The Protocol: Nvidia To Manufacture AI Supercomputers in U.S., New Opportunities for Crypto Miners

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. We’re Margaux Nijkerk and Sam Kessler, reporters on CoinDesk’s Tech team.
In this issue:
Can Ethereum Be Truly Private? Developers Push for Encrypted Mempool, Default PrivacyNvidia Moves AI Supercomputer Production to U.S., Opening New Avenues for Crypto MinersMIT-Incubated Optimum Raises $11M Seed Round to Build Web3's Missing Memory LayerNoble’s New ‘AppLayer’ Lets Developers Build Stablecoin Tools on Celestia
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Network News
PRIVACY HEATS UP AMONG ETHEREUM DEVS: When the U.S. government sanctioned the Ethereum-based crypto mixing service Tornado Cash in 2022, it ignited a debate within the crypto community that continues three years later. Advocates argued that complying with the sanctions amounted to censorship — undermining a fundamental cypherpunk principle. President Donald Trump supported the cypherpunks and lifted the sanctions on Tornado Cash in March of this year, but for some Ethereum developers, the situation highlighted a flaw within the network that still exists today: Why should users depend on third-party apps to transact privately on the network? Perhaps emboldened by the recent Tornado Cash developments, Ethereum developers and researchers have once again begun discussing ideas for making the Ethereum network private at its core. "Privacy must not be an optional feature that users must consciously enable — it must be the default state of the network," said PCaversaccio, whose post outlined his vision for a privacy-oriented Ethereum roadmap. "Ethereum's architecture must be designed to ensure that users are private by default, not by exception." In response to PCaversaccio's post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin left a comment on the network's main developer forum with his own much shorter privacy-oriented Ethereum roadmap. Buterin suggested focusing on privacy for on-chain payments, anonymizing on-chain activity within applications, making communication on the network anonymous, and privatizing on-chain reads. To achieve all of this, Buterin listed various steps like integrating certain third-party privacy features into the core network. — Margaux Nijkerk and Sam Kessler