FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

The U.S. bankruptcy court granted the crypto lender permission to sell its altcoin holdings for BTC and ETH starting in July.

Bitcoin holders that want to deposit their assets to crypto exchange Binance using the lightning network, a bitcoin scaling solution.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams has introduced a new open-source protocol named UniswapX that will aggregate liquidity across decentralized exchange pools.

The protocol, released today by Uniswap, will enable users to find optimum prices for their trades by pooling its liquidity sources, according to an official blog post. This aggregator service has been launched as an opt-in beta feature on Uniswap Labs’ front-end platform on Ethereum.

UniswapX aims to be an open network of third-party entities called “fillers” who compete to fill swaps using onchain liquidity like decentralized exchange pools across all of Uniswap versions or their own private inventory, according to Hayden Adams.

“Swappers can use the Uniswap interface without worrying whether they’re getting the best price and transactions will always be transparently recorded and settled onchain,” Adams explained. “All orders are backstopped by the Uniswap smart order router, which forces fillers to compete with Uniswap v1, v2, v3 and, once it launches, v4.”

Uniswap is the largest decentralized exchange protocol by daily trade volume. In the last 24 hours alone, the decentralized exchange protocol handled approximately $260 million on its version 3 platform on the Ethereum mainnet.

Gas-free trades and MEV protection on UniswapX

One of the main features of UniswapX will be gas-free execution, allowing swappers to authorize off-chain orders while fillers pay the gas fees on their behalf. 

“With UniswapX, swappers sign a unique off-chain order, which is then submitted on-chain by fillers who pay gas on swappers’ behalf,” said Adams. “Since swappers don’t have to pay gas, they don’t require a chain’s native network token (like ETH, MATIC) to trade.”

The protocol will also have the ability to safeguard against maximal extractable value (MEV) — thereby resulting in improved swap prices and discouraging malicious value extraction from network participants like sandwiching, Adams added. For this purpose, the so-called fillers will be incentivized to use private transaction relays when routing orders to onchain liquidity venues.

UniswapX also includes a protocol fee switch that can be activated later if approved via a vote by Uniswap’s governance body.

Adams emphasized that UniswapX will be immutable and that Uniswap Labs cannot modify or pause its contract. Users will maintain self-custody of their funds throughout the swaps. 

© 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.

UniswapX, announced at EthCC in Paris, offers better prices by aggregating liquidity sources, gas-free swaps, and protection against MEV.

ZK tech developer Nil Foundation, also known as “=nil; Foundation,” partnered with cryptographic hardware producer Fabric Cryptography to build a decentralized marketplace for cryptography and outsourced proof generation, with the ultimate goal of facilitating faster, more scalable, more private and interoperable zero-knowledge computing.

“Cryptography has a problem,” Fabric CEO Michael Gao said in a statement. “New protocols, new coins, and new projects mushroom every day. The public continues to associate blockchain technology with speculation and a lack of real-world application.”

“Developers will appreciate the hardware-accelerated performance of zkLLVM circuits for proving computations, while proof generators can enjoy enhanced profitability with Fabric’s VPU on the Proof Market,” Nil Foundation founder Mikhail Komarov said in the statement.

Nil Foundation unveiled its premier zero-knowledge builder zkLLVM in February that allows developers to use popular coding languages such as C++ to build Ethereum chains and applications, forgoing the need to learn new programming languages.

© 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.

The effort will accelerate the deployment of zero-knowledge proofs, one of the hottest trends in blockchain technology, they said.

The latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for July 17, 2023. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets.

Episode 66 of Season 5 of The Scoop was recorded with The Block’s Frank Chaparro, Lightspeed Partner and Head of Gaming Moritz Baier-Lentz, and Faction Managing Partner Samuel Harrison

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Youtube, Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please send feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblock.co.

---

Moritz Baier-Lentz is a partner and head of gaming at Lightspeed, and Sam Harrison is the managing partner of Faction.

In this episode, Baier-Lentz and Harrison unpack their thesis behind investing in the Web3 gaming industry. 

While Web3 gaming has yet to reach mainstream appeal, Baier-Lentz and Harrison state that a combination of technological advancements and veteran game developers embracing blockchain rails will help facilitate breakout Web3 games in the near future.

Outline:

1:13 Web3 VC Update

4:41 Lightspeed + Faction

8:46 Market Cycles

14:04 Web3 vs. Web2 Gaming

20:40 Gaming Metrics for VC

23:38 Tokenomics & Gaming

33:50 AI & Gaming

38:41 Closing Thoughts

© 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.

Blockchain payments firm Ripple anticipates that U.S. banks and other financial institutions will return to utilize its On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product, which uses XRP as a bridge between fiat currencies for cross-border payments, following a mixed ruling in its legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Stu Alderoty, Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer, said the San Francisco-based company plans to start talks with financial firms this quarter, during an interview with CNBC on Friday. Asked whether American banks would return to Ripple’s ODL product following the ruling, “I think the answer to that is yes,” Alderoty said.

“I think we’re hopeful that this decision would give financial institution customers or potential customers comfort to at least come in and start having the conversation about what problems they are experiencing in their business in terms of moving value across borders without incurring obscene fees,” Alderoty added.

Bank of America was piloting Ripple’s technology in 2019, though was reportedly waiting for the case to conclude before any further partnership. American Express and Santander also teamed up with the firm for cross-border payments in 2017. The majority of Ripple’s customers are currently based outside of the U.S.

Ripple’s partial victory 

Last week, Southern District Court of New York Judge Analisa Torres declined to issue a summary judgment requested by both the SEC and Ripple in the enforcement over whether XRP is an unregistered security, with a trial now possible.

The securities regulator accused Ripple of illegally raising $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP in 2020 and also sued CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen. The dispute centered around whether the Ripple-launched XRP token is an unregistered security and whether the sale of it is unlawful. 

The SEC’s allegations had a detrimental impact on Ripple’s business, resulting in the loss of customers and investors. MoneyGram, a major U.S. money transfer company, suspended its partnership with Ripple in March 2021 amid the lawsuit.

Torres ruled partially in favor of both sides. She agreed with the SEC’s argument that direct institutional investment contracts involving XRP were unlawful securities sales but took Ripple’s side on other “blind bid” programmatic sales, where Ripple did not know who the buyer was, ruling that those did not break securities laws. The sales brought in $728.9 million and $757 million, respectively.

The crypto industry largely celebrated the partial victory for Ripple, though Alderoty conceded it was not a total win for the firm. Following its partial defeat, the SEC left the door open for an appeal of the decision, which independent experts also expect. However, on Saturday, Katie Haun, a former Department of Justice prosecutor and crypto venture investor, said an appeal of the court decision was “unlikely.”

The price of XRP soared following the mixed ruling, roughly doubling to trade at $0.95 for the first time in over a year, as its daily trading volume surged 18-fold. XRP currently trades at $0.74, according to CoinGecko data. It is currently the fourth largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of $38.5 billion.

© 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.

Lawmakers appear to have largely ignored pleas from organizations linked to Polygon, NEAR and Cardano about the kill-switch, according to a final version of the text seen by CoinDesk