🚀 The scalability of #Ethereum is right around the corner, and zero-knowledge rollups play an important role in this!

🤔 But do you know what they are and how they work?

Thread 👇🧵 ⛓️ Blockchains can be slow and expensive due to their distributed structure.

Zero-knowledge (ZK) #rollups use the minimum data necessary to verify transactions by unburdening #Ethereum from excess network workload. This makes the network both faster and cheaper. 🚀

JP Morgan recently made history as the first major bank to execute a LIVE DeFi trade 💹🤯

@TyLobban is the head of @JPMorgan's blockchain-focused unit, named 'Onyx', which executed the trade.

Here's Ty on how TradFi can successfully enter into DeFi 🧵👇 1/ First, what are the benefits of blockchain for TradFi?:

- The ability to exchange financial information in a better way, and deliver new insights thanks to a distributed ledger technology.

- The transfer of value. Specifically, money.

BREAKING: Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing out of @FTX_Official wallets into one wallet, with current totals surpassing ~$390M Etherscan link: etherscan.io/address/0x59ab…

💣The spectacular collapse of crypto exchange @FTX_Official roiled crypto markets this week, sending #Bitcoin plunging to a 2-year low.

How did things go so wrong, so fast?

Here's everything you need to know🧵 Prior to this week, FTX was a derivatives powerhouse with over $10B in daily volume.

FTX and crypto hedge fund Alameda Research are pillars of the crypto empire headed by @SBF_FTX, who was hailed as crypto's savior earlier this year after bailing out various troubled entities.

ALL of DeFi could potentially become ILLEGAL?! 🤯

The CFTC's case against Ooki DAO will set precedent that could forever alter the future of DeFi.

However, Gabriel Shapiro (@lex_node) believes the CFTC's position can be attacked on two assumptions.

Here's the argument 🧵👇 1/ First, some context:

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recently sued Ooki DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization.

The CFTC alleges they offered leveraged/margin trading products without being registered in the U.S. as a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM).

Four hacks in one day might be a new record 🤯

More than $115M was stolen from DeFi protocols TODAY.

👇 1/ @Rabby_io's Rabby Swap smart contract contained an exploit resulting in the loss of ~$200,000

https://twitter.com/Rabby_io/status/1579819525494960128?s=20&t=1ukFn2j75yQQNEverg7COQ

This Week in Crypto 📝

@BNBCHAIN's official bridge was hacked for more than half a BILLION dollars and @CelsiusNetwork doxxed the names and investments of its customers in bankruptcy court

🧵👇 1/ Around 4PM ET on Oct. 6, @BNBCHAIN paused BSC, citing irregular activity

The irregular activity was the movement of massive amounts of $BNB ($2M tokens) by the attacker in an attempt to launder funds

https://twitter.com/BNBCHAIN/status/1578148078636650496

Around 3-6M transactions/week are processed on StarkNet (more than $BTC some weeks!) 😱

Using ZK-STARK technology, $ETH could surpass the txn speeds of @Visa within just a few months

Here’s how @StarkWareLtd founders @EliBenSasson & @ukolodny plan to level up Ethereum scaling👇 1/ First, what are ZK Proofs?

"Zero-knowledge proofs are a method by which one party can prove to another party that a given statement is true, without revealing any additional information apart from the fact the statement is in fact true."

This Week in Crypto 📝

The @Cosmos team revealed new $ATOM tokenomics which aim to position Cosmos Hub as the centre of the ecosystem and @Mashinsky, CEO of bankrupt crypto lender @CelsiusNetwork, has resigned.

🧵👇 1/ @Cosmos is planning to restructure its tokenomics to drive more value to $ATOM and better secure its network of chains

The proposal aims to position Cosmos Hub as the centre of the ecosystem, improve revenue capture, and reduce ATOM issuance over the next 3 years

What does the future of Ethereum look like now that the Merge is complete? 🤔

@benjaminion_xyz is the product owner of @Consensys' ETH2.0 enterprise client @Teku_ConsenSys and has been heavily plugged in to Ethereum's transition to PoS.

Here's what comes next for $ETH 🧵👇 1/ First, the immediate effects of the Merge:

Environmental impact ♻️

- $ETH's transition to Proof-of-Stake resulted in a -99.98% reduction in energy consumption

- The Merge took an entire country's energy consumption off the global grid by moving to PoS

It's the moment we've all been waiting for... 🐼

In less than 24 hours, Ethereum will undergo 'The Merge', the most significant upgrade in its eight-year history

Here's what's going to happen 🧵👇 1/ The Merge is the process of joining $ETH’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Beacon Chain with its Proof-of-Work (PoW) Mainnet

This Week in Crypto 📝

The $ETH/BTC ratio soared to its highest level since December 2021 after a successful Bellatrix fork, and @ensdomains is suing @GoDaddy & @foldfinance over the sale of a domain name.

🧵👇 1/ On Sep. 5th, @ensdomains filed a lawsuit against @GoDaddy, alleging the company unlawfully sold the eth.link domain

@foldfinance acquired the domain at auction on Sep. 3 for the hefty price of $852,000

Imagine...

A social network where users are NOT the product 😱

This is what @StaniKulechov is building at @LensProtocol 🌱

Stani is the founder & CEO of @AaveAave, and his latest mission is to reimagine how social networks are built

He explains how in this week's podcast 🧵👇 1/ Blockchain technology isn't just useful for decentralized finance.

"We've seen how NFTs allow creators to go directly to their own communities and have that relationship with their fanbases, and to value their social capital within that community."

This Week in Crypto 📝

@avalancheavax is caught up in a scandal as lawyer Kyle Roche is accused of using frivolous lawsuits to hinder the chain's competition, and @arbitrum executes its 'Nitro' upgrade, vastly improving scalability while reducing transaction fees.

🧵👇 1/ 🔺 In a series of brief, undercover videos published on a website called 'Crypto Leaks,' lawyer Kyle Roche bragged of his close ties to the founder of the $AVAX blockchain and seemed to suggest he had filed frivolous lawsuits in a bid to weaken its competitors.

This week's guest on The Defiant Podcast authored the first-ever blog post about Bitcoin 🎙️

@zooko was an early Bitcoin contributor long before starting @zcash 🛡️

For Zooko, $ZEC is not about privacy, it's about freedom.

Here's the fascinating story of @zcash's beginnings 🧵👇 1/ Zcash's slogan is 'privacy is normal'.

"I think it's a funny sort of inversion in the popular discourse where some people want to portray tools that give people free expression and free choice as being radical, weird, novel things — that's the opposite of reality."

This Week in Crypto 📝

"Bellatrix," the first stage of The Merge, is set to take place on September 6 as Ethereum's record low burn rate calls the prevailing deflationary narrative into question.

🧵👇 The initial step in Ethereum's two-part transition to Proof-of-Stake will be an update to its consensus layer, dubbed 'Bellatrix'.

The second update, dubbed 'Paris', will update the execution layer and complete the transition.

This Week in Crypto 📝

Ethereum's final testnet successfully completed the Merge while the market weighs the aftermath of sanctions against crypto mixer @TornadoCash in the United States

🧵👇 1/ On August 8, the U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) added @TornadoCash to its Specially Designated Nationals list, a designation reserved for those identified as threats to national security

The move makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to interact with the protocol

This Week in Crypto 📝

Two large scale exploits occurred with the @nomadxyz_ bridge being looted for ~$190M and @slope_finance leaking users' seed phrases, and the world's largest asset manager @BlackRock partnered up with @coinbase to offer crypto services to its clients

🧵👇 1/ In the 5th largest hack in DeFi history, $190M was stolen from cross-chain bridge @nomadxyz_ by more than 40 attackers

A vulnerability that allowed messages to be spoofed was abused by a frenzy of attackers who could get money out by just copy/pasting the prior transaction

In this week's podcast 🎙️

@CamiRusso is joined by Will Warren, co-founder and CEO of @0xProject

$ZRX is a full-stack decentralized exchange protocol, complete with a user-facing application @matchaxyz along with trade execution and settlement layers.

This is @willwarren 🧵👇 1/ 📉 On DEX volumes amid the downtrend:

"Yield farming activities have really inflated the amount of economic activity happening on-chain, and that is starting to cool off. I think the space is starting to go beyond it with different ways of incentivizing activity."

This Week in Crypto 📝

Communities mull important decisions as proposed compensation for @SushiSwap's new 'Head Chef' is met with skepticism, and users of @harmonyprotocol fume over the team's proposed solution to last month's $100M hack.

🧵👇 1/ In an effort to resolve a leadership crisis, members of @SushiSwap DAO are voting on the possible election of @staringispolite as the decentralized exchange's new 'Head Chef.'

The proposed pay package for the position has sparked heavy debate amongst community members.

In this week's podcast 🎙️

@CamiRusso is joined by Hart Lambur, co-founder of @UMAprotocol, an optimistic oracle on Ethereum.

$UMA stands for 'Universal Market Access,' which sums up Hart's mission of making financial products & services accessible to all.

Here's @hal2001 🧵👇 1/ 🏦 Parallels between now and the '08 financial crisis:

"DeFi is exactly what needed to exist in '08, where you could see who your risks are. It's transparent on-chain, you can see whether you're collateralized, or who needs to be liquidated. It was not DeFi that caused this."