EthHub Weekly #119
Compound liquidity mining begins, zkSync launched, EPNS announced, ConsenSys launches eth2 staking service and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
đ¨âđžÂ Farming All the Yield
Well, that was an absolutely crazy week in Ethereum, wasnât it? If youâve somehow missed it, the concept of âyield farmingâ entered the mainstream crypto lexicon this week with the launch of Compoundâs liquidity mining program and the Synthetix/Curve yield farming partnership. Eric and I will be diving very deep into this new trend on this weeks recap podcast - be sure to subscribe so that you donât miss it!
Gitcoin Grants Round 6 is now live! You can now have your donation matched by up to 100âs of times during this matching round. If youâd like to support EthHub, you can do so here (or fund the Ethereum âstate mediaâ here). You can also support my efforts with The Daily Gwei here.
Lastly, a Chinese version of EthHub is now available - a big thanks to ECN for making this possible!
Have a great week everyone!
-Â Anthony
News of the Week
đ Â Trump Told Treasury Secretary to âGo Afterâ Bitcoin, Bolton Book Reportedly Claims
President Donald Trump ordered Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to focus on a clampdown on Bitcoin over negotiating a trade with China, former national security adviser John Bolton reportedly claims.
In a terse exchange about imposing sanctions and tariffs with China, Trump reportedly told Mnuchin: âDonât be a trade negotiator,â ordering him instead to: âGo after bitcoin [for fraud].â
âIf you donât want me on trade, fine, your economic team will execute whatever you want,â Mnuchin retorted. The exchange comes from an excerpt from Boltonâs new book, obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The conversation is said to have happened in May 2018, around the time investors were cheering bitcoin on after it rose 33% against the dollar. Itâs unclear from the excerpt what specifically led Trump to order Mnuchin to crack down on bitcoin and whether the two men had been talking about cryptocurrencies beforehand.
âŽď¸Â Ethereum Foundation Makes Second Crypto Donation to UNICEF
The Ethereum Foundation followed up on its 2019 gift to the United Nations Childrenâs Fund (UNICEF) this week with a second cryptocurrency donation.Â
UNICEF crypto portfolio manager Cecilia Chapiro said the fund is now accepting applications from startups in emerging markets to receive investments via this second donation of roughly 1,125Â ETH.
âWe are still looking for big donors ⌠also from a technical expertise perspective, weâre always matching our startups with mentors in the space,â said UNICEF blockchain lead Christina Lomazzo. âWeâve not received any more bitcoin, beyond what we got from the Ethereum Foundation [in 2019].âÂ
Thereâs no set number, but Chapiro expects to find five to 10 attractive startups for equity-free investments worth $100,000 each. The fund is in talks with other prospective donors, but so far none that could be named for this article.
Project Updates
EPNS Introduced
EPNS is a decentralized protocol for sending notifications on the Ethereum network. You can get notified from all sorts of apps on both desktop and mobile - early access is also open now (just DM the team).
Anthonyâs note: Had a really fun call with the founders behind this project - I think itâs a key missing piece from Ethereum and I canât wait to see how it develops!
TXRX Research Updates
Lots of updates this week from TXRX including a case study where eth2 validator privacy was broken, an update on patching up the eth2 spec, building out the first phase 1 eth2 client and more.
Eth 2.0 Dev Update #52 â Onyx Testnet Launched
Your bi-weekly update from the PryLabs team covering the recent launch of their eth2 onyx testnet, the usual code updates, some security updates and much more.
ConsenSys Launches Eth2 Staking Service
ConsenSys Codefi is launching an Ethereum 2.0 staking-as-a-service platform with institutional functionality for exchanges, custodians, funds, wallets and other potential customers. Binance, Crypto.com, DARMA Capital, Huobi Wallet, Matrixport, and Trustology are the first companies to join the Codefi Staking Pilot Program.
WBTC.Cafe is now on Mainnet
WBTC.Cafe is a basic dApp that provides one of the easiest ways for average users to acquire WBTC with real BTC. The Cafe facilitates a native BTC user experience, so all you have to do is send in real BTC and you receive WBTC.
The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off Announced
Reddit and the Ethereum Foundation are holding a scaling âbake-offâ where developers are able to compete by sending Reddit their Ethereum layer 2 scaling solutions.
zkSync Announced
zkSync is built using Matter Labsâ zkRollup technology: a combination of cutting-edge research in zero-knowledge proofs with on-chain data availability. zkSync can massively reduce costs to send ETH and ERC20 tokens while gradually enabling VISA-scale throughput of up to 2,000 TPS.
Compound Launches Liquidity Mining Program
Users can now âmineâ COMP tokens by lending and borrowing from the Compound protocol. These tokens are able to be used in governance to manage the platform as it now belongs to the community.
New BTC Yield Farming Pool from Synthetix, Curve, and Ren
With this pool, speculators can farm SNX, REN, CRV and BAL tokens using their tokenized BTC on Ethereum.
Geth Adds New Feature
Following the large fee transactions that occurred a couple of weeks ago, lead Geth maintainer Peter announced that in Geth 1.9.16+, there will be a default setting that refuses to accept any transactions with a fee of more than 1 ETH.
DeFi Pulse Registry Launched
DeFi Pulse Registry wants to keep DeFi safe and to do this they are rolling out 3 categories of new metrics: economic risks, centralization risks, and security risks associated with different DeFi protocols.
EthGlobal Announces HackFS
HackFS is a 30 day virtual hackathon that focuses on decentralized storage dapps, dev tools, DeFi integrations and more.
Matic Updates
Deposits and withdrawals on the Matic Network mainnet are now live and the Ethernal world game released alpha 2.0 with a UX powered by Matic.
Blockchain Security Database Launched
The database is organized by project, and collects up all the audit reports, bounty programs and security contact information that the ConsenSys Diligence team could find.
WalletConnect Mobile Linking Now Live
You can now connect to mobile dapps using your mobile wallet without scanning a QR code. Currently supported wallets include Rainbow, MetaMask, Argent and Gnosis Safe. It was also announced that the WalletConnect beta is now over.
Polymarket Public Beta Now Live
Polymarket is an information markets platform, where speculators bet on the world's most highly-debated topics â producing actionable insight on the matters most important to society. You can now trade USDC-based information markets on coronavirus, politics and crypto using the platform.
USD++ Live on Mainnet
USD++ is a stablecoin index deployed to PieDAO that is designed for medium to long term holding.
Ethereum Cat Herders Update #23
The Berlin upgrade, testnet YOLO, Eth2.0 version 0.12.1, and more covered in this update from the Cat Herders.
Nimbus update: June 19th
Updates on the core spec and implementation, security audits, testnets and more from the Nimbus team this week.
Turbo-Geth Update
Another update from Alexey this week on new changes and features for Turbo-Geth.
Community Member Spotlight
This week weâre highlighting the great work of Sam Sun!
Sam is a security auditor currently working with Trail of Bits. Sam is well known within the Ethereum community as the âwhite hat hackingâ hero who has found many vulnerabilities in popular applications on Ethereum and responsibly disclosed them. You can read his write-ups about that on his blog here.
Sam also has an active Gitcoin Grant that you can donate to here.
Keep up the great work Sam!
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Guide #1: Starting with Bankless (highly recommend checking this out)
What Are Ethereum Users Paying Fees For? (recommended read)
What is an Ethereum Core Developer? (recommended read)
Calculating Value, Impermanent Loss and Slippage for Balancer Pools
The 1.x Files: EIP 1559 and the Ethereum Improvement Horizon
Videos
Podcasts
DeversiFi: Bringing Ethereum to Serious Traders - Into the Ether
SotN #1 - BULLISH; DeFi tokens, Internet-era growth, Fee v Issuance Debate - Bankless
Opyn: The Insurance Platform Which Protects Your DeFi Deposits - Epicenter
Why COMP 5xed on Day 1 and What This Means for a DeFi Bull Market - Unconfirmed
EIP-1559 and the blockspace market - Uncommon Core
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Data Scientist - 0x
Account Executive - Coinbase
Senior DevOps Engineer - Curv
QA Automation Engineer - Paradigm
+100âs more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
Support EthHub:
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