This Week in Crypto: Cosmoverse, Mantle's mETH Token, and the Cardano Summit

This week in crypto, several major events are set to capture the attention of industry participants. Among the top stories are the highly anticipated Cosmoverse event

Cosmoverse 2024, the largest Cosmos conference, will take place in Dubai this year, following successful events in Lisbon (2021), Medellin (2022), and Istanbul (2023).

During the three-day conference, keynotes and panels will feature thought leaders from the Cosmos ecosystem and beyond. They will share updates on the latest developments, implementations, and visions with the broader crypto community.

This year’s event will see Osmosis co-founder Sunny Aggarwal, dYdX Foundation CEO Charles d’Haussy, and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal among the 120,000 speakers. The gathering will also feature attendees from Cardano, Ripple, and the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The Mantle ecosystem is making headlines this week with the upcoming launch of cmETH. Designed to be highly composable, cmETH serves as a value-accumulating receipt token within the Mantle Liquid Staking Protocol (LSP), similar to Lido’s stETH. Mantle also aims to achieve the highest sustainable core yield by exploring maximal extractable value and sharing treasury-generated yield.

Being among the top 5 in terms of TVL on L2Beat, they are now focusing on the development of cmETH, their own liquid restaking token, along with COOK as the governance token. Notably, the cmETH token will support several different restaking apps, with the mETH protocol hinting that the launch is around the corner.

“Once cmETH is introduced, users will have the opportunity to restake their mETH to obtain cmETH, adding more value to COOK,” Mantle said.

The ZkSync ecosystem’s first governance proposal was posted on the ZK Nation forum last week. It announced the Ignite program, which is expected to allocate 325 million ZK tokens to establish a DeFi liquidity hub.

“The ZKSync Ignite program, authored by Merkyl, requests 300,000,000 ZK tokens from the ZK Nation token assembly to distribute to DeFi users over 3 seasons, totaling 9 months. The proposal requests an additional 25,000,000 ZK tokens to cover administrative costs and includes a buffer for unforeseen circumstances,” ZKSync said.

BeInCrypto data values the 325 million ZK tokens at $47 million, based on the current rate of $0.1448. This highlights the potential financial impact of this initiative, as investors and stakeholders view this as a positive development.

Specifically, the overall sentiment surrounding the ZK token is likely to be bullish in the coming weeks. As liquidity continues to play a crucial role in the market, the establishment of a dedicated hub on the Elastic Chain could attract new users and enhance the utility of the ZK token within the ecosystem.

The 2024 Cardano Summit will take place in Dubai on March 15 and 16. The event will highlight crypto adoption in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), focusing on innovation and industry advancements.

Dubai, renowned as a top crypto hub, will host the summit, underscoring its dedication to blockchain integration. Over 10,000 attendees will join in person and virtually to celebrate the growth of Cardano’s ecosystem.

Last year’s Cardano Summit was notably bullish for the ADA token, providing tailwinds that helped the price break through a critical resistance level. If history repeats, the event could help ADA avoid risks of a 21% drop amid ongoing uncertainty.

A strategic announcement from the Sushi ecosystem is among the top crypto news to watch this week. Jared Grey, a builder at Sushi Labs, hinted at an upcoming announcement. He invited protocols and builders to integrate with Sushi’s APIs and mentioned a strategic move that will introduce new DeFi primitives to Automated Market Makers (AMM) and perpetual swaps.

“We’ll announce a strategic acquisition very shortly, allowing us to bring innovative DeFi primitives built in stealth to the AMM and perpetuals vertical, too,” Grey wrote.

Grey also expressed optimism about Sushi’s future, stating that this is only the beginning of the platform’s growth and innovation.