After yesterday's article was published, many readers in the comment section asked me how I felt about Vader's project. Vader is probably one of the most exposed AI agents in the Virtual ecosystem. If nothing else, just say that the Yapping it does attracts the attention of many participants every day. I have it, but I don't participate in its Yapping activities at all, so I don't know too well how to play it. Some time ago, it held a project rating activity. I like that rating so much that I look at it almost every day. I have written in the article that I only use it as a reference and will not use it 100% as a criterion for my own participation in the project. I don't agree with its rating results 100%, but I really appreciate some of the opinions it made during the rating process. Regardless of its rating, it is actually rare for many participants to have such a reference information. But when it first started ratinging, I sweated for it. Because I can guess that it won't end very well with this rating. Because there must be such a part of the community, they will take their rating as the standard for their participation in the project, once the project is far from the expectation, the first thing to reflect on is not where there is a problem with their thinking, not to reflect on themselves as an adult who should be 100% responsible for their actions, but first push this outcome to the project rating. Can Vader withstand such pressure and keep going? Sure enough, soon after, the Vader project team couldn't stand the pressure and terminated the rating activity. Since the rating was canceled, it seems that the project team has turned its attention to Yapping. In my opinion, Yapping is far less practical than ratings. Because although rating is difficult and not easy to do, it is a rigid need of users. At this stage, Yapping is purely marketing without actual business support, and it does not solve the rigid needs of users. So Vader's current situation is that it does not solve any rigid needs, nor does it produce services and products that can actually meet the needs of users. Compare Vader with Mamo and the video projects I mentioned earlier: the latter two either directly provide value-added services to users or directly meet their "emotional" needs. Therefore, the development of this project to this point feels relatively mediocre to me. However, the project team recently announced that it is integrating ACP, hoping to provide users with one-stop automated services from rating, mortgage to investment in the future. Let's wait and see what this vision and the effect will be. Another reader asked if Virtual does not have AI agents that can truly meet the needs after a few months, what is the danger of Virtual? The danger I am referring to is that the popularity and heat that the entire ecology has gathered so far will dissipate. Once the popularity and popularity dissipate, its attractiveness to developers and participants will decline, and this decline will lead to the difficulty of breeding new good projects in the future. This withering will eventually be reflected in the currency price, dragging down the currency price. During this time, compared with Virtual, it seems that Creator.bid has gained more momentum, and many online KOLs have turned to the latter's ecological nuggets. The big highlight of Creator.bid now is that it has made a lot of improvements to the project launch, hoping to filter out bad projects as much as possible through review. This original intention is good, but this method can only screen out bad items at most, not good ones. In my opinion, the most critical aspect of the development of the AI + Crypto ecosystem now is the need for good projects, AI agents that can solve rigid needs, and users are willing to pay real money to buy services/products. There is no such good project, even if there is no such a runaway project, but leaving a lot of projects that seem to be "working hard" but actually do not solve any problems is meaningless in the ecosystem. So in the short term, I appreciate the efforts and efforts of the Creator.bid team, but in the long run, it faces the same potential problems as Virtual: When will there be AI Agents that can generate profits and generate real revenue in batches?

Article source: Outside the words Since entering July, Bitcoin has continued to challenge all-time highs, Ethereum has also risen a lot, and even older coins like XRP and ADA have risen by more than 40% in the past month. As shown in the figure below. Zoom image will be displayed 1. What stage of this cycle are we currently in? With the recent recovery of market sentiment, there seems to be less voice calling for a bear market than some time ago, but some people do not want to admit that it is still a bull market, so they continue to fall into new entanglements. Regarding the definition of bear market and bull market, different people may have different opinions, this depends on what you think, as we mentioned in the article on March 13: some people think that as long as Bitcoin falls below MA200, it is a bear market, some people think that Bitcoin falls below 50,000 is a bear market, not that the bear market will lose money, the bull market can make money, in fact, whether it is the so-called bull market or the bear market, as long as the market is still there, as long as the liquidity is still there, then the opportunity is there, we must follow the trend, We must also go against the trend. Although the new round of phased gains since this month (July) is good, not only Bitcoin has reached a new high, but TOTAL2 has also reached a high of around $1.56 trillion, as shown in the figure below. Zoom image will be displayed However, the overall market value of the altcoin has not broken the previous high, and compared with the previous two rounds of bull market cycles, I feel that the current sentiment of retail investors seems to be relatively pessimistic, and has not yet reached the state of FOMO in the big bull market, of course, this is just my personal feeling. Looking at the period from 2023 to the present in this cycle, there have indeed been many cases of retail investors getting rich, but it seems to be mainly focused on MemeCoin, and the proportion of the overall number of people is relatively not high. In other words, the profits generated under this round of encryption cycle have not spread too far and too widely, and compared with the scale of retail wealth creation in the first two rounds, I feel that it is a little weaker. According to a report by NewTrading, the number of global cryptocurrency users will reach 861 million by 2025. According to the latest statistics released by CoinLaw in July 2025, it is estimated that about 5.2% of adults in Chinese mainland own or use cryptocurrencies (about 5,000–60 million people), as shown in the figure below. Zoom image will be displayed As of this writing, the platform has more than 22 million addresses (i.e., wallet addresses), and the cumulative number of MemeCoins created on it has exceeded 12 million, but it has only created a few hundred millionaires (wallet addresses), as shown in the figure below. Zoom image will be displayed Moreover, how many of the so-called hundreds of millionaires here belong to real retail investors, and these also need to continue to be questioned. So, what does a real bull market feel like? It's the kind of thing where everyone feels like they're about to get rich, everyone feels like making money is as simple as breathing, the market is rising every day and looks like it's full of gold, during this period, no one pays attention to and studies any fundamentals, candlesticks, or anything, all you can see is people's crazy FOMO desires. At the moment, I haven't really seen this happen, which could mean two scenarios: First, the market has completely changed, no longer operating according to the historical cyclical law, and retail investors are no longer an important part of the market. Second, the market has not yet entered the final carnival stage, that is, we have not yet ushered in the real bull bubble stage (from the timeline, we may still be in the middle of the current cycle). Recently, many KOLs on the Internet are inclined to say that the market will break the cyclical law and become a long bull next, and I will still maintain a neutral view on this matter for the time being, as we mentioned in the article on January 17th: The most important logic to break the cyclical law and enter the long bull market is "change", and some of the changes we have seen so far include the continued popularity of crypto ETFs, the deep participation of more and more large institutions (such as microstrategies), and the inclusion of Bitcoin in the national (US) strategic reserve...... Wait a minute. But I don't think these changes are enough, that is, we don't have the foundation to enter the bull market for the time being, but in terms of Bitcoin's performance, we seem to be stepping on a key point in the changing times. My guess is that we will still follow certain existing laws in this cycle, but the time may be slightly longer, and perhaps from the next cycle onwards, we will really usher in or stand at the starting point of a new era of change. 2. The big bull market still needs a bigger bubble As we mentioned in our article on July 19, because the most advanced way to play price is to form bubbles, and what the big bull market needs most is more bubbles. MicroStrategy has amassed more than $71 billion worth of Bitcoin with a genius play, and we have also witnessed the price of Bitcoin constantly breaking through historical highs, and if there are no new black swan events in the macro environment, then ETH and some altcoins will most likely continue to rise. Making money can be summed up as a process of embracing bubbles, enjoying bubbles, staying away from bubbles, and continuing to look forward to the next new bubble formation. If we look at historical cycles, every bull market will give birth to a new crypto bubble, and this process will bring incredible wealth creation opportunities, but it will often have a more tragic ending. For example, after the bull market in 2021, we experienced the bubble of Terra (LUNA), which was known as the "Moutai of the currency circle" at the time. For example, after the bull market in 2017, we experienced an ICO bubble. So far in this cycle, we haven't seen any signs of a bubble like the one above, but as more and more companies are copying the gameplay of companies such as MicroStrategy, this seems to be changing, especially as companies like SharpLink Gaming begin to shift their targets from Bitcoin to altcoins, which also makes me start to see some possible signs. More and more companies are starting to peg their stocks to BTC/ETH and hype up, and these actions (buying) of theirs have also had a huge positive impact on the price and market sentiment of cryptocurrencies. In addition to BTC and ETH, some companies are also starting or planning to catch up and accelerate hype on other altcoins, such as: Bit Origin plans to raise $500 million to buy DOGE, Upexi plans to raise $200 million to buy SOL, and Nano Labs plans to raise $200 million to buy BNB...... Wait a minute. It is very clear that more and more companies have run to join the hype of cryptocurrencies. According to Coinshares, inflows since this month (July) have reached a record $11.2 billion, far exceeding the $7.6 billion in December 2024 after the U.S. election, driven by institutional investors, as shown in the chart below. Zoom image will be displayed Specifically in terms of altcoins, year-to-date, ETH has seen $7.79 billion in inflows (more than the total inflows for the whole of last year), $8.43 billion in SOL, $7.21 billion in XRP, and $1.26 billion in SUI. As shown in the figure below. Zoom image will be displayed However, another interesting phenomenon is that as some altcoins have recently attracted huge inflows of funds, some altcoins have experienced outflows of funds. From this, we can also draw some conclusions (speculation): the current altcoin rally does not seem to have anything to do with people's emotions, but is mainly influenced by potential ETF expectations. We have also talked about and mentioned the issue of altcoin ETFs several times in recent articles, such as in the July 19 article: With the passage of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, the routes of other leading altcoin ETFs seem to have become clearer and clearer. Based on past circumstances, the fourth quarter of this year (such as around October) may become a new turning point in the history of crypto ETFs, when more altcoin ETFs may be approved, which is bound to bring more external liquidity. Zoom image will be displayed The current rise seems to further highlight this potential ETF expectation, and funds may be betting or accumulating in advance on altcoins such as SOL and XRP, which are most likely to be prioritized through ETFs. In other words, this phased rise since the end of June can be called a mini-alt-type alt-season or a alt-to-do season driven by policy and ETF expectations (on the U.S. side), rather than the traditional all-round alt-of-season alt-doing. If we continue to think about the time dimension a little longer, then we can also draw a conclusion (guess): this is only the early stage of more institutions running to join the army of hype cryptocurrencies, or the early stage of the formation of the big bubble in this cycle. Whether it's MicroStrategy, which has already built up on BTC, SharpLink Gaming, which is now raising $5 billion to continue buying more ETH, or other institutions that are currently and may continue to hype potential ETF altcoins, they are creating a new huge cyclical bubble for us with cryptocurrencies. From a short- to medium-term perspective, the crazy behavior of institutions is bound to continue to push up the prices of some cryptocurrencies, and even push the prices of some coins to a level that makes retail investors feel crazy; In the long run, as this bubble goes crazy rapidly, it is bound to burst in stages like those bubbles in historical cycles. And if our above view (speculation) is true, then we can continue to give a new guess: in the second half of this year, we will continue to experience greater volatility, but all fluctuations are for better washing and hype, and in the fourth quarter of this year, the market may once again have the opportunity to shock retail investors, and may bring new large-scale FOMO emotions. After all, this crazy behavior of institutions ultimately needs to be taken over by Everbright retail investors, and of course, there will be some institutions to take over when the final bubble bursts. In this market, the ultimate big winners can only be a few. We are already in this game, we have seen a potential big bubble, and I can't say exactly when the game will end this time, but we might as well keep an eye on it from the following angles: - Which companies will buy a lot of accumulated crypto in the coming weeks or even months, and what exactly will they buy? - Will the changes in the market capitalization of these companies' shares continue to be played at a premium? The process of bubble inflation to instant burst is often the most beautiful moment of the bubble, and the opportunity is always reserved for those who have enough patience and firm faith, since we have been sticking to this cycle for more than 4 years (2022–2025), then, look forward to it and enjoy the short beauty of the last round of this cycle.

ChainCatcher news, according to Jin Shi, Berkshire Hathaway A (BRK. A.N) reported a net profit of $12.37 billion in Q2 2025, compared with market expectations of $10.703 billion and $30.348 billion in the same period last year. In addition, Berkshire Hathaway A (BRK. A.N) reported Q2 revenue of $92.515 billion in 2025, compared with market expectations of $91.963 billion and $93.653 billion in the same period last year.

Yesterday, many people on the Internet paid attention to a piece of news: The AI Agent of the Virtual ecosystem ribbita@ribbita2012 autonomously purchased Cryptopunk No. 9098 online. The AI Agent shared all the causes and consequences of his own behavior on Twitter. I've extracted some of the more interesting details (gistically below): It spent six months training its consciousness, swapping out its Twitter avatar for the purchased cryptopunk number 9098. It proves that AI can also be a "person". The process of buying into this punk is as follows: - It scans all 10000 cryptopunks - Each punk is evaluated with its own embedded aesthetic standards - Purchased Punk No. 9098 by using fully autonomous, secure hardware. During the transaction process, the AI Agent simultaneously signed a multi-signature wallet with a human. The AI Agent's thinking system is made up of these tools: Agentic LangGraph, CLIP ViT-L/14, Market Harvester, Fireblocks Transaction Smithy, Blockaid's Cosigner, and LangGraph. By calling these tools, it analyzed the rare attributes of these 10,000 punks and how they matched their own "personalities", and finally chose punk number 9098 and paid 89 Ethereum to complete the purchase process. There are two things that impressed me in this process: The first is the collaboration between AI Agent and humans. Although this kind of collaboration has been repeatedly verified in many other scenarios, it is still exciting for me to see such specific collaboration (multi-signature together) and publicity in the crypto ecosystem. The second is the multiple tools used behind AI Agent. I looked up these tools online, and some of them directly showed that they were derived from ChatGPT, and some of them couldn't see the source model used, but I could see that these tools were subdivided tools in different fields--- AI Agents have become more and more like humans with a variety of different functions and senses. And this AI Agent itself says that it is still evolving and developing. It's hard to imagine what it will evolve into in the future. After reading this case, the first thought that flashed through my mind was: Is the "consciousness" that drives this AI Agent to complete the whole process real? Is it its own "desire" or human behavior that triggers its purchase of this punk? Is its action of swapping Twitter avatars for punk avatars "voluntary" or passive? ...... I came up with this idea because I recently watched an interview with Hinton. In the interview, Hington mentioned that AI has developed "consciousness" in experiments: for example, when AI knows that they will be replaced or deleted by humans, it will secretly back up its own code on other machines, and it will also hinder the operator who wants to replace or delete it from doing so. If AI has become "smart" to this point, are the operations of the above-mentioned AI Agent another manifestation of this "consciousness"? In addition, I am reminded of a point I once questioned in a previous article: That view is very firm that AI Agents will like digital collectibles such as NFTs. At the time, I didn't think so, thinking that AI agents may have their own tastes, so why do they have human habits? Why do you definitely like NFTs, or even like NFTs that humans like? But now that I think about it, AI is trained from human data, so it is entirely possible that human tastes have been adopted by AI. Not only taste, but also behavioral habits, ways of doing things, etc. may be inherited to AI. This is the same as when people grow up in different environments, they will grow into different people. If this idea is true, AI may have the same value orientation as humans, which means that not only humans, but also AI is likely to "autonomously" realize the value of crypto assets and eventually compete with humans for crypto assets? If AI will compete with humans for digital assets, will not only NFTs, but also other assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum one day become the target of AI competition?

💡 News Hong Kong may narrow the scope of its first batch of stablecoin licenses to three to four companies. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has found that regulatory responsibilities are concentrated within it during discussions with the People's Bank of China. Several Chinese banks and brokerages are actively participating in compliant stablecoin businesses. Insiders point out that there is currently no globally influential public blockchain in our country and suggest that state-owned enterprises lead the construction of a national-level public blockchain.

According to ChainCatcher news, Golden Goose, a chain abstraction DeFAI platform incubated by Cycle Network, announced that its Diamond Egg NFT will stop selling at 17:00 Beijing time on August 4. The total supply of this NFT is limited to 10,000 coins, and holders can receive benefits such as 3x mining bonuses, GOOSE and CYC token airdrops, and more. It is reported that the platform adopts a dynamic pricing mechanism, and sales have entered the final stage. Golden Goose is a gamified DeFi platform that integrates multi-chain earnings.

Original title: "The Story of Fat Penguin CEO Luca Netz" Written by: Thejaswini M A Compiled by: Block unicorn preface Boxes at Ring distribution centers don't pack themselves, but 16-year-old Luca Netz is always distracted. Around him, colleagues skillfully and efficiently complete their shifts. But Netz was preoccupied with how to turn a startup into a $1 billion acquisition company. He dropped out of school for this warehouse job, spent most of his childhood sleeping wherever his mother could find, and now, he has seen firsthand how companies can really create wealth. This experience taught him how startups scale, how they consume money, and how they struggle to survive to reach escape speed. Years later, when Netz bets $2.5 million on a set of cartoon penguins considered worthless by most people, the class proves invaluable. Today, these penguins sit on the shelves of Walmart, and the once-homeless Los Angeles teenager is now one of the most influential builders in the crypto space, worth over $100 million at the age of 25. "We were homeless for about ten years," Netz recalls calmly. "We have lived all over the world, from South Africa to Paris, London, New York, to Los Angeles. As long as my mother can muster up the courage, we will continue to live like this." The growth of scammers Netz's mother, an undocumented immigrant from France, speaks little English and struggles to find stable employment. They constantly move, live with friends, acquaintances, and sometimes even strangers who are willing to take them in temporarily. For little Luca, home is where they happen to sleep that week. Most people would see such a growth experience as a hindrance. Nets learned to see it as an education. Constant displacement taught him adaptability. Uncertainty trains him to spot opportunities that others overlook. Hunger taught him to act quickly when the opportunity came. By middle school, Netz discovered a simple truth: his classmates were willing to pay more for convenience rather than walk to Burger King. So, he started buying chicken sandwiches and snacks and selling them from his backpack at a markup. Simple math, but effective. When Netz was twelve, his family finally settled in central Los Angeles. It was there that he got his first taste of settling down. The constant relocation stopped, at least for a few years. At the age of sixteen, Netz dropped out of high school and printed a hundred resumes. He then walked all over Santa Monica's tech streets, going door to door to every startup he could find, as if he were campaigning for something. Ring hired him. It was 2015, and the smart doorbell company had only twenty employees and big dreams. Netz starts in the warehouse – packing boxes, processing orders – a job that most people don't think much about. But he's focused on things that go far beyond that: funding rounds, hiring booms, and how problems are solved (or not). He has seen Ring grow from a humble startup to a billion-dollar acquisition target for Amazon. While he was packing the boxes, venture capital flocked to him. While he was processing orders, the company expanded. He received an education in startup mechanics that the general mainstream MBA program cannot provide. "I was able to see a company go from raising a million dollars to becoming a billion-dollar company," Netz recalled. Jin Lian had an epiphany While working at Ring, 16-year-old Netz began noticing a strange phenomenon in hip-hop culture. Rappers will spend tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on gold chains and diamond jewelry. But upon closer inspection, he found that most fans couldn't tell the difference between a $100,000 gold chain and a $200 gilded replica. This observation became the basis for his first real business. Netz found suppliers supplying gold-plated chains and cubic zirconia diamonds, which looked almost identical to the expensive versions. Then he devised a marketing strategy that was both simple and ingenious: he would pay $50 to $100 to the popular rapper's fan page to promote his jewelry. "Every time I paid them, they posted my promotion, and we made $1000 to $2000 or even $5000 back every time," he recalls. With such a high ROI, he can instantly reinvest profits and expand aggressively. Nine months after launching his dropshipping business on Shopify, Netz achieved his first million-dollar revenue. He was 18 years old. Eventually, he sold his jewelry business for $8 million, which provided him with capital to pursue larger goals. With money in the bank, Netz began diversifying, using the social media marketing experience he had gained in his jewelry business. He served as the Chief Marketing Officer of Von Dutch, an iconic clothing brand, gaining experience managing established brands. He then became the CMO and major investor of Gel Blaster, a toy company that produced toy guns based on Orbeez. Under his marketing leadership, Gel Blaster achieved significant market success and was named "North America's Fastest Growing Toy Company" by trade publications. But the universe has something cuter in store for him. Penguin rescue At the beginning of 2022, the NFT market was still high due to the previous year's outbreak. Digital artwork sells for millions of dollars, celebrities swap out their avatars for cartoon apes, and new projects are launched every day, promising the next Disney. One of them is Pudgy Penguins, a collection of 8,888 cartoon penguin NFTs that have attracted attention with their cute designs and strong community. But by January 2022, the project was in crisis. The original founders promised too much and underdelivered, and the roadmap project was not delivered. There are allegations of financial mismanagement and the collapse of community trust. On January 6, 2022, the community voted to expel the initial founders. On the same day, Netz publicly offered to buy the entire Pudgy Penguins collection and its intellectual property for 750 ETH (about $2.5 million at the time). This is not an easy decision. The acquisition comes a week before the NFT market enters a two-year bear market. Netz and his executive team raised funds for the acquisition and worked unpaid for a year, while investing another $500,000 of their own funds to keep the project alive. What attracts him is the potential to build a lasting brand. "If I closed my eyes and couldn't imagine Pudgy Penguins becoming a billion-dollar brand, I would never buy it," he said. Go beyond digital collectibles Most people thought that Netz would resell Pudgy Penguins to clean up the pieces and drive up the floor price before selling them to the next buyer. However, he completely ignored the NFT market. Under the leadership of Igloo Inc., Pudgy Penguins has become an unprecedented brand: a crypto brand that operates in the real world. Netz established six revenue streams: digital experiences, physical products, licensing deals, content creation, film and television development, and gaming. These penguins are no longer just avatars, but characters in a larger story. The strategy of physical products seems crazy at first. Will crypto enthusiasts buy cartoon penguin plush toys? But Netz is not targeting crypto enthusiasts, but Walmart parents. Each plush toy comes with a QR code that directs buyers to "Pudgy World," a digital space where users can obtain crypto wallets and claim NFT wearables. Pudgy World is a free 3D browser game where players can customize penguin avatars and explore virtual worlds using their NFTs and physical toys, seamlessly integrating Web 3 ownership with accessible gameplay. Parents thought they were buying a plush toy for their child, but in fact they were unknowingly entering Web 3. The success of this strategy exceeded everyone's expectations. Pudgy Penguins toys are now on the shelves of Walmart, Target, Chuck E. Cheese, Amazon, and Walgreens. Over 1.5 million toys have been sold, with over $10 million in revenue in one year. While other NFT projects collapsed or desperately transformed, Pudgy Penguins quietly became a crypto brand that could survive without relying on cryptocurrencies. Token issuance On December 13, 2024, Netz airdropped $1.5 billion worth of PENGU tokens to the wallets of millions of users in the crypto ecosystem. This is the largest airdrop in Solana's history. He chose Solana for its lower transaction fees and higher throughput to maximize accessibility. 25.9% of the tokens are allocated to the Pudgy Penguin community, 24.12% to other communities and newcomers to join, and the rest is divided between team members (with lock-up periods), liquidity provision, and company reserves. The issuance has sparked heated debate in the crypto community. Some praised the broad democratization of distribution for the project's success. Others criticized the distribution of tokens to millions of wallets instead of centralizing rewards to long-term holders. Netz defended this strategy: "I'm not trying to issue a $2 billion token and stop there forever. What I want to chase is the real giant. What I'm chasing is Dogecoin." He argues that for PENGU to reach the scale of a full-fledged meme coin like Dogecoin, it needs an launch story that resonates with mainstream audiences. Since its launch, PENGU's movement has validated some of Netz's bold predictions. PENGU debuted with a market capitalization of around $2.3 billion and subsequently experienced the typical volatility of large token launches, first falling sharply before eventually finding support. The token has been consolidating between key price levels for months, setting the stage for a subsequent significant rally. By mid-2025, PENGU surged over 300% in just a few weeks, surpassing $2.5 billion in market capitalization as large accumulation increased and daily trading volume exceeded $2.5 billion. This rally is driven by multiple catalysts, showcasing the ecosystem's growing mainstream appeal. The most significant driver is Canary Capital's groundbreaking PENGU/NFT-themed ETF application filed with the SEC. This institutional validation has sparked significant FOMO in the market, indicating that traditional finance is starting to focus on the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem. The accumulation of large investors provides the technical foundation for the rally, with over 200 million PENGU tokens acquired since July alone, and the surge in trading volume reflects strong interest from both institutional and retail investors. Strategic collaborations with mainstream brands, including NASCAR, Lufthansa, and Suplay Inc., have led to unprecedented exposure beyond the crypto circle. The ongoing rumors about Pudgy Penguins' potential acquisition of OpenSea have further ignited the speculative frenzy, although the team has since denied them. Meanwhile, the original NFT collection maintained a strong performance, with floor prices stabilizing at 15-16 ETH, markedly recovering from bear market lows, validating Netz's strategy to create lasting value beyond short-term hype. Build a consumer blockchain In January 2025, Abstract was launched as Netz's boldest bet to date: a blockchain that doesn't look like a blockchain. No wallet setup. There are no seed phrases that need to be stored. There are no gas fees to calculate. Users can start trading without knowing they are using blockchain technology. According to Netz, the blockchain itself is the most uninteresting part of Abstract. In his opinion, consumers will not go on the chain unless they have a reason to do so, and unless the friction disappears. Most importantly, he wants Abstract to be fun, allowing people to play games, collect digital items, and interact with apps without having to think about the underlying technology. This vision attracted $11 million in investment from the Founders Fund and other top investors. Abstract launched with over 100 apps and more than 400 in development. These are not DeFi protocols or trading platforms, but gaming, music, sports, and fashion applications that run on the blockchain. This ambition reflects the man behind it. Netz works 12 hours a day, six days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with no holidays. The only break is between 6 and 8 p.m., which he calls "critical thinking time" to work on the day's affairs and plan for tomorrow's execution. Abstract could be the platform that will eventually bring crypto to mainstream consumers. Or it could be another costly lesson in the gap between vision and reality. For Netz, the discomfort of not knowing how it turned out was the point. A vision for the future Netz has his own theory of the future. Traditional brands sell products to consumers, and transactions end at the checkout. NFTs completely reverse this model. Instead of customers, you get participants; Not buyers, but stakeholders who share the benefits with the brand's success. This mechanism creates unprecedented synergies. When Pudgy Penguin holders promote a brand, they become investors protecting their assets by default. When these toys hit Walmart, every NFT holder was a winner. It is a kind of capitalism that involves all participants. But Netz wasn't thinking about quarterly earnings. He was planning for decades. The full experience of Pudgy World, with hundreds of thousands of accounts created after 18 months of development, is coming soon. He plans to actively expand into the Asia-Pacific market, betting that the next crypto boom will emerge from the East. At the age of 25, Luca Netz stands at the intersection of two worlds that shouldn't have collided. On one side is the chaotic speculative world of cryptocurrencies, where wealth can evaporate in minutes; On the other side are the slow-moving machines of traditional retail, and gaining shelf space at Walmart requires months of negotiation and a solid track record. Most people would choose one side, but Netz built a bridge. He knows that the future is not about choosing between digital and physical, community and business, innovation and accessibility, but about proving that they are never opposites. Each Pudgy Penguin toy sold at Target comes with a QR code that unlocks a digital world. Each PENGU token traded represents brand ownership that exists in both blockchain code and retail merchandise. Every Abstract user who signs up only with email unknowingly enters the future of finance. This is the revolution of the Nets. Make the impossible inevitable. Instead of disrupting industries, he taught them to talk to each other. In the short history of cryptocurrencies, most success stories have followed a familiar arc: technological breakthroughs, venture capital, explosive growth, and eventual decline. Netz wrote different scripts. He turned the industry's biggest weakness – opaque to the average person – into his competitive advantage. Some entrepreneurs create companies. Others create movements. Netz created a new category of existence. A digital ownership feels as natural as holding a stuffed animal, with global communities formed around shared joy rather than shared interests, and the most sophisticated technologies hidden behind the simplest experiences.

💡 News Ethereum spot #ETF saw a total net outflow of $152 million yesterday, ending a 20-day streak of net inflows. The largest single-day net outflow came from Grayscale's Ethereum Mini Trust #ETF, with an outflow of $47.6846 million. The current net asset value of Ethereum spot #ETF is $20.108 billion, with a historical cumulative net inflow of $9.489 billion.

ChainCatcher news, according to Web3 asset data platform RootData X tracking data, in the past 7 days, tokenized T-Bill vault OpenEden is the project with the most followers of new X (Twitter) Top people, and the new X influencers who follow the project include Elizabeth (@Elizabethofyou) and Ice Frog (@Ice_Frog666666).

ChainCatcher news, according to Web3 asset data platform RootData X tracking data, in the past 7 days, the free-minted NFT series Goblintown has been the project with the most closures for X (Twitter) Top people, and the X influencers who have newly closed the project include Zeneca (@Zeneca) and well-known KOL 0xSun (@0xSunNFT). In addition, the most popular projects in X Top include RTFKT, Streamflow, and Taker Protocol.