The Ethereum Goerli testnet has activated the Shapella upgrade at epoch 162304 at 06:25 Beijing time, but due to the low participation rate of validators, this epoch has not been finalized at the time of writing. Under normal participation conditions, the epoch will end at 06:38 UTC. There was a 29% validator participation rate at the time of the epoch trigger, which is particularly low for Ethereum. During a YouTube livestream, Ben Edgington, head of product for ethereum client Teku, admitted that the low participation rate may be due to validators not upgrading the Goerli fork in a timely manner.

British investment firm Infodriver Capital has announced a new $10 million fund to back startups in areas such as DeFi, GameFi and AI. Currently looking for experienced and qualified investors with a minimum investment requirement of $100,000. The investment portfolio will mainly cover the seed round to the A round stage, and provide financing assistance, business development, joint promotion and other additional services. According to reports, the fund has confirmed that it will invest in several startups, including wallet application Certhis, asset management application Aspis DAO, liquidity and social trading application Toscale, community building platform Main, etc.

The private sharding network Calimero Network announced the launch of a blockchain framework based on the Near protocol, and has started beta testing. The framework supports enterprises to independently build shards, and can modify the performance of shards according to needs, thereby maximizing cost-effectiveness.

According to the announcement on the Mt.Gox official website, the deadline for the registration of Mt.Gox creditors has been postponed from January 10 to March 10 (Japan time). Will be postponed from July 31, 2023 to September 30, 2023.

According to Businesswire, digital collectibles platform Candy Digital today announced the completion of its A1 round of financing, led by Galaxy and ConsenSys Mesh, followed by 10T Holdings and ConsenSys. Specific financing terms have not been disclosed. Through a new partnership with ConsenSys Mesh and ConsenSys, Candy will accelerate the development of its platform, tools and experience capabilities.

The founder of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital received a subpoena from a liquidator on Twitter, The Block reported. Three Arrows founders Kyle Davies and Zhu Su have been on the run since Three Arrows collapsed last year. The liquidators claimed the duo had been refusing to cooperate with the bankruptcy process and had to send subpoenas via Twitter. Three Arrows Capital bankruptcy proceedings are ongoing in the United States, Singapore and the British Virgin Islands. The fund is being liquidated by financial advisory firm Teneo, which had asked the Southern District of New York for authorization to subpoena the fund's founders via Twitter and email. In a statement, the joint liquidators said they had obtained authorization from US and Singapore courts to send the subpoenas via email and Twitter accounts. The subpoenas require the founders to provide information to the company's liquidators later this month, including the company's books, digital assets and any related books, documents or records.

The TON Foundation is launching a universal data storage ecosystem called TON Storage. The project aims to enable users to exchange files of any size, while providing economic incentives to node operators to host files for users. Node operators and users create smart contracts on the TON blockchain that guarantee users will pay a fixed amount of Toncoin to store files for a predetermined amount of time, ensuring users can store data "almost forever."

Iran’s State-Owned Property Collection and Sale Organization (OCSSOP) has begun returning some mining equipment seized to miners during raids on underground crypto farms, according to Bitcoin.com, following an Iranian court order. Abdolmajid Eshtehadi, head of the group, said Iran's power generation, transmission and distribution companies should make recommendations on how to utilize mining hardware without harming the national grid.

The Bitcoin Genesis Block will celebrate its 14th anniversary at 02:15 on January 4, Beijing time.