Crypto && Coffee 052
- 9 mins🎉Happy 1 Year Anniversary to Crypto && Coffee🎉 Technology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Over 25% of the Bitcoin hashrate is now signaling for the upcoming Taproot activation! The mining pools signaling for Taproot include: Poolin, SlushPool, BTC.com, F2Pool, AntPool, and Luxor.
- Awesome thread on all things Taproot! Check it out and dive down the rabbit hole of Schnorr signatures.
Ethereum:
- The threshold on the ETH2.0 Deposit Contract has been reached!! This means that the ETH2.0 Genesis will take place on December 1st, 2020 at 12pm UTC. View some nice stats that were shared by Vitalik.
- Vitalik shared a comment he made in the recent Ethereum Reddit AMA regarding the max supply of Ether.
- Prysmatic Labs has promoted Prysm to v1.0.0 and is ready for mainnet launch on December 1st, 2020.
- Sigma Prime has promoted Lighthouse to v1.0.0 intended for ETH2.0 launch and those running a staking validator.
- Bitfly shares the ETH2.0 Genesis state root, block root, and ETH1.0 block.
- Nimbus shares the ETH2.0 bootstrap nodes, configs, and deposit contract information for all of the main ETH2.0 clients.
- November 18th, 2020 was the fifth birthday for ERC-20! Tokens on tokens!
- Ethereum Foundation releases Solidity v0.7.5! This adds the ability to select between ABI coder v1 and v2. In addition, it adds an experimental capability to compile via the Yul-based compiler.
- The Ethereum Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) releases their roundup on the current grantee’s progress on their various projects.
Other Chains:
- John Newbery, Bitcoin Core developer since 2016, and Mike Schmidt, contributor to Bitcoin Core and previous manager at Blockstream, have teamed up to create brink! A new project to strengthen the Bitcoin protocol and network through fundamental research and development. The project is backed by Human Rights Foundation, Square Crypto, Kraken, and Gemini.
- Pickle and Yearn developers have worked out a structure to allow the two projects to work together. This will merge Pickle Jars and Yearn’s v2 Vault.
- Matic Network has successfully integrated Chainlink natively on its mainnet. Five price feeds have already been launched on their mainnet including: MATIC/USD, USDC/USD, ETH/USD, USDT/USD, and DAI/USD.
- Beam has launched BeamX, a confidential DeFi experimental platform based on Beam Confidential blockchain.
- The recent sCIP#14 proposal for Zcash to make its way onto Curve via (renZEC/wZEC) has successfully closed.
- Chainlink publishes a post on the benefits of their ecosystem aiding in the growing adoption of Bitcoin using externally connected smart contracts.
- Loopring has released a beta version of Loopring Wallet, the first Ethereum smart wallet with zkRollup scaling baked in.
- In light of the recent flash loan exploit, ValueDeFi will be choosing Chainlink to be their main oracle solution and will use their Price Feed contracts for all supported stablecoins. This is the next step in their MultiStables Vault relaunch.
- Dune Analytics shares a stats page for lending protocols Compound Finance, MakerDAO, and Aave.
- A new Zcash focused blog, ZcashZeal, has been published to hopefully become a community hub for Zcash wallets and more.
- The Electric Coin Company shares new information regarding the Halo 2 Project, where they have designed a new cycle of elliptic curves, Pallas and Vesta, which they are collectively referring to as the Pasta curves.
- Ava Labs publishes an article for all things one needs to know about the Avalanche-Ethereum bridge. By using ChainSafe’s ChainBridge, trusted relayers Protofire, Hashquark, POA Network, and Avascan will enable two-ways transfers between the two chains.
- On November 22nd, 2020, ParaSwap hit a new all-time high with a 24hour volume of ~$14,509,641 USD.
- Status shares their recent Town Hall on November 23rd, 2020 including information on their security, infrastructure, keycard, and more.
- Stellar announces that the latest network upgrade to Protocol 15 has been completed! Protocol 15 includes two new features: claimable balances and sponsored reserves.
- Aave is excited to announce its investment into Pixelcraft Studios, the Singapore based company developing Aavegotchi, a Tamagotchi-inspired NFT collectible.
- Gnosis releases the GnosisDAO, a prediction market-driven collective aiming to guide proposals and participates in the Gnosis ecosystem.
- Status publishes their v1.9 release for the Status Mobile App. This release includes: censorship-resistant personal statuses, link previews, and transaction notifications.
- Loopring announces that they have settled over 2M transactions over their zkRollup infrastructure.
- Yam Finance introduces the Umbrella Protocol which is designed for perpetual ERC-20 streaming coverage, immutable coverage pools, and permissionless factory-based pool creation.
- Connext published their next iteration, Vector, which is now on testnet and is focused on fixing on/offboarding from layer-2.
- AirSwap announced that in January 2021, they will enter the second phase of their rollout with new governance, new tokenomics, new treasury plan, and more!
- Ren announces the release of the Multichain into RenVM, and new upgrades to the RenJS library. With this, a new range of assets and chains enter the world of interoperability including: BTC, BCH, DGB, DOGE, FIL, LUNA, and ZEC all on Ethereum as well as Binance Smart Chain.
- Buidl Guidl releases their Round 1, unaudited, system which is a forkable quadratic funding and bounty system to incentivize developers to coordinate around various projects and tasks.
- DeFi Database launches a one-stop shop for all projects and DApps that have been announced and are currently running within the DeFi ecosystem.
Mainstream Recap:
- Pickle Finance’s pDAI PickleJar was hacked on November 21st, 2020 which resulted in a loss of 19.76M DAI. The loss ended up being covered by COVER. Full overview of the attack and each step is illustrated here.
- NiceHash’s DNS records were taken over by attackers on November 18th, 2020 following the latest series of attacks on cryptocurrency projects hosted on GoDaddy.
- Two vulnerabilities were discovered in the 88mph project on November 17th, 2020 resulting in an exploit that accumulated to a $100K loss. Luckily, some funds were rescued in the Uniswap pool.
- ConsenSys acquires Truffle Suite, one of the most widely used developer platforms for Ethereum including a testing framework, asset pipeline and more.
- A new research paper has been released entitled Modelling Attacks in Blockchain Systems using Petri Nets which explores various vulnerabilities within current blockchain-based systems.
- Genies is bringing its customizable 3D avatars to a partnership with Dapper Labs. The collaboration brings the teams behind CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot together to introduce users to blockchains.
- The Bitcoin Fund (the “Fund”) announced a successful overnight treasury offering on November 17th, 2020 of 2,850,000 Class A units.
- Lisbon-based non-fungible token (NFT) platform, Mintbase, has closed a $1M seed funding round. The round was led by Chinese venture capital firm Sino Global with partnership from D1 Ventures, Block Oracle Capital, Arweave and angel investors.
- Reuters reports that 30 major Japanese firms will begin experiments next year towards issuing a common, private digital currency.
- ClearBank announces a simple API integration which will provide Gemini with secure infrastructure including dedicated account numbers, sort codes, as well as direct access to payment rails, such as Faster Payments and CHAPS.
- Airbnb has submitted a document on its IPO to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) where they state the possibility of adding crypto payments in the future.
- Winning Poker Network, which operates a number of online poker sites, is focusing on buying millions in bitcoin a day to meet demands of exiting players. Full report from Bloomberg here.
- Circle announces collaboration with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, led by President-elect Juan Guaido, U.S.-based fintech innovator Airtm, and in coordination with the U.S. Government to put in place an aid disbursement pipeline that leverages the power of USDC.
- South Africa’s Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services (FAIS) Act, which is under a draft declaration states that cryptocurrency assets would be treated like financial products moving forward.
- Coinbase CEO shares a fireside chat with Vitalik Buterin on the future of Ethereum and crypto.
- Pantera Capital releases information on Balancer and their recent investment in the platform with Alameda Research.
- BitMEX Research shares that the 100x Group is delighted to announce that it’s providing a $20,000 grant to Gary Kramlich to develop the open source instant messaging client Pidgin.
- CoinDesk reports that Crypto.com is trying to bulk up its Maltese financial licenses in search of a competitive edge across Europe.
- Binance announces that it will list a Litecoin (LTC) options contract at 7AM UTC on November 25th, 2020.
Crypto && Coffee Year in Review:
- Pieter Wuille opened up Bitcoin Improvement Proposals 340, 341, and 342 at the end of January 2020 proposing Taproot. Taproot was recently merged into Bitcoin Core at the end of October 2020 and is awaiting activation.
- Ethereum Istanbul fork occurred on December 4th, 2019 allowing for the use of zk-rollups and initial building blocks for ETH2.0. ETH2.0 testnets then started appearing in early January 2020 including Prysmatic Lab’s Prysm and Sigma Prime’s Lighthouse. Now, at 12pm UTC on December 1st, 2020, ETH2.0 Genesis will launch with the ETH2.0 Deposit Contract fully funded.
- Litecoin began initial discussions on Mimblewimble Extension Blocks at the end of 2019. David Burkett took over development of the Mimblewimble Extension Blocks in December 2019 and we now have a full LTC MWEB testnet running.
- BitcoinCash performed multiple upgrades to BitcoinABC and then recently split to BCHN and BCHA over the decision for how to properly fund network development.
- Monero upgraded their consensus to RandomX Proof of Work, added Dandelion++, Triptych, and more.
- DeFi, layer-2 protocols on Ethereum and zero-knowledge based protocols have exploded across multiple blockchains bringing users into the blockchain/crypto ecosystem.
- And much more…feel free to check out all the previous Crypto && Coffee emails!
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are going back to the first coffee that was ever featured on Crypto && Coffee, but taking it up one notch. The Chronic Super Dank from Doma Coffee Roasters in Post Falls, ID. This dark roast blend will yield flavors of dark chocolate, cloves, and hints of dried fruit. One of my all-time favorites. Cheers!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer