EthHub Weekly #122

Eth2 launch drama, MakerDAO approves new light feeds, Aave introduces Credit Delegation, Katalyst & KyberDAO now live and much more!

Jul 13, 2020

Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)

🚀 Eth2 Will Launch in 2020

The Ethereum Foundation’s eth2 research team held an AMA on Reddit a few days ago and let’s just stay it kicked up quite the stir on Twitter. In case you missed it, there was a comment from Justin Drake where he suggested that eth2 wouldn’t launch until January 3rd 2021 at the earliest. This, of course, made a lot of people upset because they were under the impression that eth2 would launch in 2020. A few minutes later, Vitalik followed up with a comment saying that eth2 is still on track for a 2020 launch. Anyway, you can read more details about this whole ordeal in my latest daily gwei piece here. Eric and I will also be talking about this on the podcast.

A quick shout out to a new newsletter that I came across called ‘The Ethernaut Diaries’. If you’re a developer, this will be a good resource for you to subscribe to - do that here.

Oh and the Ethereum.org website got a fresh coat of paint and it looks awesome!

Have a great week everyone!

- Anthony

News of the Week

💰 Coinbase Exploring Stock Market Listing

Crypto exchange Coinbase has reportedly begun preparing to go public.

A Reuters report, citing people familiar with the matter, said Coinbase's listing could come as early as this year. One source told the news outlet that the exchange is considering a direct listing instead of a traditional initial public offering (IPO).

Should the exchange receive approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, it would become the first U.S.-based crypto exchange to become a publicly-traded company.

🤔 CENTRE Blacklists Address Holding USDC for the First Time

In a first of its kind, an Ethereum address holding 100,000 USDC stablecoin has been blacklisted.

The transaction, viewed through blockchain explorer Etherscan, shows that a "blacklist(address investor)" function was called on June 16, 2020, by 0x5dB0115f3B72d19cEa34dD697cf412Ff86dc7E1b, an address owned by CENTRE, the entity issuing USDCs.

In USDC's Contract Application Binary Interface, the standard by which smart contracts interact with Ethereum, we can see the address named "blacklister" matches the one that called the blacklist function. According to Circle's website, a blacklisted address will not be able to execute transactions (receiving or sending) through the USDC smart contract. Additionally, Circle adds that all USDC balances held on blacklisted addresses may be "wholly and permanently unrecoverable."

Project Updates

What’s New in Eth2 - 10 July 2020

The usual round of updates from Ben including updates on phase 0, new eth2 explainers, research updates and more. Ben also added a new ‘Media’ section to the newsletter!

Lighthouse Update #27

Various updates from the Sigma Prime team covering their work on Altona, BLST, Peer Scoring and more.

Aave Announces Credit Delegation (CD)

Aave depositors will be able delegate their credit lines. For example, Karen deposits an asset such as USDT to Aave and delegates her credit line to Chad, who draws funds such as ETH from Aave Protocol.

Katalyst and KyberDAO Now Live

KNC holders can stake their tokens on the KyberDAO and govern the protocol by voting on important proposals and parameters, while earning rewards (in ETH) for their efforts. Any KNC holder can contribute to Kyber’s development by participating in the KyberDAO.