Trove ICO Oversubscription Controversy, Ethereum ERC-8004 Standard Released, What's the Overseas Crypto Community Buzzing About Today?

Publication Date: January 12, 2025
Author: BlockBeats Editorial Team

Over the past 24 hours, the crypto market has shown a parallel evolution at multiple levels. The mainstream discussion has focused on the back-and-forth between platform rules and compliance boundaries, including risk exposure in the prediction market and ICO mechanisms, as well as the centralized controversy sparked by stablecoin freezes. In terms of ecosystem development, Ethereum has continued to advance standards and upgrades around AI agents and the execution layer, RWA tokenization has accelerated landing, and the Perp DEX track has exposed growth and profit differentiation in intense competition.

1. Mainstream Discussion Topics

1. X Platform Tests 'Smart Cashtags,' Crypto Community Reaction Clearly Divided

On January 11, X's product lead Nikita Bier announced that the platform is developing a new feature called "Smart Cashtags." This feature allows users to tag precise asset objects (including stocks, cryptocurrencies, or smart contracts) in posts, where readers can click on the tag directly from the timeline to view real-time price, K-line chart, market data, and all related discussions.

According to the introduction, this feature supports near real-time updates of on-chain assets through an API and is expected to be released to the public in February. It is currently in the feedback collection stage. Some leaked interface screenshots show that there may be an integration of buy and sell buttons in the future, enabling integrated operations from content to transactions.

The Solana community has reacted positively to this, believing that this will further strengthen X's position as a financial information source and a central part of market narratives—substantial funds have long been deployed based on content and sentiment on X. Unlike the potential ambiguity of traditional $cashtags (such as same-name tickers on multiple chains), Smart Cashtags aims to address information confusion through "asset-level pointing," transforming X into a product form closer to a real-time market command center.

However, the community's attitude has been clearly divided. On one hand, many project teams and users (such as Solana Daily, Kryll) see this as a significant positive development, believing that this feature will help improve information accuracy, accelerate narrative diffusion, reduce application switching costs, and may even drive X towards a native transaction gateway evolution, increasing on-chain asset exposure.

On the other hand, some users question the timing of the release: against the backdrop of a recent algorithm adjustment leading to a significant decline in crypto content recommendations, Nikita Bier subsequently deleted the related post, triggering some users' accusations of "algorithmically suppressing CT (Crypto Twitter)." Critics are concerned that this feature may amplify FOMO sentiment, deepen algorithmic opacity, and even show bias towards a particular ecosystem in asset presentation.

Overall, Smart Cashtags are seen as a key step in the X "Internet of Everything" vision, but some also believe it is "too little, too late," more like an institutionalized acknowledgment of existing community behavior. Discussions are still ongoing regarding transparency, potential transaction integration, and its impact on the decentralized ecosystem.

2. Trove ICO Oversubscription Triggers Controversy: Rule Changes Lead to Polymarket Bettors' Heavy Losses

TroveMarkets (positioned as a perpetual contract DEX for illiquid assets such as collectibles, RWAs, and stocks) conducted an ICO on January 8–11. The project originally aimed to raise $2.5 million but quickly faced oversubscription, eventually receiving commitments exceeding $11.5 million, about 5 times the target amount.

Trove highlights its ability to offer up to 10x leverage on non-traditional assets (such as Birkin bags, Pokémon Charizard cards). Official data shows that its testnet has accumulated a trading volume of over $1 billion, with around 24,000 users. This ICO used a 100% TGE unlock mechanism and prioritized distribution to Trove token holders.

In the early stages, the community's overall sentiment was mostly optimistic, with many KOLs (such as Lookonchain, Vass) seeing it as a signal of an "ICO narrative revival," emphasizing the project's existing working product and significant data. However, controversy erupted later in the fundraising process: the team first announced an extension of the fundraising period by 5 days to "ensure a fairer distribution," a decision that directly affected the odds in related prediction markets on Polymarket— the Yes odds for "total commitment amount exceeding X dollars" quickly rose from nearly 0% to 80%, causing many bettors to heavily invest. Subsequently, the team abruptly canceled the extension arrangement, reverting to the original plan scheduled to end on January 11, triggering strong community doubts about "manipulating expectations and misleading bets."

Several users disclosed significant losses due to this: one bettor invested around $89,000, only receiving a refund of about $200 in fees, resulting in a loss of over $73,000. The Trove team later responded that the decision-making confusion stemmed from "overlistening to a minority of supporters" and stated that they would refocus on product delivery.

The community's attitude is also divided: some users still have confidence in the project, believing that the oversubscription itself demonstrates genuine demand, with the mainnet expected to launch on February 10; while others criticize it as "looking extremely unprofessional in 2026" and view this event as another manifestation of the "Wild West" nature of the crypto market, warning investors to be cautious of the structural risks brought by the overlap of prediction markets and ICO mechanisms.

3. Google Releases Universal Commerce Protocol, Propelling Standardization of "Agentive Commerce"

On January 11, at the NRF 2026 Big Show, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the launch of the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and partnered with major retail and e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart.

UCP is an open universal commerce protocol designed to support AI agents in completing the entire shopping process from product discovery, negotiation, payment to after-sales, and is compatible with existing agent protocols such as A2A. On the payment front, UCP also supports various methods including credit cards, stablecoins, and bank transfers, with over 20 payment and technology partners such as Adyen, Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa participating.

As planned, UCP will first be integrated into the Gemini app for native checkout; meanwhile, merchants can also integrate their own branded AI business agents into Google Search. Pichai stated that AI agents will become the mainstream shopping entry point in the future, and UCP aims to establish the underlying standard for this trend.

Overall, the community response has been mostly positive, with many seeing this as a significant milestone in the deep integration of AI with e-commerce, helping drive "agentive commerce" from concept to scale. Retailers and developers especially welcome its open standard nature, believing it will help reduce system fragmentation and lower cross-platform integration costs. Elon Musk also simply responded with "interesting."

The discussion has mainly focused on two aspects: first, AI-driven shopping is expected to reduce cart abandonment rates and improve conversion efficiency; second, potential risks including increased intermediary layers, algorithmic bias, and privacy and data control issues. Some see it as a key move for Google in its competition with Amazon, Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI, among others, believing that "openness" may actually accelerate mainstream adoption.

Within the crypto community, some discussions have extended to the potential space for Bitcoin or stablecoin payments in such protocols. In general, UCP is seen as a positive development, but its real impact remains to be seen as the pace of implementation and global expansion unfolds.

II. Mainstream Ecosystem Dynamics

1. Ethereum

ERC-8004 Standard Released: Establishing an "On-Chain Trust Layer" for AI Agents

The Ethereum Foundation AI team has released the ERC-8004 "Trustless Agents" standard, aiming to build a public discovery and trust layer for AI agents. The standard addresses agent discoverability, identity verification, and reliability issues through three on-chain registries: Identity, Reputation, and Validation, applicable to various scenarios such as DeFi, supply chain management, and on-chain governance.

On a technical level, ERC-8004 supports portable identities (in the form of ERC-721 NFTs), an auditable feedback mechanism, and third-party verification methods (such as zero-knowledge proofs, TEE, etc.). The goal is to reduce the collaboration costs of agent economies and prevent further ecosystem fragmentation without introducing centralized trust parties.

The proposal has quickly sparked discussions. Supporters see it as the beginning of the "Agent Cryptography Era," believing that its EVM-native, auditable, and composable features are poised to drive the development of on-chain autonomous coordination, such as transaction agents, operation agents, and governance agents. Some developers have disclosed testing over 7400 agent instances and explored its potential in cross-chain trust. However, there are also concerns that the standard may lead to various coexisting implementations in the early stages, exacerbating fragmentation risks.

Arbitrum activates ArbOS Dia upgrade, optimizing execution stack and user experience

Arbitrum has officially activated the ArbOS Dia upgrade, with several key updates to its execution stack, including a multi-dimensional gas pricing mechanism to mitigate fee fluctuations during peak demand, raising the L2 base fee default floor to 0.02 gwei; optimized state transition functions to lay the foundation for higher throughput; improved block packaging logic to enhance overall execution efficiency; secp256r1 authentication support to accommodate commonly used keys and biometric logins, enhancing the new user onboarding experience; integration of Fusaka-related EIPs (such as the CLZ opcode, BLS12-381 curve); and added support for native Gas tokens on custom chains.

The upgrade has received positive feedback overall. The community generally believes that the smoother fee curve, increased throughput, and the introduction of features such as biometrics are substantial improvements geared towards real users and developers.

Additionally, some users have shared on-chain data as evidence: the current Arbitrum stablecoin supply has exceeded $8 billion, with an RWA TVL of approximately $800 million, further solidifying its position as a "financial execution layer" in the market.

Ondo Global Markets Expands to 200+ Tokenized Assets

Ondo Finance has announced the expansion of the Ondo Global Markets platform, adding 98 tokenized stocks and ETFs covering various sectors such as AI, technology, metals, finance, healthcare, electric vehicles, energy, and major indices. With this addition, the total number of on-chain assets supported by the platform has exceeded 200, currently deployed on Ethereum and BNB Chain, with upcoming support for Solana.

The community widely views this expansion as a significant milestone in the RWA tokenization process, seeing it as providing users with a true "on-chain global market" gateway. Discussions focus on further integration of TradFi and DeFi, the feasibility of 24/7 trading, and the scalability brought by cross-chain expansion. Some KOLs have also pointed out that Ondo's current AUM is close to 2 billion USD, signaling the acceleration of global capital onto the blockchain. However, a few voices remain cautious about potential regulatory risks.

2. Perp DEX:

Lighter to Launch LIT Staking, Utility Narrative Sparks Debate

The Head of Developer Relations at Lighter has announced that the platform will soon launch $LIT staking, introducing a new use case for the token. Although the specific mechanism has not been disclosed, the official hint suggests that this feature will enhance holder incentives. As per the previously revealed TGE plan, 25% of the $LIT allocation is earmarked for future incentive seasons, corresponding to a valuation of around 6.75 billion USD.

This announcement has sparked a notable divide within the community. Some users are excited about this development, seeing it as a signal that $LIT is "finally becoming practical" and are optimistic about the team's continuous development and community incentive expansion opportunities. Others are concerned that staking may lead to increased token emissions or compress repurchase space, especially with around 50% of the supply unlocking next year, with some outright stating that it could become a "sell pressure tool."

Lighter's Daily Profit Only $8,000, Raising Questions About Lighter's Growth Prospects

According to DeFiLlama data, Lighter's daily profit on January 10th (Saturday) was only about $8,000, significantly lower than its peers. This data quickly sparked discussions. Lighter is positioned as a ZK circuit-based decentralized perpetual contract trading platform, focusing on low cost and low-latency execution.

The low-profit performance has become the focus of community ridicule and comparison. Some users have contrasted it with platforms like Hyperliquid, pointing out a daily profit difference of tens of times and mocking its corresponding P/E ratio of about 170, even describing it as "meme-ification."

Supporters, on the other hand, have defended it, suggesting that the data may not fully reflect the true situation or that it is merely a normal fluctuation in the early stages, and criticized related remarks as FUD. However, overall, concerns are rising in the market about Lighter's slowing growth pace and intensifying competition in the perpetual contract race.

3. Others

Tether Freezes 5 Tron Wallets Involving $1.82 Billion USDT

Tether has frozen 5 Tron network wallets, totaling around $1.82 billion USDT, in one of the largest single blacklisting operations in recent years, surpassing the total historical frozen amount of USDC. It is widely speculated that this action may be related to cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, or Secret Service to combat illegal fund flows.

Official data shows that since 2023, Tether has cumulatively frozen around $3.3 billion in assets, highlighting the institutionalization of stablecoins in terms of compliance and law enforcement.

This event has sparked a new round of discussion on centralization and compliance. Some users believe that this once again proves Tether's close cooperation with regulatory agencies, helping to combat terrorist financing and cross-border crime; while others criticize its "non-decentralized" nature, expressing concerns about the centralization risk of freezing power. Given that around 84% of illegal stablecoin flows in 2025 involve USDT, this large-scale freeze has further amplified the related controversies.

Tempo Testnet Explicitly States No Airdrops, Triggering "Meaningless Interaction Brushing" Discussion

The Tempo testnet explicitly emphasizes that there are currently no incentives, no airdrops, with the core goal being developer learning and technical validation. Its documentation shows that Tempo's TIP-20 standard allows stablecoins (such as USDT, USDC) to be directly used for fee payment, without the need for a separate Gas token; the AMM mechanism will automatically convert fees into assets preferred by validators, positioning itself as a high-throughput payment-focused network.

The community's attitude toward the testnet is generally cautious. Most users believe that the lack of expectations for airdrops is more of an "engagement bait" and remind not to invest time in meaningless interaction. The developer community, on the other hand, is relatively positive, seeing it as a practice session for "vibe coding" and preparing for future ecosystem activities. A consensus is gradually forming: the value of Tempo lies more in the product and architecture itself than in short-term speculative opportunities, and participation in the testnet should be learning-oriented rather than "casino-style expectations."