EthHub Weekly #46
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
š« How to Get Involved in Crypto
One of the most common questions I get asked is how people can get more involved in the crypto ecosystem. The good things is that thereās plenty of ways to get involved - some of which Iāll list below.
The most obvious is to get a job in crypto! My go to resource for this is Cryptocurrency Jobs as they work hard to connect talent and startups within the space. Whether youāre a developer, researcher or even a designer, the website has a number of opportunities available at all of the best companies that are building the decentralized future.
Next, you can also attend local meetups for any crypto community youāre interested in or attend bigger meetups like the upcoming ETHDenver and Edcon (the Ethereum Community Developers Conference).
Speaking of Edcon, itās taking place in Sydney, Australia from the 8th-14th of April (Iāll be there!) and weāve teamed up with the organizers to offer 10% off tickets when you use the promo code āEthHubā. You can head here to learn more and buy a ticket.
A few other ways to get involved:
Contribute to open-source projects (including EthHub!)
Answer peoples questions on various crypto subreddits
Get involved on crypto twitter
Contribute your thoughts via blog posts
Organize local meetups
And lots more that I donāt have room to list!
Have a great week everyone :)
-Ā Anthony
News of the Week
š¤Æ Messari Releases Explosive Report on Ripple and XRP
A new report from crypto data startup Messari estimates that the true market capitalization and circulating supply of the digital asset XRP is markedly less than what data sources currently present.
XRPās circulating supply is pegged at roughly 41 billion tokens. But in its report, Messari posits that of that figure, 19.2 billion XRP āmay be illiquid or subject to significant selling restrictionsā tied to daily trading volume, including āat least 6.7 billion XRPā held by Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb that are subject to an agreement between him and Ripple.
In addition, Messari said that it believes that the circulation figure includes 5.9 billion XRP pledged by Ripple co-founder to a nonprofit entity called RippleWorks, an amount that it contended hasnāt been delivered. As well, Messari identified 2.5 billion XRP held by RippleWorks that are also subject to daily selling restrictions.
Further, the report also estimates that as much as 4.1 billion XRP sold via XRP II, Rippleās money-services business, is also subject to selling restrictions.
š¤ Samsung Galaxy S10 Leaked Images Show Crypto Wallet Integration
Newly leaked images of Samsungās flagship Galaxy S10 device show support for cryptocurrencies within the device. The āSamsung Blockchain KeyStoreā is described as both āa secure and convenient place for your cryptocurrencyā and a place to āsecure and manage your blockchain private key.ā
A user may import an existing wallet to transfer existing cryptocurrency. The image shows that multiple cryptocurrencies are supported, although only Ethereum is named directly. Additionally, a user may create a new cryptocurrency wallet with Samsung Blockchain KeyStore.
š A16z-backed Startup Anchor Labs Launches Crypto Custodial Service
A crypto startup has launched a custodial service for institutions that it claims is more secure than cold storage yet offers easier access to assets.
Anchor Labs, which previously raised $17 million in a series A round backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Max Levchin, Khosla Ventures, Blackrockās Mark McCombe, Elad Gil and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, announced the launch of Anchorage, a digital asset custodian, on Wednesday.
Anchorage says it can deliver āall the benefits of asset accessibility,ā which include capturing the yield from staking a cryptocurrency, voting, confirming proof of existence and faster transactions.
š Cboe Exchange Withdraws Proposal for VanEck-SolidX Bitcoin ETF
The Cboe BZX Exchange has withdrawn a proposed rule change that, if approved, would clear the way for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) backed by VanEck and SolidX.
In a noticeĀ published Wednesday, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deputy secretary Eduardo Aleman wrote that the Cboe BZX Exchange had pulled its proposed rule change, which would have allowed it to list shares of the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust if approved. The exchange filed its withdrawal on Jan. 22.
While the notice itself did not provide a reason for the withdrawal, some securities lawyers speculated that the ongoing government shutdown would result in the ETF being denied, as no staffers at the SEC are able to review the proposed rule change.
š Robinhood Crypto Nabs Coveted BitLicense
Robinhood, the California-based broker, now has the green light from regulators in New York to open up shop in the state, the firm said Thursday.
The company announced that the New York Department of Financial Services granted Robinhood the so-called BitLicense, which is only held by a handful of crypto companies including Genesis Trading and payments firm Square. The agency also granted LibertyX a license.
Project Updates
Ethereum Constantinople Post Mortem Report
The recently announced Ethereum Cat Herders initiative put out their first report which covers the process Ethereum and its community went through during the Constantinople hard fork postponement. The report also includes ways to address what could have been done to prevent it and to create actionable items and processes for the future.
The Great /r/EthTrader Donut Experiment
Unless youāve been living under a rock in Ethereum land, you would of heard all about the /r/EthTrader donut experiment that has been happening over the past week or so. Basically, someone created a way for /r/EthTrader Reddit karma to be tokenized and now people are speculating on the price of $DONUTS. Weāll be talking all about this experiment on our weekly podcast recap (due out in around 30 hours) but in the meantime you can:
Kyber Network Details Its 2019 Plans
These plans fall into three key areas:
Implement a permissionless liquidity pool on Kyber.
Support end user swaps, NFT and commerce payments, exchanges and trading, defi and liquidity provisioning.
Establish a technical, communication and governance framework for treasury decisions
What's New in Eth2 - 25 January 2019
Ben Edgingtons weekly update on all the developments happening with Ethereum 2.0 including a nice little op-ed about what a migration from Eth1.0 to Eth2.0 may look like.
MyCrypto Acquires Ambo & Team
Ambo is a mobile and desktop wallet app that gives you access to the web3 and decentralized finance ecosystem on Ethereum. This week, MyCrypto CEO Taylor Monahan announced that they had acquired the Ambo product and team because their visions were aligned.
Dharma Markets Report
Max Bronstein from Dharma published the first Dharma Markets Report this week. This new report/newsletter is your go-to resource for staying up to date with the decentralized financial system. I highly recommend signing up!
Veil Acquires Predictions.Global
Augur relayer Veil announced this week that they have acquired Predictions.Global - āthe CoinMarketCap for the Augur ecosystemā - and will integrate it into their own platform.
Speaking of Augur, Guesser.io will be live on the Ethereum mainnet on January 29th.
New Balance.io iOS Beta is Out
Mobile Ethereum/web3 wallet Balance.io was updated this week with a bunch of new features including the ability to import seed phrases!
Announcing Yeeth
Yeeth is a new Ethereum 2.0 client being built using the Swift programming language by Dean Eigenmann and Eric Tu (as part of ZK Labs). You can check out all the teams building Ethereum 2.0 over here.
Nimbus Testnet Simulation
Bruno Å kvorc from the Nimbus team explains how the team are experimenting with the Beacon chain and validators through testnet simulations.
Introducing the Decentralized Bank
InstaDApp is a Decentralized Bank on top of MakerDAO Protocol in an easy-to-use interface by abstracting complexities under the hood for the end users.
The team also built MakerScan - a MakerDAO explorer.
Updates on FOAM
A large and detailed update from the FOAM Protocol team going over all the recent developments (including updates on hardware)!
On-Chain Activity
Matthew Vernon tokenized himself this week which means you can now trade your $ETH for $BOI (a tokenized representation of Matthews time).
Request Network becomes the second (known) project to open a CDP using their ICO funds (the first being Aragon).
Augur Leaderboard from Mike McDonald shows the profits that people are making on Augur.
The Block now has a detailed weekly on-chain activity piece that is put together by Matteo Leibowitz.
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Bitcoin Post-issuance: An Existential Threat (recommended read)
Podcasts
Martin Kƶppelmann of Gnosis: DEXs, DAOs and Predictions of the Future - Into the Ether
Ep 19, MakerDAO, Novel Paradigms for Risk Management with Steven Becker, President and COO - Wyre Talks