EthHub Weekly #79
Joe Lubin joins Hyperledger board, Coinbase announces USDC bootstrap fund, UMA released synthetic token builder and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
⛓️ Ethereum 2.0 Interoperability Event
Crypto news outlet The Block recently launched their new ‘The Block Daily’ premium subscription - something that I’ve been waiting for as I’m hungry to read more of Matteo’s Ethereum insights. If you’d like to sign up yourself, you can use this referral link for a monthly subscription or this one for an annual subscription (which works out cheaper). All use of proceeds from the referral links will adhere to our EthHub donation guidelines as outlined here.
The Ethereum 2.0 interoperability event featuring the engineering teams building the Eth2.0 clients was a massive success with 7 of the clients achieving interoperability! During the event, the teams were tweeting about their progress and Reddit user /u/ruvalm decided to track this here. Eric and I will be discussing this in further detail on this weeks Into the Ether weekly recap episode.
EthHub core contributor Chaz Schmidt has decided to start an initiative called ‘DeFiDoodles’ where he explains different DeFi concepts using illustrations. You can check out his first one here.
Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony
News of the Week
🤔 Coinbase May Soon Launch an Initial Exchange Offering Platform
San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase may soon issue a proprietary exchange token, according to Coinbase’s head of institutional sales in Asia, Kayvon Pirestani.
Speaking on a panel Wednesday about the evolution of cryptocurrency capital formation at CoinDesk’s Invest: Asia conference, Pirestani said an initial exchange offering (IEO) platform is one of several capital-formation tools currently being explored by Coinbase.
“We think there’s a really interesting opportunity there for Coinbase,” said Pirestani, adding: “In a nutshell, Coinbase is carefully exploring not only the IEO space but also STOs (security token offerings). But I can’t make any formal announcements right now.”
👍 Ethereum Co-Founder Joe Lubin Joins Hyperledger Board
Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum, is to join the governing board of the Linux Foundation-led blockchain consortium Hyperledger.
The move comes as ConsenSys, the Ethereum development startup founded by Lubin, becomes the latest Hyperledger premier member, ConsenSys announced on Wednesday.
ConsenSys said it will work as part of the group to explore interoperability between blockchains, as well as to promote standards to support “enterprise-grade blockchain environments.”
ConsenSys’ PegaSys protocol engineering group recently submitted its Ethereum client, formerly known as Pantheon, to the group as the Hyperledger Besu project. Besu, aimed to provide a platform for “open development and deployment,” marks the first public blockchain-compatible submission to Hyperledger, the firm said.
♎ France Says It Will Block Facebook Libra in Europe
The French finance minister has said the nation plans to block Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency in the EU over concerns that it poses a threat to the sovereignty of national currencies.
According to The Independent newspaper on Thursday, Bruno Le Maire, Economy and Finance Minister of France, said:
“I want to be absolutely clear: In these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil.”
Le Maire was speaking at the opening of an OECD conference on blockchain and cryptocurrencies in Paris, France.
The Telegraph, meanwhile, adds that Le Maire said “It would be a global currency, held by a single player, which has more than two billion users around the world. The monetary sovereignty of states is under states is under threat.”
🏦 Santander Settles Both Sides of a $20 Million Bond Trade on Ethereum
Spanish banking giant Santander says it has become the first institution to use a public blockchain to manage all aspects of a bond issue.
Revealed Thursday, the company not only used a token on Ethereum to represent the $20 million debt issuance but settled it with another set of ERC-20 tokens representing cash held in a custody account.
To understand why that’s important, imagine asking someone a question on WhatsApp and waiting for them to mail a postcard with the answer. That’s what it’s like to issue securities on a blockchain while settling the cash side of the trade through the analog legacy system. But Santander, in this analogy, conducted both parts of the conversation digitally.
Project Updates
Introducing Exponential Moving Averages on TokenSets
This week the Set team introduced Exponential Moving Averages (EMA) to the Trend Trading Strategy category on TokenSets. The first Set that rebalances based on an EMA indicator — the ETH 12 Day Exponential Moving Average Crossover Set (ETH12EMACO) is live on TokenSets.
Coinbase Announces USDC Bootstrap Fund
To encourage further growth in decentralized finance (DeFi), Coinbase announced the USDC Bootstrap Fund this week. The Fund will support developers building DeFi protocols by investing USDC directly in the protocol. Coinbase also announced the funds first two investments, Compound & dYdX, and added $1mil in USDC to each platform.
Dai Savings Rate Update
The Maker team gives us an updated overview on the Dai Savings Rate (DSR) - a critical piece of the Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) upgrade that is being deployed to the Maker system soon.
Gnosis Prediction Market Enters Beta
Sight.pm, Gnosis’ first prediction market product focused around information discovery and forecasting for better decision marketing, is now ready for its first wave of beta users.
KyberSwap Announces Fiat On-ramp
KyberSwap announced that they have recently entered a partnership with Coindirect, a 3rd party service backed by MakerDAO, which allows anyone to buy crypto with fiat easily, with low fees.
Introducing the Robo-Advisor for Yield (RAY)
RAY is a set of smart contracts that automatically move crypto assets to the highest yielding opportunity. Users deposit assets into a smart contract and choose which opportunities should be considered. RAY monitors yields and automatically moves holdings to the highest yielding opportunity at any time.
Announcing the UMA Synthetic Token Builder
UMA’s “Synthetic Token Builder” is now live on Rinkeby testnet! With the Token Builder, you can create tokens that track the price of anything (the S&P 500, the # of Twitter/IG followers someone has, the # of upvotes your meme has…). All you have to do is choose the price feed and deposit DAI. More info on UMA here.
dYdX Launches Native ETH-DAI Market
dYdX has launched an entirely separate ETH-DAI market. Previously, the ETH-DAI market sourced liquidity via the Eth2Dai exchange and only supported market orders. There is now a new, native market that supports both limit and market orders, with a brand new execution engine behind it.
MetaMask Monthly
A monthly recap from the MetaMask covering updates including the new web3 permission system, more extensive wallet transaction history and general development updates.
Podcrypto Beta Released
Podcrypt is a podcast app that facilitates automatic, fair, and peer-to-peer podcast donations. It allows listeners to setup one recurring cryptocurrency donation that is automatically split between verified podcasts and Podcrypt, based on time listened. EthHub’s Into the Ether podcast is on there!
TheTie Introduces Charts
Charts is a new tool for traders, researchers, and journalists to compare up to ten cryptocurrencies at one time across multiple sentiment, fundamental, and market metrics.
Introducing Aragon 0.8 Camino
This latest release of Aragon includes improvements for the protocol across the board including streamlined setup flow for the Aragon client, email notifications, refreshed design and much more.
ConsenSys Announces CodeFi
CodeFi is a new product suite for commercial applications of decentralized finance (DeFi) built by ConsenSys.
New Mobile Crypto Wallet
Astro Astro is the first wallet that lets you do everything on Ethereum with dollars, whether it's trading on Opyn or buying a digital cat as the app has direct debit card integration. You can sign up for early access here.
Loopring Updates
A couple of Loopring-related updates over the last few weeks including an article on Understanding Loopring and Dolomite and the latest Loopring Bi-Weekly Update.
Community Member Spotlight
This week we’re highlighting the great work of Jeremiah Nichol!
Jeremiah (or JT) was a long-time moderator of /r/ethtrader and is now a moderator over at /r/ethfinance. He has been an avid Ethereum contributor for years through both his activities on Reddit and his many YouTube videos discussing both Ethereum and non-Ethereum related things. He also DJ’s in his spare time!
You can learn more about JT in his interview with Kobe van Reppelen here.
Keep up the great work JT!
Interesting Tweets
David Hoffmans recap thread of Vitalik Buterins Q&A at Ethereal
The only defensible aspect of a crypto protocol is its monetary premium
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Brief responses to two USV Ethereum Critiques (recommended read)
Why Ethereum’s Churn is Normal and the Chinese Bamboo Tree Analogy
Podcasts
Matteo Leibowitz: A Deep Dive on the Current State of Ethereum - Into the Ether
Gnosis & Full Node with Friederike Ernst - Zero Knowledge
Ren’s Loong: Unchaining Liquidity with Private Interoperability - Chain Reaction Podcast
tBTC, with James Prestwich - POV Crypto
Videos
Misc
Meme of the Week
ETH’s price started moving up this week and Ethereum Twitter got just a little bit excited!
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Software Engineer, Frontend, UI/UX - Kraken
Solidity Engineer - Aragon Black
Security Engineer - Blockchain
+100’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
Protect Your Crypto
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