Posts from the 'Quoted' Category

Crypto ‘sniper’ makes $28M on CZ-inspired Broccoli memecoin

Crypto ‘sniper’ makes $28M on CZ-inspired Broccoli memecoin

A savvy cryptocurrency trader made almost $28 million in profit after buying the latest memecoins inspired by a Binance co-founder.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, co-founder and former CEO of Binance, revealed his dog’s name, “Broccoli,” on Feb. 13, sparking a wave of memecoins named after the Belgian Malinois.

Broccoli memecoins quickly took up residence on popular memecoin launch platforms, including Solana’s Pump.fun, where there are now at least 480 Broccoli-themed coins, and BNB Smart Chain’s Four.Meme, with at least 300 CZ-dog-themed coins.

An unknown crypto trader capitalized on the social media hype after Zhao’s announcement and bought almost every memecoin named Broccoli, wrote crypto intelligence firm Lookonchain, in a Feb. 14 X post, adding:

“A sniper made $27.8M by sniping the memecoin named after CZ’s dog (Broccoli)!”

“After CZ announced the name of his dog, this sniper sniped almost every meme coin named Broccoli. Then he distributed Broccoli to multiple wallets for selling using disperse […] In the end, this sniper earned a total of 27.8M $USDT,” added the post.

In industry slang, “sniping” refers to traders looking to capitalize on short-term or intraday opportunities, using technical indicators to find quick trading opportunities.

Despite their intrinsic lack of utility, memecoins have made millionaires among crypto traders.

In May 2024, another unknown trader capitalized on Pepe’s price gains, netting over $46 million worth of profit after generating an eye-watering 15,718-fold return on his initial $3,000 investment.

$28 million memecoin profit raises insider trading allegations

The $28 million profit raised some insider trading allegations among the crypto community.

Some of the traders’ wallet addresses are associated with the developers of some Broccoli memecoins, wrote pseudonymous crypto trader DoctorDeFi in a Feb. 13 X post, adding:

“For context, this is not a sniper but Broccoli dev. In total, he made >$50M.”

The thread showed three more crypto wallets potentially related to the Broccoli trader. The wallets had a combined value of over $34.2 million worth of stablecoins.

The Broccoli-themed memecoins saw widespread attention despite CZ stressing that he was not launching a memecoin of his own, adding that it’s “up to the community to do that (or not).”

Trump family memecoins spark investor hype, regulatory concerns

Investor excitement for memecoins has been increasing since President Donald Trump launched the Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin on Jan. 18 and the Official Melania (MELANIA) token on Jan. 19 on the Solana network, ahead of his inauguration on Jan. 20.

However, industry watchers are concerned that the Trump family’s memecoins may invite more industry scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The presidential memecoin launch sets a “precedent that could blur the lines between celebrity, politics and finance,” according to Anndy Lian, author and intergovernmental blockchain expert.

This may challenge the SEC’s approach to crypto regulation in 2025, Lian told Cointelegraph:

“The question now is whether the SEC will tighten regulations to curb potential market manipulations or if they will adapt to this new reality by establishing clearer guidelines for such tokens.”

 

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-sniper-makes-28-m-cz-broccoli-memecoin

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com
j j j

Pantera Capital founder faces tax probe over $850M crypto profits: Report

Pantera Capital founder faces tax probe over $850M crypto profits: Report

Dan Morehead, founder and managing partner of crypto investment firm Pantera Capital, is reportedly under investigation for potential federal tax law violations after moving to Puerto Rico, a well-known tax haven.

In a letter received on Jan. 9, the US Senate Finance Committee (SFC) requested information on over $850 million in investment profits Morehead earned after relocating to Puerto Rico in 2020.

Morehead “may have treated” these profits as exempt from US taxes, according to a Jan. 9 letter from Senator Ron Wyden seen by The New York Times.

According to the letter, the SFC was investigating tax compliance among wealthy Americans who moved to Puerto Rico and may have improperly applied a tax break to avoid paying taxes on income earned outside the island.

“In most cases, the majority of the gain is actually U.S. source income, reportable on U.S. tax returns, and subject to U.S. tax,” the letter reportedly states.

“I believe I acted appropriately with respect to my taxes,” Morehead said in a statement, adding that he moved to Puerto Rico in 2021.

Pantera Capital, founded by Morehead, was the first cryptocurrency fund in the US and has seen its initial investments grow by more than 130,000%, he wrote in a blog post on Nov. 26, 2024.

Morehead launched Pantera Bitcoin Fund in July 2013, making a lifetime return of more than 1,000 times the return on its first Bitcoin purchase at $74, he said. He added that 1% of financial wealth hadn’t come across Bitcoin at the time.

Pantera Capital holds over $5 billion worth of assets under management, with over 100 venture investments and 47% of its capital invested outside the US, according to the company’s homepage.

Crypto taxes attract regulatory attention worldwide

The investigation into Morehead comes amid increased regulatory scrutiny of cryptocurrency taxes. In June 2024, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a new rule requiring US crypto transactions to be subject to third-party tax reporting for the first time.

Starting in 2025, centralized crypto exchanges (CEXs) and other brokers will start reporting the sales and exchanges of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies.

This decision could push crypto investors to decentralized platforms in a “paradoxical situation” that could make tax revenue harder to track, Anndy Lian, author and intergovernmental blockchain expert, told Cointelegraph.

Showcasing the crypto industry’s backlash, the Blockchain Association filed a lawsuit against the IRS in December 2024, arguing that the rules are unconstitutional because they include decentralized exchanges under the “broker” term, extending data collection requirements to them.

 

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/pantera-capital-founder-tax-investigation-crypto

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com
j j j

Uniswap Launches Unichain L2: All You Need to Know

Uniswap Launches Unichain L2: All You Need to Know

Since its launch in 2018, Uniswap has evolved to become a cornerstone of the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry, becoming one of the most widely used decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

Amid its growing popularity, Uniswap has struggled with high fees and slow transaction speeds. In a bid to address this issue, the platform has introduced Unichain, an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network specifically designed to optimize DeFi applications.

Similar to other L2s, Unichain is built to improve transaction speeds, lower gas fees, and improve user experience, all while using Ethereum‘s security.

In this article, we will explore Unichain and its aim to solidify Uniswap’s dominance in the DeFi ecosystem by offering a better user experience.

Key Takeaways

  • Uniswap has launched Unichain to solve high fees and slow transactions.
  • Unichain’s key features include Flashblocks for fair transaction ordering and Trustless Revert Protection.
  • The Validation Network ensures fast and secure transactions, preventing double-spending and block manipulation.
  • Unichain integrates with Ethereum’s Superchain for cross-chain liquidity.
  • With faster block times and no initial swap fees, Unichain aims to make DeFi trading faster and better.

What Is Unichain?

Unichain is a DeFi-focused Ethereum L2 chain designed to enable instant transactions, low fees, and cross-chain interoperability.

It was developed by Uniswap Labs using the OP Stack, an open-source rollup development stack. The OP Stack allows Unichain to join the Superchain, a network of interoperable L2 chains that share bridging, decentralized governance, upgrades, and a communication layer.

Anndy Lian, an intergovernmental blockchain expert, told Techopedia:

“Since its start, Uniswap has been a go-to for many in the DeFi community, providing a user-friendly platform for swapping tokens and adding liquidity.

“It’s only natural that Uniswap would evolve by creating its own blockchain, Unichain, to better serve and grow its business. This development not only solidifies Uniswap’s leadership but also tackles some of Ethereum’s challenges like high transaction costs and slower processing times.”

Unichain’s standout features are Verifiable Block Building and the Unichain Validation Network (PDF).

Verifiable Block Building

With Verifiable Block Building, Unichain aims to optimize user experience and market efficiencies by reducing block times, limiting maximal extractable value (MEV) losses, and protecting against failed transactions.

Built in collaboration with MEV solutions developer Flashbots, Unichain’s verifiable block-building feature looks to reduce the risk of “discretionary block ordering” by separating the role of block building from the sequencer.

Blocks on Unichain will be executed inside a trusted execution environment (TEE), which will allow external users to verify that blocks were built inside the TEE according to stated policies.

Unchain also aims to enable 200-millisecond to 250-millisecond block times by spitting each block into four “flashblocks.”

Unichain users will also benefit from the “trustless revert protection,” which reduces the risk of paying for a failed transaction. The TEE block builder simulates transactions while building blocks to detect and remove faulty transactions.

Unichain Validator Network

Sequencers are critical L2 network participants who are responsible for ordering transactions, batching them, creating new L2 blocks, and posting proofs to the Ethereum L1.

A notable drawback of Ethereum L2 chains is the centralization of sequencers. At the time of writing, popular L2 chains, including Arbitrum, OP Mainnet, and Base, each have only one sequencer.

Unichain, too, will operate as a single sequencer L2. To reduce risks related to a single sequencer, Unichain introduces a decentralized network of node operators that independently validate the latest blockchain state called the Unichain Validation Network.

To become a validator on Unichain, users must stake UNI tokens on the Ethereum mainnet. The main function of Unichain validators is to perform simple block attestations to increase confidence in the state of the chain.

Why Was Unichain Created & How Does It Improve Uniswap’s DeFi Offerings?

Launched in 2018, Uniswap is a pioneer of automated market-making (AMM) protocols and is currently the most popular DEX in DeFi history boasting a cumulative volume of over $1.64 trillion, as of February 2025.

As Uniswap saw meteoric growth amid increased DeFi adoption, it soon became evident that the Ethereum L1 blockchain was not equipped to give Uniswap the high performance it craved.

Therefore when Ethereum set course to scale its blockchain with the help of L2 solutions, Uniswap took the opportunity to create a performant application-specific L2 called Unichain.

With Unichain, the DEX pioneer looks to solve two pressing issues Uniswap faces on Ethereum: high transaction fees and fast transactions.

Unichain solves the first problem by being an L2 chain that processes transactions off-chain before bundling them to post to the Ethereum L1. The distribution of gas fees across several L2 transactions is said to lower fees by 95% compared to L1 gas fees.

For faster transactions, Unichain is customized with features such as TEE block-building to produce one-second block times, a significant upgrade from Ethereum’s 12-second block time. Unichain ultimately aims to hit 200-millisecond to 250-millisecond block times.

In a bid to solve the fragmentation problem caused by the excess of L2 chains in the market, Unichain will join the Superchain collective, which is a group of interoperable L2 chains created using the OP Stack.

As of February 2025, the Superchain collective had over 25 members including Base, OP Mainnet, Soneium, Zora, Ink, and HashKey Chain.

Features of Unichain

According to Unichain’s whitepaper, the project has introduced several features that help it enhance speed, security, and efficiency within Uniswap’s DeFi ecosystem. Here are its key components:

  1. Unichain implements Flashblocks, a mechanism that locks in transaction order before execution, to reduce the risks of frontrunning and harmful MEV extraction.
  2. “Trustless Revert Protection” — A unique mechanism that ensures users do not lose gas fees on failed transactions.
  3. Unichain features a Validation Network where independent validators stake UNI tokens to help confirm transactions quickly and securely. This system prevents double-spending and block manipulation.
  4. Unichain is built as part of Ethereum’s broader rollup ecosystem (Superchain), ensuring liquidity access across different chains.
  5. Unichain significantly reduces transaction costs compared to Ethereum’s mainnet, making DeFi trading and liquidity provision more accessible.

The Growing Trend of Appchains in 2025

Appchains are blockchains built for a single app or a small set of apps. They can be layer-2 or layer-3 solutions, often forked from existing blockchains to save time and improve compatibility.

Appchains are important because they speed up transactions, lower costs, and improve security by focusing resources on just one application. They also give developers more control over governance and upgrades.

So far in 2025, several new appchains have emerged, each tailored to optimize performance for specific dApps. Last month, Ethereum Layer 2 project Starknet introduced the SN Stack, a software suite enabling developers to launch customized appchains.

Similarly, HyperLiquid and dYdX have launched their appchains to improve decentralized trading by offering lower latency and deeper liquidity.

Future of Uniswap & Unichain

Uniswap’s Unichain could be the platform’s golden ticket to shape the future of DeFi with faster, cheaper, and more scalable trading.

Lian added:

“Unichain is set to shake things up in DeFi by offering much faster transaction speeds – starting with one-second block times, with the goal of cutting this down to 250 milliseconds.

“This is a game-changer for the quick trading and liquidity activities that Uniswap users are accustomed to. Plus, by making Unichain permissionless right from the start, Uniswap stays true to its roots of being open and community-driven.”

The Bottom Line

Unichain is a big deal for Uniswap, tackling high fees, slow transactions, and liquidity fragmentation while keeping the platform fast, cost-effective, and permissionless.

Unichain expects Uniswap with all the necessary tools to lead the next era of decentralized finance.

 

Source: https://www.techopedia.com/uniswap-launches-unichain-l2-all-you-need-to-know

 

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com
j j j