Ethereum ecosystem’s restaking protocol EigenLayer is dealing with a surge of withdrawal requests following the EIGEN airdrop event. BlackRock’s six-week tokenized treasury fund is now the largest in the world. Meanwhile, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has been sentenced to four months in prison. Here are three significant developments in the cryptocurrency market in the last 24 hours.
Major Shock for EigenLayer Team
EigenLayer, the largest Ethereum restaking protocol, received over 12,412 withdrawal requests following widespread disappointment with the planned EIGEN airdrop event. The mass withdrawal requests started on April 29, when EigenLayer saw more than 4,336 transactions per day, according to Dune data, and increased to 6,496 on April 30.
Although the size of individual withdrawal transactions has not yet been tracked, the pending withdrawals, which account for 11.6% of EigenLayer’s current total locked value of $14.8 billion, could reduce it to just over $13 billion.
BlackRock Never Tires of Records
BlackRock’s six-week USD Corporate Digital Liquidity Fund, BUIDL, is now the largest treasury fund tokenized on a blockchain. On April 30, BUIDL achieved a market value of $375 million, surpassing the 12-month $368 million Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (BENJI) according to Dune Analytics.
Last week, BUIDL raised $70 million, with $50 million of the fund consisting of real-world asset tokenization company Ondo Finance’s OUSG token. Meanwhile, BENJI’s assets under management shrank by about 3.7% during the same period. Currently, there are over $1.2 billion worth of US Treasury assets on Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and other blockchain networks.
CZ Case Announced
A federal judge has sentenced former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao to four months in prison for violating US anti-money laundering laws. Prosecutors had sought a three-year prison sentence because Zhao failed to implement an effective Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program at the cryptocurrency exchange, but his defense argued for probation, and Zhao pleaded guilty in November.
Before being sentenced, Zhao apologized for his actions and said he had spent a lot of time alone reflecting. He added that he accepted responsibility for Binance’s failure to implement an effective AML program.
