😠 Coinbase CEO: Would Exit Staking Biz If Forced To Censor Transactions

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

News

• Coinbase CEO: Would Exit Staking Biz If Forced To Censor Transactions
• Uniswap Foundation Proposal Clears Hurdle
• Fractional Raises $20M And Rebrands To Tessera

Markets

• Crypto Markets Falter As Investors Digest Fed Minutes

Video

• Quick Take: Democracy Manifest: $1.6 Billion Burnt

Elsewhere

• Solana’s Biggest DeFi Lender is Leaning Into ‘Permissionless’ Loan Markets: CoinDesk
• Ethereum Name Creation Doubles In Four Months to 2 Million: Decrypt
• Sky Mavis’ Ronin sidechain expands to 17 validators to boost security
• Here is the TOP 11 rollups list in ‘New Accounts’ today: Arbitrum

Trending in The Defiant

• MakerDAO May Execute ‘Emergency Shutdown’ If Sanctions Hit DAI
• Dev Estimates Exact Timing Of The Merge
• Ethereum Completes Goerli Testnet Merge

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Crypto Regulation

😠 Coinbase CEO: Would Exit Staking Biz If Forced To Censor Transactions

Largest US Exchange Accounts For 14% Of All Staked ETH

By Aleksandar Gilbert

SHUT DOWN After several days of mounting pressure, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said that he would rather shut down the company’s Ethereum staking service than comply with a government order to censor sanctioned transactions.

HYPOTHETICAL “Its a hypothetical we hopefully wont actually face. But if we did wed go with B i think,” Armstrong tweeted in response to Rotki founder Lefteris Karapetsas, who had asked Coinbase and its peers whether they would censor or leave the staking business if pressured by regulators.

BEACON “Got to focus on the bigger picture. There may be some better option (C) or a legal challenge as well that could help reach a better outcome,” Armstrong continued. Coinbase accounts for about 14% of all staked Ether, with more than 1.9M ETH locked on behalf of its users in the networks Beacon chain. Ether is trading at $1,850 on Wednesday evening in New York, making Coinbases stake worth more than $3.5B.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Market Action

📉 Crypto Markets Falter As Investors Digest Fed Minutes

Bitcoin Dropped 3% While Ether Slid 2.3%.

By Owen Fernau

LOSSES Crypto markets are on track for a fourth day of losses as investors mull over weaker-than-expected U.S. retail sales and minutes from the Feds July meeting.

FLAT Total market capitalization is down 1.5% to $1.18T in the past 24 hours as month-over-month retail sales data for July came in flat at 0%. Economists had expected a 0.1% gain. Bitcoin dropped 3% while Ether slid 2.3%. The DeFi sector, as categorized by CoinGecko, is down 2.4%.

SPOOKED Traders may have been spooked by a transaction which moved $2.7B worth of ETH to Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

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DEX Governance

🦄 Uniswap Foundation Proposal Clears Hurdle

New Organization Would Be Tasked To Boost Growth and Improve Governance at No. 1 DEX

By Owen Fernau

NEWS Voting is underway on a proposal to create the Uniswap Foundation (UF), a new organization that will, if passed, “support Uniswaps decentralized growth, reinvigorate governance, and serve as an advocate for the protocol.”

VOTERS So far, voters are unanimously in favor of the move, with 50.56M UNI tokens voting for it. A proposal must receive a minimum of 40M affirmative votes and win the majority to pass.

GRANTS The proposal calls for an operating budget of $14M with roughly 90% earmarked for salaries to sustain a 12-person team for three years. It’s also requesting $60M to expand the Uniswap Grants Program (UGP), which the Foundation would be tasked with administering.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

NFT Fundraising

💰 Fractional Raises $20M And Rebrands To Tessera

Collective NFT Ownership Platform Closes Series A Led By Paradigm

By Jason Levin

BULLISH BETS Despite the bear market, institutional investors continue to place bullish bets on NFTs. Tessera, a collective NFT ownership platform formerly known as Fractional, has raised $20M in a Series A funding round led by Paradigm, a major venture fund with over $10B in assets under management.

PRIZED NFTs Since launching in 2021, more than 70,000 people have used Fractional to collectively own 6,500 prized NFTs, and the protocol has facilitated over $2B in total trading volume.

MEME The platform has been used to collectively buy a $3.46M Zombie Cryptopunk, raise $8M for Ukraine, and form decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to buy the original Doge meme as an NFT and another called Free Ross DAO in support of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

The Tube

📺 Quick Take: Democracy Manifest: $1.6 Billion Burnt

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Elsewhere

🔗 Solana’s Biggest DeFi Lender is Leaning Into ‘Permissionless’ Loan Markets: CoinDesk

Solend is giving the same “permissionless” principles underpinning decentralized exchanges’ limitless token listings a try on Solana Network’s cryptocurrency lending market.

🔗 Ethereum Name Creation Doubles In Four Months to 2 Million: Decrypt

As the crypto world gears up for the Ethereum Merge next month, the number of Ethereum Name Service (ENS) addresses created has surged, surpassing 2 million yesterday, after crossing the 1.8 million mark two weeks ago.

🔗 Sky Mavis’ Ronin sidechain expands to 17 validators to boost security

Ronin, an Ethereum-linked sidechain that hosts the Axie Infinity play-to-earn game, has added three new validators as it aims to boost security following the $600 million hack in March.

🛸Here is the TOP 11 rollups list in 'New Accounts' today.
@arbitrum and #arbitrumnova are in the forefront.
Get more L2 data info👉https://t.co/RTXSapviyq

Btw… these 11 rollups are all integrated into https://t.co/5rIL1Mgf1X.

PS: Data as of 08:00 UTC, 18th August pic.twitter.com/9JYnpetU6s

— Orbiter Finance 🛸 (@Orbiter_Finance) August 18, 2022

Trending in The Defiant

• MakerDAO May Execute ‘Emergency Shutdown’ If Sanctions Hit DAINow it’s MakerDAO’s turn. The DeFi blue chip is the latest protocol to be struck by shock waves from the U.S. Treasury Department’s decision Monday to sanction Tornado Cash, a so-called “mixer” that lets crypto users anonymize their transactions.
• Dev Estimates Exact Timing Of The MergeFirst, it was the third quarter. Then it was sometime in September. Now, we know that The Merge, the most sweeping upgrade in Ethereums history, will likely take place on Sep. 15.
• Ethereum Completes Goerli Testnet Merge The final installment of the testnet Merge trilogy is complete. On Aug. 10 at 9:45pm ET, Ethereums Goerli testnet transitioned to Proof-of-Stake consensus.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ 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.

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