👋 Hello 2019
Hello everyone (and hello to all the new subscribers)! We hope you had a great Christmas and New Years.
Over the last 2 weeks, Eric and I have been very busy as we officially launched the EthHub website! The support from the community has been phenomenal and we wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone.
Just an FYI for the new subscribers — we record a weekly recap podcast that is available around 36 hours after the newsletter goes out. Click here to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any of the weekly recaps and amazing guests we’ll be having on!
News of the Last 2 Weeks
🤯 Token Exchange to Enable Trading of Nasdaq-Listed Companies
A Nasdaq-powered crypto startup plans to let its clients indirectly purchase shares of major firms through a token-based platform.
Estonia-based DX.Exchange announced Thursday that it would launch its trading platform on Jan. 7, allowing its clients to purchase crypto tokens representing shares in different tech firms listed on the Nasdaq exchange. Customers will be able to use select cryptocurrencies, as well as fiat currencies to purchase the tokens.
The company will use Nasdaq’s matching engine to facilitate the trading of digital securities, as well as protect against market manipulation. DX.Exchange customers will not be purchasing ownership of shares directly, but rather, will purchase tokens which represent shares in a company, COO Amedeo Moscato told CoinDesk.
Bakkt has raised $182.5 million to build out its global digital assets platform and bitcoin futures product. This comes just a week after speculation that Bakkt would be delaying the launch of their futures product.
The round, which is Bakkt’s first, included 12 partners, according to a Medium postby CEO Kelly Loeffler. The crypto startup is owned by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which is best known as the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Investors in the funding round included Boston Consulting Group, Galaxy Digital, Goldfinch Partners, ICE, M12 (Microsoft’s VC fund), Pantera Capital and Protocol Ventures.
😔 50% of Workforce Let Go by Bitmain
Months after it filed an application to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Beijing-based cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain is undergoing a series of business changes that extend even to its China offices, the company confirmed Tuesday.
The discussion of the company cutting off staff first emerged on Maimai, China’s equivalent to LinkedIn, where one anonymous user posted a thread on Dec. 17 asking if anyone had insider information about a possible layoff at Bitmain soon.
The post has generated nearly 200 replies since then, some of which came from other users that appear to be verified Bitmain employees on the social network, who indicated the layoffs would start from the week of Dec. 24.
“It’s affirmative. The layoff will start next week and involves more than 50 percent of the entire Bitmain’s headcount,” replied one verified Bitmain staff on Maimai to the thread.
👍 ConsenSys Announces Collaboration with AMD
ConsenSys announced a collaboration with Abu Dhabi-based Halo Holdings and AMD to develop optimized datacenter solutions for emerging blockchain workloads through the creation of W3BCLOUD.
Leveraging ConsenSys’ blockchain software expertise, W3BCLOUD plans to develop optimized solutions powered by AMD hardware that are capable of supporting a variety of workloads and applications for governments and commercial enterprises, as well as accelerate the adoption of decentralized applications.
W3BCLOUD is focused on providing the first independent cloud computing blockchain infrastructure, combining increased transaction throughput with state-of-the-art security. ConsenSys brings insight into efficient compute usage for blockchain transactions, security requirements, and emerging use cases for the technology.
Project Updates
Gitcoin Grants focuses on providing recurring funding for teams building open source software. Gitcoin also published their end of year letter.
Eric and I have already committed funding to both Prysmatic Labs and ChainSafe Systems. We encourage the community to get involved in funding any of the great teams on the grants website.
Austin Griffith released version 2.2 of his popular Burner Wallet this week. Want to learn more about the Burner Wallet? We’ve got a page on EthHub.
Ethereum 2.0 Development Update #19 — Prysmatic Labs
Latest research updates, github activities and a dive into the upcoming work for the team during 2019.
Raul Jordan also shared a huge milestone on Twitter.
Decentralized Finance: Lending Report December 2018
Christopher from Bloqboard gives an overview of lending activity on decentralized lending protocols Compound, Dharma, dYdX and MakerDAO.
Mikerah gives ChainSafe Systems first bi-weekly update for their Ethereum 2.0 Client — Lodestar. Click here to learn more about ChainSafe Systems and Lodestar.
Grid+ updates on new on-boarded customers, the Lattice1, mobile wallet and more.
Richard Burton, CEO of Balance.io, shares with us a letter that he sent to his companies shareholders on the state of Balanced Software, Inc. He gives a breakdown of what the team accomplished for each month of 2018.
CEO Brian Armstrong details all the relevant Coinbase updates during Q4 of 2018 — including the launch of their stablecoin USDC, the Coinbase Earn platform, and much more.
Jutta Steiner from Parity details the growth and achievements that the Parity team accomplished from continuing to build the Parity Ethereum client to releasing Substrate.
Nimbus Development Update — December 2018
A few updates from the team on how the work is coming along for their Ethereum 2.0 client — Nimbus.
The team from Cent give an overview of everything they accomplished during 2018.
Project Spotlight
UMA is a decentralized financial contracts platform built to enable Universal Market Access.
Similar to how HTTP allows information to move across borders, UMA allows risk to move across the internet without a centralized authority or single point of failure.
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
- A Look Back at 2018: The Year of Enterprise Ethereum
- How Open is Too Open (recommended read)
- Mapping out Ethereum’s Developer Ecosystem
- Protocol Moats and Industry Attractiveness
- What We Learned about Blockchain in 2018 — and What it Means for 2019
- A Comprehensive Guide to Decentralized Stablecoins
- Crypto Theses for 2019
- Crypto Valuations Canon
- The State of State Channels: 2018 edition
- Ethereum Explained: Merkle Trees, World State, Transactions, and More
- Beyond CryptoKitties: 10 Trends That Defined the Year in Crypto Gaming
Podcasts
- Scaling Ethereum with Plasma: Georgios Konstantopoulos of Loom
- Scaling Ethereum with STARKs: StarkWare Industries
- POV Crypto Episode 21 — The Case for Ether as Money
Misc
Feedback
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