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Hi, Bradley Keoun here, editor of The Protocol.

In today’s issue of The Protocol, we’re covering the five-year-old, $500,000 bet on Ethereum’s future between Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin and Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song. We also write on crypto executives’ quick embrace of artificial intelligence or AI as a complementary technology, and highlight the black market that has reportedly sprung up in China for identity credentials from the iris-scanning identity protocol Worldcoin.

5 Years After $500K Ethereum Wager Between Joe Lubin and Jimmy Song, Who Won?

Back then, at CoinDesk's Consensus conference in 2018: Joe Lubin (left), co-founder of Ethereum and the founder of ConsenSys, with bitcoin advocate Jimmy Song and former CoinDesk reporter Brady Dale. (CoinDesk)

A bet placed five years ago on the future of crypto, between Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin and the Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song, is now coming due – and with $500,000 on the line, CoinDesk has run the numbers on who might be the winning party.

The subtext for the wager was that Song didn’t expect Ethereum, the second-biggest blockchain after Bitcoin, to develop a thriving ecosystem by May 2023, and Lubin put money down on the prediction that it would, sealed with a handshake after a bravado-filled exchange on the stage of CoinDesk’s Consensus conference in 2018.

Neither Lubin nor Song would go into great detail on whether they’re settling up, but the conditions of the wager were laid out in pretty specific terms, and it’s possible to check who might have won – with some wiggle room in the interpretation.

For Lubin to win, five or more applications built atop Ethereum needed to hold onto 10,000 daily and 100,000 monthly active users for at least six months in any 12-month period before May 23, 2023. A daily active user was defined as an on-chain transaction initiated by a single Ethereum address.

In other words: A handful of Ethereum apps needed to get, as Song put it, the sort of traction enjoyed by a minimally successful Android or iPhone app.

The upshot? Two blockchain data firms (Artemis and Nansen) say five decentralized apps (dapps) met the specified usage levels over the past half-decade – the bare minimum for a Lubin win.

So, if Lubin was the victor, he just squeaked by; it wasn't a blowout. And he might’ve lost, depending on whom you ask.

Network News

Artificial intelligence or AI might seem a natural competitor to blockchains in the category of technologies pitched as possible world-changers and chased by investors as the next winning trade. But crypto execs and fund managers have mostly come out in embrace of AI as interest surges following chipmaker Nvidia’s bullish forecast last week, despite warnings that the technology might lead to human extinction. Bitwise Asset Management CEO Hunter Horsley tweeted that “these two disparate technologies are going to have intertwined futures.” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire tweeted that “AI and blockchains are made for each other” and that his team was hearing about “bots spinning up on-chain wallets” and using the stablecoin USDC. Bitcoin miners mulled the possibility that some capacity in their data centers could be allocated if AI-related computing demand emerges. CoinDesk Chief Content Officer Michael Casey has noted that distributed ledgers could help “track the provenance of images” to help guard against risks like AI firms training their models on copyrighted work. The Solana Foundation rolled out a $10 million grant fund for developers looking to explore “the intersection of the Solana blockchain and AI.” Fetch.ai, which claims an “interoperable decentralized network to harness the power of AI and automation,” saw a jump in the price of its FET token. For what it’s worth, we asked ChatGPT what AI might mean for crypto, and the platform rattled off six bullet points including the technology’s potential for price prediction in volatile digital-asset markets.

Worldcoin, the crypto-powered identity protocol known for its iris-scanning orbs (and attendant criticisms), turned heads last week with its $115 million capital raise – and it was lost on no one that the project is backed by Sam Altman, co-founder of Open AI, the company behind the suddenly-popular generative AI tool ChatGPT. The lead investor in the deal, Blockchain Capital, wrote that “Worldcoin has a unique opportunity to become the biggest onramp to crypto.” That remark drew jeers from some corners of Crypto Twitter, with one poster responding that “Bitcoin will destroy your dreams of scamming the world.” Separately, CoinDesk’s Eliza Gkritsi and Lingling Xiang reported that a black market has emerged in China for “know-your-customer” verifications from the project’s World App, which offers wallet and ID services. The report, which cited social media and ecommerce sites, as well as the Chinese crypto site Blockbeats, noted that credentials often come from developing countries like Cambodia and Kenya. Worldcoin confirmed its team had “identified suspicious and potentially fraudulent activity whereby individuals were incentivized to sign up for a verified World ID that was then delivered to a third party’s World App rather than their own.”

Canto, a layer 1 blockchain, was designed for decentralized finance (DeFi) services like crypto lending, staking and liquidity provision. And as our Oliver Knight writes, Canto has been one of the hardest hit in the past month as liquidity dries up across the sector. Total value locked (TVL), or the amount of collateral deposited in the network, has fallen by 35%. Chalk it up to the fickle nature of crypto investors, who had piled into Canto after it launched last August as DeFi markets heated up. The blockchain’s native CANTO token is down 55% in six weeks.

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