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The Protocol: Bitcoin Gets a DEX, Union Labs Gets $12M

Published

6 месяцев ago

4 декабря, 2024

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

In this issue:

Bitcoin gets a DEX, thanks to the Nomic bridge

Union Labs gets $12M to build more bridges

Base’s Jesse Pollak looks back on BALD

Justin Drake discusses Ethereum’s Beam Chain plan … and Solana

Network News

STRENGTH FOR ETH: The Ethereum blockchain’s transaction revenue has increased substantially since Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory, Steno Research said in a Monday report. «This outcome is crucial for all on-chain activity,» wrote analyst Mads Eberhardt. The surge has led to higher staking rewards and more ether (ETH) being burned via transaction fees, the report said. «This combination strengthens Ethereum’s tokenomics,» Steno said, making ether a more appealing asset. Steno noted that the amount of USDT on the Ethereum network surpassed supply on the Tron blockchain for the first time in more than two years. This is a clear sign that on-chain activity is booming, resulting in greater demand for ether to facilitate transactions and higher transactional revenue. Read more.

BITCOIN GETS A DEX: Osmosis, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built for the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem, has opened a bridge to the Bitcoin network, as part of a pivot toward the world’s largest cryptocurrency. The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that governs Osmosis voted in favor of adopting Bitcoin bridge Nomic in June. The integration went live on Tuesday. Nomic’s bridge now enables users to deposit their BTC on the Bitcoin network in return for a token called alloyed BTC (allBTC) on Osmosis. “The novel thing with Nomic is that it’s all decentralized,» said Matt Bell, CEO of Turbofish, the team of developers behind Nomic. «The whole flow for users, from having Bitcoin in their wallet to the Bitcoin being on Osmosis, remains decentralized with Nomic. There’s no Bitgo or Coinbase in the middle.” In the big picture, Osmosis is one of several projects attempting to leverage the value tied up in BTC, by far the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, to bring liquidity to the broader crypto world. Read more.

UNION LABS GETS $12M: Union Labs, a project focused on helping blockchains communicate with each other, has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital and Longhash Ventures. The fresh round of funds will be used to expand Union’s core team, advance partner integrations, and contribute to ecosystem growth. The fundraising comes after Union raised $4 million in seed financing last year. Borderless Capital participated in the new round, along with angels from the Polygon, Celestia, Movement, and Berachain communities, Union Labs said Tuesday. Union’s core product is a modular, zero-knowledge (ZK) interoperability layer, designed to ease movement of assets between the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems. Its mainnet is supposed to go live in early 2025. Union is also interested in building in the Bitcoin ecosystem, “addressing the chain’s scripting limitations to enable secure asset transfers across Bitcoin L2s and the multichain ecosystem, enhancing DeFi on Bitcoin,” the team said. Read more

TO BALDLY GO… Critics say the Base blockchain, created by the Coinbase exchange, is too centralized. But if that were true, would anyone have been able to create BALD, a meme coin launched on Base last year whose name mocked Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s shiny pate? «BALD showed that Base wasn’t going to be this place that was fully manicured, curated, controlled, and centralized,» says Jesse Pollak, Base’s founder. «Bald showed that Base wasn’t going to be this place that was fully manicured, curated, controlled, and centralized.» Too bad BALD also turned out to be a rug, as it were. Read more

ETHEREUM’S JUSTIN DRAKE SEES NO THREAT IN SOLANA

Ethereum developer Justin Drake said his comprehensive proposal to overhaul the second-largest blockchain’s consensus layer isn’t about catching up with a rival, it’s about sticking around for the long haul.

Drake unveiled the proposal, known as the Beam Chain, at Ethereum’s biennial Devcon gathering in Bangkok last month, at a tim when the network’s native token ETH is lagging behind its counterparts at other major layer-1 blockchains.

The Ethereum network enjoyed wide adoption over the last few years, making it more expensive and slower to use. In response, a cohort of layer-1s, known as “Ethereum killers,” emerged in 2020 to compete with Ethereum on transaction speeds, and Solana has been seen as the leader of the back.

Recently, activity on Solana has exploded, mainly thanks to the surge of memecoins on the blockchain, with users wondering whether it will overtake Ethereum as the “hot” chain.

But Drake said he doesn’t see Solana as a threat to Ethereum, and neither does he see the Beam Chain as a way to restore Ethereum’s edge in the short term.

The Beam Chain “is all about improving the long-term health and security of the consensus layer, it has nothing to do with performance,” Drake said in an interview with CoinDesk.

“Solana has no consideration for health. The only thing they care about is performance. They care about reducing latency and increasing throughput,” Drake added.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW BY COINDESK’S MARGAUX NIJKERK

Money Center

What are the odds?

Polymarket Retains Loyal User Base a Month After Election, Data Shows

Deals and grants

GraFun Expands to TON Network to Enable Memecoin Creation Right in Telegram

Tokenized Uranium Goes Live on the Tezos Blockchain with Archax, Cameco Involved

Grayscale Files To Convert Solana Trust Into ETF

Greasing the skids

XRP Account Fees Fall by 90% After XRPL Validator Vote

Coinbase Plugs Apple Pay Into Its Fiat ‘Onramp’ for Third-Party Crypto Apps

Regulatory and policy

Crypto Cash Fueled 53 Members of the Next U.S. Congress

Opinion: De-banking Deserves Urgent Attention

Calendar (See #content-announcements channel in Slack)

Dec. 4-5: India Blockchain Week, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: Emergence, Prague

Dec. 9-12: Abu Dhabi Finance Week

Dec. 11-12: AI Summit NYC

Dec. 11-14: Taipei Blockchain Week

Jan 9-12, 2025: CES, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: WAGMI conference, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: Adopting Bitcoin, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: PLAN B Forum, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: Satoshi Roundtable, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: ConsensusHK, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: NFT Paris

Feb 23-March 2: ETHDenver

May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto.

May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas.

Uncategorized

Judge Overturns Convictions in Mango Markets Exploiter’s Crypto Fraud Case

Published

9 часов ago

24 мая, 2025

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A U.S. judge has overturned the fraud and market manipulation convictions of Avraham Eisenberg, the crypto trader accused of draining $110 million from the now-defunct decentralized finance protocol Mango Markets.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that prosecutors failed to prove Eisenberg made false representations to the platform.

He also moved to acquit Eisenberg of wire fraud charges. The investor manipulated the price of Mango’s native token MNGO with massive trades by more than 1,000% in 20 minutes before getting the protocol to allow him to borrow and withdraw $110 million in various cryptocurrencies, backed by the inflated collateral.

Eisenberg’s defense argued that the platform, which operated through smart contracts, allowed anyone to transact freely and that he simply exploited a vulnerability. The judge agreed, stating that Mango’s permissionless structure meant that there “was insufficient evidence of falsity” from prosecutors regarding Eisenberg’s representation to Mango Markets.

Eisenberg was arrested in December 2022, and while this case collapsed, he is still currently serving a four-year sentence handed out after he pleaded guilty to the possession of child sexual abuse material.

“From the beginning, we said this case was fatally flawed,” his attorney Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP said. “We are very pleased for Avi that the judge granted our motion and dismissed the case.”

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Swiss watchmaker Franck Muller Unveils Limited Edition Solana Watch

Published

9 часов ago

24 мая, 2025

admin

If you’ve ever wanted to have your Solana wallet on your wrist while flexing your wealth, Swiss watchmaker Franck Muller is making that a reality.

The watch market is stepping into the Web3 ecosystem with a Solana-inspired, limited-edition series of watches that contain an embedded unique QR code to directly link to the user’s Solana address.

The company’s Solana-inspired watch collection is limited to 1,111 units that will set buyers back 20,000 Swiss francs (around $24,300).

While the watches feature a unique design that could appeal to Solana ecosystem participants, their launch comes at a time when, unfortunately, flaunting crypto-related wealth is becoming risky.

The cryptocurrency industry has seen dozens of physical attacks just this year, with a notable case seeing the daughter and grandson of Pierre Noizat, CEO of crypto platform Paymium, being targeted in a daytime attempted kidnapping. The attack was filmed and shared on social media.

While that kidnapping attempt failed, an earlier one in the same city saw the father of a crypto millionaire get abducted. Police managed to rescue the man, but not before his finger was severed.

Earlier this year, the co-founder of hardware wallet maker Ledger, David Balland, along with his wife, was abducted from his home and saw similar treatment. The couple was later rescued by authorities, and a ransom that had been paid out was seized.

There have been many other similar attacks in recent months.

Franck Muller is pitching the collection as a «phygital» (physical-digital) symbol of identity and ownership in the crypto age. While the watch is certainly a piece of crypto mythos, it may be a collectible that investors may not want to show off.

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A Small Food Firm Buys 21 bitcoin, Jumping on BTC Treasury Trend, Shares Fall Anyways

Published

10 часов ago

24 мая, 2025

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DDC Enterprise (DDC), an Asian food company, has announced the acquisition of 21 BTC as part of a long-term plan to incorporate the cryptocurrency into its corporate treasury.

The company, led by founder and CEO Norma Chu, exchanged 254,333 class A ordinary shares for BTC, in a transaction valued at roughly $2.28 million, according to a press release.

The move positions DDC among a growing cohort of public companies using BTC as a treasury asset. Two more purchases totaling 79 BTC are expected in the coming days, bringing the company’s initial holdings to 100 BTC.

In a shareholder letter issued last week, Chu outlined plans to accumulate up to 500 BTC within six months and aim for 5,000 BTC in three years.

While companies adopting bitcoin as a strategic treasury asset often see major price rises, DDC saw the opposite. The company’s shares dropped more than 12% on Friday’s trading session, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.6% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 1%.

DigiAsia (FAAS), for example, saw its share prices surge more than 90% in a single trading session after announcing a $100 million BTC treasury plan earlier this month.