EthHub Weekly #149
Optimism live on mainnet, Fei Protocol introduced, Curve x Synthetix cross-asset swaps now live and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
😭 Where Art Thou All Time High?
As I’m sure you’re all aware, I’ve been unable to tweet for quite a while now as I said I wouldn’t tweet again until ETH hit its all time high of $1,420. Well, it hasn’t hit it yet and it keeps teasing me (and all of you) every day! Though, I do really enjoy the memes that the community has been putting together in my absence - keep them coming! Hopefully I’ll be back to tweeting soon as ETH is almost at all time high!
Just a quick shout-out to ETHGlobal who are hiring for a Marketing & Growth Lead and a Partnerships Coordinator - if that’s something you’re interested in you can head here for more details.
Lastly, I joined the guys at ‘Show Me the Crypto’ to discuss all things Ethereum and you can watch that here.
Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony
News of the Week
🤔 Gemini Considers Going Public
Tyler and Cameron Winkelvoss are exploring a stock market debut for crypto exchange Gemini, according to a report by Bloomberg News.
In an interview with Bloomberg, the twins–who founded the exchange in 2013—said that going public is one option they are currently exploring for the firm.
"We are watching the market and we are also having internal discussions on whether it makes sense for us at this point in time," Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini, said.
Gemini would join a growing list of crypto firms with ambitions to tap into the public markets. Some firms—including Bakkt and Coinbase—are further along in their journey. Bakkt announced at the beginning of the week that it would go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition vehicle. Coinbase filed a confidential S-1 to go public at the end of last year.
🏦 Anchorage Nabs national Bank Charter From OCC
Anchorage has won the race to become the first federally chartered digital asset bank by obtaining a national bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
The institutional crypto custodian is now on even firmer footing with its designation as a "Qualified Custodian" under the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) requirements. Investment advisers have to keep client funds and securities with those that meet the qualified custodian standard, usually banks or registered broker-dealers.
In a statement, the OCC highlighted the "conditional approval" of Anchorage's banking bid.
"The OCC granted a national trust bank charter to Anchorage after thorough review of the company and its current operations. As an enforceable condition of approval, the company entered into an operating agreement which sets forth, among other things, capital and liquidity requirements and the OCC’s risk management expectations," the regulator said.
Project Updates
What’s New in Eth2 - 15 January 2021
Your first eth2 recap of the year coming at you from Ben Edgington with updates on the Beacon Chain, recent slashing, testnets, what’s next for eth2 and more.
Optimism Mainnet Soft Launch
The first phase of Optimisms layer 2 network has gone live with Synthetix being the first app on the network. You can read Synthetix’s announcement post here.
Cross-Asset Swaps Now Live on Curve
Curve now allows you to use Synthetix to do cross-asset swaps with minimal slippage and fees. Read more about it here.
Introducing Fei Protocol
Fei Protocol aims to build a new decentralized, fair, liquid, and scalable stablecoin that exhibits a high fidelity peg.
Synthetix 2021 Detailed
Synthetix is poised to have a big 2021 with a lot of updates coming to the protocol - read the above post to get the full breakdown.
Charm Live on Mainnet
Charm is a new decentralized options protocol. It uses an innovative mechanism that can create options markets which are liquid and cheap for users to trade on.
mStable SAVE v2 Now Live
mStable SAVE v2 is a tokenized savings account that is available to be used by anyone from anywhere!
UNI Grants Applications Now Open
The first wave of UNI grants has the goal of funding projects working on usability, community and tooling.
Notional Launches Out of Beta
Notional allows you to borrow assets at a fixed rate and you can currently borrow USDC and DAI at less than 5%.
Yield Protocol Releases RateLock
RateLock is a new tool that allows Dai borrowers on Maker to lock-in a low interest rate with as little as one click.
Yam 2020 Recap & 2021 Roadmap
In this post, the Yam team gives a recap of all that happened in 2020 and provides a roadmap update covering all the features coming to the protocol in 2021.
Oiler Research — EIP-1559 BASEFEE manipulations
Oiler is a protocol for blockchain native derivatives and will soon launch a set of instruments based on hashrate, block gas limit and block times. Oiler is currently working on bringing fully native gas price derivatives to Ethereum with the advent of EIP-1559 and the post above describes this in-depth.
Biconomy Announces $1.5M Seed Round
The round was led by Eden Block with participation from other top investors including Fenbushi Capital, Binance, DACM, Outlier Ventures, Zee Prime Capital, Woodstock Capital, and MiH Ventures.
Vector on Mainnet
This marks the start of the multi-chain Ethereum ecosystem, where users can seamlessly interact with wallets and applications running on a variety of different L2s and shards, all without ever needing to know it’s happening.
Primitive 2021
The Primitive protocol’s first option market successfully concluded, signalling the first step over the starting line. The next option markets have already been deployed, and V2 development has started.
Lattice1 Firmware V10.1 Released
This new firmware adds several new major features including human-readable contract interactions, permissioned signing and more. GridPlus also published their January update here.
Introducing Coinbase Asset Hub
The Coinbase Asset Hub is an interface for digital asset issuers to manage the full lifecycle of their assets.
Interesting Tweets
2021 will be the most innovative year for the Ethereum protocol since 2016 (highly recommended read)
An explanation of how Curve and Synthetix’s new swap feature works
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Podcasts
The Fourth Crypto Cycle | Chris Dixon, a16z - Bankless
Arcane Assets | The Future of Digital Investments - Epicenter
Videos
Misc
Study on the transition from the current fee market to EIP-1559
The ENSBot on twitter will @ you if your ENS name is expiring
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Growth Lead - Gelato Network
Software Engineer - Nifty Gateway
Software Engineer Intern - Uniswap
Community Advocate - PoolTogether
+1000’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!