Andrew Thurman

Despite being backed by payments juggernaut PayPal and enjoying a scheduled listing today on Coinbase, the Paxos-issued stablecoin PYUSD seems to be struggling to gain on-chain adoption. 



As the total stablecoin supply has dwindled, and industry giants USDC and USDT average millions in outflows daily, a host of centralized and decentralized alternatives have risen to fill the void. Total stablecoin market capitalization is down to $124 billion compared to $167 billion at the start of 2023.&nbsp;



PayPal’s PYUSD, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-launches-stablecoin">which was announced on Aug. 7</a>, initially appeared to be a possible contender to Circle and Tether’s 85% industry dominance. However, after three weeks the young stablecoin, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-pyusd-stablecoin-centralization">which industry participants have criticized for its centralization</a>, has struggled to gain traction.&nbsp;



According to Coinmarketcap, PYUSD currently has 47 million tokens in existence. However, per DeFiLlama, the overwhelming majority have never <a href="https://defillama.com/stablecoin/paypal-usd">circulated</a> – a sign that minters are primarily sitting pat on centralized exchanges.&nbsp;



Indeed, data from Nansen indicates that Paxos, the issuer of PYUSD, holds 90% of the circulating supply. While there are two decentralized exchange pools with PYUSD, they hold less than 50,000 tokens between them.&nbsp;



Per Etherscan, there are <a href="https://etherscan.io/token/0x6c3ea9036406852006290770bedfcaba0e23a0e8">merely</a> 233 PYUSD holders total.&nbsp;



In contrast, a pair of decentralized stablecoins that have launched in the past year saw significantly faster adoption. The Aave lending protocol launched GHO, which achieved a market cap of $17.53 million within its initial three weeks. Meanwhile, crvUSD from Curve surpassed $18 million shortly after its debut.



In an interview with Blockworks, Aave founder Stani Kulechov cautioned against looking too deeply into surface-level adoption metrics, however, indicating that finding real-world use cases may be more important.&nbsp;



“Obviously having TVL [total value locked] and liquidity is an important base for every stablecoin out there, but it’s not exciting if all you can do is mint and provide liquidity,” he said.&nbsp; “DeFi have solved the supply side – how do you generate demand? How do you provide consumption is the more interesting problem.”



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PayPal’s stablecoin sees slow uptake in first 3 weeks

Bessie Liu

Payments giant PayPal revealed that it will introduce a stablecoin tied to the US dollar <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-launches-stablecoin">on Monday</a>.



The stablecoin, dubbed PYUSD, can be transferred between PayPal and any compatible external wallets. With the stablecoin, users can pay for purchases and convert the token to any supported cryptocurrency.



As might be expected, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/paypal">PayPal</a>’s decision to join the stablecoin game has drawn significant interest —&nbsp;as well as criticism — from the Web3 community.



In particular, concerns have been raised on social media that PYUSD is, at its heart, a centralized digital asset operated by one of the world’s biggest regulated payments company. In practice, this means that PYUSD tokens can be frozen and seized.&nbsp;



“The new Paypal USD stablecoin has an &#8216;assetProtection&#8217; role which can wipe your balance in two transactions,” Pashov, a developer focused on crypto security, <a href="https://twitter.com/pashovkrum/status/1688591468498239496">tweeted</a> earlier Tuesday.



Pashov noted that this is considered a “centralization attack vector,” though this should not come as a surprise, he emphasizes, as tether (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/usdt">USDT</a>) and USD Coin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/usdc">USDC</a>) operate similarly in that users must place their trust in operators to manage their money.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Like USDT and USDC, PYUSD addresses can be paused, blocked and unblocked, Juuso Roinevirta, a DeFi product consultant and head of product and growth at Membrane Finance noted.



Blockworks Research analyst Ren Yu Kong explains that the stablecoin’s centralized nature shouldn’t come as a surprise.&nbsp;



“Fundamentally, US regulators would not greenlight a stablecoin without such functionality and without there being a centralized issuing entity,” Kong said. “Even with such features such as freezing, it is still a net positive for the industry as it increases consumer adoption.”



Blockworks Research analyst Sam Martin said: “While many crypto enthusiasts view the freeze-and-burn functions of PYUSD as a step backward for the crypto industry, it would be naive to think PayPal’s stablecoin would have more decentralized properties than USDC, USDT, et al.”



The stablecoin’s use of apparently old code, as pointed out by developer <a href="https://twitter.com/0xcygaar/status/1688593693006086163">cygaar</a>, also emerged as a point of contention among some critics.&nbsp;



But this approach isn’t necessarily a bad thing, according to Kong.



“It makes sense that battle-tested contracts are being utilized rather than new code as newer code may not have been challenged or probed rigorously in an open environment before,” Kong explained.



PayPal did not immediately respond to Blockworks&#8217; request for comment.



Fundamentally, as one of the largest payments service providers today, PayPal’s decision to move into the crypto ecosystem can be viewed as a positive sign for the space, Martin argued.



“We should view this as a win for the space, given the fact that PYUSD will be on Ethereum and is able to be sent to external EOAs,” Martin said. “If we want to achieve mass adoption, we need these large web2 fintech companies to help in onboarding real users with real use cases.”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-usd-meta-diem">P</a><a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-usd-meta-diem'">ayPal USD too big to shut down? Why the stablecoin could be different than Meta’s diem</a>



This view is shared by 6th Man Ventures partner Carl Vogel, who <a href="https://twitter.com/CarlKVogel/status/1688746531250221056?s=20">tweeted</a>: “PYUSD will enable many more millions of people to safely enter Web3.”



Importantly, unlike USDT and USDC, Vogel highlighted that PYUSD is held by a bankruptcy-remote business entity — meaning that if the business entity ceased to exist, all PYUSD tokens would be unaffected.&nbsp;



“I would recommend PYUSD for risk-averse users over other stablecoins,” he said.



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PayPal’s new stablecoin stirs centralization criticism

Darren Kleine

Liquid staking. It’s one of the few hot spaces in crypto right now, Mike Ippolito says.



The freedom to tap into <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/defi">DeFi</a> with wrapped tokens made available in exchange for staking <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a> is a relatively novel concept that, although highly popular in <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>’s ecosystem, did not originate there.&nbsp;



First conceived in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/cosmos">Cosmos</a> app chain ecosystem, the innovation took off in Ethereum’s community — at least partly out of fear that centralized exchanges such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> or <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/binance">Binance</a> would hold too much staking power in a few massive pools.



“One of the early core propositions when Ethereum was switching from <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/what-is-proof-of-work">proof-of-work</a> chain to a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/proof-of-stake-investors-guide">proof-of-stake</a> chain was they wanted to make sure that it didn&#8217;t get concentrated,” explains Ippolito, the host of the Bell Curve podcast (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/0HiW92XqBnUnm1cc0TN8xA?si=qKgRgLgkRU68f_cSPDlDFA">Spotify</a>/<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-end-game-for-liquid-staking-s5-premier/id1641356619?i=1000619362343">Apple</a>).



“So what they wanted to do was make sure that didn&#8217;t happen by not selecting a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/consensus-mechanisms-guide">delegated proof-of-stake</a> mechanism” whereby only a few entities would control the network.



Dominant liquid staking protocols such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/lido">Lido</a> have “overruled that design decision,” he says. Now, a form of delegated proof-of-staking is effectively provided through the Lido protocol, rather than via an Ethereum-intrinsic mechanism, according to Ippolito.



Associate at the advisory and investment firm Reverie Myles O’Neil explains, “Ethereum looked at Cosmos and did not want a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/validator">validator</a> set of 100, 150 or 200. Ethereum wanted hundreds of thousands of validators and they wanted them to be individuals.”



But because of the barriers and technical challenges of becoming validators, staking via centralized exchange services became an attractive solution to holders, he says.&nbsp;



“You no longer had this 32 ETH minimum. You no longer had to set up your own hardware. You could actually have liquidity,” he says. “You could actually sell your ETH on the centralized exchange while getting staking rewards.”



A handful of exchanges could then “capture the majority of the network through retail delegating,” he says. “And that would be an even worse outcome than having 100 or 200 validators.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Lido to the rescue?</h2>



When Cosmos developers were first looking at the possibilities of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/liquid-staking">liquid staking</a>, Ethereum was already enjoying the beginnings of a vibrant DeFi scene.&nbsp;



“But they had this existential risk,” O’Neil explains, “that before the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/the-investors-guide-to-the-ethereum-merge">beacon chain</a> even launched officially, it would be controlled by a handful of centralized exchanges.”



“That is why the idea took off on Ethereum when it actually originated in Cosmos.”



<iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=BWG7595150865" width="100%"></iframe>







Ethereum developers were trying to design a system “that couldn&#8217;t be captured by a couple of large, deep-pocketed actors,” Ippolito explains, but instead would be secured by “geographically-spread individual solo-stakers.”



Lido, it seemed, was the solution to the centralization risk.



But the remedy has become too successful, it seems. Lido now <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-update-liquid-staking">dominates the liquid staking market</a>. Ippolito says the centralized control that Lido could now potentially exert is equally concerning in the popular consciousness of Ethereum natives.



“It&#8217;s taken a very core function of Ethereum — which is how it secures itself through staking — and made it subject to a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lido-may-stake-treasury-eth">different set of security properties and governance sets</a>.”



“Compounding network effects lead to what is likely going to be a winner-take-all or winner-take-most market structure,” O’Neil says.&nbsp;



“And we&#8217;ve already started to see that on Ethereum in particular.”



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Will liquid staking cause Ethereum to succumb to the forces of centralization?

Daniel Dizon

Ethereum&#8217;s staking pool market is still relatively young. But it has now reached a critical milestone of maturity with Shapella.



And as this liquid staking market has grown, it has shown itself to be vulnerable to winner-takes-most dynamics, with the top players potentially destroying the decentralization that makes Ethereum valuable in the first place.



With <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-set-date-for-eth-withdrawals" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Shapella</a> (the combo of the Shanghai and Capella upgrades), liquid staking will take another critical step towards maturity, making now a critical time to steer the industry in the right direction — toward more decentralization instead of less.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The threat of liquid staking monopoly</h2>



The amount of ETH locked in liquid staking pools has soared in the past two years to hit 7.6 million, representing more than 40% of the total staked ETH amount.&nbsp;



While this might seem like a large number, the total stake is only 15% of ETH’s total supply — a very small fraction compared to the ~50% to 75% staking participation rates seen in other <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake-whats-the-difference" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proof-of-stake blockchains</a> where withdrawals are already implemented.&nbsp;



Having a single dominant liquid staking protocol —&nbsp;or even a single centralized staking service provider — does offer some advantages. A singular protocol makes it easier to trade staked ETH while also preventing liquidity from being split across too many staking tokens. As they say in traditional finance, liquidity begets liquidity.



But at a certain point, this dominance becomes damaging. Node operators that are bound together — either operationally, politically, or through a liquid staking governance token — are more likely than not to act as a single unit that holds outsized influence over the network.



If this single protocol controls less than a third of staked ether, then it may not become a threat. But if it verges over this safety threshold, that means that a singular protocol could effectively influence the entire blockchain.



A centralized entity is more likely to succumb to pressure to censor transactions, or to establish a stranglehold on the network and reap an outsized share of MEV opportunities. Passing these superior returns on to their users (or even retaining the value extracted for themselves) would then further cement the protocol as the market leader, creating what ETH researcher Danny Ryan called &#8220;outsized cartel rewards&#8221; discourage prospective stakers from choosing other protocols.



Even disregarding the misaligned incentive structure, a smart contract bug or mistake leading to a large slashing event at a dominant staking provider could lead to outsized losses, making it more likely to shake confidence in the entire Ethereum ecosystem.



These reasons and more are why multiple Ethereans — including the likes of Vitalik Buterin and SuperPhiz — have argued that a single staking protocol should never control any more than 15% to 33% of staking activity.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Creating a healthy liquid staking market</h2>



In an ideal world, ETH holders looking to earn yield through staking would set up their own validator infrastructure and &#8220;solo stake&#8221; independently for maximum network security.



But in reality, the majority of holders don&#8217;t have the technical capability or the requisite 32 <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a> to solo stake. They are instead likely to opt for third-party solutions such as liquid staking protocols, which knock down the barrier to entry and give them liquid rewards to deploy elsewhere in DeFi.&nbsp;



To help create a liquid staking market that doesn&#8217;t damage Ethereum&#8217;s diversity or decentralization, these liquid stakers should do two things:



First, turn away from centralized and permissioned solutions and toward those that are more aligned with Ethereum. This means trust-minimized, non-custodial protocols that use diversified and resilient node operator sets, especially those that are seeking to employ innovations that aid decentralization.&nbsp;



Take distributed validator tech (DVT) as an example, which allows a single Ethereum validator to be split across multiple nodes, improving network resilience and reducing the risk of slashing. This creates less risk of centralization even if a single staking provider becomes dominant.



Second, liquid stakers should stake with the values of Ethereum in mind. The qualities of decentralization, diversity and censorship resistance are ultimately what gives ETH value, and the best way to uphold them through liquid staking is to avoid contributing to the outsized dominance of a single staking provider.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The time to preserve network neutrality is now&nbsp;</h2>



Ultimately, taking the overall ethos of Ethereum into consideration will help create a diverse staking market composed of multiple providers that each have a relatively small slice of market share, all competing on a level playing field.



As the withdrawal of staked ETH is unlocked with Ethereum&#8217;s Shanghai upgrade, the boom in liquid staking protocols will naturally accelerate — and if left unchecked, the potential threat of these protocols centralizing Ethereum along with it.



All we need to do is make sure that people understand the stakes when choosing what to do with their ETH.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Daniel Dizon is a cryptocurrency entrepreneur. He is the founder of Swell, an Ethereum liquid staking protocol backed by Mark Cuban, Bankless, Framework, and more. Prior to Swell, Daniel founded and exited a Web2 start-up and advised governments on emerging blockchain technologies. His insights have been featured in numerous publications such as TechCrunch and Yahoo.</div>


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Stakers, Don’t Let the Shanghai Upgrade Centralize Ethereum

Sebastian Sinclair

Decentralized exchange trading activity has begun to pick up steam, with some of the DEX sector’s biggest players booking a notable bump in trading volumes this week.



Ethereum-based Uniswap was leading the pack toward the end of the work week in New York, hovering around the 50% mark of total DEX volume, equating to a week-over-week double-digit jump to around $12 billion, data from <a href="https://defillama.com/dexs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DeFiLlama</a> shows.



Its closest rival, PancakeSwap was holding steady around 8% via the same market cap metric — up about 20% since the week prior, clocking in around $2.1 billion. The DEX still leads on <a href="https://twitter.com/Blockpour/status/1623668554137751552?s=20&amp;t=ihhtwohhnDZvzdZcS-9Kjw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">trader count</a> on Binance’s BNB Chain.



Notable DEXes Curve and SushiSwap have also seen significant increases in trading volumes,  jumping 12% and 63% respectively, in the last seven days through early Friday morning in New York. 



Average increase for volumes across all DEXes popped 16% or so on the week. 



Unlike centralized exchanges, which are run by a single entity, decentralized rivals are built on decentralized infrastructure — including smart contracts — allowing traders to swap assets directly with one another, eliminating the need for an intermediary.&nbsp;



Their popularity has continued to grow following the fourth quarter collapse of the centralized FTX — leaving the funds of retail and institutional investors alike frozen to this day.



Decentralized exchanges that were battle-tested last year, have come out on top, according to Toby Chapple, head of trading for the Australian trading firm Zerocap.



“The use of smart contracts on public blockchains cures a large part of counterparty-related issues related to centralized single-point entities,” Chapple told Blockworks. “The smart contracts themselves handle the crisis exactly as the rules that govern them said they would — they liquidated market participants as per the terms of the DEX.”



That’s now especially true for some market participants up in arms over the SEC’s move against centralized entity <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/kraken-settles-sec-crypto-staking-program">Kraken to shutter its US staking operations</a>. Hester Peirce, a long-tenured SEC commissioner, went as far as to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-commissioner-speaks-out-kraken">blast her own agency as “paternalistic” and “lazy”</a> in terms of Gensler’s most recent crypto crackdown. 



The centralized exchange settled with the SEC without confirming, nor denying fault, and agreed to pay a $30 million fine in the process.  



“Staking is never going away,” Bill Hughs, senior counsel and director of global regulatory matters at ConsenSys, told Blockworks in a statement. “Access to it will only grow because that is what people all around the world will demand.”



Staking remains crucial to scores of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake-whats-the-difference">proof-of-stake networks</a>, providing a mechanism for reaching consensus — and providing reward-based incentives to validate transactions and ensure a blockchain’s stability and security. 



DAO governance participants — and other individuals looking to accrue cryptocurrencies outside of the scope of regulatory scrutiny — have continued to tap DEXes in large numbers as an alternative to centralized routes. 



The sentiment appears to be increasing, according to Chapple, as exchanges continue to roll out offerings designed to win over user trust, even considering current complications.



“Going forward, the growth of DEX&#8217;s will need to address the smart contract vulnerabilities to hacking risk that seems to still plague the industry from time to time, before mainstream adoption by TradFi can be contemplated,” Chapple said.



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DEX Trading Activity Picks Up Steam as Markets Spurn Centralization

Ornella Hernandez

FTX customers just can’t get a break.



In the latest twist from the crypto exchange’s fallout, NFTs minted on the FTX exchange now show a blank image instead of the original art. Any direct links to an NFT redirect to a restructuring page with information on the bankruptcy.



The lesson learned is one of Web3 companies relying on centralized services like Amazon Web Service (AWS) or the Google Cloud Platform, as Solana engineer jac0xb.sol signaled on Twitter. Collectors are unable to view their FTX-hosted NFTs because those collections are still hosting metadata on AWS.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Oh look FTX hosted all the NFTs minted on their platform using a web2 API and now all those NFTs have broken metadata and the links go to a restructuring website. <a href="https://t.co/hsQgVru4BL">pic.twitter.com/hsQgVru4BL</a>&mdash; jac0xb.sol (@jacobdotsol) <a href="https://twitter.com/jacobdotsol/status/1600526700982710273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



This includes the Coachella NFT collection, a Solana-based collection of lifetime passes to the music festival that generated $1.5 million at launch via the FTX US NFT marketplace. For weeks, holders have been left without the option to withdraw or transfer them while the site has been disabled. Even on Magic Eden, the image displays <a href="https://magiceden.io/item-details/HBTZiCag5f2b5eceBUsu31EYdpehSFTagTJH7EwXtpZX" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">an empty gray box</a>.



The NFTs no longer point to their original images because the FTX exchange hosted their NFT metadata on FTX US Web2 servers that have since been deactivated. This issue isn’t unique to FTX, and it underscores the need for permanent decentralized storage solutions.



More often than not, NFTs are not actually built “on-chain.” NFTs may host their smart contracts on the blockchain, but their media or metadata is off-chain. The metadata — name, description and author details — is often saved in the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a peer-to-peer system for preserving multimedia files. The image itself — usually a jpeg file — is then linked to the NFT’s metadata.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/arweave" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arweave</a> is the leading Solana-focused alternative, <a href="https://twitter.com/baalazamon/status/1600672243268620288?s=20&amp;t=LzbkbCKgBebq_DI89jHy0w" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recommended</a> by Solana developers, but it was not used for FTX’s NFT mints. As a result, the URLs that retrieve the smart contracts&#8217; storage and links to the ID of the related NFTs are now broken.



Some examples of popular on-chain NFT projects that do ingrain their metadata into the Ethereum blockchain, include Nouns DAO, Chainrunners and OnChainMonkey.



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FTX NFTs Are MIA: A Lesson on Centralized Risk

<div id="highlights-block_634dba27c3ba7" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>SUAVE has been in the works for over a year, according to Flashbots developers</li>
 <li>Further details about the project will be announced this week</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Flashbots, a research and development organization <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/new-flashbots-upgrade-could-revolutionize-crypto-markets-after-the-merge/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">with the goal to reduce</a> the potential harms of Maximum Extractable Value (MEV), revealed a new project to address centralization and censorship concerns on MEV extraction for Ethereum and Ethereum virtual machine-compatible blockchains.



The project, <a href="https://twitter.com/hasufl/status/1580983853824765952" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">code named SUAVE</a> which stands for “Single Unifying Auctions for Value Expression,” will be an open-source MEV-aware, privacy-focused, encrypted mempool for users and wallets, Philip Daian, a Flashbots steward said at Devcon Bogotá.



“We’re going to provide optimal user execution that harnesses MEV,” Daian said. “So we’re going to use MEV as this decentralized engine in the long term, to make sure the users get really the best execution on their trades in a way that’s really going to make TradFi look embarrassing very shortly.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What is the SUAVE vision for MEV?</h3>



MEV refers to the maximum amount of income that can be extracted from block production after validators include or reorder transactions on a block.&nbsp;



If the MEV available in a block exceeds standard block rewards, validators could then reorganize the blocks to capture the value of the income generated by MEV for themselves, making it a risk for exploitation and centralization.



Flashbots has been actively working on reducing these problems through MEV-Boost, software that enables builders to auction blocks to validators and prevent MEV centralization by allowing each party to earn a contribution for their efforts.&nbsp;



SUAVE’s goal is to decentralize and democratize MEV-Boost by making it open source and widely available, even to competitors and users.



The overarching goal is to avoid entrenching centralized forces, such as private or exclusive order flow into the way relays and block builders do business, Daian said, “because these will destroy the system that we love, as a whole.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Risk of centralization and a decentralized solution</h3>



After the <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/tornado-cash-sanctions-expose-potential-defi-achilles-heel/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tornado Cash sanctions</a>, Flashbots, a US entity, began omitting transactions related to the <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-mixers-and-privacy-coins-can-they-resist-censorship/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cryptocurrency mixer</a> to remain OFAC-compliant. That’s led to a new worry — censorship.



As one of the largest MEV-Boost relays, Flashbots has the power to delay the incorporation of sanctioned transactions into Ethereum blocks — or slots as they’re now known, following the proof-of-stake consensus switch.



Flashbot’s avowed obligation to follow regulatory requirements has caused concern <a href="https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/1580893089077809153" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">among some</a> in the Ethereum community. But the consensus among developers seems to be that the concerns are <a href="https://twitter.com/basilesportif/status/1581906143538221058" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">mostly overblown</a>.



The Flashbots team is well aware of the potential pitfalls, and Daian said Flashbots “[does] not intend to impose our utility functions, or our legal risk analyses, on the Ethereum network, full stop.”



Indeed, the launch of SUAVE — a project that the Flashbots team has been working on for over a year — is expressly aimed at distributing the power of MEV, even if that means helping Flashbots’ competitors.



Further details about SUAVE are expected this week.



Macauley Peterson contributed reporting.



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Follow Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sbf-trial">latest news from the courtroom</a>.

Flashbots Has a New Plan: ‘Make TradFi Look Embarrassing’

On this episode of &#8220;<a href="https://youtu.be/MeKA74KOqls" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">On the Margin</a>,&#8221; Blockworks Co-founder Mike Ippolito is joined by Blockdaemon CEO and founder, Konstantin Richter, to discuss the rise and fall of crypto culture. When sentiment shifts in crypto markets, founders build conviction. Konstantin reminds us of previous cycles and shares why he has never been more optimistic on the future of crypto than right now.



Mike and Konstantin debate the pros and cons of centralization vs. decentralization, and they discuss the outlook for a multichain future.



They also cover:



<ul><li>the founding and future of Blockdaemon</li><li>forming new systems of governance</li><li>PoW vs PoS</li><li>and so much more</li></ul>



Watch the full episode below! 👇



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&#8220;On the Margin&#8221; is a two-part show.&nbsp;Once a week, Mike interviews industry experts. At the end of the week, he is joined by a co-host where they break down the top crypto and macro stories. Episodes go live every Wednesday and Saturday morning.



Subscribe to &#8220;On the Margin&#8221; today on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-margin/id1558223079" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Apple</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2yFL2nSsQucf1rzdEKbFZY" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Spotify</a>, or watch episodes on <a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvER9nHSRN3xVs_p-dl7L7K_ZgL6lSudu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube</a>.



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Get the day’s top crypto news and insights delivered to your inbox every evening.&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/newsletter/?source=end" rel="noreferrer noopener">Subscribe to Blockworks’ free newsletter</a>&nbsp;now. 



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