EthHub Weekly #170
Alchemix launches alETH, PolygonScan launched, Curve v2 now live, Aztec goes open source and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
[Sponsored] DeFi users, you no longer need to pay expensive and unpredictable interest rates on your ETH-backed loans. Liquity is an immutable, governance-free borrowing protocol that allows you to borrow interest-free against ETH as collateral. Loans are paid out in LUSD — a USD pegged stablecoin, and need to maintain a minimum collateral ratio as low as 110%.
Outside of borrowing, users can deposit LUSD to the Stability Pool to earn LQTY rewards and participate in collateral liquidation events — purchasing ETH at a discount when liquidations occur. Lastly, users can stake LQTY to earn protocol revenue, which recently crossed >$12M since Liquity’s launch in April. To learn more, head over to liquity.org to get started and get the most out of your borrowing needs today!
🐻 Bear Markets are for Building
Maybe we’re in a “bear market”, maybe we’re not, but I think these general down markets are very healthy for the crypto ecosystem because they work to both keep the market in check and also provide breathing room for builders. Think about it - most of the top projects on Ethereum today were built and grown during the 2018/2019 bear market when the world had given up on Ethereum - I really can’t wait to see what shakes out after this downtrend is over!
Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony
News of the Week
🇸🇻 El Salvador Becomes the First Country Ever to Make Bitcoin Legal Tender
El Salvador’s legislature has passed a bill that will make bitcoin legal tender in the country. This marks the first time a country will recognize the cryptocurrency as a satisfactory form of payment for any sort of monetary debt.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, submitted the bitcoin proposal to the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday evening, calling for the country to "regulate bitcoin as unrestricted legal tender."
The proposal received a favorable opinion from the legislature, before they held an official vote. Legislature members passed the bill on late Tuesday night with a supermajority vote, receiving 62 votes for the bill out of a possible 84. According to the count, 19 opposed and three abstained.
🤔 Silvergate Bank Cuts Ties with Binance
Crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank has abruptly cut ties with crypto exchange operator Binance, The Block can confirm.
Binance sent an email to customers on Wednesday, two separate copies of which have been seen by The Block — one in English and one in Spanish. The email says that Binance will no longer support USD deposits and withdrawals via Silvergate Bank over SWIFT from June 11.
"USD deposits made to our Silvergate Bank account after 11 June 2021 (UTC 23:59) will be returned to your account within 21 working days," the email reads. "The returned amount may be lower due to external bank fees involved."
Project Updates
London Upgrade Overview
In this post, Tim Beiko gives an overview of all the EIPs that will be included in Ethereum’s next network upgrade.
StarkNet Planets Alpha on Ropsten
StarkNet is a permissionless Turing-complete ZK-Rollup that allows developers to implement their business logic of choice in a smart contract and deploy it permissionlessly.
Curve V2 Now Live
This new version of Curve brings with it the ‘TriCrypto’ pool which introduces the ‘transformed peg invariant’ that allows for high liquidity among differently priced assets.
alETH Now Live
alETH from Alchemix allows users to use their ETH as collateral in order to borrow alETH (while earning a yield).
The Graph and Arbitrum Team Up
The Graph’s hosted indexing and querying services are live on Arbitrum One joining other protocols and infrastructure providers including Gnosis Safe and Etherscan.
PolygonScan Launched
PolygonScan is a blockchain explorer for the Polygon PoS network built by the Etherscan team.
InstaDApp Raises $10 Million
The $10 million round, which involved the sale of tokens, was led by Standard Crypto. The pool of investors included the DeFi Alliance, Longhash Ventures, along with developer and Yearn founder Andre Cronje.
Introducing Alpha Launchpad
Alpha Launchpad aims to incubate new DeFi projects and in doing so grow the Alpha Universe of products.
Polygon Advocates Program Launched
Polygon Advocates are the closest members of the Polygon community, helping the core team take forward the mission of growing Ethereum and Polygon. You can apply to be one here.
Gitcoin and FundOSS Team Up
The FundOSS platforms is now using the “quadratic matching” mechanism that was popularized by Gitcoin to fund various non-crypto open source software projects.
Aztec Goes Open Source
All future releases of code that Aztec publishes will now be released under the Apache 2.0 license.
0x and Polygon Team Up
The Polygon ‘DeFi for All’ Fund has allocated $7M in MATIC to the 0x Community DAO and 0x Labs has contributed $3.5 million in ZRX to the DAO for a total of $10.5 million in funding.
OKEx Integrates with Polygon
You can now withdraw 23 different assets from the OKEx exchange directly into the Polygon network.
IndexCoop DAO Internship Program Introduced
Interested people can now apply to the Index Coop DAO internship program and work within one of the existing working groups.
Rari Capital Introduces Grants Station
Grants Station is an initiative to pay our grants to those who build on or add value to Rari Capital.
Opeth Finance Now Live
Opeth is a synthetic instrument fusing options with the underlying asset. Opeth harnesses the power of on-chain options and enables users to leverage ETH upside + yield farming and reduce downside protection cost.
Introducing Parcel
Parcel is a treasury management platform for DAOs which is now open for every DAO to use.
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Ethereum is Freedom - The Daily Gwei
Temporary Value Locked - The Daily Gwei
How to Grow Decentralized Communities - Peter Pan via 1kx
The Brilliance of Yield Farming, Liquidity Providing and Valuing Crypto Projects - Mark Cuban
Uniswap v3: The Universal AMM - Dan Robinson via Paradigm
Polygon and Ethereum: Piecing the Data Together - Ling Young Loon via Nansen
Crypto Social is More Than a Trend - Johnny Zerah via Status
How Volatility Drift Affects FLI Products - Cormac Daly via Index Coop
Podcasts
The Current State of DeFi | Vance Spencer, Santiago Santos, Spencer Noon - Bankless
Tornado Cash | Keeping Your Ethereum Transactions Private - Epicenter
Julian Koh from Ribbon Finance - Cryptotesters
Videos
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Blockchain Lead - Polygon
Back End Developer - APY Vision
Solidity Instructor/Teacher - Questbook
Frontend Engineer (React) - Maple Finance
+1000’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!