Networks & Protocols

Index Coop recently launched the Diversified Staked ETH Index (dsETH) index token, which tracks the leading Ethereum liquid staking tokens. As of writing, dsETH’s total value locked has reached $400k.

NEAR Protocol published a detailed post on the NEAR Digital Collective, an ambitious project that brings together the NEAR ecosystem to create a radically new way of governing itself. The goal of the NDC is to combine transparency, collective decision-making, evolving governance models, and self-determination in a new way.

Secret Labs issued an update regarding Secret Foundation’s Financial Transparency, which has recently been under question. Suggesting working with the community to create a new Foundation, Secret Labs provided a forum update with a blueprint for the proposed organization.

Celo shared the new Celo2.0 Technical Roadmap for 2023. One key highlight of the roadmap is its deep alignment with the Ethereum roadmap.

StarkWare announced the release of Cairo 1.0-Alpha 2, which brings a series of new features to the language, including the possibility of implementing the ERC20 contract.

Friktion, a Solana-based DeFi protocol, announced its decision to sunset its user platform due to difficult conditions.

LIDO issued a blog post detailing their post-mortem of the bETH Anchor integration upgrade incident from late January 2022.

Mango Labs filed a complaint against Avraham Eisenberg in an attempt to recover the funds lost due to his actions.

MEV Boost

The Relay market saw Flashbots’ dominance drop to 70% while the total number of Relays remained at 10.

CeFi

According to reports, Moody’s is in the early stages of developing a stablecoin scoring system.

According to reports, Crypto exchange Coinbase has been fined $3.6 million by the Dutch central bank for offering crypto services to customers in the Netherlands without registering there.

Venture Activity

Investing activity remained strong this week, with 17 projects raising a total of $244.11 million (two of which had undisclosed amounts raised). The majority of this figure comes from Blockstream’s $125 million raised via a Convertible Note Issuance.

Although the bulk of activity this week was in Seed rounds, other funding rounds were seen across different sectors.

Web3 projects were highly sought-after in the week, followed by Infrastructure. The activity was noted across all sectors.

Metaverse & NFTs

Amazon will offer NFTs and blockchain gaming in Spring 2023. Link.

Azuki announced that its official Twitter account was compromised and the malicious user had posted a series of tweets. Fortunately, the Azuki team regained control of the account, and investigations are ongoing.

Regulatory

China will start taxing crypto investors and Bitcoin miners 20%. Link.

The New York State Assembly received a bill for agencies’ crypto payments. The agencies would be able to use cryptocurrencies to receive payments of fines, taxes, fees, civil penalties, and more. Link.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has tapped the Tezos blockchain for record  keeping. Link.

IOTA progressed to the next phase of EU’s Pre-Commercial Procurement. It will develop distributed ledger solutions for improving blockchain-based services across the EEA. Link.