Crypto && Coffee 070
- 10 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Bitcoin had a stale block at block height 676234. The two blocks were proposed by BTC.com and Poolin with BTC.com winning. The stale block did include a transaction which looked to spend 0.000010426 BTC. This output has not been spent on the main chain yet.
- Within the taproot-activation IRC channel, core devs have decided to have ten weekly meetings to discuss the full activation process of Taproot each Tuesday at 19:00 UTC. Full recap of the latest meeting can be found here.
- The Breez Lightning client has added a native podcast player. Lightning lets podcasters receive payment directly from their listeners without being subject to any intermediary. This is the next step forward in evolving the Lightning Network’s economy.
- Specter v1.3.0 is out! This release allows for Bitcoin Core + Tor in a single-click setup, fast sync options, fee estimation via Mempool, full RBF transaction editing, and more!
Ethereum:
- Tim Beiko publishes the latest update from the recent All Core Devs call! These include continued preparation for the upcoming London fork after Berlin, the deployment of Berlin to all major testnets for the upcoming mainnet fork on April 14th, 2021, and more.
- Danny Ryan of Ethereum Research and Development, shares the latest on ETH2.0 with the first pre-release for Altair, the upcoming Beacon Chain upgrade. In addition there is continual discussion on the unification of Ethereum’s application layer with Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
- Ben Edgington publishes what’s new in ETH2.0 including further information on the Altair upgrade, the Merge, and further tooling.
- Within the discussion regarding the Ethereum Merge, Sigma Prime shared they have tested the first ETH1.0 and ETH2.0 merge transaction via Lighthouse.
- Prysmatic Labs publishes their March Development Update including information on their work regarding the ETH1.0 and ETH2.0 merge. View this Merge demo with Prysm and Catalyst!
- ConsenSys releases the latest version of Teku, their ETH2.0 Beacon Chain client. The release highlights upcoming breaking changes in the next version.
Other Chains:
- On March 29th, 2021, ATOM holders voted through the launch of IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) within Cosmos enabling assets to easily transfer between blockchains.
- Hermes Network’s zk-rollup is now live on Ethereum! Check it out here.
- Crypto.org Chain is now live! Crypto.org utilizes the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint Core under the hood. All ERC-20 CRO will be automatically converted to native CRO when users withdraw.
- DeversiFi introduces DVF, the DeversiFi governance token. DVF will be transferable later this year and give holders the ability to directly adjust several parameters related to the layer-2 DeversiFi protocol.
- Ethereum Optimism announces that they are delaying official public mainnet in favor of a more coordinated community launch.
- Matter Labs shares the latest regarding zkSync and their full roadmap. This includes a possible zkEVM testnet in May and a hopeful mainnet launch in August.
- Alchemy has chosen Flow as the next public blockchain they will support with their entire development platform. Flow blockchain is today home to apps like NBA Top Shot, Viv3, and MotoGP.
- Shadows Network has partnered with Ren Protocol to use renBTC as a new type of collateral within their system.
- Sentinel has officially minted its mainnet genesis block on Cosmos SDK and is live!
- Sommelier publishes an article on the Five Ways UniswapV3 Changes the World For Liquidity Providers on the AMM.
- The DODO team introduces DODO NFT, a price discovery and liquidity protocol for non-standard assets.
- Aleo publishes the second installment of their series introducing users to zero knowledge primitives and Aleo’s solution to private, programmable applications.
- ZeroSwap, the multi-chain DEX aggregator, announces that after integrating Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon - they are now working on enabling Huobi’s HecoChain.
- NFT Trader will integrate the Chainlink Verifiable Randomness Function (VRF) to randomly assign rare properties to tradable NFT items within their new gamification system, Trade Squads.
- Popsicle Finance shares their latest airdrops to addresses that run Ren Protocol Darknodes as well as addresses which voted on BadgerDAO’s snapshot.
- Zero Knowledge Validator gives a full deep dive into blockchain privacy, zero knowledge proofs, and what they mean for the Cosmos ecosystem.
- Ellipsis Finance shares their 2021 roadmap with plans to add a BTC pool with Ren, integration of liquidity aggregators, a full audit of their codebase, and a full campaign to draw awareness to Ellipsis on Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
- 1inch launched a new liquidity mining program with Vesper on March 25th, 2021. Liquidity providers of the 1INCH-VSP pool will collect 150K 1INCH tokens and 100K VSP tokens distributed over a 24-week period.
- As of March 24th, 2021 renBTC will be supported on the Secret Ethereum Bridge, bringing programmable privacy to holders of renBTC and allowing it to be utilized anywhere in Secret.
- Nethermind features their latest tests and breakdown of using StarkWare’s Cairo language.
- 1inch integrates Ellipsis with $638M of additional liquidity for the following stablecoins: BUSD, USDC, and USDT.
- Loopring launched a relayer upgrade on March 25th, 2021 which was successful. With the upgrade, adding and removing AMM liquidity is now 30% cheaper.
- SushiSwap’s new lending and margin trading platform Kashi has integrated Chainlink Price Feeds to secure isolated token lending pairs, providing DeFi users a tamper-resistant, one-click leverage trading solution.
- Secret Network congratulates the Secret Monero Bridge team for their work on connecting the Monero community to Secret Network and Secret DeFi. The proof of concept developed at HackAtomRU enables value transfers between Monero and the Secret Network.
- Immutable X will launch its alpha version before the end of this month with Gods Unchained players being the first to use the layer-2 solution.
- Check out the latest in the Tezos ecosystem with the TQ Tezos weekly spotlight. This week features Interop and NFTs.
- With the upcoming Donut hard fork on Celo, James Prestwich gives a full run down on all the proposals being included - especially CIP-35. CIP-35 brings Celo back to full compatibility with Ethereum wallets and tooling.
- Origin has integrated new Chainlink Oracles live on mainnet and shares that Chainlink is now the sole provider of real-time price data feeds for OUSD.
- Crypto wallet Nash shares that users can now buy Aave directly within their wallet with 1% fees.
- Althea announces the completion and test of the first transaction of a Cosmos based token (ALTG) to test Ethereum Goerli using the second iteration of Althera Gravity - the Cosmos <> Ethereum bridge.
- The Zcash Foundation has completed an audit of their FROST implementation which is the first step for full compatibility with the Zcash protocol with re-randomization.
- The Electric Coin Company published their full Transparency Report for Q3 of 2020.
- As part of the recent mainnet launch of RAI, Reflexer has integrated Chainlink’s ETH/USD Price Feed Oracle!
- Chainlink shares how to get a random number on Polygon through Chainlink’s VRF.
- OpenZeppelin publishes their latest review and audit of Fei Protocol with multiple vulnerabilities.
- The Grin Council has awarded David Burkett and Grin++ with a $250K bug bounty in recognition of their efforts in relation to the recent critical vulnerability that was patched in MW/Grin v5.0.2.
Mainstream Recap:
- PayPal launches “Checkout with Crypto”! This enables PayPal customers in the U.S. to checkout with cryptocurrency alongside other payment methods in the PayPal wallet!
- Visa announced on March 29th, 2021 the integration and use of USDC, a stablecoin backed by the US dollar, to settle a transaction with Visa over Ethereum. Visa is piloting the capability with Crypto.com, a Visa partner, and plans to offer the USDC settlement capability later this year.
- StarkWare announces their $75M Series B, led by Paradigm, with investors Three Arrows, Alameda Research as well as Pantera Capital, Sequoia, Founders Fund, DCVC and Wing. Fun side-note, Paradigm is an investor in both Optimism and StarkWare - the two leading firms behind the most popular scaling solutions on Ethereum.
- Dapper Labs announced a $305M funding round on March 30th, 2021 from a full group of NBA stars and venture capital firms including: Kevin Durant, Michael Jordan, investment firm Coatue, and more.
- Silvergate Bank will be the second lender to extend bitcoin-backed loans to investors who custody their crypto with Fidelity. Full report from CoinDesk here.
- Lolli raises $5M Pre-Series A from Seven Seven Six, the venture capital fund headed by Alexis Ohanian, Night Media. The funding will contribute to their mobile app development and international expansion of the popular bitcoin rewards company.
- Bakkt launches its digital wallet, Bakkt App, to manage all forms of digital assets - debuting with Starbucks, GolfNow, and Best Buy.
- Esprezzo, a no-code blockchain automation and data platform, announces a $2M investment round with participation from Mark Cuban, Arrington Capital, Longley Capital, Rarestone Capital, CMS Holdings, LongHash, Youbi, TBD Angels, Zag Capital and more.
- ElasticDAO shares information on their smart contract security and recent audits. This includes information on the work samczsun and Tina Zhen performed to save ~4M of users funds spread across both the DAO and AMM pools.
- According to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a firm called FD Funds Management LLC is the sponsor of a fund, Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, with Fidelity Service Company serving as administrator.
- Under a federal order on March 19th, 2021, Coinsquare must hand over detailed information on its Canadian customers, their crypto trading activity, and PII to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).
- London based Blockchain.com has raised $300M with a $5.2B valuation led by DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners and VY Capital.
- Crypto bank, Avanti, raised $37M from Series A investors as it prepares to take its digital banking operations online. The investors include: Coinbase Ventures, Binance.US, Morgan Creek Digital, Slow Ventures, and the University of Wyoming Foundation.
- CoinDesk reports that UK listed Argo Blockchain has signed a memorandum with DMG Blockchain Solutions to launch a bitcoin mining pool completely powered by clean energy.
- a16z dives into NFTs in their latest podcast cutting through the noise of what’s hype and what’s real.
- The Graph Foundation allocates over $5M to grants and ecosystem support!
- As Cosmos entered into a new chapter with IBC, the leading firm behind the network, Tendermint, rolled out a $20M fund to support promising projects.
- Liquity, a decentralized borrowing protocol that offers interest-free liquidity against ETH as collateral announces their $6M Series A funding round. The round was led by Pantera Capital with follow on investments from Nima Capital, Alameda Research, Greenfield.one, IOSG, AngelDAO, and others.
- Blockstream shares the launch of the Blockstream Mining Note, a security token that expands exposure to Bitcoin mining to more investors.
- Crypto derivatives exchange, Delta, raises $5M in a private token sale. Sino Global Capital led the funding round with participation from Aave Ventures, Kyber Network, Spartan Group, gumi Cryptos Capital, QCP Soteria, and more.
- Tether shares a document produced by Cayman Islands-based accounting firm Moore Cayman, displaying their holdings as of February 28th, 2021 displaying at least $35.28B in total assets against $35.15M in total liabilities.
- Gemini supports the Bitcoin ecosystem with a $25K sponsorship for Mempool.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are staying local with ACE - La Bandera, a single-origin roast from Ritual Coffee in San Francisco, CA. This Costa Rica roast yields flavors of bold chocolate, caramel, toasted almonds, and hints of pineapple. Be sure to dial in your brewing process to get the pineapple flavors! Enjoy!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer