Project Progress

Gate News Announcement, March 12, OP Labs CEO Jing Wang tweeted that OP Labs will lay off 20 employees to streamline operations, accelerate decision-making, and reduce coordination costs. Jing Wang emphasized: "This decision reflects a narrowing of our focus, not a liquidity crisis." Affected employees will receive three months of base salary and N+1 compensation, and health insurance will be extended for six months.

Across Community proposed a new plan on March 12th to transform the existing "DAO + Token" structure into a U.S. C-corp company, holding the protocol's intellectual property rights. ACX holders can choose to exchange for equity or sell tokens for USDC at $0.04375 per share, with plans to execute within 6 months.

Backpack Exchange CEO Armani Ferrante announced during a live stream that the Backpack token's Token Generation Event (TGE) will take place on March 23, with a total supply of 1 million tokens, of which 62.5% will be allocated to users. Users who stake tokens can exchange for 20% of the company's equity after one year. This design aims to attract long-term investors and avoid selling pressure.

Sonic Labs launched US Sonic Dollar (USSD) on March 12 as the core liquidity layer. This stablecoin is built on Frax Finance's compliant infrastructure and supported by multiple institutions. It is pegged 1:1 to the US dollar and aims to enhance ecosystem yields while supporting cross-chain fee-free minting and flexible redemption.

Base Ecosystem Trend Prediction Platform Noise opens waitlist registration on March 12. The platform completed a $7.1 million seed round in January, attracting multiple investment institutions. Its testnet was launched last year, with over 1,300 users participating in cryptocurrency topic predictions.

Ethereum Layer-2 network Optimism is undergoing more than 20% layoffs, according to internal employee discussions on social media. The layoffs involve multiple core departments, and the reasons are unclear, possibly to improve efficiency or respond to market pressures. The OP token has already fallen over 55% this year, and market sentiment remains cautious. The impact of these layoffs on the super chain project remains to be seen; in the short term, Base's operations are unaffected, but long-term development capabilities may face challenges.

The March 12 crypto market news includes the Backpack token TGE scheduled for March 23, Across Protocol exploring the exchange of ACX tokens for equity, FDIC Chairman stating that stablecoins will not be covered by deposit insurance, Hyperliquid crude oil contract trading volume nearing $1 billion, and more.

OpenRouter launched two anonymous models, Hunter Alpha and Healer Alpha, on March 12, both available for free. Hunter Alpha is a 1 trillion parameter text model focused on long-term planning and complex reasoning; Healer Alpha is a multimodal model supporting visual and audio inputs. The community has various speculations about the identities of these models, but no official confirmation has been provided.

Gate News Announcement, March 12, Avantis announced on the X platform the launch of the AVNT token buyback and burn plan. According to the plan, Avantis will use 30% of the daily trading revenue (including opening fees, closing fees, and profit fees) to buy back and burn AVNT tokens on the open market. This mechanism is now officially in effect. Additionally, the official statement indicates that after future protocol efficiency upgrades, the buyback ratio is expected to increase to over 50%, with an expected implementation before the end of the second quarter of 2026.

Foundry Digital will launch a mining pool for privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash in April, expanding beyond its Bitcoin operations. The new pool aims to support institutional miners with compliance features and operational infrastructure, responding to Zcash's growing status as an organizational asset.

Gate News Report, March 12 — According to on-chain data monitoring, Pump.fun has registered subdomains on Base, BSC, Monad, and Ethereum. At the same time, Pump.fun also removed the Solana logo from its X platform account homepage. The market believes these actions may be early signals of the platform's multi-chain expansion.

Gate News Report, March 12 — According to SolanaFloor, Pump.fun has registered subdomains on Base, BSC, Monad, and Ethereum, indicating that the platform may be considering expanding from the Solana ecosystem to other blockchain networks. At the same time, Pump.fun also removed the "Solana" location tag from its X profile.

Gate News Report, March 12 — U.S. major bank Wells Fargo has filed a cryptocurrency-related trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the name WFUSD. According to the application documents, WFUSD will provide cryptocurrency payment processing, digital asset trading execution, and asset tokenization software services. The name suggests that it may be a deposit token or stablecoin. Previously in 2019, Wells Fargo disclosed plans to pilot an internal settlement service called "Wells Fargo Digital Cash" on its proprietary distributed ledger platform.

Gate News Report, March 12 — Sources reveal that HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Hong Kong-based virtual asset trading platform OSL will be among the first institutions to receive a Hong Kong stablecoin license. The report states that the list may be announced as early as next week, but nothing has been finalized yet, and changes are still possible. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority responded by saying they do not comment on market rumors.

Bitcoin hits 20M mined coins, fueling debates on supply, institutional buys, and market control. Zcash seed round and privacy tech drive social buzz, while Tether gains attention via USAT launch. Ethereum staking, Dogecoin rumors, and TRON AI partnerships dominate crypto social

Coinfello has launched its open-source Openclaw skill, designed to facilitate secure interactions between AI agents and Ethereum Virtual Machine smart contracts, in partnership with Metamask. Delegated Permissions and ERC-4337 Integration Coinfello, an artificial intelligence (AI) agent designed

Pundi AI and Metya have partnered to launch the "Tag to Earn" model, enabling users to contribute to AI training data while earning rewards. This collaboration integrates social engagement, AI, and payments, enhancing value for Metya's vast community.

Prediction market Myriad is transitioning to World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin as its exclusive settlement asset. As part of the move, Myriad, owned by _Decrypt_’s parent company Dastan, is migrating its entire prediction market catalog to BNB Chain. > Welcome to MYRIAD Season 3. > > Our b

Gate News Announcement: On March 11, the Solana ecosystem DeFi protocol Drift announced that on March 12, it will launch cross-chain deposit functionality, allowing users to transfer funds from any major trading platform and start trading.

VanEck Research Director Matthew Sigel pointed out that Bitcoin mining stocks are attractive to investors, as mining companies are shifting toward the AI market to enhance value. Core Scientific plans to sell Bitcoin assets to expand its AI business, and Riot Platforms expects to achieve a strategic transformation by 2025. Over the past 12 months, both Core and Riot stocks have increased by 90%, while MARA has fallen 35% due to rising costs. NODE ETF has risen over 30% since its launch.