Evening News | Babel Finance loses over $280 million in proprietary trading; Zhou Hongyi discusses Web3 and the Metaverse
Spice DAO, which purchased the unpublished manuscript of the movie "Dune" for 2.66 million euros, has announced its dissolution.Organizer: Nianqing, Chain Catcher
"What Important Events Happened in the Last 24 Hours"
1. Oasis Labs Partners with Meta to Build a Privacy-Preserving Platform to Support Fairness in AI Models
Privacy computing network Oasis Network developer Oasis Labs announced a partnership with the renowned tech company Meta. As an important technical partner of Meta, Oasis Labs has built a platform using Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC). Its encryption technology not only provides a high level of privacy protection for individuals' sensitive data but also helps Meta measure bias and fairness, supporting the development of fairness in Meta's AI models, establishing Responsible AI and responsible data usage to promote a fairer and more inclusive society.
It is reported that Oasis Labs aims to leverage blockchain, privacy computing, and privacy protection technologies to establish a series of related platforms and products, further promoting personal privacy protection, data governance, and responsible data usage. Oasis's technology focuses on making it easier for developers to integrate privacy-preserving data storage, governance, and computation. (Source Link)
2. Move-to-Earn App Sweat Economy Completes $13 Million Financing, with Participation from Electric Capital and Others
Move-to-Earn app Sweat Economy has completed $13 million in financing, with investors including Electric Capital, Spartan Capital, Jump, GSR, and the NEAR Foundation, as well as Polkadot co-founder Bjorn Wagner, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, and Civic founder Vinny Lingham.
The project aims to incentivize users to improve their health by staying active while earning in-app tokens that can be redeemed for products, services, and donations. (Coindesk)
3. Lending Protocol Aurigami Completes $12 Million Financing Through Token Sale, Led by Dragonfly Capital and Polychain Capital
Aurora lending protocol Aurigami has completed $12 million in financing through a token sale, of which $9.5 million was raised through a private token sale, and $2.5 million was raised through an IEO on KuCoin, Bybit, and Impossible Finance. This round of financing was led by Dragonfly Capital and Polychain Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, Jump Crypto, Amber Group, and QCP Capital. Individual investors include Aurora CEO Alex Shevchenko, Etherscan CEO Matthew Tan, former ParaFi partner Santiago Santos, and CoinGecko co-founders Bobby Ong and TM Lee. The funds will be used to expand the team and develop the ecosystem.
It is reported that Aurigami is a DeFi lending protocol on the NEAR ecosystem's EVM scaling network Aurora. According to DefiLlama data, its current TVL is approximately $22.42 million, making it the third-largest DeFi protocol on Aurora. Aurigami plans to support USN as a borrowable asset and cross-chain lending within the year. (The Block)
4. Miami to Collaborate with TIME, Mastercard, and Salesforce to Launch 5,000 NFTs
Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez announced a collaboration with TIME, Mastercard, and Salesforce to launch 5,000 NFTs on Ethereum.
The NFT series will be designed by 56 different Miami artists, representing the city's 56 square miles, and is scheduled for release in December. Time USA will help determine the city's NFT strategy and execute the project, while Mastercard will provide exclusive offers for Miami NFT holders, and Salesforce will manage the minting and primary sales process through its new NFT cloud platform. (decrypt)
5. Spice DAO, Which Acquired Unpublished Dune Manuscript for €2.66 Million, Announces Dissolution
Spice DAO, which previously acquired the unpublished manuscript of the Dune movie for €2.66 million, has announced its dissolution and plans to return ETH to Spice token holders.
In January, the DAO organization Spice DAO announced that it successfully bid €2.66 million (approximately $3.03 million) for the unpublished manuscript of the Dune movie directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The project planned to publicly release the book (within legal limits), create an original animated limited series inspired by the book to sell to streaming services, and support community derivative projects. It is reported that Spice DAO previously raised 2,608 ETH through juicebox, worth nearly $8.7 million, and the surplus funds will be used to cover scanning, storage costs, and other activities, subject to DAO community voting. (Decrypt)
6. Zhou Hongyi: Many Play-to-Earn Games and Other Web3 Models Are Zero-Sum, I Have Some Reservations
Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360 Company, expressed in an interview with China Entrepreneur Magazine that the disruption potential of Web3.0, blockchain, and the metaverse depends on whether there are enough small application scenarios to improve bit by bit to attract users. He believes that both the metaverse and Web3 should not be overly grand; grand narratives often do not succeed easily. According to the theory of disruptive innovation, any force that changes the world has two characteristics when it first emerges: it is very small, and it can change certain applications in the world.
Additionally, Zhou Hongyi studied play-to-earn games and found that many Web3 models similar to games are zero-sum models, and he has "some reservations" about them. However, he stated that new things should not be dismissed outright; Web3 and the metaverse can start from some micro details, and he prefers to define the metaverse as a supporting role, serving B2B and B2G scenarios. (China Entrepreneur Magazine)
7. Babel Finance Loses Over $280 Million in Proprietary Trading, Seeks to Convert Hundreds of Millions in Debt to Equity
According to restructuring proposal documents obtained by The Block, cryptocurrency lender Babel Finance suffered significant losses due to proprietary trading with client funds, losing 8,000 BTC and 56,000 ETH in June, worth over $280 million. Due to these massive losses, Babel's lending and trading departments were unable to meet margin calls from counterparties. According to recordings, stablecoin issuer Tether has extended Babel's margin call deadline by one month.
Currently, Babel Finance is seeking to convert hundreds of millions in debt to equity and raise more funds through revolving credit financing. Initially, it seeks to convert $150 million of the largest creditor's debt into convertible bonds, and it hopes to raise $250 million to $300 million through convertible bonds, followed by obtaining $200 million in revolving credit from creditors to restore operations. If successful, this plan will turn Babel's largest creditors into shareholders. (The Block)
"What Interesting Articles Are Worth Reading in the Last 24 Hours"
1. "A Comprehensive Overview of the Technical Details and Reasons Behind ETH Merge and ETC Migration"
The theoretical argument, technical implementation, and community accumulation of ETH are all very "terrifying," considering all aspects very thoroughly, which gives a sense of trust in a secure underlying system. Of course, Bitcoin does well too; Bitcoin even upgrades in a forward-compatible manner, making such a stable system worthy of being the foundation of the future financial system. Therefore, ETH is difficult to be disrupted, even if the opponent is a large miner.
As the Ethereum merge upgrade approaches, the topic of "where Ethereum miners will go after the upgrade" has been widely discussed again in the crypto circle. Recently, long-time crypto player Chandler Guo established a discussion group for Ethereum forks and promoted the heat around ETH-PoW in Twitter Space.
Based on the current discussion, it is generally believed that Ethereum miners have two main choices: one is to support other blockchain networks that use PoW or GPU mining, such as Ethereum Classic (ETC), Kadena, Conflux, Monero, Ravencoin, etc., after Ethereum transitions to PoS; the other is to hard fork Ethereum and continue using the PoW consensus mechanism after the fork. This article will analyze the feasibility of the above two options.
