EthHub Weekly #155
Optimistic Ethereum gets March launch date, dYdX layer 2 enters alpha, Aave & Balancer partner up and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
đ„Â EIP-1559 Community Call
A community call between developers, researchers, community members, and miners was held last Friday to discuss EIP-1559 (watch that here). Essentially the main goal of the call was to hear what miners had to say about the change since some of them have been vocally opposed to it lately. The tl;dw (too long; didnât watch) of it was as you would assume - miners are concerned that they will be taking a pay cut due to the fee burning mechanism being introduced with EIP-1559 and they also stated that they believe network security will go down because of this.
Though, they didnât really provide any convincing arguments or points to back up this claim in the end. There is an AllCoreDevs call scheduled soon that will decide whether EIP-1559 is accepted into Ethereumâs London network upgrade or not (which is tentatively slated for July) - I, of course, believe that it will be accepted.
Have a great week everyone!
-Â Anthony
News of the Week
âïžÂ Bitfinex, Tether Settle with New Yorkâs Attorney General for $185 Million
Crypto firms Bitfinex and Tether have settled with the New York Attorney General's (NYAG's) office, ending a legal dispute that began in mid-2019.
As part of the settlement, Bitfinex and Tether have agreed to pay $18.5 million in penalties to the state of New York, according to a statement from New York Attorney General Letitia James.
In April 2019, the NYAG's office alleged that Bitfinex used Tether's funds to secretly cover $850 million lost to payment processor Crypto Capital. The lost funds allegedly triggered withdrawal problems for Bitfinex's customers in late 2018.
Bitfinex at the time had said that it did not lose money. Instead, Crypto Capital's funds had been seized by government authorities in Portugal, Poland, and the U.S. Bitfinex has been seeking to recover those funds since then.
đ Canada's CI Financial Files for ETH ETF with Galaxy as Subadvisor
Canadian asset manager CI Financial, which oversees more than $230 billion worth of assets, has filed for an ether (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF).
CI is seeking approval to list the ETH ETF on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). If approved, the firm would manage the ETF with Mike Novogratz's Galaxy as subadvisor, meaning Galaxy will execute ETH trading on behalf of the ETF.
The ETF would trade with the ticker symbol ETHX and charge an annual management fee of 1%.
Last week, CIÂ also filed for a bitcoin ETFÂ and is awaiting approval. The firm already operates a bitcoin fund named CI Galaxy Bitcoin Fund, which manages about $162 million worth of assets.
Project Updates
Whatâs New in Eth2 - 27 February 2021
Updates on the Beacon Chain, the first eth2 hard fork/upgrade, links to new resources and more in this update from Ben Edgington.
Ethereum Cat Herders Update #39
Eth1.0 â YOLO v3, Berline, London timeline & EIPs selection, Eth1-Eth2 merge, removing EVM features, Eth2 â HF1, Verkle tree, 1559 community call, events and more.
The State of 1559 - Update 007
Lots of updates in this state of 1559 from Tim Beiko including client updates, mining updates and more.
Lighthouse Update #34
The team has been focused on improving the Lighthouse Beacon Chain implementation which means analysing validator performance and resource consumption.
Optimistic Ethereum Gets March Launch Date
The Optimistic Ethereum mainnet will go live in March, the Optimism team have doubled in size, and a16z have led a $25 million series A for the company.
dYdX Layer 2 Enters Alpha
dYdXâs layer 2 implementation with StarkWare has entered its alpha phase and you can now sign up for early access. It offers zero gas costs for traders, instant trading, up to 25x leverage and more.
MEV Explorer Released
This explorer lets you view various miner extractable value (MEV) transactions on the Ethereum network and information about them.
BAT Roadmap 2.0
A detailed roadmap update from the Brave team including updates on the Brave Wallet, the Brave DEX aggregator and more.
Alchemix Protocol Now Live
Along with the protocol comes the governance token, ALCX, that you can stake as part of a pool 2 - you can also yield farm using stablecoins to earn ALCX.
Kyber Publishes Paper on the Dynamic Market Maker (DMM)
The DMM allows for the creation of highly optimised pools with high capital efficiency & improved profits for LPs.
Blocknative Gas Platform Introduced
The Blocknative Gas Platform aims to help you get your transactions into the next block without overpaying.
Etherscan Launches âPending Transaction Queueâ Feature
This feature allows users to see a transaction's queued position relative to others in the transaction pool. The team also released a new âSmart Contract Searchâ feature.
DFX Finance Raises $5 Million
The round was led by Polychain and True Ventures with participation from various other investors and angels.
Chainlink Off-Chain Reporting Now Live
Off-chain reporting (OCR) is an upgrade that reduces the on-chain gas costs by up to 90% for Chainlink oracles.
The Block Launches DeFi Revenue Dashboard
These dashboards display DeFi protocol revenue and update with daily data - they also split revenue by protocol.
Aave & Balancer Partner Up
The teams have partnered up to build the first Balancer V2 Asset Manager â allowing idle assets in V2 pools to earn yield on Aave.
DeFi Pulse Launches Cryptodollars Page
This new page is dedicated to measuring the amount of tokenized dollars/stablecoins in DeFi.
Umbra Update
Umbra shipped phase 1 of their protocol to the Rinkeby testnet and provides updates on whatâs coming in phase 2 and beyond.
Zapper Adds NFT Support
You can now track your NFTs and their value by using the Zapper dashboard.
Introducing MPL
MPL is the Maple Finance ERC-20 native token. It serves three roles: governance, staking, and a share in network fees.
Index Coop Launches the CoinShares Gold Index
Using volatility harvesting, CGI yields a superior risk-adjusted return over holding cryptoassets or gold alone.
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Podcasts
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Marketing Lead - Set
Front-End Engineer - Yield
Solidity Engineer - ChainSafe Systems
Social Media Marketing & Brand Ambassador Manager - APY Vision
+1000âs more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!