Crunchbase reported a 76% year-over-year decrease in web3 VC funding in Q2 of this year. The downtrend looks slightly worse when looking at the full first half of 2023, where funding dropped by 78% year-over-year, with companies raising only $3.6 billion compared to last year's nearly $16 billion. This sharp decline, attributed to the crypto winter, sits in contrast to the vast amounts AI startups have raised in the same timeframe - $25 billion. Despite the decline, companies like a16z remain positive about web3's future, highlighting especially strong areas like web3 gaming.
Metaverse and AI company FutureVerse recently raised $54 million in a funding round led by 10T Holdings, with Ripple in on the round as well. FutureVerse plans to continue developing its AI content generation tools that will set the base layer for the company’s metaverse with the new funding. FutureVerse, which has acquired 11 companies since its inception, recently launched the AI-powered game AI League in collaboration with FIFA and an AI-powered boxing game in partnership with Muhammad Ali Enterprises.
Synthetix, a protocol for trading synthetic assets and crypto derivatives, is planning to launch v3 of its decentralized perpetual futures exchange and its new front end, Infinex, in Q4. The upgrade aims to improve the UX by mimicking a CEX’s usability but retaining the self-custody principle of DEXs. Infinex will facilitate access to decentralized perpetuals trading without requiring an on-chain transaction for every trade. Founder Kain Warwick envisions this as another step in user migration from CEXs, given the history of such platforms facing theft and mismanagement issues.
This Twitter thread lays out why UniswapX's new architecture could be transformative due to its efficiency and flexibility. The upgrade paves the way for better order flow auctions, returning MEV to users. While the update is seen as a crucial step towards improving off-chain order matching, more improvements are needed to enhance decentralization, competitiveness and privacy. UniswapX could pave the way for seamless cross-chain and roll-up exchanges. The new platform complements Uniswap v4, which is aimed at improving sustainable passive liquidity provision.
Coinbase Wallet recently introduced gasless sends on Polygon for USDC without relying on smart contracts or account abstraction, instead using a standard known as "meta-transactions." Defined by EIP-3009, meta-transactions offer enhanced security and usability through randomized nonces and avoid the "transferFrom/approve" pattern. Importantly, the person executing the method is not necessarily the sender, exemplifying how gasless sends work. The process illustrates how EIP-4337 is not the only standard capable of implementing gasless sends.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong will engage in a private discussion with the New Democrat Coalition to discuss digital-asset legislation and other issues such as tax, national security, and privacy. The meeting comes amidst a lawsuit against Coinbase, one of the globe's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, by the SEC. Armstrong has been pushing for clearer rules around digital assets in Washington. Additionally, Coinbase is promoting two bills offering clearer guidance on crypto exchange registration with regulators. This gathering follows a favorable court ruling in the XRP case that dealt a significant blow to the SEC’s claims that most crypto tokens are securities.
This article discusses how the nature of online interactions, driven by anonymity and lack of repercussions, fosters scams and toxicity. Online scams have sadly been prominent in the crypto sector. The lack of a sense of 'presence' in digital spaces limits feelings of empathy and often enables unethical behavior. Digital information overload also hampers the ability to discern quality information from falsehoods. The article suggests that a potential solution could be introduced through the Metaverse, proposing an environment where repercussions exist and a sense of identity or 'presence' is restored, potentially reducing fraud.
OpenSea halted Ether.Fi's staked-ether NFT trading, citing financial activity regulation. In return, Ether.Fi's CEO criticized OpenSea for being an 'unlicensed casino' and stressed Ether.Fi's non-custodial approach.
CoinFund has raised a $158 million fund to support early-stage crypto startups, exceeding its initial $125 million target. The firm plans to focus on the intersection of crypto and AI.
Polychain Capital has raised $200 million for the initial close of its fourth fund. It aims to raise about $400 million total. Three research team members have been let go amid changing investment priorities.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says that modern account abstraction could simplify crypto wallets, making them as easy as email accounts. The EIP-4337 upgrade may enhance features like wallet recovery, lower transaction fees, and multisig wallets, potentially driving wider web3 adoption.
Meet the all-new Kraken Pro. The powerful, customizable, beautiful way to trade crypto. It’s packed with all the trading features you need to trade your way. Like advanced order management and analytics tools — all in a redesigned, fully-customizable trading interface. It’s Kraken's most powerful, flexible trading platform, well, ever. So go on, head to Kraken and trade like a pro
Republican lawmakers have called for the DOJ and the SEC to investigate Prometheum, a crypto firm, concerning its relationship with Chinese investors. Prometheum's co-CEO, Aaron Kaplan, had testified before a House committee about the company's ability to operate alongside securities laws. Suspicions arose following discrepancies between Kaplan's testimony and Prometheum's SEC filings. The lawmakers fear that Prometheum may have misrepresented its ties with Chinese investors, primarily Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain, leading to an insinuation of potential securities fraud.
Crypto asset manager Grayscale has raised criticisms against the SEC for approving a leveraged Bitcoin-based ETF, alleging that the product is actually riskier than Grayscale’s Bitcoin futures products. This comes amidst Grayscale's ongoing lawsuit against the SEC for rejecting its spot Bitcoin ETF application. The company suggests the SEC is discriminating against different companies, and is seeking legal redress, with a judgment expected by year-end.
Thirdweb has rolled out a new way to deploy contracts on EVM chains. This new secure method eliminates hassling with private keys and copy-pasting ABIs, simplifying the process into a single command. Users can select from a range of pre-built smart contracts such as NFT Drops, marketplaces, tokens, staking, and governance. Post-deployment, developers can hop into a contract management dashboard and leverage SDKs designed for the contracts they deployed to start building their full-stack app. Over 300,000 contracts were launched with this feature in June.
Bitcoin developers have launched Zapple Pay, a new service enabling the exchange of Bitcoin through emojis in the Bitcoin-friendly app Damus. The innovation comes after Apple threatened to remove Damus from its App Store for allowing users to exchange Bitcoin, a practice it equates to selling digital media. Damus' developer, William Casarin, removed this functionality, leaving users with only the ability to exchange profile-level tips. However, some independent developers found this workaround, arguing that Apple will struggle to interfere due to the third-party nature of their service.
According to Electric Capital’s Developer Report, the number of active open source crypto developers has declined by 22% over the past year, largely due to newcomers leaving the industry. However, the number of developers working in crypto for over a year has remained steady and has accounted for most of the space’s activity, contributing more than 80% of code commits. Despite the overall drop, the number of active developers is higher than the pre-peak period in 2021. Ecosystems such as Osmosis, Sui, Aptos, TON, Optimism, and Aztec Protocol have reported year-over-year growth.
Safe is propelling innovation in modular Smart Account infrastructure, enabling developers to construct a variety of applications and wallets. Its framework emphasizes four primary facets: Plugins, Hooks, Function Handlers, and Signature Verifiers. The structure allows for the creation of unique functionalities while maintaining secure operations. The architecture focuses on Safe Account, Singleton contracts, Factories, and Integration Interfaces, with considerations around cost efficiency, upgradability, and augmented functionality. Safe's structure incorporates core Ethereum principles like signature thresholds to ensure security and extend its capacities to allow developers to build robust smart wallets.
Ethereum’s next major upgrade, called "Dencun," will focus on EIP-4844. The upgrade aims to reduce transaction costs on mainnet and improve the way L2s encode data on mainnet, significantly affecting the data economy of the platform. The data associated with the upgrade will be temporary, persisting for only 30 days. This new approach has implications for applications using on-chain data, especially NFTs, and raises questions about future data storage and availability.
Arkham Intelligence is launching a marketplace and token that allows users to pay for on-chain sleuthing. The platform, Arkham Intel Exchange, uses a bounty system where users post a bounty and whoever fulfills it first gets paid in Arkham’s native coin, ARKM. Alternatively, users can auction off their independent findings if they are of interest to potential buyers. In addition to its token launch, Arkham gained some attention yesterday as news came out that they had been doxxing users’ email addresses in their referral links. While the links looked harmless, they were actually the users’ Base64 encoded email addresses, which tied their emails to their Twitter accounts when they unwittingly shared them.
This thread lays out the experience of an individual who co-founded a crypto startup, sharing the insights he gained on crypto, entrepreneurship, and ethics.
In May 2022, the LUNA collapse led to significant BTC sell-offs and overall market chaos, causing a notable CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) gap of around $35,100. Today, BTC's potential to fill this gap depends on ETF approvals and a declining U.S. Dollar Index.
Crypto scammers are increasingly impersonating regulators and law enforcement officials to defraud victims. Despite intense government scrutiny and efforts to curb such fraud, these impersonation scams have still been effective and difficult to prosecute due to their international and mutating nature.
The UK is aiming to become a global hub for crypto by drafting regulations to create a more inviting environment for crypto firms seeking clear regulatory frameworks. Despite this past year’s vicious market downturn, ex-UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak maintains a vision to make the UK a leading crypto technology player. For firms like a16z, which recently announced its expansion to London, the UK offers a reprieve from the US where regulators have been criticized for heavy-handedness and lack of clarity.
Binance is facing a significant management crisis as several key executives have resigned over CZ’s handling of ongoing regulatory investigations. Among the senior figures leaving are the General Counsel, Chief Strategy Officer, and SVP for Compliance. Binance, which is dealing with regulatory struggles globally, is now more vulnerable to increased scrutiny as the resignations are from departments that directly interact with regulators. Apparently, the resignations stem from dissatisfaction with Zhao's response to a probe by the US Justice Department over alleged regulatory circumvention and possible money laundering.
Circle launched a Wallet-as-a-Service product, Circle Programmable Wallets. This platform enables developers to seamlessly embed wallets into their apps, allowing them to easily offer crypto services to users. These wallets can help streamline cross-border transactions and foster customer engagement with crypto products like NFTs, while still offering flexible custody options and operational monitoring. Its user-friendly interface also simplifies the crypto UX, bypassing the need for users to deal with complex private keys. Currently supporting Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche, the service bases its pricing on a scalable pay-as-you-go model.
IDEX, one of the oldest DEXs on Ethereum, is developing its own L2, Xchain. Built with technology from Polygon's Supernets software stack, Xchain is currently being tested as a decentralized perpetual trading platform. Polygon is aiming to help projects by giving them a platform on which to launch their own chains, and Xchain is a great example of that. IDEX CEO, Alex Wearn, is betting that this new development will enable IDEX to compete directly with centralized exchanges.
Developers are exploring the potential benefits of introducing derivative markets to Ethereum's gas market. Derivatives, which have strengthened spot markets in the past, could improve user and developer experiences by providing a fixed price for gas and enhance price discovery efficiency for the Ethereum blockspace. However, several factors, such as regulatory/legal, market, and protocol-specific considerations, need to be taken into account to put this into practice. While the timeline for this market's development is uncertain, ongoing consolidation of gas buyers, the availability of hedging products, and an increase in stakeholder sophistication could serve as a driving force to make it happen.
During an interview this week, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink expressed optimism about both digital assets and tokenization. Broadly, he believes digital products, like ETFs, are displacing the mutual fund industry, and thinks that tokenization has the potential to restructure the banking system and capital markets. Fink also indicated that he views Bitcoin as an international asset, likening it to "digitized gold". As for macro predictions, he anticipates inflation to remain high in the long term and interest rates to rise.
Jesse Powell, Kraken's CEO, is under investigation by the FBI over claims that he hacked and cyber-stalked a nonprofit arts organization he founded. The probe revolves around accusations that Powell obstructed computer accounts at the nonprofit and hindered access to emails and other communications. No charges have been pressed against Powell so far. Authorities began scrutinizing him last fall following a search operation at his LA house. Powell's legal counsel confirmed the investigation but maintains his innocence, stating it bears no relevance to his crypto activities.
DeFi protocol Pendle’s TVL hit an all-time high of $127M this week, with inflows having increased since the Shanghai upgrade. On top of that, Pendle's token, PENDLE, is up more than 1,700% this year. Pendle recently updated to its v2, helping increase efficiency by combining principal and yield tokens into one pool for improved trading volume growth. Pendle's unique approach separates both yield and principal, attracting conservative investors and speculators alike. Binance recently listed PENDLE, which also accelerated the project’s growth.
Blur introduced trait bidding earlier this week. This thread breaks down how these trait bids might impact the NFT market. The thread’s high-level thesis is that trait bids will provoke those holding rare NFTs but in need of liquidity to accept bids far below the ‘trait floor’, bringing rare trait valuations down.
In this thread, Punk 6529 gives his perspective on Blur and the 6529 Fund’s investment in the company. It also covers some of the market dynamics that are at play with Blur.
Tom Brady was the poster boy for FTX and is now taking the brunt of the backlash over celebrity endorsements of FTX. Brady and his ex-wife Gisele Bündchen received $30 million and $18 million respectively in FTX stock, which is now worthless. They are now being sued by FTX customers seeking compensation.
BlackRock's CEO, Larry Fink, stated yesterday that Bitcoin is now viewed as an "international asset". The statement comes after the asset management firm made moves to offer a spot Bitcoin ETF. Fink also compared the role of Bitcoin to digital gold, offering an alternative to physical gold investments as an inflation hedge. Despite his initial skepticism, Fink asserted that BlackRock's aim is to democratize crypto and provide cheaper options for investors.
In Q2, crypto M&A numbers fell, with intra-sector deals down 50%. According to Architect Partners, there were only 32 transactions during this period, a steep decline compared to the previous quarter's high of 54. Total deal value also dropped to $370 million from approximately $400 million last quarter. The analysis attributed this dip to crypto companies becoming more selective in their business choices. Laser Digital’s acquisition of Elysium Technology Group and Ripple's purchase of Metaco were some of the big deals of the month.
Blur v2 launched with two major feature rollouts: trades now consume 50% less gas due to optimizations and users can now place bids on specific traits. As part of this update, Blur v1 bids are no longer functional, meaning users will have to make the same bids through the updated contract. Trait bidding is available for all collections and specific ones can earn extra points. Other features previously launched this season include lending, BNPL, mobile support, notifications, and an optimized v2 marketplace.
Axiom, a solution giving developers enhanced access to on-chain data on Ethereum, is now live. With this, developers can now request larger amounts of data and compute power for their smart contracts. Using zk proofs, Axiom aims to ensure data accuracy and trustworthiness, enabling the creation of data-rich applications with the same level of interaction as traditional web apps, but with the security of Ethereum. Currently, developers can access block headers, account details, and historic storage values through Axiom’s platform, and the company plans on providing access to transaction, receipt, and consensus data in the near future.
This write-up explains how Ethereum's scaling future may depend on rollups, a shared sequencer architecture designed to improve atomic cross-rollup interoperability. The current rollup solution faces issues with centralized sequencers and a lack of effective solutions for interoperability between optimistic rollups. Shared Validity Sequencing is a decentralized model of sequencing, intended to allow atomic bridging of tokens and enable cross-chain actions. In this design, the technology can serve entire rollup ecosystems with unified layers of native assets. Among the advantages, this solution promises enhanced sovereignty for applications, flexible pricing for locks, and immediate sharding possibilities.
This tweet discusses setting up a 2 of 2 multisig setup for increased security using BIP85 on a Coldcard for bitcoin transactions. It provides step-by-step instructions for creating a secure system that incorporates the need for just one seed plate and pass phrase, two hardware wallets, and no wallet files. The process incorporates a geographic key distribution tactic to ward off potential offline theft and offers suggestions for extending the setup for a 3 of 3 spread over three locations. The tweet goes on to explain how you could potentially use this setup for an inheritance.
Brett Harrison, former FTX US CEO, founded a venture called Architect earlier this year, aiming to simplify AI-based crypto trading. It has closed a $5 million seed round from investors like Coinbase Ventures and Anthony Scarmucci. Architect uses algorithms and AI interfaces like OpenAI's API to help users create crypto trading strategies. The platform, currently in beta mode for specific clients, allows traders to establish these trading rules using natural language. Despite the use of AI tools, Harrison emphasizes that the effectiveness of the trading strategies still ultimately relies on the guiding team's expertise.
This blog explores the concept of blockchains and bridges in crypto networks. It defines a blockchain as a data structure for categorizing transactions, achieved via a consensus protocol for data validation. The blog likens blockchain protocols to databases, with ‘closed’, ‘public’, or ‘open’ databases based on their access permissions. It delves into the role of bridges in facilitating communication between such databases, with overviews of 'Human-operated' and 'Light client' bridges.
NFT royalty payments hit a two-year low in June, according to Nansen. The rise of royalty-optional marketplaces like Blur and OpenSea with its new policies coincided with creators' earnings decreasing significantly.
Coinbase Product Director Conor Grogan found over $320,000 in untouched Ethereum Classic funds for an individual unaware of their existence. This find was part of Grogan's broader effort to locate dormant ETC wallets stemming from the 2016 Ethereum blockchain fork.
In the wake of a precipitous decline in NFT prices, investors are blaming Blur's incentivized trading model. Critics argue that Blur's practices encourage rapid flipping and wash trading for rewards, essentially turning NFTs into nothing more than "altcoins with pictures."