Floating Point Group (FPG), a crypto-focused institutional trading desk, was hit by a cyber attack, leading to a loss of approximately $15-20 million in crypto. The firm was successfully targeted despite having implemented cybersecurity measures, including obtaining a SOC 2 certification. Post-attack, FPG locked all third-party accounts, secured wallets, and temporarily halted trading, deposits, and withdrawals. FPG is now collaborating with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, regulators, and Chainalysis to investigate the breach and work towards asset recovery.
Someone borrowed $14,500 against two Rolexes using a novel blend of on-chain tech with Arcade.xyz and 4K Protocol. This is an interesting solution to create greater liquidity and less friction in markets with highly valuable physical collectibles or real world assets.
Apple rejected the latest version of non-custodial Lightning-enabled bitcoin wallet Zeus for violating its cryptocurrency transmission rules, following a similar conflict with Damus, another bitcoin-related app.
Amid significant regulatory pressures and crypto market downturn, crypto-based businesses are grappling with the decision to pivot, double down, or shut down. This entrepreneur gives some advice for other startup founders to follow during the bear market.
Binance.US is fighting back against allegations of fraud, market manipulation, and customer deception made by the SEC. It insists it has been fully cooperating with the investigation since December 2020. The SEC claims Binance.US, along with parent company Binance, funneled over $12 billion in customer assets to funds controlled by founder CZ. In its defense, Binance.US states that it keeps customer and corporate funds separate. This dispute occurs ahead of a hearing on an SEC-requested temporary restraining order, which would freeze all assets of Binance.US besides customer withdrawals.
Congressman Warren Davidson has proposed legislation aiming to restructure the SEC and dismiss its chair, Gary Gensler, citing his "tyrannical" leadership. This follows recent enforcement actions taken by the SEC against leading cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, for alleged securities law violations. Davidson's move reflects growing concerns amongst crypto users and politicians about the potentially negative impact of the SEC's actions on the digital asset sector and broader US capital markets.
The ORC-20 token standard, created by OrcDAO, is aiming to improve scalability issues that could hinder the BRC-20 standard by reducing transaction costs. ORC-20's operations or capabilities include Deploying, Minting, Sending, and Canceling, and it allows changes to a token’s properties, multi-recipient sending, and cancellation of partial transactions. It also features Orc Improvement Proposals (OIPs), aimed at further enhancing efficiency and functionality. While ORC-20 brings more features, BRC-20 already benefits from strong network effects, so it is tough to say which one will ultimately prevail as the standard.
Polygon teased its 2.0 launch. The protocol aims to be the 'Value Layer of the Internet', providing a platform for value creation, exchange, and programming. With these proposed upgrades, the platform plans to revolutionize its protocol architecture, tokenomics, and governance, aspiring for limitless scalability and unified liquidity via ZK technology. It proposes to achieve this through a network of ZK-powered L2 chains, offering a seamless experience across numerous chains. The vision for Polygon 2.0 will be gradually revealed in future updates, some of which are on the roadmap in the article already.
As the crypto ecosystem becomes more multi-chain, the total volume of bridged transactions is growing. This has been led by Stargate, which has facilitated 42.9% of the volume and dominates in users and transactions. Despite lower average transaction values, Stargate is the preferred choice for average users due to its low-fee structure. This Twitter thread explains how several blockchain bridging solutions are addressing the issue of isolated liquidity across different networks. The thread also compares some of the other bridging solutions with Stargate, breaking them down by volume, transactions, users, and fees (revenue).
This guide provides an in-depth breakdown of various platforms and resources to use for job hunting in the crypto space. It suggests following VC funding, using platforms like Messari and Crunchbase for funding round insights, and exploring job boards such as Framework Ventures, Cryptocurrency Jobs, and ecosystem-specific job boards. Networking on Twitter and attending crypto conferences are also highlighted as effective strategies. Finally, being active in communities and contributing to DAOs can also lead to great opportunities.
Following the collapse of Silvergate Capital Corp. and Signature Bank, crypto firms are turning to smaller, regional lenders and Swiss and Asian banks for services. This comes as increased scrutiny and regulatory crackdowns in the US have led mainstream banks to be cautious about crypto causing the banking situation for crypto firms in the US to be worse than the pre-2018 era. It has led to the development of a new banking system for crypto, which is fragmented/decentralized, less US-focused, and less publicized. While this may be a challenge for the industry, it could lead to a more resilient system.
Institutional investors have continued to pull out from crypto funds to the tune of $417 million over a two-month period. North America accounted for 87% of total outflows. Bitcoin led the outflows, while Ethereum also experienced significant sell pressure. Solana, Litecoin, and Ripple registered inflows. Market experts attribute the selling to ongoing monetary policy adjustments, particularly rising interest rates.
Bank of China's investment arm, BOCI, in partnership with UBS, has issued tokenized notes worth approximately $28 million on the Ethereum blockchain in Hong Kong. This event marks the first issuance of a digital note by a Chinese financial institution in the region, amidst Hong Kong's efforts to establish itself as a crypto hub.
In his prepared remarks for the House Financial Services Committee Hearing, Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s CEO, advocated for clear stablecoin regulations focused on protecting the US dollar's global dominance in the evolving digital and blockchain-based financial landscape.
In response to the SEC's lawsuits last week, eToro is limiting US customers' access to four cryptocurrencies: Algorand, Decentraland, Polygon, and Dash. Customers can hold and sell existing positions but can't make new purchases.
Gary Gensler gave a talk at the Piper Sandler conference asserting that most cryptocurrencies qualify as securities and should comply with US securities laws. He pointed out what he viewed as extensive noncompliance in the crypto market, including illicit actions and misleading activities.
As a result of the SEC's latest offensive against crypto exchanges, Robinhood is delisting Solana, Polygon, and Cardano after June 27. Users will be able to transfer these cryptocurrencies until the deadline, but post-deadline, Robinhood will sell the coins, crediting the corresponding USD value to users' accounts. The decision follows Robinhood's review of SEC lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase. Despite having its securities trading license, Robinhood officials acknowledged that they are not sure if this would allow them to trade the tokens the SEC is claiming are securities.
Binance.US is suspending USD deposits and is warning users of a pause in USD withdrawals starting on June 13, due to pressure from the SEC. Its banking situation has become more complicated after the SEC issued an order to freeze Binance.US’s assets. The crypto exchange is planning to transition to a crypto-only platform. While trading, staking, deposits, and crypto withdrawals will remain operational, the firm plans to delist USD trading pairs, though Tether pairs will still be supported.
Catalyst Exchange's new whitepaper goes over an innovation called the 'Unit of Liquidity', which promises to further generalize Uniswap and Balancer AMM equations and improve cross-chain DeFi applications. Unlike existing protocols, Catalyst enables cross-chain swaps without exposing users to an intermediate token or requiring a bridge. The system executes swaps independently and uses price curves rather than a constant function. It can mimic the Balancer invariant, facilitate stable-coin swaps, enable cross-chain liquidity auctions, and more.
A PR for recursion, merged over the weekend, allows an Ordinals inscription to request content from other inscriptions, effectively exceeding the previous 4mb limit. This creates opportunities for innovative applications such as loading parts of a larger game code, or building image inscriptions from a base layer plus traits, all on-chain. Even entire programs, like Bitcoin Core, can theoretically be uploaded and run on Bitcoin. The development of this concept opens the door for further creativity and functionality for Ordinals.
This article from Vitalik Buterin discusses three critical transitions Ethereum must undergo to mature: L2 scaling, wallet security, and privacy. The first relates to everyone moving to rollups, enabling faster and cheaper transactions. The second involves the transition to smart contract wallets for enhanced security. The third emphasizes privacy-preserving fund transfers. In the post, Buterin discusses the implications of these transitions on users, addresses, on-chain payments, key recovery, infrastructure, and identity.
This blog discusses on-chain culture, represented by blockchains and the internet, and how it may lead to a global cultural shift by turning cultural diversity into a fruitful global society. It transforms individual and collective creativity into tangible milestones in the digital realm. For example, paying to mint, as opposed to simply uploading to servers, enhances the value of shared content. The decentralized nature of blockchains allows for endless hyperculture creation, across fields like art, journalism, music, and more. This potential, combined with collective resonance, could bring about a major cultural evolution.
This controversial article explains how Kyle Davies and Su Zhu have enjoyed leisurely lives traveling and sightseeing following the collapse of their cryptocurrency hedge fund, 3AC. Their hedge fund's failure led to substantial losses for other companies and individual investors, but Davies and Zhu claim to have thrived since, spending time in Bali, Thailand, and Malaysia, among other locations. Despite ongoing investigations and outstanding balances to creditors to the tune of $3.3 billion, they insist they've done nothing wrong. In fact, they're even promoting their next venture, Open Exchange, a platform for traders who lost money in last year’s crypto market crash to buy and sell claims to the bankruptcy estates of defunct crypto firms. Ironically, users will be able to trade claims against 3AC on this new exchange headed up by Davies and Zhu.
The SEC's recent lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase have drawn criticism from Congress and former regulators, who accuse SEC Chairman Gary Gensler of undermining their efforts to develop a regulatory framework for the crypto industry. Critics argue Gensler's views have significantly shifted from when he taught blockchain at MIT. While Gensler emphasizes that he is trying to reign in what he views as the non-compliance of the crypto sector, others believe the SEC is wasting resources on ambiguous cases. Some in the industry are hopeful that these enforcement actions will prompt Congress to accelerate the creation of crypto regulation, though skeptics caution about betting on swift legislative action.
a16z announced it is opening its first non-US-based office in the UK. The firm views the UKs policies towards crypto as much more friendly than the US’s regulatory environment and wants to have a strong presence in the region.
This piece from Sotheby’s in connection with its Grails auction explains how Generative art, created via autonomous systems and often tokenized as NFTs, is gaining popularity and earning a legitimate place amongst other modern art forms.
In a case alleging that Ooki DAO was operating an illegal exchange, a US court ruled that the decentralized autonomous organization is legally liable under the Commodity Exchange Act, potentially setting a significant legal precedent for other DAOs.
The SEC has filed 13 charges against the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, and its founder CZ. The SEC alleges that Binance has violated securities laws, commingled billions in user funds, purposefully worked to attract US customers to its unregulated international exchange, and included some extremely incriminating statements made by Binance officials in the lawsuit. Additionally, the SEC accused Binance of operating market-making companies to inflate trading prices. Binance claimed to have been cooperating with regulators and pledged to continue to for the investigation. The suit also alleged that several leading altcoins, such as Solana, Polygon, BNB, Cardano, and others, are classified as securities, causing crypto markets to tumble yesterday.
JPMorgan is partnering with six major Indian banks to pilot a blockchain platform for interbank dollar transactions in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City). The platform will leverage JPMorgan's Onyx blockchain solution to enable instant, round-the-clock settlements allowing GIFT City banks to operate effectively on their own time zones. This initiative supports New Delhi's efforts to establish GIFT City as an international financial center, competing with Singapore and Dubai.
Curve holders have voted to include Lido's liquid staking token, stETH, as a collateral alternative for Curve's new stablecoin, crvUSD. This development will increase the crvUSD debt ceiling by 15 times to $150M. If this new limit is reached, crvUSD would become the 13th largest stablecoin. The addition of stETH will allow more liquid staking token holders to utilize their position in DeFi with crvUSD. The vote also increases the limit on PegKeepers pools, a system that helps maintain crvUSD's stable value.
Uniswap has introduced a new metric called fee liquidity-adjusted instantaneous returns (FLAIR) to gauge the performance of LPs in AMM pools. FLAIR takes into account the intra-pool competitiveness, considering factors like timing of liquidity deployment and rebalancing of in-range liquidity. It also helps LPs measure historical performance and strategize future capital deployments. While it's applicable to Uniswap's protocol, it can also be adjusted for traditional exchanges, offering a comparative tool to understand various market structures.
This article likens DEX aggregators to hotel search engines - tools to find the best deals across multiple DEXs. They monitor numerous liquidity sources using algorithms to determine the most beneficial rates and least slippage, saving users what might otherwise be lost in transactions due to high slippage or suboptimal exchange rates. Some aggregators may even split trades across several exchanges to maximize conditions. Prominent examples of DEX aggregators include 1inch and Paraswap. In the future, DEX aggregators will likely become an integral part of wallets, enhancing their functionality as we have already seen with larger wallets like MetaMask.
The proposed crypto bill aims to integrate crypto regulation into the existing US financial regulatory landscape, allowing tokens and related intermediaries to be simultaneously regulated by the CFTC and SEC. In this framework, tokens would sometimes be regulated as securities and sometimes as commodities. For example, insider tokens would be treated as securities with a 12-month lockup period, and could be sold on SEC-registered platforms. The bill also provides a clear securities law exemption for end user distributions. Potential downsides include fragmented markets, SEC authority over crypto projects, possible lack of liquidity for insiders, and a dual regulatory regime.
In its own statement, Binance expressed disappointment over the SEC's lawsuit, stating that it has cooperated fully during investigations and attempted to address the SEC's concerns. The crypto exchange feels that the SEC's approach lacks clarity for the digital asset industry, and unilaterally labeling tokens as securities complicates matters further. Binance refuted allegations that user assets on its platform were at risk, assuring that all assets are secure. It criticized the SEC's apparent intent to make headlines rather than protect investors and claimed that the agency was hindering innovation in the US with its enforcement actions. Despite the lawsuit, Binance stated that it remains committed to cooperating with regulators and fighting the SEC's perceived overreach.
In May, there were 120 crypto venture deals that raised a total of $1.2B, down from the previous month’s count of 130 deals. While the raw numbers showed declines, it was still promising to see projects securing funding during the bear market. Three of the projects that raised in May include zkLink, a multichain trading layer for DeFi & NFTs; Dolomite, a next-gen money market and margin trading platform; and Hourglass, a marketplace for trading time-bound tokens.
Reflecting on Synthetix's journey since 2018, this article discusses the challenges and lessons learned, particularly with their oracle system, highlighting the inherent complexity and unpredictability in the crypto space and the necessity of constant adaptation.
In the lead up to Apple's VR headset unveiling yesterday, several metaverse tokens like SAND, MANA, SENSO, AXS, and FLOKI went on a slight run as investors speculated about a new metaverse narrative forming.
The community governing MakerDAO has approved the purchase of up to $1.28 billion in US government bonds via BlockTower Capital. The vote supports the opening of a new real-world asset vault funded by Maker's overcollateralized DAI stablecoin. This move is part of Maker's strategy to diversify the reserve assets backing DAI and generate revenue through yield strategies. It also highlights the growing demand for traditional financial instruments among crypto-native entities like DAOs.
Binance will delist 12 privacy coins, including Zcash and Monero, in France, Italy, Poland, and Spain starting June 26. Privacy coins enable anonymous transactions, making tracking sender, recipient, and transaction amounts difficult, which has led to the EU’s concerns over potential money laundering. Although Binance aims to support numerous projects, it must comply with local laws and regulations. Affected users have been informed that they will be unable to purchase or trade privacy tokens on the platform after June. Withdrawals will remain open.
Nike and EA Sports are teaming up to integrate digital collectibles of Nike merchandise into future EA games via .Swoosh, Nike's web3 platform that allows users to buy membership cards and digital sneakers. The aim of the collaboration is to enhance in-game experiences with a focus on customization, enabling players to acquire virtual Nike items for their in-game characters. While the specifics of the partnership are yet to be disclosed, Nike’s platform has demonstrated its potential with a fairly limited offering, generating close to $200 million in revenue since its launch in December 2021.
LayerZero has announced the launch of a production-grade zk light client developed by the PolyhedraZK team. This zkLightClient is based on notable work in the field of zero-knowledge proofs and is built exclusively on LayerZero. It features custom circuits that achieve significant compression and can batch multiple transaction verifications into a single zk proof. LayerZero's unique modular configuration allows every application to construct its desired security stack, thus offering a flexible security-cost balance tailored to individual applications.
This blog from Helius dives into Solana's Token2022, an upgrade to its current token program. It introduces extensions for enhanced functionality while maintaining functionalities like minting, transferring, and burning tokens. New features include transfer fees, transfer hooks, closing mint, interest-bearing tokens, non-transferable tokens, confidential transfers, memos on incoming transfers, immutable ownership, default account state, and permanent delegate. These additions meet the growing demand for more complex and adaptable token features, providing developers more flexibility. Despite similar features on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, Solana's speed, low transaction costs, and Token2022's new functionalities could provide a competitive edge in the L1 race.
The article discusses the concept of "intents" in Ethereum, which refer to the desired outcomes of transactions, an innovation which could enable an improved user experience by simplifying transactions. Intents are sets of declarative constraints that allow users to outsource transaction creation to third parties without losing control. Although intents can provide enhancements to the Ethereum ecosystem, they also pose challenges, particularly with off-chain infrastructure. These challenges include the potential for centralization and the proliferation of middlemen, order flow control, and opacity.
Coinbase Wallet has introduced zero gas fees for USDC transactions on the Polygon network, enhancing convenience and efficiency. This advancement has the potential to further simplify cross-border transfers and makes USDC operations easier. Enabled by EIP 4337, or "Account Abstraction", developers can subsidize gas fees for certain account transfers. Some Coinbase users hope this zero gas fee offering could extend to other networks like Solana, NEAR, or Avalanche. In other USDC-related news, Circle announced that USDC will be natively available on Arbitrum on June 8.
Ledger Live and Ledger hardware wallets are now compatible with ENS names. This can help simplify the user experience and enhance transaction security. The integration utilizes Ledger's new Trusted Name Service, which ensures secure mapping between ENS and Ethereum hexadecimal addresses. Since Ethereum’s hexadecimal addresses are long and complicated, ENS enables users to replace these addresses with simpler, human-readable aliases, reducing transaction errors. With this update, the hardware wallet’s display can now show these ENS addresses, which further facilitates easier transaction verification. Currently, only ENS is supported, but according to Ledger, compatibility with more networks and namespace providers will be added in the future.
‘The Goose’, one of the most recognizable NFT pieces that exists, is part of Dmitri Cherniak’s Ringers collection. It was purchased by 3AC for $5.9m and is now being auctioned off by Sotheby’s as part of the defunct firm’s liquidation process with an estimated value of $2m - $3m, which a Sotheby’s VP said is “conservative”.
Redeemable NFTs offer additional utility beyond being digital art or membership into a club, serving as digital assets that can be exchanged for physical items, event access, other NFTs, or various experiences, bridging the gap between the virtual and physical world. More and more products enabling these types of NFTs have been cropping up with good initial traction.