Crypto && Coffee 081
- 7 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Taproot signaling locked in successfully! This now means that Taproot will activate later this year at block 709632 which will most likely be mid-November 2021.
Ethereum:
- Sigma Prime publishes their latest release, Space Bath v1.4.0. This low priority update contains optimizations which reduce the impact of the Beacon Node on RAM, CPU, disk I/O, and ETH1.0 nodes.
- Solidity v0.8.5 is now live! This version allows conversion from bytes to bytesNN values, adds the verbatim builtin function to inject arbitrary bytecode in Yul, and fixes various smaller bugs.
- In the recent AllCoreDevs call, the team set the testnet blocks for the London fork and will later determine the mainnet block height once the testnet fork is successful. The first testnet fork will occur on June 24th, 2021 at block height 10499401 on Ropsten. If all things go well, the London mainnet fork will occur sometime in July.
Other Chains:
- Curve Finance releases their upgraded algorithm for exchanging volatile assets! The pool has already been integrated with 1inch.
- StarkWare releases the first steps to a permissionless ZK-Rollup announcing that StarkNet Planets Alpha is now live on Ropsten testnet! StarkNet is a permissionless Turing-complete ZK-Rollup which will be used to facilitate smart contracts and state transitions which will later be verified on-chain.
- The Motoko team at DFINITY Foundation announced the open-sourcing of the Motoko compiler, interpreter, test suite, and documentation! Motoko is a programming language that is designed to seamlessly support the programming model of the Internet Computer.
- 1inch releases their innovative Limit Order Protocol which enables users to buy or sell crypto assets at a specific price. This more efficient protocol replaces the existing 0x protocol that was previously used within 1inch. This updated protocol will be available on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon. It currently supports token standards: ERC-20/BEP-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155.
- Ribbon Finance is launching the first Liquidity Mining program for Ribbon vaults. This will allow users to stake their vault deposit tokens and receive RBN over the next 1 month.
- RAMP V2 is launching on Polygon. The current Ethereum vaults will undergo migration to Polygon over the next week. RAMP is already live on Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
- The Cosmos Governance Proposal #49 touches on the activation of the Gravity Bridge module, the Ethereum <> Cosmos bridge built by Althea Network onto the Cosmos Hub!
- Bitcoin goes live on Celo on June 24th, 2021 via cBTC which will be tradeable on Ubeswap.
- On June 13th, 2021 Beam hard forked successfully at block height 1280000! This latest upgrade is all about Shaders and bringing Confidential DeFi capabilities to the Beam Network. With this, the Beam Virtual Machine, BVM, is now live on mainnet.
- Polygon announces Skyweaver, a digital trading card game with actual trading where you can play to own tradable cards.
- Further updates are published to Ethereum Research regarding StarkWare’s Adamantium proposal. Adamantium is a protocol for Autonomous Data Availability, which retains the scaling benefits of off-chain data availability, while removing all trust assumptions for any willing user.
- Ren announces the first BTC stable pool on Fantom with Curve Finance!
- Marginswap now supports Polygon for leverage trades with super low transaction costs, all fulfilled via SushiSwap and QuickSwapDEX.
- The upcoming REGEN-ATOM liquidity bootstrapping pool (LBP) on the Osmosis DEX is launching on June 23rd, 2021, and will run until June 28th. This event will establish a price and liquidity for REGEN as well as be the first LBP on the Osmosis DEX.
- Bitfly shares that their Beaconcha.in mobile app v2.0 is now live for both iOS and Android! This app allows one to monitor their Sigma Prime or Prysmatic Labs nodes, add widgets, and more!
- Figment announces that they have re-launched the Celo and Secret Network Pathways on Figment Learn. Developers who complete the pathway will get $5 in cUSD and SCRT.
- dYdX shares that MATIC-USD Perpetual Markets are now live for trading on layer-2!
- Yearn Finance releases their latest newsletter diving into some metrics on how 200 Yearn v2 strategies have been deployed, Yearn Partners have earned ~$546K, and additional yVault tokens being listed via C.R.E.A.M Finance.
- SushiSwap and PoolTogether are now live!
- ARCx shares that the first batch of DeFi Passports are coming soon with limited availability!
- Sorare, an NFT platform for global fantasy football, introduces their first National Team cards with France!
- Mask Network is now live on Polygon and BSC! This is the initial expansion for their multi-chain support. After the initial integration on both networks, Dapps in the Mask Network ecosystem will no longer be limited to Ethereum.
- Nexus Mutual, an on-chain provider of insurance for DeFi projects as well as custodial crypto solutions, now offers protocol cover for BarnBridge deposits.
- Pendle shares that they will go live on mainnet at 01:00 UTC on June 17th, 2021!
- The Chainlink Community Grant program awarded a new grant to Protofire, a provider of blockchain development services, to natively integrate Chainlink oracles into the mobile-first blockchain platform Celo.
- Alpha Finance Lab launches the Alpha Launchpad which is an incubator program to incubate new DeFi projects!
- Parcel is introduced which allows treasury management for DAOs!
Mainstream Recap:
- The President of El Salvador instructed the president of their state-owned geothermal electricity company to put a plan together to offer facilities for Bitcoin mining with cheap renewable energy.
- MetaMask announces MetaMask Institutional! MetaMask Institutional gives institutional investors access to the DeFi ecosystem, investment processes through their integrated custodian, Curv, and enterprise-grade security and compliance.
- dYdX has raised a $65M Series C round led by Paradigm! They welcome many new top-tier strategic investors including: QCP Capital, CMS Holdings, CMT Digital, Finlink Capital, Sixtant, Menai Financial Group, MGNR, Kronos Research, HashKey, Electric Capital, Delphi Digital, and StarkWare.
- Canadian crypto mining company, Hut 8 Mining, won approval for its shares to be listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
- A16z delegates 2.5M UNI and 50K COMP to Blockchain at Michigan! They aim to build on DeFi and recently released a detailed look into Uniswap.
- Sotheby reports that CryptoPunk #7523 sold from their London auction house for $11.8M as part of their Natively Digital NFT auction.
- Hardware wallet maker, Ledger, completed a $380M Series C round, led by 10T Holdings with support from Cathay Innovation, Draper Esprit, Draper Associates, Draper Dragon, DCG, Korelya Capital and Wicklow Capital with various newcomers.
- Jack Dorsey hints at building Lightning Network enabled capabilities into his BlueSky project or Twitter.
- Zapper disclosed that there was a vulnerability in their old Polygon Bridge contract that would allow an attacker to steal funds that had unlimited approvals. The Zapper team exploited the contract themselves and all funds have been secured.
- A report from DappRadar highlights the move from Ethereum to Polygon as Aave secured a daily average of $2.48B in transaction volume on Ethereum with an additional $2.28B coming from Aave V2. In comparison, Aave on Polygon has processed $6.75B in the same timeframe.
- Kraken shares what Karura is and how the stablecoin platform will operate on Kusama as a parachain.
- Umee, a network focused on building the next generation of cross-chain DeFi primitives raises $6.3M in an investment round led by Polychain, Ideo Colab, Coinbase, Tendermint, Brian Kelly Capital Management, Alameda Research, CMS Holdings, Argonautic Ventures, and Joe Lubin via Ethereal Ventures.
- Both OKEx and Kraken move to list MINA.
- As of June 15th, 2021, users can now transfer CHZ, KEEP, and SHIB into their Coinbase Pro account ahead of trading. Trading for those assets will go live on or after 9AM PT on Thursday, June 17th, 2021.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are heading down to New Orleans, LA for a cup of Gallop from Congregation Coffee Roasters. This versatile blend is great for espresso or drip as it brings notes of tropical fruit with a balanced undertone of dark chocolate. Sip up and enjoy!
Jake Tarnow
Not Your Average Engineer