EthHub Weekly #60
Bitfinex planning token sale, a new ethereum.org, use DAI without fees, ConsenSys launches developer portal and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
🎣 The Genesis of the EthHub Community Call
It’s finally time! We announced the official launch of the EthHub Community Call and Forum this week with the first call happening on May 7th at 14:00 UTC and you can find the agenda here. Keep an eye on the document and our socials for the livestream link - we look forward to seeing you all on the call!
Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony
News of the Week
🤯 Bitfinex Plans $1 Billion Token Sale
Bitfinex had an eventful week last week starting off with the news that Tether is only 74% backed by cash and then details came to light that the exchange is moving to raise as much as $1 billion through a token sale.
Zhao Dong, a Bitfinex shareholder who first revealed the exchange was thinking of doing an initial exchange offering (IEO) earlier last week, posted on WeChat Wednesday that individuals interested in participating should reach out to either him or to DFund, a group he founded.
There will be a minimum buy-in of $1 million, and a total supply of 1 billion tokens, available for $1 each, Zhao wrote. He further claimed that $500 million has already been subscribed.
Zong described the token as a “hybrid” of BNB, the token issued by Binance that can be used to pay trading fees on that exchange, and BFX, the token Bitfinex issued to customers who lost money in a 2016 hack, which was convertible to equity and was fully redeemed the following year.
It is unclear how exactly the proceeds would be used, though it is possible the exchange will look to use the funds to make up for an $850 million shortfall it suffered last year after its payment processor’s funds were seized by national authorities.
🤔 Project Libra: Facebook to Launch Stablecoin-based Payments Network
Facebook's long-rumored stablecoin will be at the center of a brand new payments network, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
They company is already in discussions with payment networks Visa and Mastercard and payments processors First Data as well as large e-commerce merchants. The stablecoin will exist to eliminate credit card fees for merchant and avoid the volatility of other cryptocurrencies.
The company is considering tying the coin to Facebook's core ads engine, rewarding users for viewing ads and then purchasing goods, similar to how loyalty points rewards work.
👋 Earn.com Founder Balaji S. Srinivasan Is Leaving Coinbase
Balaji S. Srinivasan, founder of Earn.com and CTO of Coinbase, publicly announced his exit from the company in a pair of Tweets a few days ago.
“Coinbase was fun and it was energizing working with so many great people. I’ll be taking a bit of time off to get back in shape — and up to speed on everything happening while I was heads down,” he wrote. “More soon!”
“The Earn integration was successful and we’ve closed ~$200M in deals for the new Coinbase Earn. Was also my privilege to help with shipping new assets, launching USDC, & getting staking/voting going.”
Coinbase bought Earn.com in 2018 and made Srinivasan CTO after months of rumors. Earn started as the secretive and well-funded 21E6 aka 21.co which released a mining product before pivoting to a service that paid users for answering questions.
😔 BreakerMag Shutting Down
Breaker Magazine, the crypto publication tied to an entertainment studio of the same name, is shutting down, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The publication was launched last year as an independent unit of SingularDTV, a self-proclaimed blockchain firm for the entertainment industry, which rebranded to Breaker earlier this year.
The firm was one of a number of notable ventures in crypto media to launch in 2018, including Decrypt Media and The Block — all of which came online in the hopes of chipping away at the marketshare of CoinDesk and other mainstream outlets in their coverage of the nascent market, which is known for pay-for-play and poor journalism.
Project Updates
A New Ethereum.org
After a long time and a lot of nagging from the community, the “official” Ethereum website has now been completely refreshed with a host of new information (including links to EthHub). The website is completely open-source and anyone is able to contribute to improving it.
Introducing CDP Saver
CDP Saver is a fully functional CDP dashboard with advanced, yet accessible features, including Repay, Boost and a CDP Marketplace. The most notable feature, Repay, lets you increase your CDP’s ratio and make it safer by taking part of the collateral out of the CDP and using it to pay back a part of the Dai debt all within a single transaction. CDP Saver is live on the Ethereum mainnet.
Dapper Smart Contract Wallet Launched
I missed this one last week!
Dapper is a new smart contract wallet from the creators of CryptoKitties (Dapper Labs). Dapper provides security features like account recoverability & fraud protection and soon the wallet will feature smart fee management and multi-device support.
Counterfactual Development Update #5
Counterfactual updates us on the last 2 weeks worth of developments including the announcement that the Connext team will be building on top of the Counterfactual framework going forward - shared standards ftw!
Students in Singapore to Get Digital Certs
From this year, graduates from local schools – including secondary schools, junior colleges and tertiary institutions – will receive digital certificates for the qualifications they obtain using the OpenCerts platform - all built on Ethereum.
Metacash - DAI Without Fees
The Metacash team built a gasless non-custodial DAI wallet that allows you to send DAI and pay transaction fees in DAI instead of Ether - this is achieved through the use of meta-transactions.
ConsenSys Launches Ethereum Developer Portal
The Ethereum Developer portal is a place to get started and find the tools you need to develop and build applications on Ethereum.
Gnosis Releases dxDAO Whitepaper
The dxDAO is a new type of DAO being built by the Gnosis and DAOstack teams and will be initialized on May 29th, 2019.
dYdX Open to the Public
dYdX — the smarter margin trading and leverage platform — is now live and open to the public! Additionally, the team open-source the protocol powering the new dYdX.
Making Maker: April 2019
The Maker team was incredibly busy during April - launching v0.2.3/4 of multi-collateral dai to the Kovan testnet, upgrading the maker ecosystem foundation structure, collaborating & partnering with projects in and outside of the ecosystem as well as the latest dai integrations.
Introducing Defiscan.io
Defiscan shows you general stats from three different protocols: Compound Finance, Uniswap and SpankChain SpankBank - mobile and desktop friendly!
MetaMask Monthly: April
MetaMask walks us through what they achieved in April: simpler tokens transfers, MetaMask support for the Goerli testnet, community spotlights and much more.
Lighthouse Update #10
Development update from Eth2.0 team Sigma Prime covering their presentation at EDCON, state transition tests, merkle hashing and next steps for the team.
Privacy in Pantheon
Ethereum client Pantheon 1.1 was released on April 30th and comes with a new privacy feature that now has a comprehensive suite of enterprise-grade offerings that make Pantheon the premier Ethereum client for enterprises.
Future Vision for Lodestar
Gregory from Chainsafe (the team building the Lodestar Eth2.0 client), gives us a brief run through on the plans for the team and client going forward.
Loopring Protocol 3.0
Loopring Protocol 3.0 comes with two main benefits: higher throughput & lower costs as well as immediate settlement - this is achieved through the use of zkSNARKs.
Alice’s Technical Proposal
A look into how Alice is changing the game for crypto wallets using mini dapps.
DEX.AG New Features
DEX.AG has been updated and you can now instantly buy assets across a range of DEXs as well as easily search all asset pairs.
Community Member Spotlight
This week we’re highlighting the work of Alexintosh on DexWallet.
DexWallet is a mobile DeFi wallet for the Ethereum open financial system. The wallet allows you to borrow, lend, exchange and stake your crypto using protocols such as Uniswap, Compound and MakerDAO - all from one sleek interface.
You can download DexWallet on the iOS App Store.
On-Chain Activity
DAI finally hovering very close to its peg after the latest stability fee raise to 19.5%
Uniswap crosses $10m in liquidity
The 0x protocol saw a massive drop off on volume in December 2018 due to DDEX forking off of the platform but volumes have slowly been returning over March and April of 2019 (as seen below)
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Aragon Vote Shows the Perils of Onchain Governance (highly recommended read)
Set Protocol: Introducing structured products to Open Finance (recommended read)
The DeFi Series — An overview of the ecosystem and major protocols
The Power of Open Networks: Public Blockchain Adoption in Capital Markets
Podcasts
Discussing the Ethereum Roadmap with Rick Dudley - Into the Ether
Exploring Aztec with Zac Williamson - Zero Knowledge
Videos
Misc
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week
Ecosystem Development - Gnosis
UX Researcher - Kraken Exchange
Investment Analyst - Pantera Capital
Senior Product Designer - MetaMask
+100’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
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