FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Olympus DAO has cut the OHM token’s annual percentage staking yield to 7.35% in the hope of making the protocol sustainable. The rewards were reduced after the DAO approved a governance proposal called OIP-119. 

In a Thursday Twitter thread titled “Say bye to high APY,” the project clarified that while the DAO’s prior objective was to bootstrap adoption by offering very high yield, it’s transitioning to a new tokenomics framework.

Olympus DAO is a DeFi protocol with a treasury that backs the OHM token. It has a two-pronged approach to its operations, according to its website. The first is via cryptocurrency bonds denominated in vested OHM tokens. Here, the DAO issues OHM tokens at a discount to investors in exchange for their cryptocurrencies, a process designed to grow its treasury over time.

The second is single-side staking of OHM tokens. Currently, the official website shows this yield to be 267% APY, paid to those who deposit OHM to its single-side token staking pool. 

After the latest governance proposal, this specific staking yield (also called “base rate”) will be lowered to 7.35%, the DAO said. This change will help the project achieve more sustainable growth, the DAO explained.

OHM market capitalization chart. Image: CoinGecko

Six months into its launch, in November 2021, the market capitalization of OlympusDAO’s token OHM skyrocketed to more than $4.3 billion. The token’s market cap has since declined 93% to $293 million, according to CoinGecko.

Currently, Olympus has over $266 million in crypto assets from user deposits. The DAO manages these funds as a protocol-controlled treasury to back the OHM tokens as well as fund its operations. 

© 2022 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.

Bitcoin traded down following consumer spending data in the U.S.

Core personal consumer expenditures (PCE) month-on-month was 0.6%, above estimates of 0.5%, and meanwhile the annual change in PCE was 6.2% in August, higher than estimates of 6%. Bitcoin was trading at $19,301, down 1.2% in the past hour, according to data via Coinbase. 

The PCE index is a measure of the price people living in the U.S. pay for goods and services, or those buying on behalf of others. The index is typically used as a means of capturing inflation, or deflation, across a range of consumer goods.

It can also reflect changes in consumer behavior, giving a more comprehensive overview of the inflation picture than the consumer price index (CPI). 

source: bea.gov

© 2022 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.

NFT finance protocol BendDAO is considering a proposal to enable ApeCoin (APE) staking on its platform via a new yield aggregator product called BendEarn.

A BendDAO community member called vis.eth made the proposal on Sept. 29, providing a detailed breakdown for how it would work. The BendDAO team has also made a development plan for implementing the platform, estimating it would take two to three weeks to build. If the community backs the idea, it will go to a vote to be implemented.

BendDAO is an NFT lending platform. Users can deposit accepted blue-chip NFTs like Bored Apes and CryptoPunks to borrow ether (ETH).

ApeCoin is the the governance coin of ApeDAO and the native token of the Yuga Labs NFT ecosystem. The DAO voted in May to introduce APE staking. Horizen Labs was chosen at the time to build an ApeCoin staking platform. This platform is scheduled to go live by the end of October allowing APE holders to stake their tokens in four proposed pools.

BendDAO forum

BendEarn will also have the same four staking pools. One will be a solo staking pool where users can stake their APE tokens alone. The other three will involve pairing one of three major Yuga NFTs — Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Bored Ape Kernel Club — with APE tokens.

BendDAO developers are considering a two-stage plan for the creation of the BendEarn platform. The first stage will cover the development of the smart contract for APE staking while the second stage will focus on building out the BendEnd contracts and distributing NFTs and APE tokens to the different staking pools.

The NFT lending platform is looking to develop earning strategies on top of BendEarn. This means that BendEarn will act as a yield optimizer for APE staking. As such, all Yuga NFTs used as collateral for obtaining loans on BendDAO can be staked on BendEarn. The same will also apply to ApeCoin lenders on BendDAO.

There is also a plan to charge a 3% staking fee on the revenue generated by the platform but the DAO will have to agree on what to do with the funds. This decision will likely be part of the motions voted on by the DAO to approve the deployment of the BendEarn staking platform.

© 2022 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.

Uniswap Labs, creators of the Uniswap Protocol, is reportedly eyeing a fundraise of between $100 million and $200 million at a $1 billion valuation. 

It is in the early stages of putting together the round, according to a report in Tech Crunch, citing four people familiar with the matter. 

Polychain and one of Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds are said to be involved, though terms of the deal may change as discussions progress, the report added. 

The Block asked Uniswap for comment but had not heard back before publication. 

Uniswap is the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) in the crypto space. The platform accounts for almost two-thirds of the entire DEX market volume, based on figures from The Block’s Data Dashboard.

The Uniswap DAO also holds the biggest treasury of any decentralized autonomous organization in the crypto space, with $2.7 billion in its reserves, according to DeepDAO.

Last month the organization said it would create the Uniswap Foundation, an entity tasked with growing the decentralized crypto exchange’s ecosystem. Its first round of grants in September totaled $1.8 million.

© 2022 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.

Episode 93 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Tim Copeland, VP of Research Larry Cermak and Matter Labs’ Chief Product Officer Steve Newcomb.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.

For the final installment of this three-part Ethereum Merge special edition of The Scoop, we take a closer look at zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups — technology that could enable Ethereum to scale to millions of transactions per second.

There are four main teams working on ZK-rollups: Polygon, Scroll, Starkware, and Matter Labs.

In this episode of The Scoop, Matter Labs Chief Product Officer Steve Newcomb shares what he believes to be the key ingredients of a good ZK-rollup, and why he believes scaling solutions will herald a new wave of innovation.

According to Newcomb, a paradigm shift will occur once Ethereum successfully scales:

“Once Ethereum can scale — and truly scale — it’s kind of like coming out of Plato’s cave and seeing the rest of the world, and seeing these use cases we could have never even predicted.”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has stated he believes ZK-rollups will be the main layer-2 scaling solution in the future, largely because of the speed at which users can move funds between mainnet and the layer-2.

Newcomb also believes that ZK-rollups are “going to be the end game for scaling,” although he also stipulates that a good ZK-rollup should meet the following requirements:

“These five ingredients — having a generalized ZK-rollup, being EVM compatible, working with solidity, being truly open sourced, being correctly decentralized, and having good tokenomics — these are the key ingredients of what makes a good ZK-rollup a ZK-rollup.”

During this episode, Cermak, Copeland, and Newcomb also discuss:

• How zkSync compares to other L2 scaling solutions
• Why ‘Layer 3s’ will lead to a “starfield of 10x moments”
• How ZK-rollups could eliminate non-native bridges

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron, Chainalysis & IWC Schaffhausen

About Tron
TRON is dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet via blockchain technology and decentralized applications (dApps). Founded in September 2017 by H.E. Justin Sun, the TRON network has continued to deliver impressive achievements since MainNet launch in May 2018. July 2018 also marked the ecosystem integration of BitTorrent, a pioneer in decentralized Web3 services boasting over 100 million monthly active users. The TRON network completed full decentralization in December 2021 and is now a community-governed DAO. | TRONDAO | Twitter | Discord |

About Chainalysis
Chainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.

About IWC Schaffhausen
IWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com.

© 2022 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.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is planning a new ETF aimed at capitalizing on metaverse-facing companies, Bloomberg reported.

The new fund, the iShares Future Metaverse Tech and Communications ETF, is the latest foray into the blockchain ecosystem for the New York-based investment giant. The company just launched the iShares Blockchain Technology UCITS ETF that tracks the New York Stock Exchange FactSet Global Blockchain Technologies capped index, targeted towards European customers.

In August, BlackRock announced it was partnering with Coinbase to provide clients with crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage and reporting capabilities.

BlackRock now joins other traditional finance companies in launching funds composed of companies with exposure to the metaverse, including Franklin Templeton, Invesco, and Fidelity.

BlackRock did not immediately respond to The Block’s request for comment.

© 2022 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.

Telefonica, the $19 billion Spanish telecom giant, is allowing the use of cryptocurrency for purchases on its Tu.com marketplace.

The cryptocurrency payment integration for Tu.com comes as the result from a partnership between Telefonica and Spanish cryptocurrency exchange Bit2Me, CoinDesk reported. Telefonica also invested an undisclosed amount in the exchange.

This isn’t Telefonica’s first venture into the blockchain space. The company opened an NFT marketplace and earlier this week announced a deal with Qualcomm Technologies to develop an augmented reality driven platform, SnapDragon Spaces. In 2019, Telefonica held a trial for a blockchain-backed marketplace for users to sell private data.

Bit2Me is Spain’s largest cryptocurrency exchange with an average daily volume of 6,453 BTC, or nearly $126 million at current pricing, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Telefonica and Bit2Me did not immediately respond to The Block’s request for comment.

© 2022 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.

Much as it did in the 1960s for automobile emissions, California wants to develop a crypto and web3 regulatory regime that could be a model for other states to adopt, with a particular eye toward crypto mining operations. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s veto of a state crypto licensing bill earlier this month frees up his administration to create its own regulations, said Dee Dee Myers, director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. The vetoed bill proposed that digital assets firm in the state apply for a license to operate.

“The bill created a regulatory regime in a very narrow lane,” she said, adding, “We told the Assembly to try again and to work with [California] government agencies to get it right.” 

Instead, the Newsom administration is basing its own regulatory work on an executive order the governor issued in May. The order aims to provide more clarity and flexibility for the crypto industry, while retaining the consumer protections in the vetoed Assembly bill, Myers argued. 

The goal is to work in “tandem with the federal government,” to ensure that there is no conflict between California’s regulations and the federal government’s, Myers said in an interview at Circle’s Converge22 conference in San Francisco.

“We are hoping the federal government leads on regulations,” adding, “We have to go fast, but we have to be careful,” she said of the Newsom administration plans. “We need to measure twice and cut once.”

The vetoed bill would have put onerous restrictions on the growing crypto industry, at the risk of stifling innovation, added Gayle Miller, chief deputy director of the state Department of Finance. “We want the industry to continue to expand here, and we’ll do what it takes to continue to build [the crypto and web3 industries].” The state wants industry input to help create regulations, Myers said. “Everybody thinks it’s important to have a clear set of guidelines.”  

The Newsom administration believes any regulatory regime it creates will be a model for other states. “When California puts forth cutting-edge regulations, a lot of other states follow suit and adopt them,” Myers said, making the comparison between the current digital asset debate to California’s regulations on automobiles in the 1960s, which influenced rules in other states and on the national level. 

Myers added that the California officials are in dialogue with other states, even those led by Republican governors and state legislatures around digital asset regulation, though she did not go into specifics. “There is huge bipartisan interest in us getting this right,” Myers said.

Regulating crypto’s environmental impact is one way the state could deviate from the federal government. The Biden administration raised concerns over the energy consumption of proof-of-work mining in a report issued earlier this month, and Ethereum’s recent switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in an event known as The Merge aimed to lessen the blockchain’s energy use.

Myers said that California would take a close look at regulating crypto mining’s environmental impact. 

“Environmental protection is more than California’s goal; it’s our mission,” said Myers. 

© 2022 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.

Binance has registered with New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), allowing it to move forward with setting up a local office. 

“We see New Zealand as a bit of a pioneer, so from that perspective, I think there’s a lot to be learned here with our local team working with Kiwis to envisage the future of currency, transactions and the web,” the cryptocurrency exchange’s CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in a statement.

The registration, which Binance acquired on Sept. 10, will cover activities including NFTs, spot trading and staking. Its local website is now live for New Zealand residents. 

New Zealand’s central bank said last year that it would engage in public consultations about topics including digital assets such as bitcoin, stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). 

Binance has been registering locally with financial authorities around the world, including in France, Italy and Spain.

It was recently fined €3.3 million (now about $3.2 million) by The Netherlands’s central bank for providing crypto services in the country without registration. Binance said last year that it was planning to apply for registration in the European country, and confirmed after getting fined that it was in the process of applying for registration there.

© 2022 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.

Star Atlas has released its first pre-alpha gameplay demo on the Epic Games Store, offering fans a long-awaited glimpse of what they might expect in the full version of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

The demo introduces players to Asha, a pilot and captain of the Council of Peace, and gives them option to summon and view their NFT ships on launching pads in the “Showroom.”

Based on Solana and built using Unreal Engine 5, Star Atlas is one of the most ambitious gaming projects in the space. Its lore is based around three factions struggling for resources, territorial conquest and political domination in the year 2620.

The project launched in 2020 and it’s already attracted a loyal following. Fans have spun off ship-making guilds and even a dedicated news site based on the game.

But with almost $200 million spent on NFTs for a game that — by co-founder CEO Michael Wagner’s own estimate — may not be rolled out for another 5-7 years, it’s faced questions as to whether it can deliver on its lofty goals.

In July, Wagner faced off against Illuvium co-founder Kieran Warwick in a debate over the sustainability of the project following a Twitter spat in which Warwick said Star Atlas was “gonna burn the fuck out of retail.”

Warwick compared Star Atlas to Star Citizen, a non-blockchain game with a similar space theme that blends combat gameplay, world building and commerce. Despite more than a decade of development, a substantially larger team than Star Atlas and half a billion dollars in funding, it remains in alpha.

Nevertheless, Star Atlas maintains that it will continue to develop and release further gameplay iteratively through modules. It is aiming for a full Showroom with expanded functionality release in the fourth quarter of this year. 

It is one of several blockchain projects that have launched or plan to launch on the Epic Games Store, including Blankos Block Party, which also launched this week.

Unlike Minecraft creators Mojang Studios and Steam creators Valve, Epic Games has not banned NFT and blockchain-based gaming from its platform.

However, it told The Block that the company itself doesn’t have special partnerships with blockchain game makers above those it has with other games on its platform. Epic Games doesn’t itself produce any blockchain or web3 games.

© 2022 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.