TLDR Crypto 2022-09-19

Staking cryptocurrency is a great way to earn interest on your holdings. But why lock yourself out of DeFi and more yield by delegating your assets to a validator?

With Meta Pool, this dilemma is gone. You stake NEAR, and get tradeable stNEAR. In other words, you gain staking rewards AND unlock liquidity for DeFi activities on NEAR and Aurora - simultaneously.

~10.31% APY. Superior staking technology. Immediate unstaking. Many ways to maximize return in Defi. Start staking NEAR on Meta Pool

ETHPoW, the Proof-of-Work Ethereum fork aimed at miners, lost three-quarters of its value within its first 24 hours. The network was launched around eight hours after the Merge. Users had trouble accessing the network as its Chain ID was already being used by another project. Daily issuance of ETHPoW tokens is worth around 0.8% of the value generated each day under PoW Ethereum. Miners are having trouble staying profitable.

The Ethereum Merge has already contributed to a dramatic shift in the market for GPUs. Crypto miners had been buying up as many GPUs as they could over the recent years, heavily inflating prices. GPUs are now going for significantly less than their MSRP and manufacturers have been left with a surplus of excess inventory. Miners flocking to other chains have been unable to turn a profit. Some miners have pivoted to other businesses, like AI computing or VFX rendering.

Infura is planning to launch a decentralized infrastructure protocol to address centralization concerns. The process will involve developing open-source code and decentralizing the JSON RPC API that its users use to connect to Ethereum. The new decentralized protocol will exist alongside Infura's more centralized offerings. Only qualified infrastructure providers will be able to apply for the early access program.

DeFi privacy protocol Railgun has launched a mobile wallet app that allows users to privately carry out DeFi activities on Ethereum. The Railway Wallet ensures that transactions can't be tracked with tools like Etherscan. It is the first zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine prover to run completely on mobile. The wallet is available for both Android and iOS.

This article discusses what might and might not make sense when building a triple-layered architecture. Protocols can't just keep scaling by stacking rollups on top of rollups as data can only be compressed once. A layer 3 with customized functionality would be more reasonable. There is clearly a need for layers that serve non-scaling needs and rollups might not be the right approach in many cases.

Violet has introduced Humanbound tokens, a new identity primitive. HBTs are tokens that are connected to a unique identity. People can mint HBTs by authenticating their wallets then verifying their identities using SMS 2FA and by validating identification documents and completing liveness detection with identity verification provider Persona. HBTs do not hold or reveal any personal data. Violet will take custody of the data and store it off-chain via Privy. Instructions on how to mint an HBT are available in the article.

This article discusses the Network State, the origins of the idea, whether it is feasible, and more. The Network State is the idea of a sovereign nation created by a decentralized group of people around the world. These states will use the blockchain for full transparency for things like taxes and voting. Network States may be able to gain recognition with international organizations if they grow large enough. They will expand through winning minds rather than through war.

The Biden administration has just released a framework on what crypto regulation in the US should look like. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in March that called on federal agencies to examine the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies and issue official reports on their findings. The newly released framework outlines how the financial services industry should evolve to make borderless transactions easier and how to crack down on fraud in the digital assets space. More details on the report are available in the article.

A trader successfully extracted profits from GMX's AVAX/USD market by opening large positions at 0 slippage and then moving AVAX/USD to other venues in their favor.

The European Central Bank has partnered with five companies, including Amazon, to test its digital euro.

Spencer Tucker, Yuga Labs' new Chief Gaming Officer, will supervise the development of the firm's web3 gaming projects, starting with the Otherside metaverse.

WeaveDB enables developers to build complex logic for full-stack dApps without writing smart contracts.

Ethereum aims to be able to process 100,000 transactions per second after the completion of its planned upgrades.

Zero-knowledge proofs can preserve privacy, verify computations, and compress data, solving core problems within web3.