↕️Weekly Recap: Post-Halving Volatility; Consensys Fights the SEC

Happy weekend Defiers!

Crypto markets have been all over the place in the wake of Bitcoin’s long-awaited halving event. The week started with bullish action for Bitcoin mining stocks. While digital assets enjoyed a brief bounce in anticipation of U.S. economic data, the gains were quickly erased when the numbers came in weaker than expected.

In other Bitcoin news, the Ordinals-based Runes protocol is driving the lion’s network activity despite suffering a major drawdown since last week’s airdrop snapshot was taken. Miscellaneous Bitcoin collectibles also fetched seven figures from bidders at auction last week.

Renzo, the second-largest liquid restaking protocol with more than $3 billion in TVL, suffered a violent depeg that abruptly liquidated leveraged points farmers. The move resulted from a flurry of traders offloading its ezETH restaking token as misinformation spread regarding the terms of its imminent airdrop.

Despite the Renzo drama, liquid restaking continues to outperform as the leading DeFI segment on Ethereum. Data from Dune Analytics shows EtherFi taking in $1.2 billion in the past month while users pulled $1.4 billion out of Lido over the same period.

Ethereum’s broader ecosystem is also enjoying record activity, with more than 10 million wallets active and 60 million transactions executed in the past month. Despite strong on-chain volume, Ether’s supply is at a six-week high after low gas fees drove two weeks of ETH inflation.

It was a big week for law and regulation, with Consensys filing a lawsuit against the SEC. The blockchain software company hopes to force a court ruling formalizing that ETH does not comprise a security, with the move following Consensys receiving a Wells Notice — which precedes a formal legal complaint from the SEC.

Also, two SEC attorneys reportedly resigned after getting the agency sanctioned as part of its case against Debt Box, the founders of the privacy-focused Samourai wallet were arrested and charged with facilitating billions in unlawful transactions, and U.S. prosecutors want a three-year prison sentence for CZ, Binance’s former CEO.

The fourth-largest CryptoPunk sale was recorded last week, with Punk 635 changing hands for $12 million. Elsewhere in NFTs, Yuga Labs announced it is restructuring after following a protracted downtrend suffered by its ecosystem.

Also, Chainlink completed the permissionless rollout for its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, Reya’s liquidity generation event quickly attracted $200 million, Grayscale filed for a mini spot Bitcoin ETF, and SAFE debuted at a $1.2 billion market cap.