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Happy Juneteenth to our readers in the United States! CoinDesk staff is away for the federal holiday, but we’ve compiled an abridged issue of The Protocol with the latest blockchain technology news headlines, along with our top picks from the past week Protocol Village Column.
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DJT DOX! Martin “Pharma Bro” Shkreli said Tuesday he was behind the controversial DJT token in an X-space tuned in by thousands of people, days after denying any involvement, as colorfully reported by Shaurya Malwa of CoinDesk. The most popular token of the week has some cryptocurrency enthusiasts wondering who was behind it after it went viral on Monday for its alleged links to Donald Trump and his son Barron. Blockchain investigators discovered that DJT’s Telegram channel appeared to share the same administrators as a Shkreli-backed token. Shkreli denied any involvement at the time, while DJT continued to demonstrate. On-chain intelligence firm Arkham has posted a $150,000 reward that would pay the amount to anyone who revealed the creator of the DJT token. This prompted ZachXBT, one of the most followed cryptocurrency investigators on X, to present his findings to Arkham. According to ZachXBT, that’s when Shkreli sent him into a panic. The DJT token is down 58% in the last 24 hours, apparently due to a few factors panic selling. At press time there was a donnybrook raging on X over if Shkreli now owes $100 million on a bet that the token was somehow linked to Trump.
GRAY HAT? Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken said Wednesday in a tweet threads AND blog post that he contacted law enforcement after “security researchers” allegedly exploited a bug to withdraw nearly $3 million from artificially inflated account balances, and then refused to return the sums in accordance with the company’s Bug Bounty program ‘agency. “This isn’t white-hat hacking, it’s extortion!” Nick Percoco, head of Kraken security wrote on X.
IN CLEAR: The price of ether (ETH) rose after Consensys disclosed that it had received letters from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) informing that the regulator had ended its investigation into the tech incubator company and would not recommend enforcement action in his comparisons. The SEC told Consensys, whose products include the MetaMask wallet, that it would not take any enforcement action in a pair of letters sent to its law firms on Tuesday. In a blog postConsensys said the SEC is “closing its investigation into Ethereum 2.0.”
PROBLEMS WITH THE CURVE. Monday’s UwU Lend exploit set in motion a series of events that led to Thursday’s multimillion-dollar liquidations of DeFi lending giant Curve, representatives of its founder Michael Egorov he told CoinDesk on Telegram.
JUST NOT IN THE USA…. Coinbase, the large cryptocurrency exchange, has launched support for “pre-launch markets” on Coinbase International Exchange and Coinbase Advanced – for users in eligible jurisdictions of the US, UK and Canada. “Once the underlying token launches on the relevant spot exchanges, these contracts seamlessly transition to standard perpetual futures contracts,” according to a blog post. On Tuesday, Coinbase International Exchange tweeted that the pre-launch market was “now in full trading mode” for contracts on EigenLayer’s new EIGEN token, which has been airdropped but not unlocked for trade. According to at least one estimate posted on X, the exchange implies a fully diluted market capitalization for the EIGEN token of $12.2 billion.
Last week’s top picks from our Protocol Village column, highlighting the main updates and innovations in blockchain technology.
Screenshot from Minima’s McLaren GT4 data tracker demo video. (Minimum/X)
1. Mysten Labsthe lead developer behind the Sui blockchain, revealed a developer preview of “Walrus,” a new decentralized data storage and availability (DA) platform. According to the project documentation, Walrus offers two key advantages: cost-effective blob storage, high availability, and robustness. “Data recovery is still possible even if two-thirds of the storage nodes crash or come under the control of an adversary. Furthermore, availability can be efficiently certified without offloading the entire blob,” the documentation reads.
2. Ronin, a gaming-focused blockchain developed by Sky Mavis, creator of the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, has announced the upcoming launch of a new zkEVM, which is an Ethereum-compatible zero-knowledge rollup network. It will be built with a Sky Mavis-modified version of the open source Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK), according to a press release: “By building a dedicated ZK blockchain, the Ronin network will be able to serve infinitely more users, support the rapid growth of its thriving game studio partners and further enhance the environment without permission to integrate more gaming experiences Further plans include consecrating a Polygon ZK prover directly into Ronin to provide a turnkey solution for game studios to easily build their own zkEVM blockchains on Ronin without having to establish their own security and consensus.”
3. Polka dots decentralized governance has approved the Join-Accumulate Machine (JAM) protocol as the network’s future architecture, according to the team: “JAM, a minimalist blockchain concept, will support secure domain-specific rollup chains and offer synchronous composability between services. For encourage development, The Web3 Foundation launched the JAM Implementer Award, a 10 million (~$64.7 million USD) DOT fund, for the creation of several JAM implementations. This initiative aims to improve scalability and flexibility in blockchain applications by integrating elements of Polkadot and Ethereum for a versatile and secure environment.” Polkadot founder Gavin Wood’s JAM “grey card” is Here.
4. Arcana Network, which is building a modular layer 1 blockchain with the aim of doing so help developers improve the Web3 user experienceannounced the launch of its “Chain Abstraction Protocol,” according to the team: “The new protocol will help simplify the management of crypto assets across multiple blockchains, allowing users to execute transactions effortlessly across any chain by removing the complexities of bridging, promising a seamless and highly user-friendly multichain experience. Chain Abstraction protocol will have a significant impact on the evolution of blockchain technology and mainstream acceptance.”
5. Minimsdescribing itself as the only blockchain Lightweight enough to run entirely on mobile devices and device chips, says it is working with Influx Technology to integrate a data tracker into a Mclaren GT4 – a skill that could improve race performance and prevent cheating. According to a Press release: “Data points on more than 20 parameters including vehicle ignition timing, braking, oil pressure, engine temperature, steering angle and rotation, as well as gear shifting, are collected by the ‘ DePIN Data Logger’ in real time.”
Renzo Founding Collaborator Lucas Kozinski (Renzo)