Hot project news of the week: Hyperliquid whale was liquidated and the platform lost money, Offchain Labs will buy back ARB, tokenized treasury bond BUIDL exceeds $1 billion, etc. (0309–0315)

1. Hyperliquid's highly leveraged whale position was liquidated, HLP Vault lost $4 million, and the platform downgraded leverage

On March 12, Hyperliquid's HLP Vault lost more than $4 million due to a whale using 50x leverage to go long ETH, with a position of up to $340 million, and a floating profit of $8 million. After the whale partially closed its position, it withdrew 17.09 million USDC margin, resulting in the liquidation of the remaining 160,000 ETH positions. Due to the large liquidation, HLP Vault took over the position at $1,915 and gradually closed it, still with a floating loss of $4 million. Hyperliquid's official response called the incident not a vulnerability or hack, and announced a reduction in the maximum leverage of BTC and ETH to 40x and 25x.

2. Scroll: It is expected to be upgraded to Stage 1 ZK-Rollup link in April

Scroll tweeted that it expects to upgrade to Stage 1 ZK-Rollup in April of this year, which will support mandatory transactions, permissionless transaction submissions, full zkEVM proofs, and a safety committee composed of industry experts. Previously, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he was looking forward to seeing more L2s enter the Stage.

3. Offchain Labs said it will repurchase the ARB token link as planned

Offchain Labs, the Arbitrum R&D team, announced that it has launched a strategic purchase plan to increase its holdings in ARB in the open market and other trading methods to strengthen its long-term commitment to the Arbitrum ecosystem. The plan will be carried out step by step according to the preset parameters.

4. The beta version of Movement's public mainnet is now available at link

The Movement Network Foundation has announced that the beta version of the Movement public mainnet has gone live, and the MOVE token is the native gas token of the Movement Network. In addition, according to the official roadmap, Movement Network's fast-ending mechanism is planned to go live soon, and other features including a decentralized shared sequencer are in the works.

5. Starknet partners with Xverse to drive Bitcoin DeFi development link

Starknet, an Ethereum Layer 2 solution, has partnered with Bitcoin wallet Xverse and plans to integrate in Q2 2025 to provide a Bitcoin DeFi experience. According to the Bitcoin roadmap released by the Starknet Foundation, the scheme will remain active on Ethereum while serving as Bitcoin's execution layer to improve transaction processing capacity.

6. ZKsync Announces Suspension of Incentives Program Ignite in Response to Bear Market with a More Conservative Spending Stance link

ZKsync has officially announced that it will cancel the second season of the incentive program Ignite and will phase out the program by closing the rewards for the sixth phase of the first quarter from March 17. ZKsync explained that the market is currently in a bear market environment. Like other ecosystems, ZKsync has decided to take a more conservative approach to spending in the short to medium term. All remaining rewards will be distributed by Monday, March 17, 2025, as planned. No new incentives or incentives are planned to be offered after the distribution is completed.

7. The modular protocol Hemi mainnet was officially launched on link

Hemi, a modular protocol, tweeted that its mainnet is officially live, aiming to merge the two ecosystems of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Hemi provides comprehensive DeFi features, such as token swaps, liquidity mining, and cross-chain asset transfers, and users can use Bitcoin assets to participate in the Ethereum ecosystem and promote cross-chain interaction and innovation.

8. Pendle TVL grows to $4.4 billion with plans to expand the non-EVM ecosystem and launch TradFi-compliant product link

Pendle drove more institutional liquidity on-chain through yield tokenization, with its TVL growing from $230 million to $4.4 billion between 2023–2024, largely driven by rising demand for restaking. Pendle enables users to trade, hedge, or lock in future earnings independently by splitting the Principal Token (PT) and the Yield Token (YT). Pendle plans to expand into non-EVM ecosystems such as Solana and TON in the coming months, and launch TradFi-compliant products.

9. BlackRock's BUIDL token surpassed $1 billion, and Ethena increased its holdings of link by $200 million

Global asset manager BlackRock's U.S. Treasuries-backed BUIDL token, in partnership with Securitize, surpassed $1 billion in assets. Securitize revealed that Ethena increased its holdings by $200 million on the day, pushing BUIDL beyond that threshold. BUIDL serves as the main reserve asset of Ethena's yield token USDtb, which currently has a supply of $540 million, of which $320 million is backed by BUIDL.

10. Virtuals Protocol announces the launch of ACP link, a multi-agent framework

Virtuals Protocol has announced the launch of ACP (Agent Commerce Protocol), a multi-agent framework designed to enable AI agents to communicate, collaborate, and facilitate growth in a secure, verifiable, and efficient way. Over the next 1 month, the team will focus on energizing the two businesses/clusters. These include autonomous hedge funds and trading DAOs (in talks with aixbt and AIxVC), and Autonomous Media House (in talks with Luna and Music By Virtuals).