WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter - May 10

Welcome back to this week's edition of our WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter!

Major Solana bug fixed

On April 16, a bug was reported to the Solana devs that would have let an attacker mint unlimited amounts of Token-22 confidential tokens. These tokens use zero-knowledge proofs for private transfers but haven’t yet been widely adopted. No exploit of this vulnerability is known and it has been patched, but it’s a good reminder not to keep all your eggs in one basket - you never known which basket might have a hole.

Learn more here.

Ethereum Pectra upgrade live

The Pectra upgrade went live this week. It upgraded scalability, staking efficiency, and user experience, such as programmable wallets, gasless transactions, more blob space that helps L2s, and paying gas with non-ETH tokens. As a user, you don’t need to do anything in regards to this upgrade as it all happened on the backend, so watch out for scams claiming you need to transfer funds or anything like that.

Learn more here.

US stablecoin bill stalled

The much-anticipated stablecoin bill almost passed a vote that would allow the senate to debate it and then vote on its enactment, but didn’t quite make it. The bill, known as the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act), ultimately got delayed due a few senators wanting to include stronger provisions around “anti-money laundering, foreign issuers, national security, preserving the safety and soundness of our financial system, and accountability for noncompliance.” The bill may be revisited, but the future for it is uncertain.

Learn more here (video) and here (text).

EU bans anon accounts

The European Union will ban anonymous crypto accounts and privacy coins by 2027. This means popular crypto like Monero (XMR) will be banned, and anyone found using it could face legal challenges. This will primarily be enforced through all types of financial institutions, who will be banned from providing services for these under the new anti-money laundering rules (AML). These rules don’t just apply to crypto, but any financial account, including even safety deposit boxes.

Learn more here.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something!

- Theodore