EthHub Weekly #184
Polygon and EY team up, Optimism announces major upgrade, Hop now supports Arbitrum, Uniswap launches auto router 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.
🤪 Ups and Downs
Well that was quite a wild week in the crypto markets hey? At time of writing the price of ETH is hovering just above $3,000 as it dumped due to a global equities sell-off that seems to have been caused by some real estate industry troubles in China. You’ve probably seen all the hot takes about this on Twitter by now so I won’t give mine but be sure to listen in to the podcast tomorrow for Eric and I’s thoughts.
I made 2 media appearances over the last week - one was on Bankless’ new show Layer 0 where David Hoffman and I talked about all things Ethereum, life, and beyond (watch that here) and the other was on the Staking Mondays podcast to talk about all things staking and eth2 (watch that here).
Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony
News of the Week
😬 OpenSea Confirms Executive Used Insider Knowledge When Buying NFTs
On Tuesday, OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer said that Chastain had been asked to resign from his position at the startup.
"When we launched OpenSea, there was only one collection on our platform: CryptoKitties. Today, there are 20 million NFTs to discover on OpenSea," he wrote. "We owe this growth to the vibrant community of creators and collectors who use our platform every day, and we have a strong obligation to this community to move it forward responsibly and diligently. The behavior of one of our employees violated that obligation and, yesterday, we requested and accepted his resignation."
Finzer said that a previously announced investigation is ongoing "but we are committed to quickly implementing its recommendations."
⚖️ Binance to Abandon Decentralized HQ Concept After Some Regulators Think it’s ‘Dodgy’
Crypto exchange Binance is poised to shift away from its long-standing "decentralized headquarters" narrative as it faces global regulatory headwinds.
In a TV interview with the South China Morning Post on Thursday, Binance co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao was asked how Binance is getting itself ready to apply for licenses in jurisdictions that have clearer licensing regimes.
In response, Zhao acknowledged that Binance's pitch over the past several years that it is a global, decentralized operation with no headquarters does not go down well with regulators.
"Four years ago when we started it, we wanted to embrace the decentralized model so we wanted to have decentralized teams everywhere. But we do run one centralized exchange, which is the biggest part of our business. Now we have come to realize that for the regulators, we need to be centralized," he said, during the interview.
Project Updates
Ethereum Cat Herders Update #48
Ethereum mainnet attack, Travis CI security issue, Merge — engine API design, Beacon chain upgrade — Altair on mainnet in October, All core dev meeting, Verkle Tree presentation, and more community update.
Arbitrum Sequencer Suffers Brief Downtime
The Arbitrum Sequencer was down for approximately 45 minutes on September 14th due to a bug that caused the sequencer to get stuck when it received a very large burst of transactions in a short period of time.
The Future of Optimistic Ethereum
One-click deploy is coming in October for Optimistic Ethereum as OE will now have EVM equivalence meaning that no modifications need to be made to the code of any app already running on Ethereum layer 1.
Polygon and EY Team Up
Polygon have started a collaboration with EY, a global professional services and technology firm, on building Ethereum scaling and enterprise solutions. The first release is Polygon Nightfall, a privacy-focused rollup.
Hop Protocol Adds Arbitrum Support
Users can now send USDC and USDT from Arbitrum to any Hop supported network in minutes and vice versa.
ENS and Spruce Team Up
The two teams have teamed up to build a functional Sign-in with Ethereum feature that will allow users to use their Ethereum accounts to access web services instead of accounts owned by large corporations.
Uniswap Launches Auto Router
Auto Router delivers better execution prices for traders by splitting routes, using more data, and factoring in gas costs.
Zapper Quests Season 2 Announced
This season builds on the success of Season 1 with an introduction to Zapperverse Lore and exciting new mechanisms including rarity levels, crafting, and Volts.
Morty’s Introduced
Martingale shares (Morty’s) represent fractional ownership of classes of NFTs. They do not require buyouts or oracles, but instead rely on a random Martingale settlement process.
Loomlock Detailed
Loomlock is a physical lockout device that is designed to give you back control of your life from addictions and vices. A Loomlock comes with a built-in timer, and until that timer reaches zero, the Loomlock remains locked.
Zodiac Unveiled
Zodiac is a composable design philosophy for DAOs and a collection of tools built according to an open standard. The zodiac open standard enables DAOs to act more like constellations, connecting platforms, protocols, and chains, no longer confined to monolithic designs.
Immutable Raises $60 Million
Immutable has raised $60 million in a Series B funding round to bolster its non-fungible token (NFT) trading infrastructure. The round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures and King Rival Capital.
OpenSea Mobile App Intoduced
Discover NFTs by category, track the latest drops, and follow the collections you love with the new OpenSea mobile app.
Staking v2 Live on mStable
You can now earn MTA rewards, swap fees and Balancer tokens in v2 of the mStable staking system.
Optics Bridge Now Live
Users can now bridge any ERC-20 token between any supported network (with Ethereum, Polygon and Celo currently supported).
EnterDAO Whitepaper Published
In this whitepaper, EnterDAO details their core products, roadmap, token distribution and more.
0xMaki Steps Down from Sushiswap Lead Role
An anonymous leader at decentralized exchange protocol Sushiswap - 0xMaki - has stepped down from his leadership position with the project and into an advisory role.
Domination Finance Raises $3.2 Million
The round was led by ParaFi Capital with participation from a wide range of other investors.
Forefront Raises $2.1 Million
The raise was done via a community driven treasury diverisation round that was led by 1kx and Scalar capital with participation from other funds and angels.
LayerZero Introduced
LayerZero bills itself as “an omnichain interoperability protocol” that aims to connect all chains in a seamless way.
Aztec Protocol Updates
Gas efficiency improved on Aztec’s rollup, founders Zac and Joe make an appearance on Epicenter, Aztec team continues to grow and more. Aztec 2.0 updates were also detailed here.
Tracer Perpetual Pools Live on Arbitrum
Perpetual Pools is a new financial primitive that enables anybody to take a short or long position on any underlying asset. These positions are non-liquidatable, fully collateralised, fully-fungible and can exist perpetually without upkeep. You can now trade these perpetual pools on Arbitrum.
1inch and Oasis Team Up
The integration provides Oasis users with cheaper swap rates and better security, while also expanding 1inch’s reach in the DeFi space.
Oasis Multiply Now Live
You can now increase your exposure on MakerDAO up to 4x in a single click using the Oasis Multiply feature.
Unirep Introduced
Unirep is a protocol that allows users to receive and give reputation anonymously and prove their own reputation on other platforms that support the protocol.
Smol Puddle Launched
Smol Puddle is the first ERC721 Market for Arbitrum with a decentralized orderbook using Waku and 99.9% client-side powered.
Nested AMMs Introduced
Nested AMM is an AMM design which can handle multiple related tokens, and money (stablecoins). It allows for low-slippage trades between the related tokens, and higher slippage when trading with money.
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
The Grand Design - The Daily Gwei
Weekend at Arby’s - The Daily Gwei
How to Join a DAO - William M. Peaster via Bankless
Volitions: Best of All Worlds - Polynya
The Lay of the Modular Blockchain Land - Polynya
How To Think About Token Generation Events Using DeFi - Jason Choi and Sanat Kapur via Deribit Insights
NFT Crowdfunding for Non-crypto Products - Loomdart
Crypto as a Public Good: Privacy - Nick Bolduc via Status Blog
The Eightfold Path to DAOism - Maria Gomez, Julia Rosenberg and Chun Poon
Fraud Proofs: How Validators Keep Arbitrum Honest - Offchain Labs
Bridges in Crypto-Space - Ben Adar Hyman via ChainSafe
Modelling the Impact of Altair - Pintail
Using Eth.Limo as an Alternative to Eth.Link in Fleek - Fleek Blog
Podcasts
How Crypto Can Be Good for the Environment | Klima DAO - Bankless
Can Bitcoin Be Secured Only by Transaction Fees? Two Researchers Sound Off - Unchained
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Smart Contract Engineer - Zapper
Full-Stack Engineer - WalletConnect
Senior Frontend Developer - Snapshot
Senior Backend Data Engineer - Apy Vision
+1000’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!