Crypto && Coffee 043
- 7 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Bitcoin Core merges a PR to remove the automatic creation and loading of the default wallet. Users will thus explicitly create their wallet or load it on start.
BitcoinCash:
- BitcoinABC released their August 2020 Transparency Report regarding the recent releases, upcoming network upgrade in November, and fundraising donations.
Ethereum:
- The Ethereum Foundation releases their latest update on ETH2.0 development with Spadina and EIP-2982.
- Bitfly announces Spadina, an ETH2.0 testnet to give the Genesis Event one more try before the mainnet event.
- Ben Edgington shares his update on ETH2.0 development!
- Sigma Prime’s Lighthouse ETH2.0 testnet client releases an update.
- Danny Ryan has published EIP-2982: Serenity Phase 0. Serenity aka ETH2.0, is the planned upgrade of Ethereum to a scalable, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus.
Other Chains:
- Wrapped Bitcoin is increasingly being bridged onto Ethereum through various projects. As of today there is roughly $1,094,286,715.86 USD worth of BTC on Ethereum.
- After three months of testing, tweaking, and auditing the tBTC project from Keep Network, Summa, and the Cross-Chain Group have launched tBTC on mainnet. This is the first permissionless, censorship-resistant Bitcoin bridge on Ethereum. Anyone can mint tBTC by connecting to the Bitcoin and Ethereum chains, and no one can censor transactions or redemptions.
- Read the thoughts of Matt Luongo, Founder of Thesis who is behind tBTC, on the recent tBTC launch and their next steps for advancing the work of BTC-backed tokens and their incentive program with Nexus Mutual holders being able to stake NXM to provide cover for tBTC miners.
- Uniswap Protocol announces (UNI), the Uniswap Protocol governance token that is now live on Ethereum mainnet!
- Monero will experience a network upgrade on October 17th, 2020 which will introduce the new ring signature construction, CLSAG. CLSAG will reduce the typical transaction size by ~25%, and improve typical verification performance by ~10%.
- Parity’s Substrate v2.0 is here! This blockchain framework now comes with off-chain workers, over 70 composable modules, and represents a stable foundation for building optimizes - Polkadot compatible chains.
- The Graph launches the Curator Program. CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, Messari, Delphi Digital, Zapper, Synthetix, Pool Together, LivePeer, mStable, and Balancer are all pre-registered to be Curators on The Graph Network.
- Zapper integrates with Chainlink’s gas price oracle as a method of calculating gas costs for users making transactions on their platform.
- Avalanche mainnet is now live! Enterprises and institutions on Avalanche can run their own independent blockchains validated by a dynamic and custom set of validators. It also powers developers to build on DeFi, NFTs, and more through Avalanche’s smart contract framework with already-known Remix and MetaMask.
- Beam releases their roadmap towards confidential DeFi. The roadmap is divided into three tracks: Wallet, DeFi, and Infrastructure.
- Full high-level summary thread on what has happened this summer within DeFi from Kinjal Shah!
- Matic shares that Chainlink’s market-leading decentralized oracle network is actively being made available to developers building on the Matic mainnet.
- Yearn Finance introduces the Synthetic Rebase Dollar, a credit based rebase index that tracks the dollar value of the collateral that creates it.
- An army of bots apparently hacked into tens of Ethereum wallets and stole their (UNI) airdrops. Luckily some whitehat hackers were able to sweep the funds from the compromised address.
- Kava Labs has launched its first application, Harvest, which is a yield-generating DeFi platform that allows users to stake their crypto so it can be lent to others. Harvest will initially support deposits of BTC, BNB, BUSD, and XRP. Kava Labs plans to soon debut automated market makers (AMM) similar to Uniswap and Yearn Finance.
- As of September 19th, 2020, 50% of all trading fees will be distributed to veCRV holders on Curve DAO. Collected fees will be used to buy CRV on the open market and distribute them to veCRV holders.
- ethers.rs, a complete Ethereum and Celo wallet implementation and utilities in Rust now has support for Ledger!
- Orchid has extended its collaboration with Chainlink with the introduction of a new tool to make it easier for Orchid users to determine the price of VPN bandwidth.
- Elastos releases their full DeFi roadmap in collaboration with Cyber Republic ETH Task Force.
- Beam is now available on ATMs.
- Loopring v3.6 is now code complete and has shipped everything over to Least Authority for a full security audit.
- Check out this report from Mohamed Fouda on TokenDaily back in July 2020 on whether Yield Farming is bringing new users to DeFi.
- Set Protocol announces the launch of their new line of products, Yield Strategy. The first one going live as of yesterday, is ETH USD Yield Farm, which automatically farms the (UNI) token by providing liquidity to the ETH/DAI pair on Uniswap.
- Marqet is unveiled! Marqet is the first protocol that combines two foundational DeFi protocols: Aave and Synthetix. Marqet creates a new margin trading platform where funding is provided by Aave credit delegation and the order book liquidity is infinitely supplied by the peer to contract Synthetix Exchange.
- Gnosis teams up with xDai, an Ethereum sidechain designed for fast and inexpensive transactions. Gnosis has also invested in the xDai Ecosystem Fund to become significant holders of the STAKE Governance token.
- The Prime Development Foundation announces PrimeDAO - a collective of experienced builders committed to the systemic advancement of Open Finance.
Mainstream Recap:
- The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published a letter on September 21, 2020 clarifying “national banks’ and federal savings associations’ authority to hold “reserves” on behalf of customers who issue certain stablecoins.”
- ParaSwap announces a $2.7M seed round and is now sharing their insight into their vision for DeFi and how ParaSwap will help power the ecosystem.
- Quickly after the Uniswap Protocol’s announcement of (UNI), Coinbase announced UNI will be available on Coinbase Pro. However, users now have to pay gas fees 👀
- Perkins Coie releases a new whitepaper regarding regulatory compliance with privacy coins.
- The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has launched a new research and development laboratory that features blockchain technology among its focus areas.
- CoinDesk reports that China’s state-sanctioned blockchain infrastructure project, The Blockchain-Based Service Network (BSN) is planning to make 24 public chains available in its network for Chinese users starting the second half of November.
- The Department of Justice (DOJ) has released information on the International Law Enforcement operation targeting opioid traffickers on the darknet. The operation resulted in the seizure of over $6.5M in both cash and virtual currencies.
- Electric Coin Company releases their comments on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) regulations.
- Coinbase now supports Loopring (LRC) and Yearn Finance (YFI) on Coinbase.com and in the Coinbase Android and iOS apps.
- MobileCoin was featured as an Azure customer story on September 17th, 2020 with Microsoft. Through their partnership with Azure’s confidential computing team, they have been able to deliver highly performant, privacy-protecting distributed ledger technology.
- Blockchain startup Enigma has filed a registration statement for its ENG token with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
- On Thursday, September 24th, 2020 the Electric Coin Company will share their quarterly news, strategy and team update. View the livestream here.
- The Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX) announces the admission of the Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index ETF to its trading platform.
- TechCrunch shares that Morgan Beller, co-creator of the Libra digital currency, has left the company to become a general partner with venture firm NFX.
- Kraken Exchange is holding a special webinar this Friday, September 25th at 14:00 UTC on COVID-19 scams within crypto.
- Coinbase releases their Bitcoin implementation of the Rosetta API. Their open-source specification, Resetta, is now being worked on by 20+ blockchain projects including: Near, Cardano, Celo, Coda, Neo, Tron, Handshake, Oasis, Cosmos, Sia, Harmony, and more.
- The New York Attorney General’s office is losing patience with Bitfinex and Tether and has asked them to comply with a 17-month old document production order.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are heading to Cambridge, MA for a cup of Todos Santos from Broadsheet Coffee Roasters. Todos Santos is a solid Guatemalan roast with notes of chocolate, caramel, and a slight hint of cherry. Definitely a great cup for those slightly colder mornings as we move into fall!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer