Here are some of the major developments in the world of crypto over the past few days.
BlackRock, Grayscale and Bitwise amended their ETF filings ahead of the SEC's decision. In a May 22 filing with the Nasdaq exchange, asset management firm BlackRock amended its Spot Ether ETF 19b-4 filing to remove the staking provision. Grayscale and Bitwise have submitted similar amendments to the New York Stock Exchange Arca.
Neither the Trust, nor the Sponsor, nor the Ether Custodian nor any other person associated with the Trust will, directly or indirectly, engage in action where any portion of the Trust’s ETH becomes subject to the Ethereum proof-of-stake validation or is used to earn additional ETH or generate income or other earnings,” said the amended BlackRock filing.
For many in the cryptocurrency industry, the SEC's decision will embroil a debate over whether Congress should pass legislation to define the regulator's role more clearly in regulating digital assets. It’s unclear whether the commission will move forward with the approval of spot Ether ETFs as it did with spot Bitcoin BTC $69,767 investment vehicles in January.
StarkWare announced the release of ZKThreads, a new scaling framework designed to prevent lockouts and improve the scalability of decentralized applications (DApps). His ZKThreads, developed in collaboration with Cartridge, aims to solve the problem of fragmentation by creating a standardized environment for building applications that can be easily verified.
StarkWare's "Fractal Scaling" vision is in 2021 to provide an alternative to modern ZK systems that often operate in isolation, resulting in distributed liquidity, resources, and reduced app connectivity. This is an idea introduced. According to Cointelegraph, Guzman said that as the originator of the ZKThreads project, it will have far-reaching implications for how DApps are built.
StarkWare`s layer-2 solution, Starknet, permits this horizontal scaling thru execution sharding, better with zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. Recently, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers presented a decade-antique studies paper called a “blueprint” for the primary sensible use of ZK-proofs. Eli Ben-Sasson, founding father of StarkWare, became one of the publications` authors.
Eleanor Terrett revealed that the SEC had started discussions with Ethereum ETF issuers regarding S-1 forms on May 22. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began discussions with potential issuers of Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on May 22, leading some to anticipate an imminent approval.
S-1 forms are registration statements that companies have to file with the SEC, including detailed information about the company and the securities they intend to offer/issue. Whereas 19b-4 forms are regulatory filings issued to the SEC for approval, used by self-regulatory organizations (SROs) like stock exchanges or trading platforms to propose new rules or change existing ones.
ConsenSys CEO Joseph Rubin recently commented on discussions regarding the potential future approval of the Ether ETF. Rubin said that while 19b-4s filed by major companies such as BlackRock are being approved, the process behind S-1s "could drag on for a while." The Ethereum co-founder explained that there will be pressure on the SEC to take a neutral stance in the upcoming US presidential election.