Coindesk

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...

Global asset manager BlackRock's BUIDL token, issued in partnership Securitize and backed by U.S. Treasuries, crossed the $1 billion milestone in assets on Thursday, Securitize said. Pushing the fund's size above the threshold was a $200 million allocation this afternoon by crypto protocol Ethena, a Securitize spokesperson told CoinDesk. Ethereum blockchain data by Arkham Intelligence shows an entity minting $200 million worth of BUIDL tokens at Thursday 18:47 UTC.Crypto tokens backed by U.S. Treasuries are at the forefront of tokenization efforts, as digital asset firms and global financial heavyweights race to put traditional instruments such as bonds, private credit and funds on blockchain rails, aiming to achieve faster settlements and operational efficiencies. BUIDL is a key building block for multiple yield-generating...

Following two problematic tests of Ethereum's upcoming Pectra upgrade, the network's core developers decided on Thursday to create a new testnet to demonstrate the code update a final time before deployment."A new testnet, Hooli, is going live Monday to wrap up Pectra testing," said Tim Beiko, who coordinates the ecosystem's core developers at the Ethereum Foundation, in an X post following a developer call on Thursday. Pectra will be tested on Hooli on Wednesday, March 26 — when the test chain will be upgraded to the new version of Ethereum and evaluated for performance and stability.Pectra includes several code changes designed to make Ethereum faster, more efficient, and more user-friendly for both users and developers. One of the most significant...