• 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.

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Castbox | YouTube 

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, 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 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.

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.

• Vitalik against crypto-only politics

• Craig Wright is not Satoshi

• Grayscale decentralized AI fund

• ETHFI supports L2 claims

• Morpho hits $100m TVL

• Arbitrum redelegation week

Follow us on X, Lens, and Farcaster.

• Plonky3 is production-ready.

• Polynomial introduces Polynomial Chain.

• LIFI suffers a $10 million exploit.

• Uniswap releases its Uniswap Extension.

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Castbox | YouTube 

Polygon released the production-ready version of Plonky3, its latest zero-knowledge (ZK) proving system designed as a modular toolkit for building zkVMs and zkEVMs. Unlike Plonky2, which was optimized for specific hardware and recursion, Plonky3 allows developers to customize the proving system according to their specific needs, such as proof generation speed or proof size. Plonky3 includes components for using various finite fields and hash functions. It offers many proving systems within a single framework. Succinct Labs uses Plonky3 as the proving system for SP1, its general-purpose zkVM capable of proving arbitrary Rust code. Polygon will be using SP1 to generate pessimistic proofs on the Agglayer. Plonky3 is open-source under the MIT and Apache licenses.

Perpetual swaps exchange Polynomial Protocol introduced Polynomial Chain, a new Layer 2 network featuring a native liquidity layer. The chain addresses the challenges of bootstrapping liquidity by enabling new applications to tap into shared liquidity. Polynomial invites developers to build prediction markets, options markets, and structured products on its chain. Polynomial Chain will offer integrated account abstraction, aiming to bridge the gap between DeFi and centralized exchanges by providing enhanced UX. Polynomial also launched a retroactive points program to reward users of its Earn Vaults and Polynomial Trade products. Users can claim their points by making a deposit once the chain goes live.

LI.FI, the DEX and bridge aggregation protocol behind Jumper, experienced an exploit resulting in about $10 million in losses. The attack targeted users who had manually set infinite approvals for the protocol. Peckshield noted that LI.FI had previously suffered the same exploit in March 2022. The vulnerability allows attackers to make arbitrary calls to token contracts, transferring funds from users’ wallets with infinite approvals. LI.FI has since contained the exploit and is working with law enforcement to recover the stolen funds.

Uniswap launched its Uniswap Extension browser-based wallet for all users. Unlike existing browser wallets, the Uniswap Extension integrates directly into the browser's sidebar, enabling users to perform swaps, send, and receive transactions. Key features include MEV protection, automatic network switching, and access to offchain liquidity. Users can track their assets across 11 networks in a unified view.

• Degen bridge transfer bug

• Protocol Guild seeks a generalist

• CB Ventures invests in Privy

• BUILD begins round 2

• Mt. Gox begins distributing funds

• GME, TSLA tokenized stocks

Follow us on X, Lens, and Farcaster.

• Spot ETH ETFs anticipated next Tuesday.

• Matcha integrates the 0x V2 pricing engine.

• Taiko introduces Booster Rollups.

• Scroll surpasses $1 billion in TVL.

Listen on: Apple | Spotify | Castbox | YouTube 

Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas now anticipates that trading for Spot ETH ETFs will commence next Tuesday, July 23rd. He stated that today, the SEC responded to amended S-1 forms submitted by issuers and requested the final submission of S-1s by this Wednesday. The Form S-1 filings must be approved before trading can begin. On May 23rd, the SEC gave the green light to 19b-4 filings for eight Spot ETH ETFs. The price of ETH is up 7% over the last 24 hours, moving from $3,200 to $3,450.

Matcha launched the latest iteration of its DEX aggregator, featuring a new pricing engine built on 0x Protocol V2. The advanced engine sources liquidity from multiple sources in a single swap, ensuring optimal pricing for large trades. The release introduces Argon Router, a sophisticated mechanism that uses multiplex and multi-hop trade routes. Multiplex routing splits orders into multiple trades across various liquidity sources, minimizing price impact, while multi-hop functionality uses intermediate tokens with more efficient liquidity, reducing slippage. Matcha also uses Permit2 for token approvals, allowing exact allowance approvals for the duration of the transaction. The DEX aggregator also supports MEV protection and gasless trades. Matcha claims to offer access to 97% of the liquidity on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism.

Taiko introduced Gwyneth, a synchronously composable Based rollup that extends Ethereum L1. Coined as a Booster Rollup, Gwyneth leverages native sequencing for seamless access to rollups and L1 state. It also supports preconfirmations, allowing L1 validators to commit to L2 states, enhancing UX with fast transaction confirmations. Gwyneth addresses L2 fragmentation by enabling applications and smart contracts to operate across multiple rollups without the need for complex bridging. Initially, Gwyneth will be secured by Taiko’s Raiko multi-prover and will support zkVMs for real-time proving. Gwyneth is still in development.

Scroll, an EVM-equivalent ZK Rollup, has surpassed $1 billion in Total Value Locked, marking a more than 20% increase in its TVL over the past 24 hours, according to data from L2Beat. The achievement places Scroll among the top 10 rollups by TVL, overtaking Starknet. The surge comes amid a market rally and the anticipation of an upcoming token launch for the rollup. Scroll’s ZK-EVM went live on mainnet in October 2023.

• DSR is decreasing to 7%

• Maker spending breakdown

• MetaMask token auto-detection

• Squarespace vulnerability patched

• No-code EVM indexing tool

• Paul Brigner joins Coinbase

Follow us on X, Lens, and Farcaster.