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Hello there! 👋

Glad to have you as a part of the Safient family. Welcome to our newsletter. At Safient we prioritize community growth through product growth, making us a reliable and trustless protocol. Our ecosystem offers every individual the opportunity to be a contributor by simply joining our community, tap on the discord server link https://discord.safient.io to join us today!

We are going to make the next 4-5 minutes worth your while by covering topics centered around trending topics in the crypto space, as well as educating you through the “self-custody gyaan” section.

If you loved the newsletter, let us know! If you hated the newsletter, let us know! We're always looking for a fresh perspective on things to cover and feedback to make your experience better!

- Team Safient.

What we're covering this week:

1. Coinbase Launches Its Layer-2 Network For Building Decentralized Apps

2. Spotify Is Testing Token-Enabled Playlist

3. Not your keys Not Your Crypto, True Or Not?

4. Updates from Safient.💥

A WEEK IN CRYPTO

Coinbase Launches Its Layer-2 Network For Building Decentralized Apps

In an announcement on Twitter, Coinbase mentioned that they had launched a layer-2 network known as Base. The network Base is designed to be a low-cost, secure, developer-friendly environment that Coinbase believes will serve as a bridge to bring users into the crypto economy.

 In describing Base, Coinbase explains that it is Coinbase’s contribution to the core infrastructure of the crypto economy: a commitment to scale Ethereum and unlock the next wave of growth and adoption. It is designed to offer access to layer-1 ecosystems like Polkadot, Avalanche, Algorand, Fantom, and others to build decentralized apps thus, providing interoperability between chains. It will also provide access to Coinbase’s products, users, and tools as well as easy fiat on-ramps and powerful acquisition tools. Base will be built on the “OP Stack” used by Optimism making it fully decentralized.

The company said it has no plans to issue a new network token. 

Spotify Is Testing Token-Enabled Playlist

Spotify, a well-known music streaming platform is expanding its Web3 efforts by venturing into the NFT market via testing token-enabled playlists. A Web3 gaming ecosystem known as Overload made this announcement via Twitter.

NFT owners will be able to connect their wallets such as Trust Wallet, MetaMask, Rainbow Wallet, and Ledger Wallet to the Spotify app. From there, the NFT that provides access to a specific playlist will be authenticated, and they’ll be able to give the playlist a listen.

The beta currently only includes a limited group of NFT communities. There’s Universal Music Group’s metaverse band Kingship, as well as the gaming ecosystem Overlord. NFT character community Fluf and Kevin Rose’s Moonbirds are also participating in the test run.

Overlord mentioned that owners of its Creepz lizard NFTs project can use their tokens to access the community-curated “Invasion” playlist, while Kingship created its own playlist containing their favorite tracks from artists such as Queen, Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg, Led Zeppelin, and more.

At this time, token-enabled playlists are only available to Android users in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. It’s still unknown whether the playlists are a permanent feature in the app.

Confirming the beta to CoinDesk, a Spotify spokesperson said that the app “routinely conducts a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience,” some of which “end up paving the path for our broader user experience and others serve only as important learnings.”

SELF-CUSTODY GYAAN 

Not Your Keys Not Your Crypto, True Or Not?

Not your keys Not your crypto has happened to be one of the most commonly used phrases in the world of crypto. Despite its commonness, the importance of this phrase can never be over-emphasized. But what then are your keys?

Just like a traditional bank account number, cryptocurrencies are sent to a receiving address. The technical term for this address is the public key. When someone sends you some Ethereum, they will send it to your public key. It’s called public since you can send it to anyone without compromising your crypto.

There is, however, another key that is linked to your public key. That would be the private key. This key is absolutely vital. Anyone that has access to the private key can access the funds on the public key that it’s linked to. In simpler terms, a private key is similar to a password – a means of identifying you as the true owner. When speaking of “not your keys, not your coins”, it refers to your private key.

So, what then is the difference between accessing your keys and owning your keys? When you log into your favorite exchange, it might seem like you actually own the coins on your account. After all, you do need to log in to gain access to them, right?

Wrong. It looks like you’re in total control of your assets until you try to withdraw more cryptocurrencies than the platform permits or lower than a certain amount. As a matter of fact, the exchange might take a cut of any cryptocurrency transaction you make. They can quite simply do this since you don’t own the private keys to the crypto assets on your account – they have them.

This phenomenon is not limited to exchanges only, it is the same for any wallet provider that does not allow you to own the keys to the connected funds. If you do not own the private keys, you are not the true owner of the funds. You are simply entrusting a third party to it. This means that they have the mandate to do whatever they want with the cryptocurrencies on their account.

At this time, you might also be wondering, why does owning my private key matter? There is an abundance of reasons why you want to own your keys, rather than leaving it in the custody of a third party, requiring you to trust your funds to them.

The most prevalent reason is accidentally entrusting it to malicious actors. Should you have trusted a malicious third party with your money, you will likely never see it back. Thankfully this is quite unlikely with established exchanges.

Even then you will never be in total control over your own money with them. As mentioned earleir, they can set certain restrictions like a maximum withdrawal limit or fees associated with using their services. They can decide what you can do with your own hard-earned money. Also, if their platform has any technical issues, you’re basically locked out of your cryptocurrencies. In reality, so long as you don’t own your keys, you won’t have financial freedom and your funds remain under the custody of someone else.

On top of this, you won’t have control over the security of the platform’s system either, you’re outsourcing your cryptocurrency’s security to them. Unfortunately, over the years, there have been major hacks that have amounted to around 2 billion dollars being stolen.

The opposite is true if you own your own private keys. By having the private keys, you can set your own rules. There won’t be anyone else telling you what you can or cannot do with your own cryptocurrencies. By having your own keys, you fully own your own coins and can enjoy financial freedom.

As the famous saying goes, “To whom much responsibility is given, much is needed in return”. So sole responsibility over your private keys implies you must ensure that you will be the only one to hold those private keys. If anyone else manages to get their hands on them, they can access and take your cryptocurrencies.

To our rescue comes Safient Protocol, which makes it easier to safely and securely store your digital secrets in a convenient way. Safient is not a storage network, instead we are a protocol that makes it possible to secure your assets such as your private key or other digital assets through our SDK. Learn more about us and possible integration using this link: Safient- Non-custodial secret Recovery and Inheritance Protocol 

SAFIENT WEEKLY INSIDE

Let us update you on what we are up to at Safient this week.

Safient Giveaway Roundup

It is no news that we have completed the first round of our Safient Voucher giveaway. We congratulate our first 5 lucky winners who completed the tasks and were rewarded accordingly. Do well to check your email if you were amongst the winners but have not claimed your reward yet.

We implore all to keep up with the Safient community, as the Safient Voucher giveaway is still very much active.

Safient Intergrates With MetaMask

We have integrated with MetaMask flask extension to offer a recovery solution using the Safient Protocol. This we have made possible using the Metamask Snaps. We find this exciting, and we say kudos to the core team who worked tirelessly on this one. You can read more about it here. Do reach out to us if you want a demo regarding the same.

Safient X Kleros Network Twitter Space.

In our bid to promote Self-Custody and Social Recovery, we had an amazing time with one of our partners Kleros Network on live Twitter Space.

It was exciting as we discussed ongoing efforts to expand on our integrations with existing wallets like Metamask to simplify users' social recovery setup process, using Kleros to resolve disputes about any recovery requests. Also interesting are our plans to make use of the latest developments in account abstraction to eventually cover smart contract wallets as well, which will become an alternative to Gnosis Safe and Argent’s Guardian solutions.

You can listen to the recording of this amazing session using this link:

We wish you a happy new month and a lovely week y'all. Cheers! 🙂