully activates Catchain 2.0, increasing block speed by 6x and expected annual inflation rate to 3.6%

The TON Foundation announced that the proposal for Catchain 2.0 upgrade has passed and was officially activated on April 9th at 15:00 UTC+8. This upgrade increases TON’s block generation speed by approximately 6 times, enabling near-instant transaction experiences. With per-block rewards unchanged (1.7 TON for the main chain and 1.0 TON for the base chain), the faster block production will significantly boost validators’ earnings per validation cycle, raising TON’s annual inflation rate from about 0.6% to around 3.6%. Additionally, TON will retain its burning mechanism (burning 50% of transaction fees).

Covenant AI announces withdrawal from Bittensor and questions its decentralized governance

Covenant AI founder Sam Dare released a statement announcing that the company has exited the Bittensor network, citing its governance structure as inconsistent with its 'decentralization' commitment. The statement revealed that Jacob Steeves (Const) had implemented measures such as suspending subnet emissions, removing community administrative rights, unilaterally abandoning subnets, and pressuring through token sales without transparent consensus decision-making. It also highlighted Bittensor's 'tri-headed structure' of three-person multisig management, but noted that actual control is concentrated in Jacob Steeves, who can unilaterally deploy changes. Covenant AI stated it could no longer operate on this network and would continue to advance decentralized, permissionless artificial intelligence training.

WLFI responds to doubts about lending positions, stating no liquidation risk and the ability to add more collateral

The strategic reserve wallet of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency project, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), transferred 3 billion WLFI tokens, worth approximately $295 million, into a newly created multisig wallet over the past few days. These were subsequently deposited as collateral into Dolomite, borrowing 65.4 million USD1 and 10.3 million USDC. Among these, 40.4 million USD1 and 300,000 USDC were transferred to Coinbase Prime. In previous weeks, the strategic reserve wallet had already deposited 1.99 billion WLFI into Dolomite, cumulatively accounting for about 5% of WLFI's total supply.

As of April 10 data, WLFI accounts for approximately 55% of Dolomite's platform-wide liquidity supply of $458.9 million out of a total supply of $835.7 million. Specifically, in the USD1 pool, $167.5 million out of $180 million has been borrowed, reflecting a utilization rate of around 93%. Only about $12.5 million in available liquidity remains in the pool, making it practically difficult for large depositors to fully withdraw funds. The pool’s utilization rate once reached 100%. The supply interest rate for USD1 is 16.24%, while the borrowing rate is 9.18%. This interest rate structure reflects concentrated lending activity dominated by a single large borrower rather than broad organic demand. Risks are also prominent on the collateral side, as the market depth for WLFI tokens is extremely limited, with daily trading volumes far below the scale of collateral. If a sharp price drop triggers Dolomite’s liquidation mechanism, forced selling would crash the token price before the collateral could be unwound, leaving bad debt ultimately borne by ordinary depositors who currently cannot exit.

WLFI responded to market concerns regarding its lending positions on WLFI Markets, stating that as both the primary supplier and borrower, it operates by borrowing stablecoins against WLFI collateral. It claims there is no current liquidation risk, and additional collateral can be added if necessary. The project stated that this structure provides liquidity and generates revenue for the platform, with USD1 currently yielding annualized income of approximately $159.5 million. A governance proposal will also be submitted to unlock early holders’ locked tokens.

On April 11, WLFI repaid a $25 million USD1 loan on Dolomite, restoring the platform’s USD1 available liquidity to approximately $35 million. Meanwhile, the annualized deposit rate for USD1 on Dolomite has dropped to 10.43%, slightly higher than USDC’s 9.07% and USDT’s 7.74%. WLFI still has an outstanding loan balance of approximately $162 million on the platform, including 152 million USD1 and 10.31 million USDC, backed by about 4.99 billion WLFI as collateral, valued at approximately $402 million at current prices.

Across Protocol DAO governance passed a proposal with 91.51% support to transition the protocol from a tokenized DAO structure to a U.S.-based corporation.

The Across Protocol DAO governance proposal has officially passed with 91.51% voting support to transition the protocol from a tokenized DAO structure to a U.S. C-corporation named AcrossCo. According to the proposal, ACX holders can choose to exchange their tokens for company shares at a 1:1 ratio or sell their tokens at $0.04375 per token, representing a 25% premium over the average price in the 30 days prior to the proposal's announcement. The proposal also includes gradually phasing out the DAO framework, with the new entity taking over protocol IP, development, and commercial partnerships.

Lightning Labs has introduced a prototype rescue tool for Bitcoin quantum-resistant wallets, enabling fund recovery without mnemonic seed phrases.

Lightning Labs Chief Technology Officer Olaoluwa Osuntokun has developed the first operational prototype of a Bitcoin quantum-resistant wallet rescue tool. Designed for emergency quantum defense upgrades, this solution prevents millions of wallets from being permanently frozen due to the deactivation of existing signature systems. It allows users to mathematically prove they are the creators of their wallets without revealing mnemonic seed phrases, thereby regaining access to their funds. Currently operational, the prototype takes about 55 seconds to generate proofs on a high-end MacBook and less than 2 seconds to verify, though no official BIP or clear deployment timeline exists yet.

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