CryptoBilawal

.S. President Donald Trump, right, threatened tariffs against Canada if Prime Minister Mark Carney completes a trade deal with China. Getty Images
Topline
President Donald Trump said Saturday morning he will hit Canada with a 100% tariff on all imports if the country makes a trade deal with China, as tensions between the Trump administration and the U.S.’ northern neighbor escalate.

Key Facts
Trump’s threat comes two days after he pulled Canada’s invitation to join his “Board of Peace” after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney took aim at Trump’s foreign policy moves.

Crucial Quote
“If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life. If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Die Vanar Chain positioniert sich als eine "stille", infrastrukturfokussierte Layer 1-Blockchain, die Web3-Technologie für Mainstream-Anwendungen in der realen Welt, insbesondere im Gaming, in der KI und in der Unterhaltung, zugänglich machen soll. Anstatt sich auf Hype zu verlassen, konzentriert sich das Projekt darauf, die technischen Barrieren und Benutzerreibungen zu reduzieren, die historisch gesehen die breite Akzeptanz behindert haben.
Wichtige Aspekte von Vanars Ansatz zur Benutzerfreundlichkeit sind:
Niedrig-Reibungs-Infrastruktur: Vanar verwendet einen hybriden Konsensmechanismus (Proof of Authority und Proof of Reputation), um schnelle Finalität zu bieten, mit Blockzeiten von 3 Sekunden und Transaktionsgebühren von nur $0.0005.

Availability is the primary bottleneck in decentralized storage because, unlike traditional cloud storage (AWS, Google Cloud) that guarantees access through centralized, high-performance, and professionally managed data centers, decentralized systems rely on a network of distributed, often unreliable, peer-to-peer nodes.
The fundamental challenge is balancing the need for massive data redundancy (to prevent data loss) with the requirement that this data must be instantly retrievable at scale, even if many nodes in the network go offline.
Here is why availability is the real, limiting bottleneck in decentralized storage:
1. The Challenge of "Node Churn" and Downtime
Volatile Node Availability: In a peer-to-peer network, storage providers (node operators) can turn off their computers, face network connectivity issues, or leave the network at any time.
The "Recovery" Problem: If nodes holding data fragments go offline, the system must recover that data. Traditional erasure-coded systems often require downloading the entire file to fix a missing fragment, which wastes bandwidth and causes bottlenecks.
2. High Cost of Data Persistence
Redundancy Overhead: To ensure data is available, it must be replicated or fragmented across many nodes. While erasure coding reduces this compared to full replication, it still creates significant storage overhead to achieve high, trustless availability.
Upfront Costs: Some systems, like Arweave, require a one-time payment for 200+ years of storage, but the upfront cost can be high, and others, like Filecoin, rely on market-driven prices that can fluctuate, making long-term, high-availability storage expensive.
3. Latency and Retrieval Speeds
Geographic Distribution: Data fragments are spread across the globe. Retrieving a file requires connecting to multiple, disparate nodes simultaneously, leading to higher latency and slower, inconsistent download speeds compared to centralized providers, which is not suitable for "hot" storage (frequently accessed data).
4. The Data Availability (DA) Gap in Web3 Scaling
Blockchain Limits: Blockchains were not designed for large-scale data storage. As dApps (games, social apps, AI) grow, they generate massive amounts of data that cannot be directly stored on-chain without causing extreme network congestion.
The DA Bottleneck: For Rollups (Layer 2 solutions), the cost of posting data to the base layer (e.g., Ethereum) to guarantee it is "available" is the biggest factor influencing transaction fees, making it a critical barrier to scaling.
How New Solutions are Addressing the Bottleneck
Emerging platforms, such as Walrus, are attempting to solve this by separating the coordination layer (like the Sui blockchain) from the data storage layer. They are implementing:
Advanced Erasure Coding (e.g., Red Stuff): This allows for faster, more efficient self-healing of data when nodes drop out, using far less bandwidth.
Specialized DA Layers: Protocols like Celestia or Avail are designed specifically to make data available for verification, rather than just storing large, infrequently accessed files.
Optimized Storage Networks: Systems focusing on "hot" storage are designing for lower latency, aiming to provide a decentralized alternative for, for example, video streaming.
In summary, for decentralized storage to move beyond niche, cold-storage use cases, it must overcome the "bottleneck of availability" by ensuring that data is as reliable, fast, and cost-effective as centralized alternatives. @WalrusProtocol

🦭 Walrus: How a Web3 Sea Mammal Is Reinventing Data Storage

When we talk about crypto projects, most people imagine tokens, coins, or complex blockchains doing something “out there.” But once in a while, a project shows up with a clear, simple mission that actually solves a real problem. Walrus is one of those.

It’s not just another coin or smart contract platform. Walrus is a decentralized storage network that aims to make storing and delivering data — like images, videos, or PDFs — faster, cheaper, and censorship-resistant.

Let’s break it down in simple words and see why Walrus is making waves in the Web3 world.

📦 What Is Walrus?
Imagine uploading a video to YouTube or saving files on Dropbox — but instead of relying on big companies like Google or Amazon to store your data, you rely on a decentralized network that no one controls.

That’s exactly what Walrus offers.

Walrus is a high-performance decentralized network for storing raw data and media files in a secure, efficient, and accessible way. The project is focused on making data storage in Web3 truly permissionless, while offering speeds and reliability close to centralized platforms.

Its main mission? To keep your data available and safe — without trusting a single authority.

🧠 Who’s Behind Walrus?
Walrus was originally developed by Mysten Labs, the creators of the Sui blockchain. That’s right — the same team that’s building some of the most advanced infrastructure in the crypto space today.

This isn’t some unknown startup. Mysten Labs is backed by some of the biggest names in crypto and tech, and they’ve built Walrus as a key piece of the Sui ecosystem, offering a decentralized backbone for storing and retrieving content-rich data.

In March 2025, the project raised a whopping $140 million in a token sale from investors like a16z, Lightspeed Faction, Coinbase Ventures, and many others — proving there’s serious belief in the project

🚀 Is Walrus Live?
Yes! And that’s a big deal.

Unlike many crypto projects that stay in “coming soon” mode forever, Walrus is launching its mainnet on March 27, 2025. That means it’s not just an idea — it’s real infrastructure that people will start using right away.

With the mainnet launch, Walrus becomes a live, working network — ready for developers, storage providers, and users.

⚙️ How Does It Work?
Walrus is powered by a network of different types of nodes, each doing a specific job:

🔹 Storage Nodes
These are the backbone. They actually store the raw data — videos, images, documents. Anyone can run a storage node and earn rewards for contributing space and band

💡 How Is It Different From Other Projects?
You may have heard of similar projects, like:

Filecoin — great for archival, long-term storage, but not ideal for fast, responsive access.
Arweave — focuses on permanent storage, but it can be expensive and rigid.
Celestia, EigenDA, Avail — they specialize in data availability, not actual media or file storage.
Walrus combines both worlds:

It stores actual raw data and media.
It provides verifiable data availability (DA) for other blockchains and rollups.
This makes it uniquely flexible — it can be used as a content storage solution or as an infrastructure layer for other blockchain pro

💰 Tokenomics: Meet $WAL
The Walrus network will be powered by the $WAL token, which plays several roles:

Payment for storage services.
Staking for node operators.
Governance — token holders can participate in decisions about the network.
This creates a decentralized economy where users and operators are incentivized to keep the network secure and performant.

🎯 Who Is It For?
Developers who want to build dApps that store files and media.
NFT and gaming projects that need scalable and fast media delivery.
Users who want censorship-resistant and reliable file storage.
Blockchain projects that need a flexible DA layer.

👥 What Has the Community Done?
Walrus has already engaged its early community through testnet activities, allowing user

🏁 Final Thoughts: Why Walrus Matters
Walrus is more than just another blockchain. It’s an infrastructure project solving one of the most fundamental problems in Web3 — where and how to store real data.

With a strong team, real funding, and a mainnet launch ready to go, Walrus is poised to become an essential layer of the decentralized internet.#WALRUS $WAL @WalrusProtocol

Walrus keeps data safe even when some participants (storage nodes) are malicious, offline, or trying to cheat by combining advanced erasure coding, cryptographic auditing, and incentivized economic penalties. Built on the Sui blockchain, Walrus divides data into small, encrypted fragments ("slivers") and distributes them across a decentralized network, ensuring that data is recoverable even if a significant number of nodes fail.
Here is a detailed understanding of how Walrus handles cheating:
1. Data Protection Techniques
Red Stuff Erasure Coding: Instead of simple replication (copying the whole file), Walrus uses "Red Stuff," a 2D erasure coding algorithm. It breaks files into slivers and stores them such that the original file can be reconstructed using only a subset of these fragments.
High Fault Tolerance: The network is designed to tolerate up to one-third of nodes acting maliciously or going offline (Byzantine Fault Tolerance), and even up to two-thirds of nodes in specific scenarios, without data loss.
Cryptographic Verification (Auditing): Every piece of data is hashed, and nodes are required to provide periodic "proofs of availability." If a node cannot prove it still holds the correct data, it is identified as a cheater.
2. Handling Malicious Participants (Cheaters)
Slashing Penalties: Storage providers must stake the token to participate. If a node acts dishonestly, fails to serve data, or fails to provide proofs, a portion of their staked tokens is slashed (confiscated).
Permanent Token Burn: To prevent malicious collusion (where groups of nodes try to game the system), a significant portion of slashed tokens is burned (permanently destroyed), rather than just redistributed.
Self-Healing Network: When the system detects that a node has lost data or gone offline, the network automatically repairs the lost fragments using the remaining data, ensuring long-term persistence.
3. Decentralized Architecture
No Single Point of Failure: Data is spread across hundreds of independent nodes. No single node, or small group of nodes, has access to the full file, making it extremely difficult to censor or destroy data.
Separation of Control and Data: Walrus uses the Sui blockchain to manage metadata, ownership, and proofs, while the actual data sits on a distributed network. The blockchain ensures that storage rules are enforced by code rather than by trust.
Secure Access Control (Seal): For private data, the "Seal" feature uses a threshold committee of independent key servers to manage decryption, ensuring no single party can leak or access private information.
Summary Table: How Walrus Prevents Cheating
Type of Cheating Mechanism to Counter
Data Deletion Proactive self-healing, data reconstructed from remaining fragments
Data Modification Cryptographic hashing makes changes immediately detectable
Data Withholding Economic penalties (slashing) and node reputation
Collusion/Sybil Attack High-cost staking and permanen token burn
Censorship Distributed, permissionless, and immutable storage nodes
By focusing on cryptographic proofs and economic penalties, Walrus ensures that maintaining data integrity is the only profitable behavior for node operators. #WALRUS $WAL @WalrusProtocol

The term CPI most commonly refers to the Consumer Price Index, a key economic indicator used to measure inflation. In project management, it can also stand for the Cost Performance Index. 1. Consumer Price Index (Economics) The Consumer Price Index tracks the average change over time in the prices paid by consumers for a "market basket" of goods and services. How it Works: Statistical agencies (like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) collect thousands of prices monthly for items such as food, housing, clothing, transportation, and medical care.What it Tells Us:Inflation/Deflation: A rising CPI indicates inflation (prices are going up), while a falling CPI indicates deflation.Purchasing Power: As the CPI rises, the purchasing power of your money declines because each unit of currency buys fewer goods.Policy Impact: Central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, use CPI data to decide whether to adjust interest rates to stabilize the economy.Key Variations:Headline CPI: Includes all items in the basket, including volatile food and energy prices.Core CPI: Excludes food and energy to provide a clearer view of long-term price trends. 2. Cost Performance Index (Project Management) In the context of project management, CPI measures the financial effectiveness and efficiency of a project. Formula: \(\text{CPI}=\frac{\text{Earned\ Value\ (EV)}}{\text{Actual\ Cost\ (AC)}}\).Interpretation:CPI > 1: The project is under budget (performing well).CPI = 1: The project is exactly on budget.CPI < 1: The project is over budget. 3. Other Meanings Cost Per Install (Marketing): A metric used by advertisers to track the cost of each new mobile app installation. 

DUSK
As we get ready for ITN, and move closer and closer to mainnet, let’s have a refresher on what Dusk is, in 5 key points. Dusk is built on the three core pillars of privacy, compliance, and bringing real-world assets to everyone’s wallet.

But let’s go a bit deeper, and have a look at the technology, features, and novelties that Dusk brings.

Dusk is a Layer One that prioritizes both privacy and compliance
Dusk is a Layer One blockchain that uses advanced zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology to provide privacy on-chain while also complying with necessary regulations, including KYC/AML.

Transactions on Dusk are private, but auditible meaning that no one can see your transactions on-chain or look inside your wallet, but relevant authorities can still perform audits if necessary and we have the tools to perform private KYC procedures as needed (more on that later).

This means that Dusk is both private and compliant. We believe that privacy is a human right and also a necessity for meaningful, real-world adoption. Blockchain as it stands offers anonymity, so long as no one has your wallet address you can transact without anyone knowing it’s you, not to mention the fact that so much of crypto is anonymous online too. This works so long as no one can link you to your wallet address.

But when introduced to the “real world” of regulated assets, real world payments, and membership subscriptions, it becomes clear that actual privacy, not just presumed anonymity, is required.

So, Dusk is both private and compliant.

You can have a look at the Dusk testnet explorer to see how transactions are recorded, and see that they don’t include amounts or addresses.

Dusk explorer privacy

Dusk is custom-built
Dusk is built from scratch, not only as a blockchain, but also in terms of the supporting infrastructure like wallets and tooling. At Dusk we are solving two sets of problems; the problems finance faces and the problems blockchain faces. Finance has issues like fragmented liquidity and a lack of interoperability both across and within institutions, while blockchain suffers from a poor UX and a lack of real world use cases.

Dusk solves both.

We have a groundbreaking, custom-built virtual machine that is privacy-friendly, allows for one block sync up to the network, and does not suffer from state bloat.

We have a web wallet that can handle ZKP computations in-browser, and allows for infinite customization from the branding to functionality, meaning anyone can brand the wallet or add capabilities to it to suit their business needs.

We also have revolutionary nodes that support privacy within a shared state, which no other blockchain (as far as we know) has been able to do, allowing for the private spending on public coins. Not to mention the Succinct Attestation consensus, first conceived by co-founder Emanuele Francioni and further developed by the team, which allows for the infinite scalability of verifiers.

See this link for more on the web wallet and node.

Finally, our cryptography research team has been leading the way in their field, from publishing papers to developing Citadel, a ZKP-friendly licensing tool, which is particularly useful for KYC, and allows users to access goods and services without having to reveal their private data.

These are just some of the groundbreaking innovations the team has created.

Dusk has strong partnerships
Dusk is a shareholder in NPEX, a stock exchange in The Netherlands, as well as having strong relationships with other similar companies in Europe and beyond.

The team at Dusk are focused on working with financial institutions to not only tokenize their assets but to natively issue assets on-chain. This is a whole new paradigm for finance, and would allow the financial industry to evolve dramatically, increase access to liquidity and capital, and dramatically reduce inefficiencies, taking settlement and reconciliation from days to seconds, as an example.

We’ve begun to see institutional interest in blockchain with the BTC ETF and people like Larry Fink championing blockchain. Dusk has the vision, the tech, and the relationships to make this possible.

Dusk is public and permissionless
While this might be what the team is working on, Dusk is a permissionless blockchain meaning anyone can build on us. From other RWA projects who want to take advantage of our tech and tooling, to privacy maxis who want to launch projects using privacy-friendly smart contracts, to anyone who wants to run a node to secure the network.

There is also an argument made against public blockchains, suggesting that institutions will want private blockchains. In our experience this is not the case. While some institutions may have private blockchains, private blockchains miss the unifying liquidity and data layer of a public one. By offering privacy within a shared state, Dusk achieves what no one else has by giving institutions the privacy they need and giving them access to a public blockchain, unified liquidity, and an uncensorable network.#DUSK $DUSK @Dusk_Foundation

DUSK
Empowering Financial Freedom with Self-Custody and Compliance Automation
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While the vision of Dusk is simple, the steps and necessary components to execute it can be difficult to understand.
Dusk’s mission is to return complete and direct control to the user over
their own assets.

While the mission might appear deceptively simple, it does require a
fundamental rethinking of mainstream technology. Such an overhaul
comprises of a decentralized ledger to serve as a global settlement
layer, zero-knowledge cryptography to safeguard private data, and
essential protocols such as Citadel and Zedger. Citadel enables
privacy-preserving digital identity on Dusk, and Zedger provides a
regulatory framework for the compliant handling of financial
instruments.

new developments in zero-knowledge cryptography, computing security, and
They’re responsible for developing breakthrough technology such
as PlonKup, Succinct Attestation, Phoenix, etc.
then implements those technologies into our software libraries, which
form the foundation of our blockchain and virtual machine stack. Dusk’s
libraries are also widely adopted by many other projects.

We also have a team of regulatory experts who tackle official matters
that most other projects tend to avoid. With so many different aspects
in play, it’s clear that Dusk is a game-changer.

To sum it up, we want to give you an overview of the key building blocks
of Dusk, how they fit together, and most importantly, why and how they
will change the way we approach finance and ownership for the better.

The topics we will cover are:

- The current limitations
- Dusk’s solution
- Zero-knowledge proofs
- Automated Regulation
- On-chain tokenization

The limitations of the current financial system current financial system has a lot of limitations, many of which we
take for granted and blindly accept just the way they are. Those
limitations present challenges to both individuals and institutions.

Individuals have limited autonomy over their assets due to the custodial
nature of our financial systems. We let someone else hold our assets,
from government bonds to salaries in a bank. This is mainly because the
practicality of holding gold bars or piles of cash at home is quite
debatable.

Institutions, on the other hand, have huge overhead costs and allocate
significant resources toward regulatory compliance and data management.
This process is replicated across each bank, with very little scaling or
universal solutions, despite the other banks doing exactly the same
thing. Not to mention liquidity being fractured across all these
custodians.

The lack of self-custody translates directly into a stagnation ofinnovation in the financial market and an abundance of inefficiencies.For example, arbitrage, which aims to correct and profit from price inefficiencies, is risky and out of reach for most people in traditional
financial infrastructure. In contrast, the DeFi market provides
innovative technology, such as flash-loans, that are freely available to
everyone. The lack of self-custody and direct control over digital
assets stifles innovation and creates barriers to financial inclusion
and economic freedom.

Dusk’s solution
Dusk’s solution is to provide infrastructure that is intrinsically
compliant, private, and efficient. We believe that by embedding these
principles directly within the core protocol, we’ll not only enable
greater opportunities for innovation and wealth, but, most importantly,
we will help the transition toward a fairer and more inclusive economy,
where direct ownership and value play a fundamental role in empowering
everyone to achieve financial freedom.

The protocol is engineered as a decentralized ledger technology (DLT)
capable of providing fast transaction settlement, as well as immediate
finality, and sybil-resistance. Every node in Dusk’s network is equipped
with software with native support for zero-knowledge cryptography (ZK),
which ensures the privacy and scalability of the ledger and its
transactions. This is different from all other blockchains that use ZK,
where the technology is kept separate from network protocol.

Instead, Dusk protocol makes use of ZK cryptography everywhere, from
Rusk, our confidential smart contract platform, to all other
functionalities, such as Citadel, a zero-knowledge proof, soulbound NFT
that is ideal for digital identity and universal KYC.

The next thing we must consider is regulation. In order to break out of
the crypto sandbox and interact with real-world financial instruments,
it’s necessary to ensure compliance with the regulatory frameworks that
govern those assets, such as stablecoins, but also bonds, ETFs, or other
kinds of securities. Here is probably where Dusk protocol shines the
most. In fact, by enabling compliance to be encoded, we can ensure the
integrity of transactions and entirely remove the possibility of any
violation.

You may have heard the expression “code is law”, well we made it so that
law can now be encoded.#DUSK $DUSK @Dusk_Foundation