Reddit's Blockchain Experiment Tanks Tokens

💡 Reddit Ends Blockchain Rewards; Tokens Plummet

Reddit plans to sunset its blockchain-based Community Points due to scaling difficulties and a tough regulatory environment. Moderators of /r/Cryptocurrency allegedly dumped tokens before the news was public.

As a result, cryptocurrency tokens like $MOON, $BRICK, and $DONUT plummeted significantly; seeing ~60% to ~%90 losses. Jesse Powell, the co-founder and Chairman at Kraken; has argued that Reddit should have offered a a redemption path for owners.

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Rug pulled by Reddit.

☕️ On today's Top Picks

📰 Crypto News

• Vitalik Buterin states he has NOT sold Ethereum for personal gain since 2018. Buterin's Ethereum transfers to exchanges are for donations to charities, non-profits, and/or projects.

• Judge orders Genesis to respond to subpoena in case involving the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin. Genesis failed to produce certain documents and now has until Friday to answer.

• Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure company tasked with developing Polkadot; lays off most employees. Several current and former employees claim top managers are paying themselves too much while funds dwindle away.

• Sui Foundation denies allegation of $SUI token manipulation reported by the South Korean Financial Supervisory Service. The agency is investigating, but the Sui Foundation states, "There has never been any sale of SUI tokens by the Foundation after the initial Community Access Program (CAP) distributions. Period."

• Fidelity submits updated version of Bitcoin spot ETF application to the SEC. Updates include specifications of custodial arrangements, clarification of mechanics related to hard forks, and much more.

• Coinbase launches perpetual futures trading for customers in eligible non-US jurisdictions. Customers will have access to 4 contracts: $BTC, $ETH, $LTC, and $XRP.

• Coinbase suspends 80 non-USD trading pairs in an effort to improve overall market health and consolidate liquidity.

• Binance stops accepting new UK customers. Binance cites compliance with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulations for the decision. Existing UK customers will retain the current services available.

• Lido on Solana is sunsetting. The decision was made after a proposal to sunset Lido on Solana was discussed and passed. No new stakes will be accepted after Oct 16th. Voluntary node operator off-boarding will begin Nov 17th. Frontend support will conclude on Feb 4th, 2024.

• BNB Chain launches BNB Greenfield mainnet, a decentralized data storage network.

• Uniswap adds 0.15% swap fee to the frontend. Uniswap attributes the decision to sustainably fund their operations.

• LayerZero is live on Scroll mainnet. Projects integrated with LayerZero can extend their application to Scroll and Scroll developers can expand to 40+ LayerZero supported blockchains.

⚡ Alpha

• Scroll, a native zkEVM; launches mainnet. Users can bridge to Scroll mainnet and use dapps deployed on Scroll.

• Starknet Quest launches new Braavos Score Quest Campaign. Users need to complete several quests to earn a Braavos Score NFT.

• Argent launches Early Adopter campaign. To qualify, users must fund a StarkNet account on Argent Mobile before October 24th at 23:59 UTC.

• Kraken cryptocurrency exchange releases free William Racing Grid Pass NFT. Anyone with a Kraken account can claim to receive exclusive benefits.

🪂 Airdrops

• Celestia Genesis airdrop concludes with 191,391 claims. Unclaimed $TIA tokens will be allocated to those who already claimed and will reflect on the claiming site soon. Mainnet is expected in the "coming weeks."

📰 Finance News

• X is testing Not A Bot program for New Zealand and the Philippines users. New and unverified accounts will be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post & interact. Existing users are unaffected. X cites this new test was developed to bolster efforts to reduce spam, manipulation, and bot activity.

• Fidelity Digital Assets becomes first enterprise client of EY's Blockchain Analyzer: Reconciler product. Fidelity will use the product to query on-chain data for risk management purposes.

• President Biden is considering to request $100 Billion from Congress in defense aid for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Sources state this request is for a full year of funding.

• President Biden halts exports of artificial intelligence chips to China. The move seeks to stop China from receiving US technologies to strengthen its military.

• Citadel Securities sues the SEC over Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT). CAT is a repository of investor and transaction data meant to give regulators all-encompassing insight into U.S. market transactions. Citadel believes the SEC overstepped its statutory authority.

• Bank of America reports $131.6 billion of unrealized losses on its securities.

• European Union adopts new cryptocurrency tax data sharing rules, requiring cryptocurrency firms to report customer holdings for sharing between tax authorities.

• The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) plans to conduct an on-site inspection of a local unit of Credit Suisse to determine whether it properly handled the monitoring of wealthy clients. MAS made the decision after one of Credit Suisse's customers was charged with money laundering.

🛡 Security and Exploits

• Fantom Foundation employees' personal wallets were compromised resulting in ~$7 million in losses. Of the ~$7 million, ~$550K belonged to the Fantom Foundation. The attack is being investigated, but a zero-day hack via Google Chrome was initially pointed to as the cause.

• Friend tech experienced performance issues due to a denial of service attack on its servers. Normal functionality has since returned.

• Stelo is sunsetting the Stelo extension, Stelo explore, and Approvals xyz. Despite this, Stelo Labs is still building products focusing on problems outside web3 security.

• Revoke cash adds support for Scroll Mainnet.

• Everscale suffers from a theft of a large amount of $EVER tokens as a result of fraudulent activity. Everscale $EVER fell ~20% after the theft and has yet to recover.

Token Unlocks

• Axie Infinity $AXS - 15.13M ~$65.53M on OCT 20

• Space ID $ID - 18.49M ~$3.32M on OCT 21

• Cartesi $CTSI - 21.43M ~$2.68M on OCT 22

💰 Funding

• Elixir Protocol, a decentralized protocol unlocking open participation in market making; raises $7.5 in Series A funding round led by Hack VC.

• Squads Labs, the team behind Squad which is a multisig solution on Solana; raises $5.7 million in Strategic funding round led by Placeholder.

• Fileverse, an onchain space for online collaboration; raises $1.5 million in Pre-seed funding round led by Gnosis and factor.

🌾 The Degen Farmer

Top stablecoin yield farms of the day, more than $1,000,000 in TVL. DYOR and beat the fed!

That's it for today's dose! See you soon.