This Week in Crypto

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Robinhood wallet on polygon

The most widely used retail investing platform announced a crypto wallet earlier this week, initially supporting the Polygon blockchain

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. This marks the first major US brokerage to launch a non-custodial crypto wallet for the average user. At the time of the announcement, Robinhood already offers the ability to trade certain cryptocurrencies to users, but now users will have the ability to transact on-chain and interact with defi protocols from their ecosystem. Robinhood also pledged to cover gas costs for users of the wallet, making the experience more frictionless for users.  According to early users, Robinhood has placed heavy focus on the UI/UX making it easier for new users to gain experience transacting on chain.  This marks another major step in mainstream adoption of blockchain technology and usage of defi.

Atom 2.0

The Cosmos blockchain held their annual conference this week, Cosmosverse from the 26th - 28th. During this conference, they announced major upgrades that the network will implement in the blockchain’s next iteration. These changes include the introduction of an interchain blockspace market to accrue value to the $Atom token, changes to the inflation schedule by frontloading emissions vs the more balanced schedule, and an interchain allocator which allows for an easier creation of new chains using atom as collateral along with the chain’s native token. Circle also announced that they would be bringing native USDC to Atom eliminating bridge risk for users which will hopefully entice more people to use the chain.

USDC native bridge with Layer 0

USDC’s parent company Circle announced a partnership with LayerZero Labs to make the stablecoin natively Omnichain

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. This should eliminate bridge risk for users as USDC will now be issuable and redeemable across all supported chains. This will also open up new avenues for cross chain defi transactions leveraging LayerZero’s technology. This will first go live with Ethereum and Avalanche later this year and will be expanded to new chains as time goes on.

Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Do your own research.

1. https://decrypt.co/110614/robinhood-taps-polygon-ethereum-web3-wallet-beta-launch

2. https://www.circle.com/en/pressroom/circle-enables-usdc-interoperability-for-developers-with-the-launch-of-cross-chain-transfer-protocol