Weekly Crypto/DeFi Update with Synchrony

Here are top news from the crypto/DeFi space last week.

Sam Trabucco has resigned as co-CEO of Alameda Research. He will continue on as an advisor and Caroline Ellison will continue as sole CEO.

• In a Twitter thread titled “On Happiness,” Sam Trabucco admitted he has found other things “more worthwhile to do with my time than give it to Alameda,” even as he described his three years at the firm as the most formative of his life.

Genesis Trading CEO steps down

• In a Wednesday announcement, Genesis said more will leave his position as the company CEO, a role which he worked in since April 2016.

⁠Bug bounty quadruples for white hats testing the Ethereum network — up to $1M payouts ahead of Merge

• Finding “critical bugs,” or flaws with a high possibility of having a large impact on the blockchain will reportedly be worth up to $1 million, according to the foundation.

Additionally, submissions for low, medium and high-risk bugs are accepted under the reward program.

Coinbase is launching its own liquid staking token, called cbETH, ahead of Ethereum’s Merge and aims to cut into Lido’s dominance

• Coinbase has also published a CBETH white paper and the paper explains that there’s a need for strong competing liquid staking solutions with “differentiated qualities.”
• “The liquid staking market on Ethereum is dominated by a single solution that is on the verge of breaching 33% network penetration.” Coinbase also mentions that the success of usd coin (USDC), the stablecoin issued by Coinbase Global’s and Circle Financial’s Centre consortium, and the exchange believes the trading platform’s trusted reputation will help CBETH grow.

The Block is moving parts of its consumer paywall exclusively to a crypto token model

• The Block’s tokenized paywall will work in synchronization with the Access Protocol. The Access Protocol will be responsible for issuing the custom “access” tokens which will be up for sale at various crypto marketplace. Users will be able to purchase the tokens and later stake them temporarily to gain access to the Block’s website content.

Netherlands court has ruled that developer, Alexey Pertsev, accused of facilitating money laundering via the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash, must stay in jail for at least a further 90 days.

Court approves Voyager Digital to pay $1.9M in retention bonuses to key staff members to ensure they can continue operating through bankruptcy proceedings

• Voyager Digital Ltd has received approval to pay $1.6 million in bonuses to 34 employees considered critical to the bankrupt digital assets lenders’ future. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles gave the approval following a hearing.

Uniswap Foundation has passed after their proposal received over 99% of the votes from Uniswap holders.

• According to the Uniswap website, the foundation saw more than 86 million, or 99% of total votes, in favor of the proposal, with only 770 votes against it. The votes in favor come despite the initial proposal seeing mixed community reaction when it was first announced on Aug. 5.

Reddit has begun airdropping its Polygon-based “Collectible Avatars”

• Popular online discussion platform Reddit is leaning harder into blockchain technology, and recently announced that it would launch a series of NFT avatars based on its Snoo character. But now, in addition to selling the tokenized avatars, Reddit is also now giving some away to its most avid users.

The Graph adds Gnosis Chain to its decentralized blockchain indexing protocol

• The Graph, which dubs itself the “Google of Blockchains,” provides ways for blockchain-based apps to collect and interpret on-chain data. It does this through community-created “subgraphs,” which help organize a messy sea of blockchain transactions into a form that non-fungible token (NFT) platforms, decentralized exchanges and other applications can find and use.

Crypto ATM company Bitcoin Depot has struck a deal with an SPAC that should see it go public at an $885M valuation.

Coinbase eyes long-term growth of subscription revenue and NFTs are still a focus.

• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the exchange has been building subscription revenue streams for three years and will continue to do so into the long term.

Binance Notice Regarding the Upcoming Ethereum Merge

Binance assisted law enforcement in China to suspend some accounts because users received unlawful crypto, causing a huge panic in the Chinese community

South Korean exchanges such as Upbit announced that deposits and withdrawals related to 16 overseas exchanges, including KuCoin, MEXC, Phemex, Bitrue, CoinW, CoinEX, AAX, ZoomEX, Poloniex are prohibited according to government requirements

D/Bond created a new ERC-3475 standard to introduce bonds and add value to improve Ethereum’s existing infrastructure and ecosystem. It is now accepted by the Ethereum Foundation. Makes it possible to issue bonds with multiple redemption data

• Decentralised bonds are set to be the next asset class to be adopted after swaps and staking.

Mercedes-Benz’s strategic project Acentrik has now become operational on Polygon Mainnet as part of its official enterprise release

• With extra updates accessible in its most recent version, Acentrik has entered its Enterprise Official launch and is fully prepared for businesses to onboard to the forum. Start your information monetization adventure, or communicate with the squad for more chances to collaborate and get involved.

The proposal to launch Compound III has succeeded; 200 addresses voted — 1,203,196 COMP in support

• The proposal to launch Compound III succeeded with 200 addresses voting — 1,203,196 COMP in support. This moves the DeFi protocol away from a pooled-risk model, where users can borrow any asset. Compound v3 targets security, scalability, limits the protocol’s supported tokens and introduces governance changes

Alchemy, a web3 infrastructure platform backed by a16z, Coatue and Lightspeed Ventures, has announced its first acquisition, Ethereum developer education platform ChainShot

• Its rapid growth has certainly garnered attention from investors, a group that includes high-profile names such as Lightspeed, Silver Lake, a16z, Coatue and Pantera. The company says it powers more than $150 billion in transactions annually for clients, including NFT platform OpenSea and DeFi app Quantstamp.

Synthetix founder Kain Warwick proposed a new proposal SIP-276: aiming to end inflation with the total supply of SNX tokens capped at 300M. The idea is to finally turn off the money printer which was originally necessary to bootstrap the protocol. Synthetix would much more closely resemble a traditional business by simply generating fee revenue and distributing the proceeds to SNX holders. Related to the growing acceptance of the “real yield” narrative

Maker DAO opens $100M Dai loan to huntingdon valley bank

• Huntingdon Valley Bank and Maker pioneer the first commercial loan participation between a U.S. Regulated Financial Institution and a decentralized digital currency. A defining moment to envision the potential of connecting decentralized finance and real-world finance

Trader Joe introduced Liquidity Book, a next gen AMM protocol that is highly efficient, flexible and built for DeFi. This ground-breaking architecture pools liquidity into constant sum price bins which are aggregated to form a market. LB provides traders with zero or low slippage trades, for any trade size, due to constant sum price executions

Thorswap, a multichain DEX aggregator, has launched cross-chain swaps for over 8,300 ERC-20 tokens. This removes the need for users to bridge assets and enables native asset swaps directly in its platform

The $74M plan by two former Uniswap Lab executives for a new Uniswap Foundation has passed after their proposal received over 99% of the votes from Uniswap holders. The foundation’s aims to streamline Uniswap’s Grant Program and reduce friction in the protocol’s governance system. Raised questions regarding centralization.