Daily Web3 Headlines You Need To Know
11 August #NFT #Developers #DeFi&Trading #Policy&Law
🖼 NFT
Table Tennis Goes Crypto With Plans for NFT, Web3 Crossovers
乒乓通过NFT、Web 3的跨界计划加盟加密界
World Table Tennis (WTT), the events arm of the sport’s governing body, said Wednesday it is pursuing Web3 initiatives in partnership with non-fungible token startup NFT Tech — in an effort to expand the game. The multiyear tie-up will see WTT issue “digital collectibles, metaverse experiences, play-to-earn and move-to-earn gaming,” according to a release shared with CoinDesk. WTT told CoinDesk it runs more than 50 events a year…(Read More)
NFT Collections Will Be Regulated Like Cryptocurrencies Under EU’s MiCA Law, Official Says
官员声称，NFT收藏将如同加密货币一样受到欧盟的MiCA法管制
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that are part of a collection will have to apply new European Union crypto rules intended to warn investors of risks, an official told attendees at Korea Blockchain Week on Tuesday…(Read More)
🔗 Developers
Launching Aleo Testnet 3,the First Layer-1 for Decentralized Private Applications
启动Aleo Testnet 3，一个去中心化的私有应用程序第一层
Aleo, the first Layer-1 (L1) for decentralized private applications, today announces the launch of Aleo Testnet 3. For the first time, developers can build and execute fully-private applications on the Aleo Virtual Machine (AVM), and host them on the Aleo blockchain, a decentralized and permissionless network of zero-knowledge validators…(Read More)
📈 DeFi & Trading
Optimism TVL surges nearly 300% M/M ahead of The Merge upgrade
Optimism TVL在合并升级之前激增近300% M/M
According to data from DefiLlama, total value locked (TVL) on Optimism, a layer-2 scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain, has surged 284% in the past month. The vast majority of TVL consists of users lending and borrowing assets on Aave through Optimism’s layer-2 chain…(Read More)
Nuri Files for Insolvency as Crypto Fundraising Reached $30.3 Billion in H1 2022
加密融资在2022年上半年达到303亿美元，Nuri申请破产
The German cryptocurrency exchange, Nuri affirmed it has filed for insolvency on 9 August 2022. Earlier this year, Nuri was already experiencing difficulties, which led to reducing its workforce in May 2022…(Read More)
⚖️ Policy & Law
Bye-bye Brokers: EU Tries Stock Trading, the Web3 Way
再见经纪人：欧盟尝试以Web 3的方式进行股票交易
The European Union (EU) has had a busy few months defining crypto regulations, with its flagship licensing regime, the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation and controversial money-laundering controls both securing political deals meaning they’ll soon become law…(Read More)
🔍 Learn
#Tornado Cash #Sanction
On 8 August 2022, the US Department of the Treasury has announced sanctions against Tornado Cash, which it claims has helped launder more than $455m for the Lazarus Group, a hacking organisation associated with the North Korean government. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Treasury Department’s regulatory agency responsible for preventing sanctions violations, added Tornado Cash to its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, which is designed to account for all sanctioned persons, entities and cryptocurrency addresses.
What is SDN?
OFAC, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Treasury with primary responsibility for enforcing economic and trade sanctions against foreign individuals and organizations, currently has over 9,000 designated individuals or entities on OFAC’s SDN list.
Under its regulations, unless authorized or exempted by a general or specific license issued by OFAC, all individuals and entities in the United States and any foreign affiliates of such entities are prohibited from interacting with addresses on the SDN list and may face fines of $50,000 to $10,000,000 and penalties of 10 to 30 years in prison for willful non-compliance. And in addition to not being able to use Tornado Cash, it may also affect miners and some US funds that invest in Ether POS.
What is Tornado Cash?
In 2019, Tornado Cash, known as a cryptocurrency tumblr or ‘mixer’, detached from the Zcash team. Its co-founder Roman Semenov, a staunch decentralization seeker, has repeatedly emphasized the nature of Tornado — in addition to the smart contract code, they have also open-sourced its front-end, making the UI, among other things, publicly available on top of the IPFS network. In several interviews, Roman Semenov has said that “the Tornado protocol is unshutdownable”, and while it is true that Tornado cannot be shut down 100% of the time, it is now under siege on all fronts.
Shortly after the official OFAC ban was issued, the official Tornado Cash website became inaccessible, and more project parties such as Github, Citcoin, Alchemy etc., launched their own sanctions.
What does this mean for the American Ethereum miners?
If a miner or verifier generates (or verifies) an Ethereum block containing a transaction that contains one of the Ethereum addresses in the SDN list, it seems likely that the OFAC sanctions will be violated. However, how this would be enforced is unclear.
The speculation on this is that, the Ethereum software may be updated with an optional patch that allows miners/validators to ignore contaminated memory pool transactions to avoid violating sanctions.
This could be a risk for any US fund investing in proof-of-stake in Ether, as voting for blocks containing illegal transactions could be illegal activity. Hence, either a technical response (voluntary review) or moving operations outside of U.S. jurisdiction is anticipated. Non-U.S. divisions of the Exchange are separate legal entities, but may be considered de facto “foreign affiliates” of U.S. entities.
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