The Tornado of Security Concerns

On Aug. 12, the Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was arrested for suspicions of being involved in money laundering through the Tornado Cash mixer. Authorities in the Netherlands said that the mixer was used to hide huge money flows from criminals and utilized for crypto scams and hacks.

The news comes shortly after the United States Treasury Department placed several Tornado Cash addresses on the sanctions list of the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) on Aug. 8.

Circle, a major cryptocurrency firm and the issuer of USD Coin (USDC), froze 75,000 USDC linked to OFAC-sanctioned addresses.

Last week, Tether said it won't freeze sanctioned Tornado Cash addresses unless requested by law enforcement.

A judge in the Netherlands ruled that Alexey Pertsev has to stay in jail for 90 more days while waiting for charges, which spiraled into hot debates in the crypto community. In Amsterdam, protestors gathered to demand the release of the developer. Chanting "open source is not a crime," the protestors urged the government to catch the criminals and not the developers.

On August 25, Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the blockchain company behind the Cardano network, shared its latest "rollout status" of the Vasil upgrade to its 265,800 followers, with updates on "three critical mass indicators," which will determine when the mainnet update will go ahead.

This includes having 75% of mainnet blocks produced by nodes running 1.35.3, around 25 exchanges upgraded (representing 80% of liquidity) as well as the top ten key mainnet decentralized applications (DApps) also having upgraded.

On Thursday, the blockchain company noted that Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) running the latest node 1.35.3 now account for 42% of mainnet block production in the current epoch, which is now more than halfway to the 75% required.

Last week Ripple announced that foreign exchange company Travelex will utilize RippleNet's ODL to facilitate cross-border payments between enterprises by utilizing XRP. It also stated that Travelex Bank is the first bank approved by Brazil's central bank to operate exclusively in foreign exchange.

The Central Bank of Brazil's approval makes this the first time a Latin American bank has utilized ODL.

The Beijing municipal government announced a two-year (2022–2024) Metaverse innovation and development plan that would require all districts to adhere to the newly released Web3 innovation plan.

The innovation plan focuses on promoting the development of Metaverse-related industries and helping Beijing build a benchmark city for the digital economy. The action plan demands that various districts build technological infrastructure at a city level and promote its use in various fields, including education and tourism.

The development program would see the Integration of technical means such as 3D visualization and GIS (Geographic Information System) to build a visual urban space digital platform and appropriately advance the layout of digital native intelligent infrastructure.

The 2022 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) added a new category to its list of competition categories. This year, artists are eligible to compete under the category of "Best Metaverse Performance" for a coveted award.

In its inaugural year, six artists are up for nomination. The list includes BTS (YouTube), "the Rift Tour," featuring Ariana Grande (Fortnite), Charli XCX (Roblox), Blackpink's "The Virtual" (PUBG Mobile), the "Twenty One Pilots Concert Experience" (Roblox) and "Justin Bieber — An Interactive Virtual Experience" (Wave).

Market Cap is $541,726,213.

The total CRV supply is 3.03 billion tokens, the majority of which (62%) are distributed to liquidity providers. The remainder is divided as follows: 30% to shareholders, 3% to employees and 5% to a community reserve. The shareholder and employee allocations come with a two-year vesting schedule.

Curve is a decentralized exchange for stablecoins that uses an automated market maker (AMM) to manage liquidity.

Launched in January 2020, Curve is now synonymous with the decentralized finance (DeFi) phenomenon and has seen substantial growth in the second half of 2020.

In August, Curve launched a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), with CRV as its in-house token. The DAO uses the Ethereum-based creation tool, Aragon, to connect multiple smart contracts used for users' deposited liquidity. Issues such as governance, however, differ from Aragon in their weighting and other respects.