EthHub Weekly #90
Upbit hacked, DSR wrapper chai launched, Set Protocol launches social trading, Ramp instant now live and much more!
Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
😔 The Trouble with Virgil
So I think it’s fair to say that everyone reading this will have already heard about the news regarding Virgil Griffith’s arrest relating to his recent trip to North Korea. Eric and I don’t really have a “hot take” on this subject and have tried to mostly stay out of the “trial by twitter” that’s transpired over the last week. In saying that, while Virgil’s actions were careless, naive, and obviously illegal - we’re not ready to throw him to the wolves and will be sticking by him as fellow Ethereum community members until we learn more about the overall situation.
We’ll probably dive a bit deeper into this topic on our weekly recap podcast if anyone reading is interested in our more nuanced views.
Oh and our good friend Camila Russo’s book on the history of Ethereum is now available for pre-order (with a launch date of July 14th 2020) - head here to purchase it!
Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony
News of the Week
🇩🇪 German Banks Allowed to Sell and Custody Crypto Assets From 2020
From next year, banks in Germany will be allowed to offer the sale and storage of cryptocurrencies under new legislation.
Previously, banks were barred from offering direct access to crypto assets, but the new law implementing the fourth EU Money Laundering Directive would change that, according to local business newspaper the Handelsblatt in a report on Wednesday. The bill has already been passed by the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, and is expected to be signed off by the nation's 16 states.
The bill goes further than had been previously planned, the report says. Originally, banks were not to be allowed to act as crypto custodians, and were to have relied on external custodians or dedicated subsidiaries.
Sven Hildebrandt, head of the consulting firm DLC, welcomed the news, telling the Handelsblatt: "Germany is well on its way to becoming a crypto-heaven. The German legislator is playing a pioneering role in the regulation of [crypto assets]. "
😬 Crypto Exchange Upbit Suffers Hack
South Korean crypto exchange Upbit has lost cryptocurrency worth $49 million.
Upbit’s CEO said in a blog post at 9:00 UTC on Wednesday that an abnormal transaction from its wallets had resulted in the outflow of 342,000 ether (ETH).
The exchange said the loss will be covered by its own assets. Meanwhile, withdrawals and deposits were suspended as a precaution. The firm estimated that it will take “at least two weeks" for services to be back to normal.
According to transaction tracking site Whale Alert, the lost ether – worth $49 million at press time – was sent from Upbit’s wallet to an unknown ethereum address starting with 0xa09871 about 04:00 UTC on Wednesday. It has since moved to multiple other wallets.
⚖️ US Arrests Ethereum Developer Virgil Griffith
Virgil Griffith, who works at the Ethereum Foundation, has been arrested for allegedly going to a conference in North Korea and sharing his expertise in using cryptocurrency.
The United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced Friday that Griffith was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving Day.
“Despite receiving warnings not to go, Griffith allegedly traveled to one of the United States’ foremost adversaries, North Korea, where he taught his audience how to use blockchain technology to evade sanctions," John Demers, an assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.
Project Updates
Ethereum Mountain Glacier Hardfork Announced
This hard fork addresses the impending Ice Age (difficulty bomb detonation) on the Ethereum Mainnet and includes a commitment to solving the problems with the ice age more permanently in the future. The hard fork is expected to go live mid-January 2020.
Validated: Staking on eth2 #0
In this blog post, Carl Beekhuizen explains how staking will work in eth2. He goes over details such as what exactly Phase 0 is, nodes vs. clients and the design philosophy behind eth2. I highly recommend reading this piece.
Lighthouse Update #18
The Lighthouse team have been hard at work over the last few weeks in the lead up to the launch of their public Beacon Chain testnet (which is due to launch in the next few days). This update includes details on the public testnet work, network updates, security updates and more.
Introducing Frontier Wallet — Beta
Frontier Wallet is a simple and secure Ethereum wallet for accessing DeFi. Frontier will tie in info of all of your addresses, wallets and data, associated with DeFi and ERC20 tokens into one mobile app.
Introducing chai
chai is an ERC20 token representing a claim on deposits in the Dai Savings Rate (DSR). It can be freely converted to and from dai: the amount of dai claimed by one chai is always increasing, at the Dai Savings Rate.
Introducing DeFiExplore.com
DeFi Explore is an easy to use interface that allows you to check MakerDAO CDPs/Vault positions and system stats.
Tornado Cash Updates
The Tornado Cash team are adding new tokens (USDT, DAI), redesigning the withdrawal page, incorporating a decentralized relayer market and their code has been audited.
DeFi Saver Releases CDP Migration Tool
This CDP migration tool automatically checks the current locked Sai availability in the migration contract and simply upgrade your CDP once there’s enough Sai available.
InstaDApp Launched MCD Migration Bridge
Compound cSAI holders & SAI borrowers can use InstaDApps new tool to seamlessly move to a new DAI position with just one click.
Making Maker: November 2019
Maker’s monthly update covering the historic Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) launch, governance updates, community highlights, interviews and more.
Ramp Instant Now Live
Ramp Instant is a radically better way to on-ramp users into crypto. When users first use the integration on any supported site, they’ll be asked to connect their bank account with Ramp. Then they initiative payment, authorize it with their banking app and it’s all done. It takes minutes, rather than the industry standard of 1 day+.
State Channels Developer Update #14
The first update in a while from the State Channels team but a welcome one. Liam from the team goes over the last few months of work including engineering updates, research updates and what’s coming next.
Set Protocol Introduces Social Trading
Set Social Trading is a marketplace and network that enables traders to create their own trading pools where they can enact trades on commodities such as ETH, WBTC, USDC, DAI, cUSDC, and cDAI. Followers can then join these trading pools, copying every single action the Trader (or trading algorithm) enacts. This feature is expected to go live in early 2020.
Fidelity Starts to Reward Employees in Crypto
Fidelity Investments, a multinational financial service giant, has started to incentivize its employees in digital currencies. For the pilot initiative, Fidelity’s Center for Applied Technology’s (FCAT), the company’s research and development arm, collaborated with TokenSoft and is using the ERC-1404 token standard.
Loopring Bi-Weekly Update
Various updates from the Loopring team including the announcement that Loopring 3.0 beta4 will be deployed in the next few days and it will be Ethereum’s first zkRollup DEX protocol enforcing on-chain data availability.
Cryptotesters Now Live
Cryptotestners is a platform that compares crypto products by showing you things like which exchange gives the best rate, which wallets are the best and more.
Community Member Spotlight
This week we’re highlighting the great work of Will Warren!
Will is the Co-Founder and CEO of the popular decentralized exchange project 0x. This week he, his team and the community launched v3.0 of the 0x protocol onto the Ethereum mainnet marking a historic upgrade for the project.
Before founding 0x, Will worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico.
Keep up the great work Will!
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
Network Effects in an Open Financial World (recommended read)
DEXes Rising: Next Chapter, High Performance Orderbook Exchanges on Ethereum
Podcasts
Enigma: Bringing Privacy to Ethereum via Layer 2 - Into the Ether
ETHWaterloo Recap: Part 2 - Into the Ether
Ethereum Name Service, with Brantly.eth Millegan - POV Crypto
bZx's Kyle Kistner: Exploring The Protocol for Tokenized Margin Trading and Lending - Chain Reaction
Invictus' Matthew Finlayson: Tokenized Funds and Financial Inclusion - Chain Reaction
Videos
Misc
Meme of the Week
An older meme, but it checks out.
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
Applied Cryptography - AZTEC
Full Stack Engineer - Portis
Data Scientist - Blockchain
Financial Analyst - 0x
+100’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
Protect Your Crypto
Buy a hardware wallet:
Donations: 0xA19FCDaD77C1F0fd184689aca88BabCF68010347