Ethereum Foundation Probe & Security Status

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Good Morning.

The crypto market remains steady. Base and blast activities are going up. My girlfriend was pissed at me for spending too much time trading meme coins. She said why are you skipping dates but aren’t making any money.

Should’ve aped more into that SMOLE and SLERF pre-sale smh.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: Ethereum Foundation probes ⚖️

• Founders Highlight: Dima & David of LayerN 👨‍💻

• Deal Flows: Figure’s $60M Series A 💰️ 

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WHAT MATTERS

Ethereum Foundation Probed By State Authority

State of play: According to CoinDesk, The Ethereum Foundation is being questioned by an unnamed state authority, as revealed on its GitHub. Fortune also reports that the SEC aims to classify ETH as a security.

• After Ethereum's shift to proof-of-stake, SEC Chair Gary Gensler suggested such networks, rewarding users with tokens for staking, could be seen as securities, without directly naming ETH.

• Fortune reported that the SEC has subpoenaed US companies for documents regarding their interactions with the Ethereum Foundation.

• As of now, the investigation's scope and focus remain unknown.

Brian Quintenz, former CFTC commissioner and now at a16z Crypto, noted the SEC's past acceptance of ETH futures ETFs as a tacit acknowledgment of ETH's non-security status.

• He speculated on the SEC's rationale if it were to challenge ETH's classification, especially after recent court sanctions against the SEC for overreach in a separate case.

• Quintenz remarked it would be noteworthy to see how the SEC justifies any delays or denials of an ETH ETF, especially since it previously stated ETH falls outside its jurisdiction.

• This comment follows the SEC facing significant court penalties for overstepping its authority in a lawsuit against the crypto firm DEBT Box.

Why it Matters: In the unlikely scenario that Ethereum is indeed classified as a security, it would be an extremely significant blow to the crypto space.

For builders and investors: This is a distraction. It’s akin to Musk suing OpenAI — the likelihood of a victory is slim, but it creates a non-trivial distraction.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Dima & David of LayerN

Intro: Dima Romanov and David C. are the co-founders of LayerN, a novel L2 designed as a network of custom and optimized rollup nodes powered by a shared state and liquidity layer (Ethereum StateNet)

Previous background: Before LayerN Dima previously worked at Morgan Stanley in 2021. David was a Fellow in Fifty Years, a seed fund that supports entrepreneurs solving the world's biggest problems.

• Dima is a polyglot, he is proficient in 5 languages: English, French, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian.

• David earned his degree in Computer Science at Harvard.

The big idea: Layer N aims to create a fast composable chain in an era of blockchain modularity where liquidities are fragmented across numerous chains.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 500 crypto VC individuals 👇

INSIGHTS

Bots Caused Spike in Base's Transaction Costs

Credits to 0xKofi for the original tweet.

Kofi, a crypto data analyst, tweeted a compilation of analyses on the spike in Base's transaction costs yesterday, attributing the surge to heightened activity from trading bots paying high-priority fees.

• Yesterday, transactions on Base have become more costly compared to other Layer 2 solutions that utilize blobs.

• Michael Silberling finds activity only began to decrease when Layer 2 congestion pricing pushed gas prices to 4 gwei.

• The surge was likely due to automated actors targeting meme coins for arbitrage, showing less sensitivity to fees than typical users. As a result, demand remained high even as fees increased.

Jesse Pollak, Base’s #001 contributor, argues that it is time to scale Base EVM to more than 1000x.

• He believes Ethereum's focus on a rollup-centric scaling strategy and L2s leveraging L1 decentralization should broaden L2's design potential.

• He said that scaling is essential or Base to lead as on-chain infrastructure is now capable of supporting world-class apps being developed in real-time.

• Alongside scaling the Base EVM, Jesse said efforts will focus on expanding ETH data availability, enhancing superchain scaling with more L2s, and unlocking dedicated L3 block space.

DEAL FLOWS

Figure Markets’ $60M Series A

Deal flows soared this week, we saw $400M+ in deals 💼 

Figure Markets secured over $60M in a Series A funding round, with Jump Crypto, Pantera Capital, and Lightspeed Faction leading, joined by Distributed Global, Ribbit Capital, and CMT Digital.

• Figure Markets CEO said that the goal of the company is “to extend the benefits of blockchain to a broader range of assets — including crypto and securities.”

• The firm will be building on the Provenance blockchain, which it helped develop, aiming for the network to be a marketplace for a range of securities.

• Figure said it is also working towards developing a registered security alternative to stablecoins that will be used for its ecosystem.

Deal flows in the past week:

• Ooga Booga, $1M Seed Round

• EarlyFans, $1.5M Seed Round

• Tensorplex Labs, $3M Seed Round

• Umoja, $4M Seed Round

• Mystiko, $18M Seed Round

• Morph, $20M Seed Round

• D2X, $10M Series A

• Tokenize, $11M Series A

• FIgure, $60M Series A

• Espresso Systems, $28M Series B

• Mantra, $11M Private Round

• Berachain, $69M Private Round

• GRVT, $2.2M Strategic Round

• Tanssi Network, $6M Strategic Round

• Asterix, Undisclosed Strategic Round

• HyperPlay, Undisclosed $ Strategic Round

• Keyring, $6M Venture Round

• TEN, $9M Unknown Round

• Sartoshi0x, $1.6M ICO

• Doodoocoin, $2.3M ICO

• Vombatus_Eth, $2.5M ICO

• Satoshis_Mom, $3.5M ICO

• TrippyLabs, $3.9M ICO

• TemplePharmacy_, $4.6M ICO

• Pepecasso1, $5.7M ICO

• RockyXBT, $7M ICO

• Slerfsol, $10M ICO

• KeroNFTs, $10M ICO

• Pokeepandaa, $10M ICO

• miladymemecoin, $18M ICO

• Dexter_Cap, $31M ICO

• 0xDekadente, $32M ICO

QUICK BITES

• OKX is exiting India.

• Frax targets $100B in TVL by 2026.

• Super Sushi Samurai exploited for $4.6M.

• SEC delays decision on VanEck Spot Ethereum ETH.

• Grayscale adds ETH staking to its ETH ETF Application.

• McHenry says the House has a workable Stablecoin Bill.

• Kraken unveils qualified custody for institutions in Wyoming.

• BlackRock launches its first tokenized asset fund on Ethereum.

• FTX estate faces an estimated $3 to $5B in US government claims.

• Apple M-Series Chip has an un-patchable cryptographic vulnerability.

• Kyle Davis reportedly tried to lure LayerZero to entrust treasury days before 3AC’s collapse.

NOTEWORTHY READS

• Kyrian’s read on understanding Wormhole.

• Nikita Zhavoronkov’s read on upcoming L2s list.

• 0xSmac’s read on it’s my content and I need it NOW.

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.