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RelayNode NYC #22 - October 7

David Gogel

Welcome to RelayNode NYC Area edition! The NYC blockchain ecosystem is growing rapidly. Our goal is to harness its energy and innovation for the benefit of New Yorkers and provide a weekly curated list of interesting content, upcoming events, and local jobs.

Some personal thoughts from this week…

According to CB Insights, there are 300+ global tech unicorns valued at $1B+ according to the primary markets. The US leads in the share of unicorns (49%), followed by China (25%), then the UK (5%), then India (5%). 51% of unicorns are located outside of the US.

This report made me think about the geographic distribution of blockchain protocols, teams, communities, developers, miners, whales, institutional vs. retail investors, exchanges, traders, market makers, dApp users, ICO / STO issuers, regulators, among others. While this data is difficult to calculate, unlike many recent technologies that were invented and developed in Silicon Valley, the blockchain and crypto industry is already uniquely global and teams are generally distributed. Empirically, Asia as a region has taken an outsized position in the industry, with major hubs emerging in Seoul, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, among others.

There are many drivers behind this global trend. Open-source software allows anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection to participate in developing this new economy. Developer talent is distributed. Pools of capital are also distributed and sent across borders without friction instantaneously. Differences in regulatory environments create arbitrage opportunities and more or less favorable ecosystems.

Unfortunately, language is a natural barrier for information sharing. Information gets consumed and propagated in local messaging apps. As a result, it is quite common for observers to be stuck in echo chambers and succumb to confirmation bias, searching for information in a way that confirms preconceptions, leading to errors in judgment.

An understanding of local ecosystems and how they interact with global developments is a key success factor in this industry. I highly recommend signing up for RelayNode newsletters now located in 10 hubs around the world to get local insights.

Finally, for those traveling to Japan this week for DevCon5, check out a blog post I wrote back in 2016 about 150 things I learned after living / working in Tokyo for 2 years:

  • Part 1: Top 10, Public Policy, Science & Tech, Transportation, Apps & Websites

  • Part 2: Traditional Japan, Cool & Weird Japan, Sports, Matsuris & National Holidays

  • Part 3: Bars, Clubs, Coffeeshops, Restaurants, Walking Tours, Travel Outside Tokyo

Note #23 Sataoshi Nakamoto: We do not know the identity of the visionary behind Bitcoin, but from advances in Blockchain, NFC, VR, Bitcoin ATMs, robotics, Japan is a tech utopia.

RelayNode Links: Sign up | Submit events

RelayNode NYC is curated by:

David Gogel

Advisor @ Paperchain fmr Associate @ Techstars' Blockchain Accelerator, Co-president @ Wharton FinTech

Hsin-Ju Chuang

Director of Community & Growth @TQ Tezos, ex-Head of Growth @Stellar/Lightyear, Side Hustle @Dystopia Labs

Things to read

Funding & Exits

  • InstaDApp, a DeFi portal that aggregates major protocols using a smart wallet layer and bridge contracts, raised $2.4M in seed funding led by Pantera, with participation from Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan, Loi Luu, Coinbase Ventures, IDEO Colab, and Robot Ventures.

  • SKALE Network, a blockchain scalability platform, raised $17.1M to launch its mainnet. The investment consists of a $10M contribution from SKALE Labs and $7M in VC financing. 19 investors participated in the round, including Arrington XRP Capital, Blockchange, ConsenSys Labs, Hashed, Multicoin Capital and Winklevoss Capital.

  • Vega, a startup building a Layer 2 solution for trading derivatives in a non-custodial fashion, raised a $5M seed round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Xpring, Hashed, and RSK Ecosystem Fund.

  • Verisart, an art and collectibles provenance startup, raised a $2.5 million seed round led by Galaxy Digital EOS Fund, with participation from Sinai Ventures and Rhodium.

  • Algrim, a crypto trading firm based in Iceland, was acquired by Ripple, an enterprise blockchain solutions company for cross-border payments. The acquisition provides Ripple with 6 new engineers focusing on exchange integrations. The team will also work to expand Ripple’s cross-border payment corridors. Financial terms were not disclosed.

  • Infura, an IPFS API & Gateway which runs nodes on developers’ behalf, was acquired by ConsenSys. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Open Finance / DeFi

  • A particularly interesting trend in DeFi is the shift to aggregators, the user facing products that are built atop decentralized infrastructure. Ash Egan, Investor at Accomplice VC, has a great post on the rise of crypto aggregators.

  • David Hoffman has an excellent article on Ether’s role as an asset in Ethereum and how Ether has become the best model for money that the world has come up with.

  • Alastair Marsh, reporter at Bloomberg, writes an excellent article on the ambitions, progress, conflicts, shortcomings and promise of Decentralized Finance.

  • Morningstar, the credit ratings giant, is planning an evaluation system for debt securities issued as tokens on a blockchain to make the emerging asset class more credible for investors. “We're looking to see how we can also provide credit opinions, whether it’s a credit rating or different types of credit data and credit analytics that accompany those debt instruments, and we’re also looking to provide our services on a blockchain.”

STOs / Stablecoins

  • MakerDAO has patched a “critical” bug in its yet-to-be-launched Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) upgrade that could have put more than 10% of the system’s total collateral at risk. Meanwhile the Maker Stability Fee was reduced to 10.5%.

  • PayPal, one of 28 corporate backers of Libra, backed out of the association as the stablecoin quickly gained scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators. Other members showed up at a scheduled meeting except for the payments company, where Calibra head David Marcus formerly served as president.

Layer 1

  • This week, Ethereum is in the spotlight with its annual developers conference, Devcon 5, taking place in Osaka, Japan. All eyes are on Ethereum 2.0 research and roadmap, as well as general ecosystem updates. Ethereum test network Ropsten has forked into two separate chains following the activation of system-wide upgrade Istanbul.

  • Zcash bug could reveal the IP address of nodes that hold a shielded address.

Legal

  • Crypto heavyweights – Coinbase, Kraken, Circle, Bittrex, Cumberland, Genesis and Grayscale – created the Crypto Ratings Council, in an attempt to self-regulate and assign security ratings to tokens in the market. Larry Cermak, Director of Research at the Block, has an excellent tweetstorm on the framework and potential conflicts of interest.

  • Block.one settled charges with the SEC relating to the unregistered sale of 900 million ERC-20 tokens in a $4.1B ICO for the development and promotion of EOS. The settlement did not address the regulatory status of EOS. Block.one faces a civil penalty of $24M, which seems unusually low. Katherine Wu, VC at Notation Capital , provides an excellent annotation of the settlement and waiver letter.

  • Nebulous, the company behind Sia, a decentralized data storage network, settled charges with the SEC for raising $120K with the sale of Sianotes. Nebulous shall, within 15 days of the entry of this Order, pay disgorgement of $120K, prejudgment interest of $25K, and a civil money penalty in the amount of $80K. According to a Sia press release, “as reflected in the settled order, the SEC did not take any enforcement action with respect to the Siacoin token or any current activity on the Sia network.”

Audio of the Week

  • The Unchained podcast explores China’s vibrant crypto trading sector. Emily Parker, cofounder of Longhash, describes the company, an Asia-focused incubator and data media site, why she’s seeing US crypto teams and ICOs going to Singapore, why the Chinese government cracked down on crypto, and misconceptions about crypto in China.

Highlighted Industry Jobs (non-exhaustive list for NYC / remote):

If you would like to highlight jobs or internships in future editions, please email links here.

Events this week:

Lighter week ahead with many teams traveling to Osaka, Japan for DevCon5.

[Whitepaper Wednesday] Hashflow Network (Free)

When: Wednesday, October 9, 2019, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

Where: Rent24, 25W 39th Street 14 Fl · New York, ny

This week, we are reading about Hashflow Network, a layer 2-solution that supports trading BTC/ETH without taking custody in a way that minimizes counterparty risk.

MOAC & Blockchain Lab NYU present Blockchain Workshop with MOAC Engineer (Free)

When: Wed, October 9, 2019, 7:10 PM – 10:10 PM EDT

Where: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences - New York University, 251 Mercer Street, #801, New York, NY 10012

The MOAC Foundation and Blockchain Lab NYU are proud to present a Blockchain Workshop with MOAC Principal Software Engineer Martin Ma. MOAC is a multi-layer Blockchain architecture for commercial applications. It is already serving enterprises in China in FinTech, SAAS, the Industrial sector, and startups globally.

Upcoming events

⚡R3 Presents: Overview of the Corda Platform⚡ (Free)

When: Monday, October 14, 2019, 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Where: WeWork Dumbo Heights, 81 Prospect St · Brooklyn

Overview of the Corda Platform with Peter Li from R3. In this short talk, Peter will present an overview of the Corda platform, briefly discuss the concepts and functional features of Corda, and review both some use-cases and live CorDapps that are built on Corda. In addition, Peter will explain the structure of the wider Corda community and the role of R3. After, there will be an open discussion as a group where we can conduct Q & A to answer any questions you may have.

Mondo.NYC music festival & global music / tech business conference ($99 - $598, 20% discount using “relaynodemondo”)

When: Tue, Oct 15, 2019, 4:00 PM – Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 5:00 PM

Where: Williamsburg Hotel, Brooklyn, 96 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn, NY

Mondo.NYC is the first music festival and global business conference focusing on the intersection of emerging music discovery, blockchain and other frontier technologies, and how these new applications and economies will significantly impact both music and tech industries. Emerging artists, innovators and industry insiders will connect and collaborate with fans in a mission to advance human creativity in an ever-changing world.

BitDevs: Socratic Seminar 97 (Free)

When: Thursday, October 24, 2019, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Where: NYU Stern, 44 West 4th Room 1-70 · New York, ny

Discussion topics: Please see our link aggregator for a list of potential discussion topics. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments section below. A final topic list will be posted the day before the event.

https://www.zotero.org/groups/691739/devsny/items/collectionKey/TLHMLG8R

The Dawn Of The Enterprise Token (free)

When: Monday, October 28, 2019, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Where: Rise New York, 43 W 23rd St · New York, NY

A speaker and panel series focused on exploration of enterprise tokens like the JPM coin, Libra. & the Walmart patent, what it all means, where it is headed and how you might position for it.

Crypto: Blockchain, Bitcoin and Beyond (Free)

When: Fri, October 25, 2019, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

Where: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 200 Vesey Street in Brookfield Place, 4th Floor Hearing Room, New York, NY 10281

A talk about crypto, blockchain, and beyond with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Notable Conferences

Nothing written in RelayNode NYC is legal or investment advice and should not be taken as such. No one should make any investment decision without first consulting his or her own financial advisor and conducting his or her own research and due diligence.