Crypto && Coffee 109
- 5 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Kalle Rosenbaum, author of Grokking Bitcoin, publishes a walk-through of the MuSig2 protocol for Schnorr multi-signatures.
- The Q4 Bitcoin Mining Council survey confirms improvements in sustainable power mix and technological efficiency.
Ethereum:
- Vitalik Buterin features a paper from researchers at Peking University and Duke University on the consequences of EIP-1559.
- Ben Edgington shares what’s the latest in eth2 with focus on The Merge, Kintsugi since the launch, staking, and more!
Other Chains:
- Aave snapshot is working towards deploying on Arbitrum One, Boba Network, and Optimism!
- The Zcash Open Major Grants Committee funded work by QEDIT to add Zcash Shielded Assets, for example shielded ERC-20s, into the core Zcash protocol.
- Datachain has received a grant from Harmony to construct a bridge between Cosmos and Harmony. The bridge will make it possible to move assets onto Harmony to various other IBC-enabled chains such as Cosmos, Terra, JUNO, Osmosis and more.
- Upgrades went live on Polygon yesterday to fully support EIP-1559.
- Curve Finance is now live on Optimism!
- Set Protocol is now live on Optimism! This is a major step for Set to push forward and scale the best-in-class decentralized asset management infrastructure.
- Tornado Cash has been deployed on Optimism!
- StarkWare announces the StarkNet Alpha v0.7.0 release to Goerli with new features including contract upgradeability, system calls for block number and block timestamps, plus new events!
- Blixt Wallet v0.4.0 was released! This brings updates to the app for both Android and iOS with lnd v0.14.1-beta, wallet restore options, and more!
- Blockworks features a full article on the Cosmos HUB and the future of shared security throughout IBC-enabled chains.
- Element Finance shares their core principles in relation to handling of the DAO and various considerations.
- Inverse Finance announces their integration of Chainlink Price Feeds into their Anchor money market protocol.
- The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is looking to add layer-2 support via the addition of EIP-3668 and ENSIP-10.
- IBC based JunoSwap shares that the Interchain DEX v.1 beta is now live!
- The Liquid Network announces that Taproot and new additional opcodes are now active as of block 1663200, opening the door for covenants, AMMs, and more!
- Keplr Wallet shares that the first native integrations of 2022 are with Axelar Network, Juno Network, and Stargaze.
- Argent shares that they have added Aave to their zkSync wallet.
- Ren announces that the team behind VarenX, Varen, will join forces with Ren and its community to build out tooling and infrastructure for the cross-chain future.
- Fireblocks now supports Celo! Users can now access the native CELO token and 12+ dApps built for Celo.
- Archway is bringing incentivized smart contracts to Cosmos.
Mainstream Recap:
- Coinbase and Mastercard partner to classify NFTs as “digital goods” allowing a broader group of consumers to purchase NFTs.
- Blockworks shares that Iran’s Central Bank and the Country’s Ministry of Trade have reached a deal that would allow local merchants to use crypto for their international trade deals.
- The Wall Street Journal reports that cryptocurrencies are being embraced in Turkey and other parts of the developing world where government economic policies spark distrust.
- The mayor of Rio de Janeiro said that he plans to allocate 1% of the city’s treasury reserves to cryptocurrencies.
- CNBC reports that Walmart is quietly preparing to enter the metaverse and in a separate filing, they would offer users both a virtual currency and cryptocurrencies in addition to NFTs.
- BitMEX Group has signed a purchase agreement with Bankhaus von der Heydt, a 268-year-old German bank.
- Xapo has surrendered its BitLicense, according to the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).
- Google is apparently considering the ability to let users store bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in digital cards.
- Block’s CashApp integrates the Lightning Network, allowing its U.S. customers to send bitcoin for free to anyone.
- CoinDesk reports that 2TM, the holding company for Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest crypto exchange, has agreed to acquire a controlling stake in CriptoLoja, Portugal’s first regulated crypto exchange.
- Coinbase acquires FairX, a CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange as Coinbase pushes forward to offer crypto derivatives to retail and institutional customers in the US.
- Fidelity writes that “countries that secure some bitcoin today will be better off competitively than their peers” in their recent Research Round-Up.
- Urubit and Inbierto, through a joint initiative have installed the first cryptocurrency ATM in Uruguay.
- OpenSea introduces the NFT Security Group!
- Matthew Green, cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins and one of the creators of the Zerocash protocol, provides insight into what he found after skimming through MetaMask’s crypto code.
- Multichain shares that there was a critical vulnerability that affected six cross-chain tokens that was reported by Dedaub and fixed by the Multichain team. The tokens were WETH, PERI, OMT, WBNB, MATIC, and AVAX.
- Arbitrum shares that Binance users can now deposit and withdraw ETH to and from Arbitrum.
- Entropy, a new trustless protocol for decentralized asset custody, announces a pre-seed raise of $1.95M led by Dragonfly Capital accompanied by The LAO and P2P Capital.
- Bitcoin Magazine publishes an article on how Jack Dorsey’s Block is accelerating Bitcoin adoption.
- Harmony published on January 14th, 2022 that they were undergoing an outage due to multiple block propagation issues.
- Bitfinex made changes to the Services they provide to Ontario customers stating that on March 1st, 2022, Ontario customers will no longer have access to any Services.
- CoinTelegraph reports that Intel intends to reveal a new “ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC” known as Bonanza Mine at the upcoming IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference in February.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are headed to Philadelphia, PA for a cup of Corsica at La Colombe Coffee Roasters! This dark roast yields flavors of dark chocolate with tones of red wine and hints of spice. This is a perfect cup with a blend of beans from Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico. Sip up and enjoy!!
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