Weekly Editors Picks is a functional column of Odaily Planet Daily. In addition to covering a large amount of real-time information every week, Planet Daily also publishes a lot of high-quality in-depth analysis content, but they may be hidden in the information flow and hot news, and pass you by.
Therefore, every Saturday, our editorial department will select some high-quality articles that are worth spending time reading and collecting from the content published in the past 7 days, and bring new inspiration to you in the crypto world from the perspectives of data analysis, industry judgment, and opinion output.
Now, come and read with us:
Investment and Entrepreneurship
What good money requires: Why is it so hard for decentralized systems to achieve true stability?
To become a fully functional currency, an asset must successfully complete four stages of development: attracting value, developing scale, stabilizing mechanisms, and economic utility.
While cryptocurrencies theoretically advocate trustless systems, their survival in crises has repeatedly relied on discretionary intervention by implicitly trusted actors. This coordination problem becomes exponentially more difficult as the system scales.
In addition to stability, a good currency must support capital formation — the lending process that drives economic productivity. This is another fundamental limitation of existing cryptocurrencies. A well-functioning currency must provide a stable unit of account for agreements across time.
What is needed to architect a complete currency includes: an adaptive supply mechanism (a healthy currency must be able to expand when demand exceeds supply, and contract when supply exceeds demand, creating a natural stabilizing pressure); a last resort function (a healthy currency needs built-in mechanisms to provide liquidity, stability, and intervention in times of market pressure without the need for external coordination).
Crypto’s “Marketing Aesthetics”
The path for the realization of celebrity value in Web3 needs to be differentiated, transitioned, and then evolved. A paid subscription community and an X account with a blue logo, this kind of Web2 combination with sedimentation is what KOLs need at present. However, the value conversion path of top celebrities has not been smooth enough, just like a large enterprise with tens of millions of goods waiting to be dumped. To B is not cost-effective, and To C has no carrier.
A good enough meme should emphasize emotions and narratives rather than empowerment. The value of celebrity coins is not the celebritys insights and time, but the celebritys story and the emotions behind it.
Today, the point system is still the mainstream model in Web3. “Point mining” has led to the proliferation of speculative culture, and Point Market has amplified this phenomenon. The incentive of airdrops has changed the nature of early users and communities.
The rise of tokens, the prosperity of projects, and the revival of public chains all originated from a successful marketing campaign. In the past, we listened to technical narratives, but now we have to integrate into the secular world.
South Korea Web3 Market Report Q1 2025: Is South Korea Still a Liquidity Export?
In the first quarter of 2025, the Korean Web3 market reached a turning point. This market, once regarded as the liquidity exit of global projects, is transforming into a structured self-sustaining industrial ecosystem.
As part of the Financial Services Commission’s roadmap, institutional entities are gradually being allowed to trade cryptocurrencies through corporate accounts.
Projects such as Avalanche, TON, Ripple, and Solana are actively building long-term foundations in South Korea. Their activities have gone beyond marketing to focus on developer community building and hackathon hosting.
Why the “Web3 Narrative” Is Crypto’s Biggest Mistake
The biggest misunderstanding in the industry is the attempt to inject financial mechanisms into scenarios that do not need or even reject financialization.
The Meituan War in the cryptocurrency circle: the traffic game behind Alpha Points
Binding users through high-frequency consumption scenarios (takeout) to lay the foundation for their own instant retail business is being replicated in the exchange field - Binances Alpha points system is the most typical example, points for new listings, airdrop rankings, trading rankings - in other words, it is also a subsidy war in the digital asset field. It is not a competition for new users, but a stock game for users attention, trading behavior and loyalty.
How did Tether make $14 billion in profits with just 150 people?
Tether has gained instant access to U.S. dollars through the worlds safest and most liquid asset. At the same time, Tether is also somewhat resistant to fluctuations in U.S. Treasury bond interest rates.
Tethers ambition is not limited to the stablecoin business. It has also invested in artificial intelligence data centers and brain-computer interface companies, developed the P2P chat application Keet, the asset tokenization platform Hadron, and launched a self-hosted open source wallet.
The Tether team is small, with only 150 people, but their loyalty is very high. Tether used to mainly hire talents from emerging markets.
Airdrop Opportunities and Interaction Guide
Breaking through the anti-massage cycle: the new way for the Maomao studio to survive
Studios with a keen sense of smell have already changed their guns: some have switched to trading platforms and taken precise sniping actions during liquidity spillovers; some have returned to traditional IPOs and turned the Hong Kong stock market into a new ATM; and others have quietly started businesses selling water and infrastructure to earn a more stable flow of money.
This week’s featured interactive projects: Union and Miden testnets, Ping Network mining
Meme
The article tells the story of two crypto KOLs, Books and Shillin Villain, who used token pre-sales to conduct social experiments. The tokens they launched, such as $COPE and $POGE, had most of the supply controlled by the team, causing the token price to collapse quickly after the release. They also launched early access passes (0.5 SOL, 1,000 supply) to provide users who want to participate in the token issuance in advance. The two repeatedly manipulated the market by controlling the token supply, which eventually led to a sharp drop in token prices and caused losses to investors.
Bitcoin Ecosystem
Controversial Bitcoin Proposal: OP_RETURN Data Limitation, Return to Freedom or Increase Congestion
In the post-ETF era, the BTCFi narrative has just begun
Ethereum and Scaling
The Ethereum mainnet Pectra hard fork was officially activated on May 7, and the ultimate form of Account Abstraction, EIP-7702, officially came into the public eye. EIP-7702 added a new transaction type, allowing ordinary EOAs to set a contract address as their logical proxy contract.
EIP-7702 will fully inherit and surpass the ecosystem built by ERC-4337 over the years due to its cost advantage and flexibility.
EIP-7702 is also an invisible risk for ordinary users. Even if users do not upgrade, it may cause transaction failures or security asset loss risks in certain scenarios.
EIP-7702 will bring a brand new user experience. When the user body undergoes contractual migration, market applications will also evolve accordingly. The long-awaited smooth experience of gas abstraction, family tiered accounts, etc. will lead one billion people to enter the Web3 world at a low cost.
For exchanges and DApps, applying the features of EIP-7702 will bring more than 50% cost reduction, allowing them to fully embrace the era of contract accounts.
CeFi DeFi
Deregulation drives the RWA narrative of US stocks: opportunities and challenges of tokenized stocks
In the short term, the author believes that stock RWA has the following two market opportunities: for listed companies, they can issue on-chain stock tokens by referring to the EXOD case; for tokenized high-dividend US stocks, some yield-based DeFi protocols will become potential users.
The author conducted a differentiated analysis of the core highlights of several up-and-coming companies in the Perp DEX track, and the comparison targets covered Vertex, Drift, GMX V2, Kwenta, Aevo, Ethereal, OstiumLighter, and edgeX.
Also recommended: The Lazy Mans Financial Management Guide | Falcon Finance lifts whitelist restrictions; Ethenas third season airdrop collects rice (May 6) .
Web3 AI
Virtuals IPO craze continues: New Genesis Points rules implemented and popular projects
Hot Topics of the Week
In the past week, China agreed to engage with the United States on tariffs , and Vice Premier He Lifeng will go to Switzerland for talks; Ethereum activated the Pectra upgrade , which includes 11 changes to improve user experience, validator operations, and L2 expansion; ETH soared more than 20% in a single day, and BTC returned to $100,000 after three months; Zerebro founder Jeffy Yus death ushered in a reversal, and the suicide live broadcast was actually an exit strategy ;
In addition, in terms of policies and macro markets, Buffett announced that he will retire at the end of the year; U.S. Senator Warren requested to postpone the review of the stablecoin bill, saying that there may be potential corruption related to Trump ; Democratic senators proposed to ban the president from investing in or supporting crypto assets ; the U.S. Senate launched an investigation into Trumps cryptocurrency activities; Trump made it clear for the first time that he would not fire Powell : you can wait, and you can replace him soon; Powell said at the press conference: wait and see, there will be no preemptive interest rate cuts , and Trumps call for interest rate cuts will not affect the Federal Reserve ; Apple relaxed the rules related to cryptocurrencies in the U.S. App Store ; OpenAI abandoned its profit transformation plan and will continue to be controlled by non-profit organizations, or face the risk of financing insecurity; Florida canceled the strategic Bitcoin reserve bill ; Arizona signed HB 2749 to establish the first cryptocurrency reserve ; the Peoples Bank of China announced an interest rate cut and reserve requirement ratio cut ;
In terms of opinions and voices, Bloomberg: TRUMP coins are dominated by foreign buyers, and dinner promotions have raised regulatory questions ; CZ: Kyrgyzstan has been advised to include BNB and BTC in its national cryptocurrency reserves; CZ: Only one account can participate in Binance Alpha ; CZ: An employee who was fired by Binance for insider trading became a certain founder a few years later; CZ proposed to reduce the BSC Gas fee ; CZ confirmed that he had applied for Trumps pardon ; Dogecoin officials reiterated: We are still a Meme coin , although regulators do not think so; Notcoin co-founder: Tap-to-Earn model is basically dead ;
In terms of institutions, large companies and leading projects, Futu launched BTC, ETH, and USDT deposit functions ; Coinbase announced that it would acquire Deribit for $2.9 billion ; WLFI launched a Snapshot proposal, planning to airdrop USD 1 stablecoin to WLFI holders ; Space and Time mainnet was launched;
In terms of data, the SP 500 index rose for the ninth consecutive day , setting a record for the longest consecutive rise since 2004; perhaps influenced by Musks attention , the market value of Meme coin GORK exceeded 73 million US dollars, setting a record high; Yua Mikamis Meme coin Mikami has fallen more than 80% from its high point after its release;
On the security front, hackers stole the New York Posts X platform account and carried out fraud through private messages; Curves official X account was hacked ... Well, its another week of ups and downs.
Attached is a portal to the “Weekly Editor’s Picks” series.
See you next time~
