Gate Research Institute: Hot Topics Summary (2025.4.3-2025.4.10)

2025-04-11 06:30:44

Overview

This report focuses on the blockchain industry from April 3 to April 10, 2025. The Shardeum mainnet will go live on April 15th; Solana TVL hits a new high since 2023, with a strong DEX market share; Lens Chain, the main network of Lens Protocol, was officially launched; Mantra Launches $108 Million Fund to Accelerate Real-World Asset Tokenization and DeFi Project Development; Bitcoin’s computing power exceeded 1 Zetahash for the first time, and the infrastructure achieved a thousand-fold leap; Babylon will launch Babylon Genesis, an L1 blockchain, on April 10.

Project

Shardeum mainnet will launch on April 15.

Shardeum is an EVM-based sharded Layer 1 blockchain, with the mainnet officially launching on April 15, 2025. The project was initiated by WazirX co-founder Nischal Shetty and engineer Omar Syed in 2022, utilizing a dynamic state sharding and PoS + quorum hybrid consensus mechanism. It emphasizes linear scalability, low gas costs, open node operation, decentralization, and community-driven features.

The mainnet token SHM has an initial supply of 249 million, which is halved from the original plan, and is solely used for node rewards. The issuance will be adjusted dynamically based on staking participation and network security. Alongside the launch, TGE and airdrop will also commence, with a total of 5.5166 million tokens, accounting for 2.22% of the initial supply. Airdrop registration ended on March 21. The project has previously completed multiple rounds of testnets and received over $23 million in investment support from institutions such as Jane Street and Spartan Group.

Solana TVL hits a new high since 2023, with strong market share in DEX.

Recently, Solana has shown strong performance on-chain. Despite the SOL price dropping by about 19% from March 31 to April 7, the total value locked (TVL) in the network reached 53.8 million SOL, a new high since mid-2022, equivalent to about $6.5 billion, leading BNB Chain by nearly $780 million. Its decentralized exchange (DEX) market share has also risen to 24%, firmly holding the second position in the market, second only to Ethereum. Leading DApps such as Jito, Jupiter, and Kamino have performed exceptionally well, attracting a continuous inflow of funds to the network. However, despite the active on-chain data of Solana, the SOL price has not strengthened accordingly. On April 4, approximately 1.79 million SOL were unlocked, resulting in over $200 million in selling pressure, combined with the profit-taking willingness of early stakers, which exerted pressure on the price. At the same time, the popularity of meme coins on Solana has waned, with WIF, POPcat, and BOME generally dropping over 20% within a week, dragging down short-term user activity. Furthermore, the overall cryptocurrency market has recently shown weak performance, with major assets retreating and risk appetite declining, which has also intensified the emotional pressure on SOL.

However, Solana’s progress in infrastructure, user experience, and developer activity continues to be recognized by the market, despite facing controversies regarding the MEV mechanism, and the community is actively promoting optimization solutions. Overall, Solana maintains a strong competitive position as a platform in the DeFi ecosystem, and its future performance remains worth watching.

Lens Protocol mainnet Lens Chain officially launched

The Lens Protocol mainnet went live on April 4. Lens Chain uses Avail’s data availability layer and ZKsync technology to improve the scalability and security of the network. In addition, Lens Chain uses the GHO stablecoin as fuel, enabling scalable, fast, and zero-gas transactions. To support the construction of decentralized social applications, the Lens Protocol mainnet integrates several core infrastructures. First, the Social Protocol provides pre-built social primitives, such as accounts, feeds, and groups, that are modular and flexible for developers to embed into existing applications as standalone features. Second, Grove serves as an on-chain permissioned storage system to ensure users’ autonomy over content and data security. Third, the Developer Dashboard provides a simple and intuitive tool interface to help developers quickly integrate social modules, even without professional programming knowledge.

The launch of the Lens Protocol mainnet brings a complete upgrade to the platform itself, significantly improving the performance and functionality of the SocialFi infrastructure. With the help of zkSync hyperchain technology and the scalability and elasticity of the Avail data availability layer, Lens Chain not only realizes efficient and secure on-chain transactions, but also supports the permanent storage and flexible deletion of user content, meeting the data management needs in different scenarios, thus providing solid support for large-scale decentralized social applications. At the same time, competitors such as Farcaster are still in the stage of only putting user profiles on-chain, and their mainnet has not yet been fully launched. As a result, the launch of Lens’ mainnet has significant advantages in terms of security, scalability, and functional integrity, which could have a profound impact on the future SocialFi market landscape. Currently, Lens has about 650,000 user profiles and 28 million social connections. Although there is still a gap compared to traditional social platforms, the vision of “social media on the blockchain” is gradually becoming a reality. The community has reacted positively to the mainnet launch, which could lead to the growth of SocialFi investment and new capital inflows into the financial markets. 【3】

Mantra launches a $108 million fund to accelerate the tokenization of real assets and the development of DeFi projects.

The crypto public chain Mantra announced the establishment of an ecosystem fund totaling $108 million (Mantra Ecosystem Fund, abbreviated as MEF), aimed at supporting the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) and startup projects in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. The fund will adopt an “open arms” strategy, welcoming high-potential projects from around the world at all stages to participate.

As a Layer 1 blockchain specifically designed for RWA scenarios, Mantra plans to筛选和投资优质项目 globally over the next four years through its collaborative network, covering RWA, DeFi applications, and related infrastructure development. This fund has received support from multiple institutions, including Laser Digital, Shorooq, Brevan Howard Digital, Valor Capital, Three Point Capital, and Amber Group, among others. It is worth mentioning that Mantra is also the first DeFi platform to obtain a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license issued by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). With its compliance advantages and capital backing, Mantra is accelerating its efforts to establish a leading position in the global RWA infrastructure sector.

Bitcoin’s computing power has first surpassed 1 Zetahash, with infrastructure achieving a thousandfold leap.

The Bitcoin network’s hash rate recently surpassed 1 Zetahash (ZH/s) per second for the first time, setting a new historical record and becoming one of the most powerful supercomputing networks in the world, marking a thousandfold leap in its infrastructure over the past 16 years.

According to data from mempool.space, on April 5th, Bitcoin’s hash rate reached 1.025 ZH/s at one point, while BTC Frame showed it had already reached 1.02 ZH/s the previous day. Coinwarz data further indicated that Bitcoin soared to 1.1 ZH/s at block height 890915.

Due to differences in estimation methods used by various platforms, such as differences in trailing block counts, difficulty adjustment windows, or node selection, specific values may vary. Despite the data discrepancies, this achievement is still regarded as a key enhancement to the decentralization and security of the Bitcoin network. Since it first reached 1 EH/s in 2016, the Bitcoin network’s hash rate has grown by 1,000 times. Currently, Bitcoin’s hash rate far surpasses other proof-of-work networks, with Litecoin currently at only 2.49 Petahash per second, which is less than one forty-thousandth of Bitcoin’s.

Behind the significant increase in computing power is the continuous expansion and technological iteration of large Bitcoin mining companies. MARA Holdings has over 50 EH/s of computing power, making it the largest Bitcoin miner in the world; mining pools such as Foundry USA Pool and AntPool also hold a dominant position. In addition, publicly traded companies like Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, CleanSpark, Hut 8 Mining, and TeraWulf are actively deploying computing power to participate in network maintenance. 【5】

Babylon will release the L1 blockchain Babylon Genesis on April 10.

The Babylon Foundation officially launched the Babylon Genesis mainnet on April 10, marking the first application of Bitcoin staking on the mainnet. This is a Layer 1 blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK. The network employs a dual staking mechanism: validators accept BABY token staking, while finality providers accept Bitcoin staking and have a slashing mechanism for malicious behavior. The annual inflation rate of the BABY token is 8%, with 4% rewarding BABY stakers and another 4% rewarding Bitcoin stakers. The transfer and staking functionalities of the BABY token have been enabled simultaneously, with multiple wallets, custodians, and exchanges providing support. Gate.io has launched Babylon (BABY) spot trading on April 10 at 18:00 (UTC+8).

The Bitcoin staking mechanism will be limited to Cap-1 phase (approximately 1,000 BTC) participant registrations in the first two weeks to ensure the security and stability of the mainnet in its early days. After that, it will be fully open to all first-phase and new stakers. The Babylon project aims to expand the native use of Bitcoin from “payments” and “store of value” to the field of “staking.” The launch of the Babylon Genesis chain is the second phase of its three-phase plan, with the first phase completed by the end of 2024, during which a total of 57,000 Bitcoins were staked. Next, Babylon will advance to the third phase: providing the ability for other networks to access the security of Bitcoin staking, creating a secure network ecosystem for Bitcoin.

Tip Users should participate with caution, be aware of the risks, and conduct thorough research before participating. Gate.io does not guarantee the subsequent development status of the project.
Reference:

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SOL2,1%

OM2,17%

DEFI-1,27%

BTC-0,08%

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