Yassine Elmandjra, Head of Digital Assets at Ark Invest, announced on X Platform that today is his last day with the company after more than six years, and expressed his gratitude to CEO Cathie Wood and the ARK Invest team for the experiences and memories.

Hyperliquid said on the X platform that the community has played a key role in the development of the ecosystem and its feedback is highly valued. Recently, there have been some misunderstandings about validators. Hereby clarify: ① All validators are qualified based on testnet performance and cannot obtain seats through purchase; the relevant false statements belittle the efforts of those validators who have invested time and energy to understand the system; as the blockchain matures, the validator set will gradually expand. ② As previously announced, a foundation delegation program will be launched to support high-performing validators and further decentralize the network. ③ Anyone can run an API server pointing to any node; the sample client code sends requests to a specific API server, but this is not a basic requirement of the network. ④ Yes, it is unacceptable for users to try to create a black market for the testnet HYPE; this has been stated many times; we will continue to work hard to improve the onboarding process of the testnet. ⑤ Yes, the node code is currently closed source; open source is important, and the project will be open source after development enters a stable state; Hyperliquid's development speed is several orders of magnitude faster than most projects, and its scope is also several orders of magnitude larger than most projects; the code will be open source when it is safe. ⑥ Yes, there is only one binary file at present. Even on a very mature network like Solana, the vast majority of validators run a single client.

Wang Yongli, former vice president of the Bank of China, published an article titled "A Rational View of Trump's New Bitcoin Policy" in the 1st issue of "China Foreign Exchange" in 2025. The article pointed out that Bitcoin highly imitates gold at the "currency" level, and is therefore called "digital gold". However, Bitcoin is a purely chain-born digital asset, not a natural physical asset. Its value depends on the development space of its application scenarios and people's faith and investment. Bitcoin can be divided into small units of one billionth, which is more flexible in payment, but it is not backed by real gold. It is not "paper gold" in the strict sense. Once trust is lost, it will be wiped out and worthless, and the risks are far greater than gold.

Binance Futures will launch perpetual contracts with a maximum leverage of 75x at the following time: January 8, 2025, 15:00 (ET): SONICUSDT perpetual contracts.

This report deeply analyzes the underlying reasons for the underperformance of Web3 games in the 2024 bull market, revealing the industry's major progress from the surge in user numbers to the entry of traditional gaming giants, as well as its transformation process of seeking breakthroughs through innovative paths such as social platform integration and AI empowerment.

Xen Baynham-Herd, founder of the on-chain browser and search engine Roam, announced on the X platform that the Roam team and its co-founders (Xen Baynham-Herd, Selfishfish.eth and jagra.base.eth) have joined Coinbase to help accelerate the company's efforts in the on-chain consumer space. Baynham-Herd said: "We are gradually closing the Roam application and joining Coinbase because here we can make the greatest impact by building products that support this new open financial system."

The first season of ZKsync's incentive program Ignite has been launched. Season 1 will last from January 6 to March 31, distributing 100 million ZK tokens to DeFi users who provide liquidity in DEX, lending, and contracts.

Blockchain game brand Illuvium recently announced a partnership with Virtuals Protocol to upgrade non-player characters (NPCs) in its games. Virtuals is the technology protocol behind the popular AI agents on the X platform. The partnership will leverage Virtual's GAME AI model framework to enable NPCs in Illuvium's three beta games to dynamically adjust dialogues, tasks or challenges based on player behavior, improving the interactivity and diversity of the gaming experience. The Virtuals team gave an example that players' interactions with NPCs in the game will be more realistic. For example, players can choose to anger the bartender NPC, causing it to attack, or receive customized rewards through friendly interactions. This dynamic interaction will run through every scene in the game, creating endless story possibilities.