RelayNode NYC #38 - February 3

RelayNode
Written By David Gogel
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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.

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RelayNode NYC is curated by:

David Gogel Advisor & Finance Lead @ Paperchain fmr Associate @ Techstars' Blockchain Accelerator, Co-president @ Wharton FinTech, Corp dev @LinkedIn @AIG

Hsin-Ju Chuang Founder @Dystopia Labs. Former-Head of Growth @Stellar/Lightyear, Solana. Ex-Director at Tezos (TQ)

1 Big Thing: Embedded Financial Services

The next FinTech unicorn will provide embedded financial services (e.g, Lending as a Service, Payment-as-a-Service, Compliance-as-a-Service, Insurance-as-a-Service) via robust developer APIs. Plug & play through code and help companies transition from capex to opex. If you are building a company in the space, I would love to chat! 

Go Deeper:

Things to read

🌐 Why Bitcoin / Macro?

  • The Coronavirus outbreak may be a black swan event for markets. Equity markets are still reacting to the virus outbreak, with Shenzhen and Shanghai opening down ~9% on Monday after an extended Lunar new year despite the PBOC’s stimulus announcement. Volatility incoming.

  • Bitcoin vs. Coronavirus - risk-on or risk-off asset. Alex Kruger has a great tweetstorm on reaction times and correlations to explore if bitcoin trades like a risk-on asset (such as stocks) or a risk-off asset (such as gold or bonds).

  • Raoul Pal explains that it’s not just the virus itself, but the impact on an economic environment that is weaker than it seems at first glance.

  • BitMEX Research analyses the upward trajectory of the average level of precision (round numbers) in Bitcoin transaction output values. It concludes that the primary driver may be the increased prevalence of fiat denominated payments, compared to the higher level of experimental usage of the network in the past. The data also suggests the Bitcoiner dream of achieving unit of account status is nowhere in sight, at least for now.

🔓 DeFi / OpFi

  • Alethio published an excellent data-driven recap on the MakerDAO migration from the single-collateral to multi-collateral platform. The ecosystem responded to the news by taking the expected actions to provide momentum and network legitimacy to the adoption of the new platform. The success of the migration can be seen as a strong signal of the continued and growing attention given to DeFi platforms.

  • The MakerDAO protocol performed its first Flap Auction (Surplus Auction) for 10,000 DAI auctioned for MKR at a price of 548.98 MKR/DAI. These auctions are for a fixed amount of surplus Dai, from the Stability Fees that are accumulated in Vaults. In this auction type, bidders compete with increasing amounts of MKR. Once the auction has ended, the Dai is sent to the winning bidder. The system then burns the MKR received.

  • 0x, the ETH-based decentralized exchange protocol, launched the 0x API for aggregating liquidity across decentralized exchange networks. The 0x API makes it easy for DeFi developers to tap into both off-chain and on-chain DEX liquidity in a fast, reliable, and easy way.

💸 STOs / Stablecoins / Tokens / DAOs

  • Smith & Crown published an excellent report on distributed governance. With many projects actively implementing and using their intended on-chain governance models, the year’s events provide some of the strongest contrasts yet between different approaches and philosophies.

  • The Zcash community agreed to allocate 20% of the mining rewards to fund development of the privacy-centric cryptocurrency, while miners will receive 80% as of block 1,046,400. Assuming an agreement with the Zcash Foundation, this will be implemented in November 2020, to coincide with the first scheduled Zcash halvening when the total block rewards will be reduced to half as much ZEC per block.

🏦 Institutionalization

  • Genesis Global Capital, the lending desk of OTC trading desk Genesis Trading, released its Q4 2019 report indicating another record-breaking quarter. The desk issued $1B+ worth of loans in the quarter, increasing 34.8% QoQ. As of Dec 31, 2019, active loans outstanding stood at $545M, up 21% QoQ despite a significant decrease in the price of bitcoin. Cash and BTC comprised 84.5% the active loan portfolio. 

  • Max Boonen, Founder & CEO of crypto OTC firm B2C2, explores crypto market structure and deep dives into the world of high frequency trading, exploring adverse selection, the move to HFT, and the impact on exchange structure.

🌉 Infrastructure

  • According to its first financial earnings report since going public, Silvergate Bank reported a 55% decline in net income, while adding 48 crypto clients. In 2019, Silvergate brought in $24.8M in net income, up 11.2% YoY, and served 804 crypto clients including Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini. Growth was driven by the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), which allows near-instant 24/7 money transfers between different crypto exchanges, and handled 14,400 transactions in Q4. The bank has also applied for the New York trust license with the aim of providing crypto custody and settlement.

🍰 Layer 1 

  • In 2016, Joel Monegro, at the time at USV, published the seminal The Fat Protocols thesis. Joel, now a Partner at Placeholder VC, published a sequel called “Thin Protocols”, highlighting the cryptoservices architecture. Consumer apps in crypto/Web3 are independently built on top of multiple “composable” protocols using what we could call a cryptoservices architecture (like microservices, but with sovereign components).

🍰🍰 Layer 2

  • Thomas Walton-Pocock, CEO of AZTEC Protocol, announced the launch of the privacy network on the Ethereum mainnet enabling private transactions with hidden amounts. Developers can now incorporate zkDai into decentralized apps using an SDK.

  • Ashwin Ramachandran and Haseen Qureshi from Dragonfly Capital Partners published a post-mortem on the life and death of Plasma, a layer-2 scaling solution. Some Plasma focused research groups, such as the Plasma Group, have moved on to work on Optimistic Rollup solutions, but the search for the final layer-2 scaling solution is just getting started. 

⚖️ Legal

  • The Blockchain Association launched the Market Integrity Working Group to support the development of public policy that ensures the transparency and fairness of cryptocurrency markets. The working group’s co-chairs will be Breanne Madigan, Head of Global Institutional Markets at Ripple, and Rachel Nelson, Senior Director, Associate General Counsel — Regulatory at Coinbase.

  • Chainalysis released its Crypto Crime Report, breaking down last year’s $11.5B worth of crypto transactions that were associated with criminal activity. Over $600M worth of bitcoin was spent on darknet markets during Q4 of 2019. 

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 

CryptoMondays NYC Fireside Chat W/ Nodar Janashian Co-Founder of DeFiZap (Free)

When: Monday, February 3, 2020, 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Where: The Ainsworth, 64 3rd Ave · New York, NY

This CryptoMondays NYC features a Fireside Chat with Nodar Janashia, the Co-Founder of DeFiZap, a rapidly growing app that enables users to allocate assets across multiple DeFi protocols in one transaction, saving time and gas. Zap is a smart contract that auto-spreads incoming deposits across Compound, Fulcrum, TokenSets and others, based on pre-set allocations.

Cornell Blockchain NYC Meetup ($25)

When: Mon, February 3, 2020, 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST

Where: Cliqk Studios, 241 Centre Street, Floor 5, New York, NY 10013

This meetup will be focused on the following theme: Beyond the Proof of Concept of Blockchain with the panel - Markets Beyond Blockchain.

Nasdaq - Kyle O'Connor, Sr. Strategic Planning Analyst- Global Trading & Market Services

Symbiont - Ben Spiegelman, Corporate Development and Strategy Lead

Seven Eight Capital - Adam Kravetz, COO

The Future of Asset Management - Automation & Decentralized Finance (Free)

When: Tue, February 4, 2020, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST

Where: CoinShares US, 101 5th Avenue, Sixth Floor, Suite 605, New York, NY 10003

CoinShares, DeFi NYC and Avantgarde Finance would like to welcome you to join us for a discussion on the future of asset management within the cozy confines of the CoinShares office on February 4th, 2019 from 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Blockchain technology is leading to a fundamental shift in capital markets infrastructure. Decentralized finance has significantly reduced the cost of operating an investment fund, opening the door for sub-scale managers to develop a track record. Join us to learn about how Decentralized Finance tools like the fast-growing Melon ecosystem are democratizing the asset management lifecycle—from capital raising to fund administration—and how you can leverage tools like Melon for your own product, business, or track-record!

Agenda:

6:00pm — Doors Open

6:30pm — Intro Discussion (Meltem Demirors & Mona El Isa)

6:45pm — Melon Protocol Overview & Demo

7:15pm — Q&A

7:30pm — Drinks & Discussion

Light snacks and drinks will be provided.

Crypto NYC: [Whitepaper Wednesday] Coda Economics and Monetary Policy (Free)

When: Wednesday, February 5, 2020, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

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

This week, we'll be reviewing Coda's proposed economics. Coda aims to build a proof-of-stake network that replaces a blockchain with an easily verifiable proof: https://codaprotocol.com/static/pdf/economicsWP.pdf. The paper talks through the incentives and supply schedule. We'll discuss their approach and its tradeoffs.

ConsenSys Codefi: The Future of Finance: Digital Assets and DeFi (Free / Virtual)

When: Date: February 5th, 2020, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST

Where: Virtual

Please join us February 5th for a ConsenSys Codefi webinar: The Future of Finance: Digital Assets and DeFi. We will discuss the macro financial and technological trends that are contributing to the exponential growth in decentralized finance, and how we are shaping that future at ConsenSys Codefi.

Upcoming events

BitDevs: Socratic Seminar 101 (Free)

When: Wednesday, February 12, 2020, 6:40 PM to 8:40 PM

Where: Jeffrey S. Gould Welcome Center, 50 West 4th Street · New York, NY

Thanks to our friends at Chaincode Labs and NYU Digital Asset Forum for food, refreshments and event space. If you can't make it to the main event please join us at The Malt House around 9:30PM.

Please see our zotero link aggregator for a list of potential discussion topics. Topics will be added as the weeks progress. Feel free to suggest topics in the comment section below.

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

BitDevs: Whitepaper Series 12: CoinJoin (NYC)

When: Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Where: Baruch College, 151 East 25th Street Room 750 · New York, ny

Proposed in 2013 by Greg Maxwell, CoinJoin is a multi-party input aggregation protocol that breaks the “common-input-ownership” heuristic, a blockchain analysis technique commonly applied to Bitcoin’s transaction graph. Why CoinJoins work and under what circumstances they can fail are important questions. This event will start from the beginning: we will learn about the history of CoinJoin, how research has evolved in the space and what the differences are between the currently available implementations.

For a full event description and a list of discussion topics, please see here:

https://bitdevs.org/2020-02-19-whitepaper-series-11-coinjoin

Token Taxonomy Initiative Workshop Summit (Free)

When: February 19, 2020, 1PM – 5PM

Where: Microsoft 11 Times Square, New York, New York, 10036

The Token Taxonomy Initiative is offering a half-day introduction to the Token Taxonomy Framework, including detailed workshops using the TTF to define specifications for tokens. If you’re planning to attend the NFT.NYC conference on the 20th, or just happen to be in NYC that day, this Summit will deliver all the information you need to begin working with the TTF.

NFT.NYC 2020 ($75 for devs - $299 general)

When: February 20, 2020

Where: The Edison Ballroom - Times Square

NFT.NYC 2019 saw over 450 attendees and 85 speakers meet in New York City's iconic Times Square to discuss the emerging NFT Ecosystem. NFT.NYC is back in 2020 with debates, thought leader talks, workshops and industry briefings from the leading names and brands in blockchain.

How to Create a Supply Chain Blockchain App (Free)

When: Monday, February 24, 2020, 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Where: LMHQ, 150 Broadway 20th floor · New York, NY

Blockchain increases visibility and efficiency in the supply chain like the coffee trade. See how blockchain can assist farmers, roaster and everyone between, bring you a fresher and fairer cup. Come out and we will walk you through design, development, and deployment of an illustrative blockchain network and application. In this hands on workshop, you will learn about...

- Developing a supply chain blockchain application with VS Code

- Deploying it on the IBM Blockchain Platform.

- Successful Blockchain applications in the Supply Chain space such as IBM Food Trust and others

- Best practices for developing blockchain applications today and looking forward to the future

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.

David Gogel https://www.definancier.com
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RelayNode NYC #37 - January 27