EthHub Weekly #193

Polygon Miden announced, ConsenSys raises $200mil, Binance adds Arbitrum support and much more!

Nov 22

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

🤪 Crypto Mania

So much happened this week in the crypto ecosystem from the Sotheby’s auction that ConstitutionDAO bid on, to the drama on crypto twitter over the weekend to all of the project updates listed below - crypto is many things but boring is not one of them! If you’d like to hear Eric and I’s thoughts on all of this, be sure to tune into this weeks Into the Ether podcast.

I also wanted to wish Cryptocurrency Jobs a happy 4th birthday - it’s quite the achievement!

Have a great week everyone!
- Anthony

News of the Week

🤔 Crypto.com Spent $700 Million to Rename Staples Center in Los Angeles

Crypto.com has struck a 20-year deal with AEG, the owner and operator of the Staples Center in Los Angeles, to rename one of the most famous sports and entertainment venues in the U.S.

Staples Center, the official home to four professional sports franchises — basketball’s Lakers, Clippers and Sparks, and ice hockey’s Kings — will be renamed to Crypto.com Arena. The center has also hosted over 15 GRAMMY Awards shows. The upcoming GRAMMY Awards in January will also be held at the same center.

Crypto.com has agreed to pay AEG $700 million for the naming rights, a source with knowledge of the deal told The Block. This makes it one of the largest sponsorship deals in sports history.

⚖️ Bill to Limit New IRS Reporting Requirements to Enter Congress

Representatives Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Tim Ryan (D-OH) introduced a new bill to restrict the IRS definition of digital asset broker, a contentious point within the newly passed infrastructure bill.

The bill — called The Keep Innovation in America Act — aims to rewrite new definitions for a broker in the infrastructure bill that President Biden signed into law on Monday. Those definitions were part of a late-stage legislative brawl in the Senate. Truncated proceedings on the infrastructure bill limited normal debate.

"We can fix these poorly constructed standards and ensure they are compatible with how this new technology actually works," said McHenry when announcing the bill.

Project Updates

EF Announces Advocacy Grants

The Ethereum Foundation is allocating 1 million USD in grant funding to organizations that educate governments and policymakers about Ethereum and blockchain technology. We encourage others in the Ethereum community to support their important work.

What’s New in Eth2 - 19 November 2021

Updates on the Beacon Chain, The Merge, staking and more in this weeks edition of Ben’s eth2 newsletter.

ConsenSys Raises $200 Million

ConsenSys has raised $200 million tipping its valuation to over $3.2 billion, according to an announcement. Its investors include HSBC, Coinbase Ventures and Marshall Wace. ParaFi and Thirdpoint also invested in the raise.

StarkWare Raises $50 Million

The Series C round was led by Sequoia with participation from a bunch of other investors.

Polygon Unveils Miden

Polygon Miden is an advanced ZK Rollup. ZK Rollups are very promising, but currently, it's hard for them to support arbitrary logic and transactions, such as those happening on Ethereum. Polygon Miden will solve this challenge using its core component - Miden VM.

Maple Finance Offers Syndicated Loans

DeFi platform Maple Finance has created another permissioned lending pool, one designed to make it easier for institutional investors to lend money.

Binance Adds Arbitrum Support

Users can now deposit to Binance from the Arbitrum One network with withdrawal support being added soon.

Connext Adds Optimism

Users can now instantly transfer assets to/from Optimism directly from other L2’s and sidechains using Connext.

StarkNet Alpha 4 Released

Alpha 4 was released last week on Goerli. This version is the Mainnet release candidate and, if everything goes according to plan, will be deployed on Mainnet by the month’s end.

Polygon Donating $1mil to Gitcoin

Polygon has committed $1 million to Gitcoin in support of digital public goods, making one of the largest donations to the decentralized funding platform for open-source projects.

PSP Token Introduced

The PSP token is the native governance token of ParaSwap - a decentralized exchange aggregator.

Introducing SDL

SDL is the governance token for Saddle DAO which manages the Saddle Finance protocol.

Introducing DeFrag

DeFrag is a decentralized non-custodial liquidity market protocol where borrowers can use NFT assets as collateral.

Aave Arc Market Introduced

Aave Arc provides an isolated Aave market and a sandbox environment for institutions to experience the power of DeFi: transparency, decentralized governance, rapid innovation, automated smart contract-based execution, liquidity, and programmability.

AugurDAO Introduced

AugurDAO is the final act and curtain call of the Forecast Foundation: the last remaining piece of the puzzle to set Augur free into a world in which it can be iterated on and developed without the constraints or limitations that have fettered the Foundation up to this point.

Gallery Raises $2.69 Million

The round was led by Collab+Currency, alongside Distributed Global, Lattice Capital, Palm Tree Crew (Kygo), Galaxy Interactive, FlamingoDAO, Scalar Capital, and The LAO. Coinbase Ventures and Dapper Labs participated in the round as strategic investors.