Source: Talk Li Talk Outside
Today, let's briefly chat about a few interesting things from the past couple of days.
1. Controversy arises from the launch of Sony Soneium's mainnet
In an article last year, we mentioned that Sony's Sony Block Solution Labs announced the launch of the Ethereum Layer 2 network Soneium, which is based on Optimism Rollup technology and built using the OP Stack of the Optimism blockchain ecosystem. See the image below.
And just yesterday (January 14), Sony officially announced that the Soneium mainnet has officially launched and is fully operational. See the image below.
According to on-chain data, the network has attracted over 15.6 million active wallets and processed over 50 million transactions after more than four months of testing. See the image below.
Sony BSL Director Sota Watanabe also stated in an interview that Soneium is suitable for everyone and is a public blockchain open to all.
However, it has been less than a day since a controversial discussion regarding Soneium emerged online:
The event started when someone discovered that Soneium would censor early tokens at the RPC stage. If the tokens could not pass the audit, they would receive a Forbidden prompt.
The general process of this matter is that someone immediately published a MemeCoin on the Soneium network, but some of these MemeCoins were blacklisted and restricted by Soneium on the grounds of suspected intellectual property infringement. If users try to query these MemeCoins through the Soneium blockchain explorer, they will receive a warning alert indicating prohibition.
However, Soneium's approach (freezing contracts) seems to contradict the decentralized spirit of blockchain. The anonymous founder of Pump Fun has also criticized Soneium, further increasing dissatisfaction with Soneium. See the image below.
As the situation escalated, a dramatic scene appeared, as some netizens discovered they could directly bypass Soneium's Sequencer (an important component in Layer2 Rollup for receiving unordered transactions and generating ordered transaction batches) and force transactions (purchases) of tokens prohibited by Soneium through Layer1. See the image below.
This seems to directly confirm the power of OP Stack: it can bypass the L2 sequencer and force transactions through L1, thereby achieving censorship resistance for L2. According to the netizen's comments, we can translate it into simple terms: the design of OP Stack allows each L2 to inherit the security of Ethereum L1. Although L2 can be censored at the RPC level (centralized), they cannot prevent users from forcing transactions through L1 (censorship-resistant).
Of course, the above are also some views and discussions from everyone regarding Soneium. Moreover, regarding the issue of blockchain censorship, different people may have different opinions; for example, some may believe that the censorship system is one of the advantages of L2 over L1 because it can filter out some junk information.
If you are also interested in the topic of Soneium, you can follow some related developments on X or Google. Regarding something new, some people like to take a gossip angle to enjoy the excitement, some choose to ignore it, and others like to explore potential opportunities behind it; it all depends on how you choose. I briefly checked Soneium's official website, and currently, there are over 160 protocols deployed on its ecosystem. If you have the time and energy to research, you might want to explore some potential airdrop or trading opportunities.
2. Xiaohongshu concept Memes ignite popularity
Yesterday, Xiaohongshu suddenly became popular; everyone probably saw it. The trigger was news that Tiktok might be banned by the Americans on January 19, leading to a large influx of American users into Xiaohongshu, which topped the download rankings in the U.S. app store. See the image below.
This situation has caused a long-awaited rise in related sectors of the A-shares (some listed companies related to Xiaohongshu). However, compared to the rigor of the A-shares, the crypto market is much livelier; many meme coins featuring the Xiaohongshu concept quickly took off, and some tokens successfully seized this wave of momentum, leading to rapid speculative price increases.
In the past couple of days, I’ve also seen some Chinese KOLs starting to hype things up. For this kind of heat, I still advise everyone to stay calm; things that rise quickly can fall just as fast. If you can’t resist the urge to take risks, it’s best to use funds you can afford to lose for experimentation.
As for how many more days this wave of popularity for Xiaohongshu can last, I don't know, but as a locally developed social media app in China, it theoretically should not allow a large influx of foreigners who favor free speech; otherwise, various 'you know what I mean' statements would be hard to manage effectively. What’s the point of the firewall we’ve spent so much money on?
Although Tiktok 'belongs' to Douyin, it prevents locals from using it very cautiously, and even if you use a VPN, you cannot access it directly unless you remove the domestic SIM card and make some special settings on your phone. If Xiaohongshu allows countless foreigners to speak freely on our territory, it would be like playing with fire.
3. Is the XRP ETF about to be approved?
Today I noticed some partners in the group discussing XRP, as its rebound over the past couple of days has indeed been relatively strong compared to other altcoins. This seems to be a typical case of a coin that you ignore during a bear market, but can't afford to climb high during a bull market.
The main expectations regarding XRP recently should be the layout for RWA and the spot ETF.
Last week (January 7), Ripple announced a partnership with Chainlink, hoping to further increase the use of RLUSD in the DeFi market. This RLUSD is a stablecoin launched by Ripple last month (December 2024), primarily targeting the future RWA market. It seems Ripple hopes to become a bridge connecting cryptocurrency and the modern financial system.
Just a few days ago, Ripple's CEO Monica Long publicly stated in an interview that the spot ETF for XRP is about to be approved, which will become the third spot ETF after BTC and ETH. The supportive policies for virtual assets by the incoming Trump administration will accelerate the approval of the XRP spot ETF.
In fact, at the end of last year (2024), news related to the XRP spot ETF had already appeared online, such as:
In October 2024, Canary Capital (a crypto investment firm based in the U.S.) and Bitwise submitted an application form S-1 for a spot XRP ETF to the SEC.
In November 2024, 21Shares submitted a spot XRP ETF application to the SEC. WisdomTree (an exchange-traded fund issuer) registered an XRP entity in Delaware.
In December 2024, WisdomTree became the fourth institution in the U.S. to submit a spot XRP (XRP) ETF application to the SEC.
Currently, popular spot ETFs mainly include XRP, SOL, DOGE, etc. As for which of them will ultimately become the third-largest ETF after BTC and ETH, we should be able to see the answer this year; it seems that what remains is just a matter of time.
Regarding ETFs, even analysts from JPMorgan have expressed optimism. In a recent report, they stated that a potential XRP ETF could bring in $4 billion to $8 billion in capital inflow within 6 to 12 months. See the image below.
In terms of capital flow, last week, XRP saw an inflow of $41 million, as shown in the image below. This is mainly driven by political and legal factors (the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the SEC to submit a statement on the appeal against Ripple Labs by January 15, 2025).
In addition, XRP also has a strong advantage in cross-border payments. They have already established an ecosystem integrated with many partners (including banks and payment institutions), allowing partner banks to provide customers access to crypto products through Ripple's custody services, including Citi, HSBC, BNP Paribas, etc.
If we follow Ripple's current approach (strategy), then we could speculate:
The aforementioned RLUSD is likely just their first attempt; it is estimated that in the near future, they may start to provide corresponding tokenization services like banks and expand the assets that can be tokenized onto the chain (the previously mentioned collaboration with Chainlink makes sense at this point).
If Ripple can complete this big chess game, then theoretically, they could become the tokenization support center for banks (global partner banks), opening up further practical scenarios for XRP in the future.
Of course, the above speculation is merely wishful thinking; the implementation of this matter may not be as simple as imagined here, and it may ultimately not be realized by Ripple. We are just sharing opinions here, not encouraging you to blindly buy XRP tokens. Any altcoin could cause you to lose all your principal, so you need to be responsible for your own wallet before making any decisions. However, further speculation suggests that the narrative of RWA indeed has considerable room for imagination; it depends on what policies will emerge after Trump takes office. If policies can be relaxed or allowed, then this narrative might become one of the important stories in 2025.
4. At the end of the article, let's briefly look at what other noteworthy events have happened in the past couple of days:
- Bitcoin mining difficulty hits an all-time high
According to on-chain data, the mining difficulty of Bitcoin has reached 110.45 T, setting a new historical high. See the image below.
Generally speaking, the rise in difficulty and computing power will further reinforce the market's value expectations for BTC. We can also simply refer to the current mainstream machines' shutdown prices. See the image below.
- Tether and its subsidiaries will move to El Salvador
According to an announcement from Tether (USDT) a few days ago (January 13), they will complete all procedures for moving to El Salvador. What do you think about a giant company with a massive market value choosing to leave the U.S. and European markets to settle in El Salvador?
- Will Trump issue an executive order related to cryptocurrency policy on his first day in office?
Reports indicate that Trump is expected to sign an executive order next week after taking office to abolish cryptocurrency banks and repeal the banking accounting policy that allows banks holding cryptocurrencies to list digital assets as liabilities. See the image below. As for whether this news is true, we won't know until Trump takes office next week.
- The U.S. will announce the December CPI year-on-year rate today (today at 21:30 Beijing time)
The market expects the overall inflation rate to record 2.9%, up from 2.7% in November last year. See the image below.
Additionally, current observations indicate that the likelihood of the Federal Reserve maintaining interest rates (i.e., not lowering them) on January 29 has risen to 97%. See the image below.
Let's just talk about these things briefly today~
