🤯 Lido Co-Founder’s Comments Spark Debate Over Decentralization of Ethereum

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we’re covering today:

News

• Lido Co-Founder’s Comments Spark Debate Over Decentralization of Ethereum
• MakerDAO Poised to Break Up Into ‘MetaDAOs’ in Historic Shakeup
• U.S. Sanctions Spur Ethereum Validators to Shun Transactions
• Layer-1 Blockchain Aptos Launches Its Mainnet

Exploits

• Mango DAO Votes To Let Hacker Keep Nearly $50M Of Stolen Funds

Deep Dive

• Governance Project Uses ‘Contests’ to Help DAOs Improve Decisionmaking

Opinion

• How Key CBDC Plan Threatens to Betray Crypto’s Founding Principles

Podcast

🎙️Friends with Benefits’ Alex Zhang on Building Web3 Communities That Endure

Video

• Quick Take: Why Uniswap Deploying on zkSync is a Big Deal

Elsewhere

• DAOs Aren’t People, Crypto Lawyers Tell Court in CFTC’s Ooki CaseL CoinDesk
• Company Documents Show Meta’s Flagship Metaverse Falling Short: The Wall Street Journal
• The Crypties are proud to announce @AaveAave as a nominee for the 2022 DeFi Project of the Year Award: Aave

Trending in The Defiant

• Arrakis Loses Mojo as User Pulls $300M From Vault Provider
• Uniswap Fulfills its Unicorn Destiny with $165M Funding Round
• What Is TVL?

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Ethereum Staking

🤯 Lido Co-Founder’s Comments Spark Debate Over Decentralization of Ethereum

Shapovalov Says At-Home Staking Is For ‘Hobbyists’

By Aleksandar Gilbert

MANAGED Liquid staking giant Lido has come under fire after co-founder and chief technology officer Vasiliy Shapovalov said the hardware used to secure Ethereum should be professionally managed, infuriating an army of enthusiasts who operate such hardware at home, as well as several prominent Ethereum influencers.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

DAO Governance

⚡️ MakerDAO Poised to Break Up Into ‘MetaDAOs’ in Historic Shakeup

Maker Members Voting on New Reorganization This Week in Series of Votes

By Samuel Haig

VOTES Is MakerDAO, the No. 1 DeFi protocol, about to be broken up? That’s what is at stake in a flurry of votes taking place this week in the collateralized debt platform. Its members are deciding whether to spin off a number of operating units, including the Real-World Finance Core Unit, which directs its strategy of soliciting lending business from TradFi partners. 

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

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Crypto Regulation

🏛 U.S. Sanctions Spur Ethereum Validators to Shun Transactions

‘Sad Milestone in Censorship’ Puts Pressure on Flashbots and MEV Players

By Samuel Haig    

EXCLUSION Just two months after the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Tornado Cash, more than half of the blocks on the Ethereum network appear to be excluding transactions from the sanctioned wallets, according to data from MEV Watch.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Deep Dive

🃏 Governance Project Uses ‘Contests’ to Help DAOs Improve Decisionmaking

Maker, Polygon and Aave Test Jokedao’s Humorous Approach to Governing

By Owen Fernau  

UNORTHODOX Managing DAOs may be one of the most serious issues in decentralized finance. Yet an outfit called jokedao is betting its unorthodox approach, and a dash of humor, may be just the trick. 

CONTEST Jokedao, a three month-old project co-founded by entrepreneurs David Phelps and Sean McCaffey, has developed a software tool to help DAO members decide on the best course of action in advancing their causes. In a nutshell, it runs a “contest” to solicit ideas from members who get to vote on potential decisions. 

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Exploits

💰 Mango DAO Votes To Let Hacker Keep Nearly $50M Of Stolen Funds

Attacker Stole $116M By Manipulating The Price Of MNGO on Oct. 12

By Owen Fernau

ATTACKER After an attacker drained $116M two days ago from Mango Markets, the Solana-based margin trading and lending platform, they have struck a deal with the Mango DAO to keep nearly $50M of pilfered assets.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Layer 1s

👀 Layer-1 Blockchain Aptos Launches Its Mainnet

Aptos Labs Raised $150M In July

By yyctrader

TESTING Aptos, the much-hyped Layer 1 blockchain being built by ex-Meta engineers, has launched Aptos Mainnet after months of testing.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Opinion

🏦 How Key CBDC Plan Threatens to Betray Crypto’s Founding Principles

Bank of International Settlements’ Plan to Improve ‘Process Efficiency’ May Do the Opposite

Guest writer Alex Shipp argues that the influential institution’s digital money plan misses the mark…

PRIMER There was a lot of fanfare when the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) announced the launch of Project Icebreaker in September. A primer for Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) implementation, it laid out how the central banks of Israel, Norway, and Sweden would use blockchain technology to address friction in the cross-border payment system and utilize CBDCs in remittances. 

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Shoutout

Attend Eth Gathering: Barcelona 2022 to access thought leadership discussion, current and mid-term future blockchain trends, and knowledge transfer conversations on DeFi, Security, DAOs, and Data Analytics! ETH Gathering caters to ecosystem builders. Gather with our speakers in Barcelona on November 19th and 20th. 

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Defiant Video

📺 Quick Take: Why Uniswap Deploying on zkSync is a Big Deal

Elsewhere

🔗 DAOs Aren’t People, Crypto Lawyers Tell Court in CFTC’s Ooki CaseL CoinDesk

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), collectives that typically govern activities by voting through the use of crypto tokens, are not people and should not be treated as such, a group of lawyers and developers told a California court Monday.

🔗 Company Documents Show Meta’s Flagship Metaverse Falling Short: The Wall Street Journal

Nearly a year after Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta Platforms Inc. META -2.71%▼ in a bet-the-company move on the metaverse, internal documents show the transition grappling with glitchy technology, uninterested users and a lack of clarity about what it will take to succeed.

The Crypties are proud to announce @AaveAave as a nominee for the 2022 DeFi Project of the Year Award. pic.twitter.com/3pxbV11K7Q

— The Crypties Awards (@cryptiesawards) October 14, 2022

Trending in The Defiant

• Arrakis Loses Mojo as User Pulls $300M From Vault Provider Arrakis Finance, an automated liquidity management protocol, is sliding down the DeFi rankings.
• Uniswap Fulfills its Unicorn Destiny with $165M Funding Round The DeFi company famed for its unicorn logo has finally become a real life unicorn. On Thursday, Uniswap Labs, the company behind the leading DEX Uniswap, raised a whopping $165M in a Series B fundraising round, according to an announcement. 
• What Is TVL? Total value locked (TVL) is one of the key indicators to help us understand the value of a smart contract protocol. Smart contracts recreate traditional finance by codifying contractual logic and automating it.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Owen Fernau, Aleksandar Gilbert, Samuel Haig, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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