🪂 5 Best Airdrop Practices for Crypto Protocols

In today’s edition: 📉 80% of Binance-listed tokens down, 🇪🇺 Kraken stands firm on USDT in Europe, and more!

May 20, 2024

👯‍♀️ Refer Unchained with a friend and earn a Premium subscription

Why the DOJ Doesn’t Want These MEV Exploiters to Get Away With It - Ep. 647

In this episode, Evan Zinaman, founder and principal at Trailbreak, delves into the first-of-its-kind case of the Bueno brothers, who face Department of Justice charges for exploiting Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) in a cryptocurrency scheme. Accused of manipulating transaction ordering to create an arbitrage opportunity, the brothers are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud as well as wire fraud itself. 

Zinaman explores the broader implications of MEV exploitation, and addresses critics who say that the MEV exploiters just got a taste of their own medicine, and the need for block building participants to consider their legal and compliance responsibilities.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or watch it on YouTube.

What’s Poppin’?

by Sam Sriram and Sage Young

In an increasingly competitive landscape, the importance of adhering to good airdrop practices cannot be overstated.

The venture capitalist and centralized exchange cartel have rigged the game for crypto, says SwissBorg’s “tradetheflow.”

Kraken’s head of asset growth and management said the crypto exchange has no plans to delist USDT in Europe at this time.

Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍️

  • 🚔 The alleged exploiter of Solana memecoin platform Pump.Fun, Jarett Dunn, was arrested in London after being tracked down by a private intelligence firm.

  • 🔐 Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin addressed concerns about the network's decentralization in a blog post, discussing issues like MEV, liquid staking, and node hardware requirements, and proposed solutions through smart protocol designs.

  • 🛑 LayerZero Labs CEO Bryan Pellegrino announced a temporary pause in the Sybil "bounty-hunter" process for the platform's airdrop due to an overwhelming number of reports and appeals, describing the situation as a "warzone."

  • 🔙 Gemini Earn will begin returning 97% of customers' crypto assets by the end of the month following the approval of Genesis's Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan, which aims to return about $3 billion in cash and assets to creditors.

  • 💸 U.S. authorities arrested Daren Li and Yicheng Zhang for laundering over $73 million through an international "pig butchering" scam, converting the illicit funds into USDT.

  • 💻 Crypto personality Thomas Sfraga, also known as "TJ Stone," pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges for promising investors high returns on a fake cryptocurrency wallet and using the funds for personal gain, potentially facing up to 20 years in prison.

  • 🎁 ZkSync, an Ethereum Layer-2 network, hinted that a governance token airdrop could happen by the end of June, coinciding with its final protocol upgrade before community governance begins.

  • 🖼️ Dolce & Gabbana is being sued for delays in delivering its DGFamily NFTs, with a customer claiming the mishap resulted in significant financial losses and unusable digital outfits.

  • 🇳🇬 A Nigerian court denied bail for Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan, who is facing charges of tax evasion and money laundering, and ruled that Binance can be served the charges through him.

Today in Crypto Adoption...

  • 📊 Morgan Stanley disclosed that it held nearly $270 million worth of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) as of the end of March, likely on behalf of its wealth management clients rather than as a direct investment.

What Do You Meme?

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is down .3%, trading at $67,099

  • ETH is down .1%, trading at $3,098

  • BTC dominance: 51.9%

  • Crypto market cap: $2.55T

*All data as of today, 07:50 am ET. Source: CoinGecko

Recommended Reads

We Are Hiring!

  1. A Bitcoin Reporter to cover all things Bitcoin. See the details and apply here. 

  2. A Regulatory Reporter to cover regulatory topics in the space. See the details and apply here.

  3. A Senior Editor to help assign and edit daily news stories, as well as work on features and other editorial projects as needed. See the details and apply here.

  4. An Audience Development Director to broaden the reach of the publication’s content, whether through the web, social media, newsletters, podcast platforms, or videos. See the details and apply here.

🔝 Are you hiring and want to promote the postings in the Unchained newsletter? Let us know!

Thank you for reading Unchained. This post is public so feel free to share it. 📩📤