The Ethereum Layer-2 network Base exhibited some growing pains today, experiencing an outage that lasted half an hour and took another 30 minutes to fully resolve. "We had a delay in block production due in part to our internal infrastructure requiring a refresh," Base reported on Twitter. "The issue has been identified and remediated. No funds are at risk." List as a "Base chain stall" on the project page, the development team reported that "users may have issues submitting transactions" at 5:36 p.m. ET on Tuesday. The issue was identified and a fix developed 14 minutes later, and by 6:09 p.m., Base was "starting to see recovery of block production and gossip." Gossip is node-to-node exchanges of state information. Despite "widespread recovery," a lingering issue with remote procedure calls (RPCs) delayed the issuance of an all-clear report until 6:06 p.m., 90 minutes after the investigation began. Payment giant Visa has broadened its USD Coin (USDC) settlement capacities to the Solana (SOL) blockchain while collaborating with merchant acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei, according to a Sept. 5 statement. The move implies that certain merchants affiliated with WorldPay and Nuvei can now receive payments in USDC directly, instead of traditional fiat currency, when customers make purchases using their Visa cards. Visa Head of Crypto Cuy Sheffield explained the significance of this in a thread on X (formerly Twitter). According to him, Visa has been testing USDC as a treasury option since 2021, when it partnered with Crypto.com for a live pilot. This program enabled the payments company to accept settlements for the Crypto.com card program in Australia via the Ethereum network using a Visa-managed Circle account. The company is implementing the same program on Solana and will use its dedicated Circle account to settle payments on-chain to WorldPay and Nuvei. This allows the service providers to settle their payments directly in stablecoins rather than fiat. Lawyers representing crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to "expeditiously" approve a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in a letter sent to the federal agency Tuesday, continuing its victory march following Grayscale's recent court win against the regulator. The letter from law firms Davis Polk and Munger Tolles & Olson comes after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled last week that the SEC was wrong to reject Grayscale's proposed bitcoin ETF without adequately explaining its reasoning. The ruling requires the SEC to review Grayscale's application again, although the agency still has time to appeal. "We believe the commission should conclude that there are no grounds for treating the trust differently from ETPs [exchange-traded products] that invest in Bitcoin futures contracts," the lawyers wrote, citing Bitcoin futures ETFs that the SEC has already approved. Grayscale has argued that its proposed spot Bitcoin ETF should be approved because it would rely on the same market surveillance arrangement with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) that the SEC has deemed sufficient for Bitcoin futures ETFs. The appeals court agreed, ruling that the SEC never explained why the two arrangements were materially different. Users of the MetaMask cryptocurrency wallet can now cash out their digital assets for fiat currency ant send it to a bank account or PayPal account. The feature is now available in the U.S., U.K., and parts of Europe, MetaMask said in a Tuesday blog post, explaining that users of its browser-based platform can convert their crypto to dollars, euros and pounds. The post added that it has “plans to expand to more regions to cater to our worldwide community.” “Combined with the Buy feature, it enables you to have a self-sufficient Web3 experience with fewer intermediaries and faster fiat conversion directly to your destination of choice where available, like your bank account or PayPal balance,” the post read. “Ensuring a way for users to enter and exit crypto freely is important, and we hope these options make Web3 attainable to more people." You can find these stories and more at the link below:
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