An executive summary of Worldcoin, Base, Friend.tech, and PayPal stablecoin launches, as well as Grayscale and Uniswap court victories, and the current state of crypto market 👇

New kids on the block

Worldcoin

Launched at the end of July, $WLD is a native token to Worldcoin, a human verification project. It relies on the physical device called the Orb, which scans people’s irises, and the blockchain, where people can open verified wallets. People who have participated in the project so far (over 2 million, according to the company’s website), have received $WLD as an incentive. More details here.

Worldcoin is controversial (would you entrust a company with your biometric data?), but as the AI advances, the bot-fighting effort is gaining in importance.

Since its launch, $WLD has lost 5% of its price (which is totally laudable for new tokens in such a market).

Base

After a long testing phase, Coinbase revealed its blockchain Base to the public.

It is technically a Layer-2 on Ethereum, built in cooperation with Optimism, another layer-2 using optimistic rollups (an approach to scaling that involves moving computation and state storage off-chain). It is centralized now, but the company plans on decentralizing it further down the road.

The blockchain now counts over 1.1 million daily users, $419 million worth of value bridged, and an average of 400k transactions daily. An important contributor to those transactions was another newcomer – the Friend.tech app.

Friend.tech

Probably the most hyped project of August, Friend.tech is a decentralized social network that allows users to tokenize and sell their connections. Influencers or celebrities can sell the ‘keys’ to private chatrooms, where keyholders can send them direct messages. 

Launched on Base on August 10, the DApp saw an explosion of user onboarding after it revealed it was backed by Paradigm, a famous crypto CV. The buzz has since calmed down, leaving many wondering if the project was worth it. Read more about Friend.tech controversies here.

The DApp does not yet have a token, but a soon airdrop is likely.

PayPal stablecoin

Stablecoins are potentially a very lucrative sector, especially taking into account that the current leaders – Tether and Circle, both with their own controversies – command a jaw-dropping 87% of the market.

It’s not surprising that the payments giant, which has been experimenting with crypto for several years now, has decided to launch its own centralized stablecoin, called $PYUSD.

With its massive 430 million user base, we would expect a boost to crypto adoption. For the moment, however, the new stablecoin’s supply is only 43 million.

Courtroom decisions

While Federal agencies do their best to stifle crypto, the American judicial branch is counterbalancing the system.

SEC losing to Grayscale

The SEC faced a second courtroom defeat in as many months: first (partially) losing to Ripple, then – to Grayscale.  

The biggest crypto asset manager with some $21.5 billion in assets under management, Grayscale wants to convert its Bitcoin Trust into a spot ETF. This would significantly increase its client base: from only institutional and accredited entities to a vast pool of retail and conservative clients, such as pension funds.

The SEC rejected its application, for which it got slapped with a lawsuit. The judge’s ruling that the Commission’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious” opens the door not only to Grayscale, but many other asset managers who had applied for a spot Bitcoin ETF. Read more here.

Uniswap not liable

Another important legal event happened on August 30, when a New York court dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that Uniswap was responsible for causing harm to investors by allowing scam tokens to be issued and traded on the protocol.

The judge stated that true defenders in this case must be the issuers of the token, and not a decentralized dexchange. She added another interesting detail to her ruling, stating that ETH was a commodity, declining to “stretch the federal securities laws to cover the conduct alleged.”

That’s undoubtedly an interesting turn for the SEC and Gary Gensler in particular.

Crypto markets

In mid-August, $BTC price suddenly lost 12% – a drop that some attribute to Space X selling its bitcoin holdings, and a looming real estate crisis in China.

Bitcoin reacted enthusiastically to Grayscale’s victory on the 29^th, surging 8%, but losing it all in the following 50 hours.

The SEC has once again delayed its decisions on several crypto spot ETFs (including those of BlackRock and Fidelity) that were due last week, and it looks like even the hopeful Grayscale victory could not beat the apathy currently prevailing in the crypto sector.

Coupled with the lack of liquidity and gloomy macro conditions (persistent inflation, expected rate hikes), this makes for a rather unenthusiastic market so far.