GM to our new frens as well as Ambire vets!

Welcome to the latest edition of Web3 on Fire by Ambire! In this weekly series, we bring you all the hottest news and updates from the crypto space 🚀 

Today we’re talking about:

• 🏎️ 2024 bull run: we're just getting started!

• 🤑 W3OF Portfolio - read on to find out what that is!

• 💰️ ETH is now the third largest institutional crypto asset!

• 🎩 Seneca gets hacked, but hackers return the money

• 📨 Telegram unveils revenue sharing - TON is PUMPING

2024 bull run: we're just getting started!

• 2024 has been very promising for the crypto world, with record-breaking achievements and widespread adoption.

• The most notable accomplishment being BTC's shocking pump to a near fresh ATH of over $64,000, a feat that seemed impossible just a year ago when its price was struggling at around $17,000.

🧠 Various experts started pointing out the reasons for this surge, with some starting to call it the "pre-halving rally."

But the fact is, the mainstream adoption of BTC and other crypto has been on the rise, with many major companies and even financial giants like Visa announcing their support for digital currencies 👇️ 

We're back

The institutions are here.

🪙 Businesses and the governments are starting to see the potential of crypto, and the people have grown more comfortable with the idea.

For example, take the recent speculation surrounding Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest individual globally and CEO of Amazon, allegedly acquiring a significant amount of BTC 🤔 

This conjecture arose following a post by Apollo co-founder Thomas Fahrer on Twitter, in which he discusses the potential link between Bezos' recent sale of Amazon stocks and BTC (rumor was started because Bezos was hanging out with Michael Saylor from MicroStrategy).

As always in crypto, popular altcoins reflect the success of Bitcoin's epic run, with some even outperforming the leading crypto 🏎️ 🏁 

For instance, decentralized exchange Uniswap's UNI, Filecoin's FIL, and popular meme token Dogecoin (DOGE) have been among the top performers this year.

SHIB, the second-largest memecoin, has also demonstrated remarkable strength. In fact, the siblings' price action has mirrored each other's closely for quite some time 🐶 

Is that it?

If you take on-chain data into account, there's much more to look forward to.

📆 compared to 2021, when crypto exchange apps were the #1 top downloaded apps on the stores and BTC's price dominated news cycles, we haven't seen that much hype yet.

👉️ The transaction fees on Bitcoin and Ethereum networks have also been relatively stable, with no significant spikes like we saw last bull run during the DeFi boom.

This only shows that there's a huge potential for growth in crypto, and we're just scratching the surface.

💰️ with this kind of price support, new investors are expected to enter the market and push adoption to even greater heights, so we could really see the prices double or even quadruple if we ever to see the same hype as the last time.

But for now, let's just enjoy this steady growth and keep an eye out for any potential catalysts that could send prices pumping once again, because in the crypto world, anything can happen at any given moment.

W3OF Portfolio

Rise and shine, W3OF traders 🌅 We're kicking off W3OF Portfolio - it's time to find out if we’re trading masters or just a bunch of clueless degens throwing darts.

Starting with a $1000 portfolio (500 USDT on Arbitrum & 500 USDT on Optimism - address 0x5F46a9f7E04D78Fdb38de0c975D9CA07925Fe5B0), we'll collectively decide on the tokens to buy and sell to moon this portfolio 🚀

Fast forward, when bathing in gains and when we collectively decide to liquidate the portfolio… one of the most engaged and degen contributors in votings and Discord chat will walk away with 40% of the entire portfolio 🧨 

What about the other 60%? Get creative, as we’ll vote on the wildest proposals.

Read on…

Here’s what will happen:

1. Join #web3-on-fire channel in Ambire’s Discord, suggest coins for purchase, and argue with others.

2. The most requested tokens will be included in a poll in the next week's newsletter ✉️.

3. The Top 4 voted tokens will be purchased evenly with 250 USDT each.

4. Next portfolio adjustments will be done with upcoming poll results and discussions in #web3-on-fire Ambire Discord channel.

5. Lobster or noodles - it's up to you!

LFG 🚀

ETH is now the third largest institutional crypto asset!

• ETH became the third-biggest crypto asset in terms of institutional allocation 💎 

• Institutions are now over-allocating their portfolios to ETH, according to a new report from Bybit.

The report suggests what you already guessed: institutions are bullish on Bitcoin and Ether, with a portfolio concentration of 80%.

👉️ This represents a significant increase in allocation compared to retail traders with a lower concentration in these assets and a higher tilt towards altcoins.

The rally of ETH so far this year has outpaced BTC, with a 33% increase driven by factors such as its deflationary supply since the shift to proof-of-stake, low levels of ETH held on exchanges, and increased staking activity 🥩 

Plus, growth in Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem, layer-2 networks, and the anticipated "Dencun" upgrade have all been catalysts for its performance.

This market sentiment has shifted since December when Bybit published its last report showing institutions were more bullish on BTC, mixed on ETH, and were moving more of their altcoin holdings into BTC in anticipation of the ETF approval.

But that’s no longer the case, as institutions have significantly reduced their altcoin positions and are focusing more on ETH and stable assets like layer-1 tokens and DeFi protocols.

Seneca gets hacked, but hackers return the money

Seneca, a stablecoin protocol, has recently received attention after it offered a 20% bounty to the hacker who exploited an approval mechanism bug in the project's smart contract and gained access to approximately $6.4 million 🥷 

• The exploit was first flagged by multiple blockchain security firms on February 28th, including CertiK who warned users to revoke approvals from an address on the Ethereum and Arbitrum networks.

• Initial estimates of the losses were at $3 million, but it was later discovered that over 1,900 ETH, equivalent to $6.4 million, had been taken from the exploit 💸 

🤓 According to security analysts at CertiK, the exploit occurred due to a critical "call" vulnerability in Seneca's smart contract, allowing the attacker to perform external calls to any address.

The project's contracts did not have a code allowing the team to "pause" it, resulting in users having to manually revoke permissions.

Looked like a typical crypto hack, but the hacker turned out to be more ethical than expected.

Seneca offered a $1.2 million bounty for the return of the stolen funds, urging the hacker to return 80% of the stolen ETH to an Ethereum address while allowing them to keep 20%.

👉️ This offer was made in an on-chain message on February 29th.

Just a couple of hours later, the hacker obliged and returned 1,537 ETH to the specified address, worth approximately $5.3 million at the time.

The remaining 300 ETH, equivalent to around $1 million, was kept by the hacker who accepted Seneca's bounty offer 💰️ 💰️ 

🤔 All's well that ends well, but doesn't the fact that this keeps happening raise questions about the security and reliability of these protocols? Ugh.

Telegram unveils revenue sharing - TON is PUMPING

Telegram, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, has been making headlines once again with its latest crypto-related move.

• This time, the news revolves around its previous involvement with the TON blockchain and a game-changing decision to share advertisement revenue with its channel owners 🫰 

• It all started back in 2018 when Telegram announced its ambitious plan to create TON - a revolutionary blockchain platform that would power a decentralized ecosystem of services within the app ⛓️ 

• Legal troubles with the SEC over TON's token sale led to the abandonment of the project in 2020 🪙 

That wasn't the end for TON, though.

Despite the official separation from Telegram, a dedicated community of developers continued to work on advancing the TON blockchain independently. And now, two years later, Telegram seems to be hinting at a potential reunion with its crypto roots 👇️ 

Telegram's founder, Pavel Durov, revealed that starting in March, the app will begin sharing advertisement revenue with its channel creators.

This is a significant change for the platform and its content creators, as it supports their efforts and introduces a new revenue-sharing model in the digital content space.

👀 With over 1 trillion views per month on broadcast channels, Telegram has only monetized a small fraction of this potential through its own ads.

With the new revenue-sharing model, channel owners will receive 50% of the ad revenue generated within their channels. This not only incentivizes content creation but also aligns with Telegram's user-centric values.

After this announcement the TON token saw a massive pump in its price - climbing nearly 22.8% to over $2.92 - and that’s just in just 24 hours.

TON and TG certainly have a future, with TG being very important in the crypto world 🤔 

💎 The potential for this platform to integrate with other blockchain projects, whether it's TON or others, is still very much alive, and with the new revenue-sharing model in place, we may just see a whole new level of growth and adoption for both Telegram and TON in the near future.

Other worthy reads:

Gemini Earn customers are probably ecstatic right now:

Interesting stats on AI projects by Beacon:

More about the Dencun update from Eli5 (big thread):

MEMES

That's all for now, frens.

We'll meet in a week! And remember, the market conditions are temporary, but our commitment to building a better DeFi is here to stay. Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you back next week. Cheers!

Yours, The 🔥 Team

Brought to you by Ambire: The Only Web3 Wallet That You’ll Need!