📈 Optimism’s TVL Doubles as Trading Activity Surges on Layer 2s

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we’re covering today: News Optimism’s TVL Doubles as Trading Activity Surges on Layer 2s Digital Wallet Maker Dynamic Raises $7.5M from a16z Opinion Puncturing the Hype About Illicit Finance in Crypto Podcast 🎙Listen to th...

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we’re covering today:

News

Opinion

Puncturing the Hype About Illicit Finance in Crypto

Podcast

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Layer 2s

📈 Optimism’s TVL Doubles as Trading Activity Surges on Layer 2s

TRACTION Adoption of Ethereum’s top two Layer 2 chains are gaining traction as lower ranked rivals are losing market share. Optimism, Ethereum’s second-largest L2 by total value locked (TVL) with $741.5M, rocketed to new highs at the end of May, tagging a record $1.02B on June 2, double its level on May 28, according to L2beat. It overtook dYdX as the second-largest L2.

USAGE Arbitrum, Ethereum’s leading L2 with a $2B TVL and 51% market share, is also seeing increased usage amid its multi-week onboarding event, Odyssey. Trade activity on Optimism is also booming, with its monthly trailing DEX volume up 254% with $1.5B exchanges over the past 30 days, according to Dune Analytics. By contrast, combined DEX volume across all chains is down 50% over the past week.

SURGE Why the surge? It’s hard to be sure, but the recent swoon in the market has frequently driven transaction fees on Ethereum DEXes up to hundreds of dollars. This suggests many on-chain traders may be moving their assets on Optimism to capture savings.

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Crypto Wallets

💰Digital Wallet Maker Dynamic Raises $7.5M from a16z

By Samuel Haig

INFRASTRUCTURE Developers are continuing to work on new infrastructure for the web3 ecosystem despite the bear market. On June 28, Dynamic Labs, a team working to make digital asset wallets a single sign-on device (SSO) for use across the web, launched in closed beta.

ROUND The team also announced it had raised $7.5M in a closed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Leading web3 VCs Circle Ventures, Solana Ventures, and Chapter One also participated in the round.

TOKENS Dynamic’s dashboard allows dApp devs to launch support for multiple wallets and chains with a single click instead of requiring them to create unique custom code for each chain and wallet. Its kits also allow developers to provide users with specific tokens access to exclusive features, and to block wallets flagged by blockchain intelligence firm, Chainalysis, or the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control.

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ZetaChain is a public PoS-based L1 blockchain with built-in omnichain interoperability. Different from other solutions, ZetaChain natively connects with any chain and layer and will support omnichain smart contract development.

Our recent launch of the Athens testnet marks an important milestone. Users will be able to leverage omnichain messaging to move real value cross-blockchain without the need for wrapping or locking assets.

We invite developers to our docs and users to join our Discord to shape the future of multichain. Here, you can learn more about how to build on ZetaChain and sign-up for the beta-tester waitlist.

Opinion

🧐 Puncturing the Hype About Illicit Finance in Crypto

Data Shows TradFi Remains the Channel of Choice for Dirty Money

Guest writer Alex Shipp argues crypto is getting a bad rap from the media when it comes to financial skullduggery.

IMPLICATIONS From the BBC to Reuters, the world’s leading mainstream media outlets steadily deliver provocative headlines implicating cryptocurrencies as primary facilitators of illicit activity. The edgy, sensationalized narratives would appear to warrant universal, uncompromising surveillance of all public citizens that engage decentralized systems built on blockchain, but the hard numbers tell a very different story.

ILLICIT ADDRESSES According to Chainalysis’ 2022 Crypto Crime Report, transactions involving illicit addresses accounted for only 0.15% of total cryptocurrency volume in 2021, with some competitors’ estimates falling as low as 0.10%. The figure represents yet another major decline as part of a multi-year down-trend from 0.6% in 2020, and a whopping 3.4% in 2019. Indisputably, illicit addresses constitute an ever-diminishing slice of the crypto pie.

BAD ACTORS For a modern news cycle that is starved for a feel-good headline, it’s worth acknowledging that in the last three years, cryptocurrency’s growth and evolution has been primarily directed toward emergent mainstream use cases. As for the bad actors themselves, a light investigation of the facts and figures is all that’s needed to discern why they remain warm and cozy confining their operations to legacy financial systems.

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The Tube

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Shoutout

Web3 with a16z is a new podcast about the next internet, from a16z crypto. Click here to listen now.

We know you’ve been hit over the head with discussions on web3 this year, which is why we’re so excited to recommend the definitive podcast for understanding and going deeper on crypto and web3.

It is hosted by Sonal Chokshi, former showrunner and longtime host of the a16z Podcast; along with frequent guest appearances and hosting by Chris Dixon.

Elsewhere

🔗 Maker governance is voting to invest $500 million in US Treasury bills: The Block

MakerDAO, the issuer of the Dai (DAI) stablecoin, is currently voting on how to allocate 500 million DAI ($500 million) of treasury funds into investments in US Treasury bills and bonds, the protocol announced on Monday.

🔗 Toys, Secrets, and Cycles: Lessons from the 2000s: Chris Dixon

I started my internet career in the early 2000s during the dot-com bust. It's hard to picture this now, but the internet was a thing that people used only intermittently, to check email or plan travel or do some research.

🔗 Investment Firm Cypherpunk Holdings Sells All of Its Bitcoin and Ether: CoinDesk

Canada-based investment firm Cypherpunk Holdings (HODL) has dumped all of its bitcoin and ether holdings to ride out the current market risks.

Maker @MakerDAOThese four Collateral Onboarding Applications are taking their final steps toward the full implementation into the Maker Protocol: • rETH • @compoundfinance D3M • Huntingdon Valley Bank • Societe Generale What is the status? 🧵5:49 PM ∙ Jun 28, 202235Likes4Retweets

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Fear and Reveling in Goblintown: A Savage Journey into NFT Land Just before midnight in Hell’s Kitchen, we snuck out the backdoor at Terminal 5 and boarded a slapdash, wooden bus befitting mythical creatures associated with dirt, bugs, and the macabre. We were, after all, among the “VERY few” who’d been chosen to go down, down to Goblintown.
CoinFLEX Sets $47M Token Sale to Save Itself From Sinking WhaleWhen a whale went went sideways on a massive position in CoinFLEX, the centralized crypto exchange should have been able to automatically liquidate the investor’s holdings and protect the platform from further damage.
Lido Voters Reject Limiting Growth In Key Move For Eth2After four days of voting, Lido, the largest liquid staking protocol on the Ethereum network, appears poised to reject calls to limit its own growth.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Owen Fernau, Aleksandar Gilbert, Claire Gu, Samuel Haig, Jason Levin, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt, Daniel Flynn, and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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