Coindesk

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Ben Schiller, CoinDesk’s Opinion and Features editor.In this issue:DAO governance tool mergerEthereum Foundation dramaStablecoin USDh comes to Bitcoin$25 million grant program for DePINNetwork NewsDAO GOVERNANCE PLATFORM ACQUIRES RIVAL: Agora, a blockchain governance startup, is set to acquire its competitor Boardroom. The company framed the acquisition as a strategic move to enhance governance within the broader Ethereum ecosystem, citing expectations of renewed growth in decentralized governance due to President Trump's promise of regulatory clarity for the blockchain industry. "2025 is the year we make good governance the standard for all protocols in Ethereum," Agora co-founder Yitong Zhang told CoinDesk. Agora was founded in 2022...

U.S. President Donald Trump has come through with an eagerly awaited executive order on crypto that directs his administration to establish friendly policies to put the industry on solid U.S. footing and looking into establishing a "digital asset stockpile." After years of courtroom combat with federal authorities, Trump's order issued on Thursday could allow the digital assets sector to move forward in the U.S. with a more welcoming framework set by the White House. Such orders are more of a beginning than an end in federal policy, but the pro-crypto president has taken that first step. Bitcoin surged briefly above $106,000 from around $103,000 in the minutes following the news before retracing most of the gains. Recently, BTC changed hands...

It took institutions over a decade to take bitcoin (BTC) seriously as an investment vehicle, even though well-known financial pioneers had embraced the largest cryptocurrency on the market years earlier.But not even one year after the launch of the spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which saw adoption from pension funds, hedge funds and even universities, one issuer is taking it a step further.The latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission aim to bring meme coin ETFs — such as those tracking dogecoin (DOGE) or U.S. President Donald Trump’s Trump coin (TRUMP) — to the market.This isn’t just a bold move because DOGE and TRUMP are far less established and legitimate tokens, especially in Wall Street’s eyes, but meme coins...

Payments remain the big unsolved use case of the internet. When we buy something online, we generally use a traditional payment method, like a credit card, which isn’t “native” to the experience. Your ability to transact with a merchant is verified by a third-party (like a bank), which raises costs and adds a lot of inconvenience for buyers and sellers.Despite the huge growth of commerce online in the last three decades, most transactions occur outside of the browser. Marc Andreessen, who created Netscape, has referred to this as the internet’s “original sin.” “One would think it was the most obvious thing to do to build into the browser the ability to spend money, but you may have noticed that didn’t...

Binance Labs, the former investment arm of exchange giant Binance, gets a major overhaul under a new name, YZi Labs, with former Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao being closely involved in the operations, the firm announced on Thursday.The rebrand means that the investment firm turns from being the exchange's venture capital arm into the family office of CZ and Binance co-founder Yi He, Bloomberg reported."Under this rebranding, will take a more active role in investment activities, directly engaging with founders and offering mentorship and coaching," YZi Labs said in an X post. The firm also expands its investment focus beyond web3 to artificial intelligence and biotech.Zhao co-founded and led Binance to become the world's top crypto exchange by trading...