US District Judge William H. Orrick has ruled that the US Securities and Exchange Commission has a plausible case against crypto exchange Kraken. According to the judge, the SEC’s lawsuit against Kraken will proceed.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against crypto exchange will proceed, a judge has ruled. On Friday, August 23, 2024, US District Judge William Orrick denied Kraken’s motion to dismiss SEC’s lawsuit. In court documents filed on Friday, the judge noted that the regulator’s allegations that the crypto exchange had offered unregistered securities were plausible. “Kraken does not deny it never registered with the agency, but says that it does not need to because the transactions it enables on its platform do not involve securities and do not fall within the SEC’s regulatory purview. But the SEC has plausibly alleged that at least some of the cryptocurrency  transactions that Kraken facilitates on its network constitute investment contracts, and therefore securities, and are accordingly subject to securities laws,” Judge Orrick wrote in the ruling. Solana among alleged unregistered securities In its lawsuit against Kraken, the SEC listed 11 cryptocurrencies it said were sold as investment contracts. These are Cardano (ADA), Algorand (ALGO), Cosmos Hub (ATOM), Filecoin (FIL), Flow (FLOW), and Internet Computer (ICP). Others are Decentraland (MANA), Polygon (MATIC), Near (NEAR), OMG Network (OMG) and Solana (SOL). The judge’s opinion, delivered as part of the ruling, is that “all the SEC must do is plausibly allege that at least one of these crypto assets is being traded as an investment contract to make its claims feasible.” SEC has sued multiple crypto exchanges, including Binance and Coinbase. The regulator filed its lawsuit against Kraken in November 2023.

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Optimism’s Retro Funding round 5 is open for applications until September 5, 2024. The Optimism team has also welcomed new Ethereum Layer-2 Soneium to the Superchain.

Optimism has announced that its Retroactive Public Goods Funding (Retro Funding) 5 round is now open for applications. According to the platform’s announcement on August 23, Optimism (OP) contributors have until September 5 at 19:00 UTC to submit applications. Eligible projects will win part of the 8 million OP the new round has available to Ethereum core developers, OP Stack research and development teams and OP Stack tooling developers. Who’s eligible for Retro Funding 5? The Retro Funding 5 round will offer rewards to projects that have generated impact within the OP ecosystem between October 2023 and August 2024. Ethereum core contributors include smart contract languages, execution clients, EVMs, testnets, and cryptography researchers. Meanwhile, OP Stack researchers include projects that directly contribute to the OP Stack and the Optimism protocol. These include client Implementations, modules and audits. Integration and load testing infrastructure and RaaS providers are among OP Stack tooling projects eligible for the funding. Optimism welcomes Soneium Other news developments for Optimism related to Sony’s launch of the Soneium, an Ethereum Layer-2 chain leveraging the OP Stack. In an announcement following Soneium’s unveiling, Optimism said the L2 was now part of the Superchain.

Soneium will be a general-purpose network that will seek to bridge Web2 and Web3. “Sony Block Solutions Labs, the joint venture between Sony Group and Startale chose to build with Optimism for its world-class tech, strong builder community, and thriving ecosystem,” Sota Watanabe, director of Sony Block Solutions Labs, said in a statement. Watanabe is also the CEO of Startale, the platform behind Astar zkEVM and which plans to transition it to Soneium’s L2 network.

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