Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)

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🥩 The Merge is Coming

Many of you will already be aware of what ‘The Merge’ is but for those who aren’t, feel free to read this piece here. Though what I wanted to briefly talk about here is that the merge is indeed coming faster than people think. Now that work on Altair is done (going live on the eth2 mainnet on October 27th), all the core researchers and developers are focused on the merge with devnets being spun up shortly (which will lead to testnets). At this point, it’s roughly expected that the merge will happen end of Q1 2022/early Q2 2022 but, as always, take this date with a grain of salt!

Have a great week everyone!

- Anthony

News of the Week

⚖️ Virgil Griffith Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy Charge in North Korea Sanctions Case

Virgil Griffith, the Ethereum developer charged with violating U.S. sanctions law, has pleaded guilty in an agreement with federal prosecutors.

Griffith pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act last Monday in a New York courthouse. The plea deal could see him serve between 63 and 78 months in prison. He will be sentenced in January 2022.

Brian Klein, Griffith’s attorney, said in a statement, “Virgil is deeply remorseful. Setting aside what happened, he has made important contributions to society that we will raise with the court. He also has many wonderful qualities, and no one should define him by this mistake.”

😬 CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, TradingView Now Blocked in China

Three of the most popular crypto market data sites have now become inaccessible for users based in mainland China.

CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap and TradingView are currently all blocked by China's internet firewall, according to tests run by The Block. Search results on Greatfire.org, an online tool for checking sites censored by China's Great Firewall, also show that the three sites are 100% blocked as of press time.

It's not clear when exactly they became inaccessible but users started to notice the blockage early Tuesday morning China time.

It appears that these data sites did not actively cut off Chinese IP access but rather it was a move by China's internet censorship agency. "As far as we know, we didn't block proactively," CoinGecko co-founder TM Lee told The Block. 

Project Updates

Finalized No. 29

Altair upgrade scheduled for October 27th on the consensus layer with information on the merge interop specs and coming devnets.

ChainSafe Launches NodeWatch.io

NodeWatch is a node explorer to gleam insights about Ethereum Consensus nodes such as sync status, regional info, and client diversity metrics.

OVM 2.0 is Coming

OVM 2.0 will be deployed to the Kovan testnet on October 14th with mainnet coming on October 28th.

Visa Building Payments Network

The Ethereum-based layer 2 payments network would use state channel technology and is first focused on CBDCs but can be generalized for other assets.

Connext NXTP Now Live

NXTP is now live on mainnet with support for networks Arbitrum, Polygon, xDai and others.

Flashbots v0.4 Released

This version introduces mega bundles which lets Flashbots innovate faster, support more bundles and will lead to new searcher strategies and more miner revenue.

Mirror Crowdfunds Go Public

Mirror has opened up its crowdfund feature to the public so that anyone can now use the platform to raise money.

Context Introduced

Context is a new service that makes it easy to see what’s happening on Web3. It’s now in open beta.

Layer3 Raises $2.5 Million

The round was led by ParaFi Capital, along with support from Electric Capital, Lattice Capital, 6th Man Ventures, and Red Beard Ventures + angels.

Utopia Introduced

Utopia is a modern system for managing contributor payments, expenses, and more for your DAO, built right on top of Gnosis.

Greenwood Router Introduced

Greenwood is a protocol for borrowing cryptocurrency and it currently supports Aave and Compound with support for Cream, Fuse, Kashi and more coming soon.

OpenOrgs.info Updated

New features included a split treasury view (liquid and vesting), more details about the treasury itself, which assets are in the treasury and more.

Introducing Ethereum IDM

Etherescan’s IDM (Input Data Messages) feature allows you to generate a chat history of selected addresses and share it with the world.

Cryptotesters Academy Launched

This academy has tutorials on the most basic things a beginner needs to know to start their DeFi journey.

Gelato Raises $11 Million

The Series A round was led by Dragonfly Capital with participation from ParaFi Capital, Nascent, IDEO and angels.

Aave Arc Gears Up for Launch

Aave Arc, a permissioned version of the popular DeFi lending platform Aave, is getting ready for its first deployment.

Angle Protocol Raises $5 million

The round was led by a16z with participation from Fabric Ventures, Wintermute, Divergence Ventures and others.

Interesting Tweets

• A few examples of how L2’s can censor you

• Dangerous things in crypto

• Using token incentives to bootstrap new networks

• A look at the Interoperability Trilemma

• Sneak peek of Twitter NFT verification

Ecosystem Bits

Blog Posts

• Coming to Consensus - The Daily Gwei

• Fax Machine Maximalists - The Daily Gwei

• Prysmatic Labs’ Statement on Client Diversity - Raul Jordan via PryLabs

• Proofs of Custody - Dankrad Feist

• Below the Surface of EIP-1559 - T via Data Always

• Paths Forward for Monolithic Chains - Polynya

• A 23.7 Million Dollar Ethereum Transaction Fee Post Mortem - Konrad Strachan via DeversiFi

• Modular vs Monolithic Sharding & Zk-Monolithic - Liberosist

• New VMs in Rollups Will Solidify Ethereum's Lead - L2Intern

Podcasts

• China's Crypto Ban... Why Now? | Sahil Bloom - Bankless

• The Crypto Gaming Revolution | Arianna Simpson - Bankless

Misc

• A breakdown of zkEVM from Scroll

• Security Review of Ethereum Beacon Clients

• ERC 4337: account abstraction without Ethereum protocol changes

• Rollup-centric ethereum with sharding or rollup-centric sharding?

Meme of the Week

ETH Memes @EthereumMemes

September 30th 2021

39 Retweets388 Likes

Looking for Work?

Top jobs listed on Cryptocurrency Jobs this week:

• Full-Stack Developer - mStable

• Communications Lead - UMA

• Senior Product Designer - Status

• Business Development Associate - Perpetual Protocol

• +1000’s more on the Cryptocurrency Jobs website!