Coffee & Coin - Issue #4

September 9th 2019

It was a slow week for news from a lot of teams, due to the shut down for the labor day holiday last week.

We took the time to speak with some of our users about what they like and don’t like about Coffee & Coin so far and have changed up our approach. You can read more about it in our our article here: "New Directions for Coffee & Coin" - now let’s get to your news!

The Summaries:

Ethereum 2.0 Client Lock-in:

One of the largest challenges facing Ethereum 2.0 is ensuring that there is interoperability directly between all major clients, wallets and protocols. Core members of the Ethereum team had advocated for a conference to create a protocol standard to enable all the clients to speak to each other with full interoperability. In the end, major client teams agreed to each send representatives to an "interop lock-in" in Toronto, where the client teams would work together to create and implement a spec, and the lock-in would last until the clients were fully compatible. The full list of goals for the lock-in are published on the Ethereum Github. The teams are already three days into the lockup which started on September 7th and are continuing towards their goals, its been a serious commitment for a lot of smaller teams who sacrificed key players during major events and conferences, like ETHBoston which are normally a great way for small teams to meet potential investors.

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Crypto Twitter was eeriely quiet this past week with multiple influencers out at lock-ins, and traveling to/from conferences like ETHBoston and Ethereal Summit in Tel Aviv. But, there is one fun tweet worth mentioning, when Star Trek announced the launch of their ERC-721 collectibles this past week, everyone’s favorite choppy-worded space commander took to Twitter to discuss unexplored frontiers:

William Shatner @WilliamShatner

ETH goes where no Bitcoin has gone before! 😉 https://t.co/fKEPY9JyJ3

Mike Hanson @IAmMikeHanson

@TruthRaiderHQ @WilliamShatner @VitalikButerin @elonmusk @ethereum @mattereum Right? #ETH is already like a classic car you can’t drive anymore just looks cool and pretty and makes realize this is where smart contracts began.

News Round-Up:

• COSS announces fiat on-and-off ramps with 0% fees, including for US users. >>>

• Ethereum announces the first batch of ETH2.0 grants >>>

• Rocket Pool v2 BETA launches to test staking pools for ETH2.0 >>>

• FunFair gives an incredible deep dive into their State Channel Contracts >>>

• AdEx released a tutorial showing how they built their payment channel which currently processes more than 9 million side chain transactions on Ethereum >>>

• Aragon released a tutorial on how anyone can use Aragon to build a DAO with holographic consensus voting. >>>

• The ENS domain system is holding auctions for 3-6 character .eth domain names >>>

• Ethereum becomes the first public blockchain to join the Hyperledger Consortium with the launch of Hyperledger Besu by Consensys >>>

• Vitalik published a technical introduction to "Hybrid Layer 2" systems >>>

• The Numerai team launches the Erasure Protocol for guaranteed data markets and fighting fake news. >>>

• Star Trek launches official ERC-721 collectibles on the Ethereum blockchain. >>>

• Dharma Protocol launches beta test of their V2 savings protocol with fixed-rates and no lock-up periods. >>>

• PoolTogether launches V2 of their 'no-loss' lotto with automatic ticket re-purchase and any times withdrawal >>>

• Chinese state owned "China Telecom" reveals plans for a blockchain enabled phone supporting Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens. >>>

• Offchain Labs announced funding from Coinbase Ventures to build their open source ‘EthBridge’ for communicating with private side-chains. >>>

• Owner of mysterious 'Blockchains LLC' that bought acres of land in Nevada now buys the Kirkwood Bank of Neveda in a $28M merger deal. >>>

• Kyber, Compound, bZx and Chainlink launch virtual hackathon with $42,000 in bounties and much more in prizes! >>>

• Chainlink launches Mixicles to smart contract privacy >>>

• VanEck offers limited Bitcoin ETF to Institutional investors. >>>

• Bitcoin’s Lightning Network usage is dropping steadily due to poor incentives >>>

• Experienced hedge fund manager Alan Howard set to launch $1B crypto-focused asset fund. >>>

• The US Department of Energy (DOE) has partnered with Factom to trial securing the US power grid. >>>

• Dapp.com closes $1M investment round led by South Korean VC firm 'Hashed' to improve its dashboard for monitoring dApp activity across Ethereum, EOS, Tron, and Steam. >>>

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