Week through Adrian's Lenses (17-23 April 2023)

Week Adrian Lenses.jpg

Get ready, this is going to be a LONG one! Lots of things to report on from this week.

Let's see what we have for this week's roundup.

Week on Hive

Leofinance Adoption Campaign Is Coming

A week from now, on April 30th, the Leofinance Adoption Campaign beginns, a day before the Leofinance alpha interface will make the transition and replace the current main website. The campaign will have 10k USD in prizes for the winners as well as major delegations of LEO (100k each) for two communities. These are the relevant announcements:

Also this week, LeoThreads added the News2Thread feature. We've talked in the past about how ChatGPT is involved in creating thread storms from news articles on LeoThreads. News2Thread is a way to feed the bot news articles by large LEO stakeholders, on Discord. Khal talked about it during the last AMA:

SPK Network Testnet In Two-Three Weeks

SPK Network is a massive project and the news of its testnet being made public in a few weeks is great to hear! The team recorded their last team meeting for those who are interested (and have the training) to listen to the details. If you want a short two-minute presentation of where they are and what to expect, go to 2m:54s on the recording and listen to @starkerz, who speaks in a less technical manner:
@spknetwork/zznhxmqq

They expect people to participate on the testnet (more details will follow), and finding bugs or breaking it will be rewarded based on certain criteria which will be made public.

Also this week, the 3Speak team announced the release of the cluster rewarding system (being rewarding for storing their videos, before the launch of PoA). This is a guide on how to setup a node for those interested and who have the recommended minimum storage capacity:
@threespeak/cluster-rewarding-node-setup-get-rewarded-for-pinning-3speak-videos

Virtual Smart Contract (VSC) Platform in Early Stages of Development

@vaultec announced he is in "the early stages of building one of the most ambitious smart contract systems on HIVE to date". A smart contract platform on Hive (at the second layer) is considered by many one of the highest priorities we should have right now. And this is one of the projects that are either on the course to or in the planning phase to tackle this problem. This is his short announcement:
@vsc.network/the-start-of-something-big-beginning-of-vsc

Taskmaster grilled him for more information privately, and included what he found out in one of his posts:
@taskmaster4450/virtual-smart-contract-bringing-smart-contracts-to-hive

BlockTrades Exchange No Longer Accepting US Customers

Dan Notestein (@blocktrades) announced his exchange can no longer offer crypto trading services to US customers due to increasing regulatory uncertainty in the US. This is the announcement:
@blocktrades/blocktrades-no-longer-accepting-us-customers

SEED Closing Down

@empoderat also decided it is time to close down SEED due to regulatory and fiscal uncertainty. This is the announcement, his thoughts, and how the reimbursement process works:
@empoderat/important-announcement-i-m-closing-seed

Golem Overlord Is Still Hot

On (the last) Sunday, guilds were introduced. A prestige system for players who reached level 10 was also added. A whitepaper was also published that should be read by all players, in my opinion.

Don't Get Left Behind!

If you haven't seen Hive's rally car in Croatia, this post is for you:
@hiveio/hive-at-wrc-the-croatia-rally-is-on

Splinterlands News

Week in the Crypto World

"HBD a Scam" Debate :)

You gotta love Crypto Twitter. Apparently, someone jumped at calling HBD a scam without having any understanding about it, just when reading about the 20% APR. I've heard he received enough replies to correct that first impression. I'd like to add this information shared on the same platform where the false statement was made, and which properly explains how HBD works:

https://twitter.com/DocumentingHive/status/1647347253508718592
- DocumentingHive

EU about to Regulate Crypto-Assets

While the SEC is on the hunt for crypto businesses, the EU decided it is time to take action and bring some clarity to this field within the EU for businesses operating in crypto. Here comes MiCA.

As a personal impression, I remember a time when people involved in the crypto space wanted Wall Street involved because that pumped our bags. And since it was invited, Wall Street came, here and there, and it will keep coming. Today the industry is calling for regulations (or rather clarity). So, they will come... After that, you can forget about Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper... Basic carrot and stick strategy wins.

SEC Pushing Coinbase Abroad?

Coinbase seems to be on a world tour to see where to relocate if the SEC doesn't go off their backs. They've received a license to operate in Bermuda, they are in talks with the financial authority in the UAE, and their CEO had a number of meetings with officials in London.
https://www.coinbase.com/blog/an-update-to-coinbases-global-scale-to-go-broad-and-deep

European Bank Launches Euro Stablecoin on Ethereum

The crypto division of Societe Generale introduced EURCV, which is slated for institutional investors who want to move between fiat and crypto and vice-versa.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/04/20/societe-generales-crypto-division-introduces-euro-stablecoin-on-ethereum/