Top crypto stories of week 35, 2024
Mon 26 August to Sun 1 September 2024
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 26 August to Sun 1 September 2024, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 42 comments in total. Most-shared sources: open.substack.com, coindesk.com, x.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Is Kiwi News OK if its founders are arrested? (open.substack.com)
- Profitable on day one! (longform.asmartbear.com)
Jason Cohen argues that a business is not profitable just because its revenue covers its direct costs, and that founders who call a company "profitable from day one" are misusing the word. He proposes a stronger test: a company is profitable when it would still be profitable if a high-quality operator sold it and hired people at market rates to do the work. He says a founder earning less than the job they left, or paying themselves nothing, does not meet that test. He adds that most new businesses take a long time to become profitable, citing his own company WP Engine, which took nine months to start and then two years of chaos, and Smart Bear, which took 2.5 years before hiring its first employee.
- Railway: Private DeFi Wallet (railway.xyz)
Railway Wallet is a free, open-source, non-custodial, non-profit app that lets users shield Ethereum and EVM assets into private 0zk addresses and use public Ethereum DeFi privately. Shielding encrypts activity, address, and assets with zero-knowledge cryptography, and private sends transfer value without revealing sender, recipient, amount, or token type. Users can swap, earn yield, and provide liquidity on leading DeFi platforms from their private 0zk address. The app integrates the RAILGUN Smart Contract Privacy System, and its seed phrase is encrypted with the user's password and stored only on the local machine.
- Maker migration, impact on Gnosis Chain (forum.gnosis.io)
LaJota raises concern that USDS, which replaced DAI after MakerDAO became Sky, has a freeze function that can block wallets and smart contracts, conflicting with Gnosis Chain's decentralization and permissionless use. The post asks whether a wallet frozen on Ethereum mainnet would also be unable to pay gas fees on Gnosis, since the DAI and xDAI contracts are the same, and whether USDS now resembles USDT. It notes that USDS access is banned in the US and UK and says the impact may be nothing, but calls the discussion important because the token serves as Gnosis's gas token.
- Insane visualization of what happens on the builder side of Ethereum every 12sec (sorellalabs.xyz)
- MakerDAO Is Now 'Sky' (coindesk.com)
MakerDAO has rebranded as Sky as part of its multi-year "Endgame" overhaul, with co-founder Rune Christensen saying the goal is to grow DeFi to a scale as large as Tether or bigger. The protocol, which has $7 billion in assets, will introduce a new stablecoin, USDS, and governance token, SKY, on Sept. 18. Existing DAI and MKR will remain in circulation, with DAI exchangeable 1:1 for USDS and each MKR swappable for 28,000 SKY. Christensen said reward accrual for USDS and SKY holders will be restricted in certain jurisdictions, including the U.S. and U.K.
- We're not for everyone — and that's the truth (open.substack.com)
Metalabel's leadership writes that the company is not for everyone, and that embracing this pushes it toward being more itself. The newsletter-style post describes the team as deep in an unfinished creative project due this fall, with its outcome still unknown. It also highlights new releases: Molly Soda's limited run of 100 postcard editions tied to her play Trivial Pursuit, and Do Not Research's two annual publications, 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, now on Metalabel.
- (Re)introducing Kiosk, a Farcaster client for creators (warpcast.com)
- Protocols making more than $100 million (x.com)
- Degencast: Farcaster client for content and channel curators, is live on testnet (launchcaster.xyz)
- Unpopular Opinion: The Internet Is Meant for Fun (jeffgoins.substack.com)
The author argues that the internet was meant to be fun, and that today's social media has lost that quality to clutter, negativity, and the pressure to constantly produce content. He recalls delivering a pizza in 2015 to a stranger in Toronto after a Twitter exchange, and a friend, Daryl, bringing cappuccinos during a Nashville blizzard after a Facebook post. He contrasts the early blogging years, when a comment could arrive within minutes and a blog was exceptional, with a present where publishing is routine and creators feel pressured to keep posting.
- What is Programmable IP Licensing Good For? (sceneswithsimon.com)
The author argues that programmable IP licensing is most useful for open IP that is illiquid, and that it is less suited to closed mega-IP, where owners want to protect their works. The author says they were involved in this domain from 2014 to 2019, including work on Ujo Music's automated royalty payment prototype on Ethereum and the COALA IP framework. The article cites Story Protocol's $140m raise for a blockchain network focused on programmable IP, and suggests IP clubs, such as tabletop RPG licensing groups or an SCP subset charging for commercial derivatives, as possible uses.
- The marginalization of touch in a digital world (substack.com)
The author argues that the digital revolution has marginalized the sense of touch, which may be one of its greatest tragedies. Smartphone apps have replaced many physical tools and objects, including pens, paper, calculators, notebooks, wallets, credit cards, photos, maps and video games. While the author acknowledges these apps are convenient, cost-efficient and space-saving, the shift has left the author feeling a "texture withdrawal" and a longing for the feel of sketch paper and rugs.
- TON Resumes Block Production After Nearly Six Hour Outage (coindesk.com)
The TON blockchain resumed block production in the early afternoon Hong Kong time on Wednesday, August 28, 2024, after a nearly six-hour outage. The article links the halt to a surge in network traffic, which it suggests may have been driven by an airdrop of the DOGS memecoin, though it notes that observers said TON's transactions per second came in well below expectations. The team said several validators were unable to clean the database of old transactions, which led to losing consensus. Bybit temporarily suspended withdrawals and deposits citing network instability.
- Ethereum Foundation under fire for lack of transparency in treasury management (blockworks.co)
- Re-Introducing Purple (paragraph.xyz)
Purple is an onchain organization that aims to support and extend the Farcaster protocol and ecosystem, using the governance model of Nouns. It was the first DAO to launch on Nouns.build and says it helped solve the ecosystem's cold start problem by pooling daily auction funds to reward builders. The article names Ponder, Herocast, Kiwi News, Launchcaster, and GM Farcaster as early recipients, and says Purple still funds public goods, meetups, and community initiatives that may not attract traditional funding.
- Comprehensive Gnosis Chain Staking User Experience Survey (tally.so)
- Signed web pages with SXG (vivs.wiki)
Signed exchanges (SXG) let websites cryptographically sign their pages so that content can be prefetched and attributed to its origin, and the author argues this could enable zero-knowledge proofs about publicly available web data. Proposed examples include proving an author said something on a given date, proving a stock's price at a specific time, and proving how an election turned out from a news article. The author notes that Cloudflare offers one-click SXG setup, which the author currently uses, and that most sites do not enable SXG yet. The author suggests lobbying high-value sites, Cloudflare, and the Internet Archive to expand adoption, and says that how SXG handles private information is still unclear.
- In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto launched 2 blockchains (2015) (medium.com)
A thought experiment proposes that Satoshi Nakamoto launched a second blockchain, "Cloudledger," alongside Bitcoin in January 2009, with identical mechanics but no financial terms. Every 10 minutes, Bitcoin miners are rewarded with 50 Bitcoin, and Cloudledger verifiers are rewarded with 50 Ledger Tokens. Each genesis block contains a different January 3, 2009 Times headline. The only difference described is terminology, since Cloudledger has no references to coins, money, finance or currency.
- SEC threatens OpenSea because they believe NFTs are securities (x.com)
OpenSea says it received a Wells notice from the SEC threatening to sue because the SEC believes NFTs on its platform are securities, and it has vowed to fight. The company argues that targeting NFTs would stifle innovation and put hundreds of thousands of online artists and creatives at risk, many of whom lack resources to defend themselves. OpenSea says it is pledging $5M to help cover legal fees for NFT creators and developers who receive a Wells notice. The post also cites a suit filed against the SEC by musician @songadaymann and conceptual artist @brianlfrye, who fear their art and music sales could be deemed unregistered securities offerings.