Rollup: ETF Final Countdown | Polymarket's Huge Breakout | Chevron Defense | SEC Sues Metamask

Primary Topic

This episode discusses major updates in the crypto world, including the upcoming ETH ETF, Polymarket's success, the Chevron deference ruling, and the SEC's lawsuit against Metamask.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Ryan and David cover significant events in the crypto space. They start by discussing the anticipated ETH ETF, which could be a game-changer for Ethereum, with potential trading starting around July 8. The hosts delve into the implications of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Chevron deference, highlighting its potential positive impact on the crypto industry by limiting regulatory overreach. They also talk about the SEC's recent lawsuits against ConsenSys and Metamask, and their designation of staked ETH as securities. Additionally, the episode explores the rapid adoption of crypto in South America and Polymarket's surge in popularity as a prediction market platform. The hosts celebrate the Fourth of July by reflecting on the historical significance of the Declaration of Independence and its parallels to the principles of decentralization in the crypto world. They wrap up with updates on various crypto market movements, significant token unlocks, and a bullish outlook for Ethereum.

Main Takeaways

  1. The ETH ETF is expected to launch soon, potentially starting trading on July 8.
  2. The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Chevron deference could reduce regulatory overreach in the crypto industry.
  3. The SEC has sued ConsenSys and designated staked ETH as securities, continuing its crackdown on crypto staking.
  4. Crypto adoption in South America is rapidly increasing, driven by economic instability.
  5. Polymarket is gaining traction as a popular prediction market platform, with significant volumes and mainstream media attention.

Episode Chapters

1: ETH ETF Anticipation

Discussion on the expected launch of the ETH ETF and its potential impact on the market.

  • Ryan: "This might be the last weekly rollup without an ETH ETF."
  • David: "People are expecting the ETF to be a significant milestone for Ethereum."

2: Chevron Deference Overturned

Exploration of the Supreme Court's decision and its implications for crypto regulation.

  • Ryan: "Chevron deference has been a key factor in regulatory overreach."
  • David: "This ruling could shift power back to Congress and the courts."

3: SEC Sues ConsenSys and Metamask

Analysis of the SEC's lawsuit and its designation of staked ETH as securities.

  • David: "The SEC is continuing its fight against crypto staking services."
  • Ryan: "This could have significant implications for the industry."

4: Crypto Adoption in South America

Overview of the increasing crypto adoption in South America due to economic factors.

  • Ryan: "South America has seen a more than doubling in crypto ownership."
  • David: "High inflation is driving people towards crypto as an alternative."

5: Polymarket's Rise

Discussion on Polymarket's success as a prediction market platform.

  • David: "Polymarket is driving historic volumes in prediction markets."
  • Ryan: "Mainstream media is starting to cite Polymarket as a source of truth."

6: Fourth of July Reflections

Reflections on the historical significance of the Fourth of July and its relevance to crypto principles.

  • Ryan: "The Declaration of Independence embodies the ideals of decentralization."
  • David: "It's a time to celebrate the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness."

Actionable Advice

  1. Stay Informed: Keep up with updates on the ETH ETF launch and its potential impact on the market.
  2. Understand Regulatory Changes: Learn about the implications of the Chevron deference ruling on crypto regulation.
  3. Evaluate Staking Services: Be aware of the SEC's stance on staking and consider its impact on your investments.
  4. Explore Crypto Adoption: Investigate how economic conditions are driving crypto adoption in different regions.
  5. Use Prediction Markets: Consider using platforms like Polymarket for insights into future events.
  6. Celebrate Crypto Milestones: Reflect on historical events that parallel the principles of decentralization in the crypto world.
  7. Monitor Market Movements: Keep an eye on significant token unlocks and their potential effects on the market.
  8. Engage with the Community: Participate in discussions and stay connected with the crypto community for the latest updates.

About This Episode

Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup

People

Ryan, David, Gary Gensler, Justin Slaughter, Joe Lonsdale, Balaji Srinivasan, Kyla Scanlon

Companies

ConsenSys, Metamask, Polymarket, Lido, Rocket Pool

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Transcript

Ryan
Bankless nation. It is the first week of July, and it is one day early. It is time for the bankless weekly roll up. David, we got a lot to talk about. Prices are down a little bit, but we are still bullish because what's about.

David
To happen, the ETH ETF. This might be the last weekly roll up without an Eth ETF. That is better. The new expectations for the date. We'll talk about the expectations for the date.

We don't know for sure, but we think that this is gonna be the last roll up. So what are people's expectations for how it will trade? When is it gonna trade and how it's gonna trade? These are what we're gonna talk about. Also, the Supreme Court just struck down something called the Chevron deference rule set in a landmark Supreme Court case.

Ryan
But, like, what does that mean? What is Chevron deference? And is this good for crypto? We'll talk about that. The SEC has officially filed lawsuits against consensus and metamask after it said that it wouldn't.

David
It also named Lido, staked ETH, and rocket pool Reth as investment contracts, therefore securities. Is there anything new here, or is Gary just shooting the same shot that he's already shot before? ZK sync announces the new upgrade for the Zksync's network stack. And of course, crypto might actually have a mainstream breakout app. This cycle is one you already know.

You've already know the name. We'll talk about that as well. But, Ryan, July 3 is today. July 4 is tomorrow, the day of listeners probably not super relevant for anyone outside of the United States because they don't have the freedom that we have. Oh, my God.

How are you doing? How's your July 4? I'm doing great. Wow. That was probably the most american thing I think I've heard you ever say.

Ryan
So this is why we're doing this episode a day early, because we're actually gonna shoot some fireworks on the 4 July, spend some time with family. I'm gonna hold roman candles in my hands as they go off. You just disclosed to me you're a big fireworks guy, which I didn't know. That about you, fireworks kid. Yeah, you're fireworks kid.

And also, like, a little bit of pyro playing with fireworks. It went a little bit too far into my adult life. Are you still that kid? Are you going to have to? I will be perusing the fireworks as we go up to a family cabin.

David
Yeah. Wow. All right, well, David's going to have a fantastic 4 July and we should say happy 4 July to our listeners and why we celebrate. This is about the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which was America's breakup letter to a king over there in England. And there's a few lines from that that really, I think, are embodied in the layer zero of the US that I think are worth calling out.

Ryan
One is this line about men having unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Also another line I love from the declaration. Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. I love these ideas because I think they are very adjacent to crypto and why we're here. The right to fork the consent of the governed, an opt in network.

These are all powerful ideas. And the idea that we have civil liberties on our blockchains, the ability to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and maybe gains in crypto, I think these are fundamental, and it was a good time to celebrate and reflect for our american listeners on the 4 July. Yeah, I think we had the same idea about this 4 July episode because I have also prepared some statements. When I do a little bit of writing, the bankless nation probably knows that I'm a little bit more winded than Ryan. So here we go.

Oh, wow. Okay, so for everyone who's listening, there's a link in our agenda, and it just says, david, prepared statements. And when I go to click that link, it says, you're blocked. He's not shared this document with you. Because if I did let Ryan see them, he would be like, this is too long.

Edit this. I'm going to have to trim this. Strap in, bankless listeners, we'll see how this goes, but say it, david. I know it's on your heart. So let's hear.

David
Okay, so here we go. As bankless listeners know from our 4 July episode, two years ago, 4 July actually began in the 14 hundreds, when technology allowed man to wake up and see the world through a new lens. This is the printing press and double entry bookkeeping. We've pounded this drum so many times. But these two things, these two technologies created the Renaissance and allowed man and woman to become self dependent and self sufficient.

These technologies allowed us to see the permissioned world around us and gave us the tools that we needed to break free from it. By the time the 17 hundreds came around, these ideas had become so large that they became larger than the monarchy state containers that they were born in. And so a bunch of people decided to go west to live in a land that was as free and as big as the ideas that drove them there. They did not ask for permission. They saw a blank slate on which they could build a better future, and they went for it.

On July 4, 1776, these ideas of freedom and individualism were codified into the Declaration of Independence. That all men were created equal, that they were endowed with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness is, however, never ending. As technology advances, tools become available to vote both advocates and adversaries of freedom.

The pendulum between free and open societies and authoritarian nation states is never at rest. It is always in flux. After the 2008 crisis, we began building the walls around our closed source permissioned financial system. After Snowden whistleblow in 2013, we realized that we were walking into an Internet enabled surveillance state. Now, in 2024, we have the foundation, the ideas, and the motivation on how to escape these freedom suffocating pressures.

But in 2024, we are not yet ready to sign our declaration of independence from tradfi and web two. We have left Europe for the brave new world of the digital age. But we have not yet had a digital July 4. There's still work to be done, which is why we are here today talking about the news on today's weekly roll up. Dang it.

Ryan
Wow, David. I feel like David Hoffman, 2024. That felt like a political speech to me, and I enjoyed it immensely. That was great. What a great way to begin the roll up today.

David
That's about as patriotic as I will ever get, except when there's fireworks involved. I'd much rather prefer to be a patriot of the bankless nation. And if you want to join the bankless nation by being a bankless citizen, which is somebody who pays for all the perks that we provide our citizens. So you get the premium podcast feed with extra research episodes and no ads. You get access to the airdrop hunter and the claimables.

You get 30% off of permissionless tickets. The idea is that being a bankless citizen pays for itself. One of the perks that we have this specific week to commemorate Mantle's one year anniversary. Congratulations to mantle. We've made an NFT that if you claim enters you into the chance to win $750 worth of tokens.

So ten random citizens who go through the airdrop hunter quest for mantle for their one year anniversary quest, they mint an NFT, they make a tweet tagging bankless and mantle. And then you will entered into a raffle where ten citizens will earn 1000 mantle tokens that's currently about $750. So there is a link in the show notes bankless cc mantles anniversary. Just go click the link in the show notes. You can go through this process where you complete the quest, mint an NFT, make a tweet, and then maybe win a thousand mantle tokens.

Ryan
And this is definitely a quest. So there's some precursor quests you have to do in order to mint that NFT on mantle and be eligible for those 1000 tokens, including adding mantle to your wallet, purchasing some MNT bridging funds to mantle. So this is not for everyone. This is where we end every bank list. Small pool.

David
It's like small pool. You gotta earn it. You gotta earn it. Okay. But the good news is there'll probably be a small pool which improves your chances to win.

Ryan
David, let's talk about winning. Are we winning in the markets this week? I'm feeling like things are going down. We're gonna punch on that winning. Tell me about the price of bitcoin on these kraken charts here.

David
Yeah, down 2.7% on the week this week. Start of the week, 61,300. Currently just above $60,000 this week. Similar things for ETH price. Start of the week, 3360, down 1.7%.

Currently just above 3300. David, do you think these down percentages are justified? I mean, we'll talk about it later, but we got some pretty positive Supreme Court rulings with Chevron deference. We've got the Ethereum ETF next week. That what we're calling, which is like this is the last roll up, hopefully without the Ethereum ETF.

Ryan
So like we're on the brink of that. We don't rug our listeners. Yeah. Why are we going down? Um, I think we are at capacity with how much new money has gone into crypto.

David
Like the last big, like upswing in price, uh, was 1st first. To summarize the entire state of this like crypto cycle, if you can even call this a cycle. It was people reweighting Solana in December 2023 and had this Solana season, summer, winter and Solana like reprice. And that was bullish. That was a bull market for Solana.

And then there was a global industry bull market with the bitcoin ETF because new money came into the industry with a bitcoin ETF. Like people bought bitcoin, it recycled down the market cap stack. Like 15, $15 billion came into the industry. No new money has come in in the same ways that it happened in 2021 with NFT mints or like any of this other stuff. And so with the ETH ETF, we will get net new money coming in just like we did with bitcoin.

It'll be smaller than bitcoins. It'll be like maybe a more Ethereum specific price rise. But like, that's our source of new capital right now. And we can't, the prices can't go up anymore because we seem to be exhausted, like people from crypto natives selling all their stables for crypto assets. But the great thing about the Ethereum ETF is that that is the promise of new inflows and net new buyers that arent crypto natives.

Ryan
And thats whats so exciting about them. So I want to ask you our episode that we did with Alex and Matt earlier this week, where we went through, I went through a scenario, and I want you to tell me what you think the chances of this happening is. This pure hopium, but basically quiet summer. Ethereum ETF launches. It's sort of a sell the news event.

At first price goes down. There's flood about like grayscale exiting, not as much institutional demand for ETH. All of this, we go down maybe into the two thousands for the price of ETH, like under three k could be possible, could be on the table, or maybe it's just stagnant. But then we start seeing these inflows in the weeks after, in the months after people come home from their summer vacations. They have already sold in May, but now they're coming back.

It's September. We get a glorious fall into the early stages of winter. And before the end of 2024, we are above all time highs eth with ten k eth price in sight because the inflows have surprised people. On the upside, they weren't counting for this. What do you think about that scenario?

Could it happen? Or is this we just copy and paste what happened to bitcoin and apply it to Ethan? Yes, literally, this just happened within the last year to a different asset. And it sounds, as I'm saying it, because the markets are in the doldrums. It sounds unbelievable.

But yes, it's just a copy and paste of bitcoin. Yeah, no, that checks out. I feel, I feel like that is the default scenario and anyone else would have to prove otherwise. All right, well, that's where we're going with this is the shakeout, a buying opportunity before you like new all time highs. So let's get into actually, like, when, when is this going to happen?

David
When ETF July 8 has emerged as the date to walk. This is a tweet from Nate Jurassi. I need to dm him and ask him, make sure I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. He says that all of the s one s have been handed back with light comments. The issuers have been asked to address the comments and refile them by July 8.

So maybe end of day, July 8, July 9, sometime after 4 July, it's. Filed and approved that we get it. Is that. Yeah, well, so, like, all the approvals will happen under a certain condition. The way that it works is that the SEC wants all these issuers to file their s one s in a particular way, and the issuers are free to file them differently.

But then the SEC will make comments and be like, hey, address these comments, and because they want something different, they want a certain outcome. But then, so it's a little bit of just like tug of war between the issuers and the issue. But this is July 8 is the data watch, and that's the date that issuers have been asked to resubmit. But that's not necessarily the date of trading, right? Yes.

There is no date of trading that we know of. Okay, so this is not like this could happen later in July then. Still. Yeah, the first day it could happen. Is July 8, so this might not be the last roll up.

I think people, people are assuming that, like, once they get these final comments addressed, then the SEC is like, great green light, so next day sort of thing. Yeah, it could be the next day, but we'll see. It could be. I don't know, it could be whatever the hell the SEC wants, to be honest. But yeah, people are expecting.

Gary Gensler said it's being a smooth process. So when he says that, that's like the only positive thing I've ever heard come out of his mouth. Again, another Nate Jurassi tweet about the bullishness of the eth etf. He goes early and easy prediction. He says spot ETH ETF's will be the second most successful debut in ETF history, only behind spot bitcoin ETF's, which are the number one, obviously.

So two most successful ETF launches in 30 year ETF history will occur this year. Bitcoin and ether. Are you paying attention yet? Just saying. ETH is going to follow on show.

It's going to be great. He's really, he's already calling it as the second most successful ETF in history then. And so, like, his analysis was like, we'll just copy and paste bitcoin and get that your analysis on the price action, which we'll just copy and paste bitcoin. Yeah. The bitwise and Galaxy episode that we did with Matt Hogan and Alex Thorne was like, just market cap weight average.

Just copy and paste bitcoin, just control for the market caps. Everyone is just like, just don't overthink this. Yeah, I sort of fall down on that, too. David, there's some good news coming out of South America with respect to crypto adoption. Look at this chart here.

Ryan
This is crypto ownership by continent. We've got Asia, we've got North America, Africa, Europe, South America, Oceania, and we have total crypto ownership by continent. Interestingly, North America ranks number two with 72 million. Asia is number one with 326 million. I'd love to find more details on the source of the charts, but let's assume that these numbers are correct.

David
Directionally correct. Yeah. What's interesting here, David, is from 2023 to 2024, South America got a increase. More than doubling, just doubled. So in 2023, 25.5 million people own crypto.

Ryan
2024, 55.2 million people own crypto, and that was the largest percentage change of any continent. Very bullish on South America, crypto adoption. I know you've spent some time recently in South America and Argentina and some other places. Yeah. Like, what is.

What do these numbers say to you? Yeah, the big drivers are here are just high levels in inflation across Argentina and Venezuela, alongside Brazil has recently warmed up to the crypto ecosystem and inside of its banking apparatus as well. So there's just, like, meaningful crypto adoption in South America, which is also highly motivated, like just global inflation. Like, pick a country, there's inflation there. Argentina has it kind of the worst in Venezuela.

David
And so you've seen a lot of outsized adoption there. I might be going back to Argentina in August for this thing called Crazy Miento, which is just a block of crypto founders in Buenos Aires in Argentina, of which there are many, and they're trying to just make Buenos Aires into a crypto sanctuary. Crypto haven Millet is really approximate to this movement. So the idea is get Malay's administration on board and just really enshrine crypto entrepreneurship inside of Buenos Aires. You can actually apply to go to crazy Miento.

I'll put a link in the show notes as well. If you're interested in that bullish crypto. Adoption, though, David, you know, another explainer of why we're down? I saw this thread, and it was basically token unlocks, just the token unlocks that were scheduled for July. And the three biggest unlocks are a project called Alt Layer, a project called Xai Games and Aptos as well.

Ryan
And just like you could go down the list, arbitrum, worldcoin, immutable, all tons of unlocks. We get to the bottom here. We're talking about just in the month of July, we're talking about almost $700 million worth of token unlocked. And let's recall what a token unlock is. Right?

So some set of VC's insiders, like. Project team founders, investors, early investors, investors of projects. Yeah, basically they have tokens that are vested, they have some vesting period where they can't sell the token or do anything with the token. And meanwhile the tokens are tradable on public markets. The vesting period, usually it's about a four year vesting cycle or so for many of these projects.

Some are actually shorter. Anyway, when that time period of vesting expires, every incremental month or year that goes by, it releases some potential selling pressure onto the market. I think this can explain part of the market doldrums that were in particularly downmarket of bitcoin and ether is just, there's a lot of VC funded investor tokens that are unlocking and there aren't net new buyers of these assets. Yeah, well, so many VC's raised money last cycle, 2021, and also deployed cycle deployed capital, 2021, 2022, and those tokens went into market networks, launched, and now the vesting schedule is starting to ticken, to tick forward. So that $700 million of token unlocks is just kind of one cycle later of 2021.

David
And this is also why we have this U shaped bull market where we have bitcoin ether Solana up very bigly and then meme coins being up very bigly and then a void of price appreciation in the middle of these two things because there are a lot of investor unlocks in that middle section of the market. I agree with that assessment. Yet also, it still doesn't explain some of the DeFi blue chips that are really showing some strong fundamentals that have a lot of the like, they're fairly liquid in terms of float. There are fully vested, profitable DeFi projects out there. Coming up next, Chevron deference.

If you have never heard these words before, you're probably like most listeners, what's the deal with that and why should you know about it? And what does it mean for it to have been overturned? Also, in further courts, SEC sues consensus and also thinks it's Ethan Lido and Rocket pool are securities. So just another day fighting the SEC. We're going to get to all of this and more, but first I want to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, like Kraken, one of the many organizations that's fighting the SEC.

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Ryan
The question is, is this good for crypto? What does this mean in general? Okay, Chevron deference is this thing that happened way back when, that put in this precedent about who makes the rules when the laws are ambiguous. And so just since it's July 4, we'll do some civics lessons. Congress, the legislature writes the rules, and right now the executive branch, which is the president's branch, he appoints people like Gary Gensler to agencies like the SEC or like the EPA, the FDA, FDIC, like pick your three four letter agency, and these agencies go out and enforce the rules.

David
Chevron's deference says that if the rules or if the legislature, if the laws that are written are ambiguous, then agencies also, in addition to enforcing the rules, get to fill in the, fill in the gaps of that ambiguity. They also get to say what, what the legislature really meant, which they get. To have their own rulemaking. If you've heard us talk about interpretive. Rulemaking, yeah, they get to add a little bit.

They have a little say about what the rules are. And this has kind of increased the scope of what these agencies can do. It's a shift of power towards the agencies. This thing, the Chevron deference. Chevron is the company, the gas company, deference means they're deferring it.

It's just this precedent that established this whole idea that got overturned by the current supreme Court. This recently in America, the Supreme Court has moved conservative as a result of Donald Trump appointments of two, I think, Supreme Court leaders, maybe more. And so they have struck down Chevron deference, which means that agencies no longer have interpretive ability of laws. And so this takes power back to the Supreme Court, the courts in general, which will be deciding things, but then also to Congress, who needs to do a better job to make more informed rules. So it's taking away power from agencies and giving it to the courts, which the Democrats really don't like for some reason.

And also the legislature, which is Congress, which is kind of nice because we need Congress to, like, write better laws, is the theory. It's really interesting because as part of the arguments against Chevron deference, cryptocurrency made an appearance. We had the head of policy from paradigm on the podcast. His name is Justin Slaughter, and he talked about this. And this was a.

Ryan
An actual quote from the court case where they refer to cryptocurrency. Let's listen. And this is what happens, right? Justice Sonia Sotomayor is talking with the plaintiff's lawyer, Paul Clement. Great lawyer.

C
I think he was former solicitor general, which is the top appellate lawyer in the government, and asking him, you're talking about gridlock from Chevron. What do you mean? And he said, no, what I'm saying, I'm quoting now, is Chevron is a big factor in contributing to gridlock. Let me give you a concrete example. I would think that the uniquely 21st century phenomenon of cryptocurrency would have been addressed by Congress, and I certainly would have thought that that would have been true in the wake of the FTX debacle.

But it hasn't happened. Why hasn't it happened? Because there's an agency head out there that thinks that he already has the authority to address this uniquely 21st century problem with a couple of statutes passed in the 1930s, and he's going to wave his wand, he's going to say the words investment, contract or ambiguous, and that's going to suck all of this into my regulatory ambitous, even though the same person when he was a professor, said, this is probably a job for the CFTC. Oh, my God. That was our reaction to this on the podcast with Justin.

Ryan
So they were using Gary Gensler as exhibit a of this, of how the administrative state, these agencies, can go too far in their rulemaking. And, you know, they're unelected regulators, so why should they get to make the laws with respect to a new emerging field like cryptocurrency, I think in the. Crypto world, it's very easy for us to look at this and be like, well, this is good because, like, our main relationship with agencies is the SEC. But that's not, that's not universally, everyone's take. There are some positive takes, there are some negative takes.

David
One positive take comes from Joe Lonsdale, who says the ruling in loper bright versus raimondo, this is chevron deference this morning, which overturned the Chevron deference, which allowed unaccountable bureaucrats to determine what laws means for their agencies. A huge victory to check the administrative state and restore the balance of power the USA founders intended. Balaji, he put out a very long tweet thread which, if you want to learn more, there's this linked in the show notes, very useful. He says technology is about to accelerate because Chevron deference is over and regulators can't just make up laws anymore. So countless new startups just became feasible.

And so he goes through a bunch of industries that had been like, suffocated by Chevron deference, genomics, nuclear power, cryptocurrency, and just talks about how, like, because of this, startups are going to be able to just like, really hit rubber to pavement because they're unburdened by over regulation. There are some negative takes. Kyla Scanlon says that means the judicial branch, which we also don't elect, by the way. Courts, judges, and also sort of life sentences have an immense amount of power. There's a lot of people out there who are worried that we are taking away authority from experts who, you know, just no matter what you say about agencies, they are filled with experts, and we are giving them to uninformed courts who are also unelected.

And so there might be some, like, other agencies which, like, don't fit the same pattern as the SEC, which maybe this is negative for. This isn't like universally good. It's not universally bad. There's like pockets of goodness, which I will say, which is the SEC, and perhaps pockets of badness. But as it relates to crypto, very good.

Like, inarguably good, I would say. Yeah. After that episode with Justin David, I came to the perspective that this is probably net good in general. Definitely net good for crypto, but I feel like it's kind of net good because over the past 40 years, the administrative state has kind of built up and they're actually not the experts that we hope they would be. They've moved from kind of technocrats who are unbiased, you know, like the Hester purse type of regulator, to more like political appointees who are pushing forward an agenda.

Ryan
And I think that timers, yeah, and this will start to curtail, but it does very much depend on Congress's ability to actually like, do their job and govern because we do have a governance gap in general for a lot of these details that are being worked out. So good for crypto. There's some like trade offs in other areas. But David, that's not it with respect to the SEC, because even though this has curtailed their rulemaking ability in the future, they can still take enforcement actions. David.

And they've taken a number of enforcement actions against crypto companies in the US. And it came out last week that they have now formally sued consensus recall. Previously it was a wells notice, which is like the promise to sue you later from the SEC. Now they have actually sued consensus. And further, according to their suit, they've stated that ether, staked ether in Lido, that is se, and staked ether in rocket pool.

They've also alleged that those are securities. So that was the big news that dropped last week. Yeah, this is the SEC just continuing to go after staking. Staking as a concept, staking as a, as like a, like a service industry. We got the news that the SEC was like dropping the lawsuit against Ethereum 2.0.

David
Maybe that was just specifically the ideas of like the Ethereum foundation and ether, the asset not being a security, but instead being a commodity. But they're just like taking one small step backwards. They're taking one unit of retreat, if you will, and they're going after consensus as an unregistered broker and because of metamask swaps and then also the staking as a service offerings that they are also going after Coinbase with. They went after Kraken with. Now they're classifying Lido and rocket pool as unregistered securities.

I made the mistake last week of saying, look, they're also suing Lido and rocket pool. They're not doing that. They just have classified them as unregistered securities. And so they just don't like staking. SEC just does not like staking.

They see staking as a huge Achilles heel of the Ethereum ecosystem. And they're going after any protocol, startup project company that's offering staking services. As a side note, this probably doesn't bode well for a, an Ethereum, ETF with staking as a function of it. Or as a part of it? Probably true, yeah.

But we knew that staking was going to be a battle for a while. Mike Selig is a lawyer that we found on the show before, he says in the Coinbase and consensus lawsuits. SEC spins staking services as programs where stakers allocate funds to a pool managed by an operator with discretionary authority who deploys the funds to earn returns. For stakers, this is a warped characterization of technical services. So this is the debate.

Is this an investment contract? Is staking an investment contract where people like Coinbase, like Lido, Rocketpool, are invest, are offering investment services and returns with discretionary authority, or are they offering technical services? I mean, isn't it pretty clearly technical services here they're running nodes for you. If I run my own ETH node and I stake my ETH, it doesn't suddenly become a security, does it? Right.

Ryan
What I'm doing with rocket pool is I'm getting a network of rocket pool nodes to run the validators for me. Same with Lido. Why would that trigger, this is automatically a security? Particularly this is non custodial as well. Like all of these services, it's a much different setup than something like, let's say, Celsius or blockfi, where I'm depositing my bitcoin or ETH and they're doing all sorts of things with it.

They're taking risks I don't know about. Imagine if they issued a liquid token as a receipt for those assets. That to me is like much closer to what a security would be than just like staking. They did call Blockfi as a, they did label those vaults as securities. Well.

But like, again, if it's centralized, right, and there's some risk and it's a black box, you can't see it. That's where definitely discretionary authority, because blockfi would also choose as to, like, where to get yield from. That's where regulators should step in. If it's centralized, it can be regulated. It should be.

If it's open source on chain, if it's technical, right? It shouldn't be. And they're having a hard time figuring out the distinction here. I think that the process of logic is actually pretty. I hope this is the process of logic that gets argued in courts.

David
The SEC dropped the case around Ethereum 2.0, which is Ethereum with proof of stake. So proof of stake is free and clear from any sort of like SEC, like indictment, and it's SEC pursuit just vanilla proof of stakeholders taking at home. So solo staking at home is not a security. That's the thing that they've dropped. What they are saying is like, if somebody does it for you, it is a security.

That's like, because they're suing everyone who is offering a staking platform, that's what they're implying. And so the argument in court has to, they have to make the argument that because a third party is doing it, it's there for an investment contract, even though they've created the foundation of solo staking is not an investment contract, that's not a security. And so they need to make some sort of argument that transmutes some sort of third party platform into an investment contract. And this very important word of discretionary authority over people's funds becomes really, really relevant. Is Lido doing anything other than getting yield from the ethereum protocol?

Is it adding yield by any sort of discretionary choice? Is rocket pool doing that? Or is it just providing technical services? And since we've have this foundation that solo staking is on a security, and since Lido isn't doing any sort of like, strategy to increase the yields, maybe they, maybe this gets into mev boost, like mev strategies, maybe like the relayers are a conversation here, it's going to get pretty unwieldy. But the technical services argument, I think is pretty strong.

Ryan
But here's the thing is, thanks to Chevron deference being overturned against doesn't get to make up its own rules. So, like, the default is if it's. Net, they have to fight it in court, right? Yeah, they have to fight it in court, or ultimately it goes to Congress. So maybe it takes active legislation to fully clarify this and we're free and clear.

In the, in the meanwhile, something else that's relevant here, the us marshals chose Coinbase to safeguard its cryptocurrency. I'm sure the us marshals picked up some cryptocurrency from some illegal activity. I'm sure they confiscated some funds and they just, they decided to use Coinbase as their custodial service. Eric Voorhees points out the irony of this, where on one hand the us government is declaring Coinbase an illegal brokerage through one of its branches of government, and then on the other it proceeds to use Coinbase as a brokerage. So there's a little bit of hypocrisy going on in the us government.

Of course, it's not like all one entity. These agencies have different viewpoints on things, but the fact that one branch of the us government is calling Coinbase an illegal brokerage and another branch is just using them as a cryptocurrency brokerage is somewhat ironic, I think. I mean, so, like, if the US Marshal says, like, okay, well, the SEC, they're suing Coinbase so we can't use them. They're suing Kraken so we can't use them, then where the hell do they go sell their crypto? Like, I don't know.

David
What? I don't know. I'm not sure that they've thought it through. David, one last win in the courts this week, this probably snuck under most people's radars, is that secondary sales of BNB and BUSD are not securities. Once upon a time, the SEC actually went after binance USD.

That's busd, and called it a security. Yeah, they call this stable coin a security. Remember when they did that? And so this is, this is pretty similar to the precedent where XRP secondary sales are not securities. Even though XRP might have been sold as a security in the first place, that doesn't mean all secondary sales are securities.

We have a second court case that deemed the same precedent. BNB and BuSc secondary sales are not securities. And so this is District Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed this SEC claim. So we are just layering on a second precedent confirming the first. And so this got picked up by illegal Twitter and just like layering on just another win of clarity by the courts for the crypto industry.

Ryan
It's all good news. And we have some more good news coming up. In the second part of the weekly roll up, ZK sync is introducing their new network upgrade. We'll talk about that. Also, David, it feels like we've got maybe a killer app on the horizon that's being used right now that's maybe breaking into mainstream.

David
You'll never guess. We'll talk about that. Has to do with politics. And also is circle about to drop a EU stable coin? We'll cover that too.

Ryan
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David
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Okay, what does this mean? What is elastic chain? So, elastic chain is what they are calling Zksync 3.0. Zksync light is 1.0, Zksync era 2.0 elastic chain Zksync. The elastic chain now is Zksync 3.0.

Just adding dimensions onto Zksync, actually, it's a pretty logical order of operations. Zksync Lite was basically just payments. So it was a ZK roll up, but without expressivity. It was a payments layer, too. Zksync Era is a Zke EVM.

So another ZK roll up, but this time with an EVM with a virtual machine. And now the elastic chain 3.0 is a new dimension. To scale that out into, like many, many, many new chains. This is basically Zksync's version of the optimism super chain. This is their version of the polygon ag layer.

This is their native interoperability and scalability version. They call it elastic because elasticity refers to the ability to increase the supply of block space proportionally in response to rising demand. So elastic architecture allows a blockchain to expand capacity limitlessly by adding new instances to match capacity for usage. From a technical point of view, the elastic chain is a federation of autonomous ZK chains that are interconnected natively at the protocol level, at the root level. From the user perspective, it's just like a unified multi chain ecosystem that feels and behaves like a super single chain, which is what optimism super chain is going after.

You have one address across all Zksync super chains, which might sound like how you have one address on optimism and arbitrum and all the other EVM chains. But it's even better than that. You have your address on optimism, you have your address on arbitrum, and those are the same addresses, like same zero x 1234. But on each one of these EVM chains, the elastic chain is different. There's just one address, even though there's many, many, many chains.

Your single address, you make a transaction from one single address, and that will transact across all the smart contracts uniformly, seamlessly across all the zksync elastic chains. The way that this works is there is one single bridge. One single bridge. All the Zk sync chains collapse down to one single bridge, and then your assets and your address spawn from that bridge. And can interact with all of the Zksync elastic chains.

It is basically single synchronous universal composability for the Zksync network. And so this has been the big update out of zksync. Polygon has found this disagreeable. Here's Hudson Jameson taking a, who works at Polygon now showing the network topology of the Zksync announcement to the network topology of the polygon Ag layer announcement. And it's like, basically the same picture.

Ryan
But that's all true, though, right? They're all kind of building the same thing. They're all building. Everyone's building the same thing. Yeah.

David
To me, this is like. Well, yeah, because we're all discovering, like, the logical conclusion of, like, ZK roll ups. Yeah. And so the fact that, like, both teams independently approached the same conclusion makes a ton of sense. Like, Polygon will say that they're copying us, but, like, everyone says that these days.

Well, it's said that about optimism and vice versa. I think it's a great development. I like the phraseology of elastic. It reminds me of, like, cloud compute, you know, Amazon, ECt, like, elastic compute services, where you just, like, spin up new chains and scale it horizontally on demand as you need the capacity. Um, I will say, though, what this solves is, like, fragmentation and, uh, interoperability when you're inside of a chain network.

Ryan
Right. But it's not like, the holy grail. It's not global. Yeah. Right.

Because now we have zksync, we have arbitram, we have optimism. Like, we have polygon, we have all of the different ecosystems, and those are still fragmented. So we still have some work to do. It's not going to, like, elastic chain is not going to solve that problem, but it will unify the chains on, like, the ZK sync. I guess they don't call it super chain elastic chain.

David
I think it will solve the problem. It'll solve the problem, and here's why. So right now, how many chains are there on ethereum? How many layer twos? How many layer twos in total?

We probably have, like, you bridge around that. You bridge around. So you go to a cross and you hit the drop down menu. Like, how many do you see? I haven't done that.

15. Like that. There's a dozen or so that are kind of relevant. And so if you want to go do something on Zora, you got a bridge from optimism to zora, even though that Zora is in the super chain. Right?

Like, same thing for the arbitram orbits, same thing for the polygon, maybe not actually for the ZK rolls. Too many bridges. But like, if we collapse everything down to just five, you have ZK sync, polygon. Arbitrum. Optimism.

Excuse me. Four. Just four. You have four economic zones. And if there are thousands of Starknet.

Excuse me. Well, I don't know if Starknet's doing that. Oh, yes, they definitely are. They definitely are. Okay, five.

Back to five. If you just have five zones and there are thousands of chains inside of these zones and they are just solidified, they're adopted. And those five zones with five different trust assumptions, that's what creates the fracturing that can be solved by the bridging layer and the UX layer. You can build assurances into the concreteness and this hardness of each of these five foundations to the point where middleware and the UX layer can just fix the fragmentation at the UX level. And so let's get twelve down to five.

Let's grow an infinite number of chains inside of those five. And then let's let the apps kind of like, abstract away the UX because they have the strong property rights settlement assurances, because these five things are, like, very well trafficked and they can get a lot of economies of scale from this. That's how I think this gets solved. I get that. And I'm also optimistic that with what you said, we can also solve interoperability across those five, too.

Ryan
I mean, like, you know, Justin Drake has talked about shared sequencing and how in AG layer I is not just a polygon solution. That sort of solution can be expanded across all of the ZK proof type chains. Anyway. More to do there. Yeah.

And layer ones. Zerion launched one of these elastic chains, it looks like. And that was news this week. What are they doing? They're doing a pretty cool experiment using zero fee.

David
A zero fee chain. So a chain that costs zero fees to use. So it's completely gasless. There's no gas on Zion's brand new layer two chain from. From Zksync.

So they cover all the transaction costs using the thing called a paymaster. They are working on preventing spam using this thing called on chain DNA. So it's also a strategy to identify bots versus humans and make sure that the bots actually do pay gas and the humans don't. So they're just running. They're running a gasless experience.

And so sirion used to be a, and still is a portfolio manager. Now it's also a wallet. Now it's also a chain. So pretty fully integrated stack. Now they're experimenting with like, hey, what if we just like, pay for the cost?

Ryan
There's no gas. We completely abstract that away, right? Yeah, I think it's great. Very, very bullish on that experiment taking place, David, we ended last week's weekly roll up with a little bet because we are on the brink of the presidential debate. Trump versus Biden.

That was going to happen. And there was a bet as to whether crypto would be mentioned or not. I lost that bet. Crypto was not mentioned, but in my defense, very little was mentioned during that debate. In terms of substance.

David
Golf was mentioned. It was an absolutely terrible train wreck of a debate. There's been much commentary on that. I'm sure bank listeners have not missed that, that commentary. But Crypto was unmentioned at all during that debate.

Ryan
And who knows what's going to happen? Who knows whether it will have the same presidential candidates in a couple of weeks versus this debate that doesn't. Oh, wait, somebody does know. Oh, really? Oh, okay.

Well, that gets to what we introed beginning of this episode, which is we may have stumbled across a killer app for crypto this cycle. We've been looking for it. Is there more to this thing than. You'Ve been under our noses this entire time? Prediction markets.

Poly market is driving, like, historic, unprecedented volumes. And what it's doing, what is polymarket and what are we looking at on the screen? Polymarket is a prediction market platform, so you can bet on the future outcomes of events. Prediction markets have been a thing before. Crypto predict.

David
It is a prediction market that's like web two based and just ach transfer based. It's kind of janky. I've used it before. Tried to bet on Andrew Yang last cycle, didn't work. Lost.

But I could probably bet on Andrew Yang again this cycle. At least some people are betting on Michelle Obama winning on a 4% chance of becoming the democratic or the presidential election winner. There is on the presidential election winner for 2024. On polymarket, there is $216 million. Wow.

Of TvL in this one market, this one single market. So this market is extremely liquid. And so the cool thing about prediction markets is that it allows the market to predict future outcome. And it's an oracle, it's a source of truth. And so not only is this just like kind of cool to have, but mainstream media organizations like Bloomberg frequently cite poly market, the crypto app, poly market, as a source of truth because it is, it has 85% of all prediction market volumes as it relates to the presidential election or politics in general.

So if you are looking to cite anything, what you do is you go cite the most liquid venue, because that's where all the players are making their bets. And that is the best source of truth of what is most likely. Oh, yeah. And it's. It responds in real time.

Ryan
So during the debate, like, the percentages, like, so right now, we're looking at presidential election winner 2024. Donald Trump has a 61% chance of winning at this point in time. But guess what? Joe Biden is not number two. You know who's opting to number two?

Kamala Harris. Harris is number two. So the 17%, which is nuts, right? Because she's not even running. She's not even running well.

David
So this is kind of the cool thing about prediction markets, is that if you are an insider with insider information that you think that the market is not priced in because it's secret, you get to go to a prediction market and bet your life savings, and you will change the market. You will change the outcome of this, this particular bet. And so maybe. Maybe. I think it's insane just because I'm watching Kalama Harris meme videos about, like, unburdening ourselves from what has been.

I don't know if you've seen these, Ryan, but, like, maybe someone knows something and they think that, like, the Democratic Party is going to conspire to swap out Joe with Kamala Harris. Yeah. I mean, we have Michelle Obama with a 4% probability. So it could get even crazier. Why is Michelle Obama in there?

Ryan
Well, so, I mean, what's interesting about this, too, is from the very early days of Ethereum and crypto, prediction markets have been a thing that we had hoped to build. Right. And so, like, augur was a very early implementation. It's, like, one of our first big apps, Ethereum. Yeah.

But the problem is the wallet. Ux hasn't been there. It's broken too. Hard to use, like, gas. It was priced in ether in the first time around.

David
Yeah. And now here we are in 2024. And, like, with polymarket, it's easier to use than predict it. It's easier to use than. Than web two.

Ryan
So very exciting to see. And also, as you mentioned, mainstream attention. They are citing this in, like, mainstream media as, like, a good source for truth on what the heck is going on in the election. $260 million is hard to argue with. Balaji put out a tweet right after the debate.

David
This. This is a tweet of Joe Biden's chances of becoming the democratic nominee plummets from, like, 85, 90% chance down to 25% chance right after that. In real time. This happened in real time. And so we're watching.

We're watching in real time, things like play out. And of course, what happened after the debate. All of the Democratic Party is now saying, like, oh, maybe Biden shouldn't be our nominee. Hayden Adams put out a tweet saying polymarket for demnominis is popping off. Prediction markets are basically anonymous insider leaks at this point.

So, again, if you're an insider and you know something, you can leak that information to the public without saying who you are or what you know, just by, like, smashing that buy button on a particular prediction market. Politics is really a great place to bet. This is on the polymarket homepage. Like, the most populated prediction markets are, like, presidential election winner for 2024, who's going to be the democratic nominee? The probability that Biden drops out of the presidential race, that's a 76% chance at this point in time.

Ryan
I actually believe those numbers, which is totally crazy. We're so close to election day, and we have the democratic nominee potentially 76% dropping out. And the numbers have been absolutely crazy. This is open market interest. April 2024, all time highs.

And just like these election markets have propelled polymarket into incredible volumes here. It's like doing analytics so we can track all this stuff. It's really cool to see. Can I just rattle off some numbers here, just in terms of size of the bets? Okay.

David
Presidential election winner, 2024. $217 million. Democratic nominee, 2024, $80 million. Biden drops out of the presidential race. Question mark, $10 million.

Republican vice president nominee. There is $6.1 million on the. On the bet for the republican vice president nominee. Presidential election popular vote winner, $43 million. Like, these markets are super liquid.

Did you pay attention to how much capital was on the me versus Nick poly market? Yeah, I did fight. Did I. Did I ever bet? I don't think I got to the stage of betting day.

Ryan
Oh, yeah. With Kyle Samani. Yeah. Yeah. I was like.

It was like 40k or something like this. Or was it more? It was about to hit a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. Yeah, that's.

David
People love betting on these things, dude. No, it's. It's fun. And like I said, I mean, this. This now works on crypto.

Ryan
I believe this is all on Polygon as well. Yeah. So USDC on Polygon? Yeah. Actually relatively centralized of an app, except for the fact that it uses us Ec on Polygon.

Underneath, it's using crypto in the right places. This is Vitalik showing his support for prediction markets. He says prediction markets and community notes are becoming two flagship social epistemic technologies of the 2020s. Both are truth seeking and democratic, built around open public participation rather than pre selected elites. I want to see many more things like this.

Vitalik coming out in support of prediction markets and what's going on with polymarkets. Did you see. Elon responded to this tweet. Did you see what he said? No.

No, I didn't. He responds, yeah. What does that mean? That's it? He just responded, yeah.

Is that good? All right, thanks a lot. I like that. Oh, community notes. That's why Vitalik said community notes.

So Elon Musk was summoned. That makes sense. Yeah. Community notes, by the way, is great. It is great.

David
Okay. USDC being used in other places, Coinbase and stripe are bringing cheaper payments to stripe. So this is news out of Coinbase, three new integrations. You can pay out in USDC, out of your stripe account to over 150 countries. You can go fiat to crypto on ramp, added to base, inside of stripe, and then fiat to crypto on ramp, added to Coinbase wallet using stripe.

So stripe and base and USDC all holding hands. Love it. Very cool. This is also a USDC update. Dan Romero from Forecaster says introducing pay on Warpcast as a forecaster client.

Ryan
Pay someone with USCC in under 10 seconds. Mobile first with your existing wallet and not having to look or remember an address close to instant confirmations and zero fees on base. It's really cool because not only is farcaster building sort of a decentralized social network, because it's all on crypto rails, you get a wallet thrown into that, right? So you also get like venmo built in. Now they've just enabled USDC functionality and some of the financial payment.

Twitter is trying to do this too. Like X is trying to do this too, but they're doing it the tradfi way, at least up to this point. They're going through all the existing, you know, like, banking infrastructure, whereas forecaster can just do this, like, quickly because it's already on crypto rails. Totally. Ryan, I'm ready to hear about taxes.

You really are. Do you really want to. You got. You have to really mean it, David, before I'll tell you about taxes. Okay, I'm looking at my phone.

David
Go for it. This is the IR's issuing its guidance on crypto taxes. This is one of those rules, by the way, you know, like the rulemaking we're talking about with yeah, Chevron deference. You have less ability to kind of like, do this sort of thing. But anyway, the good news is the absolute worst outcome was averted.

Ryan
Do you remember that that Bankless podcast we did a while ago when the IR's originally put out its rulemaking and it was looking like they were going to ask every single defi wallet and user interface, think Etherscan, think Zurian, who we were talking about earlier. Think Metamask wallets, all of them, to actually identify the us citizens that are using their service and go send them a 1099 for trading activity inside of it. Okay. That means they need to know who you are. Like passport, like physical address.

Like, I don't need to tell bank listeners how much of a nightmare that would be from a privacy perspective. And just from like a, you know. And no one wants that. No one wants that. Anyway.

That was kind of like the. The doom type case. Well, they have come out with their. Their formal rules and they've just kicked that decision down the road to 2025. So we're not out of the woods yet.

We're not in the clear. But there was a scenario where they would start enforcing these rules and require all, like, defi front ends, essentially, to issue ten ninety nine s to us citizens. And they're not doing that, at least not right now. They're kicking that decision down the road and they say they're going to clarify it later. So how does Trevor, on deference impact that?

Well, this is one of the rules, you know, like when according to the APA, which is the administrative Procedure act, like, basically, these agencies have some rulemaking ability, right? And they have to post these rules in advance and get commentary from the public before they do it. This is just like one of those rules. And so if they do something arbitrary and capricious, then they'll just have less ability to kind of enforce this. So it curtails IR's ability to just create stupid rules in crypto as well.

David
That sounds good. That sounds good. It's good. It's just good ish news, I suppose. And speaking of that, David, speaking of good ish news.

Ryan
Yeah? Why don't you do this? Why don't you tell me about what's happening over in Europe with Mika and Stablecoin? Yeah, this is my time to take the Minka reins. Jeremy Allaire puts out a tweet saying today, I'm delighted to share that Circle has been authorized as an emoney issuer by the ACPR in France and a mica compliant Emoney token issuer for both USDC and UEURC.

David
Wow, this is some compliance speak. Circle France is now the home to the headquarters of our european regulated financial activity and european customers can now access USDC and EURC via Circle Mint France. All USCC and EURC currently in circulation in Europe are officially mica compliant with circa now holding 100% of EURC reserves under our regulated circle France entity. All of the US EC held by Europeans remains fully fungible globally and users can trade transact self custody using defi, etcetera with no changes. So I guess we're getting EURC, which is not roll off the tongue like USCC does, but nonetheless is a european stable coin backed by 100% reserves, but also european people, citizens.

Europeans can use EURC and USDC interchangeably. Raise of the week. Tell me about Astria. David. Astria, this is a bankless ventures raise.

Astra is a decentralized sequencing layer. You would know this as a shared sequencer. It's a layer one blockchain, because all shared sequencers are blockchains that enable decentralized roll ups. Let me say this again, Astria. It's a decentralized sequencing layer to help roll up sequence both in the ethereum ecosystem and the celestia ecosystem.

You would know this as a shared sequencer. This round is led by DBA. So John and also placeholder Chris and also we're in this round as well, bankless ventures. And so this is of course trying to recompose all of the roll ups into a unified structure, I think. Ryan, and if the listeners peaked, you should watch this 20 minutes bit of what I would call stand up for nerds.

You've watched this? Yeah, it was hilarious, right? Yeah, it was basically the founder, Josh Bowen, the founder of Astro, saying, we're all building the same thing in crypto, and here's why. Yeah, exactly. And it was hilarious.

His delivery of it was like, pretty funny. So it's basically start stand up for nerds. So if you want to meet Josh Bowen, he's not talking about Astra, he's talking about something else. There's a link in the show notes to watch this. It's pretty funny.

Ryan
David, speaking of shared sequencers, let's do a joke race update, because on the top of the list of podcasts that bankless citizens want us to do, give them opportunity to submit requests and then vote on, I think, coming in at number one so far, and there's still some time to vote. I think there's like seven or eight more days to vote. Seven more days. Yeah. Is the great sequencing debate with John Charbonneau, Justin Drake, Josh Bowen we were just talking about, and Ben Fish.

That's coming in at number one with the most votes. And so that might be the episode that we do. Yeah. One more guest that you skipped over is m team. His name is Matthew, who also proposed this podcast episode.

David
So the proposer is proposing himself as a guest, which is fair play, 100% within the rules. All you have to do is get the vote if you can. All you have to do is get the votes. So this is coming in. And number one.

Number two is it's a miracle anything works in crypto with a guest named Max Howell, who talks about some of the open source supply chains that makes the crypto industry work. I think we all remember when that ledger module thing broke and we all had to stop using crypto, and then we all had this existential crisis about like, wait, what the hell's going on? Third place is Mert. Mert's third. Our good friend Mertz.

Ryan
All right, well, what's the call to action here? People can still vote, right? People can still vote. So you have eight. Excuse me, eight days to vote.

David
So if you are a bankless citizen with a 2022, 2023, or 2024 PO app in your wallet, sign into droke race with that wallet and you can vote on one of the submissions. The submission phase ended a week ago, and so now it's just the voting phase. Right now, the great sequencing debate is coming in. So if the great sequencing debate passes, John Charbonneau, Justin Drake, I would not be. Josh and Ben are compelled to come on the podcast.

This is how governance works. If the government goes through, you guys have to come. They're compelled as well. They're compelled. Yeah, I see.

Ryan
Now we know the rules. All right, let's close this out with a meme of the week. David, is this a 4 July week or something? Is this a 4 July meme or something else? No, this was a meme from last week where there's a meme I found on Friday, ethereum got or consensus, and Metamask got sued by the SEC.

David
The SEC deemed that Lido and rocket pool are unregistered securities, and Solana got an ETF submission. And so this meme is Ethereum, the army man protecting the sleeping Solana from Gary Gensler is how it felt last week. Very nice with you. I'm going to do that. Got to end with this.

Ryan
Of course, none of this has been financial advice. You know, crypto is risky, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey.

Happy 4 July.