DeFi: April headlines
- Treasury Releases 2023 DeFi Illicit Finance Risk Assessment, the assessment highlights that "illicit actors, including criminals, scammers, and North Korean cyber actors are using DeFi services in the process of laundering illicit funds" and proposes measures to strengthen U.S. AML/CFT regulatory supervision (source)
- SEC’s Proposed ‘Exchange’ Definition: “The SEC’s proposal to replace ‘orders’ with ‘trading interest;’ remove ‘multiple’ before ‘buyers and sellers;’ and add ‘communication protocols’ would meaningfully expand the SEC’s ability to enforce registration requirements against DeFi protocols that perform the functions of securities exchanges” (source)
- What DeFi Must Sacrifice to Appease Regulators? SEC pushes towards programmable compliance, regulation and privacy-preserving Identity (source)
- Older Version of DeFi Yield Aggregator Yearn Finance Exploited for $11.6M: attacker minted 1.2 quadrillion tokens by exploiting a Yearn vulnerability, selling them for $11.6 million in stablecoins (source)
- Deposits to zkSync surpass $110M as its DeFi ecosystem explodes: crypto traders are actively investing in projects launching on zkSync as the hype around its potential governance token airdrop increases (source)
#DeFi#April2023#trends
Metaverse: April headlines
- What is Apple's Approach for the Metaverse? Apple is yet to confirm the rumours of it launching a long-rumoured VR or virtual reality glass at its annual Worlwide Developers Conference in June (source)
- Mark Zuckerberg denied the ‘narrative’ that he’s ditching the metaverse and he unveiled a new goal: bringing ‘A.I. agents’ to ‘billions of people’, previously Zuckerberg fired off a series of figures and metrics showing progress in the metaverse: More than one million Meta avatars have been created; Half of the people who use the company's Quest VR headset every day spend more than one hour inside its virtual realm (source)
- Shiba Inu's Metaverse Will Partially Open by End of 2022 - the metaverse is unlikely to be fully completed on release as it will be an “ongoing project,” developers said (source)
- UK’s New Technology Department to Tackle Country’s Metaverse, Web3 Strategy: the department will explore economic growth, investment and business opportunities in these areas, as well as implications on regulation (source)
- AI Will 'Accelerate' the Metaverse, Empower Creators: The Sandbox Co-Founder: “What used to take days before, from ideation and conception, can now take just a matter of seconds,” Borget told CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover” on Thursday. AI will “accelerate and empower even more creators,” he said. (source)
#metaverse#April2023#trends
Payment solutions: April headlines
- Alchemy Pay Raises $10M at $400M Valuation to Push South Korean Expansion Plans - the funding came from DWF Labs, its eighth investment of $10 million or more in the last six weeks (source)
- FedNow is set to launch in July: U.S. Federal Reserve wants to release a real-time payments and settlements service in order to boost the country’s infrastructure. Experts ask: Why not use crypto? (source)
- Stablecoin payments: Visa shares plans for ‘ambitious’ crypto product: According to a Visa job posting published on April 20, the company’s crypto division is building the “next generation of products” to facilitate the digital commerce of everyday life (source)
- NOWPayments, a Renowned Cryptocurrency Payment Provider, Integrates Shibarium for Efficient Crypto Payments - this integration allows NOWPayments to cater to the needs of various projects and tokens that operate on the Shibarium network (source)
#paymentsolutions#April2023#trends
Web3 Creator Economy: April headlines
- Mastercard Drops Free NFTs, Launches Web3 Music Accelerator: Music Pass NFT allows musicians to access its Mastercard Artist Accelerator Program, giving artists tools and resources to bolster their Web3 music careers (source)
-Nfinity.io launched a Decentralized SocialFi Platform, Transforming the Web2 Social Media Landscape, the platform seamlessly integrates incentives with content creation and dissemination (source)
- Roblox, the dominant online gaming platform, recently rolled out a new class of wearable virtual goods that can be sold in limited quantities by third-party creators, per a recent company announcement. The goods, called Limiteds, can also be resold by Roblox users at any price of their choosing, with a 10% cut of each secondary sale going to the original creator (source)
#creatoreconomy#April2023#trends
Wallets: April headlines
- Robinhood Launches 'Connect' to Link Native Crypto Wallet to DeFi Apps: an update that will allow users of its crypto wallet to access their credentials and funds directly from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and applications—all without having to open the Robinhood app itself (source)
- Trust Wallet Fixed Vulnerability But Warns $88,000 of User Funds Are Still at Risk: “Despite our best efforts to minimize loss, we proactively identified 2 likely exploits with a total loss of $170K,” the project said on Twitter. “To do right to users, we created a reimbursement process for affected users to make them whole.” (source)
- Uniswap Launches Mobile Wallet. The wallet is intended to enable users to buy crypto, offering what the protocol says is a competitive 2.55% fiat on-ramp fee. Users can also swap funds on popular DeFi platforms, including Polygon, Arbitrum and Optimism. The wallet features in-app token price and NFT data, allowing users to favorite tokens and wallet addresses so they can track the trading activity that matters most to them. (source)
- MetaMask Denies Wallet Draining is Due to Exploit, which is a response to a Twitter thread tracing fund related to the loss of about 5,000 ETH. According to the wallet provider, an attacker withdrew 5,000 Ethereum (ETH), worth about $10 million, from different addresses across 11 blockchains rather than only from MetaMask users. (source)
- Trust Wallet Partners With Web3Auth to Simplify Web3 Onboarding Using Social Logins, the solution eliminates the current requirement of a written-down seed phrase, safeguarding users from human error and a single point of failure and thus strengthening account safety and security (source)
#wallet#April2023#trends