Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)
📈 A Crazy Week for ETH
ETH, for the first time in a long time, is up over 30% over the last 7 days which is causing people to ask the question: is it 2017 again? Well, probably not! But it does seem like a “bull market” is starting to form again over the last few months as we’ve seen the so called “DeFi tokens” have incredible runs and now ETH is seemingly joining the party. Eric and I will be discussing more of our thoughts around this weeks price action on the weekly recap podcast here and you can also read this piece I wrote about it here.
Have a great week everyone!
– Anthony
News of the Week
🏦 Banks in US Can Now Offer Crypto Custody Services, Regulator Says
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is letting all nationally chartered banks in the U.S. provide custody services for cryptocurrencies.
In a public letter dated July 22, Senior Deputy Comptroller and Senior Counsel Jonathan Gould wrote that any national bank can hold onto the unique cryptographic keys for a cryptocurrency wallet, clearing the way for national banks to hold digital assets for their clients.
The letter marks a major development for the crypto industry. Previously, custody was the province of specialist firms, such as Coinbase, which typically needed a state license, such as a trust charter, to offer the service to large investors. Now, large, regulated financial companies that already provide similar safekeeping services for stock certificates and the like could enter the fray.
The letter, which appears to be addressed to an unidentified bank or similar entity, notes that banks “may offer more secure storage services compared to existing options,” and that both consumers and investment advisors may wish to use regulated custodians to ensure they don’t lose their private keys, and therefore, access to their funds.
🤔 NBA Player Spencer Dinwiddie’s Token Sale Hits 10% of $13.5M Goal
Brooklyn Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie fought the NBA for months over his plan to tokenize his $34 million contract. Now, with the NBA’s concerns apparently addressed and the sale closed out, Dinwiddie’s plan hit a different obstacle: investor interest.
Dinwiddie’s issuer SD26 LLC sold just nine of the 90 available tokenized contract shares to eight total investors as of Wednesday, according to CoinDesk’s review of Form D regulatory filings and the security’s token’s issuance history on Etherscan.
With shares priced at $150,000, just $1,350,000 (or one-tenth of the target $13.5 million sale) was sold. Project insiders have previously said the sale would last only until the end of July. It now appears to be closed out for good.
The sluggish sale of an innovative crypto-contract project indicates that Dinwiddie, who has become the NBA’s de-facto crypto hype man, will not succeed in garnering the $13.5 million in tokenization revenue he targeted.
Project Updates
Eth2 Validator Launchpad Released
After months of hard work from the eth2 research team, along with Consensys and DeepWork Studio, the eth2 validator launchpad (testnet version) has been released.
What’s New in Eth2 – 25 July 2020
Updates on phase 0, testnets, the usual great explainers, links to new media and more in Ben’s weekly eth2 newsletter.
Eth2 Quick Update #13
Medalla multi-client testnet gets a date (August 4th), beta attacknets launched, updates on the eth1 <> eth2 merger and more in Danny Ryan’s latest eth2 quick update.
Participtaing in the Medalla testnet? You can get a POAP for doing so.
Yearn.finance v2 Announced
Yearn.finance v2 has 3 main components; yVaults, Controller and Strategies. You can read the full details here.
The official yEarn governance forum was also announced.
Synthetix Releases Galena
Frontend updates to the Binary Options section, updates to the simple search function, Index Synths now have a composition table and more in this update from the Synthetix team.
Synthetix also announced that institional liquidity providers such as DTC Capital, Three Arrows Capital and ParaFi have joined the platform.
New Zerion Launched
You can now track the entire DeFi market from the same place as your portfolio on Zerion. Explore trending liquidity pools, Sets, crops and more.
Rotki v1.6.0 Released
This new version now has support for Aave, balance overview for all DeFi protocols, ENS support and a redesign of the accounts & balances page.
Yield Dollar Now Live
The yield dollar from UMA can be minted by staking WETH as collateral which means that traders can leverage their long positions on ETH with a fixed interest rate.
RAI Now Live on Kovan
The RAI reflex bond is now live on the Kovan testnet for the community to have a play around with.
Gnosis Bug Bounty Launched
Find bugs, get rewarded. Earn up to $100,000 for every bug you report. Head here for more details.
Interesting Tweets
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
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Evidence of Mempool Manipulation on Black Thursday: Hammerbots, Mempool Compression, and Spontaneous Stuck Transactions (highly recommended read)
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Gas Gambits — Game Theory Example of Incentivized Collaboration
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Around the Block #7: Understanding yield farming and the latest developments in DeFi
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Interview with Afri Schoedon — the pioneer of ETH2 multi-client testnets
Podcasts
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MetaMask: The Gateway to Ethereum – Into the Ether
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Camila Russo on the Most Pivotal Moments in Ethereum’s History – Unchained
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UMA: The Open Financial Platform for Building Synthetic Assets – Epicenter
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Stani Kulechov talks Constant Innovation, Credit Delegation and Cross Chain Aave – Ethereum Entrepreneur Podcast
Misc
Meme of the Week
Looking for Work?
Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:
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Business Developer – Gnosis
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Social Media + Copywriter – Status
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Senior Backend Developer – DeversiFi
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Blockchain Security Engineer – Trail of Bits
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+100’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!
Support EthHub:
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Donations (ethhub.eth)