News linked to both this project and an event.
the Avalanche Foundation has announced the launch of its Research Grant Program (Call For Research Proposals), open to academic researchers worldwide with individual grants of up to $50,000. The program focuses on research related to Avalanche network economics, with emphasis on two core areas: first, crypto asset pricing and valuation, concentrating on how native assets of PoS public chains accrue value, including token issuance mechanisms, monetary policy, network adoption rates, and their relationship with long-term value; second, validator economics and network security, with key topics including optimal staking ratios, validator reward models, validator set health, and non-inflationary reward mechanisms.
According to an official announcement from Curve Finance, due to a hacker attack on the rsETH LayerZero infrastructure, Curve Finance has suspended its LayerZero infrastructure for security reasons, pending further investigation into the root cause before resuming operations. This suspension affects the following: cross-chain bridging of CRV tokens from BNB Chain, Sonic, Avalanche, Fantom, Etherlink, and Kava (chains using native bridges remain unaffected), as well as the crvUSD fast bridge functionality (the L2 slow bridge remains fully operational). Meanwhile, KelpDAO is also reported to have suffered a vulnerability exploit involving approximately $291 million; the exact extent of losses is still under investigation.
According to The Block, Korean payment service provider NHN KCP has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ava Labs to jointly build a Layer 1 network for payment use cases on Ava Cloud. The initiative will focus on three key areas: sub-second payment confirmation, on-chain transaction data encryption, and customizable merchant payment infrastructure. The two parties will also explore business opportunities including tokenized deposit models, multi-stablecoin settlement architectures, and cross-border payments. Justin Kim, Head of Asia at Ava Labs, stated that the mainnet launch timeline for this L1 will depend significantly on the progress of South Korea’s cryptocurrency regulatory framework.