⚖️SEC Suffers Blow In Ripple Lawsuit: DeFi Week of July 9

This week, Cami Russo was joined by Mike Silagadze, the founder and CEO of ether.fi — a new player in liquid staking that enables ETH stakers to control their keys while delegating.

Ethereum liquid staking has been one of the hottest themes of crypto in 2023. Since the Shapella upgrade enabled staked Ether withdrawals, Liquid Staking Tokens quickly grew in popularity, igniting concerns surrounding the centralizing force associated with LSTs. Today’s conversation begins with an introduction in ether.fi before diving into what differentiates the protocol from its rivals in the fiercely competitive liquid staking space.

$3.9bn of Crypto was hacked or stolen in 2022 alone. 2021 saw about $3.2bn vanish, which was already a 6 fold increase compared to 2020. The question is - with both legislators and prosecutors out for blood, will this year be any different?

Can AI BOOST Crypto Adoption?

AI had infiltrated everything on the internet, and I still knew nothing about using it. So to find out just how powerful generative AI tools could be, we ran an experiment. My job was to harness the power of AI to boost crypto adoption and hopefully save us from the bear market blues.

What was my target? 50,000 views! I’ll share the entire journey in this video, whether or not we reached the goal, and how you can very easily create a YouTube channel using only AI tools!

Is the CIA really backing this project

Arkham Intelligence, which offers an AI platform and searchable database of crypto users, has been accused of doxxing users for months. Why is Arkham leaking its own customers' information? And what does this mean for the future of privacy in crypto?

• Aave Launches GHO Stablecoin On Ethereum Mainnet Aave, the leading DeFi lending protocol, has launched its long-awaited GHO stablecoin. Aave v3 users on Ethereum can now mint the stablecoin against assets deposited into the protocol. GHO offers a fixed interest rate of 1.5%, with Aave DAO’s treasury receiving all fees generated.

• Base Opens Up To Developers Ahead Of August Mainnet Launch Base, the hotly anticipated Layer 2 network from Coinbase, the leading U.S. centralized exchange, opened its doors to developers on July 12. Builders can now begin tinkering with their code on Base ahead of a public launch slated for early August.
• Synthetix Founder Takes Aim At Centralized Exchanges With Infinex Kain Warwick, the founder of Synthetix, launched a new decentralized perpetuals exchange called Infinex. Warwick said he is striving for Infinex competing with top centralized exchanges processing billions in daily volume.
• Backlash Over Arkham’s Intelligence Platform Highlights Blockchains’ Double-Edged Sword Data analytics firm Arkham Intelligence recently announced an incentive program for researchers to provide information on crypto addresses and transactions. The debate that followed raises the question: Should blockchains be deanonymized?

• Markets Rally After U.S. Judge Says Ripple Is Not A Security Crypto markets are soaring after a U.S. court ruled that Ripple’s XRP is not a security amid its legal battle with the SEC. XRP surged over 55% over a few hours in response to the news, while ETH rallied to its highest level since May.
• StarkWare Claims Unrivaled Throughput Following ‘Quantum Leap’ Upgrade StarkWare, an Ethereum scaling team, deployed the Quantum Leap upgrade for its StarkNet Layer 2 network on July 12.StarkWare said Quantum Leap consistently produced a throughput of 37 transactions per second (TPS) during its public testnet, with peaks of 90 TPS.
• Google Embraces Digital Assets With Updated Play Store Policy Google has given the green light to mobile app developers embracing digital assets and NFTs, with the Google Play Store updating its policies to welcome blockchain-based content within supported applications.
• Coinbase Wallet Adds Chat and USDC Payment Features Coinbase Wallet, the self-custodial wallet from the leading U.S. crypto exchange, has launched an encrypted messaging feature that lets users send messages directly to and from wallet addresses on the platform. The new feature also enables users to send USDC stablecoins to any recipient across the app via the Polygon network without paying any transaction fees.

• EigenLayer Attracts Over 30,000 ETH Just Minutes After Raising Deposit Caps Investors are racing to use EigenLayer, the pioneering staking protocol. On July 12, the project raised the cap on liquid staking tokens users could deposit in the protocol from 9,600 to 30,000, before again increasing the limit to 45,000 tokens less than an hour later.
• MakerDAO Now Earns 80% Of Its Fee Revenue From Real-World Assets MakerDAO’s RWA exposure drove 79% of fee revenue, or $13.5M for the protocol’s treasury, over the past 12 months, according to data MakerDAO shared with The Defiant. Dune Analytics data shows that MakerDAO now boasts a $2.34B RWA portfolio, including $1.14B worth of U.S. treasury bonds.
• Ethereum Developers Propose Token Standard To Protect Issuers From Bridge Hacks Ethereum developers are proposing a new token standard to protect token issuers against cross-chain bridge exploits. On July 7, Connext founder, Arjun Bhuptani, published a proposal for ERC-7281 to the Ethereum Magicians forum.
• Aave Could Launch Stablecoin On Ethereum Within Days The community behind Aave, the leading DeFi money market, is rallying behind a governance proposal to launch its long-awaited GHO stablecoin on the Ethereum mainnet. The proposal met quorum and received unanimous support from token holders.

• Consensys To Launch Linea zkEVM Mainnet At EthCC Competition within Ethereum’s Layer 2 ecosystem continues to heat up, with Consensys preparing to launch the mainnet alpha of its Linea network next week. Consensys onboarded ecosystem partners this week and will open Linea to the public during next week’s Ethereum Community Conference.
• New Developers Left Web3 En Masse In The Past 12 Months The number of active crypto developers has fallen by 22% since hitting an all-time high last year, according to a mid-year developer report from Electric Capital, a prominent crypto venture fund. The data shows that 21,300 web3 developers were active last month, down from a peak of 27,300 in June 2022
• Security Engineer Arrested Over $9M DEX Hack U.S. authorities have arrested Shakeeb Ahmed, a security engineer based in New York, alleging that he stole $9M in cryptocurrency from a decentralized exchange. While the complaint does not name the DEX, the details match the July 2022 exploit of the Solana-based Crema Finance.
• CowSwap Enables Complex Swaps With ‘Hooks’ CoW Swap launched its new ‘Hooks’ feature, allowing users to execute additional transactions immediately before or after trading via the DEX. Instead of being limited to swapping between assets, sophisticated users can now chain together actions like swapping, bridging, and staking to reduce transaction fees.

• Ordinals Inscriptions Surge Following BRC-69 Launch Activity surrounding Ordinals is picking up again following the launch of a token standard that significantly reduces the fees associated with creating them. Dune Analytics data shows the number of inscriptions steadily rose from 62,775 on July 3 to 385,920 on July 9.

• Lido and Rocket Pool Duel Over Centralization Concerns Tensions between top liquid staking providers Lido and Rocket Pool are escalating, with Lido challenging the purported decentralization of Rocket Pool’s Protocol DAO. While Lido supporters highlight a single EOA can change any parameter of pDAO’s smart contracts, Rocket Pool said the issue is well-known and efforts to decentralize pDAO’s governance are already underway.
• Fei Protocol's Discord Seized By San Francisco Court Amid Class Action Suit Fei Protocol, the team behind a nixed decentralized stablecoin, is facing a class action lawsuit that claims its FEI and TRIBE tokens were unregistered securities. A July 7 court order proposed a $17.85M settlement for FEI and TRIBE genesis investors.
• USDC Issuer Circle Launches Programmable Web3 Wallet Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, has launched a programmable Wallet-as-a-Service platform in production beta. The feature enables developers to embed wallets into their dApps and customize wallet parameters, and supports Multiparty Computation (MPC).