Crypto && Coffee 086
- 7 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Breez shares information on scaling Lightning, from El Zonte in El Salvador to beyond!
Ethereum:
- The Beacon Chain’s devnet forked from Phase 0 to Altair last week successfully!
- The Ethereum Foundation released the full London mainnet announcement with all compatible client versions for the London upgrade! The fork will go live at block 12965000 expected to occur between August 3rd and 5th, 2021.
- Ben Edgington shares what’s new in ETH2.0 with focus on Beacon Chain, Altair devnets, The Merge, and more!
- OpenEthereum shares that v3.3.0-rc.4 is ready for the London upgrade! It includes London’s EIPs and support for the eth/66 protocol version.
- Ethereum Foundation’s Go Ethereum team released Geth v1.10.5 which enables the London hard fork for the Ethereum mainnet!
- Recent Flashbots research has been published which dives into MEV and EIP-1559.
- Vitalik Buterin and Georgios Konstantopoulos explain how miners, possibly trying to game the system and reorg the chain, will become harder after the PoS merge.
Other Chains:
- StarkWare announces StarkNet Alpha 1, a permissionless decentralized STARK-based ZK-Rollup operating as a layer-2 network over Ethereum. It now will have two new features: layer-1 <> layer-2 interactions, and on-chain data!
- Sorare’s new scaling solution on Ethereum with help from StarkWare launches today! This will remove the biggest frictions faced by the community and open the door for more users seamlessly.
- zkSync’s 1.x upgrade completed on July 14th, 2021 allowing Ethereum developers to now have a toolbox which includes: mint, transfer, and swap functions for NFTs, ERC-20 swaps and limit orders, and full permissionless token listings.
- The Optimism team shares their solution in collaboration with Vitalik on how to sustainably fund public goods!
- Aave’s founder said he will build an alternative to Twitter which will run on Ethereum and hopefully launch later this year.
- MakerDAO is now completely decentralized! The Foundation will formally dissolve within the next few months.
- On July 15th, 2021 the Lido DAO passed and enacted a vote for the upgrading of their ETH withdrawal credentials. This means all new Lido depositors will now have smart contract withdrawal credentials instead of the 6-of-11 distributed key generation (DKG) BLS ones.
- The Dai token bridge on Optimism has been launched! Read the full thread to see how MakerDAO’s Engineering team and Optimism have worked closely to bring scalability to all without losing Ethereum’s essence.
- MetaMask Mobile v2.6 is now live! This enables transactions on Optimism, major library upgrades, and minor bug fixes.
- Empty Set Dollar is now “Empty Set”! In addition Digital Standard Unit (DSU) is the new stable token in the Empty Set ecosystem with the sole purpose to be a stable token and will carry no governance rights. Empty Set Share (ESS) is the new governance token in the Empty Set ecosystem which will hold governance rights.
- Opeth Finance shares how they created a Uniswap V3 Pool that allows users to buy protected ETH (Opeth) in a simple, capital efficient manner.
- DODO’s DIP-3 Trading Fees reallocation and community treasury implementation is now complete!
- Sparrow Wallet v1.4.3 has been released! This version includes the ability to create Taproot (P2TR) single signature wallets on signet/testnet, as well as support for sending to all P2TR addresses!
- dYdX shares that Compound (COMP-USD) Perpetual Contract is now live for trading on layer-2!
- MoonPay, a one-stop payment solution for cryptocurrency, is coming to Polygon.
- The Ren Report has been published! This report dives into RenBridge, Ren wrapped assets on all chains and volume data.
- Nethermind shares a report on Warp, the EVM to Cairo compiler!
- Cosmos Hub Governance Proposal #52 is now in its voting period which would allocate $100K in ATOM from the Cosmos Hub Community Pool to support ATOM liquidity incentives on Osmosis DEX.
- BottlePay v1.7.8 is live! Now with the ability to share your transactions on social, text, and more through updated cards.
- Neon Labs announces Neon, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) scalability solution built on Solana.
- Yearn has engaged with Trail of Bits for an independent third-party audit of Vault, BaseStrategy, and BaseWrapper contracts.
- Stellar Foundation announces a major upgrade to their demo wallet!
- DeFi Alliance welcomes Polygon to their Ecosystem Partnership Program to enable Polygon-specific programming for the next cohort of their Accelerator program.
- Fantom researchers propose a breakthrough solution for smart contract testing at the Usenix 2021 Annual Technical Conference.
Mainstream Recap:
- Hong Kong based crypto derivatives exchange, FTX, closes a $900M fundraise at an $18B valuation. Forbes reports that the deal will likely boost the net worth of its founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) by nearly $8M.
- CoinDesk reports that the White House is creating a new group to investigate and tackle ransomware through crypto payments.
- Nigerian bitcoin trading volume hit its highest ever in June reaching over $38M in transactions.
- OpenSea announces their $100M Series B led by a16z, with participation from Coatue, along with Michael Ovitz, Kevin Hartz, Dylan Field, Kevin Durant, Ashton Kutcher, and Tobi Lutke.
- Hong Kong authorities arrested four men suspected of involvement in a money laundering scheme that involved $1.2B HK.
- The U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program is adding crypto to its payout options!
- The EU is working to tighten rules on crypto asset transfers through a new law proposed which would apply the Travel Rule to crypto transactions.
- A feature documentary film is being produced that will follow the story of Vitalik Buterin, the community of developers, entrepreneurs, artists, and crypto enthusiasts as they chart the future of Ethereum!
- The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is launching an £11M marketing campaign to warn young people of the risk of investing in crypto.
- The SEC shuts down fraudulent mother-son offerings involving purported supercomputer and use of cryptocurrencies.
- Singapore Bybit has launched a spot trading platform as a complement to its core derivatives offering.
- Revolut raises $800M in funding at a $33B valuation to supercharge its financial services super app.
- Italy’s financial regulator, CONSOB, said Binance is not authorized to provide investment services in the country.
- Silvergate Bank accepted ~$4.3B in new deposits from new and existing digital currency customers in the second quarter of 2021.
- Axelar, a decentralized protocol designed by the founding members of Algorand, raised $25M in a Series A round led by Olaf Carlson-Wee’s Polychain Capital. The funds will be used to support the growth of the network’s integrations.
- Paradigm shares that they are expanding their Research Team under Dan Robinson.
- Circle reveals assets backing USDC stablecoin.
- Terra introduces the Terra Ecosystem Fund, which is supported by capital commitments of $150M from various investors including: Arrington Capital, BlackTower Capital, Galaxy Digital, Hashed, Lightspeed Ventures, Pantera Capital, Parafi, SkyVision Capital, and more!
- Polygon has launched Polygon Studios to help advance blockchain gaming and NFTs.
- Arianna Simpson is promoted to General Partner for Andreesssen Horowitz’s Crypto Fund.
- Brink announces the second round of developer grants! This time going to Larry Ruane and Sebastian Falbesoner.
- Crypto lending platform BlockFi received an order from New Jersey’s acting attorney general to halt its Interest Account (BIA) operations in the U.S. state.
- Dolce & Gabbana plan to launch a high fashion inspired NFT collection in Venice.
- Coin98 raised $11.25M in a strategic funding round with support from Hashed, Spartan Group, and more. Coin98 is building an ecosystem of protocols and applications on multiple blockchains to fulfill untapped demand in the DeFi space.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are jumping up to Olympia, WA for a cup of Melvin Flores Micro Lot from Olympia Coffee! This El Salvadorian roast yields flavors of chocolate, cherry, and hints of fig. Best prepared via drip or pour over! Enjoy!!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer