Blockbuster Weekly: BitMEX Executives Arrested/Prosecuted by US Regulators; The Rise of Social Tokens

1. PeckShield: A total of 33 security incidents occurred in September, and DeFi fraud occurred frequently

News on September 30, according to data from the PeckShield situational awareness platform, in the past month, a total of 33 prominent security incidents occurred in the entire blockchain ecosystem, and the degree of harm was rated as "advanced". , 1 case related to public chain security, 3 cases related to exchanges, 7 cases related to extortion, 6 cases related to fraud, etc. In addition, there were many fraudulent escape incidents in September, which are worthy of vigilance.

2. Data: In the third quarter, the total transaction fee of the Ethereum network was as high as 318 million US dollars, 3.5 times that of Bitcoin

Coin Metrics data shows that as of September 29, the total transaction fee of the Ethereum network in the third quarter of this year was as high as 318 million US dollars, 3.5 times that of the Bitcoin network transaction fee (nearly 90 million US dollars). It is worth noting that in the third quarter, the Ethereum network transaction fee reached more than 7 times the total amount ($43.56 million) in the first half of the year. As of September 29, total transaction fees on the Ethereum network during the year were as high as $362 million, compared with $159 million for Bitcoin.

3. The US Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused BitMEX of violating regulations and arrested the CTO

On October 2, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) launched criminal and civil charges against the founders and executives of the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX, respectively. The allegations involve five corporate entities associated with BitMEX and the four owners Arthur Hayes (co-founder and CEO), Benjamin Delo (co-founder), Samuel Reed (CTO), and Gregory Dwyer, head of business development. The U.S. Department of Justice disclosed that BitMEX’s chief technology officer, Samuel Reed, was arrested in Massachusetts on October 1 and will be tried in the local federal court. BitMEX responded that it strongly disagrees with the allegations made by the US government and will protest.

4. Vitalik Buterin: The Ethereum ecosystem may adopt the Rollups-based solution as a scalability solution in the near and mid-term future

On October 3rd, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, published a topic discussion thread related to "Ethereum Roadmap Centered on the Rollups Scalable Solution" in the Ethereum Magicians forum. Vitalik Buterin said that in the short term, the main reason for strengthening the Ethereum 1.0 Rollups solution is that the expansion of the Ethereum base layer is mainly aimed at block capacity, rather than on-chain calculations. In the long run, if centering on Rollups means reimagining the long-term future of Ethereum 2.0, the TPS of Ethereum can reach 3000 TPS, and the theoretical maximum TPS is 100,000. He also concluded that the Ethereum ecology is likely to adopt Rollups as the main, plus some Plasma and channel solutions as the scalability solutions in the near and mid-term future.

5. The Graph, a blockchain data index project, will conduct a public offering of the token GRT

According to news on October 3, The Graph, a blockchain data index project, will conduct a public offering of the token GRT, and user registration has now been opened. The project stated that users need to perform KYC, and this public sale is only for non-US citizens. The Graph received $5 million in financing through the sale of token SAFT in June this year to launch a decentralized network. Investors include Framework, ParaFi Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Digital Currency Group. The Graph is an indexing protocol for organizing and accessing data in blockchains and storage networks.

1. We are all on Layer 2, what about the composability of DeFi?

DeFi is called financial Lego, and composability is the most basic feature of DeFi. On the Ethereum network, the aggregation and interaction of different DeFi applications is very common. Aggregation transactions, flash loans, liquidity mining, LPtoken mining and many very important functions all rely on composability. But when we turn our attention to Layer 2, the problem will be much more complicated. As more and more DeFi adopt Layer 2 solutions, can the composability of DeFi still exist?

2. The rise of social tokens

Social tokens have shown signs of rapid development in recent months. The overall market value of social tokens has exceeded 200 million US dollars, and it was still almost negligible in May this year. So what are social tokens? What stage has the social token developed now? This article takes you to understand.

3. The Ultimate Collection of DeFi Liquidity Mining Design Ideas

The impact of liquidity mining on the DeFi field is exciting. As of this writing, the total locked value TVL of DeFi protocols exceeds US$10 billion, compared to only US$1 billion on June 16, 2020. This article will explain what yield mining is, where it has been successful, and where it can be improved. While the DeFi field is developing rapidly, we hope to provide useful information for protocols that want to implement liquidity mining plans and users who want to participate in liquidity mining

4. 17-year-old 4chan: the birthplace of emoticons, the black hole of the Internet, and the gold rush in the currency circle

The current currency circle may be inseparable from meme. Especially when community culture is becoming more and more important in new projects now, meme seems to be a kind of competition in the community, and more and more projects are inspired by meme. For the general public, emoticons are the most common meme. However, the origin of meme represented by emoji is a website created by a 15-year-old American young man 17 years ago. Perhaps he himself did not expect that this website has spawned the most prosperous meme culture on the Internet today. It has evolved into an Internet black hole, and has also become a top-tier platform in the currency circle.

1. Aave opens token exchange

Aave is a very legendary project and an earlier decentralized lending platform in the industry. Aave was originally called EthLend. It is a peer-to-peer decentralized lending protocol based on Ethereum. It is a real P2P lending. Each loan is a separate display interface. The lender needs to choose which loan contract to lend to. This model is very transparent, but the operation cost is high and the efficiency is low, so the development of ETHLend is not smooth, and the tokens are rushing to return to zero.

Due to unsatisfactory development, the team changed the business model from peer-to-peer to fund pool model, which is now the common loan pool model in the industry. After changing the model, the fundamentals continued to improve, and the data continued to grow. Before DeFi became really hot, the price of tokens began to rise fiercely, achieving a hundred-fold increase from the lowest point to the highest point, and finally grew into a leader in lending.

Because of the rise of liquidity mining, the team decided to carry out token exchange, issue new tokens, and start liquidity mining. Currently, token exchange has begun. We will wait and see how the follow-up development will be.

2. CoinGecko will officially launch a venture fund this month, and has invested in 9 projects so far

CoinGecko is currently one of the most popular market platforms in the industry. Its listing of new coins is very fast, and the display of key project information is very comprehensive, and the accuracy of the displayed information is very high, which is very popular among users.

CoinGecko launched the income farmer NFT collection at the beginning of the month. There are a total of 4 types, each limited to 500 pieces. Registered users of CoinGecko can redeem them for free with points. CoinGecko’s recent action is the launch of venture funds. According to reports, it has invested in 9 DeFi projects, including: Zapper, Serum, Frontier, ParaSwap, Dune Analytics, APY.Finance, and DODO, as well as two undisclosed projects .

According to news on September 29, the French blockchain start-up Multis completed a US$2.2 million seed round of financing. Investors include White Star Capital, Y Combinator, Coinbase Ventures, eFounders, Greenfield One and Digital Currency Group.

On September 30th, the blockchain database project Fluree announced the completion of the seed round expansion financing, bringing the company's total financing at the seed round stage to $6.5 million. Fluree’s seed round was led by venture capital firm 4490 Ventures, with participation from Rise of the Rest, Good Growth Capital, Engage Ventures, and former Venrock managing partner Ray Rothrock.

On October 1, the liquidity provider Wootrade announced that it has received investment from the investment institution Dragonfly Capital, and Hashkey Capital, SNZ, DFund and other institutions are also equity investors. In addition, Wootrade completed a $10 million private equity round of financing, with a total of 18 participating institutions.

"BLOCKER WEEKLY" is a cutting-edge reading of the blockchain industry carefully crafted by the Blockchain Research Institute. It selects a week's hot spots and cutting-edge views for blockchain enthusiasts. If you have good comments and suggestions, please leave a message in the comments below.