EthHub Weekly #53
MolochDAO, Tether drama, What's New in Eth2 returns, Daicard on mainnet and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
đšÂ MolochDAO Lives!
The official website for MolochDAO is now live at https://molochdao.com/ with a mostly functional UI with members & proposals. $275,000 (2200 ETH) has been pledged so far by 22 founders to support Ethereum open source software.
If youâd like to participate in the MolochDAO experiment you can follow these instructions and id youâd like to learn more about the project head here.
Have a great week everyone!
-Â Anthony
News of the Week
âď¸Â SEC Chair Clayton Affirms Agencyâs Stance Ether Is No Longer a Security
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissionâs chairman has seconded a colleagueâs analysis that found the worldâs second-largest cryptocurrency likely does not qualify as a security.
Last year, SEC Director of Corporation Finance William Hinman said during a speech that ethereum, the No. 2 coin by market cap, did not exhibit the properties of a security. At the time, he explained that he did not see a central group as being responsible for the cryptocurrency.
Congressman Ted Budd â with industry advocacy group Coin Center â asked for clarification on whether SEC Chairman Jay Clayton agreed with Hinmanâs remarks. The regulator has now responded by saying he agrees âthat the analysis of whether a digital asset is offered or sold as a security is not static and does not strictly inhere to the instrument.â
đ¸Â Tether Says Its USDT Stablecoin May Not Be Backed By Fiat Alone
Tether has updated the terms on its website, saying that its dollar-pegged USDT stablecoin may not be backed 100 percent by fiat reserves.
The new text states that while its stablecoin is 100 percent backed, its reserves may at times include other assets.
The website reads:
Every tether is always 100% backed by our reserves, which include traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities (collectively, âreservesâ).
However, Tetherâs previous terms, as seen on the Internet Archive in mid-February, indicated full fiat backing:
âEvery tether is always backed 1-to-1, by traditional currency held in our reserves. So 1 USD⎠is always equivalent to 1 USD.â
đ Mt. Goxâs Mark Karpeles Found Guilty
Mark Karpeles, former CEO of the long-defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, has escaped some charges, but been found guilty of manipulating exchange data in a Japanese court.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Friday, the Tokyo District Court found Karpeles guilty of wrongfully making electronic records connected to Mt. Goxâs books, but innocent on charges of embezzlement and breach of trust.
Karpeles was handed a suspended sentence of two years and six months. He must maintain a good record over the next four years to avoid jail time.
đ¤Â Galaxy S10 Wallet Doesnât Support Bitcoin
Samsung has revealed more details about the cryptocurrency capabilities of the Galaxy S10, its new flagship phone. The most striking detail? Its native wallet wonât support bitcoin, at least not out of the gate.
The phoneâs wallet, known as the Samsung Blockchain Wallet, will instead initially support only Ethereum and Ethereum-derived tokens, according to a Coindesk report. This follows leaked images of a purported crypto wallet in January, and official confirmation in February that the Galaxy S10 would support the secure storage of crypto private keys through a function called Samsung Knox.
Project Updates
Introducing the Dai Card
The Dai Card is now on mainnet and you can deposit up to $30 in Eth or Dai and send funds instantly and securely!
Cryptostaw Announced
Cryptostaw is a peer to peer payments application leveraging decentralized components. Cryptostaw is similar to Daicard but it uses Matic Networks implementation of plasma instead of state channels.
Gitcoin Grants: $50k Open Source Fund
Gitcoin has announced their second round of experiments with Liberal Radicalism - putting forward $50,000 to support 42 well known Ethereum projects.
Introducing Bison Trails
Bison Trails is an âinfrastructure as a service company designed for next-generation blockchain networksâ. The service allows users to spin up various types of blockchain nodes with just a few clicks.
Whatâs New in Eth2 - 15 March 2019
After a month-long hiatus, Whatâs new in Eth2 is back with a host of updates on Ethereum 2.0 including spec updates, âimplementation stuffâ, research and general news.
Ethereum 2.0 Development Update #24âââPrysmatic Labs
Another biweekly update from PryLabs covering their Github activities, upcoming work and the announcement of a new hire - Ivan Martinez - congratulations Ivan!
Carbon and AZTEC Protocol to Bring Private Stablecoin to Ethereum
Crypto startup Carbon is partnering with AZTEC Protocol, a privacy tech development firm, to leverage AZTECâs privacy technology for Carbonâs CUSD stablecoin. The privacy-enabled CUSD is set to go live on the Ethereum mainnet in the third quarter of 2019.
LOOM PlasmaChain Integrates with Top 100 ERC20 Tokens
You can now use the top 100 ERC20 tokens by market cap on the lightning-fast Ethereum layer 2 implementation - PlasmaChain.
Helena Goes Live on the xDai Sidechain
Helena, an Ethereum-based platform that leverages the power of global prediction markets to deliver real-time quantified blockchain insights, announced that it is now the first dapp to go live on the xDai sidechain, significantly improving the user experience by making transactions faster and cheaper.
OpenSea Launches Affiliate Program
You can now sign up for OpenSeas affiliate program and earn bounties by referring buyers to the site.
Create Your Own Prediction Market on Veil
This week Veil launched market creation so you can now create your own prediction market and get paid when others bet in it.
BitMEX Launches Ethereum Node Metrics Website
The new website, Nodestats.org, allows users to monitor the Ethereum network by displaying data from both Parity and Geth full and archival nodes.
SpankChain Updated Roadmap (NSFW)
An update from the SpankChain team going over what theyâre currently focused on and plans for the future. The team is also hiring front end and full-stack developers.
New Etherscan Feature
Developers can now view/explore âState Changesâ for any transaction ever made.
Community Member Spotlight
This week weâre highlighting Taylor Monahan - the Founder & CEO of MyCrypto!
MyCrypto is an open-source, client-side tool for generating ether wallets, handling ERC-20 tokens, and interacting with the Ethereum blockchain in a friendly way.
Taylor isnât just building MyCrypto - sheâs also doing deep dives into hot topics in the community like the recent QuadrigaCX fiasco.
Taylor also writes incredibly detailed blog posts over on her Medium profile. I recommend reading everything that she has published but if youâve only got time for one I suggest reading her excellent Crypto Security Guide.
On-Chain Activity
OpenSeaâs NFT growth chart
Dharma Borrow/Lend Volume visualized
$DAI briefly returned to its USD peg only to fall back down
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
MakerDAO Governance & Risk Call: Stability Fee hike post-mortem (highly recommended read)
Joe Lubin at SXSW: Ethereum Will Handle Millions of Transactions Per Second Within Two Years
Whatâs the MakerDAO Stability Fee and how does it affect me?
Journey to Scale on EthereumâââState Channels, Plasma and Plasma Cash
Maker (MKR) Valuation FundamentalsâââThe case for Trillion Dollar Maker
Validator Economics of Ethereum 2.0âââPart 2âŚThe Ether Vacuum (recommended read)
Whatâs MakerDAO and whatâs going on with it? Explained with pictures.
Podcasts
Ethereum 1.x: Ensuring the Future Sustainability of Ethereum with Alexey Akhunov - Into the Ether
How Uniswap Quickly Became One of the Most Popular Dexes - Unconfirmed
Videos
Misc
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week
Summer Research Analyst - CoinFund
Front End Engineer - Chainalysis
Blockchain Engineer - BitMEX
Blockchain Researcher - StarkWare
+100âs more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
Donations:Â 0xA19FCDaD77C1F0fd184689aca88BabCF68010347