“Trustless cross-chain bridge Ren and permissionless synthetic asset platform UMA have teamed up to launch a Bitcoin-backed yield dollar called uUSD, in addition to a joint liquidity mining reward program.
The partnership will result in a product that allows investors to leverage Bitcoin permissionlessly on the Ethereum network. The uUSD is UMA’s second yield dollar product following an Ethereum-backed yield dollar called yUSD, launched in July 2020. The concept was highly successful with over 10 million yUSD minted over the past two months.
A yield dollar is similar to a stablecoin but with a few significant differences. It has an expiry date just like a futures contract, and as it nears that date the price will approach $1. Upon expiry, it will be redeemable for $1 of the collateral asset at the exact time of expiry. Uma describes it as representing “fixed-rate, fixed-term loan” since when they are minted, yield dollars are usually valued at less than $1.
In addition to the new yield dollar will be a joint Ren and UMA liquidity farming incentive to jump start collateral deposits. It will enable investors to earn UMA and Ren tokens for providing liquidity to the Balancer pool for uUSD.
The offering is positive news for the rapidly growing wrapped Bitcoin market which allows yield farmers to put their BTC holdings to work on ERC-20 based protocols.”
See Also: Announcing the Yield Dollar with UMA and renBTC
“The House Committee on Energy and Commerce passed a motion Wednesday to incorporate the Blockchain Innovation Act and part of the Digital Taxonomy Act into a broader Consumer Safety Technology Act.
This adds blockchain technology onto a list of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), that the Department of Commerce (DoC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be mandated to closely examine so as to identify any potential consumer risks.
The new bill reflects similar comments made by the government’s antitrust chief last week, who said blockchain technology deserves to be protected by law as it could help stop the formation of market monopolies.
This is believed to the furthest that a bill on blockchain has ever come in the U.S. Congress.”
See Also: New Swiss laws provide solid ground for blockchain and crypto
“SushiSwap now has a new set of leaders. Nine signers of a multisig wallet controlling the project’s funds have been elected to govern SushiSwap through full decentralization.
On Ethereum, a multisig has worked out to be something like a board of directors in the analog world, such that it takes any six of the nine members to approve changes to the SushiSwap code or to spend its development funds.
These new leaders were chosen through a process largely inside the SushiSwap Discord server following the departure of two of the project’s three co-founders.
The newly elected members are Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX), Robert Leshner (Compound Labs), 0xMaki, Larry Cermak (The Block), CMS Holdings, Matthew Graham, Hagen, Adam Cochran (DuckDuckGo) and Zippo.
This multisig is only temporary. It’s progressive decentralization. It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than having Chef Nomi or [Sam Bankman-Fried] having full control.
Aaron Wright, co-founder of the ConsenSys-backed OpenLaw, wrote on Twitter that multisig members could get themselves in a hairy spot with regulators.
I think what we are seeing is that the incentives today are for whales to rig the game in their favour. The only way I can think of that shifting is if protocol politicians can make a great income.”
“In addition to companies jealously guarding their own work in crypto, some firms go further, filing what are called “pre-emptive patents” for ideas they have no plans of developing but which act to hinder the research of competitors.
To become part of COPA, members must pledge to make their patents freely available to all other members using a shared library.
Assuming the patent library grows and gathers momentum, the idea is that more and more companies will look to join COPA to access tech innovations – creating a more equitable patent environment.“
“Last June, Barclays, Banco Santander, Credit Suisse Group AG and another 10 of the biggest banks in the world announced they had poured 50 million pounds into a project that would create digital versions of the US dollar, Canadian dollar, British pound, Japanese yen, and the euro.
The project has been delayed until at least 2021 as it seeks regulatory approvals.
The US, Canada, Japan, UK, and Europe have all studied or are studying central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which would be different from these privately created ones.”
“In the two weeks since INX Ltd. commenced its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO), more than 350 investors’ Ethereum addresses have been added to the “white list” of approved buyers. The first registered offering of security tokens in the U.S. is all on the blockchain, viewable through block explorer sites like Etherscan.
On Thursday, the company announced that registrations – investors who have signed up but not yet been whitelisted – had passed 3,000 in the first three days of the sale and that it had secured the minimum $7.5 million needed before it could start accepting crypto from investors. INX is seeking to raise $117 million through the sale.
Never before has an issuer had such a transparent view of who its ultimate beneficial owners are.
At the same time, unlike stocks, which traditionally list on a single exchange, INX tokens will be tradeable on any digital platform that can handle blockchain securities 24/7. With a direct relationship between issuers and holders, the need for third parties to handle dividend payments and ownership discovery could disappear.”
“Nym is a start-up software project working to obscure metadata tracking at a network level via the mixnet it enables. The mixnet itself is hosted by a decentralized network of volunteers.
In a mixnet all the data packets get shuffled around, and then it’s emitted in a different order than [how] they came in. Doing that multiple times makes it impossible for an attacker monitoring all the network traffic on the internet to see who’s communicating with whom.
Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, said in a statement that Nym’s mixnet technology looks promising as a modern upgrade to Tor and is a step forward in terms of privacy.”
“OFAC alleges that the three individuals, Artem Lifshits, Anton Andreyev and Darya Aslanova, are employees of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian company and “troll farm” that tries to influence events.
A separate release listed 23 crypto addresses as being added to OFAC’s sanctions list, meaning any U.S. person who tries to send or receive money from these accounts might be subject to criminal proceedings.
The IRA uses cryptocurrency to fund activities in furtherance of their ongoing malign influence operations around the world.”
“IRS-CI is seeking a solution with one or more contractors to provide innovative solutions for tracing and attribution of privacy coins, such as expert tools, data, source code, algorithms, and software development services.
The agency noted rising criminal usage for privacy coins like Monero as one of its motivations behind the proposal, stating that privacy coins are becoming more popular and are being used more by illicit actors.”
The Disrupt 