EthHub Weekly #65
The SEC sues Kik, StarkDEX demo released, Microsoft partners with Truffle, Rocket Pool dev update and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
đšÂ Moloch Hungers
MolochDAO is looking for someone to complete the work of an Ethereum mixer using Vitalik Buterinâs recently released spec. Itâs roughly 4-6 weeks worth of work for an experienced developer so if youâre interested please reach out to either myself or Eric on Twitter.
Also, for those of you keeping tabs, we havenât forgotten about the merch store - it should be going live this week provided the final touches weâre putting on go through smoothly (theyâre mainly payment processor related).
Have a great week everyone!
-Â Anthony
News of the Week
đ¤Â More Details About Facebooks Crypto Project Emerge
Yet more details have emerged about Facebookâs upcoming cryptocurrency, said to be called GlobalCoin, and this time they come directly from the company.
Speaking to German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche earlier this week, Laura McCracken, Facebookâs head of financial services and payment partnerships for Northern Europe, confirmed that the planned stablecoin will not be tied to any single fiat currency, but will instead be linked to a basket of currencies in order to prevent volatility.
The executive also added to recent reports that GlobalCoin would be revealed later this month, saying that a white paper for the token would be published on June 18.
Facebook has also consulted the CFTC about their new project and will be creating an independent foundation to govern its cryptocurrency (charging $10 million to various parties for the privilege of being a node in the network).
âď¸Â The SEC Is Suing Kik for Its 2017 ICO
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is suing Kik for allegedly running an unregistered securities sale when it launched an initial coin offering (ICO) for its kin token in 2017.
In a filing submitted Tuesday in the Southern District of New York, the SEC said Kik violated Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933, which requires offerings to be registered.
âBy selling $100 million in securities without registering the offers or sales, we allege that Kik deprived investors of information to which they were legally entitled, and prevented investors from making informed investment decisions,â said Steven Peikin, co-director of the SECâs Division of Enforcement. âCompanies do not face a binary choice between innovation and compliance with the federal securities laws.â
As alleged in the SECâs complaint, Kik had lost money for years on its sole product, an online messaging application, and the companyâs management predicted internally that it would run out of money in 2017. Kikâs losses averaged about $30 million a year, according to the SEC, and earlier attempts by Kik to be acquired by a larger technology company had failed, with seven potential suitors all declining to buy or merge with the company.
I highly recommend checking out Katherine Wuâs breakdown of the SECâs 49-page complaint here.
đ¸Â Ex-Bitmain CEO to Launch New Business Within a Month
Jihan Wu, former CEO of Chinese mining giant Bitmain, is set to launch new startup Matrix before the end of July.
Details about former Bitmainâs CEO Jihan Wuâs newest venture havenât been particularly forthcoming.
But four sources close to the Chinese business mogul say Matrix â his new crypto-services business â is around a month away from going live.Â
And while Matrix is said to be in conversations with prospective clients globally (with the exception of U.S.-based customers), its biggest customer will be Bitmain itself, the giant bitcoin mining firm which filed to list publicly in Hong Kong. The assumption is that Matrix will offer custody and lending services to Bitmain, which generates an enormous volume of crypto assets as a miner, while in turn attracting a liquid pool for its over the counter (OTC) offering.
Project Updates
StarkDEX: Bringing STARKs to Ethereum
The 0x and StarkWare teams released a demo of the StarkDEX on the Ropsten testnet that boasts a system max capacity of 8,000 batched transactions per block (550 transactions per second) and is 200x cheaper in terms of gas costs. This is a huge step forward for Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges!
Rocket Pool Development Update - June 2019
The team covers their work on the upcoming public beta release of the Rocket Pool software as well as walking us through the introduction of a potential ârETH tokenâ that would act as a way for users to trade their staked ETH during phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0. You can think of the rETH token as being similar to Compounds cTokens or Uniswap liquidity pool tokens.
Microsoft Partners with Truffle
Truffle announced this week a partnership with Microsoft, in which Truffle will integrate its developer tools with Microsoft Azure to bring quality developer experience and DevOps to enterprise blockchains.
0x Development Update #19
May was a busy month for the 0x team with the announcement and proposal of a dozen new ZEIPs that encompasses the entire 0x v3.0 feature set, updates to the 0x launch kit and improvements to the overall developer experience.
Improvements to Uniswap Exchange
All known outstanding bugs fixed, new slippage warnings to prevent bad trades, better account flow, click to see inverted exchange rate, switch between pages using arrow keys and overall site speed improvements - the last few weeks have been busy for the Uniswap team!
Deposit Protected Crypto-wallet
Nexus Mutual and Argent have partnered up to offer the first deposit protection for cryptocurrency wallets. Deposit protection is enabled by Nexusâ Smart Contract Cover thta will be used by Argent to void for its own smart contract architecture.
MetaMask Monthly: May
Updates from the MetaMask team include a new privacy mode UI, highlights from the first MetaMask metrics report, and recaps from various events that the team attended.
FOAM Releases New Tools
The FOAM Map Cartographer tools have been released which enable direct filtering, sorting and the history of all points, challenges and cartographers on the FOAM Map.
Star Trek Coming to Ethereum
Lucid Sight and the development team working on Crypto Space Commander (CSC) are bringing the iconic brand of Star Trek to the CSC Universe as digital items that live on the Ethereum blockchain.
Gods Unchained Updates
The team released a New Player Guide for Gods Unchained this week that walks through each stage of a GU match and explains core concepts such as the mana system.
They also gave everyone that was on the beta wait-list access to the game.
Going live with StandardBounties 2.0
Bounties Network have deployed their upgraded smart contracts to the Ethereum main-net that bring a host of new features including NFT bounties, meta transactions, dynamic payouts and more.
Poketto Released to the App Store
Poketto is an xDai Mobile Wallet for iOS that was officially released to the app store this week.
Community Member Spotlight
This week weâre highlighting the work of Steven D. McKie.
Steven is the CEO and Founding Partner of Amentum - a hybrid crypto fund and the founder, host and editor at BlockChannel - an educational resource for crypto/blockchain.
Steven can also be seen regularly promoting Ethereum-based social networking app Cent, the Ethereum layer 2 infrastructure project Connext and âsaving the internetâ with Handshake.
Keep up the great work Steven!
On-Chain Activity
The cDAI/ETH Uniswap Pool is growing rapidly
DeFi Pulse now shows total value locked in ETH (select âTVL (ETH)â on the chart)
A nice visualization of Compound activity
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
EGS Garage with Chaz #5: Keep V1 of your Ethereum DApp simple
Blockchain fees are broken. Here are 3 proposals to fix them
Ethereumâs Newest 40 Users and thoughts on the next 10,000: A Quick Burner Wallet Case Study
Podcasts
Kyber Network: Providing Liquidity to the Decentralized World - Into the Ether
Secure Scuttlebutt â The âLocalizedâ but Distributed Social Network - Epicenter
Money Legos, with Alex Soong of Set Protocol - POV Crypto
Videos
Misc
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Product Manager - Horizon Blockchain Games
Product Designer - Fidelity Digital Assets
Business Development Lead - ConsenSys
Director of Marketing - Radar Relay
+100âs more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
Protect Your Crypto
Buy a hardware wallet:
Donations:Â 0xA19FCDaD77C1F0fd184689aca88BabCF68010347