Quick Take
Virgil Griffith is granted a sentence reduction.
Fractal ID suffers a data breach.
Optimism retro funding round 4 results.
SEC approves two more Spot ETH ETFs.
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Virgil Griffith Granted Sentence Reduction
Virgil Griffith, an Ethereum developer sentenced for violating sanctions by delivering presentations in North Korea, has had his prison sentence reduced by seven months, from 63 months to 56 months. Griffith, who has been in custody since 2019, will be released this August. In April 2019, Griffith attended and presented at the Pyongyang Blockchain Conference in North Korea. He was arrested by the U.S. Department of Justice in November 2019 for providing technical information to North Korea, despite his presentation being based on publicly available information. In April 2022, Griffith was fined $100,000 and sentenced to 63 months in prison.
Fractal ID Suffers Data Breach
Fractal ID, a KYC identity solutions provider, experienced a data breach affecting approximately 0.5% of its user base, equating to around 5,000 users. The leaked data includes full names, email addresses, wallet addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, photos, and uploaded documents such as passports. The breach occurred on Sunday, July 14th, 2024, when an unauthorized third party accessed an operator’s account and used an API script to obtain user data. The breach has since been contained from further leaks. Fractal ID is used by many web3 projects, including Optimism, Arbitrum Grants, and Gnosis Pay. Users are advised to remain vigilant against potential misuse of their data.
Optimism Retro Funding 4 Results
Optimism released the results of its fourth retroactive funding round, awarding 207 projects a share of 10 million OP tokens, currently valued at $18 million. The round focused on onchain builders with applications engaging at least 420 unique addresses, and allocations were determined based on onchain metrics. Key metrics for the round included gas fee spend, trusted users onboarded, and trusted recurring users. The top-voted projects, Zora and Layer3, each received the maximum allocation of 500,000 OP tokens. Zora committed to distributing 300k OP tokens to its users. The fifth and sixth rounds, focusing on the OP Stack and on governance, will go live in August and September.
SEC Approves New Spot ETH ETFs
The SEC approved two additional 19-b4 applications for spot Ethereum ETFs, including Grayscale’s Spot Ethereum Mini ETF and the ProShares Ethereum ETF. The agency approved eight applications on May 23rd, bringing the total to 10 Spot ETH ETFs set to launch on Tuesday. Earlier today, BlackRock and Fidelity filed updated S-1 forms with fee information, both set at 0.25%. All applicants, except ProShares, have submitted what could be their final S-1s. Most issuers also included fee waivers for the initial months of trading.
Other News
