The Protocol: Elections, Schmections. Blockchain's Got Work to Do

The blockchain industry might get a boost as former U.S. President Donald Trump wins a second term, promising to keep his promises, including a long list of Bitcoin- and crypto-related pledges.

A lot of people are saying, people inside CoinDesk, that nobody’s going to read anything on Wednesday that isn’t elections-related.

Well maybe they don’t know about all the INCREDIBLE CONTENT we have assembled in this week’s The Protocol newsletter? There’s even an ongoing election to keep you entertained.

U.S. ELECTION COVERAGE HIGHLIGHTS:

In another vote taking place, not due to close for several more hours, community members of the DeFi project MakerDAO are expressing their opinions on what to do with the Sky brand. As reported in The Protocol last month, the project formerly known as Maker rebranded to Sky in August, but the move received a lukewarm reception, and now holders of the MKR tokens are being asked to weigh in on whether a de-rebranding should be considered. As reported by CoinDesk’s Sam Reynolds, the poll is not binding. Early participation was quite limited.

Ethereum Foundation researchers Dankrad Feist and Justin Drake have resigned from their advisory roles at EigenLayer, months after a controversy erupted over potential conflicts of interest within the Ethereum community. In the spring, Drake and Feist publicly confirmed that they had each accepted advisory roles with EigenLayer. Each researcher was allotted a significant sum of EIGEN tokens in exchange for helping guide the upcoming project and its roadmap. “While I believe that the role was negotiated in a good faith and with the aim of making sure that EigenLayer is well aligned with Ethereum,” Feist said in an X post, “I understand that the perception of this relationship has been different and that for many the conflict of interest this creates is difficult to reconcile with my role as an Ethereum researcher.”

It turns out that making money in crypto isn’t quite as easy as it might seem: Crypto buyers, burned so many times over the years, are quite leery of newcomers — and skeptical when it comes to examining new token offerings. That appears to be the case for World Liberty Financial, the crypto project backed by former President and now President-Elect Donald Trump and his sons, Don Jr. and Eric. As detailed in The Protocol last month, project officials initially talked up their big plans, with a fundraising goal of $300 million, and released a “Gold Paper” with lots of fine print, including the revelation that the initial $30 million of “net protocol revenues” would be set aside to cover expenses, indemnities and obligations. The rest would go to a company called “DT Marks DEFI LLC,” whose owners and principals include Donald Trump. But sales of the tokens never passed $15 million. As scooped last week by CoinDesk’s Danny Nelson, the project now has made a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission saying that the sales will be terminated as soon as the $30 million target is reached. The concession to market realities could put an end to the bizarre effort, which left many analysts scratching their heads at how Trump had time to promote a crypto project while in the throes of an intense campaign for president.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s claim in a post on X that listings on the U.S. crypto exchange are “free” drew protests from project leaders including Sonic Labs’ Andre Cronje and Tron’s Justin Sun. Bitget, a rival crypto exchange, took advantage of the topic’s salience to open a new listing application portal on its platform, stating that it’s “transparent about its listing procedures and thrives to provide token projects with the ease of exposure at best possible initial investments for its community,” along with the following testament: “Importantly, Bitget strongly emphasizes that it does not charge any fees related to the listing application process, such as commission fees, brokerage fees, application fees or assessment fees. Tokens provided by project teams will be fully allocated to Bitget users based on the agreed-upon marketing and promotional plan.”

Crypto commercials have come a long way since Crypto.com’s notoriously cringe-y “Fortune Favors the Brave” ad starring Matt Damon. A couple videos circulating this week actually approached the not-inconsiderable triple-achievement of “surprisingly clever” and “refreshingly dark” while remaining “uncannily crypto-native.”

One of the biggest trends of 2023 among the leading layer-2 projects on Ethereum was the emergence of “blockchain in a box,” where the teams encouraged developers to clone their code to spin up new layer 2s.

Now, one project in particular appears to be pulling away as the clear leader. And as is often the case in blockchain development, a crucial factor is the money changing hands behind the scenes.

Optimism, one of the major layer-2 networks, has managed to get a slew of clients and firms to deploy their own blockchains using Optimism’s technology, with the OP Stack, under open-source software licenses.

It’s a crucial development in the evolution of the broader blockchain universe, since layer-2 networks stand at the heart