“Ethereum has a technical endgame – an open, transparent world computer – but nobody knows what Ethereum is for. The point, the rationale, why we are here. Compare the situation to Bitcoin where the political endgame can be summarized in one word: hyperbitcoinization. Bitcoin’s goal is to transition from a fiat monetary system to a Bitcoin standard.
What is the equivalent one-word term in Ethereum? To find it, it is important to understand the contemporary Ethereum political landscape. The spectrum contains the following:
- Cypherpunk: Ethereum is rooted in an earlier tradition of privacy and tech advocacy, which thought coders should use encryption and computing to build neutral infrastructure others can imbue with meaning. Ethereum’s politics is its apolitical stance and the only focus is to create open source tools that requires little human mediation.
- Experimental liberalism: Ethereum’s combination of experimental governance (e.g., soulbound tokens) and market-making (e.g. Quadratic Voting) can generate new liberal democratic political innovations. This position is associated with the network’s founder Vitalik Buterin and Microsoft’s Glen Weyl.
- Solarpunk: The social coordination enabled by DAOs can create positive externalities on wider society, with a warm ambient humanism embedded in its aesthetics.
- Lunarpunk: The privacy enhancements afforded by zero-knowledge proof variations on Ethereum-native technologies (DAOs, DeFi, NFTs) are necessary to protect crypto culture against contemporary surveillance capitalism.
Is there some common thread running through these positions that would correspond to Bitcoin’s compact hyperbitcoinization? Across the spectrum, Ethereum’s goal is to transition from a deteriorating inherited financial system built on unsustainable practices. Seeking consensus across the spectrum, the political endgame of Ethereum can be summarized in one word: hyper-regenization.
- Regenerative economics rather than illusory limitless growth: Ethereum offers retroactive and proactive public goods funding through the Quadratic Funding (QF) mechanism. It contains the potential to expand the cypherpunk mechanism of neutral public goods beyond Ethereum and Web3, into the traditional political world, as the solarpunks suggests with their focus on positive externalities.
- Regenerative citizenship: Ethereum could reward good citizenship through retroactive airdrops, such as participation in Gitcoin rounds, governance voting, testnets and community channels. The activities of the citizens of experimental liberalism could be captured in soulbound tokens that grow over time.
- Regenerative decentralization rather than centralization atrophy: Ethereum is an information commons or common knowledge pool. Transparency allows us to recognize, albeit not without its challenges, when centralized clusters are emerging. Recent efforts to re-decentralize client diversity and current efforts to re-decentralize staking reveal the cultural instincts to disrupt centralization atrophy are intact.
What is Ethereum for? To bring about ever more hyper-regenization.”
“Crypto industry figures welcomed, for the most part, the European Union’s (EU) landmark crypto law, the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, agreed upon late Thursday. But the picture is more complicated when looking at the details.
Sheila Warren of the Crypto Council for Innovation said the new crypto law mostly avoids stifling innovation – and indeed may prove a net positive.
Legal and regulatory certainty for the market will enable more crypto firms to invest and innovate across the region. Until now, every different [EU] member state has their own regulation, or they didn’t have anything, so it was very hard for different companies and projects to be present and offer their services in the whole market.
Lobby group Blockchain for Europe said rules for crypto asset service providers such as exchanges and wallets are “savvy,” and that the law will let decentralized finance (DeFi) prosper. Meanwhile, conventional investment banks, a heavily regulated sector that doesn’t want to get undercut by more lightly overseen crypto firms, also seem to appreciate the balance struck.
One of the most eye-catching measures would be a cap, which means stablecoins that aren’t tied to a single fiat currency would have to stop issuing if daily transactions exceed 200 million euros ($209 million) – intended to stop private companies usurping the role of the euro. For some, that’s an “arbitrary restriction,” and an example of the law discriminating against a means of payment because of the technology it uses.
Given that the top four stablecoins in the market currently significantly exceed this volume, this could be a barrier to stablecoins becoming widespread in the EU.
Markezic also noted that, in practice, it will be impossible for decentralized stablecoins – those that don’t have a single identifiable issuer – to comply with the rules that in practice oblige a central entity to take charge.
Other restrictions in the law, like ban on interest payments for users, and heavy restrictions on how reserves can be invested, have led some to ask if there will ever be an incentive for stablecoin issuers, and the DeFi ecosystem they bring with them, to set up in Europe at all.”
“The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is emerging as Web3’s answer to the traditional LLC or C-corp. The number of new DAO governance proposals, which codify a company’s organizational and operational structure, has risen eightfold in the past year. In May 2021, only 700 DAOs were operational. Today there are more than 6,000.
Many brands and companies aren’t in a position to fully decentralize their corporate structure, eliminate titles and put all decisions in the hands of a decentralized community of pseudonymous members. Every company, however, can implement a hybrid DAO model that gives customers a greater voice, increasing engagement and putting brands in a position to thrive in a decentralized future.
A hybrid DAO model – where projects deploy a community-owned token – can enhance customer engagement by offering all stakeholders an opportunity to have a voice in a variety of decisions that enhance buy-in, inform better products and cultivate community.
When brands give customers more of a voice, they foster an avid following of loyal customers who are highly invested in the future of the brand/product because they are contributing to elements of decision making.
Simply put, insights into customer demands and desires help brands to be more successful in delivering what people actually want. Crowdsourcing ideas can lead to even stronger end results when it comes to changes to products, branding, design and more. In other words, brands can benefit from the wisdom of the crowd.
Brands and companies that adopt a hybrid DAO model will create a shift from thinking of buyers as “customers” to thinking of them as team members and part of their community. Ultimately, the rise of the metaverse and Web3 will favor brands that adopt this type of model over those that do not, making a hybrid DAO model a multifaceted competitive differentiator that can set brands apart from the competition both now and in the years ahead.”
“BlockFi and FTX US have reached a deal that will provide the embattled crypto company with a $400 million credit facility. The deal also gives FTX US the right to acquire BlockFi and will, according to BlockFi CEO Zac Prince, “protect client funds.”
As a matter of principle, we fundamentally believe in protecting client funds. Not only because it’s absolutely the right thing to do, but this also benefits the ongoing health and adoption of crypto financial services worldwide.”
See Also: Voyager Digital Temporarily Suspends All Trading, Withdrawals and Deposits
See Also: Custodia Bank’s CEO Says Bad Actors and Regulators Caused Crypto Crash
“Crypto investment platform BnkToTheFuture proposed three recovery plans on Thursday aimed at helping users affected by the insolvency of crypto lender Celsius Network. A community vote for the three proposals is underway as of Friday, following which BnkToTheFuture is expected to hold a formal meeting with Celsius board members.
The first proposal calls for restructuring and relaunching Celsius, which would allow depositors to benefit from ‘any recovery through financial engineering.’ This could refer to the issuance of additional tokens or additional fundraising.
The second proposal is to form a pool of the most influential holders of bitcoin (BTC) and have them ‘co-invest with the community‘ in a bid to raise significant amounts of capital for Celsius. The third proposal is to ‘form an operational plan that allows a new entity and team to rebuild and make depositors whole.'”
See Also: Crypto Lender Celsius Network Exploring Options to ‘Preserve and Protect’ Assets
See Also: The Collapse of 3AC (Video)
“Hundreds of Bored Ape owners have signed up to a new nonfungible token (NFT) licensing marketplace that enables hodlers to rent out their Apne’s IP to brands. Blockchain accelerator Mouse Belt Labs launched the marketplace called Boredjobs, claiming that it will list all 10,000 BAYC NFTs on its website for brands to browse through and indicate interest in hiring for campaigns.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club gave its owners a fantastic opportunity to utilize the IP rights of the NFTs they purchased. Unfortunately, they did not provide them with an instruction manual on how to put them to work. Bored Jobs is creating that instruction manual.”
“Tether has cut its holdings of commercial paper by 58% to $8.5 billion, with a further reduction to $3.5 billion expected at the end of the month as it seeks to tackle speculation about the quality of support for its dollar-pegged USDT token. The company held $20.1 billion of commercial paper in May.
According to an update on Tether’s website, it aims to bring the figure down to zero as it diversifies its holdings into U.S. Treasury bonds. The market cap of Tether’s USDT stablecoin has plunged to $66.1 billion from $82.2 billion since May due to an increasing amount of user redemptions.”
The Disrupt 