Crypto && Coffee 058
- 7 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- All-time highs continue - welcome to 2021!!
- Andrew Poelstra posted a partial rewrite of the BIP322 generic message signing proposal back in December. This will allow wallets that don’t implement a complete set of checks to return an “inconclusive” state for signatures that use scripts that they don’t understand.
Litecoin:
- Full December 2020 progress update from David Burkett has been published. This update includes the first-ever implementation of one-sided transactions on Mimblewimble and the subsequent testing/review. LTC members have also included MWEB components to the wallet GUI.
Ethereum:
- Ben Edgington shares a brief 2020 year round-up of ETH2 and more!
- Ethereum Cat Herders share their review of 2020 including: ETH1.0 specification, on-chain projects, infrastructure providers, network upgrade frequency, community feedback and EIP awareness.
Other Chains:
- Ren publishes their 2020 recap as well as what they have planned for 2021!
- Fuel Labs announces that they are now officially on mainnet. Fuel uses their optimistic rollup to bring scalability to Ethereum and DApps.
- It has now been over 100 days since the mainnet launch of Avalanche. The ecosystem continues to grow with projects and innovations from Chainlink, Polyient Games, and Binance.
- Zora makes their announcement! Zora is a protocol to create, share, and exchange universally accessible and valuable information on the Internet.
- Ethereum Optimism shares their Year In Review including their soft launch code freeze for the anticipated community release after thorough testing of Synthetix completes.
- Zapper notes their 2020 recap with each of their updates and releases per month.
- Yam Finance shares their Yam Treasury Quarterly Update, where they look to explore their community governed treasury.
- Coinbase publishes the technical challenges and solutions involved in upgrading the USDC smart contract, a multi-billion dollar ERC-20 token.
- Volmex Finance announces that they will leverage Ethereum Optimism to make their protocol cheaper and faster. Layer-2 technologies like Optimism will provide DeFi users a 100x improvement in user experience.
- Primitive Finance is now live on mainnet. Primitive is a new protocol that harnesses the power of simplicity to deliver tokenized options for any asset on Ethereum.
- OpenBazaar shares that OBI Company will be decommissioning most of the infrastructure that powers OpenBazaar on January 15th, 2021.
- StarkWare releases their Cairo Playground! This will allow developers to write Cairo code directly in their browser.
- Loopring hits a new volume record! Their Ethereum based zkRollup DEX had $5.49M in volume on January 3rd, 2021. This is 2.5x greater than the day before.
- Yearn Generation of Yield, YGY, announces that they have integrated with Chainlink to use their VRF features on mainnet.
- 1inch Exchange states that $350K in 1INCH tokens were collected from Spread Surplus. All rewards will be distributed to stakers within a week.
- As prices rise, so do the fees. THORChain publishes that they have collected over $30K in fees and distributed $60K in block rewards within the past 24 hours.
- Illuvium, a decentralized NFT collection and auto battler game on Ethereum, is announced! The token genesis event will take place in late Q1 of 2021.
- Oiler, a protocol for blockchain native derivatives shares their view and instruments that can be used services that need exposure to hashrate, block gas limits, and block times.
- Uniswap publishes their 2020 Year in Review!
- Synthetix shares their Year in Review with notes on fee reclamation, sUSD Curve Pool, and overall community impact.
- MobileCoin releases their first edition preview of the Mechanics of MobileCoin.
- Zcash Foundation calls for a Protocol Hangout to discuss the impact and technical needs of Halo within the ecosystem on January 14th, 2021.
- BTSE announces Wrapped Monero, WXMR, which brings Monero to the Ethereum Network as an ERC-20 and is backed 1:1 by Monero and secured by BTSE.
Mainstream Recap:
- Two attack vectors have been published regarding the yCredit smart contract. These exploits have also been ported to Aave V2 and passed successfully.
- One of the many various Parity multisig hackers from 2017, just moved ETH funds on December 27th, 2020 and eventually swapped them into BTC via RenVM.
- ShapeShift announces that it has integrated decentralized exchange protocols and is sunsetting its 6+ year business of trading with customers. Thus, ShapeShift will no longer require KYC and users will no longer need to provide PII.
- Coinbase calls for crypto users to make their voices heard regarding the proposed regulations from the U.S. Department of Treasury that would require exchanges to collect and share personal information about you and the people you transact with to the government.
- The following platforms and services have made their voices heard so far:
- Kraken files formal response to FinCEN proposed rule.
- Square shares on Twitter their feelings and thoughts towards the rule.
- Coinbase files a formal response to FinCEN.
- Gemini submits their comment letter to express concern to FinCEN.
- Andreessen Horowitz, a16z opposes the rulemaking and files as well.
- Dr. Neha Narula of the Digital Currency Initiative submitted comments.
- Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF, publishes their concerns.
- Stellar Development Foundation shares their comment letter to FinCEN.
- And so many more…
- As privacy focused cryptocurrencies are being delisted on various exchanges and services, Grayscale shares their Zcash Trust to help gain exposure for ZEC.
- eToro is one of the latest exchanges to announce that they are suspending XRP trading in the US beginning January 3rd, 2021. Other exchanges include: Coinbase, Binance, Bitstamp, OKCoin, Ziglu, Wirex, Bittrex, Swipe Wallet, Crosstower, Beaxy, OSL, Crypto.com, Jump Trading, Galaxy Digital, and Bitwise.
- Winklevoss Capital re-shares their post on The Case for $500K Bitcoin as prices continue to soar in the new year.
- Jameson Lopp, CTO and co-founder of Casa, shares his annual review of Bitcoin.
- Bittrex announces that they will remove various privacy-focused cryptocurrency markets on Friday, January 15th, 2021 at 23:00 UTC. Those markets include: BTC-XMR. ETH-XMR, USDT-XMR, BTC-ZEC, ETH-ZEC, USDT-ZEC, USD-ZEC, BTC-DASH, ETH-DASH, USDT-DASH, USD-DASH.
- In response to Bittrex’s delisting, the Electric Coin Company publishes their thoughts and how there is no public regulatory rationale for delisting Zcash.
- Pratyush Mishra shares his recent publication, Proof-Carrying Data without Succinct Arguments, which focuses on more efficient recursive proofs with Benedikt Bünz, Alessandro Chiesa, William Lin, and Nicholas Spooner.
- Bitwise announced on January 4th, 2021 that it recently surpassed $500M in assets under management (AUM). The Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund, which seeks to track an index of the 10 largest crypto assets saw the largest demand crossing over $400M in AUM.
- The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) releases new guidance allowing federally chartered banks to use public blockchains and stablecoins as settlement infrastructure within the U.S. financial system.
- Gemini now accepts the Singapore Dollar. Users can now buy, sell, trade crypto with SGD using a debit card or deposit SGD funds into a Gemini account.
- Grayscale Investments, Genesis Global Trading Inc., announces that The Fund has removed XRP and effective on January 15th, 2021 at 5pm ET, it will temporarily suspend trading for XRP.
- CoinDesk reports that BitGo’s Ethereum-based tokenized bitcoin project, Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), has now expanded to its second blockchain, TRON.
- Kraken shares that clients have staked 300,000 ETH2.0, roughly over $330M on the beacon chain thus far.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are jumping to the virtual coffee store of Pucker Punch Coffee Roasters. This specialty coffee roaster has some bold flavors coming from their Force of Nature, a light to medium roast with notes of chocolate and cherry, with some crazy aromatics. Sip up and enjoy, welcome to 2021!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer