Top crypto stories of week 49, 2024
Mon 2 to Sun 8 December 2024
The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 2 to Sun 8 December 2024, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 53 comments in total. Most-shared sources: x.com.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- Stealth Addresses (philmohun.com)
Stealth addresses are presented as a practical way to keep Ethereum transactions private, and the author says the Fluidkey product makes them usable. The article explains that stealth addresses let users receive funds without exposing their public key or transaction history, by giving senders a one-time-use address instead of a main account. The author says they previously created many accounts in Metamask to do this, which was hacky and poorly suited to managing balances. Fluidkey lets users log in with a single address, generate new addresses automatically, and view all balances from one dashboard, and it uses ENS so people can send payments to a readable name such as philm.fkey.eth.
- What I would love to see in a wallet (vitalik.eth.limo)
Vitalik Buterin argues that Ethereum wallets should be a priority for security and privacy, since users only gain the protections of Ethereum and its applications to the extent their wallet provides them. He proposes built-in cross-L2 sends using chain-specific addresses, and a social recovery design where a primary key handles low-value actions while a majority of N guardians (for example, N = 5) is required for high-value operations or key changes. He suggests ZK-wrapped centralized IDs such as zk-email as an easy-to-use guardian option, but advises using it for only one guardian rather than a majority. He also says private transfers should be built into wallets instead of requiring a separate privacy wallet.
- Ethereum's North Star (dba.xyz)
- Supply Chain Attack Detected in Solana's web3.js Library (socket.dev)
A supply chain attack injected malicious code into versions 1.95.6 and 1.95.7 of Solana's @solana/web3.js library on npm, designed to steal private keys. Anza, a Solana-focused research and development firm, disclosed on December 3 that a publish-access account had been compromised, and the article states the cause is believed to be social engineering or phishing targeting the library's maintainers. Datadog researcher Christophe Tafani-Dereeper found an "addToQueue" function in v1.95.7 that exfiltrates keys using CloudFlare headers. Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz estimated damage at roughly $130K, while Decrypt projected $160K in stolen assets, and version 1.95.8 was released to remove the injected code.
- China is watching...and it doesn't want to lose. (blockchainasia.substack.com)
Coco Kee writes that China is preparing to re-enter the crypto space and does not want to fall behind, based on her first trip to Hong Kong and Mainland China since 2019. She reports that the 10th Wanxiang Blockchain Summit in Shanghai drew roughly one-third of 2019 attendance, with speakers now almost exclusively Asian and discussion centered on stablecoins and RWA tokenization rather than cryptocurrencies. She cites a South China Morning Post interview with Dr. Feng Xiao, Chairman of HashKey Group, who suggested Trump's pledge to support crypto and sanctions on Russia via SWIFT could catalyze China's policy shift, with legalization of crypto assets possibly within two years.
- Share your Kiwi story and earn $KIWIMAS (warpcast.com)
- The Crypto DevRel Trap (or how many users should you have when releasing an sdk) (juliet.tech)
The author, a DevRel professional, argues that crypto projects hire developer relations teams too early, before validating core use cases with users, and that this "DevRel Trap" slows mainstream adoption. The article cites a Telegram chat of over 400 crypto DevRels serving about 25,000 active blockchain developers, roughly one DevRel per 65 developers. It also compares Web2 companies, which launched consumer products 3 to 9 years before public APIs, such as Facebook (2004 consumer launch, 2007 API) and Airbnb (2008 launch, 2017 API). The proposed fix is to prioritize user-focused marketing and hire DevRels only once developers request API access.
- Is MicroStrategy The Next FTX? (x.com)
The author argues that MicroStrategy carries less risk than FTX or Terra but that its practice of leveraging debt to buy Bitcoin is not without danger. The article says the company held 402,100 BTC at an average price of $58,263 and had about $4.26B in convertible notes as of Q3 2024, plus a $3B offering on November 21, 2024. It also cites a plan to raise $42B from 2025 to 2027, with interest costs that could rise to $134.7M annually, and it concludes that the company does not appear to face significant immediate risks.
- Some kiwimas data on Dune (dune.com)
- Don’t try to onboard the next billion users to Ethereum, here's a better way (kanfa.macbudkowski.com)
The author argues that instead of targeting the "next billion users" for Ethereum, projects should build hundreds of narrow apps aimed at 100,000 to 10 million users. The argument draws on history: apps like Microsoft Office, Google and Instagram reached a billion users only after the underlying technology was already widely adopted, such as IBM PCs, home internet and smartphones. The text notes 136 million global ETH owners per crypto.com research, but only about 500k daily active Ethereum addresses per Etherscan. It also says narrow apps such as NBA Top Shots, Sorare and Polymarket can lead users to explore other parts of Ethereum.
- FC moving to total ordering (warpcast.notion.site)
- Infinite Market Cap (8marketcap.com)
This page is a ranking of the 100 largest assets by market capitalization, with gold at the top at $29.343 trillion and NVIDIA second at $5.536 trillion. Apple ($4.912 trillion), Alphabet ($4.254 trillion) and Microsoft ($3.973 trillion) follow, with Bitcoin ranked 13th at $1.666 trillion and Ethereum 65th at $306.18 billion. The list includes companies, commodities such as gold, silver and platinum, and ETFs such as Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, with SpaceX listed 9th at $2.141 trillion.
- Stablecoins market map (stablecoinsmap.com)
- Blobs are driving millions in fees for Ethereum (x.com)
- Bitcoin Layers (bitcoinlayers.org)
- GMGN Wallet (gmgn.app)
- The Drawbacks of Getting Rich (route2fi.substack.com)
- Enron is relaunching with decentralized technology (db) (x.com)
- Dia from The Browser Company (diabrowser.com)
Dia, a browser from The Browser Company, is positioned as built for how people actually work, with privacy controls in the user's hands. Users can decide whether Dia remembers their preferences and which tools connect to their workflow. The product's data is said to never be sold or used to build ad profiles, and Sync is described as end-to-end encrypted. Dia for Work is described as adding SSO and admin tools for team security.
- SentientMarketCap (sentientmarketcap.com)
