HOLIDAY SPECIAL — Year In Review | Exploring Events, New Technologies, and Industry Trends

We are going back in our archives for this year prior to this podcast to share some stories that we think are special.

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ABOUT

This episode is sponsored by the Stellar Community Fund

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In this installment of "The Protocol," hosts Brad Keoun, the founding editor of The Protocol Newsletter, and tech journalists Sam Kessler and Margaux Nijkerk, explore the following stories:

EVENTS

Zuzalu

This invite-only gathering of 200 people in the Mediterranean marina town of Lustica Bay has been taking place since late March and wraps up this week, featuring official sessions on zero-knowledge cryptography, twice-a-day jumps into the Adriatic Sea, and the chance to get face time with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Curve hack, DeFi existential crisis

Curve, a leading decentralized exchange on Ethereum, was hacked for more than $70 million in July. Questions continue to linger around the platform's long-term viability and potential contagion risk.

Ethereum Validator Withdrawals

Following last week's milestone Shanghai upgrade, we moved to wind down CoinDesk's Ethereum validator project, but it could be a week before the 32 ETH we staked (about $67,000 worth) hits our wallet. C. Spencer Beggs, our director of engineering, breaks down the technical steps he's taken.

NEW TECHNOLOGY - PROJECTS

Account Abstraction was 'Fire' at the start of 2023

Account abstraction – a concept recently embraced by Visa – could make Ethereum wallets significantly more user-friendly.

Worldcoin

World ID has added integrations with Shopify, Minecraft, and Reddit alongside a slew of developer-focused updates that could expand the OpenAI founder's blockchain-based "proof-of-personhood" service to more users.

Bitcoin Ordinals

In the historic auction house's first-ever sale of the Ordinals inscriptions known as "NFTs on Bitcoin," a batch of three pixelated images from a mushroom-themed collection drew about $450,000, or roughly five times the highest estimates.

PROTOCOL VILLAGE SEGMENT

INDUSTRY TRENDS - BUSINESS SIDE

Layer2 Mania

Users will be able to bridge their ETH starting Thursday, with the official launch of the main network on Aug. 9.

Crypto Winter / Legal -Regulatory: SBF gets charged | Binance + CZ

The alleged fraudster and ex-FTX CEO acted "in good faith," Bankman-Fried's attorney said in an emotional closing argument.

ZK Teams

Polygon Labs, a developer of scaling networks for Ethereum, has shifted toward "Polygon CDK," a blockchain-development kit powered by zero-knowledge cryptography. The older "Polygon Edge" was used by Dogechain, in an unofficial effort to build a Dogecoin-oriented smart-contracts network.

EPISODE LINKS |

Zuzalu Is 2 Months in Montenegro With Crypto Elites, Cold Plunges, Vitalik Selfies

As Curve Averts DeFi Death Spiral, Fiasco Exposes Serious Risks

CoinDesk Winds Down Ethereum Validator ‘Zelda,’ and We Now Wait to Get Money Back

Ethereum Upgrade Could Make It Harder to Lose All Your Crypto

'Bitcoin NFT' Hysteria Comes to Sotheby's as Super-Mario-Style Mushroom Character Tops $200K

Sam Altman Is Bringing Worldcoin's Controversial Eye-Scanning Orb to Reddit and Microsoft

Coinbase Sets Public Launch of ‘Base’ Layer 2 Blockchain for Next Week

Sam Bankman-Fried on Verge of Tears as His Lawyer Concludes Defense

Polygon Stops Work on 'Edge,' Used to Build Dogechain, as Focus Turns to ZK

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The Protocol has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Take Me Back” by Strength To Last.

HOSTS

Margaux Nijkerk

Margaux Nijkerk reports on the Ethereum protocol and L2s. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds BTC and ETH above CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000.

Sam Kessler

Sam is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor for tech and protocols. His reporting is focused on decentralized technology, infrastructure and governance. Sam holds a computer science degree from Harvard University, where he led the Harvard Political Review. He has a background in the technology industry and owns some ETH and BTC. Sam was part of the team that won a 2023 Gerald Loeb Award for CoinDesk's coverage of Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX collapse.

Bradley Keoun

Bradley Keoun is CoinDesk's managing editor of tech & protocols, where he oversees a team of reporters covering blockchain technology, and previously ran the global crypto markets team. A two-time Loeb Awards finalist, he previously was chief global finance and economic correspondent for TheStreet and before that worked as an editor and reporter for Bloomberg News in New York and Mexico City, reporting on Wall Street, emerging markets and the energy industry. He started out as a police-beat reporter for the Gainesville Sun in Florida and later worked as a general-assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, he double-majored in electrical engineering and classical studies as an undergraduate at Duke University and later obtained a master's in journalism from the University of Florida. He is currently based in Austin, Texas, and in his spare time plays guitar, sings in a choir and hikes in the Texas Hill Country. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.

EPISODES

37 EPISODES

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