ChainCatcher News, on the evening of June 1st, Beijing time, Huobi HTX global advisor Sun Yuchen engaged in a dialogue through Huobi Live with contract giant James Wynn, former professional Muay Thai fighter and businessman Andrew Tate, and the Meme project Moonpig team about the future trends of the Meme ecosystem and the development direction of exchanges. Regarding project selection, Sun Yuchen stated, "I value passion, resonance, and communities that have narratives and souls behind them, especially those that are truly decentralized and user-led projects. My goal has always been clear: to enable users to complete transactions more quickly and easily, lower the barriers to entry, and improve the various pain points existing in current trading platforms. I hope to build a trading experience that is more humanized, fairer, and freer."James Wynn stated, "Whether it's CEX or DEX, liquidity is always an unavoidable issue, and the key to solving all of this is community-driven—truly decentralized users and communities are our core strength against centralized power."

ChainCatcher news, Paradigm researcher Dan Robinson stated on social media that whether a sequencer is decentralized is not the most important factor; the key lies in the rules it follows and whether it will use its power to harm user interests or engage in value extraction. He pointed out that decentralized sequencers can also be extractive, while centralized sequencers can be non-extractive.For layer two networks, long-term censorship resistance and activity mainly come from layer one networks. The attributes of the sequencer (including censorship resistance, transaction pool privacy, and sorting rules) are the most important considerations; "decentralization" itself cannot fully define the nature of a sequencer.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, the Ethereum ZK-Rollup scaling solution Starknet has announced that it has entered the "Stage 1" decentralization phase. According to the framework proposed by Vitalik Buterin in 2022, this phase means that the network has established a security council and a validity proof system, significantly reducing external interference.Starknet added that this framework is the "gold standard on-chain tool for analyzing Ethereum scaling solutions," and stated that this phase has been achieved through transformations such as the creation of a security council and the avoidance of censorship mechanisms. StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson stated that the next step will be to advance towards the "Stage 2" goal of complete decentralization, achieving a network fully governed by the community. According to L2beat, currently only three small Layer 2 projects have reached this stage.

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced his focus areas for 2025: 1. Ethereum development, including single-slot finality in the L1 long-term roadmap, long-term virtual machine, statelessness, security, as well as full-stack security, open source, and privacy protection; 2. Decentralization acceleration at the macro level, involving communication tools, social aspects, governance mechanism design, cryptography, infrastructure, etc.

ChainCatcher message, according to SolanaFloor, the Solana Foundation has launched a new policy to strengthen decentralization: for each new validator added to its Delegation Program, if certain validators have been eligible for Solana Foundation delegation on the mainnet for at least 18 months and have less than 1000 SOL staked outside of the Solana Foundation delegation, three of them will be removed. This change aims to reduce reliance on foundation delegation, encourage community-supported validators, and maintain a more efficient and decentralized network.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, the total value of SOL tokens staked on the Solana network briefly surpassed the market value of staked ETH on Ethereum yesterday.On-chain data shows that there are 505,938 unique wallets on the Solana network staking SOL worth $53.9 billion, with an annual staking yield of 8.31%; on the Ethereum chain, there are a total of 34.7 million ETH participating in staking, valued at $53.93 billion. The high validation threshold of 32 ETH (approximately $50,000) has led many stakers to shift from node staking to liquid staking protocols, which is a key reason for the reduction of native staking on the Ethereum chain. Currently, about $21.5 billion in funds are participating in liquid staking on the Ethereum chain, with Lido alone accounting for 88% of the market share, exacerbating concerns about Ethereum's centralization, and Ethereum developers are exploring solutions to promote staking decentralization.

ChainCatcher news, at the "Web3 Future Night" gala held during the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Uweb founder and president Yu Jianing delivered a keynote speech on "Key Trends and Outlook for Web3.0 in 2025." He stated that the current Web3.0 is experiencing regression phenomena such as increased centralization, declining project quality, and weak capital inflows.He pointed out that from 2024 to 2030, Web3.0 digital assets will evolve along "two main lines": one is the market capitalization growth of individual assets driven by spot ETFs (vertical uplift), and the other is the expansion of asset pools driven by RWA tokenization (horizontal expansion). Compliance is key for mainstream institutions to enter the market.In addition, he also predicted that the Web3.0 industry will welcome nine major trends in 2025, including crypto-friendly policies driven by the Trump administration, widespread adoption of Bitcoin as a reserve asset, expansion of the RWA market, Hong Kong leading the compliance wave, explosive growth of Web3 AI Agent applications, continuous growth of the Meme ecosystem, Layer1/Layer2 reshaping on-chain logic, simplification of development experience through chain abstraction, and the Bitcoin ecosystem moving towards a new era of programmability and staking economy.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, Fideum co-founder and CEO Anastasija Plotnikova stated that meme coins are violating the fundamental spirit of cryptocurrency decentralization, increasingly being used to exploit retail investors amid a growing number of rug pulls. She added, "Meme coins have evolved from community-driven social experiments into a chaotic situation dominated by retail investors extracting value, where internal circles, stock price manipulation, and targeted groups have replaced the organic and collectible nature of the original meme coin community, creating an unhealthy competitive environment."Anastasija Plotnikova believes that some behaviors are clearly illegal and fall under the jurisdiction of law enforcement agencies, and she supports the enforcement of certain projects.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, an Ethereum researcher has proposed a new block proposal solution aimed at democratizing Ethereum's currently centralized block building process by implementing a "shared random algorithm."The anonymous researcher Malik672 stated in an article that "decentralized random block proposals" would utilize Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) to eliminate the maximum extractable value at the block level, fully achieving the democratization of block proposals and potentially accelerating propagation—the process of broadcasting transactions to network validators.According to Malik672's proposal, all Ethereum clients (rather than a few builders) would construct blocks through a cryptographic random algorithm. This random selection would prevent profit-driven manipulation strategies from affecting Ethereum users. The solution would better align with Ethereum's "trustless root" while still being compatible with the blob requirements of Danksharding—the solution aims to scale Ethereum L2. Malik672 added that the solution could even reduce the time slot duration from 12 seconds to around 6 to 8 seconds.

ChainCatcher news, Vitalik Buterin stated on social media that centralized sequencers actually have many advantages:Centralized sequencers can ensure that users' money won't be stolen through methods like frontrunning;Instant preconfirmations;It is very easy to turn a traditional application into a blockchain application, as the server directly becomes the sequencer.The decentralized characteristics of blockchain can mitigate the risks of centralized sequencers: the forced inclusion mechanism prevents sequencers from censoring users, and optimistic or zk proof mechanisms prevent sequencers from changing or violating the rules of the application (for example, suddenly inflating a token or NFT collection).However, centralized sequencers still carry risks, so we cannot rely entirely on centralized sequencers to solve problems. Having the ability for based rollups or direct transactions on L1 is also important. Therefore, I support the simultaneous promotion of both methods in the ecosystem, and then we can see which method is more suitable for which application.Maintaining the ability for ordinary users to make censorship-resistant transactions is certainly crucial.

ChainCatcher news, Bitfinex released an analysis report stating that the symbiotic potential between Bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence infrastructure cannot be ignored. AI operations require a significant amount of energy and specialized facilities, while Bitcoin miners already possess these facilities. During peaks in AI operations or surges in energy demand, miners can scale down Bitcoin mining and increase mining capacity when energy is more abundant. This dynamic can enhance the economic efficiency of mining operations while maintaining sufficient hash power for the Bitcoin network.Whether this shift is beneficial or detrimental to the Bitcoin network depends on the diversification of miners and the industry's ability to maintain network security amid changing dynamics. If executed strategically, the combination of AI and Bitcoin mining can foster innovation and efficiency without compromising the decentralized nature of Bitcoin.However, if a significant amount of hash power is permanently transferred, the Bitcoin network may face greater centralization risks. Choosing AI over other digital assets also aligns with the broader strategic goals of many mining companies. The growth trajectory of the AI industry is expected to achieve long-term scalability and align with emerging technological trends, from automation to advanced data analytics.

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin stated on the X platform in response to Ethereum Foundation researcher Devansh Mehta regarding "the Ethereum Foundation should start supporting non-cryptocurrency activities, not just events where people in the circle praise each other": "In my view, mainstream cryptography, cybersecurity, and non-blockchain decentralization being seen as 'non-cryptocurrency related' is a failure in itself (I believe this notion mainly comes from the cryptocurrency side), and it is worth taking measures to address this issue."

ChainCatcher news, Andre Cronje, co-founder of Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom), shared on the X platform that despite adhering to all regulations, he has been in tough discussions with regulators, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), for nearly two years.He also pointed out that user preferences have changed, and now many people prefer teams and products over immutable code. Cronje concluded that builders face a tough choice: either commit to decentralization and immutability, risking blame, regulatory hurdles, and lack of returns; or accept corporatization, licensing, and controlled improvements to ensure continuous progress.