🚨 In Case You Missed It

a16z invests $350 million in Flow, a real estate start-up by Adam Neumann of WeWork infamy. This marks the largest check written by the firm in any funding round.
The European Union announces a new anti-money laundering regulator to oversee cryptocurrency.
BTG Pactual, the largest investment bank in Latin America, launches a crypto exchange called Mynt.
Hodlnaut, crypto lender based in Singapore, files for judicial management. This will place a moratorium on legal claims against the company.
CryptoPunks IP rights agreement goes live, allowing holders to unlock IP rights for their NFT’s artwork.

📊 Total ETH Staked On A Steady Uptrend As The Merge Draws Closer

The total amount of ETH staked continues to climb higher, reaching a new all time high of 13.29M ETH staked across a total of 415,314 validators, as of August 16.
The total amount of ETH staked has almost doubled over the past year, despite the price of ETH declining by 43% over the same period. Currently, the price is down 62% since the all time high in Nov-21.
The staking contract, which was introduced on the Beacon Chain in Nov-20, holds ~11% of the total ETH in circulation (currently, worth about $25 billion). This signals increasing confidence in Ethereum’s future and advantages of the new proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
The Merge, scheduled to take place on September 15–16, will see Ethereum switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Withdrawals of staked ETH will be enabled after the Shanghai upgrade, tentatively scheduled 6-12 months after the Merge.
Following the Merge, MEV on Ethereum could make up more than half of total ETH staking rewards, especially with Flashbots’ implementation of MEV-boost. This will allow validators to auction off their block space to an open market, while maintaining decentralization.
MEV or Maximal Extractable Value is the maximum amount that a validator can add to their balance given the actions at their disposal. These can include the capacity to censor blocks, reorder transactions, or attempt to reorganize the chain. Typical forms of MEV include sandwich attacks, arbitrage, and liquidations.
For more on MEV, Delphi members can read our Delphi Pro report here.

⚡ Join Our DISRUPTORS Live Stream Tomorrow

Our fifth DISRUPTORS guest is Zaki Manian, co-founder of Sommelier Finance and iqlusion. He is a foremost contributor to Cosmos, having helped launch their first testnet. Subsequently, he helped complete the Cosmos design goals by completing IBC.

Join the live stream on August 17 at 11:00 AM EST by clicking here (set a reminder by clicking ‘Notify Me’).

🐣 Notable Tweets

ZK-rollups Explained

StarkWare’s ZK-rollups are huge value-adds to the Ethereum network.

But, ZK-rollups sound like black magic to anyone without a math PhD.

If you’re confused about how ZK-rollups work, read this 🧵👇

— GammaX_Exchange (@Gammax_Exchange) Aug 16, 2022

Projects Launching on zkSync

74 Days to zkSync 2.0 on mainnet. With the dream of a zkEVM solution for the @Ethereum community becoming a reality, we’ve seen a wave of projects launching on zkSync 2.0. Every Monday, we’ll be highlighting some of the members of our growing ecosystem. #jointhemission

🧵(1/7)

— zkSync (@zksync) Aug 15, 2022

Coin Center On Tornado Cash Sanctions

Here is Coin Center’s new, full analysis of the Tornado Cash action by OFAC. Bottom line: We believe that OFAC has overstepped its legal authority and are exploring a court challenge.

— Jerry Brito (@jerrybrito) Aug 15, 2022

Get access to four research reports each week with key market coverage.