EthHub Weekly #182
Arbitrum One now live, MetaMask surpasses 10 million MAUs, zkSync 2.0 developer update 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, an immutable and governance-free borrowing protocol, allows you to borrow interest-free against your ETH. Loans are paid out in LUSD — a USD pegged stablecoin, and need to maintain a minimum collateral ratio as low as 110%. Get started here.
💰 Just Bull Market Things
Well, August was an absolutely crazy month for Ethereum thanks to NFT mania and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down with ETH on the cusp of achieving a new all time high (it’s hovering around $3,950 at time of writing). I remember just a couple of months ago people were calling for another 2 year bear-market and saying that the “party was over” - funny how fast things change, huh?
Oh and don’t forget to catch Eric on Bankless’ new Layer 0 podcast here.
Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony
News of the Week
⚖️ SEC Investigating Uniswap Labs
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reportedly investigating Uniswap Labs, the startup behind the largest decentralized cryptocurrency exchange.
The Wall Street Journal reported the news on Friday, citing "people familiar with the matter." Enforcement attorneys are said to be seeking information about how investors use Uniswap and how it is marketed.
A Uniswap Labs spokesperson told The Journal that the firm is is “committed to complying with the laws and regulations governing our industry and to providing information to regulators that will assist them with any inquiry.” An SEC spokesperson declined to comment to the news outlet, saying the agency doesn’t confirm or deny investigations.
🤔 Centre Consortium Announces New Team to Create Global Network of Stablecoins
Centre, the consortium founded by Circle and Coinbase that oversees the USDC stablecoin, has announced a new team to expand globally in the coming years.
The new team comprises of six people, including C-suite executives — John Shipman as chief commercial officer, Mark duBose as chief risk and compliance officer, Beth Zolkind as chief financial officer, Chad Richman as senior counsel, Jessica Gardner as business operations manager, and Kevin Mills as graduate project manager. They all have joined Centre in recent months and have previously worked at firms such as PwC Australia, Circle, Robin Hood Foundation, Fenwick & West, and Clearfield Capital.
With its core team in place, Centre now wants to create a "global network of stablecoins," CEO David Puth told The Block in an interview. "We have been working on building up partners overseas with whom we can ultimately connect interoperable stablecoins built to Center standards in other countries similar to USDC," said Puth.
Project Updates
Core Dev Apprenticeship Program Second Cohort Announced
Aspiring Ethereum core developers can apply to this program starting today with a deadline of September 13th. It will run from September 2021 to February 2022.
AllCoreDevs Update 006
In this update, Tim Beiko gives a breakdown of the pre-merge history - that is, the history of eth2, the various phases, layer 2 and more.
MetaMask Surpasses 10 Million MAU’s
From 545,080 monthly active users in July 2020 to 10,354,279 in August 2021, MetaMask has grown over 1,800% in just one year.
Arbitrum One Mainnet Now Live
Users can now bridge into Arbitrum One and start using apps such as Uniswap, SushiSwap and Balancer with low fees and fast transactions.
Offchain Labs also announced that they have raised $120 million in a Series B round.
zkSync 2.0 Developer Update
Updates on zkSync 2.0 including a delay, testnet rollout phases and how the team plans to approach a fair launch mainnet.
StarkNet Alpha 2 Detailed
With Alpha 2, StarkNet now supports composability, the main feature defining StarkNet’s Constellations phase.
OpenZeppelin also announced that they are joining the StarkNet effort.
Chainlink Live on Optimism
Chainlink price feeds are now live on the Optimistic Ethereum network. Optimism can now leverage Chainlink for inexpensive, low latency price updates in near real-time while still getting high-quality data & robust security.
Immutable X Self-Serve Now Live
Minting and trading is now open to everyone on the Immutable X platform - developers can get started here.
Blocknative Gas Estimator Browser Extension Announced
You can now access Blocknative’s industry-leading Gas Estimator right from your browser — and accurately estimate fees for legacy and EIP-1559 transactions.
Polygon Announces Hackathon
The hackathon has a cumulative prize pool of $100,000 and registrations are now open for developers.
Introducing ‘Alpha Buy Wall’
‘Alpha Buy Wall’ is a smart contract that allows anyone to bid for NFT, and provides a price floor for NFTs.
XMTP Raises $20 Million
The Series A was led by a16z with participation from various funds and many different angels. XMTP is a protocol that enables communication between existing wallets and public keys in a way that's secure and permissionless, built on top of a decentralized network.
Fei Grants Program Announced
The goal of the Fei Grants Program is to widen the base of contributors that make up our community and put more TRIBE in the hands of the people building Fei.
Floor Perps Introduced
Floor perps are synthetic NFTs that track the floor price of a given project and can be minted by locking up NFTs from that project.
DeFi Alliance Launches Gaming Accelerator
This gaming accelerator will help game startups with game design, community building, tokenomics and liquidity. It’ll be supported by the D.A.N. and an founding cast of mentors.
Hats Raises $3.5 Million
The round was led by Greenfield One with participation of Lemniscap, Spartan Capital, Accomplice, Collider Ventures, IOSG Ventures and others.
Trader Introduced
Trader allows users to instantly create a shareable trade with no platform fees and low gas costs.
Hyype Raises $1.5 Million
The seed round was led by Electric Capital with participation from some other investors.
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Top Signals - The Daily Gwei
Multi-Chain Speculation - The Daily Gwei
DeFi Short Squeeze - Seraphim via Euler
We Like The Loot - Not3Lau Capital
What is Optimistic Ethereum? - Infura Blog
Anatomy of an MEV Strategy: Synthetix - Robert Miller
The Importance of Client Diversity in the Run Up to the Merge - 0xmiel via Status
Lawyers, Bugs, and Money: When Bug Bounties Went Boom - Dennis Fisher via Decipher
Scaling DAOs Won’t Be Easy: Five Major Challenges to Overcome - Connor Spelliscy via The Defiant
Interactive Fraud Proofs: Arbitrum’s Secret Sauce - Offchain Labs
Podcasts
Galaxy Digital: Bridging Crypto and Institutional Worlds - Epicenter
How Another NFT Trend, .eth Names, Has Attracted the Likes of Budweiser - Unconfirmed
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Technical Recruiter - Status
Head of Engineering - Immutable
Senior Crypto Product Manager - Immutable
Senior Full Stack Web Developer - Maple Finance
+1000’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!