Crypto && Coffee 083
- 8 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Developers discuss how wallets should allow sending to P2TR (Taproot) addresses and the use of Bech32 and bech32m complying with BIP-173.
- Lightning Labs releases their next Builder’s Guide focused on Understanding Liquidity.
Ethereum:
- The London network upgrade went live on Ropsten testnet on June 23rd, 2021.
- Tim Beiko provides all the latest information on London testnets, The Merge, and more in the most recent All Core Devs update.
- Ethereum Cat Herders share their latest update on Stateless Ethereum, The Merge, Altair, London upgrades, and API specs.
- With London launching on most of the Ethereum testnets, Péter Szilágyi - team lead for Geth, shared that old gasPrices will now be interpreted as maxFee = gasPrice. With EIP-1559, the baseFee is burned, with everything on top until the specified gasPrice being reached goes to the miner.
- The rts-based zk-SNARK game, Dark Forest v0.6 Round 2 started on June 29th, 2021!
Other Chains:
- Infura announces that they are going live with support for Optimism layer-2 scaling solution in time for the Optimism launch on Uniswap!
- Polygon introduces Avail, an important component of a completely new way on how future blockchains will work. Avail is a general-purpose, scalable data-availability focused blockchain targeted at standalone chains.
- The proposal to adopt the Gravity DEX protocol onto the Cosmos Hub is now in it’s voting period!
- Uniswap has been integrated natively into CoinMarketCap. The token pages now have a “Swap” icon allowing users to connect their Ethereum wallet and trade instantly.
- Monero shares that Samourai Wallet is working on integrating XMR <> BTC Atomic Swaps through Comit Network.
- Kyber DMM has been deployed on Polygon! Rainmaker liquidity mining on Polygon is also launching soon, aiming for block 16318000.
- A few weeks after Tornado.Cash deployed on Binance Smart Chain, they are now taking aim at Polygon! All contracts are ready, but they are asking for community support for testing.
- Dune Analytics, the community-driven analytics platform for Ethereum integrates Polygon for insights into DeFi, NFTs, and the gaming ecosystem.
- VeVe, a platform for digital collectables, announces a partnership with Marvel to roll out officially licensed digital collectable Marvel products as NFTs.
- A recent PR on Uniswap UI goes into detail on adding Arbitrum alpha release.
- FarmHero, a cross-chain DeFi protocol that combines yield farming, NFTs, and gaming has integrated Chainlink Verifiable Random Function (VRF) on the Polygon mainnet.
- Element Finance shares details on their June 30th, 2021 planned Ethereum mainnet launch. Their mainnet launch will start as a soft launch with support for LUSD deposits with LUSD fixed and variable rate markets.
- Sportemon Go announces their integration of Chainlink VRF on Binance Smart Chain to access Provably Fair Randomness within their blockchain-based sports gaming platform.
- Comos-based AMM, Osmosis, now allows users to explore pools, liquidity, volumes, and more!
- Lyra shares a sneak peek into their new Dapp.
- CoinGecko now has an IBC-powered exchange listed!
- StarkWare shares that developers can now deploy StarkNet contracts directly from Cairo Playground! Once deployed, users can track their contract on Voyager block explorer.
- Ren shares their Ecosystem Update for June 2021 sharing info on the recent integration with Solana, Avalanche, Curve BTC Pools on Polygon, Fantom, and more!
- dYdX shares that FIL-USD Perpetual Markets are now live for trading on layer-2!
- PolyQuity goes live on Polygon! There was no token pre-sale, but the total token distribution is 1B PQY tokens.
- Connexun launches the Connexun Chainlink node to enable smart contracts to access their premium news event data directly on-chain.
- Opyn shares that they are launching the first-ever partially collateralized options in DeFi. Partial collateralization means one can use less collateral to sell options. Thus, one can sell more options and generate a higher yield.
- Tezos shares that Centre, a consortium supporting the USDC stablecoin, announced that Centre members will issue USDC on Tezos in the coming months.
Mainstream Recap:
- Jack Dorsey announces The B Word, a one-day Bitcoin focused initiative that aims to demystify and destigmatize mainstream narratives about Bitcoin, while explaining how institutions can and should embrace it.
- Binance is no longer open for business in Ontario, Canada. They updated their Terms of Use to provide that Ontario has become a restricted jurisdiction as of June 26, 2021 at 3:59:59 UTC. This withdrawal comes closely after the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), accused Bybit of failing to comply with provincial regulations.
- Coinbase received a crypto custody license from Germany’s Financial Supervisory Authority, BaFin, allowing Coinbase to continue serving the German market.
- Kraken announces that deposit fees for more than 70 supported digital assets have been reduced to zero, beginning June 29th, 2021.
- River Financial is now serving clients in Oregon! River Financial now supports a total of 36 states.
- Carlos Rejala of Paraguay announced that he would be introducing a bill in the country’s National Congress in July that would mirror El Salvador’s new bitcoin law.
- Crypto.com shares their partnership with Circle to introduce USD deposits to the Crypto.com exchange. Users can now transfer USD from their bank accounts and receive the funds in USDC at a 1:1 ratio.
- The Bank of Israel adopts Ethereum for digital shekel trial!
- The U.S. House of Representatives passed two crypto bills last week which are the Blockchain Innovation Act and parts of the Digital Taxonomy Act.
- Morgan Stanley has purchased 28,289 shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust through its Europe Opportunity Fund, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
- Coinbase is rolling out a crypto savings account with 4% interest on USDC deposits.
- Deutsche Börse Group acquires a majority stake in Crypto Finance AG, extending its offering for digital assets.
- Andreessen Horowitz announces a new $2.2B crypto fund, Crypto Fund III, to continue investing in crypto networks and the founders and teams building in the space.
- SafeDollar was exploited on June 28th, 2021 at 03:38:36 UTC which resulted in a loss of 202,230 USDC and 46K USDT.
- THORChain shares the first known malicious attack on THORChain. The attack resulted in $140K in loss funds. The attack was executed via a logic error on ETH Bitfrost.
- With El Salvador passing the law to make bitcoin legal tender, Strike - the Lightning Network enabled startup who is helping El Salvador build its nation’s bitcoin-based payment system, will no longer need to substitute U.S. dollars with Tether’s USDT.
- Strike announces a $100K grant to Jon Atack for his Bitcoin Core development. Jon’s most recent work features improving the P2P logic in peer connectivity and support for BTC nodes leveraging Tor V3.
- CoinDesk reports that El Salvador’s bitcoin law is set to come into effect on September 7th, 2021 with every citizen receiving $30 in BTC. With the announcement, Athena Bitcoin, an ATM operator, is set to establish 1,500 new cash-to-crypto machines in El Salvador.
- Tanzania’s central bank confirmed on June 25th, 2021 that they are investigating Bitcoin and cryptocurrency at the request of the President.
- DeFi firm, Compound Labs, the creator of the Compound market on Ethereum has launched a new company, Compound Treasury. Compound Treasury aims to allows users to earn 4% through converting U.S. dollars into USDC and supplying them to the Compound Protocol to generate high-yield interest.
- Nansen has raised a $12M Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Skyfall Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, imToken Ventures, Mechanism Capital, QCP Capital also participated in the round, as well as several of their seed investors, angel investors, and funds.
- The Federal Reserve releases the transcripts from a speech held at the 113th Annual Utah Bankers Association Convention touching on stablecoins vs. CBDCs.
- The Interchain Foundation announces that Tess Rinearson has joined the Foundation as a Council Member. Tess Rinearson is VP of Engineering at Interchain GmbH where she leads the team responsible for Tendermint Core.
- Tracer DAO announces the raising of $4.5M of capital. The round is supported by Framework Ventures, DACM, Maven 11, Apollo Capital, Distributed Global Ventures, Paperclip Fund and Supernova.
- Brink receives a $150K donation to their developer funding efforts from BlockFi!
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are headed down to Newport Beach, CA for a cup of Common Room Roasters Brunswick Blend. This blend was awarded 2nd place in America’s Best Espresso and yields flavors of dark chocolate, almonds, and hints of blueberry. Sip up and enjoy!!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer