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Binance is seeking a protective court order against the SEC amid intensifying scrutiny from the regulator. The company is arguing the SEC's requests for information are overly demanding. Binance aims to limit the regulator to four employee depositions and exclude BAM's CEO and CFO. The SEC previously accused the firm of deceiving investors and misusing customer funds, which Binance denies.
Several executives, including CFO Jonathan Hugh, have left crypto market maker GSR as the firm has begun to scale back its crypto operations. GSR claims its retreat has mostly been due to an intense bear market and heavy regulatory scrutiny on the industry. It has been one of the main market makers in crypto since 2013, but it expanded rapidly during the latest bull market, growing its headcount to over 300 and bringing in executives from Wall Street. Sources familiar with the matter seem to imply that GSR’s pullback can be attributed to bringing these executives in at the height of the market, incurring significant costs, and being out of touch with the crypto industry.
Safe has released a whitepaper about its Safe{Core} Protocol, aimed at transitioning on-chain accounts to smart accounts. The protocol addresses several issues, such as fragmentation, vendor lock-in, and security. The Safe{Core} Protocol represents a unified standard that can support a smoother transition to smart accounts, reduce smart contract risks, ensure account portability, and maintain interoperability. This comes amid growing concerns about externally owned accounts, which are struggling with user experience problems.
Sei Labs deployed its long-awaited L1, Sei, to mainnet yesterday. The native token SEI is now on exchanges. Rather than focusing on solving technical issues, Sei’s core focus is making trading easier for social platforms, games, and NFTs. Boasting 10x the speed of Solana, Sei achieves transaction finality in 250 milliseconds. More than 200 teams have started building on Sei. 7.5m unique wallets were onboarded in the testnet phase and some large, established protocols like Sushiswap have integrated the chain into their offerings.
This article challenges the prevailing view that modularity is key to scalability in crypto. It argues that modular systems significantly increase complexity for app developers both technically and socially. The article also dispels the myth that modular chains execute code faster, asserting that separating data availability and execution doesn't inherently boost performance. It challenges other popular beliefs regarding modular chains' benefits, ultimately arguing that fully integrated systems are more user-friendly and beneficial to developers.
The author of this article took a nine-day trip to Kenya and Nigeria and recorded his observations on the crypto scene there. The people he met in the meetups he went to demonstrated interest in receiving payment via cryptocurrency, specifically stablecoins like USDT. The Binance P2P marketplace was a widely popular platform amongst locals to swap to and from their native currencies. It seems that Africa is ripe for even more crypto adoption as it offers a sense of stability and empowerment that many Africans do not have with their local currencies.
In this essay, Vitalik Buterin discusses X's fact-checking tool Community Notes, how it works, and the crossover it has with crypto. While not crypto-related, Buterin claims the Community Notes product has the "crypto values," of open sourcing and decentralization. Community Notes is taking strides in combating misinformation and polarization with its algorithm, which determines the visibility of notes based on widespread user votes. Despite some of its flaws and complexity, the open-source nature of the project makes it verifiable and transparent.
Binance announced it will discontinue its Binance Connect service as of Aug 16. It will concentrate more on its primary products and long-term objectives. Binance Connect, a tool that helped merchants to accept crypto payments, supported 50 cryptocurrencies and all key payment methods. It was launched only a year ago in 2022.
Goldman Sachs predicts the Fed will begin lowering interest rates by June 2024 as inflation nears its target. It forecasts a quarterly cut pace, aiming for a 3-3.25% funds rate.
BTC and ETH have hit escape velocity where they are viewed as legitimate assets by the wealthy. As opposed to physical assets, they cannot depreciate, degrade, or be seized. These differentiators make these assets even more interesting as stores of value for the wealthy
Base has generated $1.25m in revenue in the past 2 weeks while Optimism and Arbitrum have only generated $404k and $424k respectively.
ERC-4626, an ERC-20 extension, introduces token vaults, susceptible to inflation attacks where attackers manipulate share values. OpenZeppelin proposes several defenses in this article.