This week in review | EthCC Paris conference concludes; Hubei police crack down on virtual currency case with involved transactions reaching 400 billion.
BlockBeats will compile industry news highlights for the week of 7.18-7.23 in this article, and recommend in-depth articles to help readers better understand the market and stay informed of industry trends.
This Week's Important News Review
EthCC Paris Conference Ends, Multiple Projects Release Important Updates
The Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) 6 officially opened in Paris, France on July 17, 2023 and ended on the 21st, lasting for 4 days. During this period, there were many gatherings, group discussions, and parties. On the first day of EthCC, there were a total of 12 lectures covering various fields such as blockchain economics, DeFi, and security. Many well-known projects such as Lnes and Uniswap announced new products or major updates. Related reading: "EthCC Ethereum is nearing its end, key project updates, highlights of the conference at a glance"; "8 projects worth paying attention to released at EthCC 2023".
Uniswap launches cross-AMM protocol UniswapX
On July 17th, decentralized exchange platform Uniswap announced the launch of its non-custodial, Dutch auction-based protocol UniswapX. UniswapX will gradually achieve: aggregating liquidity sources to improve exchange value, preventing MEV, providing gasless swaps, zero cost for failed transactions, and expanding to support cross-chain gasless transactions within a few months. Related reading: "Uniswap: Is it the Tencent of the cryptocurrency world?"
Layer 2 solution Linea goes live on mainnet, airdrops related NFTs
ConsenSys' Ethereum Layer 2 solution Linea announced the launch of its mainnet during the ETHCC conference and airdropped related NFTs to participants of the Linea Voyage event. Currently, the cross-rollup bridge project Owlto Finance has also launched a 7-day zero-fee activity (ending on July 25). As a newly launched project on the mainnet, it is believed that the possible mainnet token airdrops and ecological project airdrops in the future will continue to boost the popularity of the Linea network. BlockBeats has compiled a list of projects worth paying attention to or interacting with on the Linea network. Related reading: "ConsenSys' zkEVM Linea goes live, which ecosystems can be used?"
Lens Protocol officially releases V2 version
Web3 social protocol Lens Protocol officially released its V2 version during the EthCC conference in Paris, with a focus on "openness and composability, benefit sharing, trust and security". Users can now directly execute external smart contract operations in Lens publications, and Lens V2 also adds the ability to interact with smart contracts within social media. The new version of Lens Protocol also integrates the ERC-6551 token standard, allowing NFT ownership to be attached to other assets and interact with applications. New third-party contract operation permissions have been added, including whitelist functionality, NFT minting on Sound.xyz (Ethereum mainnet), and NFT minting on Opensea (Polygon), etc.
Generative Ventures, a new investment fund, has been established and has invested in projects such as Taiko and AegisWeb3
Recently, Generative Ventures launched a new investment fund and incubator aimed at the "Machine Economies" era, committed to building trustless networks and becoming the preferred partner for entrepreneurs in the value network and open intelligence fields. The founding team of Generative Ventures has over 10 years of experience in internet investment and management of encrypted unicorns, with a performance of more than 40 internet and industrial unicorns and a cumulative management asset scale of over $3 billion, covering areas such as social networks, digital finance, artificial intelligence, and enterprise services.
Sequoia Capital restructures its venture team and dismisses two cryptocurrency partners
Sequoia Capital revealed on Wednesday that its long-term partner, Michael Moritz, announced his departure from Sequoia to focus on his wealth management company, Sequoia Heritage. Another senior partner, Mike Vernal, will also leave. At the same time, Michelle Fradin, who led the investment in FTX, and partners Kais Khimji and Daniel Chen will also depart. Daniel Chen's Twitter profile describes himself as a "cryptocurrency giant." These changes may have an impact on Sequoia Capital's investment strategy and business, and also reflect the recent turbulence and uncertainty in the cryptocurrency industry.
PoST Mining Blockchain Project Spacemesh to Launch Mainnet on July 14th
PoST mining blockchain project Spacemesh has announced the launch of its mainnet on July 14th. After the mainnet launch, any user with a standard consumer-grade PC can mine and earn Smesh coin, and the minimum configuration for running nodes has been released. Spacemesh is an open-source programmable cryptocurrency platform optimized for home PCs without the need for mining machines. Spacemesh is supported by the Proof of Space-Time (PoST) consensus protocol and aims to create a highly decentralized blockchain network and support universal smart contracts by running Spacemesh on personal computers from around the world. Spacemesh completed a $15 million funding round led by Polychain in September 2018.
Encryption media CoinDesk is close to reaching a sale agreement with an investor group for $125 million
According to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, an investor group is close to acquiring encryption media CoinDesk for $125 million. The sources said that the investment group is led by Matthew Roszak, the private investment company Tally Capital, which focuses on cryptocurrency and Web3 technology, and Peter Vessence, a venture capital firm and family office for Capital6.
MakerDAO Buyback has started, with an average buyback of about $5,000 MKR every 27 minutes
On July 19th, the MakerDAO smart burn engine was activated, with a current treasury surplus of $69.6 million, of which over $50 million ($19.6 million) will be used to buy back MKR and add it to Uniswap V2 LP with DAI. According to on-chain information, buybacks are currently executed approximately every 27 minutes, with an average buyback amount of about $5,000.
Starknet is about to launch Starknet Appchains
Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder of StarkWare, announced at the EthCC (Ethereum Community Conference) in Paris that Starknet is about to launch Starknet Appchains. Starknet Appchains are customizable and decentralized, providing applications with better throughput and enhanced user experience.
Trait Sniper will conduct a large-scale airdrop based on influence to Twitter users on August 1st.
NFT rarity ranking tool Trait Sniper will conduct a large-scale airdrop based on influence to Twitter users on August 1st. Users can claim corresponding TS tokens on the official website of Trait Sniper based on their Twitter influence. In addition, Trait Sniper also provides additional airdrop rewards for early adopters and strategic partners, including holders of TSG (TraitSniper Game), Meta Pet NFT, TwitterScan Pass, and TraitSniper Pass.
Memeland will airdrop 17.25 billion Memecoins to ecosystem project holders
On July 20th, Memecoin, the official token of Memeland, announced that it will airdrop 17.25 billion tokens to ecosystem project holders (including MVP, Captainz, and Potatoz), accounting for 25% of the total supply. However, Memecoin has not yet disclosed the specific share of tokens for immediate and delayed unlocking.
Tesla payment page source code shows "bitcoin", and the "bitcoin" related source code was deleted from the payment page the next day
On July 20th, according to the Tesla official website, the word "bitcoin" appeared in the source code of its payment page. BlockBeats found that the source file of the code was last updated on July 13th, but it does not mean that the "bitcoin" related code was added on July 13th, and it cannot be proven whether the related code was deleted after the cancellation of support in May 2021. In addition, Tesla had previously added the word "doge" to the payment page source code, but ultimately only supported it for purchasing products in the peripheral mall. Therefore, whether to accept bitcoin payment should still be based on relevant announcements and the appearance of related displays on the front end.
Foreign media: Over 100,000 Dutch users have transferred their assets due to Binance's exit from the Dutch market
On July 20th, after Binance announced last month that it would stop operating in the Netherlands, the exchange reminded its Dutch customers that they must withdraw all their crypto assets before August 17th. As of Monday, Dutch users can no longer trade cryptocurrencies on the platform and have one month to withdraw their funds. Binance has signed an agreement with Dutch cryptocurrency platform Coinmerce to help users withdraw their funds through the one-click system on the Binance app. According to the CEO Jaap de Bruijn, over 100,000 users have already transferred their holdings of cryptocurrencies.
Shanxi police cracked a money laundering case involving more than 380 million yuan using the virtual currency USDT
On July 18th, the Public Security Bureau of Qinshui County, Jincheng City, Shanxi Province successfully cracked a fraud case involving money laundering using the virtual currency USDT. 21 criminal suspects were arrested, more than 40 mobile phones were seized, and more than 200,000 yuan in cash and USDT worth more than 1 million yuan were confiscated.
Hubei police cracked the first case of "virtual currency" in the country, involving a turnover of 400 billion yuan
According to the Ping An Hubei public account, the main suspect in a cross-border online gambling case with a turnover of 400 billion yuan, including Qiu and others, has been sent to trial in accordance with the law by the Shaoyang County Public Security Bureau in Jingmen City, Hubei Province. Police found that all the transactions of the gambling participants were settled using a virtual currency. The special task force followed the clues and successfully identified multiple virtual currency accounts involved in the case. The task force contacted the virtual currency issuing institution and froze the relevant virtual currency accounts, preventing the transfer of virtual currency worth 160 million US dollars (about 1 billion yuan) to the suspects' group. In October 2022, the Shaoyang County People's Court made a ruling to confiscate some of the frozen virtual currency in accordance with the law. This case became the first "virtual currency" case in the country to be confiscated by a court ruling.
Binance Completes 24th BNB Burn, Destroying Approximately $485 Million Worth of BNB
On July 19th, according to the BNB automatic burn mechanism, Binance completed its 24th quarterly BNB burn, destroying a total of 1,991,854.33 BNB, worth approximately $485 million, including 747.51 BNB effectively burned under the BNB Pioneer Burn Program.
This week's popular articles
"After Unibot, LootBot, the Fur-Trimming Robot, is Popular Again"
Some bot projects have entered everyone's field of vision. For example, Unibot, which had a high increase in value some time ago; and LootBot (LOOT), which had the highest increase in value in the past day, with some people possibly having made double profits from investing in it yesterday. So what is the background of these bot projects?
"Detailed Explanation of Uniswap's New Cross-AMM Protocol UniswapX"
Uniswap has launched a cross-AMM protocol called UniswapX, which is applicable to the Ethereum mainnet and will be expanded to other chains and Uniswap Wallet in the future. UniswapX will improve the trading experience in multiple ways: obtaining better prices through aggregated liquidity sources, gas-free transactions, preventing MEV, and no fees for failed transactions. In the next few months, UniswapX will expand to gas-free cross-chain transactions.
Uniswap has once again released a new product. Founder Hayden Adams announced at ETHCC that UniswapX, a cross-AMM platform, will be launched soon. UniswapX aggregates liquidity sources to enhance trading value, effectively prevent MEV, provide gasless transactions, and allow failed transactions to be cost-free. Furthermore, it will expand to support cross-chain gasless transactions, providing users with a better and more efficient trading experience. What makes UniswapX special?
"Consensys' zkEVM Linea is online, which ecosystems can use it?"
ConsenSys' Ethereum Layer 2 solution, Linea, announced the launch of its mainnet during the ETHCC conference and airdropped relevant NFTs to participants of the Linea Voyage event. Currently, Linea's official bridge has launched a 48-hour 0-fee activity to invite users to experience the Linea mainnet, while cross-rollup bridge project Owlto Finance has launched a 7-day 0-fee activity (ending on July 25). As a newly launched mainnet project, it is believed that the potential airdrops of mainnet tokens and ecosystem projects will continue to drive up the popularity of the Linea network. BlockBeats has compiled a list of projects worth paying attention to or interacting with on the Linea network.
"Spacemesh Mining Guide: Master SMH Mining Skills Easily"
Spacemesh mainnet is online, and today we will talk about how to mine SMH. If you have mined Chia before, the process is similar, but Spacemesh uses graphics cards for plotting. Generally speaking, the larger the plot space, the greater the reward, and the plotting speed depends on the number of threads.
"What's the Magic Behind Opepen, Which Even Makes OpenSea Rename Its Official Account?"
On July 18th, OpenSea's official Twitter account suddenly changed its name to "OpepenSea". Not only that, but the account also changed its profile picture to a homemade version of "Opepen OpenSea" posted by @_0ND1 in the comments of their tweet. The English NFT community has gone crazy for Opepen, as if a bomb has been dropped in the quiet NFT market.
"Looking for the New Dark Horse of the Solana Ecosystem"
Recently, not only has Solana performed strongly, but Rollbit, which was first released on the Solana chain, also entered the top 100 in market value with a growth rate of more than 30 times within a year. This article refers to the absolute and relative values of current Solana ecosystem project data, and summarizes the old projects with impressive data and the new Solana 2.0 projects that have emerged, trying to find the next dark horse.
"Social leader Lens launches V2 version, overview of five new features"
At the EthCC venue, Stani Kulechov, founder of the social leader protocol Lens Protocol, announced the launch of Lens Protocol V2 and shared details about its new features. Lens V2 provides greater control for builders, integrators, and those exploring web3-driven experiences, with a focus on openness, composability, profit sharing, trust, and security. Users can now directly execute external smart contract operations within Lens publications, and Lens V2 also includes the ability to interact with smart contracts within social media.
Crypto researchers MooMs and Salazar.eth have summarized 20 "potential stocks" worth lurking in the bear market and possibly hitting the front line in the next bull market.
"Vitalik EthCC Speech Summary: The History and Future of Account Abstraction"
On July 17th, at the EthCC conference in Paris, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin gave a speech endorsing smart contract wallets, with a focus on the history and future of account abstraction. Vitalik expressed his support for smart contract wallets with account abstraction, such as in his June Twitter AMA where he stated that wallets based on MPC (EOA) have fundamental flaws because they cannot revoke keys, and smart contract wallets are the only choice.
《EthCC 2023 上发布的 8 个值得关注的项目》
Translation:
"8 projects worth paying attention to released at EthCC 2023"
During ETHCC in Paris, many projects made updates. For example, Lens Protocol released Lens V2, Uniswap launched the new UniswapX system, and Chainlink announced the launch of its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) on the mainnet. "Appchains" was just announced at EthCC, and the first Starknet Appchain will soon reach the mainnet. Gnosis also just launched Gnosis Pay and Gnosis Card at EthCC. The ConsenSys team has officially joined the scaling competition and opened its Linea zkEVM alpha version to the public. Tezos launched Etherlink at EthCC, which is an EVM-compatible solution.
"Ethena: Decentralized Stablecoin Inspired by Arthur Hayes"
Earlier this year, Arthur Hayes published an article titled "The Shell on the Dust - Creating Bitcoin-based Stablecoins". The article roughly states that the current stablecoin system in the cryptocurrency industry relies too heavily on banks and is not completely decentralized. The article also mentions a new type of BTC-based stablecoin that truly achieves decentralization. Arthur raises a critical issue that stablecoins have always been the most important medium between the crypto world and the traditional world, but there are also many vulnerabilities and crises.
"Gnosis Card: The first Visa debit card bound to a wallet is coming"
On July 17th, Gnosis, an Ethereum sidechain, announced the issuance of an encrypted debit card called Gnosis Card. This is a Visa debit card directly linked to the user's on-chain account and built on a layer-two chain called Gnosis Pay, with the goal of achieving the same ease of use for cryptocurrencies as fiat currencies. Gnosis Pay is a decentralized payment network developed by the Gnosis team, which connects the payment system of the fiat world on one end and the on-chain world on the other end, and transfers encrypted assets back and forth on various mainstream chains through Polygon's zkEVM infrastructure, truly achieving the bridging of on-chain and off-chain worlds.
"Unveiling the Emotions and Professional Entanglements Between Alameda's Former CEO and SBF"
In the months leading up to the SBF case trial (October 2nd of this year), SBF leaked some of Caroline Ellison's (a key witness in the case, SBF's ex-girlfriend, and former CEO of Alameda) private documents to The New York Times. US prosecutors claimed that SBF did this to discredit the witness and limit her testimony in court. The New York Times published an article about Caroline Ellison's private documents, mainly discussing her relationship with SBF and her inner conflicts while working at Alameda.
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