Fascinating perspective by Ben Davidow who outlines just how powerful prediction markets could be in absence of regulatory and other constraints:

"Augur can help us predict the future, prepare for the future, and persuade the future."

and

"Augur markets are like Wikipedia pages: anyone can create them, participate in them, and add their knowledge to them, and anyone can access the resulting collective insight for free."

Jesse from A16Z shares what can be learned from the successes and failures of real-world co-operatives to build robust cryptonetworks.

Nice and simple guide to the various, and not necessarily mutually exclusive, camps in crypto land as of today.

Dani is undoubtedly producing some of the best content at USV as of lately.

In this post she clearly defines the market opportunity for decentralized compute as the growing demand for "integrity" by the developer community (rather than lower prices as she previously postulated). She also shares a great datapoint to size such demand: there are "14,600 questions on Stack Overflow mentioning vendor lock-in".

A headline couldn't be more self-explanatory: Chris Burniske goes all contrarian.

Pretty wild piece exploring the meaning of jurisdictions and how we should frame them in the crypto discussion.

You should get some coffee before this one.

"For blockchain stakeholders with an eye on the integrity of the system as a whole, the most valuable answer to any legal question is the largest possible set of jurisdictionally-ambivalent and jurisdictionally-bounded answers, not just some narrow jurisdictional subsets"

One of the most in-depth reports we've seen on the activity going on in MakerDAO land by Placeholder, broken down by stakeholder group: CDP Creators, Keepers, MKR holders, and DAI users. The analysis of Keepers activity is particularly interesting.

This is the ULTIMATE algo-trading crypto piece that everyone interested in the topic should be reading.

Grin is pretty cool.

This is technical but understandable post that explains how the transactions work.

The only things broadcast to the network from the transaction are:
- The inputs used.
- The new outputs.
- The transaction kernel.
- The kernel offset

None of the transaction metadata from earlier are relayed.

A beautifully clean and simple tracker for anything Defi, with all the analytics and rankings of the major protocols in this fast-growing sub-space of crypto. 

Tezos getting some developer goodies too.

Fi is a ECMA/Javascript/Solidity like language that is statically typed and compiles down to valid Michelson code.

Really cool product announcement by Set Protocol, one that clearly shows the power of programmable money and open finance.

Strategy enabled tokens are a kind of Set that allows any customized strategy to be programmed into and auto-executed by smart contracts and oracles, so that owning that token gives its holder exposure to that particular trading strategy with no action required.

Needless to say there's a ginormous industry out there that charges capital providers 2/20 or more to provide "active fund management". SETs are going straight after it.

This is an EIP at this stage, opened up by the Metamask team.

Users of Web3 dapps would be allowed to sign in with "app keys" that are specific to each dapp they interact with. Much needed for increased privacy and security.

Another super cool project coming out of ETHDenver.

It's a beta version of a decentralized 2FA authenticator app that allows you to backup your One-Time-Password keys without ever needing to trust or rely on a single entity, built on top of Textile and IPFS.

All open-source so anyone can pick it up, build with it and contribute.

Wirex keeping the crypto banking dream alive with the release of V3 of their platform which includes a Visa card to spend crypto.

And we thought the good times had finished..

New stuff

- Unconditional access to Over-the-Counter (OTC) rates for crypto exchanges

- Traditional currency exchange at the interbank rate

- 10 new fiat currencies, including HKD, SGD and AUD

- New ways to transfer in and out of your account using Faster Payments, SEPA and SWIFT

- Customisable accounts – choose the currencies you want and hide the rest

- A swish, new-design Wirex Visa card

The Starkware team have unveiled StarkPay, a payment scalability engine based on STARK technology addressing most of the drawbacks of Lightning (e.g. liveness requirements, capital inefficiency).

(disclaimer: we are investors in Starkware through Semantic Ventures).

Pretty big releases here:
"sBTC provides access to the value of Bitcoin without the friction of owning or maintaining a Bitcoin wallet, and like all Synths it is trustless and does not require the underlying asset to be held. sBTC also enables ‘Bitcoin’ to be traded on DEX’s, as well as enabling other Ethereum dApps to use it within their platforms without the need to manage the infrastructure relating to actual Bitcoin."

On top of that, a synthetic silver (sXAG), which tracks the price of an ounce of silver, sSGD, sCAD, sRUB, sINR, sBRL, sNZD, sPLN.

And a DEX where you can trade it all.

Another fiat off-ramp emerges from the ETHLend crew with apparently no KYC!

There is a 500EUR max per transaction.

- Choose the currency
- Enter an IBAN
- send the crypto

done.

How the world should work.

A very interesting alternative to Atomic Swaps

Dai burner wallets for everyone!

As Dapps start to become usable, there will be a growing need for Ethereum addresses to communicate between each other or for developers to have a native direct line with actual users or token holders.

Ethmail enables exactly that, allowing any Ethereum address to send and receive emails using standard email technology, just requiring an Ethereum wallet signature to prove that such address is controlled by the user.

Now that Augur has proven, at least intellectually, popular, will we be seeing more ~centralized prediction markets?

Hodl Hodl is going to launch one where it is essentially the final oracle / judge of the prediction and where it can decide what is actually getting in the market..

James Slazas, formerly head of capital markets at ConsenSys, is launching a new $50M fund called Darma Capital to actively trade and outperform ETH (long only).

It sounds like he's going after ICO treasuries as initial LPs.

Nivaura is gearing up to become the leading player in issuance and lifecycle management of tokenized securities in Europe, closing a $20M financing round led by the London Stock Exchange Group, with participation from Santander InnoVentures, law firms Linklaters and Orrick; Transamerica Ventures, MiddleGame Ventures, Digital Currency Group and Spencer Lake, formerly head of global markets at HSBC.

Impressive execution.

Figure, the online home equity loan platform run by ex SoFi founder Cagney, has closed another $65M funding round (totally $120M in 13 months). The round was led by RPM Ventures and partners at DST Global, with participation from investors Ribbit Capital, DCM, DCG, Nimble Ventures and Pomp's Morgan Creek. 

Figure claims to be originating, financing and selling every one of their loans on a permissioned blockchain called Provenance, with several other originators ready to onboard in 2019.

The round was led by Team8 and Digital Currency Group, and included Flybridge Capital, Jump Capital, Monex Group, and Liberty City Ventures.

This sounds like quite an amazing custody solution on paper, as they wants to eliminate the concept of private keys by using proprietary multi-party computation (MPC) protocols.

Great to see Coinmetrics going for it as a commercial business, raising capital to continue providing some of the best data in the industry. The $1.9M round was not unexpectedly led by Nic Carter's Castle Island Ventures (Nic co-founded CM in 2017), with the participation from Fidelity Investments, Highland Capital Partners and Dragonfly Capital.

Here's CM post outlining the new phase for the business.

For our readers from academia, CM is giving you permissioned access to their premium datafeed for free, so don't be shy and ask for it!

Circle is reportedly on the market to raise a further $250M in debt or equity, rumors being that the prolonged bear market is taking its toll on cash needs. It's tough for everyone out there.

Trade execution services company Tagomi has closed a $12M funding round from Paradigm and Pantera.

More funding for institutional investor infrastructure.

Kava Labs has raised $1.2M in funding from Lemniscap and Digital Asset Capital Management, with participation from Ripple's Xpring, Coil Technologies, 2020 Ventures, Arrington Capital, Hard Yaka, Robot Ventures and UniValues Associates. 

Kave Labs developd Interledger solutions for blockchains, wallets, and exchanges.