Alpha-Packed: Wednesday 6 Sep

⚡ Alpha

• Taiko's Grímsvötn L2 (alpha-3) and Eldfell L3 (alpha-4) testnets coming to end along with its Glaxe tasks on September 19th. New alpha-5 testnet coming soon.

• LayerZero launches LayerZero Zorb NFT on Zora until September 8th.

• C3 protocol testnet is live. C3 is a self-custodial exchange and previously raised $9.6 million in rounds led by Two Sigma Ventures and Arrington XRP Capital.

• DeBank releases new Web3 Badge for users who received the Connext $NEXT airdrop.

🪂 Airdrops

• Connext $NEXT airdrop is live. Check eligibility, claim, and delegate to me if you would like me to vote on governance proposals on your behalf.

📰 TRADFI News

• X receives money transmitter license for payment services in Mississippi. X now has 8 regulatory licenses in the payments industry across the U.S.

• Grayscale legal team delivers a letter to the SEC urging them to approve its Bitcoin ETF.

• Visa expands stablecoin settlement pilot with Worldpay Global and Nuvei utilizing Solana.

• South Korean Hana Bank partners with BitGo to provide digital asset custody services starting in the second half of 2024.

• Genesis subsidiary and U.S.-focused trading business, Genesis Global Trading; sunsetting its cryptocurrency spot trading platform on September 18th citing business reasons.

• Coinbase launching new cryptocurrency lending service for institutional investors in the United States seeking to fill lending void left by Genesis Global and BlockFi.

• Coinbase suspending trading for BarnBridge ($BOND), DerivaDAO ($DDX), Jupiter ($JUP), Multichain ($MULTI), Ooki ($OOKI), and Voyager ($VGX), after review.

• Binance removing several spot trading pairs on September 8th due to poor liquidity and/or trading volume.

📰 DeFi News

• Vitalik Buterin states one of the major challenges Ethereum faces is node centralization. Buterin emphasizes that reducing and simplifying the cost of node operation is the key, but it could take up to 20 years to completely solve the problem.

• StarkNet v0.12.2 launched to Mainnet and includes some key upgrades to enhance the performance and reliability of the network.

• Polygon zkEVM Mainnet update introduces the new versions of both the Node and Prover components.

• Base block production delayed for ~45 minutes due to internal infrastructure refresh. The issue was remediated with no funds at risk.

• MetaMask announces "Sell" feature which allows users to cash out cryptocurrency for fiat currency. Currently only available in the U.S., U.K., and parts of Europe.

• Circle introduces native $USDC on Optimism and Base. Native $USDC is issued by Circle and compatible with Circle APIs.

• LayerZero is live on Zora Network. Applications built on LayerZero can extend their app to Zora Network and Zora Network developers can easily integrate with the rest of the LayerZero Network.

• Farcaster account recovery now available for those who lost their Farcaster recovery phrase. The onchain recovery starts next week.

🛡 Security and Exploits

• South Korean Government plans to introduce bill aimed at tracking and freezing cryptocurrencies used by North Korea for its illegal weapons program. North Korean hackers have reportedly stolen $3+ billion in cryptocurrency over the past 5 years.

• Stake hacked for $41 million. Stake co-founder, Edward Craven; confirmed private keys were not compromised, but rather the attack targeted a service the company uses to authorize transactions.

• ZachXBT issues warning about Boost Coin as the founder has previously rugged many times before.

• Nima Capital sells Synapse $SYN tokens and removes liquidity 6 months early. A passed governance proposal proposal in March 2023 outlined that Nima Capital provide $40M of bridge liquidity for 12 months. Additionally, the Nima Capital website is offline.

• Connext $NEXT airdrop disrupted by sybil bot attack. Claim UI was temporarily unavailable as the bot spammed numerous requests to Tokensoft's backend which then took down their API.

• Floor DAO exploited for 40 $ETH due to a design flaw in the "distribute" and "rebase" functions.

• WalletGuard, a cryptocurrency security browser extension; has been updated with improved risk factors and gas estimations.

💰 Funding

• Story Protocol, an open-source solution for creating, managing, and licensing new intellectual property on-chain; completes $25 million Series A round led by a16z crypto.

• GenTwo, a fintech platform that specializes in securitization; completes $15 million Series A round led Point72 Ventures.

• TRLab, a Web3 arts startup; completes $5 million Seed round led by Hivemind Capital Partners and OKX Ventures.

• •D3, a next-generation domain names company; completes $5 million Seed round with participation from Shima Capital, Lightshift, Dispersion Capital, and more.