Morning News | OpenAI receives $110 billion investment; Solana launches Solana Payments; M0, MoonPay, and PayPal jointly launch PYUSDx

整理：ChainCatcher

Important News:

• Solana launches Solana Payments, providing real-time payment simulator and developer documentation
• Bloomberg collaborates with Kaiko to bring financial data into the $25 billion tokenized market
• Foreign media: Paypal and Stripe are currently not in negotiations, and Paypal has no plans to sell itself
• Morgan Stanley plans to launch Bitcoin custody, trading, yield, and lending services
• OpenAI secures $110 billion in new investment at a $730 billion valuation
• M0, MoonPay, and PayPal jointly launch a customized stablecoin solution PYUSDx
• Tether's secondary market valuation could reach $375 billion, with its largest shareholder's wealth potentially surpassing Buffett's

What important events have occurred in the past 24 hours?

ZKsync Lite will cease operations on May 4, focusing on Era and ZK Stack ecosystem

According to ChainCatcher and The Block, the Ethereum Layer 2 project ZKsync announced that it will officially discontinue ZKsync Lite (formerly ZKsync 1) on May 4, 2026. At that time, the network will stop producing blocks and permanently freeze the final state to ensure that balances cannot be altered after shutdown. The team stated that this move is a "orderly planned exit" and will not affect ZKsync Era and other chains built on ZK Stack.

After Lite shuts down, the official will retain a read-only API for at least one year to support historical data queries. Users are advised to proactively withdraw assets before the deadline for convenience, but unwithdrawn funds can still be claimed later. Data shows that approximately $33.9 million in assets are still bridged on ZKsync Lite, including about $24.9 million in stablecoins, $8.4 million in ETH and its derivatives, $313,000 in BTC and its derivatives, and about $231,000 in other assets.

ZKsync Lite launched in June 2020 and was regarded as the first zero-knowledge Rollup on Ethereum, supporting token transfers, atomic swaps, and NFT minting, but lacking smart contract functionality. In March 2023, the developer Matter Labs stopped developing Lite after launching Era, shifting focus to support the zkEVM system for general smart contracts.

Jack Dorsey responds to layoffs of nearly 4,000 due to AI: admits previous over-hiring, future goal is over $2 million gross profit per person

According to ChainCatcher, in response to the community's claim that "Block's layoffs are mainly due to over-hiring during the pandemic and management incompetence," former Twitter founder Jack Dorsey posted on the X platform stating, "Yes, we over-hired during the pandemic due to mistakenly establishing two separate company structures (Square and Cash App), but this issue has been corrected by mid-2024.

However, this does not cover all the complexities we face in lending, banking, and BNPL. Our current goal is to achieve over $2 million gross profit per person, reaching four times the efficiency of pre-pandemic levels, which has remained around $500,000 from 2019 to 2024. In fact, we operate a company that is more efficient than most."

UK regulators plan to allow cryptocurrency for betting payments

According to ChainCatcher and Bloomberg, the UK Gambling Commission is planning to assess the feasibility of allowing gamblers to use cryptocurrencies for betting payments, in line with the UK's push for a regulatory framework for digital assets.

Reports indicate that the Financial Conduct Authority is expected to finalize regulations related to crypto assets this year, with plans for them to take effect by the end of 2027. UK betting companies may apply for crypto business licenses under the new regulatory framework.

Tim Miller, Director of Research and Policy Enforcement at the UK Gambling Commission, stated that the relevant exploration will be incorporated into the broader regulatory process for digital assets.

M0, MoonPay, and PayPal jointly launch a customized stablecoin solution PYUSDx

According to ChainCatcher and CoinTelegraph, M0, MoonPay, and PayPal are launching PYUSDx, a product designed to help developers launch customized stablecoins backed by PayPal USD.

PYUSDx combines M0's universal stablecoin and digital token platform with MoonPay Group's infrastructure, simplifying the issuance of dollar-backed stablecoins by reducing technical and operational burdens.

Vitalik elaborates on Ethereum scaling plans, covering short-term gas optimization and long-term phased deployment of ZK-EVM

According to ChainCatcher, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on the X platform that Ethereum scaling is divided into short-term and long-term parts.

In the short term, the Glamsterdam upgrade will introduce block-level access lists for parallel validation, ePBS will allow a larger proportion of time slots for block validation, and gas repricing will ensure that operational costs align with actual execution time.

The multi-dimensional gas mechanism will be phased in, first separating "state creation" costs from "execution and calldata" costs in Glamsterdam, with state creation gas not counting towards the approximately 16 million transaction gas limit. An "reservoir" dimension mechanism will be introduced at the EVM level, prioritizing the consumption of dedicated dimension gas by default, and when insufficient, consuming from the reservoir. This will transition to multi-dimensional pricing, where different dimensions can have different floating gas prices.

Long-term scaling includes ZK-EVM and blob components. For blobs, the plan is to continuously iterate PeerDAS, aiming for approximately 8MB of data processing capacity per second, with future Ethereum block data directly entering blobs.

The phased approach for ZK-EVM includes: in 2026, there will be validator clients supporting ZK-EVM, allowing about 5% of the network to rely on it; in 2027, it will expand to a larger proportion of nodes while promoting formal verification; and when conditions are ripe, transitioning to a five-out-of-three mandatory proof mechanism, ultimately continuously enhancing the security and formal verification level of ZK-EVM, involving changes to VMs like RISC-V.

Tether's secondary market valuation could reach $375 billion, with its largest shareholder's wealth potentially surpassing Buffett's

According to ChainCatcher and Forbes, the valuation of stablecoin issuer Tether could reach $375 billion, placing its owners among the world's wealthiest.

Industry insiders say that Tether's trading price range in the secondary market is between $350 billion and $375 billion. Based on communications with cryptocurrency investors and executives, Forbes currently estimates Tether's valuation at around $200 billion, still significantly higher than last year's $50 billion valuation.

At a $200 billion valuation, CFO Giancarlo Devasini, who holds about 44-45% of the shares, would have a fortune of approximately $89 billion, while CEO Paolo Ardoino and former CEO Jean-Louis van der Velde, each holding about 19%, would have fortunes of around $38 billion; General Counsel Stuart Hoegner, holding about 12%, would have a fortune of nearly $25 billion.

If calculated at the lower limit of the secondary market valuation of $350 billion, Devasini's share value would exceed $156 billion, enough to rank him among the top ten richest people in the world, surpassing Buffett's current net worth of $147.8 billion.

OpenAI secures $110 billion in new investment at a $730 billion valuation

According to ChainCatcher, OpenAI announced that it has secured $110 billion in new investment at a valuation of $730 billion.

This round of financing includes $30 billion from SoftBank, $30 billion from NVIDIA, and $50 billion from Amazon, with expectations of more financial investors joining in the future. This financing round increases the OpenAI Foundation's stake in the OpenAI Group to over $180 billion.

Additionally, OpenAI announced a multi-year strategic partnership with Amazon and expanded its collaboration with NVIDIA, utilizing the Vera Rubin system to provide 3GW of dedicated inference capacity and 2GW of training capacity.

Currently, the weekly active user count for ChatGPT has surpassed 900 million, with over 50 million individual subscribers, and the weekly active user count for Codex has doubled since the beginning of the year to 1.6 million, with paid enterprise users exceeding 9 million.

Morgan Stanley plans to launch Bitcoin custody, trading, yield, and lending services

According to ChainCatcher and Decrypt, Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley, managing nearly $9 trillion in client assets, has expressed that it hopes clients will be able to custody and trade Bitcoin on its platform. When asked if the bank also intends to offer Bitcoin-based yield and lending services, she expressed strong support.

She told Strategy CEO Phong Le at the "Corporate Bitcoin Conference" held in Las Vegas on Wednesday, "These are part of the discussions and explorations, and a natural component of Morgan Stanley's roadmap. I think we are still in a very early stage in this regard."

ZachXBT insider investigation: 8 addresses collectively profited over $1.2 million

According to ChainCatcher, defioasis.eth posted on the X platform that over 3,630 Polymarket addresses bet on "Axiom" in the insider investigation event by on-chain detective ZachXBT, with 56.2% of addresses achieving positive profits. Among the top 10 profit-making addresses, 8 are considered insider addresses, collectively profiting over $1.2 million, and these addresses have very few trading market occurrences, sometimes just once.

Three addresses made profits exceeding $100,000, all trading in that single market, specifically:

1. predictorxyz profited $411,600;
2. 0x054ec2f0ccfdae941886a3ed306635068c716639 profited $354,000;
3. 0xe56526b27b96f009b31ddb46558a134047bfce48 profited $144,000.

Additionally, 47 addresses profited between $10,000 and $100,000, with a total profit of $1.34 million. In terms of maximum exit liquidity, 2 addresses lost over $100,000, with a total loss of $366,000; and another 50 addresses lost between $10,000 and $100,000, with a total loss of $1.239 million.

Foreign media: Paypal and Stripe are currently not in negotiations, and Paypal has no plans to sell itself

According to ChainCatcher and U.S. financial media Semafor, Paypal (PYPL.O) and Stripe are currently not in negotiations. Paypal (PYPL.O) has no plans to sell itself. According to insiders, Paypal has been working with bankers for months to prepare for potential activist investor actions or unwanted acquisition offers.

Insiders stated that Paypal's stock price had previously dropped significantly, and executives faced the risk of initiating acquisition processes in response to risk considerations. Bankers began collaborating with Paypal during the tenure of former CEO Alex Chriss, who left on February 3.

CZ comments on Block layoffs: either fully embrace AI or be replaced by AI

According to ChainCatcher, Binance founder CZ commented on social media regarding the news that "Block plans to lay off nearly half its staff, betting on AI to improve company efficiency," stating, "The reality is, either maximize the use of AI or wait to be replaced by AI."

ChainCatcher previously reported that Block plans to lay off over 4,000 people, with a layoff rate close to 50%.

Solana launches Solana Payments, providing real-time payment simulator and developer documentation
According to ChainCatcher and Cointelegraph, Solana has launched Solana Payments, allowing developers access to a real-time payment simulator, developer documentation, and case studies to start building on-chain.
Bloomberg collaborates with Kaiko to bring financial data into the $25 billion tokenized market
According to ChainCatcher, Bloomberg and crypto market data provider Kaiko announced a partnership to directly embed Bloomberg-licensed financial data into blockchain environments, aiming to address data inconsistencies in the tokenized market. The first application scenario of the collaboration focuses on tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds and repo markets on the Canton Network, targeting institutional clients such as banks and asset management companies, rather than retail crypto traders.

The two companies stated that by providing a unified authorized data source on-chain, market participants can reference the same data set, effectively reducing reconciliation disputes and enhancing data integrity. Kaiko CEO Ambre Soubiran pointed out that institutional-grade data is the foundation for the effective operation of financial markets, and this collaboration will extend traditional market data to the next generation of tokenized securities infrastructure.

Kaiko acquired European crypto index provider Vinter in 2024, continuing to expand its influence in the regulated benchmark and index services sector.

Shen Yu: AI will reshape corporate organizational structures, traditional SOP models face reconstruction

According to ChainCatcher, Shen Yu, co-founder and CEO of Cobo, posted on social media stating that the development of AI Agents will have a profound impact on corporate organizational structures, targeting not individual skills but the long-standing management system centered around standard operating procedures (SOP).

He pointed out that traditional companies standardize human execution processes by continuously adding SOPs, while AI with autonomous planning capabilities, if simply embedded into existing processes, may lead to efficiency losses. In the future, companies may reconstruct processes centered around "intent and boundaries," with humans setting goals and rules, while AI autonomously optimizes execution, and humans take on supervisory and decision-making roles.

Shen Yu believes that as AI participation increases, departmental barriers and middle management functions may weaken, and organizational forms are expected to evolve towards more efficient dynamic collaboration models.

Insiders: Magic Eden will close its Bitcoin and EVM markets and gradually stop supporting multi-chain wallets

According to ChainCatcher, citing sources from Blockspace, Magic Eden will close its Bitcoin and EVM markets and stop supporting its multi-chain wallet.

Sources say that Magic Eden is expected to announce a gradual exit from related businesses as early as Friday and will close its Bitcoin and EVM markets in the first week of March.

Shortly thereafter, Magic Eden also plans to stop its cross-chain wallet service, which will enter a mode that only supports asset export in mid-March and will completely cease operations in early April. Sources also clarified that Magic Eden will continue to support NFTs and assets on Solana.

Meme Popularity Rankings

According to the meme token tracking and analysis platform GMGN, as of February 28, 09:00,

The top five popular tokens on ETH in the past 24 hours are: SHIB, LINK, PEPE, UNI, ONDO

The top five popular tokens on Solana in the past 24 hours are: USELESS, Punch, WhiteWhale, gork, neet

The top five popular tokens on Base in the past 24 hours are: B3, SKYA, TOSHI, toby, KEYCAT

What are some noteworthy articles to read in the past 24 hours?

It's 2026, how should we reasonably assess the market value of L1?

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana are the three most successful networks in the crypto industry. Despite handling asset flows worth billions, they all follow the same trajectory: fee revenue first experiences explosive growth, attracting market attention, and then is continuously diverted by Layer 2 networks, private order flows, MEV-aware routing, or application layer innovations. This pattern has repeatedly appeared in every mainstream charging mechanism, MEV structure, and scaling paradigm evolution in the history of the crypto industry, and shows no signs of slowing down.

This article argues that the compression of L1 fees is permanent and accelerating. It will break down the specific new models that squeeze L1 profit margins at each stage and analyze the impact of this trend on L1 tokens that still incorporate long-term charging capabilities into their valuations.

Why did Bitcoin, which should have surged to $150,000, get cut in half? The hidden hand is actually Jane Street?

Bitcoin should now be at least $150,000; everyone knows this.

But why is the actual price not reaching that? A federal lawsuit filed yesterday in Manhattan just provided the answer.

Let's connect three things for the first time: a federal insider trading case stemming from a private group chat called "Bryce's Secret"; a program that has been suppressing Bitcoin prices by dumping at 10 AM every day since the end of 2025; and a previously undisclosed derivatives book—it may have turned the world's largest Bitcoin ETF holdings into a tool for suppressing Bitcoin.

All three clues point to the same name: Jane Street Capital.

ZachXBT reveals Axiom insider scandal, how did internal employees abuse their authority?

The event that has attracted market attention and accumulated tens of millions of dollars in bets on Polymarket, "Which Crypto company will ZachXBT expose for insider trading?" has finally come to an end. On February 26, on-chain detective ZachXBT officially released an investigation report, directly targeting the DeFi trading platform Axiom Exchange.

The report accuses that senior employees of the platform allegedly abused internal management authority, illegally accessing users' private wallet data for a long time, and turning this sensitive information into tools for insider trading. This article will delve into the evidence chain revealed by ZachXBT, when "on-chain transparency" is hijacked by "off-chain black box management."

The market continues to decline, when is the best time for TGE?

As February comes to a close, Bitcoin's price has nearly halved since its peak, and the altcoin market is in a dire state, with the crypto market still shrouded in panic.

Countless projects are facing the same dilemma: should they launch tokens now or wait for a bull market?

The long-held saying in the market is that TGE is more likely to succeed in a bull market. However, real data and cases seem to show that there are numerous examples of bad projects going to zero after harvesting in a bull market, while quality projects can also emerge in a bear market.

How important is the timing of TGE?