Top crypto stories of week 39, 2024
Mon 23 to Sun 29 September 2024
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 23 to Sun 29 September 2024, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 52 comments in total. Most-shared sources: app.t2.world, youtube.com, x.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Celo as a Cultural Extension of Ethereum (app.t2.world)
Celo, a blockchain originally launched in 2020 as its own chain, is transitioning to a Layer 2 on Ethereum, and the post argues that Celo's focus on real-world financial inclusion, especially on mobile phones, complements Ethereum's culture. The author says Celo surpassed Tron in daily active users transacting with stablecoins, and cites Opera's Minipay wallet, which has onboarded 3M users in one year and offers transfers from Norway to Malawi at a cost 30% cheaper than MoneyGram. Mento Protocol is building local stablecoins, with six currencies live so far, and the post reports that Uniswap volumes have surged 20-fold since last year.
- WalletConnect Foundation Official Airdrop (airdrop.walletconnect.network)
- Layer 2 Interoperability through Shared Validity Sequencing (app.t2.world)
Shared Validity Sequencing (SVS) is proposed as a way for Layer 2 rollups to share one globally valid transaction history, so users can move assets such as ETH between rollups without a traditional bridge. The article gives an example of moving ETH from Base to Mode for a game, in which the lock on Base is recorded in a shared global sequence that Mode references before releasing equivalent ETH. It argues that this removes reliance on third-party relayers and validators, which it describes as adding cost and vulnerability, and that bridges have been a frequent target for hacks. The article does not provide measured fee, speed or security figures for SVS.
- t2 1000 Fans Bootcamp: For writers on the internet (t2.world)
- United States of Ethereum: E Pluribus Unum (app.t2.world)
The essay argues that Ethereum can be understood through the analogy of the United States, with Ethereum Mainnet as a lightweight federal government and L2s as independent states that follow its rules, use ETH and pay Mainnet taxes. It says this pluralistic design lets L2s differ in technology, users and governance, limiting damage when one fails, much as the US has relied on diverse states. On the L1 and L2 relationship, it notes that most fees are currently captured by L2s because of blobs, but that this could shift as blob pricing follows network usage. It proposes that L2s cooperate by onboarding users from chains such as Tron, Solana and BSC, and by specializing and interconnecting, as US states do.
- Japanese Web Design, weird but it works (youtube.com)
- Gnosis AI: Onchain agents & longtail predictions markets - Martin Koppelman (youtube.com)
- Mozilla rebrand takes from early internet aesthetics, to “reclaim the web” (itsnicethat.com)
Mozilla has unveiled a new brand identity meant to show its broader mission beyond the Firefox browser, which it describes as building and supporting technology in the public interest. The redesign was developed with Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR) and is built around a "Grassroots to Government" system intended to reach audiences from coders and activists to government officials and everyday consumers. Visual elements draw on early internet aesthetics, including custom typefaces made with Studio Drama, pixel patterns, a classic RGB green palette, and a flag logo that reveals the dinosaur mascot originally designed by Shepard Fairey. Mark Surman, Mozilla's president, said the rebrand is "laying the foundation for the next 25 years."
- Behind the Scenes of Ethereum’s Open Coordination (app.t2.world)
The author argues that Ethereum's open, collaborative process is coordinating a fix for fragmented user experience across rollups, through chain abstraction standards for wallets. Justin Drake created a chain-specific address working group in late July, bringing together Vitalik Buterin, wallet teams and rollup teams, and Josh Rudolf suggested a breakout Zoom session that took place on August 10. Other proposals come from Sam Wilson, and from Marco Stronati of Matter Labs and Jeff Lau of ENS, while the article says the problem is still being solved.
- Making Ethereum alignment legible (vitalik.eth.limo)
Vitalik Buterin argues that "Ethereum alignment" should be made legible by breaking it into specific properties that can be measured, rather than judged by social connections. The proposed properties include open source code, open standards, decentralization and security (tested by the walkaway test and the insider attack test), and benefit to the wider Ethereum community and the world. The author suggests that independent monitors like L2beat should track projects against these criteria, with the Ethereum Foundation funding such efforts but not performing them itself.
- Minipay: A Journey Through Kenya and Nigeria | Celo Europe (celodao.eu)
- Introducing Recharge Gnosis Pay in Zeal (x.com)
- Culture is the Strategy (app.t2.world)
Layer 2 chains on Ethereum share the same core value of cheaper fees than L1, so the author argues that each chain's distinct culture is its main strategy for attracting developers and users. Drawing on Vitalik's point about cultural differences between L2s, the author uses Base, Blast, Arbitrum and Zora as examples. Base focuses on building an "onchain economy" with the goal of bringing 1B people onchain, while Blast centers on speculation and farming. Arbitrum has tilted toward gaming and DeFi, with its DAO approving a Gaming Catalyst Program allocating over 225M ARB tokens, and Zora centers on onchain creativity through its protocol and mobile app.
- Binance user data allegedly leaked (dailydarkweb.net)
- Web3 Identity Search (web3.bio)
This page is a Web3 identity search and link-in-bio directory from web3.bio, which describes itself as a Web3 Identity Graph search and profile service for ENS, Farcaster, Lens, and more. It lists profiles of people such as Vitalik (vitalik.eth), Nick (nick.eth), Dan Romero (dwr.eth), and Brian Armstrong (barmstrong.eth), each showing a name, handle, wallet address, and short bio. The listed bios include roles such as Lead developer of ENS in nick.eth's profile and Coinbase CEO in barmstrong.eth's profile.
- Using ZK Sessions to improve UX (x.com)
The article proposes zkSessions, a private delegation method that lets a user's device grant a session key limited permissions and expiration without exposing the master key or the user's identity. It uses a robot assistant named Chappie acting for Bob as its running example, and it argues the approach can improve user experience for decentralized applications. The author notes that keys stored on a mobile device but needed in a laptop browser are usually handled either by exporting the keys, which is risky, or by QR code signing for each step, which is cumbersome. Under the proposed approach, a user creates one session and delegates session keys to the laptop with defined policies, so only one QR scan is needed per session.
- Practical Rateless IBLT: Part 1 (guiltygyoza.xyz)
This two-part post presents a digest of the PRIBLT paper, and Part 1 sets up set reconciliation and surveys prior approaches. The central idea is that PRIBLT makes IBLT rateless and practical, so the sender streams codes until the receiver can decode, with no need to guess the size of the set difference. Alice and Bob, the post's example pair, exchange codes by phone until Bob signals that decoding has succeeded. The article says that on average between 1.35d and 1.72d codes are needed, where d is the size of the set difference, even with millions of items in each bag.
- Don't go chasing platforms (paragraph.xyz)
The author argues that artists should commit to one minting platform for a while rather than constantly switching between them. They say that exploring options is fine, but that dedicating yourself to one platform can be more beneficial for building a collector base, and that the specific platform or chain matters less than avoiding spreading yourself too thin across many places.
- Meta fined more than $100 million for storing passwords in plaintext (far.quest)
- Telegram will now hand over your phone number and IP if you’re a crime suspect (theverge.com)
Telegram's updated privacy policy says it may now disclose a user's IP address and phone number to authorities when it receives a valid judicial order confirming the user is a suspect in a case involving criminal activities that violate its Terms of Service. The change follows the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov last month, whom French authorities charged with enabling illegal activity on the platform. Durov says the changes aim to deter criminals from abusing the app's search function to sell illegal goods, and that the company's previous law enforcement policy applied only to terror suspects, as reported by 404 Media. Telegram says it will disclose in its quarterly transparency reports whether it provided user information to authorities.