Crypto && Coffee 055
- 7 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Bitcoin has reached a new all-time high today moving beyond $20K!!
- Bitcoin had a stale block on December 11th, 2020 at block height 660903.
- On December 12th, 2020 core developers noticed that Bitcoin Core v0.21.0rc3 had an invalid macOS code signature due to an allocation difference between Apple’s open source and shipped code sign tool. Lesson learned is that Apple’s codesign_allocate tool rounds x86_64 segments to 0x2000 bytes, while the published source code does to 0x1000.
- BitMEX announces that they are now using Bitcoin Core to track user’s deposits and withdrawals, eliminating their in-house custom fork. This update will now allow them to finally support SegWit deposit addresses.
BitcoinCash:
- The Bitcoin Cash Node (BCHN) project releases their latest financial report on income, airdrops, expenses, and more.
Litecoin:
- Litecoin Foundation announces their partnership with Hub Token!
Ethereum:
- Ethereum Foundation releases the last release of the 1.9 branch, Marljeh, v1.9.25. This release contains several improvements as well as one security fix for LES servers.
- Massive progress has been made over the past couple months by all Ethereum Foundation supported teams. Check out the full R&D update here.
- Ethereum Foundation shares what really matters when it comes to validating, staking, and slashing on ETH2.0.
- Ben Edgington, from ConsenSys, shares what’s new in ETH2.0 for the past week including beacon chain suggestions, slashing, and various tooling environments and continuous work.
- Tim Beiko shares the latest update on EIP-1559 and the extensive economic analysis.
- Prysmatic Labs releases v1.0.5 of Prysm which reduces disk I/O in the validator client, libp2p updates, as well as safer attester slashing protection.
- Sigma Prime releases v1.0.4 of Lighthouse which removes legacy websocket servers, disables Medalla and other legacy testnets as well as the same improvements similar to Prysm.
- Status releases v1.0.3 of Nimbus that has new metrics to track the syncing progress of the ETH1.0 deposit contract, and new web3 test commands.
- ConsenSys releases v20.12.0 of Teku which adds support for Nethermind and OpenEthereum when historic blocks are not fully available. It also allows the maximum number of blocks per request for ETH1.0 deposit logs as well as support for setting CORS headers in REST API.
Other Chains:
- As of December 11th, 2020 - ETH2.0 has a two week deposit queue.
- The Aave Protocol is coming to Bitcoin thanks to the RSK Smart team. View the full proposal for an RSK market on the Aave Protocol.
- The list of platforms/services that now support Aave V2 and it’s token keeps rising: Binance, 1inch, Kraken, Argent, and Coinbase.
- Binance Smart Chain (BSC) has successfully integrated the Chainlink decentralized oracle network on mainnet as its recommended oracle solution.
- Yam Finance announces collaboration with UMA Protocol and the creation of a new product suite - Degenerative Finance.
- Bancor announces that REN, renBTC, and renZEC are among the first tokens to be whitelisted on Bancor v2.1. Both REN and renBTC have been voted by Bancor governance to receive 12 weeks worth of BNT Liquidity Mining Rewards.
- Aave Genesis team will release periodical security reports for the Aave Protocol. The latest report focuses on the proposal for Governance V2 and potential attack vectors.
- Grin publishes information on David Tavarez’s work on getting a Grin full node to now run on a mobile device.
- MakerDAO adds an executive vote to the voting portal that aims to onboard renBTC and UNI as new collateral types. In addition, there is a vote to enable Debt Ceiling Instant Access Module (DC-IAM) for ETH-B.
- Loopring Protocol v3.6 TVL has crossed $30M. A new high for Ethereum layer-2.
- Stellar developers release their latest update on development including their new case study, Euro stablecoins, and Protocol 15.
- Beam shares their latest update in language additions to their wallet, R&D, and more work throughout the community.
- Cosmos announces IBC v1.0! In the linked post, the team goes through the most significant protocol and implementation changes in the past few months, describes the expected two-phase Stargate IBC rollout, and outlines how others can get involved.
- Celo announces Plumo, a SNARK-based ultralight client protocol on Celo.
- DeFi777 v1 launches! This aims to make the user experience of DeFi much simpler by wrapping tokens themselves into super-charged ERC-777 tokens. DeFi777 provides adapters that make it easy to use the most popular DeFi protocols via swap, pools, and lending.
- Badger Finance is now live!
- Secret Network has launched their Ethereum bridge on mainnet. Users can now get programmable privacy for their ETH and select ERC-20s.
- Uniswap introduces Sybil.org, a governance tool for discovering Uniswap and Compound delegates.
- DeversiFi has joined forces with Loopring to establish L22 - a working group committee focused on the development, education, and adoption of layer-2.
- HealthTrends.AI, a trustworthy source for health care data and analytics, announces that they are bringing state-certified COVID-19 data onto a variety of blockchains throughout the Chainlink network.
Mainstream Recap:
- Nexus Mutual founder’s personal Ethereum wallet gets attacked and funds are moved through the same pattern as the MetaMask phishing scam reported last week.
- Dan Boneh, Justin Drake, Ben Fisch, and Ariel Gabizon publish Halo Infinite: Recursive zk-SNARKs from any Additive Polynomial Commitment Scheme. This supports all major polynomial commitment schemes, adds three new options without trusted setup: DARK, Dory, FRI, and finally it allows optimized post-quantum FRI-based recursion.
- Circle launches new era of digital currency native payments and treasury infrastructure for fintech businesses.
- Forbes releases an article on how Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Monero luminaries invest in a historic crypto-securities offering via the little-known video game Exordium.
- Kraken shares a livestream chat with Bitcoin core developer John Newbery on his new platform and funding of the next generation of bitcoin developers.
- Fidelity Digital Assets is excited to enter the digital asset financing space with their new collateral agent capabilities. Full press release here.
- Balancer Labs helps contribute 10K in Gitcoin grants to Hardhat ($6K), Deployments of Hardhat contracts ($2K), and the ethers.js team ($2K).
- Massachusetts Mutual Insurance Co. bought $100M of bitcoin for its general investment account, the latest sign of mainstream acceptance for Bitcoin.
- Filecoin (FIL) launches on Coinbase and is available in iOS and Android apps.
- Investment bank JP Morgan says it has completed a live intraday repo transaction using a blockchain solution that will soon be released for commercial use.
- Bloomberg releases a report on how Sweden is exploring options to move to a digital currency. This digital currency, electronic krona, would be based on the same blockchain technology that underpins crypto like Bitcoin.
- CNBC reports why the Winklevoss twins think Bitcoin’s rally is different this time.
- BTC Times shares how Gloria Zhao made her move from Silicon Valley to Bitcoin Core and her journey into the crypto ecosystem.
- Kraken publishes a livestream on PayPal’s bitcoin volume.
- River Financial hints at a mobile wallet coming January 2021.
- Square Crypto announces another grant to Patricia Estevão, a UX designer focused on privacy and security.
- Kraken announces new staking assets and how they will work within the Kraken platform.
- CoinDesk reports on Hybrid blockchain maker Kadena, and its collaboration with fintech firm Celo to put its U.S. dollar stablecoin, cUSD, on Kadena’s platform using a trustless bridge.
- Swivel Finance closes a $1.15M seed round led by Multicoin Capital with additional investment leaders: Electric Capital, CMS Holdings, Divergence Ventures and Defiance Capital. This brings rate-derivatives to DeFi.
- Curv partners with ConsenSys to launch enterprise-grade DeFi solutions for institutions.
- Reuters reports that Japanese financial group, SBI Financial Services, a subsidiary of SBI Holdings Inc. has acquired UK-based cryptocurrency trading firm B2C2. This will become the first major financial group to run a digital asset dealing desk.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are grabbing a bag of Southern Weather from Onyx Coffee Lab in Arkansas. This dark roast is best known as one of Onyx’s house filters that balances some modern acidic flavors with full bodied chocolates. With notes of milk chocolate, plum, and candied walnuts this roast is perfect for the holidays. Pour up!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer