July 15, 2021 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin
Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️
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Sorare, a digital soccer collectibles platform, is expected to announce a $532M raise that would value the company above $3.8B, according to Business Insider.
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CertiK, a blockchain security startup, raised $37M in a Series B.
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Fed Chair Jerome Powell told Congress that stablecoins should face stricter regulation.
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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is not hearing about demand for Bitcoin amongst long-term investors.
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An Ethereum documentary is fully financing its production through the sale of NFTs.
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Phantom, a Solana-based DeFi wallet, raised $9M in a Series A led by a16z.
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FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said acquiring Goldman Sachs and CME “is not out of the question.”
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The SEC has delayed its decision on the WisdomTree bitcoin ETF.
- The SEC fined Coinschedule, an ICO rating company, for taking payment in exchange for favorable reviews.
What Do You Meme?
Everything you need to know about the DeFi Education Fund:
What’s Poppin’?
The Erik Voorhees-led crypto exchange ShapeShift is shutting down formal operations and has begun fully decentralizing.
The exchange is open-sourcing everything and has commenced the largest airdrop in history, distributing $98M worth of FOX tokens to over a million customers and DeFi community members.
All 900,000 ShapeShift users will be eligible, along with 120,000 addresses associated with popular DeFi tokens. You can check whether you meet the requirements of the airdrop here.
According to a blog post from Erik Voorhees, the decentralization process started last fall, when ShapeShift began replacing its trading systems with popular DEXs. Through integrations with 0x and THORChain, ShapeShift was able to offer fully decentralized trading — at scale — for ERC-20 and Bitcoin transactions.
Once ShapeShift’s trading systems were replaced by DeFi integrations, Vorhees saw no reason for the centralized aspect of ShapeShift’s existence to continue. He wrote, “With our integration of these DEXs, ShapeShift no longer provided trading services, and yet users didn’t lose their ability to trade. We outsourced the regulated activity to an immutable decentralized protocol. This was better for our users, better for us, and appropriately in line with the ethos of crypto: privacy, immutability, and self-sovereignty in finance.”
Founded in 2014, ShapeShift lived up to its name, transforming from an identity-free crypto trading platform, to a robust crypto exchange, to, now, taking steps towards a fully decentralized autonomous organization. It was a rocky ride, which Vorhees lamented, seemed “impossible” at times as the regulatory climate evolved and ShapeShift had to add KYC/AML to its platform to compete.
Transitioning the exchange to a DAO is a move that matches the original ethos of ShapeShift, to, as Voorhees writes, “create a useful tool for the frictionless trading of digital assets, without custody, done in a manner that protected users.”
You can read the full announcement and plan from Voorhees here. CoinDesk’s Brady Dale also wrote an in-depth piece, which is just one click away.
Recommended Reads
- Messari’s Ryan Watkin’s breaks down everything (!!) that happened in DeFi during Q2’2021:
- Reuters’s Mike Dolan on why stablecoins are unnerving regulators:
- Check out Rabbit Hole, a DeFi platform that helps you build an on-chain resume. They just released a new “quest,” which will reward you for learning how to swap and provide utility on Uniswap v3:
On The Pod…
Aaron Wright, co-founder of OpenLaw and Professor at Cardozo Law, and Ross Campbell, SushiSwap core developer and LexDAO contributor, discuss the latest breakthroughs and legal implications in the burgeoning world of DAOs. Show highlights:
- how Aaron and Ross fell down the crypto rabbit hole
- whether a DAO, like Curve, could sue to protect its IP
- when a governance token might be considered a security
- who owns the copyright to a DAO
- how SushiSwap handles its open-source licenses
- why Ross views Uniswap’s business license as a good thing
- what a DAO is and how the idea stems from Bitcoin
- how Wyoming’s DAO law works
- what makes a Wyoming DAO different from a DAO registered as a Delaware LLC
- how an algorithmically managed DAO might work in the future
- why Aaron thinks a DAO should not be allowed to be manager-managed
- why wrapping a DAO into an LLC could be advantageous
- the difference between private and public ordering
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 Nov. 2nd. Pre-order it today!
You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians
