The Disrupt

“Today, we’re unveiling our most significant improvement to Optimistic Ethereum since its inception.

Anyone who has written code targeting Geth can now deploy without change — even for advanced features like traces and gas. The upgrade removes our custom compiler, and over 25,000 lines of other code, in favor of simply using what already exists.

It means one-click deploy is coming in October. Any tooling that can run on Ethereum will run identically on Optimistic Ethereum.”

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“Maybe today and tomorrow, the metaverse is just an online virtual world – like Decentraland, Crypto Voxel and The Sandbox – where you play a quick game, browse NFTs in an art gallery or have an online meet-up. This is the metaverse’s infancy. But in five or 10 or 20 years, perhaps the metaverse replaces much of what you do online, or even offline. Instead of a Zoom with your parents who live across the country, you join them for a metaverse game of tennis. Or instead of consuming the news on Twitter, maybe you’re dropped into a metaverse simulation of what’s happening in Afghanistan.

What path will we take to arrive at this metaverse future? Through the centralized, big tech route of Facebook? Or through a new decentralized model?

What we are playing for is whether our children will be fully free or residents in a digital company universe – with the illusion of free, but not really free.”

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“LayerZero will connect all chains seamlessly, having users unaware they are even using it. It will enable current and new Decentralized Applications to expand beyond the borders of EVM or Non-EVM, creating the world’s first omnichain applications. LayerZero enables cross-chain state sharing, bridging, lending and borrowing, swaps, governance, and much more!

SushiSwap exists on twelve different chains with each instance running in a siloed ecosystem. If they want to sync state with their main Ethereum instance, they’ll have to write code for using Wormhole, Rainbow Bridge, Polygon Network Bridge, Avalanche Bridge, etc. The end result is eleven sets of code, with eleven unique interfaces and eleven different security properties. Since the ecosystem of bridges and new L1/L2s is constantly in flux, this becomes an unmanageable proposition.

When using LayerZero, SushiSwap would have one single interface and code base for all cross-chain pairs.

Bridges today compete to attract liquidity providers (LPs), fragmenting liquidity between bridges and their individual pairwise pools. Instead of having one pool that provides liquidity for an asset to all connected chains, LPs must choose a single pool that connects to one chain. LayerZero enables the holy grail of bridging: unified liquidity across all chains with guaranteed finality on the source chain.”

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“There are three basic ways crypto and space interact: crypto is a funding source for novel space programs and companies, space is a place to deploy infrastructure to improve crypto networks and crypto could become the monetary standard of future extraterrestrial settlements.

Yesterday, the Winklevoss twins led a $650,000 seed round into space trade publication Payload. Space is currently a $350 billion market. Some 400 space companies were founded in the first two decades of the current century. This capital expenditure is likely to continue, it’s almost assured crypto will play a role.

At the start of next year, for instance, Geometric Energy Corporation plans to launch a 40 kilogram cube satellite aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket headed towards the moon. It’s a trip that reportedly will be funded in full by dogecoin.

The DOGE-1 mission will demonstrate the application of cryptocurrency beyond Earth orbit and set the foundation for interplanetary commerce.

Then there’s early Bitcoin Core engineer Jeff Garzik, whose SpaceChain corporation is working to integrate space and blockchain technologies. The whole idea is to take advantage of the trustless nature of blockchain to facilitate deep space communication and commerce.

Blockstream, the Bitcoin infrastructure juggernaut, plans to build a floating web of satellites that will make it possible to beam BTC payments across the world, without using the internet, and eventually wherever humans go. This strengthens the Bitcoin network, moving it beyond the reach of nation state attacks and other Earth-bound risks.”

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“If lenders could rely on more than just collateral, they could make more informed credit decisions, and thus charge lower rates to borrowers.

Last year, Aave introduced credit delegation, which allows users who deposit collateral into the system to essentially rent their credit lines to someone they trust. The depositor earns extra yield, and the borrower gets an unsecured loan. Aave’s founder and CEO, described a future where credit delegation would allow people to borrow against their good names – not their government names, necessarily, but their Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain names.

This is the future of DeFi. If we make this work [at] scale … we have a lot of ability to empower communities in real life.

In this model, the borrower’s repayment history would be out there for all to see. But control of the borrower’s identity, the ENS domain name, would stay with the borrower. Compare this setup to the status quo, where the keys to your identity – your Social Security number, home address, date of birth – are entrusted to the provably porous Equifaxes of the world.”

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“U.S. investigations into Binance now include an insider trading and market manipulation probe from the CFTC. The CFTC has also reportedly been investigating the exchange for allowing customers in the U.S. to trade derivatives products without oversight.

Binance already faced a probe from the U.S. Department of Justice and the IRS. The investigation reportedly focused on tax and money laundering claims.”

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“Bakkt Holdings and VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings (VIH) have received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to complete their merger and push forward with plans to operate as a single publicly traded entity. VIH shareholders will meet on Oct. 14 to approve the merger.

We are excited about the unique growth opportunities ahead for our business, and are laser focused on furthering our vision of connecting the digital economy.”