Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a "stealth address system" to improve transactional privacy on the Ethereum blockchain. In a research blog, Buterin wrote that privacy is "one of the largest remaining challenges in the Ethereum ecosystem."

The stealth address system is based on a mechanism that would allow any Ethereum wallet to generate cryptographically obfuscated public addresses called "stealth addresses'' in order to receive funds in a private manner and access them using a special code called a "spending key."

More info: https://bit.ly/3WrWO0h

A zero-carbon data center manufacturer Cumulus Data, a subsidiary of an independent power producer Talen Energy, has completed the powered shell for its first data center powered by a 2.5-gigawatt nuclear power station, World Nuclear News reported on January 18.

More info: https://bit.ly/3ZYdIXx

The Cardano blockchain network has finally announced the launch of its Sidechain Toolkit. As announced by Input Output Global, the software company tasked with the development of the Cardano protocol, the new Sidechain Toolkit will create a wealth of new possibilities for all stakeholders within its ecosystem.

More info: https://bit.ly/3j3bSDR

Lawyers for Genesis Global told a federal bankruptcy court in New York City on Monday that they’ve been working with creditors’ representatives and the U.S. Trustee’s Office “around the clock” for the past two months in order to reach a “consensual resolution” with the embattled company’s creditors. They expect to reach an agreement with the creditors by the end of the week.

More info: https://bit.ly/3j7KO6q

Token holders from the Sushi community have voted on two separate proposals that aim to strengthen the decentralized finance (DeFi) service’s treasury and long-term staying power.

The ‘Kanpai’ proposal aimed to direct all trading fees from xsushi holders to the Sushi treasury, while the other sought to claw back unclaimed sushi tokens from a distribution held in 2021 back to the treasury.

The Sushi DAO community voted in favor of retrieving 8.2 million SUSHI, just over $11 million, which were initially rewarded to early liquidity providers (LPs) during SushiSwap’s launch in 2020.

More info: https://bit.ly/3kGxkPu

Banks holding crypto will need to follow strict laws to ensure capital requirements, lawmakers decided in a European Parliament committee vote on Tuesday.

An amendment slipped in before the vote proposed that banks should apply a risk-weighting of 1,250% to crypto-assets exposures, Reuters reported on Monday, to a bill covering financial capital requirements for traditional institutions. This means that, when the rules would come into effect, banks will need to be able to cover a complete with capital reserves and not be able to gain leverage.

More info: https://bit.ly/3wrgJC4

Christian Moss, developer and co-founder at Zebedee (ZBD), a Bitcoin-powered platform that allows developers to put money in their games and gamers to earn money by playing them, has upgraded his original Nintendo to do just this, as he demonstrated in a video posted on January 23. New options become available to earn digital assets, including generating Bitcoin (BTC) by playing video games.

More info: https://bit.ly/3H7qBWi

QuickNode, an end-to-end development platform that helps builders bring their Web3 ideas to life, announced today that it has raised $60 million in new funding to accelerate its vision.

The Series B round, which gives the startup a valuation of $800 million, bucks the trend of shrinking sums of money flowing into Web3 firms amid the current crypto bear market.

More info: https://bit.ly/3kGDsap

In Pantera’s latest newsletter, chief investment officer (CIO) Joey Krug says that decentralized finance (DeFi) will act as the foundation for the next bull market. The CIO, who helps manage the $6.9 billion fund, says that DeFi managed to stay completely intact during 2022, even if the top protocols saw lower prices.

More info: https://bit.ly/3iWsLAo

Gemba, a software developer providing virtual reality training to corporates, raised $18 million in a Series A round led by Parkway Venture Capital. The deal values the business at $60 million.

More info: https://bit.ly/3XDxOod

Governance members of Dai stablecoin issuer MakerDAO have approved a preliminary proposal to deposit $100 million worth of the USDC stablecoin from its reserves into a special investment account known as a "vault" managed by Yearn Finance. The vault has a limit of $100 million and is expected to earn an estimated yield of 2% per year for MakerDAO, worth $2 million.

More info: https://bit.ly/3DbWrA4

Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, has blamed the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its failed plans to go public. According to a new report by FT, the regulatory agency failed to sign off on the $9 billion deal.

This comes a month after its CEO Jeremy Allaire revealed the termination of the firm’s agreement with special-purpose acquisition company Concord Acquisition Corp., thereby withdrawing from its plan to go public. The exec then said that Circle did not complete the SEC’s “qualification in time.”

More info: https://bit.ly/3JetxTJ

This is the second chain Arkham Intelligence will add support for besides Ethereum, which it will do in the first quarter. Arkham said it chose Polygon for its second integration because of its partnerships with Disney, Starbucks and Stripe, as well as its large user base.

More info: https://bit.ly/3wxDDYA

De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch central Bank, fined cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase 3.3 million euros ($3.6 million), due to non-compliance with local regulations for financial service providers, according to a Reuters report on Jan 26.

More info: https://bit.ly/3Hxzav6

Aave v3 on Ethereum will be launched with support for seven assets: wrapped bitcoin, wrapped ether, wrapped staked ether, USDC, DAI, link, and aave. These assets were proposed by DeFi risk manager Chaos Labs.

More info: https://bit.ly/3WGbh8Q

Decentralized crypto exchange Mango Markets sued its exploiter Avraham Eisenberg for $47 million in damages according to a United States District Court for the Southern District of New York filing on Wednesday.

More info: https://bit.ly/3wuI46k

Transaction volumes on Optimism, a scaling solution for Ethereum, have dropped 70% following a major spike earlier. The daily transactions have declined to 238,000 after a peak of almost 800,000 transactions per day on Jan. 12, according to data from blockchain explorer Blockscan.

The fall in activity coincided with the end of an incentive program called Optimism Quest, which aimed to increase user engagement and educate users about the Optimism Layer 2 network.

More info: https://bit.ly/3wvjYbs

According to data shared by on-chain analytics firm Santiment, Polkadot’s development activity, along with that of its pre-production network Kusama, over the last 30 days was superior to that of the smart contract platform Cardano.

More info: https://bit.ly/3HA8qdq

Polygon is now second with 340,000, just eclipsing Ethereum’s 320,000. Polygonscan confirms the uptick in daily active chain addresses reporting closer to 400,000. Furthermore, the metric has increased by 21% over the past two weeks.

More info: https://bit.ly/3Y0cmcL

Noncustodial crypto wallet Atomic Wallet has announced the addition of support for Shibarium, a Layer 2 protocol from the Shiba Inu team. The wallet was one of the first to announce support for Shiba Inu's innovation. Atomic Wallet's current user base, according to its own claim, is over five million users.

More info: https://bit.ly/3Y3avUM

Socios and Chiliz CEO Alexandre Dreyfus has taken to Twitter to share his excitement over the imminent launch of Chiliz 2.0.

More info: https://bit.ly/3Y6lSLH