Remember that first Medium post last March? Marinade announced its working prototype of a liquid staking solution on Solana.

The rest is history. Time sure flies when you’re chewing glass.

Following Marinade’s 3rd place finish at Solana x Serum, the team launched its mainnet by August. By early January of this year, Marinade had reached the №1 Solana project based on TVL for the first time. The success of liquid staking at Marinade, which applies the Solana Foundation delegation strategy designed to further secure and decentralize the network, has positively impacted Solana itself by helping elevate its Nakamoto Coefficient to 20 as of January, 2022.

It’s been an exciting 11 months in the kitchen. And now, enter the Solana Hackathon 2022 event: Riptide.

This year’s Riptide hackathon, Feb. 2 — March 17th, is taking place virtually and IRL at Hacker Houses around the world from Seattle to Moscow. Companies and VCs have put up over $5 million in prizes. These companies are bullish on the potential of Solana and range from global web and payments companies like Visa and Google to Solana-native protocols like Marinade.

This year, Marinade is proud to judge and sponsor a $30,000 cash prize in Riptide. Devs, here is your mission:

One of the most effective ways Marinade can grow its TVL and thus further secure and decentralize Solana is through integrations across Solana DeFi and DAOs. While a one-click solution to promote DAO staking has already been integrated into the spl-governance UI and the Solflare wallet, Marinade seeks to extend its reach by inviting developers to contribute towards integrating its liquid staking SDK into other Solana platforms.

Marinade is eager to see advancement in the DeFi space in this year’s Riptide event by further securing and decentralizing Solana and will personally judge submissions and award $30,000 to the winner.

Developers can register for RipTide individually or as a team. For more details on Marinade’s project, please contact: Discord: MjCage#4347 | Telegram: @MjCage.

There has never been a better time to chew glass. Good luck to all the devs in this year’s Solana Riptide Hackathon!

Marinade.Finance is the first non-custodial liquid staking protocol built on Solana. Stake your SOL tokens with Marinade and receive mSOL (“marinated SOL”) tokens in return that can be used in decentralized finance (DeFi). mSOL is the most widely integrated collateralized version of SOL. The price of mSOL goes up relative to SOL each epoch, with rewards being accrued into the underlying staked SOL.

Marinade’s delegation strategy stakes in 400+ validators that are selected automatically by an open-source, fair formula based on performance, commission, and decentralization.

Marinade includes mSOL->SOL swap, so you can “Unstake Now” and receive your SOL immediately for a small fee. You can also directly exchange between mSOL and SOL on secondary markets at the current rate. Finally, you can unstake your SOL with zero fee by waiting 2–3 days for the Solana cool-down period (Delayed Unstake).

Website | Discord | Github | Docs | Stats | Press Kit | Get MNDE

Luckily, this was not my first Series. No more learning curve. I hopped on and 45 minutes later I had both wallets setup, bounty hunter rocking, and I was back in the zone.

The reality is experience and learning from my mistakes from expedited the process.

For this reason, I share my experience, tips, and trick to scroll for Avastars in this short series of videos, all viewable below.

Videos include:

Here is a short video on installing the bounty hunter tool by Kai. The github link is here: https://github.com/kaigani/avastars-bounty-hunter.

It really is a simple process. Make sure you have Chrome installed. I also suggest making sure your Chrome Favorites Bar is viewable.

The Bounty Hunter tool will come pre-loaded with a few bounties. In this video I will quickly explain setting up different bounties.

Once you have the Bounty Hunter installed, you need to start searching for Avastars. Make sure to connect your Metamask wallet.

You will notice two queues, Teleporter and Wish List. If you have a Avastar in your wallet, you will see a 3rd queue called Consignment. The Teleporter queue is used to purchase an Avastar.

This video goes into greater detail and includes some tips on finding and consigning Avastars.

This video goes a little deeper into consigning. I also explain how I post multiple global feeds, where to post your feed, and where to find bounties.

Scrolling ends with Series 5. However, in the Replicant series I do believe you can consign traits. So, do not forget to pickup your own Avastars when scrolling.

Turn on your favorite music and enjoy!

Website: www.Avastars.io

Bounty Hunter: https://github.com/kaigani/avastars-bounty-hunter

Discord: https://discord.gg/9bt8KbX7

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AvaStarsNFT

But in terms of understanding asset classes, investing, and how money works its really changed the way I think about the future and money.

Hear me out…

Maybe 1% of the people that surround me (friends/family) understand and support the notion of crypto and blockchain.

The rest.. well they laugh it off.

It’s still as foreign of a concept as it comes, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

This is astonishing considering the market cap has blown past $1T… with no signs of slowing down.

This leads me to believe that people TRULY DON’T HAVE A CLUE what is going on!

NFT stands for “Non-Fungible Token.” NFTs are unique digital assets stored on the blockchain — the same technology that drives the Bitcoin network.

NFT, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are virtual tokens that are non-interchangeable, meaning each token is unique. NFTs represent ownership of a digital or physical asset. The etymology of non-fungible is derived from the “fungible” term in finance and economics — an asset or commodity that can be freely exchanged for another identical asset or commodity of similar value.

The NFT Artist Project combines blockchain technology with generative art to create digital assets that can be traded. Digital Art is cool, but it’s hard to store for long periods of time, and even harder to trade because of the cost associated with verifying the authenticity of a piece. NFT solves this by layering a blockchain network on top of digital art, while creating a community driven visual artwork registry by exhibiting and cataloging the works in physical spaces around the world. As an added bonus, NFT provides an easy-to-use toolkit for generating your own art.

Get onboard the cryptocurrency train and join the NFT art movement. You can now create digital assets — legendary pieces of art that are valued through expert evaluation and collector interest.

NFTs share a unique advantage over physical art, they can be sold to anyone in the world with a stable internet connection knowing that it’s authenticity and ownership are verifiably provable through blockchain technology. This is also true for physical works of art as well, but when you consider shipping and insurance costs these adds up to a level that puts it outside of most people’s reach.

The Truth about Art and NFTs: How the artists will actually make money. This is an article showcasing Real art that uses blockchain technology. Alternatives to bitcoin and alt coins. Not a scam at all, Generative art is different.

New technologies are changing the art world. Now, artists can create digital artwork and upload it to a blockchain for easy trading. The rich are trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for fun, but what about the rest of us?

I think NFTs are great, but they’re expensive and only the rich can trade them. In my opinion, we should create a community and build utility by creating quality art that’s also useful. That way people can buy and sell it at any price without worrying about a bubble.

I’m an artist, and I’m in love with the possibilities that blockchain is bringing to art.

The digitization of art assets allows art to be truly owned by the creator, without any additional restrictions. This also means that there are no barriers to entry — anyone can participate!

It’s also a new way to build community around art, not just owning it. The sheer number of different digital art assets that are being traded on the blockchain means that you can find people who share your taste and create art together. And if you create something amazing that sparks someone else’s imagination and inspires them to create something amazing in return? Well, now you’re part of a larger community!

I think NFTs are a great avenue for artists to make their work more accessible. Because they’re not limited in any way (other than by the rules of the contract), it’s easy for anyone to pick up and play with them. You don’t need to know how to use a computer or have any special skills. The barrier-to-entry is so low that even kids could play with them!

With all the hype surrounding NFT art, we can’t help but feel like there are some challenges ahead for its commercial adoption. It seems likely that these issues will become even more pressing as the technology behind NFT art continues to advance. But we still hold hope that this technology could lead to new forms of online art — and its monetization.

Artists with NFTs can now be paid directly by their fans, without having to rely on galleries or other intermediaries.

Even if you’re not an artist, there are many other benefits to using NFTs. For example, they can give you access to tickets and merchandise that would otherwise have been unavailable.

If you’re interested in buying art for the first time, NFTs are a great place to start because you don’t have to worry about the overhead associated with physical art. You can also buy from artists who might not otherwise be accessible.

NFTs are a new way for artists to create value in their work, and a way for people who appreciate that work to support it.

Bored Ape GWOP Club NFT Gallery:

https://oncyber.io/gwopapes

Checkout our experimental NFT collections on Open Sea

https://opensea.io/GWOPUniversity

SAMO was born in April 2021 with a max supply of 14B SAMO. Although initially released as Solana’s first memecoin and in tribute to FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Solana’s Co-founder Anatoly Yurkavenko, SAMO has evolved into a community coin. We remain concentrated on becoming Solana’s ambassador by pushing the limits of what’s possible for a Web 3.0 community and filling the role of a friendly community guide dog for the Solana and broader cryptoasset ecosystem. Since then, we’ve seen tremendous growth, laid the foundation for future developments, and have set our sights on where we want to go and how we intend to get there.

The unexpected and overwhelming growth the Samo Famo experienced in 2021 coincided with SAMO posting head-turning numbers. Like many of the largest cryptoassets to date, SAMO’s surge in demand resulted in a step function in growth that has laid the foundation for the next wave of adoption. Said differently, as impressive as some of these numbers are, the team and community remain optimistic that 2022 will bring yet another surge in adoption. However, one ought to not dismiss the results achieved in 2021, which include the following:

SAMO was highlighted in several well-established news publications, such as Nasdaq, Business Insider, Money.com, Decrypt, and Solana News. We were mentioned in Binance Academy and AAX Academy. Not only that, but SAMO made an appearance at Solana Breakpoint 2021 in Lisbon, being first featured as part of the Solana ecosystem and mentioned during BetDEX’s Co-Founder Nigel Eccles’ keynote presentation.

Several notable burns took place in 2021, including the start of our final burn where 54% of SAMO’s total supply is burned over a year. The burns that took place in 2021 and the burns slated for 2022 not only substantially reduce SAMO’s max supply by 9.254 billion SAMO, but serve as a reminder to the community that the team remains committed to its word. Although the last remaining 3.5 billion SAMO will be burned in 2022, the following burns took place in 2021:

Although initially released as a memecoin, we spent time in 2H2021 reflecting on the future of SAMO — particularly in light of how other “memecoins” have positioned themselves within crypto. Seeing the opportunity for SAMO to lead the charge on what’s possible for a Web 3.0 community, we thought it was necessary to define SAMO’s vision, mission, and strategy.

Defining our vision, mission, and strategy came off the back of a change in leadership mid-summer. While some community members were concerned about SAMO’s future, what followed was new additions to the team that allowed for both the team and community to assist SAMO’s rise in the second half of the year and set the path ahead. As hoped, community members received the change in leadership as a tailwind for SAMO and many continue to believe the reorg to have been a net positive for the community. In addition to several members joining the team, two members were hired full-time to lead SAMO’s community efforts: GoodSamoSamo (GSS) and Swick Samo.

GSS joined the Samoyedcoin community in May 2021 and remained active until being brought on full-time in December 2021. GSS has been following crypto intimately since 2016, is a former Wall Streeter turned crypto enthusiast and spent nearly 4-years working in crypto full-time. He has held several roles at one of the most prominent players in the industry. In GSS’s latest role, he was in charge of growing and scaling a team of market analysts & researchers.

Swick Samo is a former operations manager turned SOL and SAMO enthusiast. Despite having followed crypto since 2017, it wasn’t until 2021 that he discovered the potential of the SOL ecosystem, fell in love with the Samo Famo, and joined the SAMO team full-time. He is also a known community member of the SOL NFT scene, has organized multiple Solana events, and is well connected within his local community of crypto addicts.

The SAMO Mods!The SAMO moderator team has expanded to 10 total members as of year-end. Although team members are from all around the world and come from all walks of life, they’re all equally as passionate about SAMO, crypto, and the opportunity to make a positive impact within our community. Our team of moderators is as follows:

Last year’s surge in demand coincided with SAMO becoming increasingly more integrated within the broader cryptoasset ecosystem. Between centralized exchange listings, decentralized exchange listings, liquidity pools, yield farms, decentralized apps, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and more, SAMO became a bigger part of the Solana ecosystem than we had anticipated. As we grow our presence within the Solana DeFi sector, we intend on continuing to help educate community members about the world of DeFi — how to borrow, lend, staking, and provide liquidity to various platforms, as well as the potential risks associated with participating in DeFi.

Centralized ExchangesThe ever-growing demand for SAMO and the rise of the Samo Famo attracted the attention of several reputable centralized exchanges. SAMO closed out 2021 with 11 centralized exchange listings when all was said and done.

Decentralized ExchangesNotwithstanding SAMO listed on several centralized exchanges, we were also fortunate to be listed on several decentralized exchanges — such as Raydium and Orca. Even as of year-end, the bulk of SAMO’s trading continues to take place on these decentralized exchanges, which serves as a testament to SAMO being, amongst all else, an onboarding and marketing vehicle for new users of the Solana ecosystem.

DeFi Lending, Liquidity, & FarmingThanks to many emerging DeFi platforms built on Solana, SAMO was integrated into six different platforms. Users of these platforms can lend, borrow, provide liquidity, and/or yield farm using their SAMO.

Amidst the boom of Solana NFTs, SAMO was fortunate enough to be featured in some of the most popular Solana NFTs of 2021. To those who were kind enough to show the Samo Famo love, we appreciate you! ❤️

BetDEXIn Nov. 2021, it was announced that SOL, USDC, and SAMO would be accepted as wagers on BetDEX, the world’s first decentralized sports betting protocol. BetDEX, which is expected to launch in 1H2022, was founded by former FanDuel executives. According to a press release, BetDEX recently raised $21 million in an investment round led by San Francisco-based crypto investment firm Paradigm and Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Multicoin Capital, Hack VC, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sino Global Capital, Solana Ventures, and Everblue Management also participated in the fundraising round.

GM IndexOn Nov. 18, 2021, Symmetry, a permissionless and composable index protocol on-chain, announced that SAMO would be part of its “Meme Index (GM)” alongside DOGE, SHIB, and others.

Sol CasinoOn Dec. 9, 2021, SAMO was added to Sol Casino, the first live playable casino on Solana that allows users to play several casino games using SPL tokens (such as SAMO).

Going InternationalThanks to the help of community members, we were able to grow our international presence in 2021 considerably. As of year-end, SAMO has more than 18 international communities, and Samoyedcoin.com has been translated into 14 different languages — all of which took place at the community’s request.

VIP Roles: FAMO & SAMILLIONAIRE As part of a broader community-building initiative, we created the “FAMO” and “SAMILLIONAIRE” verified Discord roles for community members. Thanks to our friends at Grape Protocol, those with more than 100,000 SAMO (FAMO) and 1 million SAMO (SAMILLIONAIRE) can now get special access to a separate Discord channel with exclusive events, giveaways, prizes, alpha, and more.

SAMO HoldersDespite being only eight months young, airdropping to 2,000 early community members, and retracing from an all-time high of $0.25, SAMO now ranks as one of the most widely held tokens within the Solana ecosystem. In just the last 3-months of the year, the number of SAMO holders has gone from roughly 10,000 to 50,000.

The only thing more notable than the number of SAMO holders growing despite recent price action is the growth of holders, which formed an “S” shape. This shape is also known as an “S growth curve,” which is found in the growth of social networks, technological innovations, business cycles, and more. That is to say, an initial surge in growth eventually slows but ultimately sets the foundation for another abrupt jump in growth.

Memes…Lots of Memes…If there is anything that crypto has proven to the world, it’s that communities can form, exist, and thrive thanks to the power of memes. As that great SBF once said, “Memes are really f***ing important!” Given the impact of memes and the rise of the Samo Famo, we were ecstatic to see so many incredible SAMO memes crafted. For this reason, we rolled out “The Hall of Memes” on our Discord so the very best SAMO memes (+200 as of year-end) will forever be recognized as part of SAMO’s history.

Collaborations, Contests, & GiveawaysIn 2021, we had several noteworthy collaborations, contests, and giveaways. We held 25 Days of SAMO (which was later extended to 31 Days of SAMO thanks to the BetDEX team), a rare 1-of-2 NFT giveaway, a custom SAMO NFT giveaway, a SAMO Swag Design contest, and gave away a rare SAMO Stompers NFT thanks to CryptoKickers.

Not only that, but we collaborated with GenesysGo to host a SAMO airdrop to those who staked their SOL with the GenesysGo validators. Also, we hosted the Solana Euro Fantasy League, participated in Grape Protocol’s Hearthstone Battlegrounds Tournament, joined Grape Protocol’s Poker Tournament, participated in Grape Protocol’s Call of Duty Warzone Tournament, collaborated with The Caveman Club for their $CAVE airdrop, collaborated with Mesopotamia Art for SAMO NFT auction where 90% of proceeds were used to buy and burn SAMO (roughly $13,000 worth), teamed up with Million Monke and Socks On Solana for a special giveaway, partnered with UNQ Club for SAMO holders to earn Neutrino, and held our very first SAMO Raid.

Our First Charity Donation!In the spirit of giving back, we held our very first charity donation in 2021. In addition to our $30,000 worth of SOL donation, the SAMO community raised an additional $9,000 worth of SOL for a total donation of $39,000. Thanks to The Giving Block, we donated SOL to Wyoming-based Dogs For Better Lives, a non-profit that trains rescue dogs to help those in need.

Tools & Website UpdateLast year, we released our SAMO Airdrop Tool, rolled out SAMO Tips (as part of the Solana Hackathon), and launched our SAMO DEX with the help of GenesysGo. We also revamped and redesigned Samoyedcoin.com alongside updating the website to support many different languages.

Although originally slated to be released in 2021, SAMO NFTs were delayed for an early-2022 release due to a combination of volatile market conditions, technical issues with Candy Machine V1.0, and design revisions. However, we’ve made meaningful progress and have never felt more confident about the imminent roll-out of SAMO NFTs. We expect the community to feel the same in due time.

As previously stated, the growth we saw in 2021 far exceeded our expectations and was most certainly a pleasant surprise. While we’re incredibly pleased with just how far this pup has come in such a short time, we have no intention of slowing down. We expect 2022 to be an even bigger year for us and will be the year that we show the world that SAMO is a driving force in redefining the value, impact, and function a Web 3.0 community can have not only in crypto but in the world.

For those who might have missed it, we recently published our 2022 roadmap detailing initiatives that will keep us plenty busy. We intend to execute aggressively but also know other opportunities will arise for Samo Famo to expand and have a lasting impact on the Solana ecosystem.

We’re beyond excited and hope you feel the same too. Thanks to everyone who has been part of the journey. It’s each and every one of you that makes the blood, sweat, and tears all worthwhile, so thank you.

The first thing is I need to ask your age. Now you may be thinking that what is the point of asking your age with this question let me explain it.

Currently, if you leave the covid-19 pandemic year the Nifty approximately give 12% — 15% annual return and on the other hand, Bitcoin gives an average return of 200 % annually. But because you’re writing safely in your question I think you are not in the favour of cryptocurrency where there is so much volatility (I’m just assuming it). That’s totally the best thing to do, when you do not understand anything don’t invest in it, yeah but I want to make a counter-argument also in case if you invest 10,000 in the current market you get 15% on Nifty, in FD you get 5%.In India is no such asset where you can get more than 25% annually because all these Investments is already trillion rupees market there is no such way it can become 10 trillion or 100 trillion in 1 year but on the other hand, if you see e cryptocurrency market cap its approximately doubling every year. Now I asked this question to you, can a 1 trillion stock market become 10 trillion in one year or BTC that 10x doing every year can make it to 10 trillion, which can reach the 10 trillion mark first? — think about it.

Now I’m giving you a simple rule that you can apply to yourself and gain good returns also so and keep your money safe. Subtract your age from a hundred the number you get is the percentage of your investment is going into equity and you might think that equities are still a risky asset and why I am telling you to invest in it that’s because I am not recommending you to invest in any such small-cap or mid-cap companies where the risk is great but I am sharing a simple rule to invest in blue-chip companies that can give you good returns also with your investment amount safe.

If you think this answer gives you knowledge about something or you learn something please upvote this answer. This makes me super happy and motivates me to do extra effort to make you learn something new the next time.

See this interesting Community on NbliK App. Finance En… https://nblik.com/community/9021 Playstore link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nblik.app

It seems pretty clear that the whole process of providing proper market adaptation to the non-crypto public will require a lot of effort.

We talked with Aga Marecka, a founder of HandieU. Her superpower is involving non-techy handcrafters to contribute to crypto projects.

This space is so dynamic that flexibility is necessary for the project to grow. Forget about hierarchical structures or dedicating yourself to one specific task. The hands-on approach is the key to success in this case.

Blockchain provides endless possibilities for new businesses. It is important to have a strong team from the beginning that knows their values and will not get lost by shallow incentives such as money.

There is no way to just expect people to just simply get busy with crypto. There is so much to be discussed and people will get overwhelmed or discouraged. Prepare or find a proper educational course and make sure that your community, here — our handcrafters, receives knowledge from proper sources.

We have also discussed aspects of community building, what challenges are there to be overcome, and what is behind the added value that projects should provide except for profits. Everything was done based on the use case from Aga’s project.

If you want to hear more about the project, we highly encourage you to check out the recording at the top of the page.

This week:

The arrival of the SMTP protocol in 1981 — based on a proposal by Jon Postel — allowed people to directly communicate with each other via email. Later, the invention of Tim Berners-Lee’s world wide web in 1989 and corresponding protocol HTTP allowed people to access websites through a browser.

These developments from the early internet allowed people to easily share information.

Satoshi’s 2009 white paper on Bitcoin took that one step further — describing an elegant system combining cryptography, consensus mechanisms, and networked computers that would enable people to directly exchange value online without an intermediary for the first time.

The next breakthrough would come in 2015 — the year Ethereum went live. Building on Satoshi’s core concepts, Vitalik Buterin conceived a system that enabled decentralized computation. Smart contracts are essentially programs or applications that run directly on the blockchain.

That framework would set the stage for use cases such as NFTs and DeFi, which came of age last year.

This concept of decentralized computation would plant the seeds for web3.

What if we could build an entire generation of decentralized applications on the blockchain?

Pioneers in the space immediately ran into roadblocks.

When Alameda Research and FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried assessed Ethereum as a platform for building a global, decentralized exchange, it was a nonstarter.

SBF — as he’s often referred to — earned his stripes at Jane Street Capital, one of the most storied prop shops on Wall Street. As such, the bar for their decentralized exchange was high. Coming from a world where high-frequency trading is the norm, your trades have to move as fast as information flows. Cost is also a major concern as fees directly eat away at your trading model. Scalability is crucial.

In other words, Ethereum’s technology was too slow and too expensive.

That’s where Solana came in.

As Peter Thiel described in his book, Zero to One, you’re not moving the needle unless your offering is an order of magnitude better than what came before.

A host of so-called “Ethereum Killers” had been floating around that were potentially better than Ethereum but objectively, not that much better.

Released in 2019, Solana was different. Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko would incorporate learnings from his time as an engineer at Qualcomm working on cell networks into his development of the Solana blockchain.

The result is a blockchain that can process 50,000 transactions per second (tps) compared to Ethereum’s 15 tps for a fee that’s fractions of a penny. Given the massive growth in Ethereum’s ecosystem in recent years, computation fees can cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars during peak usage — something anyone who’s tried to mint a popular NFT drop on Ethereum intimately understands.

For SBF, Solana was fertile ground for developing his vision around decentralized finance.

Here’s Sam speaking at Yahoo Finance and Decrypt’s Crypto Goes Mainstream back in November:

“Solana is one of the few currently existing public blockchains that has a really plausible road map to scale millions of transactions per second at, you know, fractions of a penny per transaction, which is a scale that you need for this.”

“That is not where a lot of other blockchains have been focusing, including ethereum.”

For the industry at large, Solana’s throughput and cost profile has taken decentralized computing from zero to one, paving a path forward where web3 is a legitimate reality.

Naturally, developers have followed suit — including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who announced last fall that he would invest $100 million in decentralized social media projects built on Solana:

Today, much of the NFT and DeFi ecosystem lives on Ethereum, but what we’re seeing in the market is the product of the last few years.

If Github commits are any indication, much of the next generation stuff — what will emerge in the market in this next cycle — will likely live on Solana.

The rise of Solana’s futures and derivatives markets also suggests growing institutional participation:

Solana is not without its issues. With development only starting in 2017, the network is still going through growing pains given its explosive growth.

In a rocky start to the year, the blockchain suffered 6 outages in January alone. There’s clearly plenty more work to do.

Competition is also heating up as other next generation chains vy for market share including Avalanche, which offers its own scalability promises.

For end users, that can only be a good thing.

If you’d like to learn more about Solana, you can check out this report published last week by Two Prime (via /gregkidd).

It’s where we got these nifty charts from.

You can also check out Greg’s conversation with Anatoly from our YouTube channel here. (Another indication of Solana’s impact — it’s our most watched video with over 11K views.)

Relevant:

The stock market — with crypto in tow — is having a rocky start to 2022, apparently the worst ever.

Here’s Axios:

State of play: As of the end of trading yesterday — the 16th session of the year — 2022 is now, officially, the worst-ever start in the history of the S&P 500, according to data from Ned Davis Research, a stock market research shop.

The silver lining? Market downturns can be the best time to build — without the frothy distractions of all the hype and conference parties. (Solana began development during the last crypto winter in 2017.)

And as SBF suggests, in a tweet responding Solana’s outages, there’s still plenty of building required:

Relevant:

First, here’s what happened — Bloomberg:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing cryptocurrency firms Celsius Network, Voyager Digital Ltd. and Gemini Trust Co. as part of a broad inquiry into companies that pay interest on virtual token deposits, according to people familiar with the matter.

The SEC enforcement review focuses on whether the companies’ offerings should be registered as securities with the watchdog, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The firms are able to pay customers rates higher than most bank savings accounts by lending out their digital coins to other investors, a practice that the SEC and states including New Jersey and Texas have said raises concerns about investor protection.

Here’s also what happened — Matt Levine:

The other story is about … well, see, there’s a billion-dollar Ponzicoin called Wonderland, 1 which as of about 11 a.m. today was advertising an annual percentage yield on staked deposits of EIGHTY-THREE THOUSAND, SIX HUNDRED EIGHTY-SEVEN POINT FIVE PERCENT (83,687.5%), and it is in the news today because one of the pseudonymous people running its treasury is allegedly a famous convicted serial scammer who previously co-founded Quadriga CX, which was the biggest Canadian crypto exchange before it collapsed in an exit scam in which the other co-founder apparently stole most of the money and may or may not have faked his death.

And here’s Matt Levine aptly summarizing the current state of affairs when it comes to crypto regulation in the U.S. his Money Stuff newsletter:

Man, come on. Read that sentence. If you were an SEC enforcement lawyer and you had the choice of (1) calling up the “revolution needs rules” guys to tell them that under SEC precedents interest-bearing crypto accounts paying 8.05% have to be registered as securities or (2) looking into the very popular billion-dollar Ponzicoin run by an exit scammer that is offering an 83,000% APY to U.S. investors … just … what are we doing here?

What is the difference between Gemini and Wonderland? I think two critical differences are:

There is a certain drunk-under-the-lamppost element to current U.S. crypto regulation. If you incorporate a company in the U.S. and walk into the SEC’s office and ask “hey what are we allowed to do,” the answer is “almost nothing.” If you just launch the wildest thing in the world pseudonymously, call it “decentralized,” and advertise eye-popping investment returns to U.S. investors, then, I mean, I don’t want to give you legal advice, but look around.

As Matt points out, it’s also why Facebook/Meta’s crypto project failed to launch:

Or we talked yesterday about stablecoins. Specifically we talked about the fact that Facebook Inc. (now Meta Platforms Inc.) announced in 2019 with enormous fanfare that it was going to launch a stablecoin and work closely with all of the relevant regulators blah blah blah, and it went to the Federal Reserve and said “what do we need to do to launch a stablecoin,” and the Fed said “you must bring me the egg of a dragon and the tears of a unicorn,” and now the Facebook stablecoin is shutting down. One of the largest companies in the world devoted millions of dollars to figuring out how to launch a stablecoin and concluded that it was impossible. It is demonstrably not impossible! Tether did it! Tether has a hugely successful stablecoin! Tether does not care at all about working closely with all of the relevant regulators! That’s why!

So there you have it, the U.S. approach to regulation and innovation in a nutshell.

Relevant:

People’s trust in institutions are at an all-time low. They’ve also become increasingly cognizant of and educated on what’s at stake with the ever-expanding digitization of their lives, accelerated by the pandemic.

And so what the IRS likely expected to be a lowkey update regarding new digital identity requirements has boiled over into a firestorm of controversy.

It started with a blog post by Brian Krebs.

Here’s a quick overview from Axios:

The IRS’ move to require some taxpayers to use facial recognition to identify themselves is reigniting a debate over how the government should use such technology.

Why it matters: Critics warn that, without sufficient guardrails, information collected by one agency for a seemingly benign purpose could easily be re-used in other ways.

Driving the news: The IRS will soon require taxpayers to provide a third-party company — ID.me — with a combination of documents and a video selfie to verify their identity before undertaking certain online interactions with the agency.

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What they’re saying: “This announcement signals one of the largest expansions of facial recognition technology in the U.S. and there is no question that it will harm peoples’ privacy,” says Caitlin Seeley George, campaign director at Fight For the Future.

And the latest — Axios, again:

A growing number of civil rights groups are calling on the IRS to sever ties with ID.me over concerns about the company’s face recognition technology as well as its lack of transparency.

Driving the news: A coalition of groups, including Fight For the Future, the Algorithmic Justice League and EPIC, have launched Dumpid.me, an online petition urging individuals to indicate their opposition to the agency using the private company’s video selfie-based technology to verify identity.

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Catch-up quick: The IRS plans to require taxpayers who want to do certain online transactions to use ID.me’s video selfie-based authentication system.

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To be clear, we’re not taking shots at ID.me here — or any identity service provider at that.

The big takeaway here is that people are wisening up to their individual needs when it comes to their digital identity, their data, and their privacy. With this IRS debacle, they’re showing that they’re willing to push back in order to get those needs addressed.

Relevant: