Andy Rubin incorporated home security monitoring software startup Simple Things in July 2020 and appears to have hired staff from his defunct startup Essential (Jon Victor/The Information)

Vishal Chawla / The Block:
Decentralized crypto exchange Serum, backed heavily by FTX, says it is “defunct” and points users to a community-led fork  —  – Solana-based exchange protocol Serum stated on Twitter it was now “defunct.”  — It pointed that it was now replaced by a community fork called OpenBook.

Jef Feeley / Bloomberg:
Delaware Chancery judge rules that Elon Musk can amend his counterclaims and use Twitter’s $7.8M severance payment to Peiter Zatko to justify ending the deal  —  Elon Musk can use a $7.8 million severance payment to a Twitter Inc. whistle-blower to argue he was justified in walking away …

Jef Feeley / Bloomberg:
Unsealed court docs: Peiter Zatko said he burned 10 notebooks and deleted 100 computer files at the behest of Twitter managers as part of his severance package  —  Just before Elon Musk revived his proposal to buy Twitter Inc. last week, the billionaire accused the company of ordering …

Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Sources: Andreessen Horowitz is the investor behind Android founder Andy Rubin’s new hardware startup Smart Things  —  Reed is Semafor’s Technology Editor, joining us from the Washington Post.  Sign up for the Semafor Tech newsletter to get his scoops and coverage on the industry’s biggest stories in your inbox twice a week.

Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Adobe’s Figma retention package may be the biggest since Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014, exceeding deal packages from Auth0, LinkedIn, Mobileye, and Slack  —  Figma’s cofounder and some employees are set to make billions more in a historic retention package following its acquisition by the software giant.

Jon Victor / The Information:
Source: between Q1 2019 and this fall, Alphabet’s Google Cloud, hardware unit, and YouTube have roughly doubled headcount, as the total employee count grew ~80%  —  Alphabet has doubled the headcount in its Google Cloud unit since early 2019, according to data obtained by The Information, outstripping Alphabet’s overall hiring growth.