December 7, 2021       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

  • Brian Roberts, former Lyft exec, is joining OpenSea as its CFO and is hinting at taking the NFT marketplace public via an IPO.

  • Polygon, a layer 2 solution, is in talks with investors for what could be a $50-$150 million token sale.

  • Binance Smart Chain and Animoca are jointly investing$200 million into blockchain gaming. 

  • BitMart’s CEO says the $196 million hack on BitMart resulted from stolen private keys.

  • The Kleiman v. Wright trial ended with Craig Wright being ordered to pay $100 million for the unauthorized use of funds from W&K Info Defense Research LLC.

  • Ethereum miner revenue was greater than Bitcoin miner revenue for the seventh straight month in November.

  • Japan is reportedly looking into limiting the issuance of stablecoins to banks and wire transfer companies.

  • Binance is looking to gain a license with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

  • Pak, a famous NFT artist, sold almost $92 million worth of tokens in an experimental NFT project.

  • DeFi has a centralization problem, according to a reportfrom the Bank of International Settlements.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Decentralized Drama

SushiSwap CTO Joseph Delong is threatening to leave the decentralized finance protocol. “I am going to ship Trident, and if you do not give us the autonomy to continue operations, the capability to form leadership, and increase compensation across the board I will leave,” wrote Delong on Twitter (referring to Trident, a decentralized exchange product the team has been working on recently).

Delong made such comments after experiencing, as he describes it, “absurd defamation” from the community relating to his decision to turn Sushi into a legal entity, a la Uniswap Labs. According to Delong, transforming Sushi into a professional and scalable entity was a “brutal reality. In the newly constructed hierarchy, developers, and management (like Delong), could not return to governance for every decision.

Delong also made comments to clarify that Mudit Gupta, a former SushiSwap developer, did not leave because Delong forced him out. “The next absurdity is that @Mudit__Gupta left due to a fault in my leadership. In fact, I sought out and hired Mudit. It took me 4.5 months to find a Senior Solidity developer of Mudit’s caliber,” said Delong.

In addition to all of the inter-Sushi drama of legal entities and developers leaving, Delong says that he is not being paid well enough: “I am not very well compensated for the job I am doing. I received a payment of $300k in Sushi for my work for this year and that ends on January 7th, 2022. That may seem like a lot but I took a pay cut leaving Dapper Labs to come work on Sushi because it seemed exciting.”

Delong also proposed “bridge compensation” for the Sushi Core team, excluding himself, that would see nineteen developers each receive 200,000 $SUSHI — to which the Sushi community voted against 68%-32%. After the proposal failed to gain traction, Delong tweeted, “This was a test to show less than 1% of the issuance going to the core team is controversial. You failed btw.”

Leadership tumult at Sushi is not new. Two of the previous lead developers at Sushi, Chef Nomi and OxMaki, left under not-so-great terms. Chef Nomi made headlines by selling development funds for ETH (though he ended up returning the funds). OxMaki announced his departure in September — though rumorhas it he may have been fired.

With Delong, it appears that any change in position will be peaceful (though maybe not happy): “​​I will peacefully transfer all the accounts and go and build something equally as successful and you can find someone else to bully,” concluded the CTO.

Recommended Reads

  • Vitalik Buterin on long-term solutions for rollups:

  • Not Boring on how web3 makes making money fun:

  • Muneeb Ali on BTC maximalism:

On The Pod…

Crypto Philanthropy: How to Donate to Make Real-World Impact

Some of the biggest names in the crypto industry discuss their personal giving philosophies, how blockchain technology could change the dynamics of giving to charity, and which crypto projects are making a lasting real-world impact. Guests include Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital; Caroline Ellison, co-CEO of Alameda Research; and Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos. Show topics:

  • the definition of effective altruism

  • why Haseeb thinks crypto is the best industry for effective altruism

  • how Haseeb and Arthur differ in their philosophy of doing good

  • why blockchain technology is less important than liquidity when donating money across borders

  • whether Axie Infinity is making a real-world impact

  • why Arthur thinks Axie’s impact will be short-term and not sustainable

  • whether people should donate now versus later

  • Haseeb’s and Arthur’s thoughts on how giving changes people

  • what people working in crypto can do to give back

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, is now available for pre-order now.

The book, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, comes out Feb. 22. Pre-order it today!

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