Block by Block Weekly Newsletter #37
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💻 Settle Virtual Hackathon #2
The team at Settle Finance are holding a second virtual hackathon from November 26th to December 10th where builders have a chance to show off their decentralized finance chops. Check out the developer page for more information on what’s possible with the Settle Finance platform.
I’ll be judging the hackathon alongside many decentralized finance heavyweights including Robert Leshner of Compound and Rich Brown of MakerDAO.
Head here to sign up and get started!
News of the Week
⚖️ SEC Settles Charges Against 2 ICO Startups
By far the biggest news of the week was the SEC announcing that they had reached settlements with 2 startups that conducted ICOs last year — CarrierEQ Inc (AirFox) and Paragon Coin Inc (Paragon). The firms raised $15 million and $12 million respectively.
The U.S. securities regulator contended that neither startup registered their ICOs as securities offerings, and neither qualified for registration exemptions. In addition to registering their tokens as securities, both companies will refund investors, file periodic reports to the SEC and pay $250,000 apiece in penalties.
The SEC’s statement noted that these two cases are the SEC’s “first cases imposing civil penalties solely for ICO securities offering registration violations.”
The implications of these settlements is an interesting discussion and crypto lawyers took to Twitter to offer their opinions. Click through to Jake Chervinsky, Katherine Wu and Aaron Wrights threads on the matter.
🍴 Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork Drama
A big week for Bitcoin Cash as the ‘hash war’ heated up between two competing implementations of the protocol — Bitcoin ABC (Roger Ver, Jihan Wu) and Bitcoin SV (Craig Wright, Calvin Ayre). For a full breakdown of the drama, head over to here or here or here or here. The Block also mapped out which implementation prominent companies in the crypto ecosystem sided with during the hash war. You can also rewatch the 8 hour livestream that covered the ‘hash war’ that included prominent community members.
It was fun to follow along on Twitter as many in the community discussed what was happening and what the implications could be for the wider crypto ecosystem. Make no mistake — this hash war wasn’t exactly a good thing for the crypto ecosystem and some believe that it showed deep flaws in the Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism that both BTC and BCH use.
In the end, Bitcoin Cash did indeed split into two competing chains but the Bitcoin Cash ABC chain is currently the ‘longer’ chain — which basically means that it’s considered the ‘real’ Bitcoin Cash.
You can keep an eye on the network activity over here or here and learn all about Bitcoin Cash over here.
👮 Erik Voorhees, Salt Lending Being Investigated by the SEC
Crypto loans startup Salt Lending and former board member Erik Voorhees are said to be under investigation by the U.S. securities regulator, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In an article published Thursday, the news source cited “people familiar with the probe” as saying that Salt was subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in February seeking information on its $50 million initial coin offering (ICO) held in late 2017.
Apparently under investigation is whether Salt’s crypto fundraising effort was in fact a securities offering that should have been registered with the regulator, the WSJ says, as well as how tokens were distributed to “insiders” and how the sale proceeds were spent.
For an interesting view on the SALT lending platform and token, read this tweet thread from Larry Cermak.
🤔 Execs Flee Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital
Galaxy Digital, the merchant bank run by famed trader Mike Novogratz, announced this week that two major executives are stepping down from their positions as the firm shifts its focus to larger institutions from small ICOs.
“The Company is adapting to the regulatory framework and the opportunities it is currently seeing, and therefore repositioning its Advisory business from focusing on small ICO advisory and blockchain consulting to instead serve larger, more institutional clients in the space,” the firm said. Notably, the firm was known to operate an advisory business as well as one in trading and venture capital. As part of the shift, the firm is shutting its Vancouver office.
Further, according to The Block, the reality is that five execs were leaving. Head to the article for a full breakdown of who left.
Singapore-based crypto exchange KuCoin has raised $20 million in Series A funding backed by IDG Capital, Matrix Partners and Neo Global Capital.
KuCoin announced the funding Wednesday, saying that the three firms had not only invested, but formed partnerships with the exchange in order to bring cryptocurrency to the “masses.”
With the funding in place, KuCoin said it now plans to revamp its service, launching “Platform 2.0” probably in Q1 2019. Planned to be “more than a single exchange,” the new offering, it says, will be a “dynamic, secure and malleable” trading platform that will allow KuCoin to scale and add new features.
👍 Binance to List USD Coin (USDC)
Binance announced this week that it will open trading pairs for the regulated, U.S. dollar-pegged token against its own token Binance coin (BNB) and bitcoin (BTC).
The support for USDC comes shortly after Wei Zhou, Binance’s CFO, said that the firm is looking to list more stablecoins. The news means Binance will support four stablecoins, with tether (USDT), Paxos Standard (PAX) and TrueUSD (TUSD) already on the books.
More than 50 exchanges, protocols, platforms, applications and wallets now support the token, Circle said, adding that its circulating supply is currently at over 140 million.
Project Updates
Settle Finance went live this week (https://settle.finance/) and you can now interact with the web-native operating system for decentralized finance.
Don’t forget to sign up for the second Settle Virtual Hackathon too!
Spenser Huang and Eric Turner from the Messari team added 3 new resource pages to the Messari website this week:
Diar Launches Curated Data Platform
Cryptoasset research firm Diar have created a curated data analytics platform with the intent of providing an economic health outlook and state-of-play for the many moving parts of the digital asset industry.
The Coinbase Wallet team revamped the mobile wallets UI and adding a new gallery section for your crypto-collectibles (it also integrates with OpenSea and RareBits).
The team at 0x released a kit this week that allows anyone to launch their own relayer in under a minute. Think of it as the WordPress for non-custodial exchanges.
What’s New in Eth2–12 November 2018
Bed Edgingtons Devcon recap and workshop notes and technical spec updates.
Gitcoin Labs will be a service that provides “Research Reports and Toolkits for Busy Developers”. The roadmap includes research on burner wallets, state channels, casper and much more.
Bonus! Gitcoin now has Ethereum gas price heatmaps!
Prysmatic Labs Ethereum 2.0 Development Update #16
Lots to unpack in this update as the team from Prysmatic give us a recap of their experience at devcon + all the new research thats happened over the last few weeks!
Updates include POI filtering directly in the dashboard, rejected points of interests now viewable and the signaling frontend and backend work is complete (awaiting code audits to be finished).
Non-custodial exchange Radar Relay has pushed an updated UI to their website. Full list of changes over here.
The team also published a regulatory strategy update that clarifies their position on regulation in the decentralized/non-custodial exchange space.
LOOM Announces First External Validators
LOOM Networks first PlasmaChain validators include Mythos Capital, Bitfish, Bixin and MW Partners.
Be sure to check out LOOMs latest tutorial post that explains how you can install loom, set up your work environment and generate keys to deploy an app to the Loom PlasmaChain.
Grid+ Lattice1 Developer SDK Open-sourced
Developers can now develop for the GridPlus Lattice1 with the official SDK over at the GridPlus Github page.
Counterfactual Development Update #0
Liam Horne from the Counterfactual team gives an overview on what the project is, what they are building and what’s next.
Project Spotlight
Kickback is an Ethereum-based event management service that delivers higher event participation rates by asking registrants to put some skin in the game.
Everyone commits a small amount of ETH when they RSVP to an event, which is refunded after the event check-in. Any no-shows lose their ETH, which can then be split amongst the attendees.
Interesting Tweets
- Is BCH centralized?
- Why market cap is flawed
- On-chain governance system implementations
- Connext business model
- How DEXs can protect themselves from law enforcement
- Why Ethereum is such a big deal
- List of crypto grants programs
- A thread on sound money
- Long Reads Sunday #20
- Thoughts on on-chain governance
- Why would a business choose to build their app on a decentralized network
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
- The Next Step in Cryptoasset Valuation
- Visions of Ether (recommended read)
- Mapping out the Security Token Ecosystem
- Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork Report
- Bitcoin Cash’s November 2018 Fork
- Prediction Markets Report
- Understanding Distributed “Consensus” (recommended read)
- Bancor’s Smart Tokens vs Token Bonding Curves
- Crypto Market Cap: An In-Depth Review & Survey Of Emerging Alternatives
- Are 0x relayers using ZRX? Yes and No
- Bearish on Security Tokens
- Generalized Mining: The LPs Perspective
- Plasma Isn’t Dead
- An Overview Of Decentralized Trading Of Digital Assets
Videos
Misc
Website Updates
New research added to the site
- Ethereum 2.0 spec — Casper and Sharding (updated link)
- Serenity Node Types
- An Overview Of Decentralized Trading Of Digital Assets
- Prediction Markets Primer
- Generalized Mining Resource Page
- Bitcoin Cash Resource Page
- Decentralized Exchange Resource Page
New resources added to the site
Feedback
Thanks for reading. I’d love to get your feedback so please send an email to info@blockbyblock.io and I’ll be sure to get back to you! :)
Disclaimer: None of the information outlined in this piece should be taken as investment advice. Please click here for more information.
