TLDR Crypto 2022-09-12

FTX Ventures has agreed to purchase 30% of Sky Bridge Capital for an undisclosed amount. SkyBridge will use some of the funds to buy $40 million in cryptocurrencies as a long-term investment. The company announced in July that it was planning a web3 dedicated fund to invest in late-stage crypto companies. It started an investment vehicle to invest in bitcoin mining that has raised about $7 million, according to a US SEC filing in April.

LUNA tripled in price within a few hours on Friday. The token was introduced after the original Terra blockchain collapsed in May. LUNC, the original Luna token, also surged due to news of a new burn scheme that would reduce the token's hyperinflated supply. The new Terra blockchain has so far struggled to attract investors into its ecosystem. Many cryptocurrencies appeared to rally on Friday after multiple economic indicators signaled a slowing of the global economy.

BNB chain has announced the launch of zkBNB, a blockchain built to solve problems associated with blockchain scaling. zkBNB was launched in testnet on September 2 and will be officially released in November. The blockchain can process up to 10,000 transactions per second. zkBNB features a built-in NFT marketplace and API services. Developers will be able to easily transfer BNB, BEP20, BEP721, and BEP1155 tokens between BNB Chain and zkBNB.

Unblocked has partnered with industry leaders to build branded NFT marketplaces. The Unblocked Exchange is an NFT marketplace for artists and creators to showcase and sell their digital creations. It features email/phone number signup and credit card payments. Unblocked plans to build a community of music, art, and culture fans. It recently onboarded more than 80,000 users during a live TV event in collaboration with Pepsi.

This site contains a dashboard with token unlock schedules and tokenomics data. It covers tokens from many protocol types, including DeFi, DAO, blockchain, metaverse, gaming, and more. Users can set alerts through the dashboard.

One of the consequences of Solana's explosive growth is an increase in spam. Solana has implemented QUIC to combat spam, but UDP is still enabled. Stake-weighted QoS will be built out after UDP is turned off. Local fee markets are live and wallets will start suggesting priority fees during periods of congestion. An article with more details about how Solana plans to combat spam is available in the thread.

While being able to buy ENS domains for cheap is good for people now, it may severely handicap the system in the future. Reliance on secondary markets also makes domains more expensive than a well-designed in-protocol mechanism. This article discusses other ways of allocating ENS domain ownership. Other methods of allocation should raise more revenue for ENS DAO and do a better job of ensuring that domains go the those who can make the best use of them.

Berachain is a developing EVM-compatible blockchain that uses a Proof-of-Liquidity consensus model to allow users to stake assets with Berachain validators. It operates around a tri-token structure consisting of BERA, BGT, and HONEY. Users who stake with Berachain will earn block rewards in the form of BERA. Loans are issued in HONEY with staked assets as collateral. Those who stake BERA earn BGT, a non-transferable token that gives holders rewards and voting privileges.

This Twitter thread links to an article that looks at a year of MEV data to estimate how validator returns might look if similar amounts of MEV are available post-merge.

The sanctions placed against Tornado Cash and other addresses should not require blockchain technology infrastructure providers to monitor or censor transactions.

This article discusses how to decentralize the builder role, the challenges in doing so, the benefits of having a decentralized builder role, and more.

This post is a response to Vitalik Buterin's recent article on Ethereum Name Service name registration fees and mechanisms for making the namespace more sustainable in the long run.

This article discusses some of the legal technicalities around the Tornado Cash sanctions.