Coinbase apparently mulled over the idea of purchasing FTX's European arm after FTX’s fall last year. While the talks did not progress extensively, the move highlighted the importance of derivatives in Coinbase's global strategy. As spot trading volumes have declined during the bear market, derivative volumes have risen, particularly in Asia. Coinbase's interest also brought about questions regarding the future of crypto derivatives in Europe, as FTX Europe was the only company offering a type of crypto derivative called perpetual futures.
Crypto investment firm CoinShares is launching a hedge fund division, CoinShares Hedge Fund Solutions, to cater to US investors, marking the firm's expansion into the country. The unit will be led by Lewis Fellas and offer funds based on Bitcoin and Ethereum. This move comes while other companies have been exiting the US due to its oppositional regulatory stance. CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti sees potential with the product as he has observed increased demand for active digital asset management amid an inflation-driven macro environment.
This developer has open-sourced an EVM chain-based protocol for private payments and transfers of any asset, including ERC20 and ERC721 tokens. The smart contracts aim for a balance between stealth and simplicity. The idea was based on a framework that Vitalik Buterin proposed for stealth addresses. The technology is accessible for developers seeking transaction privacy, leveraging ERC5564, a formal standard for stealth addresses.
ZeroSync, a Swiss non-profit, is aiming to bring zk proofs to Bitcoin, starting with a zk proof-based light client for the network. Its roadmap includes developing a protocol on top of Bitcoin to increase throughput, allowing for the incorporation of tokens and enhanced privacy. The project, which is funded by grants and is the first to use StarkWare's Cairo programming language outside Ethereum, would require a soft fork in Bitcoin's code. The ZeroSync team is currently exploring options and participating in the community to find the best approach.
This post provides a guide to using Cryo, a flexible user-friendly tool built by Paradigm that enables developers to easily extract blockchain data into multiple formats for analysis. The tool utilizes Rust and Python for data exploration, allowing users to download different datasets like blocks, transactions, and logs. The post offers a walkthrough of how to install Cryo, extract and download Ethereum data, and analyze it using Python libraries.
This article examines the concept of Ethereum-equivalence and introduces a layer of advanced definitions. The idea is to identify levels within Ethereum-equivalence, building up on conventional meanings towards a more philosophical alignment. This hierarchy aims to provide a roadmap for rollups and in achieving a full 'Ethereum on Ethereum' structure. The author proposes two further levels within the Ethereum-equivalence hierarchy, providing a comprehensive view of the topic. They also elaborate on what each level offers and the virtues of full Ethereum-equivalence.
2023.09.25·finestone.mirror.xyz·10 min read·TLDR Crypto NounsDAO is due for an update. This proposal lays out plans to burn any excess ETH held by the treasury. The move would tie the treasury, the Nouns supply, and the auction price together, and encourage the DAO voters to spend the treasury, increase the Noun supply, and raise the auction price. The proposal also suggests a waiting period post-update to allow the DAO to coordinate, potentially setting the first burn date for New Year’s Eve, 2023.
This article from Placeholder explains how the legal and regulatory uncertainties surrounding blockchains and dapps remain key barriers to mass adoption. Many projects aim to achieve "progressive decentralization" to comply with current regulatory frameworks. The primary challenge with this approach lies in accomplishing compliance without compromising foundational principles. The article lays out a parallel concept called “progressive compliance” for companies or protocols whose business models do not make sense to decentralize.
This blog post highlights some of the shifts in the dynamics of building in web3 that have occurred throughout the bear market. It specifically highlights 5 shifts: velocity being the new constant, the frontier paradox, headless brands, the multi-application flywheel, and putting the audience ahead of the product.
Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal mentioned at Messari Mainnet that Coinbase has not ruled out issuing a token for its Ethereum L2 Base that launched and gained a great deal of traction throughout the summer.
This study conducted by Max Resnick and Mallesh Pai explains how integrated builders, due to their speed, dominate CEX/DEX arbitrage, outperforming neutral builders.
Vitalik Buterin was recently interviewed on CNBC, discussing the regulatory crackdown on cryptocurrencies in the US and how crypto will continue to thrive, especially in developing countries.
Tether has resumed lending, despite previous commitments to halt the practice. As of June 30, the company's assets included $5.5 billion in loans, a slight increase from the previous quarter. This practice potentially poses a risk to the crypto landscape, as repayment is not guaranteed. While the company didn’t make clear whether or not these were new loans, it raised concerns that Tether could be winding up these practices again rather than sunsetting them.
The trustee of the collapsed Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange has extended the deadline for repayments to creditors until October 2024. This news comes one year after the approval of a rehabilitation proposal, planning to pay back approximately 90% of the assets. Notably, the Estate holds about 138,000 Bitcoin and a similar amount in Bitcoin Cash, with a combined value of over $3.7 billion. The exact timing for individual repayments remains undecided.
Pirate Nation, a blockchain-based RPG, has secured $33m in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Greenoaks. Pirate Nation aims to immerse players in the game while avoiding technical barriers. The game's producer, Proof of Play, plans to develop "Forever Games," decentralized games that operate without creator intervention or external servers. Proof of Play is planning to open-source its technology framework, encouraging creation within its game architecture.
Mesh, a startup providing a service for managing and transferring digital assets, has secured $22m in a Series A funding round. The funding will be utilized for enhancing its tools for deposits, payments, and payouts and supporting its go-to-market operations. Mesh offers businesses a platform to allow customers to shift assets, including cryptocurrency, across numerous platforms. The startup, founded in 2020, currently claims to have 70 paying clients from the finance and digital assets industries.
NFTs have seen a boom and bust, crashing after a bull run, leaving the market flooded with assets that lack buyers. A study encompassing over 73,000 NFT collections found colossal imbalances in the market characterized by over 95% of collections having zero value. While that is a staggering portion of NFTs that are deemed worthless, there was a much smaller pool of collections that people actually cared about to begin with, so this figure could be a bit misleading.
Projects like Eclipse, Canto, and Astar are shifting to use Ethereum for their settlement layers due to its secure and cost-effective framework. This blog explains some of the reasons behind these shifts. Eclipse combines the strengths of Solana's tech and Ethereum's strong monetary layer. Canto, initially built on Cosmos SDK, is now migrating to Ethereum as an L2. Meanwhile, Astar aims to expand its reach to Ethereum with the Astar zkEVM, creating interoperability across chains.
Zora Protocol's new Rewards scheme is letting creators earn ETH from their work, even when it's minted for free, in a move that could disrupt the traditional art world. All Zora Mints, including those made by artists, singers, and writers, can now generate value indefinitely, providing creators with a new stream of income every time their work is minted on the platform. The change also safeguards at-risk artists by providing a counterbalance to exploitative economic forces.
This blog explains how crypto can be likened to a newly discovered planet with its unique economic system and potential. Despite criticism and speculative hype, many see crypto offering fresh possibilities like providing worldwide financial services that are transparent, programmable, and more inclusive. Digital currencies such as BTC, ETH, and stablecoins are adopted extensively in nations where traditional systems fail. Despite its dark sides including potential scams and short-term speculation, supporters believe that crypto creates the ability to revolutionize money, finance, and digital property.
These notes gathered by Eric Wall from talking to many experts on the topic explore the challenges of adding ZKrollups/ZKPs to Bitcoin. Wall suggests using a general-purpose VM like WASM for flexibility and future optionality.
This theory from Nic Carter suggests that the NSA invented Bitcoin, citing a 1996 paper and the agency's creation of SHA-256, proposing it was an internal project later secretly released.
This blog examines divisions in Bitcoin culture, highlighting criticisms of 'maximalists' for their perceived close-mindedness and lack of openness to new ideas. It questions whether discourse has actually deteriorated or if perspectives have simply changed.
This post explains how this user nearly fell for a sophisticated scam posing as a venture investment opportunity for his start-up.
Goldsky has launched Mirror, a data pipeline solution for real-time streaming of on-chain data to off-chain databases. Mirror allows developers to merge data from multiple chains into one repository, generate advanced dashboards, and effortlessly combine on-chain data with off-chain data. It provides broad support for various database connectors and is powered by Goldsky's indexing coverage on major EVM-compatible chains.
Uni-LBP is a Uniswap v4 pool for tokens to be sold at a linearly decreasing price. It optimizes liquidity and selling pressure over time to ensure accurate price discovery and reduces bot effectiveness. Unique features include no initial capital requirements, capital efficiency, limit orders, and gas efficiency. To use, owners must initialize the pool with the PoolManager and approve the hook address to spend the bootstrapping token.
Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX is suing the parents of its disgraced ex-CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, claiming they wrongfully acquired millions of dollars and property from the company, in an attempt to recover these assets. The lawsuit asserts that his parents used their influence in FTX to obtain a $10m cash gift and a $16.4m Bahamian luxury property while FTX teetered on the brink of insolvency. Additionally, the suit accuses the couple of urging for political and charitable contributions that increased their professional and social standing.
Nomura subsidiary, Laser Digital Asset Management, has launched the Bitcoin Adoption Fund to provide an easy path for institutional investors to enter the digital asset space. According to management, this is the first step in plans to launch a broader platform of digital asset investment products. Led by Sebastien Guglietta and Fiona King, the fund aims to capitalize on long-lasting transformational changes in the economy caused by technology.
Petra, a crypto wallet developed by Aptos Labs, is integrating Coinbase Pay into its platforms. The goal of this integration is to improve ease of use and onboarding for users in the web3 space. This integration could potentially attract users to Aptos by creating more seamless onramps and offramps. Petra has integrated 160+ dApps into its wallet offering so far, including LayerZero and PancakeSwap.
Eclipse is planning to launch a general-purpose L2 solution that combines Ethereum's security and liquidity, Solana's speed and scalability, and Celestia's data availability to massively scale Ethereum. The platform aims to improve user experience and ease of development. Key features include Ethereum settlement, a Solana Virtual Machine execution environment, Celestia for scalable data availability, and ZK proofs of fraud via RISC Zero.
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This article discusses the evolution of social media towards an "asocial" model, with a focus on financial transactions and capital extraction. It further dives into web3's potential to revolutionize online commerce through tokens associated with specific social "tribes" or communities. This sort of tokenization of culture could fundamentally transform social interactions online by monetizing internet subcultures and trending memes.
This article provides an overview of the Arbitrum ecosystem and the newly-released Arbitrum Stylus. Stylus allows smart contract developers to use various programming languages to build on Arbitrum. The article also discusses potential ecosystem growth due to a new governance proposal for ARB incentives and upcoming protocols including Tapioca, Dolomite, Parallax, Empyreal, and Hyperliquid.
2023.09.20·degensensei.substack.com·6 min read·TLDR Crypto Generative art has taken the crypto world by storm over the past couple of years. This article argues that the unique combinations of generative algorithms and blockchain tech will eventually enable generative manufacturing of consumer and luxury goods. It argues that the generative manufacturing stack will be comprised of the creation layer, including on-chain engines and coding libraries, a curation layer, a translation layer, a fabrication layer, and an authentication layer.
Crypto influencer Gainzy announced that he was switching from crypto gambling site Rollbit to its competitor Stake.com, leading to a 5.3% drop in Rollbit's token. While his sports betting and casino gameplay generally generates interest on social media, his move to Stake.com has generated quite the buzz thus far. Stake has built an impressive roster of celebrities and mainstream influencers to represent its brand, while Rollbit has leaned heavily on Crypto Twitter influencers.
The lawsuit against SBF’s parents for improper compensation practices has made headlines - this article details some of the most interesting aspects of these compensation packages.
Hong Kong is in its second consultation for stablecoin issuance guidelines, aiming to release regulations by mid-2024.
Optimism recently conducted its third community airdrop, distributing $27 million in OP tokens to 31,000 addresses.
From its roots in Bitcoin all the way back in 2010 to present day, DeFi evolved from decentralized digital currency to complex financial systems. This post highlights some of the biggest milestones along the way in that journey.
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Ring 一 Acquired by Amazon for $1.2B Nest 一 Acquired by Google for $3.2B