Evening News | Public Chain Aptos Completes $150 Million Financing; U.S. SEC Investigates Coinbase Over Listing Issues

Organizer: Cookies, Chain Catcher

"What Important Events Happened in the Last 24 Hours"

1. Vitalik: Merge, Surge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge are not phased but occur simultaneously

Vitalik responded on Twitter regarding Argent's review of the five phases of the Ethereum roadmap discussed at the ETHCC conference, stating that Merge, Surge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge are not phased but are all occurring simultaneously.

Previously reported, Vitalik discussed the future roadmap of Ethereum at the EthCC conference in Paris, including Merge and Surge. He stated that at the end of this roadmap, Ethereum will become a more scalable system, capable of processing 100,000 transactions per second by the end. (Source link)

2. U.S. SEC Investigates Coinbase Over Cryptocurrency Listings

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating the publicly listed company Coinbase, suspecting it of allowing Americans to trade unregistered "securities." Sources say this investigation predates last week's insider trading lawsuit.

Previously, the SEC stated last week that seven cryptocurrencies listed on Coinbase are securities in an unrelated insider trading case against a former product manager at the exchange. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has also indicated that some cryptocurrencies already listed on Coinbase should be registered as national securities. (CoinDesk)

3. THORChain Plans to Integrate Networks like Avalanche, Dash, Haven, and Monero

The decentralized cross-chain trading protocol THORChain has released its next phase focus areas, including increasing RUNE binding to nodes and increasing total assets in LPs to generate more trading volume. Additionally, THORChain plans to integrate networks such as Avalanche, Dash, Haven, and Monero.

It is reported that THORChain has focused on network security and stability over the past year. Following the mainnet launch, THORChain is transitioning to scalability and adoption phases to drive more trading volume, swaps, and total value locked (TVL) into the network. (Source link)

4. Public Chain Aptos Completes $150 Million Financing, Led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto

The new public chain project Aptos, founded by members of the Diem team, has completed $150 million in financing, led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, with other investors including Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures, and Superscrypt.

In March, Aptos completed a $200 million strategic financing round led by a16z, with participants including Tiger Global, Katie Haun, Multicoin Capital, Three Arrows Capital, FTX Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures. (The Block)

5. Bithumb's Largest Shareholder Vident Confirms Negotiations with FTX for Bithumb Acquisition

Bithumb's largest shareholder Vident has confirmed that it is in talks with FTX regarding the acquisition of Bithumb, stating, "We are discussing all possibilities regarding sale, exercising the right of first refusal, or joint operation, and will re-disclose relevant information when specific matters are decided within a month."

It is reported that Vident holds a 10.23% stake in Bithumb Korea and a 34.22% stake in Bithumb Holdings, the holding company of Bithumb Korea. On July 23, Bloomberg reported, citing sources, that FTX is negotiating the acquisition of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb. (Source link)

6. Lido DAO Votes Against Selling 10 Million LDO Tokens to Dragonfly Capital

According to a vote that ended on Monday, the Lido Finance community voted against the proposal to sell 10 million LDO tokens to venture capital firm Dragonfly Capital for $14.5 million. Over 600 DAO members participated in the proposal, with 66.6% of the majority opposing it.

It is reported that the token sale is part of Lido's financial diversification proposal. The DAO proposal called for the sale of 20 million LDO tokens, half of which would be allocated to Dragonfly. The recent vote was merely to determine whether to proceed with the sale of tokens to Dragonfly. (The Block)

7. Optimism Launches Native Conditional Trading System Drippie

The Ethereum Layer 2 scaling network Optimism has launched a trust-minimized Ethereum native conditional trading system called Drippie, which allows transactions to be executed under specific conditions. Drippie allows for a series of checks/operations to program drips (in Solidity) to execute most on-chain operations required by Optimism daily.

Optimism uses drips to maintain the balances of various accounts, regularly transferring funds between L1 and L2, and even automatically paying for Drippie's own transactions. Drippie operates on top of other transaction automation systems, currently supported by Gelato, and plans to integrate Chainlink Keepers as a backup to ensure Drippie continues to operate. (Source link)

"What Interesting Articles are Worth Reading in the Last 24 Hours"

1. "Uniswap Governance Status: Minimizing Paradoxes"

When the governance scope of Uniswap is intentionally limited, how can participation in governance be increased? Few support changing the protocol itself, and most community efforts have shifted to Web3 ecosystem issues, such as L2 scalability and multi-chain governance mechanisms. However, for projects in this field to succeed, Uniswap governance needs more off-chain organizational structures and processes to facilitate the coordination of complex relationships among stakeholders. This article explores this issue from multiple angles and proposes potential improvement paths.

2. "Talking about Web2.5: Retreating to Advance, the Glorious 'Compromise' of Web3"

Crypto Native is a seemingly attractive label, but it can also be misleading. How can WEB3 break out on a large scale and gain real users? This article argues that WEB2.5 is an intermediate stop on the way to WEB3, and even a necessary path, presenting investment opportunities. Finally, the article speculates on the gaming model of WEB2.5.

3. "How Does the New Public Chain Aptos Meet Market Expectations?"

Aptos's mainnet is expected to launch at the end of September, and many projects are currently being developed and deployed based on the testnet, including the ultra-parallel CLOB protocol Econia, the mobile multi-signature wallet Hive, and the automated market maker (AMM) model trading application Pontem Network. Overall, Aptos has a development team with deep technical accumulation and a luxurious matrix of investors. Whether Aptos can meet these expectations will need to be evaluated after its mainnet launch.