🤨 UNI Sale by Committee Member is Latest Controversy in DeFi Education Fund

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we are covering today…

News

• UNI Sale Raises Concerns Regarding Newly Formed DeFi Education Fund
• Digital or Physical? Damien Hirst’s New NFT Project Gives Buyers A Choice
• Hop Drops on Mainnet: A Protocol for Interoperability Across Scaling Solutions
• Uniswap’s V3 Launches on Layer 2 Solution Optimism

Video

• Treasury Troubles Solved: with the UMA range Token

Podcast

Links

• DeFi wallet Phantom raises $9 million in Series A funding led by A16z: The Block
• Ethereum: The Infinite Garden
• Blocknative raises $12 million to scale core transaction monitoring infrastructure: Blocknative

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Markets

🤨 UNI Sale Raises Concerns Regarding Newly Formed DeFi Education Fund

TLDR A series of unexpected trades in the last two days roiled the DeFi Education Fund set up by Uniswap token holders, leading to finger-pointing and accusatory tweets as the newly formed lobbying organization struggled to fend off more controversy.

FIVE HOURS It started when Igor Igamberdiev, a research analyst at The Block, said on Twitter that Larry Sukernik, one of the individuals controlling the fund, sold $50K of Uniswap’s UNI token five hours before the Education fund itself sold a significant portion of its allotment.

TRADES The DeFi Education Fund sold 500K UNI for USDC. That amount is worth roughly $10M, which is half of the fund’s 1M token allotment. The trades triggered speculation that Sukernik had taken advantage of his position to execute trades ahead of the Education Fund’s sale.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

SPONSORED POST

Your Project’s Token: Collateral to Mint the Next-Gen USD-stablecoin

Select projects are being invited to have their tokens made available as collateral for minting a new stablecoin: USDO, OpenDAO’s multi-collateral stablecoin.

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Learn more at: https://Opendao.io

Dives

🔗 Digital or Physical? Damien Hirst’s New NFT Project Gives Buyers A Choice

NEWS Damien Hirst, still the enfant terrible of the UK art scene and reportedly the nation’s richest living artist, is about to add to his fortune with a $20M NFT drop.

VAULT His project, called The Currency, is a collection of 10,000 NFTs, which correspond to 10,000 unique paintings of spots created by the artist in 2016. These physical artworks are currently stored in a secure vault in the UK. Each is individually signed and numbered, and the handmade paper used includes myriad security features such as watermarks and holograms, making them difficult to copy. The NFTs representing the artworks will be sold for $2,000 apiece during a July 29 drop.

Damien Hirst has made scores of spot paintings in the last decade.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Bytes

⚙️ Hop Drops on Mainnet: A Protocol for Interoperability Across Scaling Solutions

TLDR As yields and prices cool, dampening down dreams of another DeFi summer, the hope of a Layer 2 version of the season has emerged.

SCALING Pushing the dream forward is Hop Protocol, a project which allows users to “hop” across scaling solutions has launched on the Ethereum mainnet.

LAUNCH Hop, which works with protocols compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), currently facilitates transfers of USDC across Polygon, xDAI, and Ethereum. Support for leading optimistic rollup providers, Optimism and Arbitrum, are coming soon, according to the launch post. DAI, USDT, ETH, WBTC and MATIC transfers are also coming soon.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

🦄 Uniswap’s V3 Launches on Layer 2 Solution Optimism

NEWS It’s a good time for Layer 2 enthusiasts as Uniswap V3 has soft-launched on Optimism, a leading optimistic rollup solution for scaling Ethereum.

SO WHAT Users can now tap Optimism to deposit, trade and provide liquidity on the decentralized exchange (DEX), which captures roughly half of all DEX volume, according to a Dune Analytic’s query.

COSTS Optimism “currently reduces baseline user transaction costs by ~10x-50x,” the project states in a blog post.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Video

📺 First Look: Treasury Troubles Solved: with the UMA range Token

Links

🔗 DeFi wallet Phantom raises $9 million in Series A funding led by A16z: The Block

Phantom, a crypto wallet and browser extension for accessing decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, has raised $9 million in a Series A funding round. Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) led the round, with participation from Variant Fund, Jump Capital, DeFi Alliance, and the Solana Foundation.

🔗 I am often asked if I will “return to cryptocurrency:” @ummjackson

Jackson Palmer @ummjacksonI am often asked if I will “return to cryptocurrency” or begin regularly sharing my thoughts on the topic again. My answer is a wholehearted “no”, but to avoid repeating myself I figure it might be worthwhile briefly explaining why here…4:54 PM ∙ Jul 14, 202130,102Likes7,732Retweets

🔗 Ethereum: The Infinite Garden

A vibrant community of developers, entrepreneurs, artists and crypto enthusiasts chart the future of the Ethereum blockchain as it experiences unprecedented growth. ETHEREUM: THE INFINITE GARDEN is a character-driven documentary film on the challenges and rewards of building a new world.

🔗 Genesis MoonCats (uGMC) auction is now live at http://miso.sushi.com: @SushiSwap

SushiChef @SushiSwapGenesis MoonCats (uGMC) auction is now live at miso.sushi.com 🐈🤍🍣

RedCave Ventures @RedcaveV1/2 The uGMC is live and running hot: https://t.co/DB2uW0EdeE To celebrate the succesful launch of the uGMC Token sale on MISO, we are running a giveaway. 25k uGMC worth 2.4 eth will be given away to five lucky winners. To qualify, simply - follow @RedCaveV - Like - Retweet9:10 AM ∙ Jul 13, 202190Likes27Retweets

🔗 Blocknative raises $12 million to scale core transaction monitoring infrastructure: Blocknative

Founded in 2018, Blocknative builds and operates critical infrastructure for monitoring and managing public blockchain transactions. Today, we are excited to announce that we have raised $12.0 million in new Series A financing, bringing our total raised to more than $19.0 million.

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🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in this newsletter were written by Owen Fernau, Dan Kahan and yyctrader and edited by Edward Robinson, Bailey Reutzel and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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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).