1confirmation Newsletter - Issue #66
The total money supply (M2) in the world today is over $89 trillion and governments around the world derive most of their power from controlling the money. Cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH introduce an alternative that is disruptive to this power that governments have over people and it's been interesting to see many central banks react to the crypto boom by introducing their own cryptocurrencies, with the People's Bank of China (PBOC) being the most recent.
China is one of the most active crypto regions of the world and we'll see how the public reacts to a government-backed cryptocurrency. Initiatives like this certainly help the crypto narrative and there may be some interest in using PBOC's coin. But at the end of the day a government-backed cryptocurrency still relies on trust in the government and that trust may be lost for good.
Required reading this week
What You Should Know Before Putting Half a Million DAI in Compound — medium.com
Ameen Soleimani teams up with a security researcher to better understand the security risks of putting money into Compound and also analyzes the cryptoeconomic incentives of Compound.
Synthetic Assets in DeFi: Use Cases & Opportunities — medium.com
Synthetics are a key building block for cryptoasset markets and many projects are already building them today. Dmitriy Berenzon writes a piece on the state of synthetic assets in DeFi.
Information Asymmetry in Crypto — medium.com
Jonathan Joseph explains how there is so much innovation happening in crypto right now that new knowledge is not efficiently being shared across different projects.
Gas Spectrum Transactions — medium.com
Chris Whinfrey writes about gas spectrum transactions, a new idea to sign a transaction at many different prices and automatically find the best price. This solves the awful UX of having to set gas price and also assures the user gets the best price.
Arthur Breitman expands on the benefits and drawbacks of supply caps for crypto monetary policy.
The Dawn of Hybrid Layer 2 Protocols
Vitalik Buterin explains the resurgence of a forgotten category of "semi-layer-2" protocols, a category which promises less extreme gains in scaling but with the benefit of much easier generalization and more favorable security models.
1confirmation portfolio reading this week
Creating the EDG Mainnet validation set
The Edgeware team explains the steps to become a validator at genesis block for the upcoming Edgeware mainnet launch on September 15.
Nervos CKByte Public Sale Date Announcement — medium.com
Nervos announces the details of its upcoming public sale of CKByte tokens.
MakerDAO CDPs Liquidation Analysis
Natan Baredes explains the CDP liquidation process, analyzes how keepers operate, and quantifies the business opportunity through observing the historical data on liquidations.
Parathreads: Polkadot Connectivity for Everyone — medium.com
Parathreads, the newest feature in Polkadot, gives projects that may not have the capital to secure a dedicated parachain slot access to the interoperability and shared security of Polkadot.
Coinbase to Invest $2 Million USDC in DeFis Compound and dYdX — www.coindesk.com
Coinbase announces a $2M USDC Bootstrap Fund to invest in DeFi projects like dYdX and Compound.