Can Drift's New Prediction Market Rival Polymarket? 🧐
In today’s edition: 🏛 DOJ accuses Salame's partner of campaign fraud, 🤨 Mystery DeFi project, "The DeFiant Ones," touted by Trump, and more!
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The Chopping Block: L2 Strategy Debates, Prediction Market Innovations, and Ethereum’s Vulnerabilities
L2 Strategy Debates, Prediction Market Innovations, and Ethereum’s Vulnerabilities.
Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest news. This week, the boys discuss Ethereum’s current standing in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, comparing it to the United States regarding capital concentration despite fewer users.
They also dive into the dynamics of prediction markets, focusing on Polymarket’s role in predicting election outcomes. The conversation evolves into an analysis of potential changes to the Ethereum mainnet, driven by competition from Solana and other factors, including block time reductions and gas limit increases. The episode concludes with predictions about Ethereum’s possible upgrades in the next six months and a bet among the hosts about the outcome.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
What’s Poppin’?
by Sage Young
Drift’s New Predictions Market Not Trying to ‘Vampire Attack’ Polymarket, Says Co-Founder
Drift co-founder Cindy Leow said the startup’s Bullish on Everything (BET) prediction market is trying to take advantage of a Solana-native audience.
Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍️
⚖️ The DOJ charged Michelle Bond, partner of former FTX executive Ryan Salame, with campaign finance violations, accusing her of using funds from a sham consulting agreement to finance her 2022 congressional campaign.
🔄 MakerDAO plans an optional redenomination of its MKR governance token into 24,000 NewGovToken (NGT) tokens as part of its endgame strategy to broaden governance participation and flexibility in the platform.
🇮🇳 The Indian government is preparing a consultation paper to gather input from industry stakeholders as it seeks to balance innovation with regulatory oversight in shaping the country's crypto policy, expected to be released between September and October.
🚫 The SEC pushed back against Hex founder Richard Heart's attempt to dismiss the case against him, arguing that it has jurisdiction to pursue the lawsuit alleging over $1 billion in unregistered securities offerings.
🚀 Former US President Donald Trump promoted "The DeFiant Ones," a new DeFi project led by his sons, highlighting it as a way for average Americans to challenge big banks and “financial elites.”
📈 Magic Eden, an NFT marketplace, announced the launch of its ME token, via the ME Foundation, signaling a pivot beyond NFTs to enable cross-chain trading of fungible tokens such as bitcoin and ether.
🛠️ Conduit launched a marketplace aimed at rollup teams to enhance scalability, allowing them to purchase and integrate best-in-class tools quickly, following a $37 million funding round co-led by Paradigm.
⚡ Babylon initiated the first phase of its self-custodial bitcoin staking on mainnet, already attracting over 12,000 stakers and enabling bitcoin staking via smart contracts.
🚨 Colombia's Superintendence of Industry and Commerce accused Worldcoin of violating personal data protection laws, potentially leading to significant sanctions from the regulator or the closure of its operations in the country.
Today in Crypto Adoption...
💱 Grayscale Investments introduced the Avalanche Trust, giving investors exposure to the AVAX token, further expanding its portfolio of crypto investment products.
🏦 Franklin Templeton launched its OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) on the Avalanche network, continuing its expansion into multi-chain tokenized treasuries as it competes with BlackRock's similar offerings.
🎮 Sony Group unveiled Soneium, an Ethereum layer 2 blockchain developed with Startale Labs, aimed at enhancing scalability and user experience for mainstream adoption across entertainment, gaming, and finance sectors.
The $$$ Corner…
💰 SatLayer, a Bitcoin restaking platform built on Babylon, raised $8 million in a pre-seed funding round, with significant interest in using bitcoin as collateral to secure decentralized applications and infrastructure.
What Do You Meme?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down 0.4%, trading at $61,089
ETH is up 1.2%, trading at $2,668
BTC dominance: 53.31%
Crypto market cap: $2.26T
*All data as of today, 06:55 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
Recommended Reads
Blockworks: Crypto is all professor coins in the front, memecoins in the back
CoinDesk: From Chaos to Crypto: The Crecimiento Movement Igniting Argentina
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