Project Progress

Hong Kong's financial regulatory framework is progressing, with the Stablecoin Ordinance scheduled to take effect in August 2025, requiring issuing entities to meet stringent standards. Mature financial institutions such as Standard Chartered and HSBC are expected to be among the first to obtain approval, thereby promoting the development of the stablecoin ecosystem. Although concerns about centralization exist, this framework reflects Hong Kong's commitment to becoming a global hub for digital asset innovation, while also instilling confidence in crypto users and institutional investors.

Pi Network launched a new application feature called Pi Launchpad on its testnet on March 16, designed to help developers issue project tokens and integrate them with practical applications. The platform emphasizes "utility first," promoting healthy ecosystem development and allowing users to experience token issuance and DeFi functionality through the test environment. Launchpad employs a liquidity pool mechanism to provide baseline liquidity, with the overall update aimed at attracting more developers and driving application implementation.

Bittensor subnet Templar completed pretraining of Covenant-72B, a decentralized language model with 72 billion parameters, on March 10th. The model demonstrated excellent performance on MMLU tests, surpassing multiple centralized baseline models. The project attracted collaboration from over 70 nodes, with all weights and checkpoints released under the Apache License. Following this news, Bittensor and its token experienced broad gains.

The Ethereum Foundation released a 38-page charter aimed at defending individual technological sovereignty and decentralization. They positioned Ethereum as "sacred technology," emphasizing privacy and security, and proposed the concept of "subtractive governance," committed to enhancing decentralization and allowing the Ethereum ecosystem to evolve autonomously. The charter also emphasized requirements for Layer2 scaling solutions, rejecting centralized designs to ensure Ethereum's future development.

Pi Network has introduced a new feature called the Pi Launchpad. The first version is now live on the Pi Testnet as a Pi App. This early release allows the community to test how the system works before it moves to the main network. The Pi Core Team announced that the Launchpad currently uses a test environment.

On March 16, Web3 social infrastructure UXLINK launched Season 7 incentive campaign, with the core focus on "AI-Driven and Real-World Applications." Users can complete tasks such as subscribing to AI services and using FujiPay for payments to earn cashback rewards and N-Score points. The campaign aims to promote the integration of Web3 social networks with AI tools and real-world payment scenarios.

Paradex released its product roadmap on March 16, announcing multiple important updates, including DIME token expansion, RWA contract trading launch, upgrades to MCP and CLI functionality, and sharing token buyback progress. Meanwhile, Paradex will rebrand as Paradex Ecosystem to strengthen the connection between real-time dynamics and on-chain trading.

Gate launched the AI aggregation platform GateRouter on March 16, providing developers and AI Agents with a unified model calling interface. Users can quickly access multiple mainstream large models through a single API and enjoy a pay-as-you-go model without requiring a credit card or subscription, offering high credibility and convenient usage.

The Solana ecosystem has recently achieved multiple financial integrations. Aon successfully completed premium settlements using PayPal USD on its platform, demonstrating the viability of blockchain in traditional payments. Additionally, Solana is exploring tokenized stocks and access to Nasdaq, and has joined Mastercard's cryptocurrency collaboration program to deepen financial infrastructure cooperation. This marks blockchain payments entering mainstream finance.

The Trump family's cryptocurrency project WLFI has passed a governance proposal requiring token holders to lock their tokens for 180 days to retain voting rights, while offering 2% annual yield to promote governance participation. This change aims to attract long-term holders and improve low voter turnout, but raises concerns about centralized governance. WLFI also plans to expand the legal applications of stablecoin USD1 by applying for a national trust bank charter.

Surgence Labs reveals its operating model and success cases, including a DeFi project with TVL breaking $100 million in days and token oversubscription of 28x. Despite crypto startups reaching record financing, user growth remains limited by lack of distribution channels, funding dependency, regulatory uncertainty, and technical barriers. The institution emphasizes neutrality to avoid conflicts of interest and provides market entry support.

Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Swedish AI startup Lovable, stated that tech giants like OpenAI and Google, which possess strong distribution capabilities, represent the primary competitive threat. She believes that market dominance in AI programming tools relies on distribution channels and user growth capabilities. Despite intense competition, Lovable's business maintains robust growth, with annual recurring revenue rising rapidly, and the company plans to expand its workforce to meet growing demand.

Mistral AI co-founder Chaplot joins xAI and SpaceX to participate in Grok large language model training and the integration of digital intelligence and physical hardware. Recently, xAI has recruited multiple key talents, forming a stark contrast with talent attrition elsewhere.

Gate News, on March 16, the decentralized contract exchange Grvt announced through its official Twitter an adjustment to its points multiplier policy. According to the announcement, the altcoin points multiplier will be reduced to 2x, and the RWA (Real World Assets) points multiplier will be adjusted to 3x.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may soon sign a bill allowing the state to create a stablecoin regulatory framework, despite his previous warnings against Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) posing financial surveillance risks. The bill, passed unanimously, requires stablecoin issuers to report transactions over $10,000, raising concerns among libertarian groups about potential oversight. The move could complicate DeSantis's anti-surveillance stance while aligning with federal legislation efforts on stablecoin regulation.

Gate News reported that on March 16, Bitcoin L1 native smart contract platform OP_NET announced that its mainnet launch has been postponed from the originally scheduled March 17 to March 19, with wallet registration time extended by 2 days. Previously, OP_NET completed a $5 million funding round in March, led by Further.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino announced that a major breakthrough from the AI division will be released this week, marking progress in decentralized intelligent infrastructure. The QVAC platform aims to enable AI models to run locally on consumer-grade devices with efficient inference and task automation capabilities. Supported by Tether's financial resources, QVAC continues to iterate and involves multiple cutting-edge technologies, though its future breakthroughs still require observation of actual results.

Pi Network has initiated the second phase of its mainnet migration, marking the first time that referral reward tokens are included in the migration scope and converted into "on-chain assets." KYC verification is a key condition for the migration, but delays in verification and transfers have caused user dissatisfaction. This migration aims to accelerate Pi Network's transition toward a complete blockchain ecosystem, enabling support for more applications in the future, such as merchant payments and decentralized applications.

Sky proposes allocating approximately 70 million USDS to the remaining Sky Agents, including 10 million for Keel, 25 million for new executing Agent Amatsu, 25 million for Ozone, and 10 million for an undisclosed Sky Agent. If the proposal is approved, the funds will be transferred in the voting on March 26.

On March 15, Aave and CoW Swap released different analysis reports regarding last week's swap disaster, with disagreements on responsibility attribution and problem assessment. Aave emphasized that users confirmed transactions despite warnings, while CoW Swap pointed to systemic failures. Neither report detailed the profit issues of MEV bots, reflecting the controversy over responsibility attribution. Future collaboration terms still require community discussion, and Aave has introduced new features to prevent similar losses.