UK Data Protection Regulator Launches Inquiry into xAI

On February 3, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted: “Now that Ethereum’s Layer 1 (L1) has scaled significantly and its gas limit has risen sharply, the original vision of ‘brand-based sharding’ for Layer 2 (L2) is no longer necessary. L2s cannot fully deliver the intended features of ‘brand-based sharding,’ and some projects may even stay in Stage 1 indefinitely to meet customer regulatory requirements. Thus, L2s should be repositioned: instead of just chasing scalability, they should offer unique additional features—like privacy-focused virtual machines, application-specific efficiency, maximum scalability, non-financial use cases (social, identity, AI), low latency, or built-in oracles.” Best practices for L2s include: upholding at least Stage 1 standards (otherwise, they’re essentially independent L1s with bridges) and prioritizing interoperability with Ethereum as much as possible. Additionally, exploring integration with native rollup precompiles (ZK-EVM verification)

February 3 — Crypto.com said Tuesday it will launch OG, a dedicated prediction market platform, in the days ahead of the Super Bowl, per Bloomberg. Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek noted the firm’s event contract business has seen 40x weekly growth over the past six months, making a standalone product launch necessary.

On February 3, U.S. House Speaker Johnson announced the House will vote to advance relevant legislation to end the brief government shutdown on Tuesday. (FX678)

On February 3, official sources confirm that Ondo has launched a Global Listing service designed to onboard U.S. stock IPOs onto the blockchain nearly instantaneously—enabling trading on mainstream blockchains via the Ondo Global Markets platform from day one. Going forward, wallets, exchanges and blockchains will be able to offer their global users access to on-chain IPOs on launch day. The tokenized stocks are permissionless, transferable and built for composability—similar to stablecoins—while being compatible with the most widely adopted blockchain ecosystems.

On February 3rd, Bitget market data shows U.S. stock indices extended losses: the Nasdaq dropped 1%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.48%.

February 3 — Kairos, a trading terminal built for predictive market users, announced it has raised $2.5 million in funding, led by a16z Crypto with participation from Geneva Trading, the University of Illinois, and other angel investors, per Fortune. Co-founders Jay Malavia and Zayd Alzein are targeting users by integrating two top prediction markets — Kalshi and Polymarket — and offering a fast, customizable dashboard. On Kairos, clients can view real-time trades from both platforms in one interface and receive real-time news alerts tied to those trades. Kairos claims its platform is 2-3 seconds faster than Kalshi or Polymarket’s own interfaces. The terminal has already integrated Kalshi and Polymarket, with plans to add more trading platforms soon.