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MakerDAO, one of the oldest and largest DeFi protocols and the creator of the DAI stablecoin, is set to integrate the Ethereum Layer 2 network StarkNet on April 28 as part of its multichain strategy.

Deploying MakerDAO on StarkNet will allow users to mint and trade DAI faster and at a cheaper cost. “It’s going to be about 10x improvement in cost compared to Ethereum,” Louis Baudoin, facilitator for the StarkNet core unit at MakerDAO, told The Block.

As for speed, it currently it takes 1-2 minutes to process transactions on StarkNet, Baudoin said, but the goal is to reduce this to a few seconds within the next year. Ethereum transactions can take up to 5 minutes to process, depending on the gas fees paid and the network’s congestion.

StarkNet, developed by StarkWare, uses ZK-rollups — a Layer 2 technology that bundles Ethereum transactions off the main chain — to support a larger number of transactions at a lower cost.

MakerDAO’s StarkNet integration is an expansion of its multichain roadmap. The Ethereum-based protocol has previously integrated Arbitrum and Optimism, two networks based on a different scaling technique known as optimistic rollups.

The StarkNet integration will occur in four phases, Baudoin explained.

On April 28, a simple token bridge will be released for DAI transactions. The second phase will implement fast withdrawals from Layer 2 to Layer 1, in the second quarter of this year. The third step, in the third quarter, will include Layer 2 to Layer 2 teleportation. And, finally, MakerDAO will deploy full multi-collateral DAI (MCD) on Starknet in the fourth quarter of 2022 or the first quarter of 2023.

MakerDAO aims to support more networks in the future. Baudoin said the protocol will support “most Ethereum Layer 2s and some key Layer 1s.” For Layer 1s, MakerDAO will deploy wrapped DAI, he said.

“The aim of the multichain strategy is to capitalize on the speed and cost advantages of Layer 2 chains while also growing coverage of DAI and making it the stablecoin of choice within the multichain world,” said MakerDAO.

© 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.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has appointed an interim lead for its efforts to regulate digital assets. 

Victoria McLoughlin will take up the charge, according to a LinkedIn post, having worked at the FCA for more than a decade. She was previously a supervision manager for cryptoassets and digital markets. 

“It’s an incredibly important time for the sector – and will be a real privilege to lead delivery of our supervisory strategy & our fantastic specialist teams in a new FCA Department as we shape the future of financial services & deliver good outcomes for consumers, markets & firms in coming months,” McLoughlin wrote in the post. 

She has a legal background, having trained as a solicitor at Magic Circle law firm Linklaters. During her training she was seconded to Lehman Brothers. 

The regulator had put out a search for a crypto head in mid-March as pressure mounted ahead of its deadline for granting firms anti-money laundering licenses, which would allow them to continue operating in the UK. The complicated and protracted process for granting licenses has meant that some firms, including marketmaker B2C2, Blockchain.com and BCB Group, have opted to seek regulatory approval elsewhere. 

As it stands, there are still five firms on the FCA’s temporary register, including custody heavyweight Copper and neobank Revolut. Earlier this month, the FCA called for contributors for its first “Crypto Sprint” event, as it promised to engage with the industry to inform its policymaking. 

Meanwhile, the Treasury has laid out its plans to regulate stablecoins and issue an NFT via the Royal Mint. 

© 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.

Sleuths on Twitter have noticed that Coinbase has added a price page for an Optimism token — despite one not existing yet. It doesn’t show any price data but the page features the Optimism name and can be currently accessed.

There could be a few different explanations for this. Perhaps Coinbase is undergoing testing for these pages or a rogue employee decided to make this page just to cause rumors. Or, as was the case with Robinhood, this could suggest an imminent listing for an Optimism token.

According to Tree of Alpha, who first noticed the page, their bots (which scan for new pages on a website) picked up the page around midnight on Monday UTC time. They noted to The Block that it’s only accessible via a direct link and the page does not appear in search results on the main website.

Optimism is a scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain. It has long been rumoured that it would be launching a token, perhaps issued as an airdrop at the point of handing over goverance of the project to its community.

Just yesterday, Optimism published a blog post that suggested this could come sooner rather than later. It said, “We’re nearing the end of a chapter and the beginning of the next — one driven by community ownership and governance. And it’s fast approaching.”

While tokens have typically taken some time before they land on Coinbase — with assets sometimes waiting years to make it onto the exchange — this has changed a bit recently. For instance, when Bored Ape Yacht Club launched ApeCoin, an airdrop to all Bored Ape NFT owners, it was instantly available on Coinbase, as well as other major exchanges. This could suggest the exchange is trying to be the first to list tokens, as opposed to the last.

We have reached out to Coinbase and Optimism and will update this article should we hear back.

For more breaking stories like this, make sure to subscribe to The Block on Telegram.

© 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.

A slew of crypto exchange-traded products are set to begin trading in the land down under. 

As per the Australian Financial Review, the country’s main clearing house ASX Clear said that four ETF issuers have agreed to cover the margin requirements to list new crypto-related products on Cboe Australia. 

21Shares — which operates a number of crypto exchange-traded products in Europe — said in a press release today that it will launch a physically-backed ether and bitcoin exchange-traded fund in Australia. In the US, regulators have given the green light to futures-based crypto ETF products, but they have not approved spot-tied products to trade on US-based derivatives exchanges. 21Shares, a Switzerland-based firm, is partnering with ETF Securities to launch the two funds. They will track the price of bitcoin and ether in Australian dollars. 

“Australian investors clearly want and deserve an affordable, easy, and professional way to access the growing crypto asset class and we’re delighted to continue building accessible bridges into the crypto world,” said 21Shares CEO Hany Rashwan. “We’re starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum but have even more exciting plans for Australian investors.”

21Shares offers ETPs (exchange-traded products) tracking a wide range of assets, including Tezos and Solana. 

As per the AFR, Cosmos Asset Management is also looking to launch its own bitcoin futures ETF on April 27. The paper says the products could see as much as $1 billion worth of inflows.

ETFs provide a vehicles for investors to gain exposure to various assets, ranging from stocks to commodities. A bitcoin ETF has been viewed as the key to unlocking wealth advisory channels to crypto and a broader retail investor base.

© 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.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is encouraging global policymakers to develop standards for crypto in response to growing concerns highlighted by the war in Ukraine.

In its Global Financial Stability Report published Tuesday, the IMF directly addressed crypto’s potential use in sanctions evasion by Russia and its potential to threaten the stability of existing financial systems through the changing banking landscape.

The global financial system has seen increasing “cryptoization” amid the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the IMF. Though much of this is due to general trading activity, the IMF warned that it could be used as a means of circumventing identification checks in capital flows, essentially, a means of anonymously transacting overseas.

Bad actors may use non-compliant exchanges, mixers or other means to evade sanctions, though the IMF noted US and UK regulators have urged crypto firms to increase vigilance. They could also leverage energy resources to mine crypto and increase their funds. 

To mitigate these crypto-specific risks, the IMF recommended that nations focus on the implementation of the Financial Action Task Force standards, which included a travel rule for crypto assets that require exchanges to transmit sender and recipient identification information, as well as implementing additional laws and regulations on foreign exchange and capital flow management to cover crypto. 

“Essential steps include developing a comprehensive, consistent, and coordinated regulatory approach to crypto assets, and applying it effectively to capital flow management measures; establishing international collaborative arrangements for implementation; addressing data gaps; and leveraging technology (“regtech” and “suptech”),” said the report.

The report also takes a closer look at the decentralized finance (DeFi) space as a new form of intermediary and calls on regulators to tackle the new legal questions DeFi poses – essentially, how to regulate an entity that lacks a centralized point of contact.

“Regulation should focus on elements of the crypto ecosystem that enable DeFi, such as stablecoin issuers and centralized exchanges,” the report suggested. “Authorities should also encourage DeFi platforms to be subject to robust governance schemes, including industry codes and self-regulatory organizations. These entities could provide an effective conduit for regulatory oversight.”

The IMF previously called for a “comprehensive, consistent and coordinated” global policy for cryptocurrency in December of last year.

© 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.

BlockApps, an enterprise blockchain provider, has raised $41 million in funding to grow its development team and accelerate its go-to-market strategy, the company announced today.

The funding was led by Liberty City Ventures, with new participating investors including Morgan Creek Digital, Eidetic Ventures, and Givic. Existing investors ConsenSys, Bloccelerate, Fitz Gate Ventures, Arab Angels, Kenetic Capital, and PropelX also participated.

BlockApps will also be using the funding to “expand its partner program and bring in more real assets to STRATO, the company’s industry-leading enterprise blockchain,” said a statement from the company.

An enterprise blockchain works similarly to other networks of this type,  except for how the visibility of that data can be restricted to a select number of people, offering participants more privacy than a public network like Bitcoin or Ethereum. These blockchains can be used in an effort to streamline processes like tracking supply chains.

BlockApps was incubated in 2015, focused on “solving some of the world’s biggest challenges and causing industries to re-think what’s possible with blockchain technology – especially when it comes to navigating the complexities of today’s sustainability challenges and supply chain issues,” as Murtaza Akbar, founding partner at Liberty City Ventures, put in a statement.

Since launching STRATO on Microsoft’s Azure in 2015, its customers have included Bayer Crop Science, the U.S. government, and Blockchain for Energy, a group of large energy companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil.

In the past 14 months, BlockApps has launched an application that traces food and agricultural products starting from its seed. It has also launched a carbon data management product for companies. 

© 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.

Sandy Kaul, Citi Prime Finance’s former global head of business advisory services, has started a new role as senior vice president at Franklin Templeton.

In a LinkedIn post, the Citi veteran wrote that, in her new role, she will be “building out Advisory & Thought Leadership on the evolution of the Investment and Wealth Management space as part of the Franklin Institute with a special focus on digital assets and models.”

Franklin Templeton serves clients in more than 155 countries and had approximately $1.5 trillion in assets under management as of March 31, 2022, it said.

Kaul had been with Citi since 2009, where she produced primary research on the evolution of the hedge fund and alternatives investment industry. 

“We are in a singular position today to define how we are going to respond to the transformative changes taking place across our industry, to position for the next decade and beyond,” Kaul said in a press statement. 

“Sandy is a revolutionary thinker with an uncanny ability to predict the future of our industry and foresee the future needs of our clients, and I am quite thrilled to have her join us at this pivotal time in the industry,” Jenny Johnson, president and CEO of Franklin Templeton added.

The Block first reported that Kaul had left the bank earlier in April, alongside a number of other longstanding executives who have chosen to leave the bank for the digital assets space. 

Other Citi alumni who have left Citi in the past few months after long stints include Alex Kriete, Greg Girasole and Frank Cavallo. Most recently, Kriete and Girasole served as co-heads of the Citi Global Wealth digital assets group. They formed a new investment management firm dedicated to crypto named Motus Capital.

Matt Zhang also launched his $1.5 billion crypto venture fund Hivemind Capital Partners in November to much fanfare. The move followed a 14-year stint at Citi, where he was global co-head of structured products trading.  

© 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.

The international entertainment firm United Talent Agency (UTA) has signed on DeadFellaz, a non-fungible token (NFT) project composed of 10,000 green-skinned zombies, according to The Hollywood Reporter. 

DeadFellaz was launched in August of 2021 and has a floor price of 1.87 ETH (about $5,802) on OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT market by trade volume. There are over 6,000 DeadFellaz holders with more than 26,000 ETH in volumes traded for the project. 

UTA, which manages famous figures such as musicians like Halsey and speakers like Malala Yousafzai, will help DeadFellaz broaden opportunities in gaming and merchandise, among other areas, according to The Hollywood Reporter’s report.

DeadFellaz is not the first NFT-oriented project UTA has signed. In August 2021, UTA signed Larva Labs, creator of the popular NFT project CryptoPunks, for media representation, The Block previously reported. However, Larva Labs has since sold the intellectual property to CryptoPunks and its other popular NFT project Meebits to Yuga Labs, creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club.

© 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.

The Puerto Rico Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions has granted Binance.US a money transmitter license, the company announced on April 19.

“Puerto Rico, in particular, is an important market for the growth of crypto and we look forward to continuing to offer its residents secure, reliable, and low-fee access to a robust selection of tokens,” Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder said in a statement. 

Puerto Rico has gained a reputation as a crypto hub over the past few years, with investor Brock Pierce spearheading efforts to attract entrepreneurs to the island now known for its crypto-friendly tax policies. 

Earlier this month, Binance.US raised more than $200 million at a $4.5 billion pre-money valuation. The U.S.-based affiliate of crypto exchange Binance also received money transmitter licenses in West Virginia, Connecticut, and Wyoming this year, the company said in its announcement.

Binance.US now operates in 45 U.S. states and seven territories through its own licenses and those of third parties, the company added. 

According to the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry (NMLS) Resource Center, a money transmitter license in Puerto Rico is required to “offer services or engage in activities in which any order of payment is received, including, but not limited to bank drafts, checks, personal money orders, or any other means of money transmission or payment, including those carried out by electronic transfer, wire, telephone, or any other medium to be transferred to a beneficiary, and which services require the person for whom the money transmission is processed, transacted, or conducted to pay a service charge.”

© 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.

Quick Take

• France’s blockchain startups are gathering steam but face an uncertain European regulatory environment and competition with the UK. 
• With speeches from Binance’s Changpeng Zhao and France’s sovereign wealth fund, last week’s Paris Blockchain Week aimed to add weight to France as a European crypto hub.

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