Quick Take

• A judge denies Tornado Cash case dismissal.

• Impact of increasing the blob target.

• Hyperdrive goes live on Base.

• Aerodrome surpasses $1 billion in TVL.

Judge Denies Tornado Cash Dismissal

U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla denied a motion to dismiss the indictment against Roman Storm, an open-source software developer. His trial is scheduled for December. In August 2023, Storm was indicted on charges of money laundering, sanctions violations, and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business related to the Tornado Cash privacy tool. Essentially, he faces charges for actions carried out by third parties who used the decentralized privacy tool. Storm's legal defense team is still accepting donations through Juicebox, needing approximately $2.5 million to support extensive legal research for the case.

Debate On Increasing The Blob Target 

Ethereum core developer Potuz highlighted a division of opinions between client developers and researchers regarding a proposal to increase the blob target. Potuz, who supports the increase, pointed out that some folks remain silent despite having opinions, particularly after Vitalik Buterin voiced his support for the change. Researcher Ben Edgington raised concerns about how the increase might affect bandwidth requirements, particularly for home stakers with slow internet connections. He emphasized the lack of adequate compensation for including blobs in blocks, as blob fees are burned, and suggested giving home stakers the flexibility to set a minimum tip per blob. A blob target increase allows more data to be included in each block, reducing costs and improving scalability. Ethereum community member Ryan Berckmans proposed an initiative to research validator bandwidth requirements to better understand the risks associated with changes like increasing the blob target.

Hyperdrive Goes Live On Base

Hyperdrive, an AMM for trading fixed and variable interest rates, is now live on Base. Users can access fixed-term pools, provide liquidity to earn trading fees, benefit from variable rates on idle funds, and trade against others on the protocol. Hyperdrive features like on-demand terms, single-sided liquidity, and continuous liquidity provision. To earn a fixed interest rate, users can purchase interest tokens at a discount, which mature to their full value or can be sold at a discount before maturity. For a variable rate, users pay the fixed rate to the pool and receive capital equal to the discount on their interest tokens.

Aerodrome Hits $1 Billion TVL

Aerodrome, an AMM and liquidity layer developed by Velodrome, reached $1 billion in total value locked (TVL), representing over 50% of the total TVL within the DeFi ecosystem on Base. Aerodrome's governance and reward mechanics are inspired by Curve Finance. Users can lock AERO tokens to receive veAERO, which grants voting power for pool incentives. veAERO holders are rewarded with a share of protocol trading fees proportional to their votes.

Other News

• Geth v1.14.10 release

• Charon v1.1.1 release

• Coinbase asset recovery supports Base

• Fileverse introduces Offline Mode

• Celestia Blobstream upgrades to SP1

• CZ is released from prison

• SEC charges Mango Markets

• Introducing Truth oracle

• uniBTC post mortem