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News

Cancel Culture Comes to Crypto as Offensive Tweets Trigger Flurry of Ousters
Bitfinex’s LEO Token Explodes after US Seizes $4B of Bitcoin Lost in 2016 Hack

Opinion

The Time is Now: Web3 Must Make Good on its Promise of Inclusivity

Podcast

🎙Listen to the interview with Giveth’s Griff Green here:

Video

First Look: Lens Protocol - the Metaverse's first true social layer

Links

Will MetaMask Drop a Token? Breaking Down the Biggest Wallet Merge Ever: Bankless
EIP-3668: CCIP Read: Secure offchain data retrieval: Ethereum
'Like Genghis Khan, but With More Pizzazz': What We Know About the Accused Bitfinex Money Launderers: CoinDesk
Join us as we host @anchor_protocol on Twitter Spaces to talk about the exciting synergy between @avalancheavax+ @terra_money, Liquid Staking and the state of DeFi: Benqi
Punk 5577 bought for 2,501 ETH ($7,704,080.16 USD) by 0xcfc505 from 0x9c9113: CryptoPunks Bot

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DeFi Drama

👀 Cancel Culture Comes to Crypto as Offensive Tweets Trigger Flurry of Ousters

PROVACATIVE For years, crypto has floated along in its own bubble, replete with risque anime characters, profane observations, and lots of provocative opinions about politics and society. There was little concern about offending others and definitely no worry about crypto leaders being jettisoned from projects because of something they said.

TERMINATED That appears to be changing. On Feb. 6, True Names Limited (TNL), the non-profit behind Ethereum Name Service (ENS), terminated Brantly Millegan, the project’s director of operations, after a 2016 tweet surfaced in which he said “homosexual acts are evil” and “contraception is a perversion.”

DECISION After discussion with the ENS team, Nick Johnson, the project’s founder and lead developer, made the final decision to remove Millegan from TNS, according to a tweet by Makoto Inoue, also a developer at ENS. There has been a separate action taken which removed Millegan as a ENS community steward, a position which manages one of the project’s four working groups.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Crypto Loot

👮‍♂️ Bitfinex’s LEO Token Explodes After US Seizes $4B of Bitcoin Lost in 2016 Hack

VALUE A token most people in crypto haven’t thought about since it launched in 2019 just rocketed up in value and the moves actually make sense once you dig in.

JUMP Bitfinex’s UNUS SED LEO token (LEO) went from trading at $4.97 at 11:34 AM ET to as high as $8.04 at 12:39 PM, according to CoinMarketCap — a new all-time high. The price has since settled down somewhat to $6.84, but the sudden jump appears related to the seizure of stolen crypto assets that formerly belonged to Bitfinex users.

STOLEN On Tuesday, the United States Department of Justice announced that it has recovered 94,000 BTC that had been stolen in an Aug. 2016 hack against Bitfinex, a cryptocurrency exchange. Hackers stole 119,754 BTC, worth $72M at the time.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

Opinion

🤨 The Time is Now: Web3 Must Make Good on its Promise of Inclusivity

Guest writer Izzy Howell argues that web3 will fail to fulfill its promise if it doesn’t leverage DeFi to promote equality.

PANACEA A recent report by ArtTactic revealed something startling about web3: for an industry that casts itself as an egalitarian panacea we still have a long way to go.

FEMALE ARTISTS More than three quarters of NFT sales went to male artists, between January 2020 and September 2021, while only 5% went to female artists (the report also makes the point of saying that 16% of sales went to individuals of “unknown genders”). What’s even more galling is that 55% of all of the capital generated by NFT artists went to 16 creators – a result that shows just how exclusive this new world truly is.

OWNERSHIP CNBC and Acorn’s Invest in You: Next Gen Investor Survey is equally disheartening: Women are falling far behind men when it comes to investing in crypto, with a gender gap that exceeds the ownership of other securities. That includes exchange-traded funds (14% men; 7% women), individual stocks (40% men; 24% women), mutual funds (30% men; 20% women), real estate (36% men; 30% women), and bonds (14% men; 11% women). You get the point.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO👈

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The Tube

📺 First Look: Lens Protocol - the Metaverse's first true social layer

Links

🔗 Will MetaMask Drop a Token? Breaking Down the Biggest Wallet Merge Ever: Bankless

MetaMask and MyCrypto are teaming up to build the ultimate crypto wallet. Revamping efforts on security, user experience, as well as features & integrations, this is a massive moment in the world of non-custodial crypto wallets.

🔗 EIP-3668: CCIP Read: Secure offchain data retrieval: Ethereum

Contracts wishing to support lookup of data from external sources may, instead of returning the data directly, revert using OffchainLookup(address sender, string[] urls, bytes callData, bytes4 callbackFunction, bytes extraData).

🔗 'Like Genghis Khan, but With More Pizzazz': What We Know About the Accused Bitfinex Money Launderers: CoinDesk

They are successful and glamorous, in a Bushwick, Brooklyn, sort of way. And on Tuesday, U.S. officials arrested them on allegations they sought to launder billions of dollars worth of crypto stemming from a 2016 hack of the Bitfinex crypto exchange.

🔗 Experts Share Tips To Protect Your Business From Cybercriminals: Forbes

COVID-19 has forced just about everything to go online or close. 😉

BENQI🔺 @BenqiFinance

📌 Join us as we host @anchor_protocol on Twitter Spaces to talk about the exciting synergy between @avalancheavax + @terra_money , Liquid Staking and the state of DeFi. 📆 February 10 ⏰ 11AM EST 📍 https://t.co/NDhgkF327K

CryptoPunks Bot @cryptopunksbot

Punk 5577 bought for 2,501 ETH ($7,704,080.16 USD) by 0xcfc505 from 0x9c9113. larvalabs.com/cryptopunks/de… #cryptopunks #ethereum

Trending in The Defiant

Crypto Stakers’ IRS Tax Refund Marks Milestone for PoS Validators There may be good news ahead for those looking to earn new tokens by providing security to major blockchains that operate using proof-of-stake.
SushiSwap Struggles to Overcome Lack of Management and Nixed Frog Nation Deal SushiSwap doesn’t just need leadership, it also needs to sort out where all its keys are.
OlympusDAO Created a Breakthrough DeFi Model – Now It’s Down 93% and Called a ‘Ponzi’ OlympusDAO held so much promise when it exploded on the DeFi scene in 2021.

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Samuel Haig, DeFiDad, and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, yyctrader, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr)

DeFi, NFT & Web3 Insights - The Defiant

👀 Cancel Culture Comes to Crypto as…