The Daily Index — Thursday, August 17, 2023 · TLDR Index

MARKETS & BUSINESS

TLDR Crypto

TLDR Crypto

VALUATION

US-based crypto custody firm BitGo announced it raised $100m in funding at a $1.75 billion valuation. While many folks in the industry raised their eyebrows at this valuation, BitGo, which safeguards crypto assets, says its focus on regulatory compliance garnered investor interest. CEO Mike Belshe remained tight-lipped about the investors’ identities but revealed they were from the US and Asia. The funds will be used to fuel strategic acquisitions, with two deals already underway.

archive.ph · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

CACTI - NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERACTIONS FOR WEB3 PROTOCOLS

Yield Protocol is launching a new open-source project called Cacti. Cacti allows users to trade assets and retrieve information from integrated web3 protocols using natural language. The aim of the project is to revolutionize the experience users have while interacting on-chain. Currently in alpha, the interface leverages OpenAI’s function calling feature. It is being developed under an AGPLv3 license to enable contributions from web3 developers, with integration possible through Javascript or Python.

medium.com · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

INCENTIVE SCHEMES FOR ROLLUP VALIDATORS

This thread provides a good summary of a recent paper by Offchain Labs that discusses potential solutions to incentivize validators on rollups. The crux of the problem in the paper is that optimistic protocols generally have a “lazy validator dilemma” and that there is currently not a great solution addressing this.

twitter.com · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

IS SOLANA GOING TO ZERO OR VALHALLA

The Solana ecosystem has been resilient, despite taking a significant hit from the collapse of FTX due to its close ties to the exchange, and developers have kept plugging away. Innovations such as isolated fee markets, stake-weighted QoS, and compression have been launched on Solana, fortifying its fundamentals. Solana itself outperformed as market conditions and the majors, BTC and ETH, rebounded. The strong fundamentals and the deployment of future liquidity mining programs could set the stage for a Solana 'DeFi summer' moment and its path to Valhalla.

twitter.com · 9 min

TLDR Crypto

Untitled entry

Shibarium was supposed to be an Ethereum L2 that would utilize Shiba Inu for gas fees and also allow BONE, TREAT, and LEASH tokens to be used in the ecosystem. To kick off the launch, users had to bridge ETH to Shibarium. Unfortunately, the Shibarium devs botched the bridge contract and the ETH that was bridged, over $1.7m worth at one point, is now stuck and unretrievable.

twitter.com · 1 min

TLDR Crypto

AGAINST SBF

Prosecutors intend to present Caroline Ellison’s personal notes and diary entries as evidence against Sam Bankman-Fried. The notes contain information about the operations of FTX and discussions between Ellison and Bankman-Fried about the company's activities. Bankman-Fried's lawyers have argued against these entries being admissible due to the delayed provision of information from the prosecution.

decrypt.co · 4 min

TLDR Crypto

THE OPEN PROBLEMS OF ON-CHAIN GAMES

This post from Paradigm explains the challenges on-chain games currently face, including technical constraints and the inherent financialization that may alter game incentives and mechanics.

paradigm.xyz · 13 min

TLDR Crypto

AN IDEA FOR A FULLY ON-CHAIN BANK

In this thread, Kyle Samani of Multicoin suggests an idea for a crypto-native bank. Ideally, this bank would allow users to keep 100% of their net worth on-chain while still providing the conveniences of autopay, credit card transactions, etc.

twitter.com · 2 min

TLDR Crypto

MARKETS INC.

Better Markets made a comment on Fidelity's Bitcoin ETF to the SEC that seems suspect. This short thread outlines how it might have come from Gary Gensler or Elizabeth Warren.

twitter.com · 1 min

TLDR Crypto

LET’S TALK BITCOIN STAKING: BABYLON’S LITEPAPER

Babylon proposed an intriguing concept in a new litepaper whereby L2s could operate a proof-of-stake model using Bitcoin instead of the native L2 asset to secure the chain. The idea is an attempt to solve the issue of L2 assets not having enough capital to properly secure a chain.

blockworks.co · 3 min