Welcome back to Chain Reaction.
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Last week we didn’t publish a Chain Reaction newsletter, thanks to Thanksgiving. But we’re back at it this week and saying goodbye to November after a long, eventful month filled with lawsuits, price changes, and typical crypto chaos.
Let’s get into it.
What’s happening on web3
- Crypto enforcers have been heavy-handed this year, but don’t expect it to soften in 2024 (TC+)
- Optimism executives bullish on Ethereum’s future amid ongoing scaling battle (TC+)
- How big of a recovery will it take to bring investors back to web3? (TC+)
- Binance and CEO ‘CZ’ Plead Guilty to Federal Charges, Agree to Pay $4.3 Billion in Fines
- China’s tech giants dip their toes into web3, but prospects are limited so far
The last pod
For this week episode, Jacqueline interviewed Optimism CEO and Co-Founder Jing Wang and Chief Development Officer Ryan Wyatt.
Optimism is an Ethereum-based layer-2 blockchain that focuses on scalability and speed while reducing costs for users. It helps users interact with Ethereum for about 10 times cheaper through its blockchain and gives developers the ability to build decentralized applications (dApps) in a faster and more scalable way.
Before taking on this new role at Optimism, Ryan had a short hiatus, but was the president of Polygon Labs (he came on the podcast at the beginning of the year to talk about it) and before that, he was YouTube’s Head of Gaming.
Jing co-founded Optimism in 2018. Prior to that he founded the Plasma Group, a research firm focused on addressing challenges related to scaling Ethereum. He also previously managed blockchain projects at companies such as Zcash and Nasdaq.
We discussed how layer 2 blockchains like Optimism are trying to solve scalability issues in Ethereum and where Jing and Ryan see growth opportunities right now.
We also talked about:
- Base building with Optimism technology
- Competition between Ethereum and other blockchains
- Long term adoption
- Web3 games
Sign up to Chain reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to catch up on the latest episodes and leave us a review if you like what you hear!
Follow the money
- Acctual Raises $3.85M To Help Crypto Firms Better Manage Their Accounts
- Education platform Web3 Open Campus received a $3.15 million investment from Binance Labs
- Wind.app raised over $3 million to make DeFi accessible to average consumers
- Decentralized Perpetual Exchange MYX Raises $5M in Seed Round at $50M Valuation
- Blockchain-powered fitness and wellness app Coral wins $3M investment from TealLink
This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as reports from TechCrunch itself.
What else are we writing?
Want to escape the web3 world? Here are some TechCrunch articles that caught our attention this week.
- 2024 IPO cohort takes center stage as Shein, Reddit prepare to go public (TC+)
- Here’s everything Amazon Web Services announced at AWS re:Invent
- If I’m honest, I didn’t have what it takes to be a founder (TC+)
- Apple’s partner Foxconn to invest $1.5 billion in India
- European startup funding halved to $45 billion in 2023, says Atomico
Follow me on twitter @Jacqmelinek for crypto news, memes and more.
