Welcome to this 20th issue of the Chain Reaction newsletter for the week commencing 4th April 2022.
In the news last week we started off with pretty negative with more news of scams reaching the market, this time with the biggest of all in this space thanks to the Ronin Network hack leading to a $625m exploit but it ended on a positive with an improvement in crypto price action and our friends at NFTSYD hosting a successful all day event on Saturday (skip to the social posts for more).
What you can expect in this newsletter
In the News
Videos of the week
Charts and Data
Around the world of social media
Education
In the news
artnet - As Part of His NFT Debut, Jeff Koons Will Launch Sculptures Into Space and Place Them Permanently on the Moon - The most expensive living artist on Earth is now setting his signs on the moon. Jeff Koons new art will be based on technological advancements and each digital artwork will have a physical representation too.
OpenSea Confirms It Will Start Listing Solana NFTs in April - OpenSea has officially confirmed through Twitter that the platform will be supporting NFTs minted on the Solana blockchain. No specific date mentioned but will be in April.
Crypto Briefing - DeFi Project Spotlight: Tornado Cash, Ethereum’s Top Privacy Tool - In this analysis piece, the crew take a look at Tornado Cash, a decentralised, non-custodial protocol helping users keep their information private when sending deposits from one address to another. It explains how it uses ZK-SNARKS (zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge) to enable its privacy features. Whilst firms like Chainalysis have reportedly demixed transactions, it’s likely due to user error rather than a breaking of the ZK-SNARKs. Worth a look if you’re into privacy.
The Block - BNB Chain to launch application-specific sidechains to reduce network strain - BNB (Binance) will launch sidechains to expand its network scalability. This will reduce costs and increase transaction speeds for users. This enables large scale transaction protocols like GameFi, SocialFi, Metaverse and more.
Decrypt - Ethereum Layer-2 DeFi Money Market zkLend Lands $5M Raise - zkLend raised $5m in a seed round with Delphi Digital, Starkware and Three Arrows Cpaital along with a few others to build out its money market solutions (similar to Aave and Compound) using zk-rollups. This funding will help it launch its retail lending product, Artemis later this year.
SMH - Mastercard partners with local crypto exchange in effort to tackle debanking - BTCMarkets has announced a deal with Mastercard that would allow users to buy crypto with debit or credit cards. Prior to that it was only possible to exchange via bank deposits and helps fight the debanking that has been going on with customers being cut off by local banks.
CoinDesk - The Clumsy Theatrics of Metaverse Fashion Week - Over 4 days, designers like Perry Ellis, Dolce & Gabbana, Phillipp Plein and Tommy Hilfiger were among designers promoting their digital fashion lines all inside Decentraliand. In this opinion piece there were the pros and cons of metaverse fashion but it’s still early in the space it seems with advertising being a bit clunky inside and communication limited too.
CoinDesk - Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network Suffers $625M Exploit - Potentially the largest exploit or hack in DeFi history happened with the gaming-focused Ronin Network this week. This resulted in a loss of $625m in USDC and ETH out of Ronin’s validator nodes for Sky Mavis (the makers of Axie Infinity).
#Regulation and Government
CoinTelegraph - DAO regulation in Australia: Issues and solutions, Part 1 - 1st of a 3 part series opinion piece on the DAO regulation announcements from Australian Senator Andrew Bragg during Blockchain Week. Whilst many see the positives, a flaw to highlight is the lack of discourse in the public that politiicians serve when it comes to what DAOs are about. If this does not happen then conventional approaches to regulating something new may do more harm than good.
CoinDesk - US Lawmakers Introduce 'ECASH' Bill in New Push to Create a Digital Dollar - In further moves towards a digital US dollar there has been a new bill introduced known as the ECASH Act (Electronic Currency And Secure Hardware Act). This is meant to create a true digital analogue to the US dollar and would support fully anonymous transactions in contrast to other government backed digital currencies.This is still a proposal but keep an eye on this one.
Cryptoslate - Bitcoin drops to $45.5k as Europe votes to ban cold wallets in attack on decentralization - The EU parkiament voted on outlawing unhosted wallets (aka cold storage) in what could be a major blow for DeFi in Europe. Not only that but there will be more requirements on DEXs to gather customer information via KYC and companies have 9 months to adapt to this new ruling. Whether crypto companies decide to stay in Europe or not after this is anyone’s guess.
CoinTelegraph - US Congress agency recommends 4 key policy options for blockchain - GAO (the US Government Accountability Office) has shared 4 policy options to help lawmakers implement blockchain tech in their own work. This includes the flowchart below.
Charts and Data
CoinGecko
Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap as of April 3rd 2022 12:51pm AEST on CoinGecko. A continued trend up during the week for BTC climbing to $47k but hitting some resistance and settling at $45.9k at the time of writing.
Dune Analytics - DEX Metrics
In this set of charts we can see the biggest decentralised exchanges and their recent volumes. It's no surprise that Uniswap is the biggest followed by Curve and Sushiswap. You can check out the dashboard here: https://dune.xyz/hagaetc/dex-metrics
Videos of the week
The Defiant - Stargate Finance is open for business. Omnichain: fast, cheap and on Layer Zero - a dive into this Omnichain platform built on Layer Zero. It offers a fast crypto bridging solution and is the type of project that will likely unlock the next levels of mainstream adoption as it is part of a new wave of protocols built to reduce barriers in crypto. 10mins
Gugus - Ronin Network Hacked! 173,600 ETH Stolen! - Details about the Ronin Network hack with 173,600 ETH stolen worth over $600m. It goes through the Ronin announcement as well as tweets and a dive into Etherscan to look at what’s on the hackers wallets (because it’s all visible).7mins
The Defiant - Cashio - The $52M hack nobody's talking about - Adding to the saga of hacks is this piece describing the infinite mint glitch on Solana using Cashio (CASH) the native stablecoin on that network and what it’s worth now. 6mins
Netflix - Trust No One - A bit more than just a short video is this documentary from Netflix in the spirit of crypto hacks/scams. This one covers the Quadriga crypto exchange which saw its users lose millions of their savings after it’s CEO passed away and took the passwords to the funds to his supposed grave. The documentary goes into this mystery and if you’re wondering why Quadriga is familiar, it’s because the CFO there resurfaced as 0xSifu, the CFO of Wonderland who was ousted earlier this year. Misery loves company.
ausbiz - Many Worlds to be the shining star of the Binance Smart Chain - Steven Bumbera from Many Worlds describes the difficult ability to create intrinsic value and how they’ve created a levelling system with their smart contracts which can provide an ageing to their tokens. This is built on the Binance Smart Chain to lower gas fees and offer faster transaction speeds. 17mins
Social post(s) of the week
NFT Sydney
We saw a couple of posts from the great NFT Sydney event held on Saturday 2nd April - here's a few of them from the organisers and attendees:
Angel Alliance
Finally, we also had member Kat Dunn announce an Angel Alliance event with some of the women in the Aus DeFi group here https://twitter.com/Kat_Dunn_01/status/1510032461094621184
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