1. Web3 Foundation announces the 18th batch of Grant funding list, 36 projects are shortlisted
Web3 Foundation announced the 17th batch of Grant funding list, providing a total of approximately US$780,000 in grants to 36 projects. Among the projects, the recipients in the user interface category include Web3 Labs Ltd, Wunderbar Network, Profond.ai, etc., the Chains and Pallets category includes Valletech AB, Ed Anderson, Societal Labs Ltd., Ideal Labs, Xcavate, etc., the smart contract category includes Galaxy.Do, Collective Intelligence Labs, 727.ventures, CoinFabrik, Talentica Software, Deep Ink Ventures GmbH, etc., the tools, APIs and languages category includes DAuth, TradeLink, Supercomputing Systems AG, Nikita Orlov PR, P2P.ORG, ParaSpell, the research category includes Scio Labs, and the interoperability category includes Polytope Labs.
2. NEAR Q2 Transparency Report: The total treasury is $900 million, the decrease is mainly due to the decline in NEAR prices
The NEAR Foundation released a transparency report for the second quarter of 2023, which showed that as of the end of the second quarter, the NEAR Foundation's treasury totaled $900 million, including $349 million in legal reserves, 315 million NEAR (approximately $435 million at the closing price of $1.38), and $90 million in loans and investments. The NEAR Foundation's treasury decreased by $200 million in the second quarter of 2023, mainly due to the drop in the price of NEAR from $1.99 to $1.38. A net deployment of $16 million in fiat currency and $1 million in NEAR was made in the second quarter.
3.SignalPlus: Mainstream digital asset investment grew for the third consecutive week
In terms of cryptocurrency, mainstream digital asset investment products received $136 million in capital inflows, which was the third consecutive week of growth, helping to recover the capital outflows in the previous two months; BTC remains the first choice of investors, accounting for 67% of the total status, capital inflows are still mainly through Greyscale. Despite continued declines in stablecoin balances and further declines in recent NFT activity/floor prices, cryptocurrency prices have remained relatively stable, and as we enter the summer break we expect prices to continue to range-bound and implied volatility to remain subdued .
4. Algorand Ecosystem Lending Protocol Algofi will cease operations
Algorand ecosystem lending protocol Algofi announced that it will begin shutting down the platform and will soon put the platform into withdrawal-only mode. The collateral in the lending market will be gradually reduced over a few months to ensure liquidity transfer. In the future, it will ensure that the liquidation work is carried out in a safe, clear and timely manner, and only Discord will be retained as a communication method.
5. Memeland announces the details of the MEME token sale and will airdrop to relevant NFT holders
NFT project Memeland announced the details of the MEME token sale, which will allocate whitelist spots for Captainz holders, with more spots available for rare Captainz. A single whitelist spot can buy tokens worth up to 0.69 ETH. In addition, Memeland stated that all NFTs in Memeland (including MVP, Captainz and Potatoz) are eligible for airdrops.
6.Arbitrum Ecosystem Leverage Income Protocol Rodeo_Finance Suspected of Being Attacked
Security audit company Beosin's monitoring shows that Rodeo_Finance, a leveraged yield protocol in the Arbitrum ecosystem, has been attacked. The Beosin security team has calculated that approximately $1.5 million in funds have been stolen.
7.BAYC will launch intellectual property tool Made by Apes in collaboration with SaaSy Labs this month
Bored Ape Yacht Club announced that it will launch an intellectual property tool "Made by Apes" in partnership with SaaSy Labs later this month. Greg Solano, co-founder of Yuga Labs, said that although people in the club have been building with their IP, there is no simple on-chain method to verify these items, nor is there an official catalog to verify everything that Bored Ape and Mutant Apes are making. It is reported that SaaSy Labs unleashes the potential of smart contracts through blockchain-based legal agreement solutions, facilitating the signing, management and downstream financial mechanisms of legal agreements. The cooperation use cases listed on its official website include automated licensing agreements on the chain, automated licensing agreements on the chain, and displaying intellectual property.
8. Laser Digital, a subsidiary of Nomura Securities, appoints new partners for venture capital business
According to The Block, Nomura Securities' digital asset subsidiary Laser Digital has appointed industry veteran Florent Jouanneau as a new partner in its venture capital business. Despite shrinking financing levels across the industry, the company plans to expand its venture capital division. It is reported that Jouanneau previously worked at White Star Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in web3 and DeFi startups. He previously worked as a structured credit and ABS trader at Bank of America, and has held sales and trading positions at UBS and Natixis, a subsidiary of BPCE Group.
9. The UK is cracking down on unauthorized cryptocurrency ATMs
According to Crowdfund Insider, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued a statement saying that it is cracking down on unauthorized cryptocurrency ATMs in the UK. The FCA said that since the beginning of the year, it has investigated 34 locations in the UK, often in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies. So far, 26 crypto ATMs have been closed during 2023. In May and June, the FCA, the Southwest Organized Crime Unit, the Bedfordshire Police, the Hertfordshire Police and the Metropolitan Police inspected 18 locations across the UK suspected of operating cryptocurrency ATMs.
10. South Korea will establish clear accounting standards for virtual assets
In order to eliminate market uncertainty, the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea have formulated specific guidelines for supervision within the scope of reasonable interpretation of the International Accounting Standards (IFRS). The regulatory guidelines specifically guide the accounting standards for various transaction entities and transaction stages related to virtual assets. Among them, the company's obligations to virtual asset holders are usually divided into three stages, unless in rare cases, the scope of obligations granted to the issuer is arbitrarily changed afterwards to avoid the recognition time of sales proceeds that are recognized as liabilities in advance; after the company completes all obligations to virtual asset holders, it must recognize the sale share of virtual assets as income; before completing the obligations to virtual asset holders that are usually divided into three stages, the company's collection of funds should be recognized as liabilities. The South Korean government spent about two months collecting opinions from stakeholders such as listed companies, virtual asset operators, and accounting firms, and then finalized the revision of regulatory guidelines and standards. After review and resolution by the Accounting System Review Committee and the Securities and Exchange Commission, it was announced and implemented between October and November. The "Accounting Supervision Guidelines" shall come into effect on the date of publication.
11. Ethereum Punks creator: At the request of Yuga Labs, Ethereum Punks was deleted and removed from the shelves
Ethscriptions founder Middlemarch tweeted that at the request of CryptoPunks owner Yuga Labs, the Ethereum Punks website will be shut down, all Ethereum Punks images will be removed from http://Ethscriptions.com, and tweets referencing Ethereum Punks, including tweets introducing the Ethscriptions protocol, will be deleted.
12. Dubai Cryptocurrency Regulator Suspends BitOasis Cryptocurrency Exchange License
Dubai’s cryptocurrency regulator has suspended the license of cryptocurrency exchange BitOasis for failing to meet specified conditions within the time specified by the regulator, Cointelegraph reported. The Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) issued two alerts, saying it had taken enforcement action against BitOasis and was reviewing the Dubai-based company. VARA said the conditional license BitOasis received on April 12 allowed it to operate provided the company met “key conditions within a 30-60 day timeframe,” which the regulator said had not yet been met. VARA did not detail which conditions BitOasis failed to meet, but the regulator said the company’s “institutional and qualified retail investor licenses remain ‘inoperable’” until the conditions are met.
13. a16z transferred approximately $5.9 million worth of MKR to Coinbase
On-chain analyst Ember tweeted that 5 hours ago, a16z transferred 6,432 MKR (worth about $5.9 million) to Coinbase through the address starting with 0xd520. The a16z address received 60,000 MKR in 2019 (should be investment allocation), and then sold 27,840 MKR (through Genesis Trading OTC, Coinbase) at an average price of about $2,750 during 2021.
14. Aave community launches formal governance proposal for “native stablecoin GHO launched on mainnet”
Aave has launched a formal governance proposal to launch the decentralized stablecoin GHO on the mainnet, which aims to introduce GHO to the Ethereum mainnet through the Aave V3 Facilitator and FlashMinter Facilitator. The proposal will be open for voting in about 20 hours. If the vote is passed, Aave V3 users on Ethereum will be able to mint GHO using collateral. It is reported that there are two initial service providers for GHO: Aave V3 Ethereum Service Provider and FlashMinter Service Provider. If the proposal is approved by Aave DAO, GHO will be launched on the Ethereum mainnet. Facilitator is a concept introduced by GHO. Facilitators (such as protocols, entities, etc.) can generate GHO within a certain range of quantities, and can also destroy them. Aave V3 Ethereum Facilitator allows users to deposit collateral to borrow GHO, and the collateral is stored in the V3 Ethereum mainnet pool. FlashMinter Facilitator allows users to FlashMint (same as flash loan function) GHO and repay it in a single transaction instead of borrowing assets from the pool.
15. OpenSea SDK adds support for collection or contract retrieval of NFTs and creation of orders on more chains
OpenSea SDK releases new features and multi-chain support, including support for retrieving NFTs through collections or contracts, and will allow users to obtain the owner list, property list, and even the rarity of NFTs of ERC-1155 tokens; developers can use the SDK to create orders on all supported chains.
16.Messari: Polkadot Q2 revenue fell 32% month-on-month, with 295,000 monthly active users
Messari released the Polkadot 2023 second quarter report, which showed that Polkadot's market value fell 16% month-on-month, from US$7.74 billion to US$6.24 billion. Revenue was US$81,000, a decrease of 32% month-on-month. The average daily number of active accounts on the relay chain was 5,800, a decrease of 16% month-on-month. As of the end of June, the entire Polkadot ecosystem had a total of 3.9 million unique accounts (public key addresses), an increase of 200,000 month-on-month and an increase of 600,000 year-to-date. With more than 750 full-time developers and a total of 2,000 developers, the entire Polkadot ecosystem had an average of 295,000 active users per month in the second quarter, including external signers and token recipients.
17. Arkham CEO: All referral links will contain an encrypted version of the referrer’s email address
Arkham CEO Miguel Morel said on Twitter: "The referral link contains a Base 64 encoded version of the referrer's email. This system was created at the beginning of the beta version with the purpose of allowing us to track user referrals via email in order to reward these users. This is not a way to collect user emails - users already use their emails when they sign up for the platform and get a reference link. They will not be used for any other purpose besides communicating with users and tracking referrals. Similar to most referral programs, the registration page always displays the referrer's email when the referral link is posted. This is to show the invited user that the invitation is legitimate. After our user base has grown exponentially, we should change this system. In the future, all referral links will contain an encrypted version of the referrer's email, so it cannot be reverse engineered. This change has taken effect." It is reported that the referral links of Arkham previously circulated in the community were just Base64-encoded email addresses, which meant that users who shared referral links may have inadvertently leaked their personal email addresses.
