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The Base and Optimism networks have reached a new agreement on revenue and governance sharing. Binance has renamed sanctioned Russian banks on its platforms “yellow” and “green” cards, despite denying relationships with any banks. Meanwhile, crypto advocacy group Coin Center has criticized aspects of the recently unsealed indictment against two co-founders of crypto mixer Tornado Cash.
Base, Optimism reach revenue-sharing agreement
The Base and Optimism networks have reached a new agreement on revenue and governance sharing — a move developers say will enhance both ecosystems.
Under the agreement, Base will pay 2.5% of its revenue or 1.5% of its profits to the Optimism Collective, whichever is greater. In return, Base will receive up to 118 million OP Tokens, thereby giving the network a voice within Optimism’s protocol.
This month marked a momentous first for Ethereum: a publicly listed US company incubated and launched an OP Chain powered by Optimism.
But @BuildOnBase represents so much more than just technological validation of the OP Stack.https://t.co/E1Pow0LIlk
— Optimism (✨_✨) (@optimismFND) August 24, 2023
Coinbase, Base’s parent company, also published a “principles of neutrality” list that, when implemented, will prevent Base from becoming centralized. Base’s prinicpal creator, Jesse Pollak, wrote that Base’s decentralization pledge mirrors Vitalik Buterin’s concept of “stage 2” decentralization for layer-2 networks.
Both organizations have also vowed to create a “security council” to safeguard the ecosystem.
Base and Optimism have been met favorably by the Ethereum community, who believe that the networks could onboard new users to the developer ecosystem.
Binance dubs barred Russian banks on its platform as ‘Yellow’ and ‘Green’ cards
Binance’s peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency exchange in Russia has continued facilitating transactions through sanctioned banks like Rosbank after denying relationships with “any banks.”
On Aug. 23, multiple local news sources reported that Binance P2P has renamed some of its troubled payment options for withdrawals and deposits, namely the sanctioned Russian banks like Tinkoff and Rosbank.
The P2P exchange replaced the banks’ names “Tinkoff” and “Rosbank” with terms like “Yellow” and “Green” cards, Cointelegraph has confirmed.
At the time of writing, Binance P2P offers customers the use of the “local cards” to convert cryptocurrencies like Tether to Russian rubles and receive them on sanctioned Tinkoff or Rosbank.
The new naming apparently came shortly after The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 22 reported that Binance offered Russian clients at least five sanctioned Russian banks, including Rosbank and Tinkoff, as options for processing payments.
In the WSJ report, Binance executives denied any relationships with “any banks whatsoever, in Russia or elsewhere,” in relation to its P2P platform. “Binance follows the global sanctions rules and enforces sanctions on people, organizations, entities, and countries that have been blacklisted by the international community, denying such actors access to the Binance platform,” the company said.
The news came a few days after Binance services in Russia were promoted on a YouTube channel of a major Russian YouTuber, Yuri Dud. A recent video on his vDud YouTube channel — which has 10.3 million subscribers — featured an advertisement of Binance services, offering 5 USDT in exchange for signing up on the platform.
In the video, Dud also promoted Binance Earn, which allows users to earn passive income on crypto through a variety of products like flexible savings, locked savings, staking and liquidity mining.
It appears to be unclear how the latest news aligns with the Western sanctions against Russia. In February 2023, the European Council sanctioned Russian banks like Tinkoff and Rosbank as part of its 10th package of sanctions on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The United States also put sanctions on Tinkoff in May 2023.
The news comes months after the U.S. Department of Justice security division reportedly launched an investigation of Binance for allowing Russians to use the exchange in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Binance has not been the sole cryptocurrency exchange that has been facilitating such transactions in Russia, though. Other major P2P crypto exchanges, including Huobi and OKX, also allow transfers with Tinkoff, Rosbank as well as Sberbank at the time of writing. Huobi and OKX didn’t immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request to comment.
Crypto advocacy group questions indictment of Tornado Cash founders
Crypto advocacy group Coin Center has criticized the latest indictment of two former Tornado Cash developers, arguing that the facts offered don’t show any clear violations of money-transmitting-related offenses.
In an opinion piece, Coin Center research director Peter Van Valkenburgh argues that the claims in the indictment appear to run counter to guidance from the United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — arguing that Tornado Cash only provides the software to transmit money rather than transmitting money itself.
Good analysis from Coincenter that covers everything except the relayer issue
I really think the relayer issue will be the deciding factor on the MSB claim and it's not clear cut unfortunately… looking forward to reading arguments on both sideshttps://t.co/hdtv8BFqF3
— _gabrielShapir0 (@lex_node) August 23, 2023
“The only thing the indictment claims regarding the defendants’ unlicensed money transmission is that they ‘engaged in the business of transferring funds on behalf of the public’ and did so without registering with FinCEN,” wrote Valkenburgh.
But does the indictment state any facts that actually show that the defendants engaged in any activities that qualify as money transmission under the relevant law?
Coin Center first voiced its opposition toward the U.S. Treasury in October when it sued the agency for its unprecedented and unlawful sanctioning of Tornado Cash.
The OFAC indictment claims Storm and Semenov ran an unlicensed money transmission service by engaging in the business of transferring funds on behalf of the public. The enforcement agency claimed the developers should have registered with FinCEN.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
