🪨BlackRock Swoops In: DeFi Week of June 18

Happy weekend Defiers!

This week saw major TradFi players enter the crypto space, with a new custodial crypto exchange backed by legacy incumbents Citadel Securities and Charles Schaub, plus a spate of filings for Bitcoin ETFs, including one from the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock.

The markets pulled off a bullish turnaround after the previous week’s regulatory actions from the SEC targeting centralized exchanges. But critics are now slamming the U.S. regulatory crusade against crypto for clearing the way for legacy financial institutions to position themselves to profit from the next bull cycle.

The digital asset markets received an additional bullish boost on Wednesday when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said crypto has “staying power as an asset class.” Bitcoin has surged 15% over the past seven days, while Ether gained 10%. Bitcoin now boasts a crypto market dominance of more than 50%, its highest level since April 2021.

In other news, Optimism launched its third retroactive public goods funding, which will distribute 30M OP tokens to builders providing value to the Optimism ecosystem. Optimism’s RetroPGF rounds offer an alternative to venture capital funding for early-stage developers.

BNB Chain launched a public testnet for its opBNB, a Layer 2 network based on Optimism’s OP Stack. BNB Chain said the network can process 4,000 transactions per second with fees below half a cent.

Polygon published a proposal to transition its PoS sidechain into a zero-knowledge-powered Validium. The PoS Chain is the largest network in Polygon’s ecosystem with $960M in TVL but currently lacks the cutting-edge technology underpinning Polygon’s L2s.

NFTs are enjoying a small resurgence on Solana, with daily transactions pushing above 60,000 for the first time since January. The news follows a tough spate for both NFTs and Solana, with many popular nonfungibles giving back their 2023 gains in recent months while Solana reels from the fallout of FTX’s collapse.

Gods Unchained, an NFT-based card game, launched on the Epic Games Store to its 230M users this past week. Epic Games Store is expanding its blockchain game catalog, positioning itself as an ally to the sector in contrast to Steam’s decision to boycott the sector in 2021.

And in this week’s podcast, Coinbase’s head of cryptography, Yehuda Lindell, shares advances in wallet technology he believes could be the key to unlocking mass adoption of web3.

Enjoy!

Podcast

The Key to Crypto's Mass Adoption? Coinbase Says it's Wallet as a Service (WaaS)

This week, Tegan Kline was joined by Yehuda Lindell, head of cryptography at the leading U.S.-based exchange, Coinbase.

Yehuda is a former professor and former co-founder and CEO of Unbound Tech, a cybersecurity company specializing in privacy and key management solutions that Coinbase later acquired. Yehuda now leads the cryptography team at Coinbase, driving innovation in the field of secure computation and increased privacy and data security.

On today's podcast, we dive into the cryptography team at Coinbase, the company’s innovative new Wallet-as-a-Service, and bringing self-custody to the masses. We also get into Yehuda’s advice for aspiring cryptographers.

Defiant Video

WTF is up with Binance?!

Today, we're diving into the tumultuous state of Binance, the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange, as it navigates a series of regulatory hurdles around the world.

From narrowly avoiding catastrophe in the U.S. to strategically pulling out of Europe, Binance's recent headlines have been a rollercoaster for us all. So, let's figure out why these events matter.

Friday

Lido Revenue Sharing Proposal Draws Fire Amid Rising Staking Dominance Lido, the top liquid staking provider, is ruffling feathers in the Ethereum community by seeking to expand its dominance with a revenue-sharing program despite already commanding nearly one-third of the staked Ether supply.

Thursday

Gods Unchained Launches On Epic Games Store Gods Unchained launched on Epic Games Store, a digital gaming distribution platform, on June 21. EGS boasts a user base of 230M PC gamers, including an active community of digital trading card enthusiasts.

Wednesday

Crypto Surges After Powell Says It Has “Staying Power As An Asset Class” The cryptocurrency market is rallying after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said it has “staying power” and as Wall Street institutions move forward in their efforts to adopt the technology. Bitcoin is up 8% and crossed the $30,000 mark for the first time since mid-April. Ethereum’s Ether gained more than 5% to $1,877, the highest since last June.
Polygon Proposes Zero-Knowledge Overhaul For PoS Chain Engineers at Polygon, a leading Ethereum scaling team, have published a proposal to transition its PoS sidechain into a rollup-like zero-knowledge-powered validium. The PoS Chain is the largest network within Polygon’s ecosystem, with a DeFi TVL of $930M, and processes 2.5M transactions daily.
Wall Street-Backed Bitcoin ETFs Pile Up After BlackRock’s Filing BlackRock has opened the floodgates to institutional asset managers who are racing to apply for exchange-traded funds offering exposure to Bitcoin. Exchange-traded fund manager WisdomTree and investment management firm Invesco on Tuesday submitted filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking permission to launch Bitcoin ETFs.
Optimism Unveils $40M Public Goods Funding Round Optimism, Ethereum’s second-largest Layer 2 network with $2.2B in value locked, has announced a third “RetroPGF” round to reward ecosystem contributors for their past contributions to the network. Starting in the fall, the program will distribute 30M OP tokens to builders, creators, and educators.
France DeFi Paper is Latest Sign of Global Regulators Warming Up to Crypto While U.S. regulators crack down on the crypto industry, the opposite is happening abroad. The Autorité des Marchés Financiers, the regulatory body that oversees French financial markets, published a paper that “aims to provide a definition of what constitutes DeFi, providing a high‐level overview of the sector.”

Tuesday

Bitcoin Dominance Rises To Highest Level In Over Two Years Bitcoin now represents more than half of the crypto market for the first time since April 2021, suggesting the most valuable cryptocurrency may be gearing up for a pre-halving bull market.
Crypto Crackdown Cleared the Way for Fidelity-Backed Exchange and BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, Custodia CEO Says Major names in crypto are calling foul as some of the United States’ largest financial firms launched an exchange for digital assets today. Wall Street giants Fidelity Digital Assets, Charles Schwab, and the market-making behemoth Citadel Securities are behind EDX, a non-custodial crypto exchange.
BNB Chain Launches Testnet For Layer 2 Network BNB Chain, Binance’s Ethereum-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, has unveiled a testnet for opBNB, a Layer 2 rollup based on Optimism’s OP Stack. BNB Chain said the new network will be able to process more than 4,000 transactions per second with average transaction fees of less than half a cent.
Solana NFT Activity Doubles In May Solana’s on-chain NFT activity is on the rise, producing some much-needed signs of recovery for the ailing network. According to data from Messari, the daily NFT transaction count doubled from the start of May to sit near 60,000 based on a seven-day moving average.

Monday

Curve Looks To Expand crvUSD Collateral Assets Curve, a popular stablecoin-focused decentralized exchange, is seeking to expand the set of collateral assets supported by its crvUSD stablecoin beyond Ethereum liquid staking tokens. Should the proposal pass, Curve would launch a wBTC vault with a $200M debt ceiling.
Donations for ZachXBT’s Legal Defense Reach $1M Target in Less Than Three Days Support is pouring in from the cryptocurrency ecosystem to help blockchain sleuth ZachXBT in his legal defense against a defamation lawsuit. Widely known for exposing scams in the crypto space, ZachXBT’s plea for help did not go unheard. He reached that $1M milestone just three days after providing the ETH address for supporters to direct their donations.