November 3, 2022 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin
What’s Poppin’?
Alameda’s Balance Sheet Sparks Controversy
Alameda Research, Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, held $14.6 billion of assets as of June 30, but analysts are saying the balance sheet is highly illiquid.
Crypto Exchange Deribit Hot Wallet Hacked for $28M
The crypto derivatives exchange lost $28 million after hackers gained access to its hot wallet.
Over 1,000 Solana Validators Go Offline After Cloud Provider Cuts them Off
by Juan Aranovich
Several validators of the Solana blockchain went offline yesterday after their cloud provider cut them off, preventing more than a fifth of the Solana stake from earning rewards.
Hacker Drains $3M NEAR From Skyward Finance
by Samyuktha Sriram
A NEAR-based IDO platform has lost $3 million from its Treasury in a contract exploit on Wednesday.
Meta Integrates Arweave Protocol to Store Instagram’s Digital Collectibles
by Samyuktha Sriram
Meta has officially made Instagram an NFT marketplace, integrating with Arweave to permanently store its creator’s NFTs.
Arbitrum’s Weekly Transactions Surged 550% Since Nitro Upgrade
Arbitrum’s weekly network transactions are up significantly since its Nitro upgrade, but there may be another reason behind the heightened on-chain activity.
In Other News… ✍️✍️✍️
- Coinbase Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee stepped down as the company restructured its product team.
- Protocol Ventures, a crypto fund of funds, is reportedly shutting down.
- The creditors’ committee of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius is investigating whether the firm was a Ponzi scheme.
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler defended the agency’s actions against Coinbase, BlockFi and other crypto companies.
- NFT marketplace OpenSea launched a feature that detects and prevents potential thefts.
- Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said he would join Twitter’s board if asked by Elon Musk.
- Venture capital firm a16z is looking to join the ongoing lawsuit against OokiDAO.
- The community of decentralized lending protocol Aave is voting whether to deploy on the zkSync testnet.
- Bitcoin mining company Bitdeer delayed its $4 billion SPAC deal for the third time.
- Cross-chain decentralized exchange Rubic lost $1 million in funds due to issues with their private keys.
- Solana-based Solend suffered a $1.26 million exploit related to oracle prices.
- Vitalik Buterin said Musk’s idea of charging $8 a month for a blue check on Twitter could “damage the blue check’s anti-scam role.”
- Bitcoin miner Iris Energy (IREN) said some of its mining equipment is not making enough revenue to cover costs.
Today in Crypto Adoption…
- Instagram announced it will support a Polygon-powered NFT marketplace that lets creators mint and sell NFTs within the platform.
- Game of Thrones will launch its own collection of NFTs.
The $$$ Corner…
- Troubled cryptocurrency exchange Zipmex is negotiating a takeover deal with venture capital fund V Ventures.
- Evmos, a cross-chain protocol, raised $27 million in a funding round led by Polychain Capital.
- Berlin-based project Centrifuge gathered $4 million in a strategic funding round.
What Do You Meme?
Recommended Reads
- Pintail on Ethereum’s validator rewards
- Shayon Sengupta from Multicoin Capital on MEV
- Zachxbt on phishing scams
On The Pod…
Sterling Crispin, artist and software developer and Holly Herndon, host of the Interdependence podcast, talk about the problems that creators face, some potential solutions, and the debate over creator royalties. Show highlights:
- how Holly and Sterling got into crypto
- how Holly used the Holly Plus Project to pay royalties
- how NFTs change the economic experience of being a creator
- how creators make money and why it is so difficult for most of them
- whether NFT royalties are necessary for artists
- why creators are the ones that should decide to charge royalties or not
- how the enforcement of royalties also occurs in the traditional art world
- whether NFT royalties only benefit big players vs. smaller creators
- what shifts could make paying royalties a norm, the way paying for music streaming became a norm over piracy
- other solutions to helping creators earn from their work besides NFT royalties
- whether NFT creators should use blocklists
- whether people objecting to blocklists can be hypocritical about decentralization
- whether creators can build their own marketplaces
- how a profit-sharing model among creators could work
Book Update
My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, is now available!
You can purchase it here: https://amzn.to/3CvfrbE
