Crypto && Coffee 075
- 7 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Bitcoin Core v0.21.1 has been released with Taproot activation code!!
- May 1st, 2021 initiated the signaling process for the Taproot soft fork! For every two week difficulty period until August 11th, miners can signal for Taproot. If during any single difficulty period it reaches 90%, the signaling will stop and Taproot is locked in to be activated at block 709632 on November 12th, 2021.
- Miners that have started their roll out for signaling for Taproot include: SlushPool, Foundry USA Pool, F2Pool, AntPool, and more!
- Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex, shares that they had ~10K transactions via the Lightning Network in the last 30 days in which 10% have been withdrawals.
- River Financial breaks down how River plans to support the Taproot soft fork.
- Lightning Labs releases their latest in their Builder’s Guide series highlighting how to manage liquidity.
- The mempool is now clearing 4+ sat/vB transactions! We have ~1,376 blocks remaining in this difficulty period. It is possible that 2+ sat/vB transactions may clear this week and possibly more of the mempool. The difficulty will increase by 20% in ~8 days. At that time fees may settle back into the range of 20-50 sat/vB.
Litecoin:
- David Burkett shares his April update on Mimblewimble Extension Blocks progress. QA and review continue on the full audit, documentation, and testing of MWEB.
Ethereum:
- Ethereum crossed $3K for the first time ever this past weekend!
- Ethereum released Geth v1.10.3, Maroon Sea, which is a maintenance release with focus on snapshots after a snap sync.
- The latest All Core Devs call last week focused on the London hard fork which is coming up soon on July 14th, 2021. The call featured a large discussion on EIP-3529, the newly proposed alternative to EIP-3403 which reduces the storage clearing refund from 15,000 to 4,800.
- This past week there was a Scaling via Zero Knowledge Summit at ETHGlobal which highlighted developers and advocates in the space pushing for greater resources and frameworks around enabling zero knowledge proofs effectively on Ethereum.
- Nethermind shares that on April 30th, 2021 they enabled their first Ethereum PoS testnet, Steklo.
- Raul Jordan of Prysmatic Labs releases the full retrospective of the recent ETH2.0 incident at epoch 32302.
- Status releases v1.2.2 of their ETH2.0 client, Nimbus. This update included various bug fixes and improved stability of their REST API.
- An Ecosystem Readiness Project was announced in the latest All Core Devs call which is aiming to get Ethereum dev tooling ready for the London hard fork.
Other Chains:
- The Maker Foundation returned 84K MKR from the Development Fund to MakerDAO. These funds are now fully under control of Maker Governance.
- The Cobalt upgrade is live on Oasis Network! This is the first major update since mainnet launch and a critical step as Oasis aims to be the leading privacy-enabled layer-1 for Dapps.
- Binance Smart Chain has integrated Chainlink’s VRF onto mainnet as the recommended oracle solution for all BSC developers needing a verifiable and tamper-proof source of on-chain randomness.
- Mirror Team introduces Splits, a native feature that lets one route funds continuously to an unlimited number of Ethereum addresses, according to a set of percentage allocations.
- Polygon announces that the Bytom blockchain will collaborate with Polygon to develop cross-chain gateways!
- Foundation releases their primer on everything you need to know about DAOs.
- dYdX reports $700M in total volume on layer-2 Perpetuals and an ATH of $57M in volume over the last 24 hours!
- ProspectNow will launch their own Chainlink node to sell premium real estate data across leading blockchains to enable DeFi products.
- Ren releases their development update highlighting the latest on RenVM, Loki, and Blockchain Blitz.
- WBTC Cafe has officially migrated to the Badger Bridge. Users can deposit their native BTC via the bridge and start earning interest immediately.
- The first Aave powered no loss prize pool from PoolTogether is now live on Polygon!
- PancakeSwap has integrated Chainlink’s BNB/USD Price Feed on BSC mainnet.
- Cosmos now has three IBC connected mainnets: Cosmos, Iris, and Akash. Terra is planning to come online with IBC shortly and expand CosmWasm to Secret, Juno and Tardigrade. Don’t forget the GravityDex on Cosmos Hub in June 2021!
- A new Aave Proposal has been published to add support for Reflexer Lab’s RAI.
- Ren drops their Ecosystem Update for April highlighting their integration with BadgerDAO, Value DeFi, Ellipsis Finance, DigiByte, 1inch, and Rari Capital.
- DeversiFi debuts DeFi Pooling. This feature allows one to lend into DeFi protocols directly from within layer-2, instantly, privately, and with zero gas fees.
- Haveno, a Monero-based P2P DEX has been announced! Haveno aims to be a fast, cheap, non-custodial DEX for Monero.
- Loopring announces the Loopring Smart Wallet which is now available for iOS.
- Kyber Network collaborates with Mercurial Finance to help drive innovation and use cases around stable asset liquidity systems.
- Sudoswap has been launched! Sudoswap, which is powered by 0x Protocol, allows for the swap of any ERC-20/721/1155 for another.
- ParaSwap shares their monthly milestones with $40M in volume and ~$14K in swaps in just two weeks.
- Aztec Network announces that private DAI is now live on the Aztec Private Rollup. Users can get their zkDAI with free transactions until May 6th, 2021.
- MushroomsFinance integrates Ren to bring native Bitcoin to DeFi. Users can mint and yield farm renBTC via Zap.
- Zapper allows users to track their yield farms and holdings whether they are on Ethereum or Polygon.
- RCN announces the integration with Binance Smart Chain as its first approach to multi-chain adoption to improve their synergy with other blockchains.
- DeFiLab releases a Uniswap V3 Strategy Simulator which is pretty insane.
- Tezos shares what to expect in the next proposal, Granada, including information on Emmy+ which will have faster finalities and Liquidity Baking!
- The latest release from BlueWallet includes native Tor support for iOS and Android!
- An Aave Proposal for Aave Grants DAO (AGD) is now up for voting with everyone in favor!
- mStable has launched and is now live on Polygon!
Mainstream Recap:
- According to reports, Mastercard polled 15,569 customers in 18 countries which resulted in 40% of consumers planning to use cryptocurrency in the next year.
- Mogo, a digital payments and financial technology company, announced that it had purchased approximately 146 ETH at an average price of $2,780 USD on May 3rd, 2021.
- OKEx is leading the way in Ethereum Layer-2 adoption by being the first major cryptocurrency exchange to enable direct deposits and withdrawals to an Ethereum Layer-2 protocol, Arbitrum.
- Venture firm Volt Capital raised a $10M debut venture fund to invest in the cryptocurrency market with a traditional edge.
- CoinDesk reports that Polygon, formerly known as Matic, has launched a $100M fund aimed at making DeFi more accessible to end users.
- Gemini shares that the following tokens are now open for deposits: CUBE, BOND, INJ, LPT, MATIC, and SUSHI.
- Financial Times reports that Andreessen Horowitz plans a $1B cryptocurrency VC fund.
- eToro adds Dogecoin due to high client demand.
- As of May 3rd, 2021 Coinbase now supports ERC-20 Tether (USDT).
- Gemini adds support for Dogecoin in both trading and custody.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are heading to Atlanta, GA for a cup of Kenya Chania Bridge from Portrait Coffee. I recommend brewing this via pour over or Chemex to yield the fruity flavors of lemon, melon, and citrus. This lighter roast is definitely something to test out as we move into warmer weather. Enjoy!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer