Tornado Cash Raises $500K for Defense

️ On today's Top Picks:

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Tornado Cash developers raise $500K for legal defense with support from Edward Snowden.

• US Rep. Maxine Waters inquires Mark Zuckerberg about Meta's digital asset plans.

• Binance & SEC battled in court in an effort to get the lawsuit against them dismissed.

• Rarible launches RARI Chain, an Arbitrum Orbit L3 with royalties embedded on the sequencer level.

• Firgure Technologies seeks approval from the SEC to issue an interest-bearing stablecoin.

• Nexo seeks $3B in arbitration claim against Republic of Bulgaria for, "...unjustified and oppressive criminal investigations."

• FINRA states 70% of cryptocurrency communications violate its rules to be fair and balanced.

• Core Scientific $CORZQ resumes trading after successful reorganization efforts.

Alpha

• EtherFi deVamp is live for EigenLayer depositors of stETH, cbETH, wBETH.

• ClayStack facelifts csETH with staking rewards, CLAY points, & EigenLayer points.

• Rainbow partners with FriendTech and offers bonus points.

• Magic Eden introduces rewards with a retroactive Diamond drop for Solana OGs.

• Drift points are live with the first weekly points drop set for February 2nd.

• Hinkal last chance to mint early adopter NFTs that offer exclusive Discord roles & future rewards.

• Arcade2Earn launches Zealy community campaign that will reward top rankers with an airdrop.

• Andre Cronje posts sentiment check regarding the release of shelved defi prototypes.

Airdrops

• AltLayer $ALT updates & Rabby points by Olimpio.

• ⭐️ ZetaChain airdrop claim eligibility is live on ZetaHub.

• Confirmed TGEs for this year by wagame.

• Dmail $DMAIL airdrop set to launch by mztacat.

Finance News

• ⭐️ Russia & India partner to create digital economy as BRICS international expansion efforts continue.

• UBS appoints Aleksandar Ivanovic as new head while integration with Credit Suisse continues.

• Microsoft $MSFT & Apple $AAPL cross $3T in market cap.

• Apple $AAPL delays release of self-driving electric car to 2028.

• Alibaba $BABA co-founders buy $200M+ worth of shares.

• EBay $EBAY to cut 1K jobs and scale back contracts citing headcount and expenses outpacing growth.

• Johnson & Johnson $JNJ to pay $700M settlement over the safety of its talc-based products.

• US FTC blocks Intuit $INTU from advertising or marketing their services as free.

Security and Exploits

• ⭐️ Kaspersky uncovers new family of trojan proxies targeting macOS users and their cryptocurrency.

• Mailer Lite exploited to mimic web3 firms and send malicious emails resulting in ~$600K losses.

• Socket recovers stolen 1032 ETH with recovery & distribution plan coming soon.

• GMEE exploited for 800M $GMEE tokens due to unauthorized GitLab access.

Token Unlocks

• Acala / 4.66M $ACA / ~$366K / JAN 24
• Yield Guild Games / 16.69M $YGG / ~$7.3M / JAN 27
• SingularityNET / 9.11M $AGIX / ~$2.3M / JAN 27

Funding

• ⭐️ Polymer, an Ethereum interoperability hub; raises $23M in Series A funding led by Blockchain Capital, Distributed Global, & Maven 11.

• Ingonyama, a zk tech developer; raises $21M in Seed funding led by IOSG Ventures, Walden Catalyst, & Geometry.

• Masa Network, a zk-data marketplace and network; raises $5.4M in Seed funding led by Anagram.

• Arcade2Earn, a play-to-earn gaming platform; raises $4.8M in a private token sale led by Crypto[.]com Capital.

• The Bagel Network, a decentralized data platform; raises $3.1M in Pre-Seed funding led by CoinFund.

• Synonym, a cross-chain money market; raises $1.5M in Seed funding led by Borderless Capital.

• KEKKAI, a Web3 security company; raises $1.5M in Seed funding.

• BitGo, an institutional digital asset platform; raises an undisclosed amount in funding from Brinks.

• EDX, a digital asset marketplace; raises an undisclosed amount in Series B funding led by Pantera Capital & Sequoia Capital.

The Degen Farmer