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Superstate, led by Compound founder Robert Leshner, raised $14 million to develop regulated blockchain-based investment vehicles for US investors, focusing on tokenized assets and team expansion.
BlackRock, a leading global asset manager, has called attention to the risks posed by stablecoins such as USDC and USDT in its application for a Bitcoin ETF. Although not directly allocating funds to stablecoins, the firm acknowledges the potential risks they present to Bitcoin and the crypto market as a whole. While outlining any and all risks in disclosures is simply standard practice in any filing, these statements still raised eyebrows as BlackRock provides financial products to Circle, the company behind USDC.
Cryptocurrency advocacy group Coin Center has proposed recommendations to US Senators Ron Wyden and Mike Crapo about legislation related to crypto taxation. These proposals include requiring the IRS to create an exemption for minor cryptocurrency transactions, excluding digital assets from secondary reporting obligations under US tax law, and clarifying the definition of a broker to exclude certain individuals within the crypto space. The suggestions also advocated for more clear guidelines on block rewards, airdrops, and hard forks for tax purposes.
OKX announced plans to launch an L2 network named 'X1' using Polygon's Chain Development Kit. The network, anticipated to launch in Q1 of 2024, will employ Polygon's zk tech stack, a burgeoning type of cryptography in the blockchain space. OKX's native token, OKB, will be used for gas fees on X1. This move comes on the heels of Coinbase’s successful launch of Base and Kraken’s announcement of its own L2.
Disney is partnering with NBA Top Shot creator Dapper Labs to launch a platform for users to buy and trade branded NFTs in the form of “digital pins”. The initiative, named Disney Pinnacle, aims to digitize pin collecting and will feature characters from Disney, Pixar, and Star Wars. The platform, informed by lessons from Dapper Lab's NBA Top Shot experience, is set to launch on the Apple App Store by the end of the year.
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This thread details how to use DEX Screener, a tool for tracking real-time crypto price and market data, to spot potentially profitable trades ahead of the crowd. The thread goes through DEX Screener's various functions, including multichart and portfolio tracking, and how to set filters for better analysis. It also advises going off of DEX Screener and checking the project's website, team, community, and papers to conduct more thorough research.
This post from Variant details a new token distribution model that it is coining as ‘progressive ownership’. This framework involves measuring value with tokens, which would incentivize users to deepen their engagement with protocols or apps. Variant also outlined the shortcomings of previous token distribution models, such as the proof of work model, ICOs, and airdrops. It argues that tokens should be used thoughtfully, targeting power users to maintain engagement and encourage sustainable growth.
This post from Vitalik Buterin discusses the evolution of Plasma, a blockchain scaling solution, and its applications. Despite initial hurdles like high data storage costs and issues in generalizing beyond payments, the introduction of validity proofs or ZK-SNARKs has potentially breathed new life into Plasma. These proofs could efficiently address the biggest challenge faced by Plasma. Buterin delves into more technical aspects of Plasma and how it would work for NFTs, fungible tokens, and the EVM.
This builder report reveals that consumer crypto application developers are focusing on making user onboarding and fund activation more seamless for newcomers. The builders believe that key factors for successful applications are a smooth transaction experience, a fast activation funnel, secure processes, and engaging experiences. There's also increased emphasis on developing mobile-first, social, and media-rich applications that require little technical knowledge. High transaction fees and bridging are persistent issues that developers in the space are still grappling with and looking for solutions for.
This post provides an in-depth analysis of Bittensor, an AI x crypto project, discussing its architecture, tokenomics, and challenges, aiming to clarify misconceptions and highlight its potential in the space.
NFT trading volume has reached a four-month high, driven partly by airdrop farmers returning to Blur ahead of its next round of airdrops.
Delaware authorities are referring a fake BlackRock "iShares XRP Trust" filing to the state's Department of Justice for potential investigation.
Agrotoken is partnering up with Visa and launching on Polkadot, having tokenized $105 million in agricultural commodities already and aiming to revolutionize agriculture with stablecoins backed by grains and food.
Bithumb, a South Korean crypto exchange, is reportedly planning a potential IPO on Kosdaq, aiming for the second half of 2025. It has selected Samsung Securities as the underwriter for this process. Meanwhile, its former chair, Lee Jeong-hoon, cleared of previous fraud charges, has returned to the company as a registered director.
A falsified business registration listed as a BlackRock XRP trust triggered significant market volatility yesterday. The phony registration, posted on Delaware’s Division of Corporations website, led to a 10% surge in XRP prices, which later dropped back after confirmation of the fake news. The incident mirrored the fake CoinTelegraph announcement regarding a BlackRock Bitcoin ETF approval that temporarily sparked a market rally.
Cboe Digital is preparing to launch margin futures for Bitcoin and Ethereum in January 2024, marking its transition as the first US-regulated crypto native combined exchange and clearinghouse for both spot and leveraged derivatives trading. Supported by leading crypto trading firms, Cboe also intends to broaden its crypto derivatives suite, subject to regulatory approvals. This move is expected to enhance liquidity and hedging opportunities for traders.
New Ethereum research is aiming to apply zk-SNARKs (zero-knowledge proofs) to enable privacy in transactions using Solidity. This could potentially remove the need for L2 blockchains, leading to reduced gas fees on Ethereum and centralizing transaction activity. Obstacles include ensuring auditability and extra storage needed at the verification phase. This open-source research hopes to attract other builders and funding to work on these types of projects.
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If you haven’t heard of RYSE yet, you will soon. The story of the smart home COMPANY that started out pitching on Dragons Den and receiving two offers [9] is about to become known nationwide, as their product rolls out in +100 Best Buy stores.
This post discusses how trend-traders can adjust their strategies to effectively execute in strong market trends. It shares numerous strategies, including lowering timeframes, considering consolidations as forms of pullback, using MAs as dynamic S/R levels, and leveraging liquidations. Traders can make use of seemingly mediocre levels and simple price action concepts during strong trends. Traders should not ignore BTC and ETH as they remain key indicators of market movements and sentiment.
This report provides an in-depth exploration of zkSync's architecture and its processes, including Account Abstraction, Core Architecture, Transaction Finality, zk-proof, and Interoperability. It also provides detailed illustrations that can help you understand the relationship between different components of the protocol, transaction phases, and how zkSync accommodates and integrates with Ethereum's processes. The report analyzes the revenue and costs of the protocol and gives a developer's perspective on working with zkSync, highlighting notable functionalities and potential challenges.
The Block announced that it has sold a stake in the company for around $60 million to Singapore's Foresight Ventures for ~80% ownership. The majority of this capital was used to buy out former CEO Mike McCaffrey's stake following a scandal involving FTX loans. Foresight plans to help The Block expand its Asian customer base amidst struggles in the crypto media industry.
This post breaks down the value of what is left on FTX’s balance sheet a year after its dramatic implosion. Despite calls for liquid assets like BTC, ETH, and SOL to be returned to customers, systems in place require broad creditor distribution. Creditor claims total $81 billion, split between customer and non-customer claims. However, the total liability might be closer to $23.2 billion, accounting for disputes. Assets include liquid and illiquid digital tokens, real estate, and brokerage accounts, with the values in this report based on closing prices as of August 31, 2023.
This post discusses the importance of capital efficiency in DeFi, highlighting Solana's ability to generate significantly more trading volume with less liquidity compared to Ethereum, challenging the relevance of TVL as a metric.
Ryan Wyatt, former head of YouTube Gaming and Polygon Labs, is now joining Optimism as its Chief Growth Officer to focus on the adoption and development of Optimism.
Solana's daily active user count surpassed Ethereum user count over the weekend, but Ethereum's entire ecosystem, including its Layer 2 networks, is still in the lead with over 1 million active wallets.
As it continues to sort out legal issues, Terraform Labs has acquired Pulsar Finance, focusing on a post-Kwon strategy with enhanced cross-chain capabilities and portfolio management tools.
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Hedera is a decentralized, open-source, proof-of-stake public ledger governed by a council of leading enterprises, universities, and web3 projects [5]. Hedera’s scalable and reliable network infrastructure allows developers to deploy ecosystem-critical web3 applications and protocols - including stablecoins. Stablecoin Studio [5] is an open-source SDK that makes it easy to build stablecoin applications on the Hedera network. It’s used by web3 stablecoin platforms, institutional issuers, enterprises, and payment providers.
Ark Invest and 21Shares are planning to roll out five funds that incorporate either bitcoin futures contracts, ether futures, or both sometime this week. These include an ETF that leverages both BTC and ETH futures, an Active On-Chain Bitcoin Strategy ETF, and an ETF featuring BTC futures paired with a portfolio of crypto-related equities. While it’s uncertain what kind of demand there would be for these specific products, this could be yet another option for retail and institutional investors to get exposure to the crypto space.
JPMorgan's blockchain-based settlement token, JPM Coin, now allows users to automate payments according to preset conditions. The new feature enables funds to be transferred automatically to cover overdue payments or margin calls, making it unnecessary to set up standing orders. This capability is beneficial in a 24/7 payments infrastructure and in times when the market is especially volatile.
DeFi platform Gearbox Protocol is launching its v3 upgrade, which includes an Onchain Credit Layer, enabling the creation of individual credit accounts controlled by users. The system operates like an in-store credit card, providing increased capital access across various DeFi protocols. The upgrade comes with extra features like adjustable collateral limits for new and large assets and a governance and rate markets system.
Proof of Stake systems require optimization of the way cryptographic signatures, used as ballots, get collected. In large P2P systems with potentially millions of validators, aggregating bitfields is essential for system optimization. This proposal lays out potential solutions to the bitfield aggregation problem and three possible instantiations using SNARKs (zk-SNARKs or 'Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-interactive Argument of Knowledge'), including Recursive Stark, Recursive Halo2, and Folding. Though they are preliminary, all have advantages and downsides in terms of merge cost, verification, and communication overhead.
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What if you had the opportunity to invest in the biggest electronics products before they launched into big box retail? RYSE [10], the smart home tech company, is launching in 100+ Best Buy stores [10],
before their name becomes known nationwide.
This thread provides a comprehensive guide on getting started with on-chain trading in the Solana ecosystem. It's divided into three sections: discovery, research, and trading. The discovery phase involves using analytical tools to find top-performing tokens and trends. The research phase includes examining the project's primary resources and data points to evaluate potential purchases. Lastly, the trading phase discusses the use of wallets and platforms like Phantom, Jupiter, and Fluxbot for transactions and optimal execution.
Stylus' latest upgrade has expanded its capacity to accommodate not just the EVM, but also WASM. This opens the platform up to developers who want to use Rust, C, and C++, enhancing Stylus' scalability and drastically reducing computation costs. The system retains its compatibility with EVM contracts while offering improved safety features, including additional protection against reentrancy attacks.
This article suggests that the main issue with crypto adoption isn't scalability, but the complexity and limitations associated with interacting with base protocol layers. Modular architecture, which allows builders to innovate and customize on top of the base layer, is presented as a solution. The author also emphasizes the importance of vertically integrated middleware, offering use-case-specific protocols and networks that could scale to millions of users.
The possibility of Ether ETFs following a Bitcoin ETF approval will likely pose new challenges to Ethereum's decentralization. As interest in spot ETH ETFs rises, issuers may partner with third-party centralized staking providers for staking rewards. This could potentially increase market control by centralized entities, further centralizing Ether staking. Decentralized protocols like Lido could act as an effective counterbalance, successfully attracting new Ether investors and limiting the growth of individual node operators.
FTX's bankruptcy estate is suing ByBit and Mirana, seeking nearly $1 billion for assets withdrawn just before FTX's collapse, alleging ByBit exploited VIP access for these withdrawals.
UBS is offering three crypto ETFs on its Hong Kong platform, following HSBC's announcement to start a digital assets custody service for institutional clients.
Justin Sun's Poloniex exchange lost over $126 million in a hack and is now working with other exchanges in an attempt to recover the stolen funds.
A wallet linked to Binance lost $27 million in Tether stablecoins in a hack, with funds laundered and converted to Bitcoin via THORChain.
BlackRock has reportedly started setting up an Ethereum ETF, as indicated by a recent registration for an iShares Ethereum Trust. This caused Ethereum’s price to spike along with the rest of the crypto market. Although the SEC has not yet approved a Bitcoin ETF, market participants seem to think BlackRock is confident it will be approved if they are already preparing an Ethereum ETF as well.
Lightspeed Venture Partners has launched Lightspeed Faction Fund I, a $285m fund focused on early-stage blockchain tech. The fund is specifically designed to back entrepreneurs in the blockchain industry with the belief that the next big tech breakthroughs will happen in this space. As market sentiment has shifted over the past few months, there have been several new funds like this either announced as planned or raised.
Coinbase has launched a set of on-chain verifications called "Coinbase Verifications," which utilize Ethereum's Attestation Service. These verifications allow Coinbase users to access on-chain apps and benefits. Developers interested in integrating them into their services can use this repo to better understand how to implement them and what use cases they are suited for. Coinbase warns that the attestations, reflecting a user's account status at issuance time, are for informational purposes and should not be relied upon for legal or compliance purposes.
Stephane Gosselin, co-founder of Flashbots and now CEO of Frontier Research, has launched "Alfred", a Telegram bot developed in partnership with Kolibrio. Designed to execute token swaps on the Ethereum network, Alfred aims to provide users with advanced trading tools and protections against MEV profits. It’s entering a competitive market with real user security concerns, but unlike other Telegram bots, it currently has no plans for a dedicated token.