Q: What early Bitcoin feature allowed users to embed arbitrary data into transactions, later inspiring Ordinals and inscriptions?

Crypto markets experienced a broad and abrupt drawdown this week, with BTC, ETH, and high-beta DeFi tokens selling off in tandem with global risk assets. The move followed a tightening of financial conditions and renewed macro uncertainty, triggering deleveraging across derivatives and onchain lending markets.

Despite the sharp market sell-off, DeFi TVL fell at a slower pace than spot prices. Capital largely remained parked in lending markets, DEX liquidity, and yield strategies rather than exiting onchain entirely. This divergence suggests maturing user behavior, with participants reducing exposure without abandoning productive positions.

Stablecoins again acted as the primary shock absorber during the drawdown. Onchain volumes in USDC and USDT increased as traders rotated out of volatile assets while keeping capital deployable. Rather than shrinking, stablecoin usage reinforced their role as DeFi’s settlement and risk-management layer.

The team confirmed major progress on zk provability, with the hVM state transition now fully ZK-approved. Current work focuses on performance optimizations to the ZK tree structure, plus small structural upgrades that improve flexibility for future hVM precompiles. Support for multiple proving systems is also underway, moving Hemi toward prover diversity ahead of hBitVM.

Engineering work continues toward activating the Jovian hard fork. Rather than shipping it alone, the team is bundling several Hemi features into the same upgrade, including an hVM 1.1 update that introduces incremental feature additions and fixes edge-case bugs encountered by developers.

MinerFi development is advancing across both backend systems and smart contracts. Internal testing is expected within the next one to two weeks, followed by a potential public testnet beta later this month or early next month, depending on results.

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This report introduces Hemi's convergence-layer model that unifies Bitcoin’s settlement security with Ethereum-grade programmability, without wrapped assets, custodial bridges, or weakened trust assumptions.

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A: The OP_RETURN opcode.