Welcome to your #1 source for crypto news, DeFi, and everything in between. If you want to know what's happening in the world onchain, well, you've come to the right place.
What's in this edition:
- tBTC wants to takeover WBTC
- Dyad strikes gold
- Arbitrum Stylus Upgrade Soon™️
Don't forget to check out the best longform "Good Reads" at the end of the newsletter
tBTC Proposes Merger with WBTC Amid Custody Concerns
Wild news for Bitcoin, Threshold Network has proposed a merger between its decentralized tBTC and the widely adopted Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC).
Bitgo's WBTC, with a total value locked (TVL) of approximately $9 billion, is the most popular Bitcoin wrapped variant across all of DeFi. However, BitGo, the trusted custody provider for WBTC, recently announced plans to transfer control of the WBTC product to a joint venture with BiT Global. This decision has sparked concern within the crypto community, particularly due to the involvement of Justin Sun, whose projects have been scrutinized for potential misappropriation of collateral.
The announcement has prompted major DeFi protocols to take protective measures. MakerDAO has already ratified a proposal to disable further WBTC borrowing, while Aave is closely monitoring the situation, ready to take action to ensure market safety and stability.
tBTC's Proposed Solution
Threshold Network, the team behind tBTC, has proposed a merger that would combine WBTC's extensive user base and integrations with tBTC's decentralized custody and permissionless bridging mechanism. This move aims to address the concerns raised by the crypto community while preserving WBTC's liquidity and widespread adoption.
Key aspects of the proposal include:
- Transferring WBTC's custody to Threshold's decentralized system
- Granting BitGo a significant stake in Threshold Network, by minting nearly $36m worth of tBTC transferring it to Bitgo.
- A phased implementation to ensure a secure transition
As part of the proposal, Threshold DAO has offered to mint an additional 15% of its fully diluted supply as a grant for BitGo. This grant, valued at approximately $36.4 million at current prices, would make BitGo the largest stakeholder in Threshold Network.
If successful, this merger could have far-reaching implications for the DeFi ecosystem. It would address the immediate concerns surrounding WBTC's custody while potentially creating a more decentralized and robust tokenized Bitcoin solution.
For now, we're waiting for BitGo's response to this proposal. If declined, Threshold Network has indicated they would repurpose the proposed token mint to facilitate a safe and orderly exit from WBTC for DeFi.
Threshold's governance token is down 10% on the week.
Dyad Liftoff!
Welp. Hope you enjoyed farming Dyad at cheap prices. Over this last week, inflows to Ethereum's hottest new stablecoin increased 10-fold, rocketing to almost $30m.
Dyad's token Kerosene responded as well, up 1000% from when we had our interview with Founder Joey Roth.
If you missed the interview, go watch it now to understand why Dyad is preforming so well and also you can read our write up on how Dyad works.
Samuel McCulloch
Arbitrum Stylus Upgrade
Today, Arbitrum announced that its latest upgrade to Arbitrum Nitro, Stylus, will go live next Tuesday, September 3rd.
For context, Arbitrum Nitro was the tech stack that powered Arbitrum One, Nova, and Orbit chains. Stylus brings another “coequal virtual machine to the EVM,” meaning that EVM contracts would act the same as if they were on Ethereum's main net. Arbitrum calls this paradigm “MultiVM since everything is entirely additive.”
In their documentation, Arbitrum highlights six key features to the Stylus upgrade:
Stylus lets you write smart contracts in programming languages that compile down to WASM, such as Rust, C, C++, and many others.
Rich language support already exists for Rust: you can use the Stylus SDK and CLI tool to start building today.
Stylus smart contracts benefit from Arbitrum's EVM equivalence thanks to a second, coequal WASM virtual machine.
Solidity contracts and Stylus contracts are fully interoperable. In Solidity, you can call a Rust program and vice versa.
Stylus contracts are over an order of magnitude faster with significantly lower gas fees due to the superior efficiency of WASM programs.
Memory use can be greatly optimized when using Stylus, unlocking new use cases now that consuming RAM is viable on the blockchain.
Through this upgrade, developers can use their preferred programming language to build on Arbitrum, enabling interoperability across any Arbitrum chain using the Stylus upgrade. Additionally, with Stylus’ MultiVM, developers can use all the benefits of EVM without having to change anything. As Arbitrum put it, “EVM equivalence is no longer the ceiling; it’s the floor.”
The Stylus testnet is currently available for anybody to use. So once you’re done touching grass this weekend, you can play around with the testnet to see what to expect next week!
Good Reads
- Binance Research writes Web3 - The Household Name in the Making
- Bridge X article on "Bridge: An entirely new payments platform, built with stablecoins, to simplify global money movement"
- Jonathan Blanco writes "NFTs are not securities but they can be if you treat them as one"
- Level (lvlUSD) announces fundraise of $3.6M co-led by Dragonfly and Polychain Capital
- Pendle announces support for eBTC
