February 22, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• Russia’s Finance Ministry submitted a draft proposal for investment-based crypto regulations.

• An artist blew up a $250,000 Lamborghini in an attempt to protest against crypto’s focus on getting rich.

• OpenSea reported that only 17 users were affected by this weekend’s phishing attack, rather than its original report of 32.

• A DAO is attempting to purchase the NFL’s Denver Broncos for $4 billion.

• Rug pulls on Solana have forced Magic Eden, a Solana-based NFT marketplace, to invoke a doxing policy for creators.

• FTX US is launching a crypto gaming unit called “FTX Gaming.”

• Intel unveiled a new blockchain accelerator chip and mining rig yesterday.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

• 400 employees at Salesforce signed a written letter objecting to the firm’s NFT plans.

• Korea’s largest bank plans to launch crypto investment products for retail investors.

• Spotify is hiring a senior backend engineer to explore web3 tech.

The $$$ Corner…

• Amber Group was valued at $3 billion in its latest $200 million round.

• Jambo, a web3 startup based in Africa, raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round.

• Over $1 billion was invested in blockchain games in January alone.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Who Was Behind the DAO Attack of 2016? My Sources and I Believe We Have the Answer

As you all know, my book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which I’ve worked on for the last four years, comes out today.

What I’ve been keeping under wraps for months is that, during the course of working on my book, my sources and I uncovered compelling evidence indicating who the DAO attacker is. 

Listen to the case we have to make on today’s Unchained, after which I’ll be interviewed by Steven Ehrlich, editor of Forbes Cryptoasset and Blockchain Advisor.

You can also read the article in Forbes, which also unveils the alleged attacker’s identity. (You can also read about the process of finding the alleged hacker and its ramifications on my Bulletin and Medium page!)

But to truly understand what happened in the DAO and why it matters, buy your copy of The Cryptopians (on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org).

Aside from the DAO attacker news, you’ll want to read this book because, if you’re a crypto OG, you may be surprised at the amount of drama and intrigue that went into Ethereum’s founding. If you’re a crypto newbie, The Cryptopians should explain to you 1) how Ethereum works and 2) why it has the potential to change the world in a simple, narrative style page-turning book.

While the story of Ethereum is, on one level, one of technical innovation, it is also a story of constant politicking and intense drama, in which the founders and early leaders of Ethereum, from Vitalik Buterin to Ming Chan to Joe Lubin to Gavin Wood to Charles Hoskinson, battled each other for power over Ethereum. In addition to Ethereum’s contentious founding, The Cryptopians tells the story of 2017’s ICO craze (which shares many traits in common with 2021’s NFT bonanza). I was able to find not only nuggets about the founding of Ethereum that have somehow remained unpublished until 2022, but also entire storylines. Whole entire sections of the book cover stories that have been unknown before.

I’m excited to share the book with you. I’ve never had as much fun professionally as I did working on this book. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

A few tips:

• Get the hardcover if … you want to be able to flip back and forth between the list of characters in the front and the glossary in the back – and if you just want this gorgeous book (or a signed copy!).

• Get the ebook if … you want to be able to click through on the footnotes to the many blockchain transactions and social media posts that I gathered.

• Get the audiobook if … that’s the easiest and fastest way for you to consume a book – and if you want to hear me narrate the book with the same emotion my sources told me their stories.

• Or … get multiple copies if you want to enjoy all the above benefits.

• And don’t forget! Here’s how to get a signed book plate from me.

Recommended Reads

1. David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of Ruby on Rails, founder & CTO at Basecamp & HEY, NYT best-selling author, and Le Mans 24h class-winner) on why the situation in Canada has forced him to reconsider the world’s need for Bitcoin:

2.  CoinCenter’s Jerry Brito on crypto becoming a partisan issue:

3. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on how its Super Bowl QR-code commercial came to be:

On The Pod…

Exclusive: Crypto’s Biggest Whodunnit: Who Was Behind the 2016 DAO Attack on Ethereum?

While researching for my book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, I found evidence that I believe resolves the biggest whodunnit in crypto: who hacked The DAO? This podcast is coming out in conjunction with an article in Forbes revealing the prime suspect’s identity.

Part 1: Who Attacked the DAO? Here’s the Evidence

To document the process of finding the alleged attacker, I wrote an article for Forbes, with which I opened the podcast. In it, I reveal

• who, evidence indicates, attacked the DAO

• how my sources and I uncovered this person’s identity

• how a previously undisclosed technical capability by Chainalysis helped my sources and I identify the alleged hacker

Part 2: Contextualizing the DAO Attack

Forbes’s Steven Ehrlich comes onto the pod to interview me about finding the DAO attacker. Topics

• what is The DAO, and why is it important?

• who are the key players in The DAO’s story

• how the attacker pulled off the hack

• what legal questions surrounded the hack

• why finding the attacker is important

• the legal implications of identifying the attacker

• what Laura’s interactions have been with the suspect

• what the future of DAOs may hold

Book Update

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians