Crypto && Coffee 074
- 8 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- On Sunday, April 25th, 2021, the mempool receded to a depth of 209 blocks with the prediction of the next block to include transactions paying ~20+ sat/vB. In the following 24 hour period, there were 147 blocks with an expected difficulty adjustment of 9-11% in ~3-4 days from now, Wednesday, April 28th, 2021. Since Sunday, the fee rate has stayed relatively low with high priorities ranging from 160->175 sat/vB.
- Bottlepay, a Bitcoin and Lightning-enabled app published their research on Lightning node performance and the path to 1,000 transactions per second.
Ethereum:
- Vitalik Buterin gives an explanation of EIP-2929 (SLOAD and CALL gas cost increase) and why state accessing gas costs were raised in the Berlin hard fork.
- Ben Edgington shares the latest in ETH2.0 including the first incident on the Beacon Chain, The Merge, and the need for people to fully understand and invite client diversity within the ecosystem.
- Nethermind and ConsenSys feature their Rayonism Merge spec with the Teku client via their ETH1.0 <-> ETH2.0 devnet.
- Prysmatic Labs published a thread on an incident on April 23rd, 2021 where Prysm Beacon Chain nodes were unable to produce blocks for a period of 18 epochs (~2hours). The incident was widespread and resolved without intervention.
- Prysmatic Labs releases an update, v1.3.8-hotfix-6c0942, which contains two critical fixes to resolve on-going issues within the mainnet Beacon Chain.
- Martin Swende and Vitalik Buterin publish EIP-3529 (Reduction in Refunds), which aims to remove gas refunds from SELFDESTRUCT calls and reduce refunds from SSTORE calls to a lower level. This hopes to protect further exploits via these mechanisms.
Other Chains:
- Uniswap V3 is targeted to launch on Ethereum mainnet in ~7 days!
- Celo announces Optics, a gas-efficient interoperability standard for cross-chain communication. This standard explores a security trade-off that allows cheap, low-trust communications between any two smart contract enabled blockchains.
- Loopring publishes Ethport, their zkRollup solution to solve composability between layer-1, layer-2, and centralized exchanges while still reducing layer-1 fees.
- The Graph Foundations unveils Scalar, a scalable layer-2 micro-transaction system that uses the Connext Vector protocol with the throughput to accommodate The Graph’s growth.
- Wrapped announces a partnership with Celo to bring Bitcoin (cBTC) and Ethereum (cETH) to Celo!
- Balancer Labs announces that they are teaming up with Gnosis to deliver the best experience to DEX traders. The goal is to build the Balancer-Gnosis-Protocol (BGP) alliance which will combine the best of both protocols which will empower efficient market making.
- Kraken publishes an infographic to help users understand the difference between Polkadot and Kusama Network and the use of Parachain Auctions.
- Aave’s AIP-16, which was proposed by ParaFi Capital and introduces Liquidity Incentives for Aave V2 passed and liquidity mining initiated on April 26, 2021!
- ValueDeFi shares the first native RenVM integration on BSC, allowing users the opportunity to earn from BTC, ZEC, and BUSD.
- The Graph Foundation announces the first 10 projects migrating subgraphs from the hosted service to the decentralized network: Audius, DODO, Enzyme, Gnosis, Livepeer, mStable, Opyn, PoolTogether, Reflexer, and UMA.
- Kwenta, a derivatives trading platform powered by Synthetix, has integrated 1inch! Traders can now easily on-ramp into sUSD from any cryptocurrency supported by 1inch in Kwenta.
- Celer Network shares that layer2.finance v0.1 mainnet has launched on Ethereum! Layer2.finance tackles high transaction fees and the difficulty to navigate layer-2 within DeFi protocols.
- Akash Network has fully integrated IBC into their system and is now live! With IBC, Akash enables ATOM <-> AKT swaps via the Cosmos Hub and multi-currency support. Akash is the third Cosmos chain to enable IBC transfers and the second one to connect to the Cosmos Hub.
- Celer Network and StarkWare announce a partnership to collaborate and add a ZK Rollup version to layer2.finance’s platform offerings, utilizing StarkWare’s StarkEx services and Cairo programming language.
- Bankless shares the endless limits of synthetic assets and incentivized tokens.
- IC3 shares how to provide privacy for smart contracts in a general purpose way by using Multiparty Computation (MPC) as a sidechain.
- Centrifuge and Maker collaboration goes live, New Silver becomes the first to connect DeFi to real world assets.
- The Ren Report #3 is published which highlights the Community Ecosystem Fund which Darknode operators can now vote on which contributes to one’s per-epoch node earnings. In addition to various news, the report highlights the weekly volumes illustrating BSC volume jumping up.
- mStable has now launched on Polygon! mStable offers Polygon users another source of USD and BTC liquidity, a DeFi-native savings account and two risk minimized meta-stablecoins.
- On April 26, 2021, 1inch integrated PancakeSwap V2.
- As DeversiFi nears the announcement of further DVF growth, refresh your knowledge on how DVF will incentivize growth and reward DeversiFi users here.
- Nsure Network announces the start of the subvention presented to Ren aiming to lower the premium for RenVM policy within dynamic pricing models, increase capacity of RenVM coverage within their Capital Pool, and reduce price volatility.
- SushiSwap has integrated Chainlink Price Feed oracles live on both Ethereum mainnet and BSC to secure their new Kashi lending platform.
- Lido Finance shares that as of April 22nd, 2021 they have passed 250K staked ETH.
- Comit Network features a new PR to add support for XMR <-> BTC swapping through Tor.
- BadgerDAO announces that they will use KPI Options. The options are designed to encourage DIGG to have positive rebases. Full details here.
- Tezos Community members share how artists are using Tezos as their platform of choice for minting and distributing NFTs.
- Brink shares how grantee Hennadii Stepanov started contributing to Bitcoin Core and his priorities for the next year.
- THORChain shares that they have a mostly complete implementation of Monero being added to their cross-chain DEX.
- Yearn Finance shares their quarterly report for Q1 of 2021.
- Our Network, an on-chain analytics and research newsletter, publishes a deep dive into Governance Extractable Value and the various exploits we have seen in recent times.
- Erik Voorhees delivers an introduction to THORChain for Bitcoiners.
- Pendle Finance releases an ELI5 description of their upcoming bootstrapping event and liquidity drop.
- Deep dive into Gravity DEX, the upcoming AMM for Cosmos with further research and thoughts from developers.
- Instadapp releases Aave Liquidity Mining, allowing users to leverage their position on Instadapp and maximize their AAVE returns by 10x.
- BarnBridge shares how to master tranche lending and farm yield on BarnBridge.
- Ric Burton shares the history of WalletConnect and how Pedro Games has improved the way people use products built on protocols.
Mainstream Recap:
- Gemini announces Mastercard as their network partner for the Gemini Credit Card.
- MetaMask surpasses 5M monthly active users and has grown ~5x in the past 6 months!
- Stellar announced a $3M Enterprise Fund investment in Tribal Credit to advance development of its blockchain products built on Stellar, bringing their banking solutions and cross-border payments to businesses in Latin America and more.
- Square and ARK Invest team up to release a whitepaper on the Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative.
- Jack Mallers of Strike, releases a new Request and Receive functionality allowing users to request P2P, cross-border payments with native BTC all in a single click.
- CoinDesk reports that eToro has launched a portfolio of BTC proxy stocks including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, NVIDIA, Samsung, Intel, Coinbase, and more.
- U.S. Marshals sign a $4.5M contract with BitGo to store forfeited crypto.
- Gemini users can now purchase crypto with Apple Pay and Google Pay!
- Caitlin Long shares that Wyoming will recognize DAOs as a new type of LLC, effective July 1st, 2021.
- Coinbase Pro shares that as of April 22nd, 2021, inbound transfers for USDT are available in the regions where trading is supported.
- Georgios Konstantopoulos and Hasu of Paradigm Research publish an article On Staking Pools and Staking Derivatives, highlighting their actions and inner-workings on Ethereum.
- Anoma Network raises $6.75M to help traders move assets across networks with privacy technology and no need for a base currency. The funding round was led by Polychain Capital, including prominent backers Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, FBG Capital, CMS Holdings, Lemniscap, Cygni Labs and Walden Bridge Capital.
- Gauntlet shares a thorough write up on their full Aave Market Risk Assessment.
- Binance apparently plans to launch an NFT marketplace in June 2021 on BSC.
- Deep dive into sleepminting and the new craze around this NFT scam.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are heading out to Wisconsin and stopping at Wonderstate Coffee in Viroqua, WI. Their Organic Big Dipper is a solid dark roast with notes of fudge, brown butter, and vanilla wafers. As the mornings are still a little crisp, this is a perfect cup to jumpstart your day. Enjoy!!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer