Crypto exchanges are cutting fees to capture market share from rivals. Exchanges have had to get bigger or diversify into other revenue streams to make up for lost revenue as margins become tighter. Binance lost revenue when it launched zero-fee trading for spot bitcoin but it more than made up for it with user growth and revenue from other token trading and services. Its fee cuts puts pressure on other exchanges to follow suit. Binance's bitcoin and ether spot-market trade volume this year exceeds the other 11 major exchanges combined.
MakerDAO currently holds around $4 billion in stablecoins. Its assets come from its highly efficient decentralized exchange. The reserves on the exchange are investable assets. MakerDAO will invest $500 million from these reserves into a specific bond strategy composed of US Treasury and Corporate bonds. There are more ongoing proposals that seek to further invest these reserves into different bond-linked strategies.
ConsenSys and Bankless DAO have announced plans to develop the world's first DAOlationship. A DAOlationship is a mutually beneficial undertaking between a traditional organization and partner DAOs that provides partner DAOs with talent and supports the traditional organization's employees in exploring the broader DAO ecosystem. ConsenSys created the DAOlationships program to improve the Ethereum and DAO ecosystems. The program will revolutionize the way brands onboard into DAOs.
Lido will support a wrapped version of its staked ether token on Arbitrum and Optimism. stETH tokens represent ETH tokens staked on Ethereum's network. wstETH (wrapped stETH) will allow stETH holders to use Arbitrum and Optimism for faster and cheaper transactions. Lido currently holds around 29% of all staked ETH.
Noir is a Rust-based domain-specific language for creating and verifying zero-knowledge proofs. It allows developers to easily write zk applications compatible with any proving system. Noir abstracts away the cryptographic complexity of zk while retaining the power and flexibility of other circuit-building languages, allowing any developer to build zk apps. Links to sample implementations are available.
Some people think that Ethereum's new staking model will result in ETH being deemed a security under US security laws. This article explains why the adoption of a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism doesn't make ETH an investment contract. ETH must pass all four prongs of the Howey test in order to be classified as a security. Staking fails to satisfy the test because there is no common enterprise and validators never rely on the effort of others.
Coinbase's CEO Brian Armstrong has proposed developing stablecoins whose value is linked to the Consumer Price Index rather than fiat money. Stablecoins designed this way would allow tokens to retain their purchasing power. The proposal was made during a streamed conversation about the launch of Coinbase in Australia. A video of the stream was published on YouTube on Wednesday, but it has now been placed in private mode.
The Binance Smart Chain has been temporarily paused due to a potential exploit. Binance says that all funds are safe. The company is now investigating the vulnerability.