Updates & Upgrades: What You Need to Know About Perp Protocol
Crypto, from Law Enforcement's POV
GM, this is your Daily Bolt briefing.
If you thought crypto’s regulatory landscape couldn’t get worse, think again. Yesterday, COIN 0.00%↑ took a tumble in response to the SEC alleging the exchange of listing unregistered securities. Concurrently, the SEC is suing Binance and CZ. Stay peeled for our coverage of this content as the situation unfolds…
In this edition, we’ve included a couple of briefings on some interesting developments in the onchain world. Keep reading to learn about:
Perpetual Protocol’s latest updates, including changes to the PERP rewards system, Optimism’s Bedrock upgrade, and more.
CAT Labs, a private company developing tools to detect and reduce crypto crime. Learn about what law enforcement officials like and don’t like when it comes to blockchain.
Stay alert in the markets.⬇️
1/ Perpetual Protocol - Community Call #52 (Bedrock, Rewards, PerpSim)
Preview: In Perpetual Protocol’s community call, Contributor Nick invites Jamie and Lee to discuss the latest updates and developments from Perpetual Protocol. Click here to listen to the full episode (47 mins).
Read our Note (5 mins) and save 42 mins.
Here are some key takeaways:
Perpetual Protocol is a trustless crypto trading platform built for everyone.
Nick says that there were two increases to the vault cap of the USDC vault in the past couple of weeks.
Jamie talks about Optimism’s Bedrock upgrade, which he describes as the biggest upgrade to Optimism yet.
He says that there will be downtime on the Optimism network during the upgrade and to prepare for the upgrade, Perpetual Protocol will be paused half an hour prior to the upgrade.
Jamie says that traders can look forward to cheaper gas costs after the upgrade, with costs expected to be reduced by about 10%.
Jamie says that the goal of the updates to Perpetual's rewards program is to continue giving liquidity providers (LPs) and stakers rewards in the form of the PERP token.
He says that starting June 19th, there will be a reduction in liquidity mining rewards for Pool Party. The rewards will be reduced to 270,000 $PERP per month.
He mentions that on June 22nd, there will be a reduction in vePERP emissions. PERP stakers on Optimism currently get a share of the trading fees in the form of USDC, as well as locked PERP. These rewards will be reduced from 25,000 PERP per week to 15,000 PERP per week. He adds that the last distribution of referral rewards will occur on June 12th, and that program will be discontinued for the time being.
Nick says that a workshop was conducted with Miguel, founder of Arkham Intelligence, to uncover on-chain insights.
2/ On The Brink Ep. 429 - Combating and Preventing Crypto Crime
Preview: In the episode of On The Brink, host Ria is joined by Lilita to discuss the evolution of crypto-enabled crime, the challenges and benefits of working on such cases, and CAT Labs' development of tools for law enforcement to recover digital assets and prevent frauds and more! Click here to listen to the full episode (60 mins).
Read our Note (9 mins) and save 51 mins.
Here are some key takeaways:
CAT Labs (Crypto Asset Technology) builds tools to fight crypto crime.
Ria introduces Lilita, the founder and CEO of CAT Labs. Lilita used to work as a special agent for the Department of Justice (DOJ) and created a crypto task force to fight against crypto-related crime.
Ria explains that Lilita noticed certain missing elements while investigating crypto assets, which made it difficult for the industry to combat crime and hindered the adoption of positive uses. This motivated Lilita to leave the DOJ and start CAT Labs.
Lilita explains that she realized early on that Bitcoin could be used for money laundering because it's fast and cost-effective. Despite facing doubt from her colleagues, Lilita pushed forward, recognizing the large-scale illicit trading and the potential involvement of traditional criminal organizations.
Lilita provides a list of tools used in crypto investigations, including blockchain analytics tools like Analysis Elliptic, Coinbase Analytics, and TRM Labs. They also utilized dark web scraping tools, open-source intelligence tools, forensic tools, and intelligence aggregators.
Ria brings up the topic of mixers, which are controversial because they can make it hard to track transactions, but they also allow innocent users to make transactions without being traced. Ria asks Lilita what she thinks about this.
Lilita says she doesn't like mixers. She thinks blockchain should be transparent and open. While she understands the need for privacy, she sees a lot of criminal activity happening in these hidden transaction pools, which makes it difficult to track transactions.
Ria agrees that blockchain's transparency and accountability are important, but she also believes in the value of privacy. She hopes that zero-knowledge proofs can provide a balance between transparency and privacy.