EthHub Weekly #160
New ETH all time high, Coinbase to direct list on April 14th, Caspian announced, Dharma introduces gas-lite and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
đ All Time High
Well ETH broke through its all time high to set a new one of $2,145 after 6 weeks of grueling price action. The overall market is extremely hot right now and people are wondering if weâre near âthe topâ. Well of course no one really knows for sure but those who were around in the last bull market are surely having flashbacks to it at this point (I know I am). I guess only time will tell where we end up over the next few months!
In case you missed it, DCInvestor has launched his own blog called âThe Catalystâ and you can go subscribe to it here.
Have a great week everyone!
-Â Anthony
News of the Week
đžÂ PayPal Now Allows Crypto Spending at Millions of Merchants
PayPal has started allowing U.S. users to spend their cryptocurrency holdings at millions of online merchants globally.
The development means PayPal users who hold bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), bitcoin cash (BCH), and litecoin (LTC) in PayPal digital wallets can now convert their crypto holdings into fiat to make purchases. Reuters first reported the news.
"This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet," PayPal CEO and president Dan Schulman told Reuters. "We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies move from being predominantly an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants."
PayPal first revealed the crypto spending feature last October. In the coming months, the company will expand the feature to non-U.S. users at its 29 million global merchants. PayPal will not charge any transaction fee to pay with crypto, and customers can only use one type of cryptocurrency for each purchase.
đ±Â Coinbaseâs Direct Listing on Nasdaq Planned for April 14th
Coinbase, the U.S.-based crypto exchange, is set to go public in the next two weeks, according to Bloomberg.
Bloomberg's report said that Coinbase "is now planning to make its trading debut about April 14, according to people with knowledge of the matter." Bloomberg had previously reported that Coinbase's expected March direct listing was pushed back.
Coinbase's S-1 prospectus filing became public in late February and formally set the stage for the crypto exchange unicorn's direct listing. The firm made its intent to go public via a direct stock listing in late January, as reported by The Block at the time. Coinbase later confirmed that it would go public on Nasdaq's stock exchange.Â
Project Updates
Ethereum Berlin Community Call
The Ethereum Cat Herders are hosting a countdown call for the Berlin upgrade that will be joined by EIP authors, EIP editors, client developers, & the Ethereum community.
Beacon Book Update 001
The Beacon Book is getting close to launch with submissions closed, book specs finalized, the distribution finalized and more updates in this post.
Finalized No. 25
Updates on Rayonism, the blst security advistory and the Beacon Chain security + testing RFP.
Inside Arbitrum Released
Inside Arbitrum is a top to bottom explanation of Arbitrum's technical design and rationale.
Rayonism Project Now Live
This is a project with Eth1 and Eth2 clients to build an Ethereum Merge testnet during the ETHGlobal Scaling Ethereum hackathon, and prototype sharding on top of it.
Caspian Announced
Caspian is a new L2-powered AMM design from StarkWare. This AMM leaves assets on L1, resulting in defragmented liquidity, and better capital efficiency. StarkEx 3.0 (Coming in June 2021) will support Caspian. It will include two new primitives required for implementing Caspian: L1 Limit Orders, and Batch-Long Flash Loans.
mStable Launches Feeder Pools
Feeder Pools are pegged asset liquidity pools comprising of 50% fAsset (like BUSD) and 50% mAsset (like mUSD). mAssets are the default trading pair of all fPools, and efficiently bridge liquidity from each fPool to the main mAsset pool.
Dharma Introduces Gas-Lite
Gas-Lite allows users to save up to 80% on Network Fees when you deposit to yield protocols from their bank account on Dharma.
Element Finance Raises $4.4 Million
The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Placeholder Ventures with participation from SV Angel, A.Capital, Scalar Capital and Robot Ventures along with various angels.
Sushi 2021 Q1 Update
Updates on new hires, BentoBox & Kashi release, governance proposals, Onsen reward program and more in this quarterly review from the Sushi team.
ALPHA Tokenomics Now Live
ALPHA stakers will not only earn protocol fees from Alphaâs entire product suite, but will also unlock product specific benefits by utilizing them as ALPHA stakers.
Greenwood Raises $2 Million
Greenwood is a DeFi lending protocol that raises $2 million in a round led by Polychain Capital.
A Prelude to AlchemixDAO
In this piece, the Alchemix team runs through their plans for their DAO, what part the ALCX token plays in it, their plans for layer 2/scaling and more.
Zora Raises $8 Million
Zora, a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has raised nearly $8 million in equity sales from various investors (according to regulatory documents).
Kyber Dynamic Market Maker (DMM) Now Live
DMM is a next-gen AMM designed to optimise fees and enable extremely high capital efficiency for liquidity providers.
EPNS and Uniswap Team Up
Uniswap will be participating in EPNSâs pilot program and to develop the core EPNS protocol.
Aave Deploys on Polygon
Aave was deployed to Polygon (a sidechain to Ethereum) this week and the team also detailed their future plans on how they will be tackling scaling going forward.
imToken Raises $30 Million
Crypto wallet and blockchain technology company imToken announced today the completion of a $30 million Series B funding round led by Qiming Venture Partners, with returning investor IDG Capital also participating along with new investors Signum Capital, HashKey and Breyer Capital.
Polygon and Connext Partner Up
As a first step in the partnership, the teams have integrated Connext into wallet.matic.network for fast USDC and USDT transfers between Ethereum and Matic.
Fei Protocol Genesis Completed
The genesis event resulted in 639,000 ETH being committed to the protocol resulting in a mint of $1.3 billion FEI.
SuperRare Raises $9 Million
The round was led by Velvet Sea Ventures and 1confirmation with participation from Version1, Collaborative Fund, Shrug Capital, Third Kind, The LAO, SamsungNext and more.
Palm NFT Announced
Palm is a new token-powered ecosystem for NFTs running on a sidechain, which is connected to Ethereum, and features low gas costs, fast transaction finality, and 99% more energy efficiency than proof of work systems.
Liquity Raises $6 Million and Launches on Mainnet
Liquity has raised $6M In Series A funding led by Pantera Capital with follow on investments from Nima Capital, Alameda Research and others. The project was also launched onto the Ethereum mainnet and users can now start interacting with the protocol.
Gro Raises $7.1 Million
The round was led by Galaxy Digital and Framework Ventures, with participation from Variant, Northzone, Nascent, a_capital and 3AC.
Coordinape Announced
Coordinape is a social graph based contributor reward system where contributors can allocate points to other contributors which builds up a contribution graph over time.
Perpetual Protocol Staking Now Live
PERP token holders can now stake their tokens to earn rewards.
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Podcasts
EIP-1559 | Hasu - Bankless
Opyn: The Release of V2 - Epicenter
Alex Salnikov from Rarible.com on NFTs - Crypto Testers
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Head of Operations - Set
Technical Support Lead - GridPlus
Ethereum Core Developer - Gnosis
Website Design Contractor - Bankless
+1000âs more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
EthHub Weekly #160
Just a small technical quibble with the title. I believe Coinbase is doing a direct listing, not an IPO. The article you linked has it right.