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Central bank digital currencies will revolutionize how companies settle international trade and reduce the need for greenbacks in the world economy, says Michael Casey.

With his Twitter clone’s decentralized architecture, Mark Zuckerberg is yet again borrowing from crypto’s best ideas. Third time’s the charm?

Polygon Labs has promoted its chief legal officer Marc Boiron to chief executive officer in a newly recreated role.

Boiron’s promotion comes almost a year after he joined Polygon Labs last August from dYdX, a DeFi protocol. Boiron is an “ideal” person for the CEO role given his extensive involvement in shaping the Polygon Labs strategy and successful management of multiple departments for many months, the nine Polygon co-founders said in a joint statement shared with The Block. Boiron will report to the co-founders.

Boiron’s appointment as CEO comes one and a half years after Polygon Labs said in December 2021 it could no longer have C-suite positions because the project is decentralized. At the time, Polygon co-founder Jaynti Kanani was also the CEO and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal was also the chief operating officer.

When asked why it was bringing back the CEO role, a Polygon Labs spokesperson told The Block that the organization has and will continue to be founder-led and that Boiron, as CEO, will lead both the engineering and business teams.

Sandeep Nailwal becomes executive chairman 

With today’s management reshuffle, Nailwal has now become executive chairman of Polygon Labs, where he will continue to actively shape day-to-day business activities.

“I take great pride and joy in community building,” said Nailwal said in the statement. “This role enables me to continue in a fully executional role to continue to shape the future of the entire space, guided by the invaluable guidance and direction from the Polygon community.”

As Boiron takes the CEO role, Polygon Labs’s chief policy officer Rebecca Rettig will now serve as chief legal officer at the company.

Meanwhile, Ryan Wyatt, president of Polygon Labs, is leaving his role at the end of the month and will continue as an advisor to the firm. Last month, Wyatt testified to the United States House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Innovation, Data and Commerce after the Polygon blockchain’s native token MATIC was deemed as security by the Securities and Exchange Commission in its actions against crypto exchanges Binance, Binance.US and Coinbase.

Polygon Labs at the time responded to the SEC’s claim, saying it developed the project “outside the U.S., deployed outside the U.S. and focused to this day on the global community that supports the network,” adding that “MATIC was a necessary part of the Polygon technology from day one, ensuring that the network would be secure — and remains so to this day.”

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

This week, the floor price of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection dropped to its lowest price in nearly two years, leading to questions about the collection’s value. But floor price is just one metric used to value NFTs – experts explain that there are other important factors in assessing what an NFT is worth.

The management changes come as Polygon, which runs two of the most closely watched networks for scaling Ethereum transactions, is in the midst of a rebrand to the next chapter of its corporate development, known as “Polygon 2.0.”

Crypto exchange Gemini is suing Digital Currency Group and its founder Barry Silbert, with Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss accusing Silbert of being “the architect and mastermind of the DCG and Genesis fraud against creditors.”

The move came after Winklevoss gave Silbert an ultimatum last week to immediately pay $640 million he says is owed to Gemini’s Earn clients or face a lawsuit.

“This lawsuit seeks to recover from Defendants the damages and losses that Gemini has incurred as a direct result of DCG’s and Silbert’s false, misleading, and incomplete representations and omissions to Gemini, and Defendants’ role in encouraging and facilitating Genesis’s fraud against Gemini,” according to the complaint. 

Winklevoss has argued that Gemini Earn users are stuck in limbo with over $1.2 billion of assets stuck in Genesis Global, which DCG owns.

 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Gemini and its founders sued Digital Currency Group on Friday alleging that it incurred losses due to DCG’s “false, misleading and incomplete representations” tied to DCG subsidiary Genesis’ work with Gemini on the crypto company’s Earn product.

The Bank of International Settlements published a plan to protect central bank digital currencies against the same sort of hacks and breaches that plague the market for decentralized finance. 

The framework targets risks found in the DeFi sector that could threaten CBDCs that utilize DLT and smart contracts technology.

“The large-value attacks on DLT protocols and smart contracts in the DeFi space underscore the potential operational and reputational risks,” the report stated. “Recent examples of smart contract hacks, which have led to the loss of a significant amount of value in DeFi, serve as an example of the potential security risks CBDC systems could face.”

The study said the rise of internet, telecommunication networks and devices has resulted in a diverse, complex, and swiftly evolving cyber threat landscape. The BIS suggests these risks could extend to DLT-related attacks against consensus protocols, cross-chain bridges, oracles, and smart contracts, as well as offline CBDC components.

CBDC design

The BIS framework, published Thursday, is part of Project Polaris that’s aiming to create “secure and resilient CBDC systems, offline and online.”

Project Polaris plans to give global central banks a framework for CBDC design, implementation, planning and operational considerations.

The BIS framework suggests central banks upgrade their procedures to fend off these type of attacks, and create “security and resilience functional teams.” These teams would be involved in each phase of a CBDC program to ensure requirements are implemented to counteract cyber attacks.

“Central banks should recognize the complexity and new threat landscape brought by CBDC systems, adopt modern enabling technologies supporting security and resilience where appropriate,” the report added.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Arbitrum’s decentralized autonomous organization has locked up 700 million ARB tokens worth $770 million into a vesting contract. The funds will be released incrementally to the Foundation over a four-year period in a major step for the DAO toward accountability and transparent governance.

The move came after the approval of the AIP 1.1 proposal that came amid a controversial governance period within the Arbitrum ecosystem. Earlier this year, the project faced significant backlash over a “special grants” program in the plan that initially sought to allocate over 700 million ARB tokens directly to the Arbitrum Foundation. The Foundation stated the funds would be used to support initiatives built on Arbitrum’s technology.

However, the immense scale of the allocation, which was worth over $1 billion at the time, prompted fears over transparency in a project that’s designed to make collective decisions. That led to a subsequent proposal to return the funds from the Foundation back to the DAO which was rejected.

Arbitrum DAO makes the call

Arbitrum is a Layer 2 scalability solution for Ethereum, developed by Offchain Labs, that aims to offer scalable and low-cost smart contract capabilities. Its governing DAO makes decisions by proposing and voting on various initiatives, known as Arbitrum Improvement Proposals.

A proposal known as AIP-1.1 sought to address the community’s concerns by implementing stringent control measures on the allocation of the DAO’s treasury. It provides the DAO with the power to modify the vesting period, an authority that could be exercised to extend, shorten, or even halt the vesting process, the Arbitrum team said.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

MicroStrategy, a software intelligence firm that holds bitcoin on its balance sheet, has lost its chief revenue officer Kevin Adkisson.

Adkisson informed the company of his resignation from the position on Wednesday, MicroStrategy said today in a regulatory filing. Adkisson will remain with the company as a non-executive officer employee in an advisory capacity for a transition period that has not yet been determined, MicroStrategy added.

Adkisson worked for MicroStrategy for nearly seven years, according to his LinkedIn profile. It is not immediately clear why he exited. The company did not immediately respond to The Block’s request for comment.

Phong Le, MicroStrategy’s president and CEO, has assumed Adkisson’s responsibilities as head of the company’s sales organization and sales function, the company said.

Adkisson’s departure comes amid MicroStrategy’s renewed purchases of bitcoin. Last month, the company said it bought an additional 12,333 bitcoins for a total of $347 million in cash, bringing its total bitcoin holdings up to around 152,333 bitcoins, worth roughly $4.6 billion at the current bitcoin price of around $30,200.  

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.