EthHub Weekly #67

Facebook announces Libra, Ethereum Foundation Q1 Report, Argent introduces Hopper, Grid+ announces the Phonon network and much more!

Jun 24, 2019

Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)

🎢 A Wild Week for Crypto

Well, that was one very interesting week! Crypto twitter was basically dominated by talk of Facebooks new cryptocurrency Libra for around 48 hours - it was exhausting! If you haven’t dug in yet, you’ll find all the relevant links to get yourself up to date below!

I also published a new blog post this week titled ‘How Set Protocol Works Under the Hood’ which focuses on diving deep into Set Protocol - the DeFi standard for bundled crypto-assets. I recommend giving it a read if you’re interested in the DeFi/Open Finance space of Ethereum.

ConsenSys is also hosting a virtual hackathon starting today if you’re a developer and interested in getting involved - first prize is 24 ETH!

Have a great week everyone!

- Anthony

News of the Week

♎ Facebook Announces Libra

Well Facebook finally announced their new cryptocurrency and it basically controlled what the internet spoke about for 48 hours. Instead of summarizing the news, I’m going to provide a few links below that’ll get you up to speed:

A huge shout out to The Block team as well - they were the MVP of Libra coverage.

⚖️ France to Create G7 Stablecoin Taskforce

France, which holds the Group of Seven (G7) presidency, will create the group taskforce on “stablecoin” projects, according to a report from Reuters on Friday. The news was announced by France’s central bank governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau. The taskforce will reportedly be headed by European Central Bank board member Benoit Coeure, and will also include Facebook’s planned cryptocurrency project, Libra.

France’s finance minister also reportedly called on the G-7 central bank governors and guardians of the global monetary system to review the social media giant’s cryptocurrency project and submit a report next month.

😵 QuadrigaCX CEO Set Up Fake Crypto Exchange Accounts With Customer Funds

QuadrigaCX’s late founder and CEO used customers’ funds to trade for his own account on other cryptocurrency exchanges, the Canadian firm’s bankruptcy trustee said.

In a bombshell 70-page report released Wednesday, Ernst & Young claimed that Gerald Cotten, who apparently died last December, transferred millions of dollars in crypto out of customer accounts and into other exchanges, with the funds being used to furnish Cotten’s personal lifestyle and trading habits. Overall, it appears that Cotten effectively stole more than $200 million USD from his customers.

More info in this tweet thread.

Project Updates

What’s New in Eth2 - 21 June 2019

Ben Edgington is back with a packed edition of What’s New in Eth2 featuring updates on all the work being done for the beacon chain ahead of the June 30th spec freeze, updates on phase 1 and a nice explainer of how the thinking around phase 2 has evolved over the last few weeks.

EF Development Report

This report from the EF is packed full of an enormous amount of information on what’s been happening in Ethereum over the last few months including Eth1.x, Eth2.0, client updates and more. My summary won’t do it any justice - just go read it!

Mobile & web-friendly privacy for Ethereum

Hopper is an open-source mixer created by the Argent team that enables private transfers on Ethereum. Users can deposit 1 ETH into the Hopper smart contract and later withdraw this deposit to a different account. They do this by providing a zero-knowledge proof that they previously deposited 1 ETH into the mixer. That proof does not reveal from which account the ether was sent.

Grid+ Announces the Phonon Network

The Phonon Network is a scalable, off-chain protocol for transacting with digital assets. Unlike payment-channel-based layer 2 solutions (e.g. Lightning, Raiden), the Phonon network uses packetized payments called “phonons” which can be transacted directly with any network participants (without the need for an intermediary).

Augur Teams up With bZx to Integrate Margin Trading

Wondering how Augur works with margin trading? The bZx smart contracts will hook directly into Augur, allowing Augur to act as a price feed and source of both trading and margin call liquidity. Traders borrow units of account and Augur market shares from other market participants and trade them from inside the bZx escrow contract.

You can play with a prototype here on the Rinkeby testnet.

Cloudflare Launches an Ethereum Gateway

This is another tool in Cloudflare’s Distributed Web Gateway tool set. Currently, Cloudflare lets you host content on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and access it through your own custom domain. Similarly, the new Ethereum Gateway allows access to the Ethereum network, which you can provision through your custom hostname.

ERC-1155 Now Official

Exactly one year after its introduction, ERC-1155 (the multi token standard) has become an official Ethereum token standard and is available to be used by the entire Ethereum development community.

Dharma Releases New Borrower Experience

Borrowers can now set their own loan duration, interest rate, liquidation threshold and collateralization ratio on the Dharma platform.

Connext Update #10

Connext outlines their plans for v2.0 and v2.x in this update which includes support for virtual apps and generalized state via Counterfactual and things like onion routing!

MEW Integrates MakerDAO CDP Portal

MyEtherWallet has integrated a MakerDAO CDP portal right into their native web interface so users can easily open, manage and close their CDPs.

Introducing Burner Factory

The Burner Factory is a simple website that lets a user configure a new Burner Wallet and deploy it to a new website without writing a single line of code!

Uniswap SDK Now in Beta

Developers can now use the Uniswap SDK to simplify integrating Uniswap into their project.

ENS Development Update

Various updates from the ENS team this week including a spotlight on who’s been integrating ENS lately.

InstaDApp Update

Lots of updates from the InstaDApp team this week including new integrations, more utility and what’s next for the platform.

Community Member Spotlight

This week we’re highlighting the great work of Ben Edgington!

You may already recognize him as he’s featured in this newsletter almost every week for his amazing ‘What’s New in Eth2’ updates. But did you also know that he is a core developer working on ConsenSys’ Pegasys client? Talk about an Ethereum powerhouse!

Keep up the great work Ben!

On-Chain Activity

Total value locked in DeFi is now ~$650 million
dYdX has been growing rapidly since May
Compound crosses $10M of active borrowing for the first time

Interesting Tweets

Ecosystem Bits

Blog Posts

Podcasts

Grid+: Lattice1 Hardware Wallet and Announcing Phonon Network - Into the Ether
DARMA Capital's Andrew Keys and James Slazas: $100M Ether Fund Launches - Chain Reaction Podcast
Uniswap – An Automated Decentralized Exchange for Ethereum - Epicenter
The Frontier of Dai, with Mariano Conti - POV Crypto
Burner Wallet with Austin Griffith - Wizard of Dapps

Misc

Looking for Work?

Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:

Digital Communications Specialist - Gemini
Business Development Analyst - Fnality
Operations Manager - BitPesa
Office Manager - Blockchain
+100’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!

Protect Your Crypto

Buy a hardware wallet:

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