Networks & Protocols

Fantom recently introduced its Ecosystem Vault, an innovative fund that seeks to support builders on Fantom by providing a decentralized source of funding for projects, ideas, and other creations through community-based decision-making. The Ecosystem Vault is an on-chain fund financed by 10% of the transaction fees on Fantom and controlled by the community.

Canto has announced that the Contract Secured Revenue (CSR) feature they developed will be deployed on their Testnet and Mainnet, with the security audit already completed. With this rollout, the CSR provides a fee-splitting model on Canto Network where smart contract developers could earn a percentage of the transaction fees paid to the network when users interact with their smart contracts.

AAVE Governance is voting on activating the Aave V3 Ethereum pool (3.0.1), with the plan to make it live on 27th January 2023, post-approval.

Vitalik Buterin authored a blog post, “An Incomplete Guide to Stealth Addresses,” discussing the mechanics and applications of a distinct type of tool that could fortify the privacy on Ethereum in many contexts; stealth addresses.

1inch Network has unveiled the 1inch Hardware Wallet, with its final phases of development nearing completion and the sale of the product slated for later this year.

Aragon posted an article exploring how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can augment DAOs. In their post, they list six use cases from the intersection of AI and DAOs.

MEV Boost

The Relay Market continued following a similar pattern as the last week. Of note is that Agnostic Relay and Ultra Sound Relay increased their market share while the other eight relays experienced diminishing shares.

Reports suggest that Flashbots aims to raise up to $50 million at a valuation of one billion dollars.

Biconomy published their second thread on their forum to discuss Biconomy Relayer Network (BRN) – a decentralized, multi-chain relaying network. The proposed network contains a Smart Contract that oversees the allocation of transactions to Relayers, with their allocations proportionate to the size of their stake. Relayers could potentially minimize or, in some cases, eliminate the risk of two or multiple relayers pitching the same transaction.

CeFi

With the imminent launch of the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) mainnet, updated developer documents have been made available to help developers. CCTP is a permissionless on-chain tool that provides the ability to burn native USDC on a source chain and mint an equal amount of native USDC on a destination chain. It is presently live on Goerli testnet for Ethereum and Fuji testnet for Avalanche.

Genesis initiated voluntary Chapter 11 restructuring of its lending business. Genesis’s derivatives and spot trading, broker-dealer, and custody businesses are not part of Chapter 11 and continue client trading operations. Decentraland noted that The Decentraland Foundation has a credit against Genesis of principal amount approx USD ~7.8M (as of date). It further mentioned that the DAO funds are exposed to the situation.

Venture Activity

After several weeks of below-par performance, venture activity has shown signs of recovery. Despite the positive outlook, the total amount raised remains relatively low, at $198.16 million across 21 transactions.

Data indicates that Seed rounds accounted for most of the market, with average transaction valuations close to $10 million. This could signify that, in challenging market conditions, builders concentrate on the ecosystem’s fundamental building blocks.

Interestingly, funds were flowing into all critical sectors in the industry, pointing to progress and new tech development across the stack.

Regulatory

Nexo sued the Cayman Islands regulator over a rejected license. Link.

U.S. officials arrested the founder of Bitzlato over money laundering. The virtual currency exchange allegedly processed more than $700 million in illicit funds. Link.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Avraham Eisenberg with orchestrating an attack on a crypto asset trading platform, Mango Markets.