New Congress Body to Hold First-Ever Hearing on Regulatory 'Attack' on Crypto (4 minute read)
Congress's new Digital Assets Subcommittee has scheduled its first hearing on March 9 titled "Coincidence or Coordinated? The Administration's Attack on the Digital Asset Ecosystem" to examine recent crypto enforcement actions and banking lockouts by federal regulators. The hearing will delve into the SEC's crackdown on crypto companies, highlighting the shutdown of Kraken's staking offering and stablecoin issuer Paxos' Binance stablecoin, the lawsuit against Terra, and their usage of the Howey test to assert jurisdiction over crypto markets. The joint statement from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in reference to Operation Chokepoint 2.0 will also be discussed. |
Ethereum Steps Towards Staking Withdrawals With Successful Testnet Upgrade (2 minute read)
Ethereum developers successfully launched the Shanghai Capella upgrade on Sepolia testnet at midnight ET, Tuesday. This deployment is a step in Ethereum's roadmap to allow validators to withdraw ether when the update is complete on mainnet. While Sepolia isn't open to permissionless validators, the testnet was launched in October 2021 and was used to test the Merge upgrade successfully. The deployment comes after developers ran the application on the Zhejiang testnet earlier this month, following the Shanghai upgrade plans that have been underway since 2020. The mainnet upgrade is on track for late March when users will finally be able to un-stake and transfer their assets. |
Gaming Engine Unity Taps MetaMask, ImmutableX and Solana for Web3 Developer Tools (1 minute read)
Unity, a leading game developer platform, has released a 'Decentralization' category in its online storefront offering support for 13 different blockchain-based software developer kits (SDKs), such as Metamask, Solana, Dapper Labs, and ImmutableX. This is intended to allow developers to build in blockchain technologies such as NFTs to bolster gameplay experiences. Web3 game developers have been eagerly anticipating this move, as platforms like Joyride and ChainSafe have already optimized their products for Unity. |
The Six Phases to Product-Market Fit in Web3 (5 minute read)
In a still nascent industry like Web3, there have been numerous different approaches to finding Product-Market Fit (PMF). While builders in Web3 can draw on learnings from Web 2.0, the decentralization component of crypto creates unique challenges for finding PMF. This article attempts to lay out the six phases of finding PMF in Web3. Platforms and protocols can begin the journey with the distribution of utility tokens via airdrops creating a community-operated workforce. After that, they can aim for progressive decentralization, utility establishment, utility momentum, Network effect alpha, Network effect beta, and Economic Flywheel. Overall, getting to any semblance of PMF in Web3 requires a deep understanding of incentive alignment and is still a relatively new problem space. |
A Developer's Guide to the Web3 Security Stack from Coinbase Ventures (7 minute read)
While smart contract exploits garner the most media attention the underlying infrastructure, smart contract code, protocol logic, and ecosystems are all vulnerable to security threats. A range of security technologies, processes, and policies can be used to detect and respond to these emerging threats, including infrastructure primitives like wallet and private key management, access management, consumer security, and monitoring & observability as well as smart contract and protocol logic solutions like security testing tools, formal verification, audit services, and bug bounty platforms. Lastly, protocol risk management, threat intelligence, and blockchain forensics are necessary to help prevent, detect, and respond to potential threats. Coinbase Ventures continues to invest in teams building developer tools that automate security testing and audit processes, monitoring platforms that enable proactive threat detection and prevention, or tools that enhance identity management and access control mechanisms. |
Visa's Crypto Strategy Remains Intact Despite Crypto Winter (2 minute read)
Yesterday, Reuters published an article claiming that Visa was "slamming the breaks" on new crypto initiatives; however, Visa's head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, strongly refuted that sentiment and reiterated Visa's focus on crypto and crypto-related innovation. According to Sheffield, Visa is still forging new partnerships in the crypto space and still holds the long-term belief that fiat-backed digital currencies running on top of blockchain rails will be an important piece of the overall payments ecosystem. Even as recently as mid-February, it was announced that Visa had entered into a long-term partnership with Wirex to facilitate more payment options for consumers in the U.K. and Asia-Pacific. |
Stablecoins as Statecraft: How Uncle Sam Could Replace Satoshi as the King of Digital Currency (4 minute read)
The SEC has recently begun taking a hardline approach to stablecoin regulation, but this could end up coming back to bite the US as it could impede legitimate innovation and, even worse for the US, global dollar adoption. Stablecoins have already been adopted in inflation-ravaged countries like Argentina, Zimbabwe and Turkey, and they have the potential to cement US financial hegemony for a generation. The US government embracing stablecoins could actually act as a tool to project American economic power and promote dollarization abroad. A well-regulated approach to stablecoins could enable US dollar dominance to an extent the world has never seen before and ultimately secure a dollar-centric digital economy. |
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