Evening News | dYdX plans to develop an independent blockchain on Cosmos; Binance claims responsibility to help industry participants survive
Cryptocurrency infrastructure company Prime Trust has completed a $107 million Series B funding round; zkSync has released V2 update information, adding the "account abstraction" feature.Organizer: Nianqing, Chain Catcher
"What important events have occurred in the past 24 hours?"
1. Decentralized derivatives protocol dYdX plans to develop Layer 1 blockchain in Cosmos
Decentralized derivatives protocol dYdX plans to launch its own Layer 1 blockchain using the Cosmos SDK in the coming months to provide a competitively sustainable product experience. This blockchain will be controlled by a group of distributed validators rather than solely by the founding team, which helps to make the project more decentralized. (The Block)
2. Crypto infrastructure company Prime Trust completes $107 million Series B funding
Crypto infrastructure company Prime Trust announced the completion of $107 million in Series B funding, with specific financing details not disclosed. The funds from this round will be used to expand its product categories, including cryptocurrency retirement products and asset tokenization products.
Previously reported, Prime Trust announced the completion of $64 million in Series A funding in July 2021, led by Traverse, a growth equity fund of Mercato Partners, with participation from Samsung Next, Kraken Ventures, and Seven Peaks Ventures. (Source link)
3. Facebook Pay rebranded as Meta Pay, aiming to create a universal digital wallet for the metaverse with interoperability
Mark Zuckerberg announced that its payment product Facebook Pay has officially been renamed Meta Pay. Zuckerberg stated that this change is the "first step" for Meta to create a digital wallet for its vision of a virtual world. There will not be significant functional changes in the short term, but in the future, Meta Pay will become a universal wallet for all digital items purchased or created in the metaverse, not limited to Meta's products, and will serve as an interoperable wallet for virtual worlds.
Additionally, Meta recently confirmed that it has cut 48% of digital asset sales from Horizon Worlds and will use the funds for the wallet application. (Engadget)
4. CNBC: Binance.US announces zero trading fees for spot Bitcoin, potentially causing Coinbase stock to plummet
According to CNBC, Binance.US has announced that it will allow users to trade spot Bitcoin for USD, USDT, USDC, and BUSD without paying trading fees. Following this announcement, its biggest competitor, Coinbase, saw its stock price drop significantly, closing down 9.7% on Wednesday. CNBC analysts believe that Coinbase's main source of revenue is trading fees, but with Robinhood and FTX US also attempting to launch zero-commission trading services, Coinbase will face increased pressure. (CNBC)
5. Ministry of Public Security: Drug money circulation is expanding from online bank transfers to virtual currencies and game currencies
The Ministry of Public Security held a press conference today, during which it released the "2021 China Drug Situation Report." The report indicated that the drug market continues to extend online, increasingly adopting a model of separating money and drugs, as well as separating people and transactions. The "Internet + logistics delivery" non-contact drug trafficking methods are on the rise. Transaction connections are evolving from popular chat tools to niche social tools, second-hand trading platforms, gaming platforms, and even the dark web. The circulation of drug money is expanding from online bank transfers to virtual currencies and game currencies. (Dazhongwang)
6. Binance: We have a responsibility to protect users and help industry participants survive in a tough market
Binance released a blog today stating that as one of the largest industry participants with healthy cash reserves, Binance has a responsibility to protect users and help industry participants survive in the current challenging market environment, even if this does not provide direct benefits or a positive return on investment for Binance.
Additionally, Binance clarified the criteria for rescue projects: rescuing poorly managed projects that fail solely due to poor design or management is meaningless; Binance will assist projects that have a high product-market fit, a good business model, and a decent team but have made minor mistakes like insufficient reserves. (Source link)
7. zkSync releases V2 update information: adds "account abstraction" feature, increases compatibility with Ethereum EVM
According to an official announcement, zkSync, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution based on ZKRollup, released its V2 update today. The structural changes aim to improve user experience, increase compatibility with Ethereum EVM, and upgrade the performance of the zkSync v2 test network.
This upgrade adds "Account Abstraction," which can reduce the number of account types or the number of entities that can send transactions with ETH balances. The upgrade also adds messaging from L2 to L1 and support for transaction attribute msg.value. Additionally, the addition of L2 to L1 messaging simplifies the protocol interface and replaces hard-coded operations with generic L1 interoperable L2 communication. To implement these changes, the zkSync 2.0 test network has been reset, contracts redeployed, and account balances and transaction statuses have been reset. (Source link)
"What excellent articles are worth reading in the past 24 hours?"
1. “Those who left big companies for Web3 BUIDL”
As more evangelists, explorers, and experimental products emerge, Web3 is transforming from a vague concept into something concrete.
Capital and new entrepreneurs are flooding into the NFT, metaverse, and GameFi craze, and the slogan "All in Web3" has emerged. Traditional internet workers, who have been in the game for years, are also starting to stir. Under the immediate social media topic of "Web3 Research Institute," employees from leading internet companies like "Donkey Factory" (Alibaba) and "Goose Factory" (Tencent) can often be seen observing, learning, and testing. However, with the recent market cooling, the voices have weakened. Chain Catcher interviewed builders who transitioned from big companies to Web3 to glimpse what challenges they encountered during their transformation.
2. “Vitalik Buterin: How to use zk-SNARKs technology to protect privacy?”
ZK-SNARK is a powerful cryptographic tool that is becoming an increasingly important part of applications built on and off the blockchain. However, they are complex, both in terms of how they work and how we use them. This article will focus on how ZK-SNARKs fit into existing applications, examples of what they can and cannot do, and general guidelines for determining whether ZK-SNARKs are suitable for specific applications.
Now, it has been a year since the El Salvador Congress passed the Bitcoin law, during which the country proposed a series of plans, including building a Bitcoin city, using geothermal energy from volcanoes to mine Bitcoin, and issuing $1 billion in Bitcoin bonds. Over the past year, what has been the actual situation of El Salvador's plans regarding Bitcoin? What impact has Bitcoin had on this country?
4. “The pillars of Web3: An overview of the decentralized storage ecosystem”
If we want to advance further into a decentralized internet, we will ultimately need these three pillars: consensus, storage, and computation. If humanity successfully decentralizes these three areas, we will step into the next journey of the internet: Web3. Storage, as the second pillar, is rapidly maturing, with various storage solutions already applied to use cases. This article will further explore this pillar of decentralized storage.
