Crypto && Coffee 080
- 6 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Lightning Labs LND v0.13.0-beta.rc3 is a release candidate that adds support for using a pruned Bitcoin full node, allows receiving and sending payments via Atomic MultiPath (AMP), and increases the capabilities with PSBT.
- ACINQ shares their metrics on their Lightning channels with their most used channel processing 17,108 payments before it closed. That is close to ~10,000x reduction in on-chain footprint.
- Taproot is still looking good for this current signaling period! We are at ~98.23% signaling with ~320 blocks left to lock in.
Litecoin:
- David Burkett releases his latest update on MWEB for Litecoin including significant improvements to the codebase.
Ethereum:
- Ben Edgington publishes the latest in regard to the Beacon Chain, staking, The Merge, and further research into Miner Extractable Value (MEV).
- Ethereum Cat Herders release their latest update detailing the London upgrade and current devnets.
- Fun PR to jump through to see how Geth is adapting for The Merge.
Other Chains:
- Gnosis shares that they are joining forces with Erigon (formerly Turbo-Geth) to release the next-gen Ethereum client that integrates tracing functionality while increasing modularity, synchronization speed and resource efficiency.
- The Electric Coin Company announces their work and exploration for Zcash-Shielded Assets to both align and better support the community.
- Injective Protocol is integrating NEAR Protocol to expand their multi-chain trading ecosystem alongside Aurora.
- StarkWare publishes a proposal to Ethereum Research regarding how to achieve faster finality in ZK-Rollups using checkpoints in StarkNet.
- Immunefi shares a Guide to Reproducing Ethereum Exploits.
- DODO announces that they are one of the first decentralized apps in Arbitrum’s initial cohort of DeFi projects.
- Oasis Protocol Foundation shares their thoughts on NFTs and the all new Oasis NFT Grant Program.
- Alchemy announces support for Arbitrum via their new Arbitrum API!
- Ren shares that Avalanche is now RenVM’s third chain which has gone live via Blockchain Blitz! Native assets on Avalanche will now include: renBTC, renBCH, renDGB, renDOGE, renFIL, renLUNA, and renZEC.
- UniLend Finance publishes that their lending protocol is now live on Polygon!
- Bancor shares that 1inch Network, Cream Finance, and LinkPool have been whitelisted by the BancorDAO.
- The Zcash Community shares information on the ZOMG whitepaper v1.0 which focuses on the Zcash Open Major Grants committee and more on decentralizing development.
- Alpha Homora V2 adds leveraged ETH/BAND, ETH/CRV, and ETH/REN pools!
- The BarnBridgeDAO seeds Bancor Pool with 50,000 BOND.
- Opeth Finance is now live! Opeth is a synthetic instrument fusing options with the underlying asset.
- Immunefi shares Zapper’s Bug Bounty program!
- Beam shares the latest in their push towards the next hard fork, updates to their mobile wallets, and more!
- Offchain Labs shares that The Graph indexing and querying services are now live on Arbitrum One.
- KyberDAO publishes KIP-9, a proposal for Kyber DMM to expand to Polygon.
- Terra Money shares the Terra Algorithmic Design and how it applies to the mint/burn mechanism within Terra and LUNA.
Mainstream Recap:
- Jack Mallers of Strike announces at Bitcoin2021 that he is working with El Salvador to accept Bitcoin as legal tender and to hold BTC as a reserve asset.
- Within days, El Salvador successfully passed their new Bitcoin Law which was approved by a supermajority in the Salvadoran Congress last night!!
- Since El Salvador’s announcement, Paraguay and many other LatAm countries are discussing jumping in on Bitcoin!
- M13 shares their thought process behind investing in Fold and how Fold is building a consumer financial services business centered around bitcoin rewards.
- Jack Dorsey announced that Square is considering making a hardware wallet for Bitcoin. If so, they would develop it entirely in the open, from software to hardware design, and in collaboration with the community.
- US investigators recover some of the BTC that was used to pay ransom in the Colonial Pipeline attack.
- Dogecoin is now live on Coinbase.com and in both the Coinbase iOS and Android apps.
- Blockstream shares that in conjunction with Square, they are building an open-source fully solar-powered Bitcoin mining facility at one of the US Blockstream Mining facilities!
- The Gitcoin Team announces that ENS, the decentralized naming protocol, has made a $700K investment in support of digital public goods!
- Okcoin announces that they have integrated Polygon, the fastest growing scaling solution for Ethereum-compatible blockchains.
- With the recent Kyber Network (KNC) contract upgrade, exchanges (such as Huobi) are resuming their ERC-20 deposits and withdrawals for KNC.
- Wyre announces that they are using Stellar network to offer new high-yield savings products leveraging the Stellar USDC token.
- NortonLifeLock, the company behind the Norton Antivirus software, has launched a new feature dubbed Norton Crypto, which is now allowing select Norton 360 customers to begin mining Ether.
- The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is extending the end date of the Temporary Registrations Regime (TRR) for existing crypto-asset businesses from July 9th, 2021 to March 31st, 2022.
- Gemini announces the sponsorships of Bitcoin Core developers Dhruv Mehta and Jarol Rodriguez. These sponsorships are made through the Gemini Opportunity Fund, which will continue to fund the scalability, security, and sustainability of the Bitcoin network.
- Okcoin shares information about their new open-source developer grant recipient, João Barbosa. João’s main focus is Bitcoin Core’s UX.
- Gauntlet shares a retrospective on Aave and DeFi in general during the recent stress test on Ethereum with network congestion and drastic price changes.
- Wasabi Wallet servers were under a DDoS attack on June 6, 2021.
- Decrypt reports that Solana is raising up to $450M to challenge Ethereum.
- The Sia Foundation publishes info regarding the DDoS attack on the Sia network which as of June 5th had been continuing for > 48hours with 30% of the network going dark.
- CoinDesk reports that U.K. based Ruffer Investment Management made a $1.1B profit in five months from investing in BTC.
- Okcoin shares at Bitcoin2021 that they are investing $100K into Brink, the open-source Bitcoin development firm that supports developers and ecosystem growth.
- The Bank of England released a second discussion paper exploring new forms of digital currency including stablecoins and a potential U.K. CBDC.
- Bitfinex, one of the largest crypto exchanges, is now a shareholder of HodlHodl, a DEX which provides lending and private transactions.
- SatoshiPay announces that they have received a R&D Grant from Stellar Development Foundation to start development of the Pendulum network. Pendulum is a new layer-2 blockchain that connects Stellar to the wider DeFi ecosystem.
- U.K. based Revolut adds DOGE to its crypto offering in response to widespread demand.
- CoinDesk reports that the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Criminal Investigation Division (CI) wants more funding to pursue crypto tax evasion.
- Sherlock raises $1.5M for a new model to protect DeFi users from smart contract exploits.
- Gemini announces the acquisition of Shard X, a leading developer of secure multi-party computation cryptographic technology. Gemini plans to integrate Shard X’s MPC technology into their distributed, multi-site key management and signing infrastructure.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are heading back to Rogers, AR for a cup of Eclipse from Onyx Coffee Lab. One of my favorite roasts which yields flavors of chocolate, smoked vanilla bean, and hints of brown sugar is a solid cup to jumpstart the day. Sip up and enjoy!!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer