👮SEC Swoops: DeFi Week of June 4

This week, Camila Russo spoke to Steven Goldfeder, the founder of Offchain Labs. Offchain Labs is a company focused on Ethereum scaling solutions and known primarily for building Arbitrum, which is currently Ethereum's biggest Layer 2.

In our conversation. Steven will explain how Offchain Labs is addressing the scalability challenges of Ethereum by utilizing off-chain computation and optimistic rollups.

We get into the Arbitrum airdrop, its governance drama, the big vision for Arbitrum and Layer 2s as a whole, and what the next milestones are for the scaling solution.

Today we’re bringing you the essential guide to protecting your digital assets. Now, more than ever, securing your digital assets is key. Hardware wallets, recognized as the gold standard for crypto storage, are leading the charge in security. So let’s dive into hard wallets, cold wallets, and everything in between to understand how to protect your assets.

⚠️COINBASE AND BINANCE SUED BY THE SEC🩸

Binance is in hot water again! The world’s largest centralized exchange and its founder CZ are facing 13 charges from the SEC. It looks like the SEC has realized the power of Crypto Twitter, and they're using it to turn up the heat on CZ and Binance. But that’s not all, because Coinbase was hit with similar charges just this morning!

• Curve Founder Says VCs Seek to Leverage “Hostile Crypto Climate” in U.S.-Based Lawsuit VCs argue they are owed equity in Swiss Stake – the company behind the development of Curve Finance – and CRV tokens, in exchange for an investment of almost $1M. Founder Michael Egorov argues he doesn’t owe the VCs anything because he terminated the investment contract and, in the case of the U.S. lawsuit, because the jurisdiction of the agreement is in Switzerland.
• Ether.fi Launches NFTs Backed By Staked ETH In the Ether.fan collection launched by liquid staking protocol Ether.fi, every NFT represents a certain amount of staked ETH and enables the owner to earn staking rewards.
• Vitalik and CryptoRelief Mobilize $100M To Combat Future Pandemics Buterin and Polygon co-founder, Sandeep Nailwal, have agreed to allocate a further $100M from CryptoRelief to support medical and infrastructure solutions, including “improving ventilation, HEPA filtering, and experimental tech like UVC irradiation” to minimize airborne disease transmission.

• PoolTogether Lawsuit Dismissed By US Judge In a landmark decision for the DeFi sector, a U.S. district court judge has dismissed an ongoing lawsuit against the DeFi protocol PoolTogether. In 2021, Joseph Kent accused PoolTogether and several other entities of operating an "illegal lottery" in New York.
• Coinbase Wallet Catches SEC’s Attention In Industry-Defining Lawsuit U.S. regulators have charged against crypto’s biggest centralized platforms this week, but decentralized finance wasn’t left unscathed. Deep into the 100-plus-page Coinbase lawsuit, the SEC took aim at the exchange’s non-custodial wallet.
• Arbitrum Onboards Norway’s Digital Krone Arbitrum, the leading Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum, is making major strides towards expanding its ecosystem, with the network onboarding Norway's digital currency and adding native support for Circle’s USDC stablecoin.

• BTC, ETH, and BNB Trade At A Premium On Binance.US After Court Orders Asset Freeze Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance’s native BNB token are trading for a premium on Binance.US, compared to the wider market. Bitcoin is trading roughly 2.5% higher on Binance.US versus its international counterpart, down from 7% earlier today.
• DeFi Tokens Are Down Over 80% Against ETH Since All-Time Highs Traders have been better off holding ETH than DeFi tokens in the bear market. While ETH has bled 60% its all-time high of $4,787 in November 2021, DeFi tokens have well outpaced those losses.
• Swift To Explore Cross-chain Transfers With Major Banks Swift is working with banking partners worldwide to trial cross-chain tokenized asset transfers. “More institutions are beginning to explore how to serve customers on both permissioned and public blockchain networks like Ethereum,” said Swift’s Jonathan Ehrenfeld.
• Binance Outflows Slow After SEC Crackdown Net outflows from Binance, which spiked after U.S. securities regulators filed charges against the world’s largest crypto exchange, are slowing. In the past 24 hours, Binance's net outflows retraced to $513M from $1.4B a day earlier.

• Centrifuge Looks To Help DAOs Invest In Real-World Assets Centrifuge launched a platform for DAOs seeking to manage a portfolio of RWAs in beta on June 6. “Protocols can set up the legal, technical, and operational infrastructure needed to adopt and scale real-world asset investments in a safe and compliant way.” Centrifuge’s CEO told The Defiant.
• Aave Prepares To Launch GHO Stablecoin Ethereum users will soon have another decentralized stablecoin option, with Aave proposing to deploy its GHO stablecoin on mainnet to an outpouring of support.
• Optimism Deploys Bedrock Upgrade Optimism has deployed its long-awaited Bedrock upgrade, which optimizes its technology stack for modularity, allowing third-party developers to launch customizable layer 2 networks on top of the OP Stack. Less than 2,000 lines of code differentiate the Geth client from Optimism’s client.
• SEC Charges Coinbase With Securities Violations The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Coinbase with violating the nation’s securities laws. The SEC alleges that Coinbase has been operating as an exchange, broker, and clearinghouse without the necessary approvals from the agency.

• Crypto Markets Dive After SEC Sues Binance The SEC is taking the world’s largest crypto exchange and its founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) to court for allegedly violating federal securities laws. Crypto markets turned sharply lower on the news, with BNB crashing 9% to its lowest point since March.
• Atomic Wallet Exploited For More Than $35M Atomic Wallet, a cryptocurrency wallet service with 5 million users, is currently grappling with a significant security breach. An unknown exploit has resulted in users losing over $35M of assets. However, the damage may very well exceed $50M, considering ongoing reports of stolen assets.
• Curve’s Stablecoin to Support Lido’s stETH Token holders of Curve Finance, the leading stablecoin DEX, voted for Curve’s new stablecoin to onboard Lido’s liquid staking token, stETH. The proposal passed on Saturday with unanimous support and a massive quorum of more than 84%.