WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter - Sept 2

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

Grayscale’s Bitcoin Spot ETF Win

Crypto regulations in the US continue to be strange. A court ruled that the SEC’s reasons to deny Grayscale’s bitcoin ETF were “arbitrary and capricious”. This doesn’t mean that the SEC will approve the application, but that they will ahve to come up with better reasons if they decide to deny it. The SEC has responded by delaying the review of various bitcoin ETF applications, rather than actually dealing with them. We’ll see how long it takes, but this could be good news as it will require the SEC to meet certain requirements rather than just tossing out the applications because they feel like it.

Learn more here.

Lawsuit Against Uniswap Labs Dismissed

Someone filed a lawsuit against the popular decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, claiming that it should be held responsible for users losing funds from scam tokens that were listed on the DEX. The judge threw out the case, ruling that developers shouldn’t be liable for actions taken by users of their software. This is a huge win, and might help the TornadoCash cases too. In this ruling, ether (ETH) was also classified as a commodity, NOT a security as the SEC has been pressing for. In other words, this is a really good ruling.

Learn more here.

Polygon Released New L2 Dev Stack

In good news for builders, the Polygon blockchain has released a development kit that allows devs to use zero-knowledge proof (ZK-proof) tech to build on Polygon’s open-source codebase called Chain Development Kit. ZK-proof tech allows more security and fast transactions, and will allow layer 2s to expand in use-cases and flexibility. We’re hoping that there will be a time when users won’t even know what tech they are using, or even maybe which blockchain, but that using crypto apps would be as simple as using an app on your phone. This tech might help that along.

Learn more here.

LimeWire’s Creator Studio to use AI with Music

If you were on the internet in the early 2000s, you probably know about LimeWire, the file sharing app that people used to spread pirated music, TV shows, and movies. While the app itself isn’t a thing anymore, the team behind it came into the Web3 space on the Polygon blockchain a while back. They already allow users of their creator studio platform to use AI to generate images. Now, they will be using AI to generate music too. These songs are generated from content uploaded by artists, and the artists split the earnings with the creator of the AI-generated versions. This is a really interesting model that we’ll have to see how it plays out and if it is fair to creators or not.

Learn more here.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something!

- Theodore