TLDR: Bitcoin ETFs launches, Binance integrate Bitcoin on Lighting Network, UniswapX launches gas-free swaps with MEV protection, Nolus Protocol Yield Strategies & Worldcoin.

Bitcoin Highlights of the Week

1. SEC has acknowledged the Bitcoin ETF applications for BlackRock, Vaneck, Invesco, Galaxy Digital, Fidelity and Wisdom Tree.

2. Europe’s first bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF) is expected to be publicly listed this month.

3. Australia to launch spot Bitcoin ETF on the national stock exchange, amid a wave of US filings.

4. CH4Capital, raising a $400M ClimateTech Fund, to reduce landfill methane emissions using Bitcoin mining - Forbes.

5. MIT researchers acknowledge the grid balancing, methane mitigating benefits of Bitcoin mining in new paper.

6. Binance has completed the integration of Bitcoin on the Lightning Network and deposits and withdrawals are now open.

7. Africa Bitcoin Community engaged over 1,000 high school students early July as part of our Bitcoin for Youngsters program. This program introduces young people to #bitcoin and its relevance in the local economy.

8. Bitcoin mining services company @LuxorTechTeam has just launched extended-duration contracts and faster liquidity options for the BTC mining market.

9. Both $MARA and $RIOT issued SEC filings in order to report an acquisition of shares made by a beneficial ownership with more than 5% in the company. Vanguard Group has now a stake in excess of 10.31% of Marathon and 10.24% of Riot through its investments.

10. Marathon achieved 9 blocks and close to 59 BTC yesterday. Have they increased their hashrate significantly after Vanguard entered the game?

11. Phoenix Wallet introduced a 3rd generation self-custodial Lightning wallet by adding Splicing.

12. Primal, an emerging player in the Nostr industry, has secured $1 million in funding from Ten31, Hivemind Ventures, and others, making it the first venture capital-backed startup solely dedicated to developing bitcoin-infused Nostr applications.

13. Nostr documentary by Max DeMarco was aired, showcasing the power to fix the broken social media landscape.

Ethereum Highlights of the Week

Core development

• Consensus layer:

  • Lodestar v1.9.2: hotfix for gossip blocks with unknown block parent errors and changed block production wait cutoff

  • Nimbus v23.7.0: validator client optimisations and improves validator performance

  • Teku v23.6.2: minor bug fixes and dependencies updates

• Execution layer:

  • Nethermind v1.20.1: fix for v1.20.0 which caused Prysm error

  • Reth v0.1.0-alpha.4: removed downloader heuristic preventing syncing, jemallocator default on UNIX and added transaction pool maintenance metrics

For Stakers

• Staking directory: directory of staking providers 

Research

• Data availability sampling (DAS) eprint: prove existing constructions secure, propose new constructions with benchmark & trade-offs

• Threshold encrypted transaction pools: tradeoffs of using for MEV mitigation

Layer 2

• Celo propose rollup migration, initially OP Stack, decentralized sequencer using Celo’s validator set, offchain data availability via Eigen Layer and 1-block finality

• zkSync Era shadow testing Boojum (STARK-based proof system)

• Mantle (optimistic rollup) alpha is live

• Consensys Linea (zk rollup) alpha is live

• L2BEAT: upgrade process of L2s [PDF]

EIPs/Standards

• ERCs (application layer):

  • ERC7336: Interactive across multiple registries

  • ERC7361: Metadata hash with decentralized validation (ERC721 extension)

Stuff for developers

• Solidity v0.8.21:

  • Language features: access events from other contracts & immutable variable initialization restrictions relaxed

  • Addresses “stack too deep” errors for unoptimized code from IR-based code generation

  • Bug fixes: legacy code generation always generate code for expression in <expression>.selector and Yul optimizer FullInliner evaluation order

  • website makeover

• Create a stake & reward contract

• Reproduce a simple MEV attack in Solidity using Hardhat or Foundry

• Guide to fuzzing onchain contracts with Echidna

• Sothis v0.4.0: replay historical state on a local Anvil/Hardhat node

• The Graph: Substreams-powered subgraphs

• Secureum A-MAZE-X CTF solutions

• Celer Brevis: zk co-processing & data attestation SDKs, alpha

Security

• Conic Finance $3 million exploit via read-only reentrancy

• Immunefi: top ten common vulnerabilities

Ecosystem

• EthCC:

  • Videos by stage: main, Eiffel, Versailles, Bastille, Notre Dame, Louvre & Saint Victor

  • EthCC 2024 will be in Brussels

• Etherscan advanced filter updates

Notable at app layer

• Aave GHO (overcollateralized stablecoin) live on mainnet, Aave v3 supplied assets used as collateral

• UniswapX (aggregator): gas-free swaps with MEV protection & no cost for failed transactions, beta

• Ajna (lending) live on mainnet, no governance or external price feeds

• OpenSea Deals: create offers to swap NFTs for NFTs & WETH

• Mint.fun (NFT minting) adds support for NFTs on Optimism & Zora

Regulation/business/tokens

• Financial Stability Board (FSB) recommended framework for crypto assets

• UK Financial Conduct Association (FCA) guidance warns memes can breach promotion rules

• France issues crypto license to Societe Generale Forge to buy/sell, exchange & custody assets

• Nasdaq halts plans for crypto custody service due to US regulatory environment

General

• Gnosis Pay: payment network on Gnosis chain L2 with linked Visa Debit card

• GitHub social engineering attacks, using repo invites & malicious npm dependencies

Cosmos Highlights of the Week

Evmos Apeiron v13 update

Evmos continues to bring Ethereum and Cosmos together with their Apeiron v13 update. Let's explore the power of EVM Extensions:

• Bridging the isolation gap

• The Outpost model

• Dynamic IBC

Nolus Protocol Yield Strategies

Nolus Protocol publishes 5 strategies to generate more yield:

• Open a leveraged long position

• Deposit to the liquidity providers' pool

• Add value to a short position

• The "Power Hedgooor"

• The "Power Leveragooor"

Osmosis v16 Magnesium Upgrade launch

Osmosis v16 Magnesium Upgrade is here and with a new set of features with concentrated liquidity and programmable pools, like Uniswap V4.

Wormhole Gateway launch

Wormhole has launched their gateway which revolutionizes blockchain interoperability within the Cosmos Ecosystem.

Cosmos Hub v11 upgrade

Cosmos Hub v11 Upgrade aka Gaia v11 draft proposal is up and features following main updates:

• Replicated security v2.0.0

• Refactored global fee module

• Liquidity module state removal

Other Highlights of the Week

Worldcoin has launched

The audacious effort aims to create not only a unified database of humans transacting online by verification through a retina-scanning proprietary camera orb, but also a widely accessible crypto payments system that instantly awards users tokens as an incentive to join the network.

Post-launch, the coin has achieved a $22 billion fully diluted value (FDV), a figure that values the network's maximum quantity of tokens higher than most other fixed-cap crypto projects including Solana, Optimism and Arbitrum.

U.S. Federal Reserve activate FedNowThe U.S. Federal Reserve activated TradFi’s answer to the advancements offered by distributed ledger and blockchain technologies: FedNow, an instant payments system designed to modernize America’s archaic banking infrastructure and turn multi-day transaction wait times into a relic of the past.

Big TradFi institutions have signed on and customers of these early adopters will soon gain access to immediate 24/7/365 payment settlement, features all too familiar to stablecoin users but this is where the similarities between FedNow services and crypto technologies cease.

Decentralized apps built on the LayerZero protocolLayerZero is an omnichain interoperability protocol that supports cross-chain apps. It enables use cases like trading out of a token on one chain and into a new token on a different chain, all in a single transaction.

That said, there’s no singular LayerZero app that you go to use. Rather, you can try the apps that are built on top of, or that have integrated with, the cross-chain protocol.

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