gm Bankless Nation, Bitcoin's growth may be the most popular story in crypto today, but new projects are still pushing the boundaries of blockchain utility.
gm Bankless Nation, Bitcoin's growth may be the most popular story in crypto today, but new projects are still pushing the boundaries of blockchain utility.
Today's Issue ⬇️
☀️ Need to Know:Celsius Sentencing DOJ wants Mashinsky in prison for 20 years.
👨⚖️ DOJ Asks for 20-Year Prison Sentence for Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky. Prosecutors want major jail time for the former leader of the embattled lender. Mashinsky has already pleaded guilty to fraud.
🔵 Base Achieves 'Stage 1' in Ethereum Rollup Decentralization. The milestone in Vitalik's decentralization framework means Base has integrated fault proofs and has added a sufficiently decentralized security council.
🐶 Nasdaq Issues Proposal to List Dogecoin ETF. The 21Shares Dogecoin ETF comes with the 'exclusive' support of the Dogecoin Foundation.
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Daily Market Snapshot: Stocks continued to rise as the market priced in a cooldown in Trump's tariff announcements. Meanwhile, BTC again rejected off an attempt to cross the $96K barrier.
I'm a big fan of onchain games, which is how I found Kamigotchi. It's a fully onchain MMORPG, and I think it's one of the most promising and charming titles in crypto's gaming scene today.
In following Kamigotchi, I learned the project was launching its own virtual world appchain, Yominet, on Initia. Admittedly, that was the first time I'd ever heard of Initia.
Built using the Cosmos SDK and leveraging Celestia for data availability, Initia is a newly launched Layer 1 designed to make building and running Layer 2 rollups streamlined and more interconnected.
At the core of Initia is its Interwoven Stack: a fully integrated toolkit that bundles together all the common services that L2s need, like bridges, explorers, liquidity hubs, and oracle feeds. Everything fits together out of the box.
The idea is to reduce fragmentation without sacrificing flexibility. Developers can still customize things like their rollup’s virtual machine (EVM, MoveVM, or CosmWasm), gas tokens, and fee structures. But under the hood, every rollup still shares a common set of standards and rails, making crosschain activity much simpler.
The Initia L1 itself acts as the central hub for the ecosystem, coordinating liquidity, governance, and security across its appchains. It offers a native decentralized exchange, InitiaDEX, and also a built-in incentive system, the Vested Interest Program (VIP), which rewards both rollups and users with $INIT tokens based on certain achievements.
The grand vision here is that a tighter, opinionated chain stack will foster deeper network effects and better value accrual over time.
🧭 How to use Initia
If you're interested in exploring Initia, it's easy to get started.
First, head to app.initia.xyz/onboarding and connect a popular wallet like MetaMask, Rabby, Rainbow, Keplr, or Phantom. Doing this will let you generate your account on the Initia L1.
Next up, the onboarding flow will bring you to a deposit interface so you can fund your Initia account. Keep in mind that Initia accepts either INIT or USDC as gas tokens, so depositing either will suffice to proceed.
At this point, you can deposit $INIT from a centralized exchange like Binance, or you can acquire $INIT on a DEX like Osmosis and use the Initia Bridge to deposit from there. You can also use this bridge to deposit USDC from chains like Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Celestia, Osmosis, etc.
If you just have ETH and want to keep bridging simple, you can use an external service like Gas.zip to automatically convert ETH deposits into INIT once they hit your Initia account.
After your wallet is funded, the onboarding flow will give you the option to register an Initia username, which is like Initia’s version of ENS domains. You can skip this step, or search for a name you want. The cheapest names go for 10 INIT a year, roughly $10 at current prices.
With your wallet all set up, you'll be ready to dive into the Initia ecosystem. Now, time for some appchains.
If you're not sure where to begin here, projects that are part of Initia's VIP program are a good starting point. This program is a rewards system that distributes esINIT—an escrowed version of INIT—on a recurring basis.
In this system, each participating appchain defines its own scoring system to reward meaningful user actions, like staking, trading, gaming, minting NFTs, etc.
These rewards are escrowed, meaning they can’t be transferred immediately. To unlock them, you must either maintain ongoing participation or convert them into a long-term LP staking position via Initia DEX.
The next distribution here is set for May 8, with over 550,000 esINIT up for grabs across projects like:
👾 Yominet — Kamigotchi's gaming world | VIP Task: Harvest and burn VIP tickets in-game
🌌 MilkyWay — A liquid staking hub | VIP Task: Bridge INIT to MilkyWay and stake there
🎉 Zaar — A fun, degen L2 | VIP Task: Play “Flip,” stake tokens, or trade via Sudoswap
🪙 Echelon — A lending protocol | VIP Task: Supply or borrow assets
📈 Rave — Perps trading platform | VIP Task: Bet on BTC, ETH, or SOL
🛒 Intergaze — NFT launchpad and marketplace | VIP Task: Mint or trade NFTs
Keep in mind, these projects all have varying commission rates on their VIP rewards.
For example, Kamigotchi's Yominet is currently the only appchain here that takes 0% commission, so all its rewards go to its players. Something to think about as you decide where you want to explore on Initia!
Initia's VIP has been well on the way since its launch last week. I've pulled some stats below for the whitelisted rollups.@kamigotchiworld takes the least amount of commission meaning all VIP rewards go to users. Pretty neat. pic.twitter.com/rfkMU8ESJc
Unlock the power of Unichain – a fast, decentralized Ethereum Layer 2 network built to be the home for DeFi and cross-chain liquidity. To bridge tokens to Unichain and start swapping today, get started with Uniswap Labs’ web app or mobile wallet.
Can Story Protocol Tokenize the $70 Trillion IP Market?
Can Crypto disrupt the IP Market?
In this episode, we dive deep with Jason Zhao, co-founder of Story Protocol, on how their new token launch could unlock the $70 trillion intellectual property market. We explore the bold vision of making IP liquid, programmable, and globally accessible — and how crypto-native creators, DAOs, and even major studios could reshape how stories are owned and built.
This might just be crypto's most ambitious attempt at disrupting the media yet.
Not financial or tax advice. Bankless content is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
Disclosure. From time to time, we may add links in this newsletter to products we use. We may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless team holds crypto assets.
