March 11, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

  • The US Department of Labor urged “extreme care” for fiduciaries considering crypto as part of retirement portfolios.

  • The CFTC is asking for public comments on FTX.US’s proposal to offer crypto derivatives trading.

  • Chainalysis released a set of crypto sanctions monitoring tools to the public for free.

  • US inflation increased to 7.9% in February.

  • An alleged ransomware attacker was extradited to the US in connection with a $28.2 million seizure of BTC by Canadian authorities.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

  • Stripe announced support for crypto businesses and a partnership with FTX.

  • eBay teased a “digital wallet” in an investor presentation.

  • The internet arm of SoftBank reportedly plans to launch an NFT marketplace.

  • Warner Bros. is dropping a collection of 6 million physical DC-comics trading cards that can be redeemed as NFTs.

The $$$ Corner…

  • StarkWare, an Ethereum layer-2 developer, is reportedly raising funds at a $6 billion valuation.

  • Bessemer, a VC firm, announced a $250 million fund to invest in decentralized tech.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Staker’s Delight

Data from Etherscan shows that 10,027,810 ether are staked to the official Eth2 Deposit address. At current prices, this surmises a ~$26 billion bet by ETH stakers that Ethereum will successfully switch from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. With Ethereum’s market cap sitting around $313 billion, this means roughly 8% of all ETH is locked into the network’s “consensus layer” (formerly known as Eth2).
The milestone comes as “The Merge,” where Ethereum’s current mainnet secured by PoW transitions to being secured by PoS, approaches. According to Ethereum.org, The Merge is coming“~Q2 2022,” or, in other words, sometime in the next few months.
If all goes according to plan, The Merge will mark the end of proof-of-work Ethereum in favor of the more eco-friendly proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, where transactions on the blockchain will be secured by a group of “validators” instead of miners. To become a validator, entities must stake 32 ETH. Validators that act in good faith will be rewarded with more ETH, to the tune of 4.81% APY currently, while bad actors will see their staked ETH slashed.
As of writing time, there are over 300,000 validators securing Ethereum’s consensus layer (aka Eth 2.0). Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken and staking protocol Lido account for about 20% of the validators on the network. However, 67% of validators appear to be single entities.

Recommended Reads

  1. @CroissantEth on ether as a resource:

  1. Web3 Labs’ Conor Svensson on tokens being the web3 equivalent to websites:

  1. Token Terminal on Centrifuge, a bridge that recently secured a Polkadot parachain slot:

On The Pod…

How Justin Sun Has Allegedly Tried to Manipulate Markets and Escape Regulation

Chris Harland-Dunaway, a freelance reporter for The Verge, talks about his most recent investigative story on Tron founder Justin Sun, which details a long string of questionable decisions and actions by Sun. Show topics:

  • why Justin Sun fled China after the Tron ICO

  • why Chris’s 15 sources were granted anonymity for this story

  • why Chris believes that Tron’s market-making team was performing insider trading

  • how Justin Sun has tried to evade US securities law

  • what “Operation Couch Cushions” was and how it led to 300 BTC being sent to Poloniex

  • where Justin Sun is looking for citizenship

  • what Chris knows about a grand jury investigation into Justin Sun

  • what Justin Sun had to say about Chris’ allegations

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: http://bit.ly/cryptopians