The Block

Quick Take Total value locked across DeFi protocols has surged to levels last seen prior to the FTX crisis in Nov. 2022. In 2023, the metric jumped from around $38 billion to its current level of $52 billion, a 36% hike in dollar terms.

PancakeSwap’s proposal to reduce the maximum supply of its native CAKE token from 750 million to 450 million was approved.

Mathew McDermott of Goldman Sachs says the approval of spot crypto ETFs will spur greater institutional interest in crypto.He also foresees the development and growth of tokenization marketplaces in the coming year.

Quick Take Buterin wrote today in a blog post that there’s a large ideological rift where the non-blockchain world would “see the crypto space as a distraction.”

Quick Take The company suspects the breach may be an inside job.

Quick Take Judge Jed Rakoff in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment for the SEC on that claim, while also siding with Terraform “on the claims involving offering and effecting transactions in security-based swaps,” according to an order filed on Thursday.

Quick Take Former New Jersey resident Diana Mae Fernandez promised guaranteed returns as high as 63 percent by claiming to invest customers’ money in crypto, private and publicly traded companies and luxury real estate, the SEC said in a litigation release posted on Thursday.

Quick Take This crypto quiz is designed to test how well you recall key crypto events that happened during 2023.

Quick Take Bitcoin options trading volume has hit an all-time high across major crypto derivatives exchanges. On Friday’s options expiry, a record-breaking $7.7 billion worth of bitcoin-linked options will expire on Deribit.

Quick Take zkSync, a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum, processed more transactions than the Ethereum mainnet over the past month. zkSync handled 34.7 million transactions in 30 days, surpassing Ethereum’s 34.2 million in the same period.