Coindesk

Layer-2 network ZKsync has announced that it will be sunsetting the Ignite Program, which rewarded users for providing liquidity, due to bearish market conditions."After careful consideration, the DeFi Steering Committee (DSC) has decided to not renew Ignite for Season 2 and will be sunsetting the program starting March 17th, 2025 by turning off rewards for period 6," ZKsync posted on X.It added that the long-term vision is centered around the Elastic Network, which is composed of multiple chains within the ZKsync ecosystem."Unfortunately we’re navigating a bearish market right now. In line with many other ecosystems, ZKsync has decided to be more conservative with spend in the short to medium term in response to these evolving conditions," it added. "To stay...

Spot gold surpassed $3,000 an ounce for the first time before retreating to $2,990. Gold futures for April delivery also broke the $3,000 mark on Thursday.The precious metal is now up over 15% this year, driven by strong ETF inflows, geopolitical uncertainty, and continued concerns over U.S. equities amid ongoing tariff discussions by former President Donald Trump.Meanwhile, gold priced in British pounds has yet to reach its all-time high of £2,363, currently sitting around £300 below that level.Charlie Morris, founder of ByTree and manager of the BOLD ETF, which includes both bitcoin and gold, has observed a divergence between gold and bitcoin ETFs and expects this trend to reverse soon.“In the last 30 days, gold ETFs have seen $10 billion...

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the Donald Trump-backed crypto project, has closed its token sale after raising approximately $590 million.The project's raise of $590 million would put it in the top-10 list of token raises, according to data curated by ICODrops. To date, the largest token sale is EOS, which raised $4.21 billion.EOS is a blockchain platform developed by Block.one, which later founded Bullish, CoinDesk's owner.On stage at Consensus 2025 in Hong Kong, WLFI co-founder Zak Folkman credited Tron's Justin Sun with the success of the project's token sale.After WLFI first launched its sale, its critics called the momentum sluggish. But this changed after Sun invested $30 million into it in November 2024 and later invested more."When we were launching this...

Crypto venture funding in the U.S. clocked in at approximately $861 million for the first three months of 2025, but was dwarfed by artificial intelligence's nearly $20 billion haul, according to data provided by Pitchbook, showing how investors continue to pivot towards AI.Data shows that investors closed 795 deals in the U.S in AI from January to March, with blockbuster deals like Databricks' $15.3 billion round and Anthropic's $2 billion raise dominating headlines.Crypto's largest blockbuster deal, in comparison, was Abu Dhabi's MGX, with a $2 billion investment into Binance – the first institutional placement in the crypto exchange. Other deals of note include a $82 million raise from payment infrastructure company Mesh, ETF issuer Bitwise's $70 million round, and digital...

Solana's high staking rewards will live to inflate SOL another day.A contentious effort to reform the blockchain network's generous inflation regime flopped on Thursday after supporters of SIMD-0228 failed to garner the supermajority they needed to implement the major economic change.The surprise result delivered a blow to the Solana power brokers who rallied to replace Solana's static inflation mechanics with a market-based system. Their proposal likely would have cut the network's 4.7% annual staking rewards down to 1% or less.In a contest that pitted Solana's influential leaders and investors – who claim the network's high staking rewards are bad for SOL's price – against small-time operators who feared the effects of a big cut to their revenue, the opposition rallied...