EthHub Weekly #153
Synthetix raises $12mil, Scaling Ethereum announced, eth2 Updates, Matic is now Polygon and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
⛽ I Support EIP-1559
You may have seen a bunch of people on Twitter tweeting out their support for EIP-1559 over the weekend and if you’re wondering why you can read this piece that I wrote here. The tl;dr is that some miners don’t want EIP-1559 to happen because they’ll be taking a small pay cut if it does. On that note, you should also check out Eric’s thread on EIP-1559’s history here.
Argent put out a “who to follow on Twitter” blog post that included both myself and Eric in the top 5 accounts to follow - we are honored! You can check out the full list here.
Finally, I announced that I have joined Polygon (formerly Matic Network) as an advisor - check out my thread on why here.
Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony
News of the Week
💰 Tesla Buys $1.5 Billion Worth of BTC
Tesla has disclosed in an SEC filing published Monday that it has bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin.
"In January 2021, we updated our investment policy to provide us with more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity," reads the filing. "Thereafter, we invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin under this policy and may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term."
In addition to the bitcoin purchase, Tesla expects to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for its products "in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which we may or may not liquidate upon receipt."
🤯 Mastercard to Support Crypto
The crypto space lit up last Wednesday when news broke that Mastercard was expanding the scope of its digital currency support.
Mastercard said in a blog post that it was moving to enable its systems to facilitate payments in the form of stablecoins directly to merchants who choose to accept them. Such a service will complement Mastercard's existing crypto card-focused offerings, through which consumers can spend their cryptocurrencies via an issuer's card -- though in the end, the transaction is settled outside of Mastercard and in the form of fiat currency like the U.S. dollar.
The payments firm's chief financial officer, Sachin Mehra, discussed the expanded offerings during a virtual event hosted by Goldman Sachs on Wednesday, according to a published transcript obtained by The Block. But more broadly -- and, perhaps, more importantly -- Mehra provided a clear-cut break down of how Mastercard views what he termed "sub-categories" of digital currencies: cryptocurrencies, fiat-backed stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.
Project Updates
What’s New in Eth2 - 13 February 2021
An editorial on how Ethereum will scale, Beacon Chain updates, tooling updates and more in this weeks eth2 update from Ben.
Eth2 Quick Update No. 22
Updates on the eth2 workshop, eth1+eth2 merge and sharding in this very quick update from Danny Ryan.
Scaling Ethereum Announced
Scaling Ethereum is an online ETHGlobal hackathon dedicated to building the tooling and protocol to make scalability happen on Ethereum. The event will be held from April 9th to May 14th.
Ethereum 1559 Community Call Announced
The Ethereum Cat Herders are hosting a call on EIP-1559 featuring the major stakeholders concerned with the proposal: EIP champions researchers, developers & miners from the Ethereum community.
Degenerative Finance Presents “uSTONKS”
uSTONKS, designed by UMA Protocol in their uLABS program, will be a synthetic that tracks an index of the ten most bullish Wall Street Bets stocks. With uSTONKS, DeFi users can earn liquidity mining rewards, hold a long position, or hold a short position.
UMA KPI Options and Airdrop Announced
MA will be airdropping a new incentivization mechanism called a “KPI option” to a curated list of addresses in DeFi. The value of these options depends on the TVL of the UMA protocol, thereby giving every recipient an incentive to grow the protocol.
Synthetix Raises $12 Million
Synthetix announced a $12 million dollar fundraise led by venture capital firms Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and IOSG. The funds purchased SNX tokens directly from the DAO treasury.
DegenScore Launched
You can use this tool to find out your ‘DegenScore’ and if you’re “degen enough”, you will be granted access to the atomic.blue beta.
Reflexer Labs Raises $4.14 Million
Pantera and Lemniscap have led a $4.14 million round for Reflexer Labs, the creator of a new stablecoin.
NFTX Updates Its Identity
A brand new visual identity for the NFTX DAO was launched, created by designer Ben Pieratt in collaboration with ChopChop.
Alpha Finance January 2021 Summary
Alpha Homora v2 was announced and launch, AlphaX started its second round of private testing, design and implementation started on ALPHA’s tokenomics and much more in this January recap.
Alpha Finance also announced a liquidity mining program for v1 and v2.
Colony v2 Launch Plans Detailed
Colony is the most powerful, practical, flexible, and easy to use DAO framework. Colony v2 will soft launch on Ethereum mainnet and xDai at 17:00 UTC on 15th February 2021.
Badger DAO Partners With Yearn Finance
The partnership aims to bring the “best in class” BTC vaults to the DeFi industry through collaborative efforts.
Balancer Raises $5 Million
Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital have made a combined investment of $5M in the Balancer protocol, joining recent investors Pantera Capital and Alameda Research via a direct purchase of BAL tokens from the Balancer Labs treasury.
zkSwap Launched
ZKSwap, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on ZK-Rollup technology, has launched its mainnet as a layer-2 protocol on the Ethereum network.
Kyber Ecosystem Report January 2021
An update on all the things Kyber achieved during the month of January including the announcement of v3 of the protocol, growth stats and more.
zkSync Upgraded
zkSync uccessfully completed an upgrade this week to the recursion-enabled version, bringing its mainnet capacity to over 2000 TPS. Transfers are now at 1/100th of the L1 costs.
Matic is Now Polygon
Matic is expanding their mission and technology scope by becoming Polgyon which aims to be Ethereum’s internet of blockchains.
Introducing Edge & Node
Edge & Node is a new software development company founded by the core protocol team behind The Graph.
Fire Eyes DAO x Balancer
Fire Eyes DAO announced their collaboration with Balancer Labs this week and will be helping them with governance.
The TRIBE Token Distribution Detailed
This post goes through how the TRIBE token of Fei Protocol will be distributed and how it will function in the protocol.
Staking Community Grantee Recipients Announced
The Ethereum Foundation has given out more than $1 million worth of grants to various eth2 initiatives from the community.
Index Coop Adds Fiat On-Ramp
You can now use Transak to buy the DeFi Pulse Index using British pounds and Indian rupees.
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Podcasts
Lyn Alden and Raoul Pal: Is Ethereum a Good Investment? - Unchained
2020 Reflections on Crypto and Beyond | Vitalik Buterin - Bankless
Mark Cuban: "ETH Has an Advantage Over BTC as a Store of Value" - The Defiant
Tim Beiko on How Ethereum Governance works and the upcoming EIP-1559 - CryptoTesters
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Integration Engineer - LinkPool
Marketing Generalist - Chainflip
Product Manager - Maple Finance
Frontend Engineer - Maple Finance
+1000’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!