Did zkSync Steal From Polygon? 🙊

In today's edition: 🎙️ New episode with Sam Kazemian, 💸 Aave DAO's $2 million play, 🏛️ Bitfinex hacker admits guilt, 👤 BALD's deployer identity revealed?, and more!

August 04, 2023

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What’s Poppin’?

by Laura Shin

Mystery solved: Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein has pleaded guilty to the 2016 hack of Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex.

by Samyuktha Sriram

Polygon Zero accused the developers of rival Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution zkSync of copying code from its Plonky2 library without attribution.

by Samyuktha Sriram

The proposal’s author believes the purchase would send a strong signal of “DeFi supporting DeFi” and allow the Aave DAO to strategically position itself in the Curve wars.

by Samyuktha Sriram

The mysterious creator of the BALD token looks more like a regular DeFi degen than the former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

On the Pod…

While it’s now mostly contained, the Curve crisis has exposed some of the systemic risks in the world of DeFi. Sam Kazemian, founder of Frax Finance, joins the show to discuss what DeFi needs to do to get better – and what builders should learn from a novel attack that was ultimately about much more than $50 million in drained funds.

Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

  • 🔒 The US Department of Justice maintains its stance for the incarceration of Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of FTX, rejecting his claims that revoking bail would infringe on his right to free speech.

  • 🚨 The SEC secured a temporary restraining order against Utah-based firm "DEBT Box", which is accused of swindling investors out of at least $49 million in a cryptocurrency scheme.

  • 📄 ProShares and Bitwise submitted more applications to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for ETFs that would offer exposure to both BTC and ETH.

  • 🛑 Fintech company Revolut will cease providing crypto services to its US customers from September 2, 2023, due to regulatory uncertainties in the country.

  • 📲 Elon Musk's app X, formerly Twitter, is reportedly exploring partnerships with financial data providers to create a trading hub inside the platform.

  • 📆 Coinbase plans to open its layer-2 blockchain, Base, to the public on Aug. 9. Users can also bridge their Ether (ETH) to Base starting this week.

  • 📈 Coinbase shares saw a 5.5% increase in after-hours trading following its Q2 revenue report, which surpassed analyst estimates despite a drop in transaction revenue and total trading volume.

  • 📉 Michael Egorov, founder of Curve Finance, sold a total of 106 million CRV tokens, worth $42 million, according to a Nansen analyst.

  • 🔍 Arkham Intelligence is offering a $46,000 reward for identifying the individual behind the 2022 FTX exploit, demanding comprehensive research and concrete evidence from applicants.

  • 🖼️ NFT platform Zora revamped its revenue model, offering creators at least 42.9% from free mint fees and 100% revenue from paid mints, in a bid to incentivize more artist participation.

Today in Crypto Adoption...

  • 📈 Despite ongoing legal conflicts with US regulators, Binance's user base experienced a significant surge, reaching 150 million, marking an addition of 22 million users in just three months.

The $$$ Corner…

  • 💰 Binance Labs, Sequoia China, and several other investors collectively invested $2.5 million into privacy-focused protocol zkPass, during a seed funding round.

  • 🚀 Futureverse cofounders Shara Senderoff and Aaron McDonald launched a $50 million venture fund, Born Ready, to invest in early-stage Web3 and metaverse technologies.

What Do You Meme?

Learn 🤓

Learn about what total value locked (TVL) is and what role it plays in the global decentralized finance (DeFi) market.

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is up .1%, trading at $29,145

  • ETH is down .1%, trading at $1,833

  • BTC dominance: 46.85%

  • Crypto market cap: $1.21 trillion

*All data as of today, 7:40 am ET

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