This blog post outlines the progression of NFT tech over time despite this past cycle’s market volatility. It notes advancements that have significantly broadened the scope of NFT applications beyond artistic and collectible goods and highlights how improvements in transaction cost and usability have helped NFTs become more accessible. It also underscores the value of NFTs in providing digital artists and creators with a new platform for monetization and interaction with audiences. There is a bright future for NFTs as just about anything could be represented as an NFT on-chain.
This post discusses how the digital revolution has profoundly changed how we define and express identity, allowing for anonymous or pseudo-anonymous entities to amass power, particularly in the realms of crypto and online communities. The shift enables us to divide our interests through multiple online identities, democratizes physical constraints like geography, and necessitates a nuanced, active approach to finding one's online community. While it brings more opportunities, it also presents challenges, like alienation and navigating the complexity of online groups.
This thread outlines how crypto price increases spark interest in narratives, explaining the rise, reinforcing the narrative, and further driving prices up, demonstrating a positive feedback loop.
This dashboard tracks evolving crypto narratives and trends, regularly updating to include new narratives and projects, with indices for the top projects in each narrative.
ENS’s token value surged 50% with a 600% volume increase after Vitalik Buterin emphasized its importance for Ethereum's L2 integrations.
In the wake of the recently announced Dymension airdrop, many people are wondering what other protocols might drop tokens to $TIA stakers. This list gives a very quick rundown of protocols that might be good candidates.
The US Infrastructure Bill, signed into law by President Biden, requires crypto transactions above $10,000 to be reported to the IRS. It officially went into effect at the start of this year. The legislation requires any entity that receives $10,000 or more in crypto in the course of business to report personal details of the parties involved to the IRS within 15 days of the transaction. While the new law states that not complying will be considered a felony, there is no guidance on how exactly individuals and businesses should actually conduct this process.
Crypto exchange trading volume reached $1.1 trillion last month, exceeding $1 trillion in a month for the first time since September 2022. Binance led the way, accounting for 39.3% of December's trading volumes. The rise in trading is due in large part to industry participants’ anticipation of the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Dymension, a protocol for deploying app chains, announced a token airdrop for over a million eligible addresses across numerous chains. Dymension is built on Cosmos and the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol to facilitate connections between rollup scaling networks. The "genesis rolldrop", with a unique set of qualifying factors, is allowing users to claim their DYM token allocations until January 21.
Web3 entertainment platform Playbux is planning to raise $150,000 via a token sale. It will allow pre-listing access to its engaged users through a fair community offering, managed by crypto investment platform Raiser. This novel fundraising method works by ranking users for investment opportunities based on their platform activity. Aiming to circumvent the fraud risk inherent in ICOs, this method offers an alternative community-driven fund-raising mechanism.
Messari CEO Ryan Selkis unveiled his annual crypto market predictions with his 2024 thesis, spotlighting potential trends and key players to watch. Highlights include increased crypto VC activity, the rise of DePIN (storage, compute, wireless) projects, and significant progress for privacy projects. Selkis also lists his top 10 people and projects to watch. He predicts an evolutionary leap in Bitcoin's security model and advocates for increased on-chain privacy to preserve user rights. He also details promising rollup chains' tokens and highlights the ongoing wallet war in crypto.
Dymension, making headlines for its aforementioned airdrop, is developing a new technology called 'RollApps' that combines the best features of Cosmos SDK and Ethereum EVM to scale modular blockchains. In modular chains, different specialized chains handle execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability. This post details how RollApps provide more optionality and scalability than traditional monolithic chains.
This article discusses vampire attacks as capital-efficient go-to-market strategies that reward usage of other pre-existing platforms with tokens. This reward system, exemplified by NFT marketplace Blur, has proven successful in overcoming the network cold-start problem. The author hypothesizes about the possibility of using this strategy to disrupt non-crypto platforms, provided they satisfy certain conditions, and provides examples of disruptable platforms like Chess.com, Stack Overflow, and Tinder.
This blog post from Fred Wilson, a renowned crypto VC, goes over his predictions for 2024 as they relate to web3 and AI. Wilson anticipates more regulatory clarity for web3 technologies, driving increased adoption of dapps. While he expects the crypto industry to show strength and gain traction this year, he still thinks that VC funding will remain muted for the time being.
Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy is selling $216 million of his individually owned MSTR shares to buy more Bitcoin personally and ‘meet financial obligations’.
On the back of over $2 billion in funds being stolen through hacks and exploits in 2023, Orbit Chain announced that it had been exploited for $81 million in a hack.
Drake has announced Stake's two-year naming sponsorship of the Sauber F1 team, rebranded as the Stake F1 Team, continuing his promotion of the crypto gambling site.
US prosecutors dropped the eighth charge against SBF, citing prior trial evidence and public interest in a prompt case resolution.
The SEC is reportedly likely to notify 14 asset managers as early as this week regarding the approval status for their respective Bitcoin ETF applications. This comes in anticipation of the January 10 decision deadline. Approved firms may even be allowed to launch by the given deadline.
BlackRock and Valkyrie, two spot Bitcoin ETF applicants, recently announced the authorized participants for their ETFs. BlackRock has chosen Jane Street and J.P. Morgan, whereas Valkyrie will use Jane Street and Cantor Fitzgerald. The selections caused a bit of a buzz due to J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon's recent public opposition to crypto.
Parallel Labs will soon launch the Parallel Network, the first Arbitrum Orbit chain on mainnet, aiming to effectively consolidate DeFi and NFT protocols from various chains into one platform. The system will streamline user experience due to its increased responsiveness and scalability while maintaining Ethereum's security standards. The network aims to address liquidity fragmentation, a common issue with L2s, by creating a unified multi-chain margin account, enabling a more efficient and user-friendly crypto trading experience.
2024.01.02·tinychainorg.github.io·1 min read·TLDR Crypto This article provides an in-depth look at how Solana achieves high performance through its unique consensus architecture. Solana utilizes Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) and a unique mechanism coined Proof-of-History (PoH) for validating and sequencing transactions. PoH essentially creates a global clock across nodes reducing discrepancies and boosting speed, while DPoS relies on stakes for network governance, making it efficient and incentivizing integrity. This unique design has been a tailwind, as scalability became one of the main narratives throughout this bear market.
Ethereum's EIP-4844 is set to incrementally scale Ethereum's data layer, providing improvements such as blob data, a new resource with its own independent fee market, and cryptographic components. It also introduces the Danksharding proposal, which gradually uses cryptographic and networking components to obtain scalability and feature-completeness, potentially increasing bandwidth requirements. This EIP is one of the most highly anticipated upgrades to the Ethereum network, and many crypto experts are expecting this upgrade to shift focus and mind share back towards Ethereum L2s.
This article discusses the continuous prevalence of speculative investments in the crypto ecosystem, including internet money, memecoins, and NFTs. This trend is fueled by the broad access and the potential substantial rewards that crypto offers to ordinary individuals. While some people see these speculative investments as a form of entertainment, others view them as an opportunity to jumpstart their wealth-building journey. Regardless of the goals of users, these speculative cycles have consistently driven greater adoption of crypto platforms. This type of speculation will continue to drive growth and technical progress in the crypto space.
This essay from Vitalik Buterin reflects on the early ideals behind cryptocurrencies and decentralized technology, tracing their trajectory for creating a more open society and economy. It observes the shift away from these visions due to rising transaction costs and the dominance of financial applications. The piece further highlights advancements like rollups, privacy solutions, and zero-knowledge proofs that now offer a chance to realign with original goals. Buterin calls for a balance of incentives and values within the crypto community to meaningfully implement these technological improvements.
Vitalik Buterin released a new roadmap for Ethereum, showing few changes, emphasizing single slot finality in post-Merge PoS, progress in Surge and Scourge projects, and shifts in priorities like state expiry and VDFs.
SOL Shotty is a Solana RPC proxy that 'shotgun blasts' RPC requests to multiple providers, ensuring faster response and reliability, even if a provider is down.
SEI has been surging lately with the narrative of parallelized EVMs picking up. This thread provides a simple overview of what you can do on the chain to get a feel for what the ecosystem has to offer.
The creator of Inscriptions aligns with Bitcoin maximalism but is critical of its rigidity. They advise against whining about Bitcoin ordinals and inscriptions and urge people to focus on more impactful issues.
Solana DEX volumes surpassed Ethereum’s for the first time over the past week due in large part to meme coin activity and strong inflows of capital into the ecosystem. This stat highlights the theme that has gained traction this year of Solana being a legitimate contender with the Ethereum ecosystem, aided by lower gas fees and faster transaction speeds. Despite this growth, Ethereum’s market cap is still over 6 times larger than Solana’s.
Digital asset firm Prometheum has obtained approval from FINRA to launch digital asset securities clearing and settlement services. The firm plans to offer custodial services to institutional clients, including asset management firms and hedge funds. The approval comes as the SEC continues to battle with industry participants like Coinbase on the topic of registration.
AltLayer and EigenLayer have proposed a new rollup design called Restaked Rollups to address decentralization, security, and interoperability issues in app-specific rollups. This includes three modular components for decentralized verification, faster commit finality, and decentralized sequencing. These enhancements are set to facilitate the secure, efficient functioning of app-specific rollups while addressing challenges posed by centralized sequencing, slow finality, and verification.
Ghost Addresses are an advancement on the Lightning Network that lets users run their own lightning node without needing a custodial third party or a publicly accessible server to have a wallet address. They enhance user experience and remove the need for trusted intermediaries, combining the clever behavior of Phantom Payments with the convenience of a Lightning Address. This novel innovation offers a simpler way for users to receive transactions directly in their own custody.
Uniswap v4 could revolutionize DEXs through its new feature known as "hooks", allowing developers to add features and take fees from swaps. The update could transform Uniswap into a universe of DEXs by providing a platform for other developers to build on. As an example, an upcoming DEX, Bunni v2, uses these features to offer shapeshifting liquidity, optimized fee income, and impermanent loss control.
This report outlines some of the main highlights in the digital asset space in 2023, discussing price activity, the influence of regulators and infrastructure providers, developments in blockchain platforms, and application-driven adoption. Factors such as macroeconomic trends and decreasing volatility in crypto markets have created a solid foundation from which crypto prices have rebounded substantially. The full report also dives into expectations for the year ahead.
As the new president of Argentina, Javier Milei, attempts to combat high inflation rates, he is rolling out a plan to allow legal contracts to be paid in Bitcoin. This move aims to deregulate the economy along with over 300 measures impacting sectors like real estate and mining. The proposition, which promotes currency freedom, may also see cryptocurrencies playing a role in Milei's plans to dollarize the economy.
Cryptocurrency scammers are misusing a Twitter feature that allows any account name to be associated with a tweet's ID. This potentially leads users to fraudulent accounts instead of the proposed legitimate account stated in the original URL, making scams look more credible. The method targets primarily crypto-related accounts and has been used to promote fake crypto giveaways, wallet-draining websites, and deceitful Discord channels.
Multicoin is one of the main and earliest investors in Solana and the Solana ecosystem. As such, these blog posts from Multicoin are a treasure trove that provides a full overview of the firm’s thesis on Solana.
A British Virgin Islands court froze over $1 billion in assets of 3AC founders and associates in an attempt to aid liquidators in recovering creditors' claims exceeding $3 billion.
Worldcoin has halted its Orb-verification service in India, Brazil, and France, surprising many after recent expansions, due to regulatory challenges and ongoing efforts to meet global standards.
Vladimir Putin has integrated the digital ruble into Russia's tax code, increasing control over digital asset transactions and aiding in circumventing sanctions related to Ukraine.
Blockchain data firm Avail, a rival of Celestia, announced a partnership with Starknet to enhance data access for the L2 network. By leveraging Starknet sequencer Madara, Avail seeks to offer data solutions for developers' app chains, potentially cutting costs and enabling more innovation in the ecosystem. The integration is expected to lower data publishing prices by 90% and help achieve quicker transaction finality. Although Avail's testnet will only go live in Q3 2024, developers have immediate access for experimentation.
China is planning to release a web3 strategy intended to clarify industry objectives. The strategy document will cover innovation, security, and government responsibilities related to crypto. It will also aim to foster new business models and use cases in areas involving NFTs and other decentralized applications.
Yuga has introduced a new platform called 'Your Stash' to address some of the unique features of trading CryptoPunks. Its first function allows for simplified trading of CryptoPunks, a pre-ERC721 standard collection, via a new wrapper dubbed 'CryptoPunks721'. The update offers a streamlined interface for wrapping coupled with batch capabilities for efficient transactions. Your Stash also unveiled a tool for easy migration of Wrapped Punks, with more developments hinted at for the near future.
Ondo Finance, a top real-world asset protocol, has expanded its product offerings to Solana. The firm is providing two treasury-backed tokens, OUSG and USDY, diversifying from its prior Ethereum-driven approach. Solana has turned heads recently as its one-week DEX trading volume surpassed Ethereum’s this week, creating a real potential growth opportunity for Ondo's tokenized treasury offerings.