Project Progress

Gate News reports that on March 20, The Smarter Web Company, a London-listed technology company, announced that its Chief Financial Officer Albert Soleiman has reached an agreement with the board to immediately resign from his position as a company director and will step down as Chief Financial Officer following an orderly transition period. Mario Visconti, the company's former Chief Financial Officer and current Finance Director and Project Head, will serve as interim Chief Financial Officer following Albert Soleiman's departure.

Crypto accelerator Alliance announced its ALL16 cohort list on March 20, featuring 18 teams covering stablecoin payments (such as Allod, Superbank, etc.), prediction markets (such as Predexon, Freeport, etc.), and AI applications and RWA tokenization projects (such as Givance, Graded, etc.).

Pi Network's Protocol 20 protocol update has garnered attention from the crypto community, activating new discussions about its utility, while market price predictions for its global consensus value have reached $314159. The significance and specific impact of this technical upgrade continue to be widely analyzed.

Gate News reported that on March 20, Lido Earn introduced a new first-loss compensation mechanism on-chain to cover potential losses users may suffer in extreme scenarios. Lido DAO has allocated $5 million from its treasury for this purpose. When losses valued at market price reach or exceed 1%, a dedicated protocol reserve will first absorb the losses, ensuring user deposits remain unaffected.

Pi Network (PI) recently rose, indicating that the profit-taking trend is weakening. Kraken and LBank have been added as official centralized exchanges supporting PI trading, boosting liquidity. On-chain data shows that net inflows on CEXs have turned positive, indicating increased holder confidence. Technical analysis suggests that PI still faces resistance but has rebound potential, requiring a break above the 50-day moving average and rising RSI to challenge the psychological level of $0.20.

Startup t54 announces that its AI agents can now autonomously make payments using XRP and RLUSD on the XRP Ledger, achieving the first integration of AI agents with on-chain payments. t54's x402 protocol enables AI agents to autonomously take on tasks, verify them on-chain, and settle payments via smart contracts. Ripple's strategic investment signals its early positioning in the AI agent economy, which could potentially increase demand for XRP, though success will require time to verify.

Open-source AI agent tool OpenClaw is rapidly gaining popularity in China, attracting users across various industries to train personal agents for diverse purposes. While the boom aligns with government-driven AI policies, it faces a dual dilemma of rising costs and safety regulations, leading users to concerns about its future development.

Tether is accelerating the introduction of USDT into the Bitcoin Lightning Network to enhance transfer efficiency and expand application scenarios. This move combines stablecoins with Bitcoin, promoting efficient payments and cross-chain application development, and is expected to improve the usability of cryptocurrency payment systems, though it faces market competition and technical challenges.

The World Gold Council and Boston Consulting Group have jointly launched the "Gold-as-a-Service" white paper, aimed at establishing a unified open platform framework that connects physical gold with tokenized products to enhance gold's usability and transaction convenience in the financial system. This framework features six key functionalities including standardized issuance, high transparency, and improved liquidity, and is expected to accelerate institutional investors' entry into the tokenized gold market.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has questioned the efficiency of the current T+2 settlement system and is pushing to shorten settlement cycles and introduce blockchain technology. Blockchain can enable instant settlement, eliminate counterparty risk, and enhance market liquidity. If South Korea successfully implements these reforms, it could gain institutional advantages in Asian markets.

Gate News reports that on March 20, WLFI announced the launch of an open-source payment toolkit for AI agents, AgentPay SDK. The SDK is built on USD1, integrating self-hosted key management functionality and policy-based transaction authorization mechanisms, and can be integrated with commonly used AI development tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenClaw.

Figure co-founder Mike Cagney announced the launch of the Figure Forge service, which aims to turn blockchain-native loans and other RWAs into participation tokens. The service will be used in the Democratized Prime DeFi market and will offer additional yields through the Hastra protocol, with the liquidity limit order book funded by Figure.

Monero core developer jeffro256 released the first quarter development plan on March 20, which includes proposals for wallet API changes, support for Carrot-derived accounts, the launch of the FCMP++ stress test network, collaboration with hardware wallets, and multisignature implementation.

World Chain announces adoption of ERC-8183 standard, which supports smart agent commercial applications and was jointly released with the Ethereum Foundation team. ERC-8183 emphasizes custodial mechanisms for on-chain smart contracts, with task flows passing through four major states to ensure trustless transactions.

Gate News: As of March 20, Aave V3 has experienced continuous rapid growth since its launch on the Mantle mainnet on February 11. Data shows that the market size broke through $400 million in the first week, exceeded $550 million in the second week, and surpassed $1 billion in the third week. As of now, the total market size of Aave Mantle has exceeded $1.34 billion, making it the third-largest lending market on the Aave platform, and it continues to grow.

The Ethereum Foundation has allocated 3,400 ETH to the decentralized lending protocol Morpho, enhancing its treasury strategy. This includes 1,000 ETH in Morpho Vaults V2, aimed at sustainable DeFi yields, following an earlier deployment of 2,400 ETH last October.

Strive Company holds 13,627.9 bitcoins, making it one of the top ten bitcoin reserve companies globally, but the fourth quarter loss reached $393.6 million, primarily due to bitcoin price decline. To support its high dividend strategy, Strive purchased low-interest STRC, which despite generating a 1.25% negative carry, helps maintain cash flow and reduce the risk of having to sell bitcoins when paying dividends. Currently, the stock price has retreated from its peak to approximately $10.