😠 StarkNet Testers Fume After Token Announcement

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

News

• StarkNet Testers Fume After Token AnnouncementCrypto Lender
• Celsius Files for Bankruptcy Protection
• Multicoin Raises New $430M Web3 Fund

DeFi Explainers

• What Is Ethereum?

Podcast

🎙Listen to this week’s podcast with Arthur Breitman here:

Elsewhere

• DeFi Worked Great: Pantera Capital
• Huobi’s version of wrapped bitcoin has a transparency problem: the Block
• NFTs Are Now Collateral for Secured Loans. Are You Legally Protected?: CoinDesk
• We're very excited to announce that @The_Beacon_GG will be deploying their web3 game on Arbitrum!: Arbitrum

Trending in The Defiant

• Three Arrows’ Su Zhu Breaks Silence Accusing Liquidators of Playing Dirty
• WZRDS Project Punishes Flippers By Burning Listed NFTS
• What Are Layer 1 and Layer 2 Blockchain Networks?

The open economy is taking over the old one. Subscribe to keep up with this revolution. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button below ($15/mo, $150/yr).

Subscribe now

🙌 Together with:

Nexo’s fundamentals-first model helps you secure your assets and grow your wealth. The company now provides an increased insurance on custodial assets of $775 million. Learn More!

Zetachain is the first public L1 blockchain that natively connects with any chain and layer including Bitcoin and Dogecoin without wrapping or bridging assets. Dive into the docs to start building the future of multichain.

Thirdweb: Build web3 apps easily, for free, with easy smart contract deployment, powerful SDKs and UI components from thirdweb. Create NFT drops, marketplaces, social tokens, DAOs and more on Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Arbitrum and Optimism.

Token Launches

😠 StarkNet Testers Fume After Token Announcement

By Aleksandar Gilbert

NATIVE TOKEN StarkWare, the company behind Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution StarkNet, plans to launch a native token designed to decentralize control and maintenance of the network.

UNVEILING The token is also intended to reward developers and investors, and its unveiling comes a day after Su Zhu, the enigmatic founder of failed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, slammed the fund’s liquidators for their alleged failure to claim StarkWare tokens before a July 5 deadline.

BOTCHED AIRDROP But early adopters of the nascent L2 took to its Discord to fume that they were left out of the equation, and some compared it to Optimism’s botched token airdrop last month.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Crypto Lending

😮 Crypto Lender Celsius Files for Bankruptcy Protection

User Withdrawals to Remain Halted

By Camila Russo

NEWS Celsius, the crypto lender that last month halted withdrawals, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the company said in a press release. User withdrawals will remain halted.

DECISION “This is the right decision for our community and company,” Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky wrote in the statement. “We have a strong and experienced team in place to lead Celsius through this process.”

RESTRUCTURING Celsius filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to start a financial restructuring process, the company said on its website.

MOTION Celsius has $167M in cash to support certain operations during the restructuring process, according to the press release. Celsius has filed a motion to request to pay employees and continue their benefits.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Sponsored Post

DeFi Saver offers convenient and safe access to borrowing, leveraging and yield farming, available using DeFi's most trusted protocols such as Maker, Aave and Liquity through a unified interface with additional automation and loan shifting options for complete management.

The famous DeFi app first started off as CDP Saver in early 2019 as a tool to help users protect their Maker CDPs (now Vaults) from liquidation and the dreaded 13% liquidation penalty. As DeFi started growing, they pivoted to DeFi Saver and over the past 3 years integrated protocols such as Aave, Liquity, Compound, Reflexer, Yearn, mStable and as of latest Convex.

As a complementary protocol to Curve, Convex brings users enhanced yield on their liquidity, and is the latest addition to DeFi Saver’s Smart Savings dashboard. With simple 1-transaction asset supply to the most famous yield farming protocols, it offers an easy access to some of the most popular DeFi protocol liquidity pools. The option to move your funds between pools and integrated protocols in a single transaction makes the dashboard especially convenient.

With an ever more expanding set of features, DeFi Saver is slowly becoming a truly robust solution for DeFi asset management with a safe and low-risk approach.

Check out this essential piece of anyone’s DeFi toolkit at DeFiSaver.com.

Crypto Funds

👀 Multicoin Raises New $430M Web3 Fund

By Jason Levin

RAISE Despite the bear market, venture capitalists are still raising money and looking to deploy capital. On July 12, crypto venture capital fund Multicoin Capital said it has raised $430M to invest anywhere between $500K-$25M in early-stage opportunities and up to $100M in mature projects.

TOOLING The fund will make investments in web3 infrastructure, DAOs and DAO tooling, consumer products, new IP-based business models, and creator monetization. Multicoin is looking for protocols that offer “proof of physical work” – ones that incentivize communities to “do verifiable work that builds real-world infrastructure.”

PORTFOLIO Multicoin Capital began investing in crypto five years ago and their portfolio includes early investments in Ethereum, Solana, blockchain explorer Dune Analytics, crypto-IoT network Helium, crypto exchange FTX, and DAO accelerator Seed Club.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

DeFi Explainers

🦄 What Is Ethereum?

A Step-by-Step Primer on Ethereum's Blockchain, Gas Fees, Scalability and dApps

By Rahul Nambiampurath

VALUELESS When Bitcoin first launched in January 2009, it was effectively valueless. In fact, it took two years for Bitcoin to reach $1. It took many subsequent years for the cryptocurrency to popularize the concept of blockchain assets, paving the way for other types of blockchain networks.

ALTERNATIVE The most important alternative to Bitcoin is Ethereum. Only, it’s not really an alternative but an entirely different proposition. Unlike Bitcoin, which is designed to be a form digital money, Ethereum is a network that enables software developers to create decentralized programs, called dApps, and smart contracts which automate agreements. Ether, Ethereum’s native token, is an intrinsic part of its operational program.

NODES As with any blockchain network, Ethereum relies on multiple computers, known as nodes, to maintain a distributed database on the internet. This public ledger is not just synced up with other nodes for data redundancy, but each record in the database is chained together and time-stamped. This creates a data blockchain that is immutable because no record could be forged without creating another blockchain branch.

As of July 2022, there are 1,224 Ethereum nodes in operation across the world. Each one holds an entire Ethereum ledger. Source: Etherscan.io

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Shoutout

Zebu Live is an immersive two-day Web 3 conference that brings the London crypto community together to showcase 80+ change-making leaders from the top web3 brands, including entrepreneur and investor Steven Bartlett. The conference will host 1,000’s of people worldwide, with discussions on DeFi, NFTs, the Metaverse, DAOs, and Gaming led by industry leaders.

Elsewhere

🔗 DeFi Worked Great: Pantera Capital

There’s a huge misconception that DeFi – Decentralized Finance – failed. It didn’t – it worked great!

🔗 Huobi’s version of wrapped bitcoin has a transparency problem: the Block

Huobi’s version of wrapped bitcoin isn’t living up to the transparency that it promised. The $800 million of assets that are backing the crypto exchange’s token are supposed to be sitting in clearly market wallets; except they’re not.

🔗 NFTs Are Now Collateral for Secured Loans. Are You Legally Protected?: CoinDesk

Regardless of personal views, it has grown near impossible not to take notice of non-fungible tokens (NFT).

Arbitrum @arbitrumWe're very excited to announce that @The_Beacon_GG will be deploying their web3 game on Arbitrum! It's great to continually see game developers choose not only Arbitrum as their home, but Ethereum in extension. 💙 Game on frens! 🎮

The Beacon @The_Beacon_GGThe Beacon is excited to announce that we will be building on @Treasure_DAO and @Arbitrum. We feel these ecosystems best align with our long-term thesis for web3 gaming. A 🧵, told with game visuals from The Beacon: https://t.co/D5Bq15CHC35:52 PM ∙ Jul 13, 2022193Likes38Retweets

Trending in The Defiant

• Three Arrows’ Su Zhu Breaks Silence Accusing Liquidators of Playing DirtySu Zhu, the co-founder of Three Arrows Capital, has accused the hedge fund’s liquidators of operating in bad faith, breaking a month-long silence during which his firm suffered a stunning fall from grace.
• WZRDS Project Punishes Flippers By Burning Listed NFTSRitual sacrifices are being carried out on the blockchain. An NFT collection called WZRDS has implemented a novel burn mechanism that allows NFT holders to vote to burn WZRDS NFTs listed below a certain price.
• What Are Layer 1 and Layer 2 Blockchain Networks?As the smart contract wars heat up, Layer 1 vs. Layer 2 blockchains are differentiating. From Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake blockchains, each has its own way to scale to accommodate transaction volume.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ 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 and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.

Subscribe now

The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content.Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr.