EthHub Weekly #183

Rocket Pool gets a mainnet date, Gitcoin Grants Round 11 now live, EnterDAO announced and much more!

Sep 14, 2021

Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)

💸 Gitcoin Season

Well it’s that time for the year again when we all get out or ETH or DAI and donate to our favorite projects on Gitcoin Grants during a matching round ($950,000 of matching funds is up for grabs this time). Of course, if you’d like to support our ongoing work at EthHub you can donate to our grant here but definitely don’t stop there as there are plenty of other amazing projects for you to donate to!

Have a great week everyone!

- Anthony

News of the Week

💳 Mastercard Acquires CipherTrace to Boost Crypto Security and Compliance

Payment services company Mastercard has acquired blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace to bolster its own cyber security tools and to better comply with crypto regulatory guidelines, according to an announcement on Thursday. The amount offered for the acquisition remains undisclosed.

“With the rapid growth of the digital asset ecosystem comes the need to ensure it is trusted and safe,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of Cyber and Intelligence at Mastercard, in the statement. “Our aim is to build upon the complementary capabilities of Mastercard and CipherTrace to do just this.”

In addition to gathering data in the crypto space, CipherTrace publishes yearly reports about the trends in the crypto ecosystem and has built compliance tools for decentralized exchanges.

🤔 Brian Armstrong Responds to SEC Threats to Shut Down Coinbase Yield Product

Crypto exchange Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong responded Tuesday evening to planned enforcement by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission pertaining to the firm’s recently announced yield-generating product.

The firm, which went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange in April, received a subpoena by the SEC less than three months after it announced to the market a product, dubbed Lend, that would allow users the opportunity to earn yields on deposits of USDC on its platform. That's a much juicer yield than what is offered by consumer banks, which provide less than a basis point for savings accounts.

Armstrong said that the exchange contacted the SEC about its yield product and the SEC told Coinbase that the offering is a security but gave no guidance on the compliance with existing laws.