Crypto && Coffee 065
- 7 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- A stale block was detected on February 21st, 2021 at height 671511. There were no conflicting transactions or double spends.
- The Bitcoin network is currently adding more than twice as many new transactions as are being confirmed. The mempool has a ~237 block depth. The default mempool is dropping transactions below 11 sat/vB.
- BlueWallet merges in a PR to support offline signing with air-gapped PSBTs (Partially-Signed Bitcoin Transactions). A PSBT at its highest level is a data format that allows wallets and other tools to create a transaction that identifies a set of UTXOs to spend and a set of outputs to receive that spent value. The information about each UTXO that’s necessary to generate a signature however can be added by another tool. Thus, both parts do not need to be done on the same device or program.
- Lightning Lab’s lnd v0.12.1-beta has been released. This release reverts the removal of the premature channel update cache, a refactor of the gossip throttling that was added in v0.12.0, and more!
Ethereum:
- In the latest Ethereum All Core Devs call, the timeline for the next upgrade, Berlin was discussed. The timeline as of now is aiming for the upgrade to take place for Ethereum mainnet on April 14th, 2021 at block height 12,244,000.
- A proposal for the first hard fork, HF1, for the ETH2.0 Beacon Chain has been published. The key goals for HF1 include: adding light client support, fixing weaknesses, and thorough testing of the hard forking mechanism with relatively small changes.
- Vitalik Buterin shares his opinion on prediction markets such as Augur, Omen, PolyMarket and more - focusing on their use cases and application of blockchains.
- Hasu and Georgios Konstantopoulos publish their insights on why Miners will accept EIP-1559 on Derbit.
- Sigma Prime releases v1.1.3 of their ETH2.0 client Lighthouse. This release contains a fix for a known issue which caused excessive memory consumption as well as fixing false-positive warnings on resource consumption.
Other Chains:
- On February 18th, 2021, Cosmos upgraded to Stargate enabling IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) which marks the completion of the original Cosmos whitepaper and ushers in the age of cross-chain communication. Full rundown of the latest within Cosmos here.
- Synthetix releases a full write up on their recent updates including debt tracking on staking, earning options and more.
- Balancer partners with Aave to build the first Balancer V2 Asset Manager, allowing idle assets in V2 pools to earn yield on Aave!
- The Graph announces that they will be supporting Polkadot, Solana, Celo and NEAR Protocol. These blockchains will be joining The Graph’s current support for Ethereum and IPFS.
- DeversiFi enabled a UI letting users transfer ETH and tokens between accounts without gas and privately, with no on-chain visibility.
- DEXes are pumping right now, with the 30-day volume reaching ~$64.05B with a daily growth rate of 28%.
- Yearn Finance has submitted an ARC to disable YFI borrowing in Aave in order to prevent governance and shorting attacks, extend a special 3% fixed interest facility to Yearn’s Treasury, and enable access to Native Credit Delegation for Yearn Vaults, allowing Aave LPs to delegate to Yearn vaults directly from within Aave.
- The dYdX StarkEx built ZK-Rollup is now live on Ethereum mainnet!
- 1inch shares that they are adding a mBTC pool that will bring an additional $1M of liquidity. As shared last week, mBTC is a meta-stablecoin based on tokenized Bitcoin, with a weight-limited basket of assets and native interest rate.
- Tiingo has launched their own Chainlink node live on mainnet, bringing their financial market data directly to blockchain markets.
- Cosmostation Mobile Wallet is now upgraded for Cosmos Hub-4 support.
- The Zcash Sapling privacy set is nearly 2.5 times larger now than it was a year ago, as measured by the total number of transactions with at least one shielded output.
- Osmosis is announced! Osmosis is an advanced AMM protocol built using the Cosmos SDK that will allow developers to design, build, and deploy their own customized AMMs.
- Cover Protocol announces a substantial improvement to the liquidity model of their coverage tokens. Via taking advantage of flash loans and their binary token system, Cover is able to eliminate their 2 balancer pools, replacing them with a single 50/50 NOCLAIM/DAI pool.
- Alchemix is announced! Alchemix is a DeFi protocol that allows for the creation of synthetic tokens that represent the future yield of a deposit. Thus, it enables users to retrieve near instant tokenized value against temporary deposits of stablecoins.
- Binance will be adding BUSD trading pairs for: 1INCH, BAND, GRT, IOST, OMG, and REEF.
- Cream Finance adds renBTC and renZEC to C.R.E.A.M on Binance Smart Chain.
- Brave releases their latest roadmap update for BAT including the Brave Wallet and Brave DEX.
- Aavegotchi shares that Chainlink VRF (Verifiable Randomness Function) is live on Polygon (formerly Matic)! This ensures that traits are assigned to Aavegotchis in a provably unbiased and tamper proof manner by Aavegotchis Portals.
- The Electric Coin Company introduces a potential new Zcash protocol feature build using the Halo2 zero-knowledge proving system. This has been placed in ZIP-224 and is aiming to be incorporated in Zcash’s Network Upgrade (NU5) in the summer of 2021.
Mainstream Recap:
- MicroStrategy announced the purchase of an additional ~19,452 bitcoins for a purchase price of ~$1.026 billion in cash at an average price of $52,765 per bitcoin today, February 24th, 2021.
- Square announced on February 23rd, 2021 that it has purchased approximately 3,318 bitcoins at an aggregate purchase price of $170M. Combined with Square’s previous purchase of $50M in bitcoin, this now represents 5% of Square’s total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities as of December 31, 2020.
- Bitfinex and Tether have settled with the New York Attorney General’s office over a case that began two years ago, resulting in Bitfinex/Tether paying $18.5M as part of the settlement.
- Blockchain.com closes a strategic financing round, securing $120M from Moore Strategic Ventures, Kyle Bass, Access industries, Rovida Advisors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Lakestar, Eldrige, and more.
- Kraken shares insight into the recent market selloff during the large price fluctuations on February 22nd, 2021.
- Will Reeves, CEO and co-founder of Fold, publishes their latest update stating that this is the last early access community update before announcing the full program.
- Hong Fang, CEO of OKCoin, announces that starting March 1st, 2021 BSV and BCH will no longer be listed on OKCoin.
- Open source Bitcoin firm, Brink, receives a 1 BTC donation to aid in their developer funding efforts from Jack Dorsey.
- Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex, shares that over the last 30 days, Bitfinex has processed ~12.5K transactions on the Lightning Network. All mostly being deposits.
- Alpha Homora and C.R.E.A.M publish an announcement that clarifies how the additional debt between the two will be resolved from the recent exploit.
- A major debate occurred online this past week when Binance suspended withdrawals of ETH claiming that the blockchain was super congested with gas levels > 1200.
- Form D filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission illustrate that Bitcoin brokerage firm, River Financial, aims to raise ~$500,000 in additional funding for a total of nearly $17.8M.
- Mempool.space receives a generous donation from their newest sponsor, Jack Dorsey.
- CoinDesk reports that Cryptopia has been hacked again at ~$45K USD in the XSN cryptocurrency which was transferred out of Cryptopia’s cold wallet on February 1st, 2021.
- Gemini shares that over the past few months, growing support of the Gemini dollar (GUSD) via DeFi projects has led to a surge in its market cap, now passing $100M.
- CoinDesk reports that the Swiss canton of Zug has started accepting tax payments in cryptocurrency.
- Gemini launches Cryptopedia, a free crypto education platform which provides open-access to anyone in the world wanting to learn more about crypto.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are traveling down to Beverly Hills, CA for a cup of Bravo from Aharon Coffee & Roasting Company. This incredible blend brews great for an espresso, drip, or cold brew. Crafted exclusively with 100% organic coffee from South America, Indonesia, and Africa it packs a full-bodied punch with notes of currant, dark chocolate, graham cracker and hints of cherry. Sip up and enjoy!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer