EthHub Weekly #77
Pantheon joins Hyperledger, more Ethereum Foundation grants announced, Dharma relaunches, a new What's New in Eth2 and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
🎙️ EthHub on Epicenter and A New Guide to DeFi
Eric and I recorded an episode of the Epicenter podcast a couple of weeks ago and it went live this week! We discussed EthHub, the Ethereum community, the role of the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik, the state of Ethereum 2.0 and much more. Be sure to check it out here.
Our good friend Ryan Sean Adams announced a new initiative this week that he’s calling ‘Bankless’ - it’s basically a newsletter that will guide new (and experienced) users through DeFi/crypto finance. It’s currently free (and you can subscribe here) but it will be going to a paid model of $12 per month starting November 1st. Do note that this is not a sponsored post - we just love spotlighting new education initiatives (free or paid).
Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony
News of the Week
😍 Ethereum Client Becomes First Public Blockchain on Hyperledger
Hyperledger has officially adopted its first public blockchain project in the form of ConsenSys’ Pantheon.
The Hyperledger technical steering committee approved Pantheon’s addition Thursday morning, renaming the initiative to Hyperledger Besu (a Japanese term for base or foundation). Pantheon was first proposed as a potential new member of the consortium on Aug. 8, joining the likes of Hyperledger Fabric (which IBM has supported) and Hyperledger Sawtooth (backed by Intel).
Pantheon includes a suite of Ethereum-based services built by PegaSys, an engineering team at ConsenSys. These services can operate on top of Ethereum’s public, private and test networks. Grace Hartley, strategy and operations associate at PegaSys, said Pantheon is ConsenSys’ only Ethereum client in its suite of open-source projects.
🤦♂️ Craig Wright to Forfeit 50% of Bitcoin Holdings
A corroborating order has been filed in Craig Wright’s sanctions and contempt hearing.
In a court document published Tuesday, Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart confirmed that Wright, the self-declared inventor of bitcoin, must forfeit half his crypto mined prior to 2014 to Ira Kleiman as well as half his intellectual property. Additionally, Wright is ordered to pay the attorney’s fees and related expenses incurred in this motion.
The court found Wright had argued in bad faith, perjured himself and admitted false evidence during the motion.
The ongoing trial began in 2018, when Kleiman – the brother of Wright’s late business partner Dave Kleiman – sued for half the bitcoin holdings in the so-called Tulip Trust, alleging that Wright defrauded the family’s estate.
⚖️ 4 Agencies Are Investigating Crypto Exchange QuadrigaCX
At least four different law enforcement and regulatory agencies are investigating defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, a new report by bankruptcy trustee Ernst & Young (EY) said.
George Kinsman, the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee and EY employee overseeing the exchange’s shutdown and the return of funds to its users, wrote a new report Monday sharing some information about EY’s ongoing attempts to recover crypto and fiat for its creditors.
The document outlines the different investigations surrounding the exchange, as well as EY’s motion to transfer QuadrigaCX’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings from Nova Scotia to Ontario, which the Big Four auditor says will reduce costs moving forward.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), FBI and reportedly an Australian investigative agency are all looking into the project. There also appears to be another investigation, though the agency behind it has not been disclosed.
Project Updates
Announcing Ethereum Foundation and Co-Funded Grants
The Ethereum Foundation (and ConsenSys) gave out more grants this week to teams building Eth2.0 clients, working on networking for Eth2, grants for Eth2 research and development and opened various bounties.
A Unified State Channel Specification for Ethereum
The Celer, Connext, Perun, PISA, Prototypal, Magmo, L4 teams along with the Ethereum Foundation this week announced the launch of an initiative to unify Ethereum's State Channels projects around a single standard. The project builds on years of research & development by the teams, as each of them pushed forward different components of the tech stack.
Ethereum Smart Contracts in L2: Optimistic Rollup
Karl Floersch describes “optimistic rollups” - a construction which enables autonomous smart contracts on layer 2 (L2) using the OVM. The construction borrows heavily from both plasma and zkRollup designs, and builds on shadow chains as described by Vitalik. This construction resembles plasma but trades off some scalability to enable running fully general (eg. Solidity) smart contracts in layer 2, secured by layer 1. Scalability is proportional to the bandwidth of data availability oracles which include Eth1, Eth2, or even Bitcoin Cash or ETC — providing a near term scalable EVM-like chain in layer 2.
Dharma V2 Enters Beta
Leveraging the Compound Protocol, Dharma V2 offers anyone in the world with an internet connection a way to save that’s as easy as creating an email account — and, soon, the ability to easily borrow against your crypto at a fixed interest rate.
What’s New in Eth2 - 31 August 2019
A nice concise update from Ben this week going over various feedback on the Phase 0 and Phase 2 specs along with some notes on recent topics from ethresear.ch, a recap of the most interesting recent Gitter conversations and an update on the interoperability retreat that’s happening in about 5 days.
Introducing Pool DAI
Pool DAI is a no-loss donation protocol enabling people to pool money together, lend it out, and donate the interest to a cause. It does this by pooling DAI and lending it out via Compound and then donating the interest earned to different causes.
Set Launches the ETH50SMACO
The ETH50SMACO Set automatically rebalances based on a crossover between the price of ETH and the 50 Day Simple Moving Average (50 SMA) technical indicator.
Counterfactual Development Update #13
Updates on protocol Standardization announcement & progress, the team identified a bug in common build tools causing mismatched bytecode when using CREATE2 and performance improvements to nodes supporting Connext Network.
Synthetix SIPs Website Now Live
The team at Synthetix recently began an initiative a la Ethereum EIPS, introducing Synthetix Improvement Proposals (SIPs) to formalise community governance of the change process for updates to the Synthetix system. The SIP process and the SIP website provides oversight and information about all proposed changes to the Synthetix system, enabling engagement and debate within the community.
AZTEC Announces Ignition
Ignition is the codename given to the AZTEC network’s setup ceremony that will be happening in October. You can apply to join the ceremony here.
Connext V2 Launch Partners Announced
Launch partners include wallets (MetaMask, Mosendo, Portis + more), infrastructure partners such as Infura and app partners like Civil, Relevant and dTok. Check out the full list here.
Introducing Web3 Permissions
This week, the MetaMask team introduces a new web3 permissions system that aims to do away with the dreaded ‘repeated confirmations’ that MetaMask users frequently experience.
Rocket Pool 2 - v1 Beta Launch
The Rocket Pool 2.0 v1 Beta will be starting in a few weeks, on the 24th September, 2019 00:00 UTC. The beta site will be running from https://beta.rocketpool.net, open to the public and will run for a month at the least. All you’ll need to participate is a browser with the latest version of MetaMask, some testnet ETH to stake, and RPL if you want to run a smart node in the beta. Both ETH and RPL will be freely available from a testnet faucet on the site when the beta begins.
Celer Partners with SkyDream Technology
This week Celer Network announced that they had formed a strategic partnership with SkyDream Technology, a multi-million-daily-active-user mobile mini game studio on platforms such as WeChat, Facebook and more.
The Erasure Protocol Awakens on Ethereum Mainnet
Numerai’s Erasure Protocol is now live on the Ethereum mainnet allowing users to interact with Erasure with real skin in the game.
Introducing ENS Login
ENS Login is an open standard for wallet support for Ethereum dapps.
Zerion iOS App Launched
Track your DeFi portfolio (Compound deposits, Maker CDPs) on your iPhone using the Zerion app.
God’s Unchained Update v0.17
This update brings a complete overhaul of the God’s Unchained card fronts, god icons and mana lock system - all while optimizing performance of the game.
Community Member Spotlight
This week we’re highlighting the great work of Nodar!
Nodar is making great hands on tutorials at DeFi Tutorials (we recommend subscribing). He’s also a co-founder of CountUp and a researcher at Hedger Protocol (option contracts on Ethereum).
Keep up the great work Nodar!
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Cross-Chain Infrastructure Revisited (recommended read)
Podcasts
Talking Ethereum 2.0 with Danny Ryan - Into the Ether
EthHub – Ethereum Education and the Quest for Ether Dominance - Epicenter
Rebuilding the Web, Restructuring Social Organizations, With Dan Finlay - POV Crypto
Videos
Misc
Meme of the Week
Presented without comment.
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Marketing and Community Lead - Compound
Systems Administrator - Coin Metrics
Crypto Policy Council - a16z Crypto
Product Manager - Harbor
+100’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
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