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I agree with you, that there is a lot of big money, now being invested in ETH and BTC...I have been reading and hearing about the interest by large investors at all the major brokerages and funds for over a year now! Yes, most of the smaller coins will not make it, in my opinion. I do however like BAT and JASMY, which are run by people who have previously been successful in business, and have already been attracting major support for what their coins and businesses can provide...
Below is an interesting article:
Why Ethereum Is Outperforming Bitcoin Again
by Best Owie 2 hours ago in Bitcoin, Ethereum Reading Time: 3 mins read
https://www.newsbtc.com/news/bitcoin/why-ethereum-is-outperforming-bitcoin-again/
Where is all this money coming from; if you look at all the VC money hitting so many projects. Never forget EOS's 4 billion. I just sold it, no Voice no much anything,, soo much wasted money on coins that'll never mount anything amongst the thousands of of them,...
I took coin bureau''s lead just holding btc/eth/sol/matic. I'v had vet since .002 n seriously thinkn dumping it to. Stick with blue chips, lol
e
Nearly $6 Billion in ETH Burned as Ethereum 2.0 Edges Closer
The second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, has officially destroyed more than 2 million ETH via a burn mechanism introduced last year.
By Liam J. Kelly
Mar 21, 2022
3 min read
Ethereum’s burn mechanism is hotter than ever, as crypto’s second-largest network has officially destroyed over 2 million ETH since the mechanism was introduced last August.
According to Watch the Burn, a dashboard monitoring the burn mechanism, the network has destroyed a total of 2,000,996 Ethereum since its inception. In dollar terms, that’s more than $5.82 billion removed from circulation forever.
Implemented in the London hard fork, EIP-1559, the technical name for the burn mechanism, was just one of several updates made to the network.
This specific “Ethereum Improvement Proposal” restructured the network’s fee structure.
Instead of all the fees paid to execute various operations on Ethereum going to miners, EIP-1559 essentially split these fees into a base fee and tips (the latter of which would go to miners).
It is the base fee that is burned, which is another way of saying that that cryptocurrency is destroyed and removed from circulation.
This burn mechanism has also fueled the “ultra-sound money” meme.
The meme follows that when there is a spike in activity on Ethereum, it is possible that the destruction of the circulating supply could outpace the amount issued via block rewards.
This creates a deflationary effect in which there are fewer and fewer Ethereum on the market to buy.
During a fireside chat during this year’s Camp Ethereal, Joe Lubin, Ethereum co-founder and CEO of ConsenSys (which funds an editorially independent Decrypt) again reminded that yet another upgrade will bring this particular meme into even greater focus.
Burned Ethereum and the ‘Consensus Layer’
Alongside the London Hard Fork, Ethereum is also inching towards its most comprehensive upgrade yet.
Recently rebranded to “Consensus Layer,” Ethereum 2.0 would improve the network’s transaction speed, lower costs, and “will lay to rest Ethereum’s carbon or energy footprint problem,” according to Lubin.
The upgrade will shift Ethereum away from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, something that Bitcoin also uses to validate transactions, to a different model called proof-of-stake (PoS). The latter mechanism is more environmentally-friendly as it demands less computing power to achieve comparable levels of security.
That’s not all either.
“Another exciting thing about moving to proof-of-stake is that proof-of-work requires a lot of issuance of ether [the term used to describe Ethereum the cryptocurrency rather than the network] in order to incentivize these people with heavy infrastructure, to lend their resources and validate transactions on the network,” said Lubin. “So if you have very light infrastructure, then you can issue much less ether per block that's constructed."
Less issuance means that there will be fewer Ethereum distributed onto the market.
This, plus the burn mechanism at work now, means that Ethereum will “be burning more ether every single day than is issued, because much less ether will be issued to secure the network,” said Lubin. “And so ultra-sound money is about to come into existence.”
All of these changes are slated for launch “by Q2 or possibly slipping into Q3” according to the Ethereum co-founder.
https://decrypt.co/95574/nearly-6-billion-eth-burned-ethereum-2-0-edges-closer
ETH 2.0 vs BTC Lightening.
Good news for both going into Summer!
imo
e
At least when ETH 2 gets going. maybe Q2.
ETH eye on supply and fly,by May..
Ethereum 2.0 Coming in Q2, 'Will Lay to Rest' Energy Concerns: Joe Lubin
By Liam J. Kelly
Mar 17, 2022
5 min read
Despite delays, Joe Lubin stands by his estimate that Ethereum 2.0 will arrive in Q2 "or possibly slipping into Q3” of this year.
ConsenSys CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin is still confident that the next era of Ethereum will arrive within the next few months.
In an interview with Decrypt last December in Miami, Lubin predicted Ethereum 2.0 would come "by Q2 or possibly slipping into Q3" of this year. Last week, during a fireside chat at the Camp Ethereal crypto event in Wyoming, Lubin stuck with that predicted timing.
"The merge is happening, surprisingly, on that same timeframe," said Lubin. "So my estimate stays the same. We have a team working strongly, heavily on it."
He cited a key event to bolster his prediction.
The next step will transition the current Ethereum mainnet (let's call that Ethereum 1.0) to a sort of ghost network currently operating in parallel (technically called the Beacon Chain, it will evolve into Ethereum 2.0). The mechanics of this transition led the Ethereum Foundation in January to rebrand the "Ethereum 2.0" name in favor of "consensus layer," or in Lubin's words, the "consensus chain."
Beacon Chain isn't executing real transactions right now, but is instead creating a home for validators (computers that validate crypto transactions) to lock up their hard-earned Ethereum. It’s laying the groundwork for Ethereum’s shift from its current method of verifying transactions using proof-of-work (PoW) to a different method called proof-of-stake (PoS).
Bitcoin also uses a PoW mechanism and has caught global criticism for its enormous energy usage. There are no immediate plans to change this.
Under the new mechanism, Ethereum validators, like PoW miners, are rewarded for ensuring the network is processing correct transactions. Right now, this reward pays out 5.54% in ETH to stakers, according to data pulled from Staking Rewards.
However, if validators get caught adding fraudulent transactions to the Ethereum blockchain, they get penalized. This penalty is monetary and gets drawn from the 32 Ethereum needed to stake in the first place in order to become a validator.
On Tuesday, Ethereum developers announced that they had successfully trialed this Merge event on a public testnet called Kiln. A testnet is essentially a crypto sandbox where developers test new upgrades or changes to a protocol without causing serious damage to an actual blockchain network. "And it seems to have worked," tweeted core developer Tim Beiko. "Post-merge blocks are being produced by validators, and they contain transactions!"
It's a small celebration for an incredibly technical task, one that is made even more pressurized given Ethereum's current market cap of $337 billion.
Once it's executed on the mainnet, Ethereum 2.0, now rebranded the "Consensus Layer," will be alive and kicking.
What will Ethereum 2.0 do?
Alongside the various bets surrounding the exact launch date, Crypto Twitter threads have spilled much digital ink explaining and debating what this upgrade will mean for the network and its users.
Ethereum 2.0 will bring about several key changes, namely creating an environment where shard chains and rollup technologies can increase the speed of transacting as well as lowering costs—in theory.
If you ask Lubin, Ethereum 2.0 will indeed bring lower energy usage and lower gas fees, though many in the crypto community have their doubts about the latter.
"The merge will lay to rest proof-of-work, will lay to rest Ethereum's carbon or energy footprint problem, that all goes away," Lubin said at Camp Ethereal. "Orders of magnitude less expensive, energetically. And another exciting thing about about moving to proof-of-stake is that proof-of-work requires a lot of issuance of ether in order to incentivize these people with heavy infrastructure, to lend their resources and validate transactions on the network. And so if you have very light infrastructure, then you can issue much less ether per block that's constructed."
After making Ethereum cheaper and more environmentally friendly, Lubin added that the upgrade will also turn the world's second-largest cryptocurrency into "ultra-sound money." The term is a play on the idea that gold and Bitcoin are sound money because their supply is capped and cannot be changed. "Ultra-sound money goes a step further."
The shift to Ethereum 2.0 will result in a much lower emissions rate, which means fewer Ethereum will be given to validators for securing the network because their operating costs are much lower. Running a traditional PoW mining outfit, for instance, comes with an enormous overhead and only makes sense if the reward is worth it. Without that overhead, validators remain incentivized to do their job even if the rewards are cut. This, in turn, means there will be a smaller supply of new ETH entering the market.
At the same time, Ethereum's latest EIP-1559 improvement introduced a burn mechanism that destroys a certain amount of ETH with each transaction.
These two changes create an environment in which tons of ETH is being destroyed on one end, while fewer ETH is being created on the other. Instantly, a dramatic deflationary pressure emerges.
"When the merge happens," said Lubin, "we're going to be burning more ether every single day than is issued, because much less ether will be issued to secure the network, and so ultra-sound money is about to come into existence."
Lubin's comments amounted to a compelling case for the future price of ETH, though he was careful to add for the audience at Camp Ethereal, "This is not financial advice." And Decrypt does not dispense investment advice either.
https://decrypt.co/95368/ethereum-2-merge-launch-lay-to-rest-energy-usage-concerns-joe-lubin
Awesome! I Will Share It On Social Media Thanks Again $ETH $ETHE
Sweet! Thanks, Great & Exciting Info and I’m Looking Forward To It All $ETH $ETHE
Two Attacks On Proof-of-Stake Ethereum - Cornell University
https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.01315 Joachim Neu, Ertem Nusret Tas, David Tse
We present two attacks targeting the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Ethereum consensus protocol. The first attack suggests a fundamental conceptual incompatibility between PoS and the Greedy Heaviest-Observed Sub-Tree (GHOST) fork choice paradigm employed by PoS Ethereum. In a nutshell, PoS allows an adversary with a vanishing amount of stake to produce an unlimited number of equivocating blocks. While most equivocating blocks will be orphaned, such orphaned `uncle blocks' still influence fork choice under the GHOST paradigm, bestowing upon the adversary devastating control over the canonical chain. While the Latest Message Driven (LMD) aspect of current PoS Ethereum prevents a straightforward application of this attack, our second attack shows how LMD specifically can be exploited to obtain a new variant of the balancing attack that overcomes a recent protocol addition that was intended to mitigate balancing-type attacks. Thus, in its current form, PoS Ethereum without and with LMD is vulnerable to our first and second attack, respectively.
Ethereum Incubator ConsenSys Raises $450 Million at $7 Billion Valuation
By Jeff John Roberts
Mar 15, 2022
4 min read
Ethereum software factory ConsenSys raised an additional $450 million, doubling its valuation as it builds out MetaMask, Infura and other products.
In brief
* ConsenSys will use its new funding to bring in more people from
traditional finance.
* The company's flagship products are MetaMask and Infura.
Ethereum software incubator ConsenSys announced on Tuesday that it has raised a $450 million Series D round led by ParaFi Capital and a host of other prominent names, including Microsoft and Softbank.
The new round values ConsenSys at more than $7 billion—double the valuation it received after a $200 million round just four months ago.
Consensys launched in 2014 as a home for startups seeking to tap the potential of a then-new blockchain called Ethereum, and earned a reputation for both innovation and a chaotic work culture. In the last two years, the company appears to have its stride thanks to the emergence of two flagship products: the Web3 wallet MetaMask and the crypto infrastructure platform Infura.
These days, ConsenSys has two divisions: ConsenSys Software Inc (CSI) and ConsenSys Mesh, which funds and incubates crypto startups. (ConsenSys Mesh funds the editorially independent Decrypt.) According to founder and CEO Joe Lubin, ConsenSys will use the funding to further build out MetaMask and Infura, as well as other Ethereum software tools it supports.
"It's about growing the company organically and bringing the best and brightest into our ecosystem," Lubin told Decrypt in an interview last week about the new funding. "There's a lot of people from the world of Web2 technologies and traditional finance who are dying to get in."
MetaMask has grown dramatically in the last year—recently hitting 30 million monthly active users—and so has Infura, but they are very different products. The former is primarily a wallet used by consumers to navigate Web3 while the latter is a suite of developer tools for building and maintaining crypto applications.
It creates a potential strategic challenge for one company to be serving both consumers and enterprise at once, but Lubin says he views MetaMask and Infura as complementary, in part because the wallet relies heavily on Infura to stay up and running, and will do so even more as it grows.
Lubin added that MetaMask will be ramping up its efforts to serve institutional clients and to provide more tools to link it to credit cards and other elements of the traditional finance industry. Part of this will entail MetaMask launching a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and issuing a token to support new features of the wallet, though ConsenSys has provided few details about when this might take place.
In the meantime, ConsenSys—along with much of the crypto industry—will be watching closely to see when Ethereum will pull off its long-anticipated "merge" to proof-of-stake, which entails updating the blockchain to no longer use energy-intensive proof-of-work mining.
According to Lubin, who is also a co-founder of Ethereum, early indications suggest the proof-of-stake transition is set to go smoothly, and will occur later this month or in early April. As Decrypt reported last week, 10 million ETH is already staked in Ethereum 2.0.
At ConsenSys, Lubin says he remains committed to the ethos of decentralization that animates Ethereum. His top priorities include the "progressive decentralization" of MetaMask, and expanding Infura to serve "20 or 30" different blockchain protocols.
On a personal level, Lubin says he has learned to adapt as ConsenSys has evolved from a chaotic extension of Ethereum's early days into a big company whose backers include the likes of JP Morgan and Microsoft. Asked whether he tries to model his leadership style after any prominent CEOs like Elon Musk or Tim Cook, Lubin replies: "None of them. My model for the ideal CEO is a chameleon who can agilely adapt to the environment and move quickly."
Also investing in ConsenSys's new funding are Temasek, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures, C Ventures, Third Point, Marshall Wace, TRUE Capital Management, and United Talent Agency’s venture fund, which also invested in the Series C round.
https://decrypt.co/95090/consensys-funding-ethereum-metamask-series-d
Ethereum Staking Protocol Swell Raises $3.75M as Locked ETH Tops $26B
By Sam Kessler
Mar 14, 2022 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
Updated Mar 14, 2022 at 9:25 a.m. EDT
Swell is attempting to make it easier to stake on Ethereum and eventually other blockchains.
Ethereum reached a major milestone last week in its highly anticipated transition to proof-of-stake, with 10 million ETH (about $26 billion) now locked in the Ethereum 2.0 staking contract.
Against that backdrop, a new staking protocol, Swell, has joined the ranks of projects helping investors get staking rewards for stashing their ether. The team announced Monday a $3.75 million seed round co-led by Framework, IOSG Ventures and Apollo Capital.
Ethereum, like most other blockchains, relies on a distributed network of volunteers to keep itself secure. While the network originally took after Bitcoin by employing a resource-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) model for validating transactions, it is in the midst of transitioning to a more efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) model, where one can stake 32 ether to become a network validator and deploy a node.
In exchange for lending compute power to help secure Ethereum, validators get a percentage of the fees generated as users transact on the network.
ETH staking 101
Currently, it costs 32 ETH (about $82,000) to become a validator, though Swell and others are looking to lower that barrier to entry. Swell’s minimum commitment is 1 ETH. Significantly, the protocol will provide stakers with liquidity by granting them an interest-bearing token representing their stake.
Similar liquid staking solutions to Swell already exist – the most popular being Rocket Pool and Lido. Both products already make it easy for users to enter and exit their staking positions, and they allow minimum deposits much lower than Swell’s 1 ETH. Rocket Pool requires a minimum deposit of just .01 ETH, and Lido doesn’t have a minimum at all.
Swell says its main advantage is in making it easier for users to earn additional interest through in-app “vaults.”
“We do everything for the user,” Swell co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Lecky Lao said of the project’s vaults feature. “After they stake, they get an NFT they can optionally put into a vault if they want to get some extra yield from DeFi farming. Basically, we reduce the entry barrier for the beginner.”
Swell plans to launch its beta on the Ethereum mainnnet in April. Later, the company says it plans on expanding to other blockchains, starting with Avalanche and Polygon.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/14/ethereum-staking-protocol-swell-raises-375m-as-locked-eth-tops-26b/
Cathie started buying $ETHE @14 or so lucky to get under 20 for the ticker buy more $ETH with the profits that what I’m doing
What is coming? TELL MEeee
I Do Too! More Money For Longs! LoL $ETH $ETHE Premium Perma Bulls
Wow sounds like a good buying op
Yep, won't change anytime soon. Without ETH ,polygon matic wouldn't exist. Matic basically runs like a sub layer of ETH. Think of it as the old school way of batching credit card transactions.
Ethereum Crosses $5 Billion In ETH Burned As Momentum Picks Up
by Best Owie 5 hours ago
in Ethereum Reading Time: 2 mins read
Ethereum implemented the EIP-1559 in 2021 and since then, ETH has been burned every day. This upgrade has pushed the network towards becoming deflationary, taking more than 30% that would have gone straight into circulation and burning it. Now, only seven months after the upgrade was implemented, the network has reached another milestone of ETH burned in terms of dollar value.
Over $5 Billion In ETH Burned
On August 5th, the EIP-1559 officially went into effect. This came with much fanfare given the implications of such an improvement on the network. It has burned ETH since then and accelerated over the next few months as network activity rose due to the rise of the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. The burn had quickly surpassed $1 billion burned, and now seven months later, there have been over $5 billion worth of ETH burned.
This comes in light of the recent acceleration recorded over the last six months. In this time frame, the rate at which ETH is being burned is up 559%. The volume burned all comes from fees as the network has seen higher activity in recent times. The burn is important given that it permanently removes all of the burned coins from circulation. This means that since August 2021, more than 1,950,00 ETH have been removed from circulation.
At this accelerated rate, the network is seeing about 80 ETH burned every hour. This translates to more than $200K worth of ETH being burned every hour. The burn over the last seven months has since the net reduction reached as high as 67%.
Ethereum planned to have 2.6 million ETH burned in the first year of the implementation and at the current rate, it looks like the network will actually be at this milestone long before August 2022.
Ethereum Heading Towards Consensus Layer
Ethereum’s move to the consensus layer (previously referred to as ETH 2.0) is growing closer by the day. The final merge is expected to take place sometime in the middle of 2022, leaving only a few months until the estimated time of launch. This will put the network on a completely new path, making it more efficient, scalable, and safe for all users of the blockchain.
Ethereum still remains the second-largest cryptocurrency in the space by market cap. It is currently trending around $2,500, a critical support point for the digital asset. Its market cap sits at $311 billion at the time of this writing.
https://www.newsbtc.com/news/ethereum/ethereum-crosses-5-billion-in-eth-burned-as-momentum-picks-up/
That may be true, but neither have what ETH enjoys NOW....that's the no. 2 spot on the totem pole. That won't change anytime soon. XRP beats everyone absolutely EVERYONE, with fast cheap transactions. .00001 xrp...no one comes close.
This is nice news and all for ETH but we already have that with Layer 2 Polygon Matic. Takes seconds for transactions and it is dirt cheap.
Ethereum Layer 2 Service StarkNet Goes Live on Alchemy, Promises 100x Lower Gas Fees
By Jeff John Roberts
Mar 7, 2022
3 min read
StarkNet is the latest Layer 2 solution to arrive on the scene, promising to slash Ethereum gas costs.
In brief
* StarkNet relies on ZK technology to process masses of transactions
quickly and cheaply.
* A number of major crypto players, including Alchemy and Immutable, are
already using it.
Don't look now, but there are signs that Ethereum's high-gas-fee woes may be abating. Those high fees have long been a source of frustration for Ethereum users, but a series of so-called Layer 2 innovations have begun to offer a fix—the latest in the form of StarkNet, which is now integrated into crypto infrastructure giant Alchemy's development kit.
For those unfamiliar, the idea of Layer 2 solutions (aka "roll-ups") is to process big batches of transactions apart from Ethereum's core blockchain, and then periodically write a record of those activities to Ethereum itself. The idea is to produce high transaction volumes at a much lower cost, all while creating the same immutable records as Ethereum.
StarkNet was created by an Israeli company called StarkWare that's raised $173 million in funding. StarkNet is hardly the first to deploy its Layer 2 solution—other rollup options include the likes of Polygon, Optimism and Arbitrum, which have gained traction the past two years.
But StarkNet is getting buzz because it relies on a form of cryptography known as zero knowledge proofs (ZK in crypto speak). ZK entails showing something to be true without also disclosing other private information—akin to showing your driver's license to prove you are 21, but without also revealing your name or address.
And in terms of rollups, ZK-based computations are much faster than a competing technology known as optimistic rollups, which can take up to a week to clear. StarkNet describes its gas fees as "100x lower" than transactions on the Ethereum base layer.
"We're driving towards Vitalik’s vision of five-cent transactions," said Alchemy product manager, Mike Garland, referring to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
Alchemy's integration of StarkNet is significant because the company provides behind-the-scenes support to a large swath of Web3, with customers ranging from banks to crypto exchanges. Alchemy clients now will have an option to build services using the low-cost StarkNet tools—a development that Garland suggests could supercharge Web3 app development.
"StarkNet’s utilization of Validity and ZK-rollups effectively solves core Web3 problems. Validity rollups increase scalability by bundling transactions together off-chain, and then verifying them on-chain with just a fraction of the cost," Alchemy said in a statement.
Alchemy isn't the only major crypto player to deploy StarkNet—Immutable, an NFT gaming startup that just raised $200 million, is counting on StarkNet to make its transaction-heavy operations affordable.
It's too soon to say if StarkNet—or the passel of other Layer 2 contenders—will rescue Ethereum users from sky-high transaction fees once and for all, but the technology certainly appears to be moving in that direction.
https://decrypt.co/94549/ethereum-alchemy-starknet
Haters gonna hate. I know what’s coming
Ethereum miners generated $1.19 billion in revenues during February
by Catarina Moura
March 4, 2022, 10:41AM EST · 1 min read
Ethereum miners brought in $1.19 billion in revenue in February.
Most of these revenues came from the block subsidy ($1.09 billion) and only a small portion from transaction fees ($109.77 million).
The numbers reveal a decrease in revenue totals for the third month in a row, with a month-over-month decrease of 15.3% between January and February.
Total revenues were $2.07 billion in November 2021 and have been going down since. They hit an all-time high in May 2021, with a total of $2.4 billion.
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/136393/eth-ethereum-mining-february-data?utm_source=basicrss&utm_medium=rss
Andreessen Horowitz invests $70M in Ethereum staking protocol Lido
March 03 2022 - 03:15PM
Cointelegraph
The venture capital firm said Lido's liquid staking solution removes many "operational complexities" institutional investors have faced in staking ETH.
https://ih.advfn.com/stock-market/COIN/BTCUSD/crypto-news/87457273/andreessen-horowitz-invests-70m-in-ethereum-staki
SAM BOURGI
52 MINUTES AGO
Andreessen Horowitz invests $70M in Ethereum staking protocol Lido
The venture capital firm said Lido's liquid staking solution removes many "operational complexities" institutional investors have faced in staking ETH.
Ethereum staking solution Lido Finance has raised $70 million from venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, marking the protocol’s first funding round since May 2021.
Andreessen Horowitz’s investment in Lido is intended to further support the adoption of decentralized staking solutions for Ethereum 2.0, a spokesperson for the venture capital firm said. Ethereum 2.0 marks a significant shift in the network’s consensus algorithm by ushering in the adoption of proof-of-stake (PoS) and other upgrades that could enhance scalability and reduce fees. The transition to Ethereum 2.0, which began in November 2020, is still ongoing.
According to Andreessen, staking Ether (ETH) has significant barriers due to the high threshold for operating a node. To become a full validator, users must be able to stake at least 32 ETH, which is worth over $90,000 at current prices.
In addition to investing in Lido, Andreessen said it’s staking a portion of its ETH holdings on the BNB Beacon Chain through the protocol. “Staking with Lido removes many of the operational complexities that institutional investors have faced,” the venture firm said.
Ethereum's BNB Beacon Chain recently registered its 300,000th validator, according to industry data. At the time of writing, nearly 9.7 million ETH had been staked for a total value of over $27.1 billion.
Although terms like Ethereum 2.0 and Eth2 are still widely used in the industry, the Ethereum Foundation announced in January it would ditch such terminology. Instead, it now refers to the original Ethereum blockchain as the "execution layer" and the PoS chain as the "consensus layer."
Founded in 2020, Lido Finance offers a liquid staking solution for Ethereum 2.0, allowing users to stake their ETH with no lockups or minimum deposits. As Cointelegraph reported, Lido also supports other tokens, having only recently added Kusama liquid staking.
Lido concluded a $73 million funding round in May 2021 that was led by crypto venture capital firm Paradigm. Three Arrows Capital, Alameda Research, Digital Currency Group and Alameda Research also contributed.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/andreessen-horowitz-invests-70m-in-ethereum-staking-protocol-lido
KPMG Canada Buys World of Women Ethereum NFT, ENS Domain Name
The company paid 25 ETH ($70,000) for Woman #2681, calling the purchase its "first foray into this rapidly growing asset class."
By Kate Irwin
Feb 28, 2022
2 min read
The Canadian outpost of the global accounting firm KPMG has purchased a World of Women (WoW) NFT and an Ethereum Name Service domain name just weeks after adding Bitcoin and Ethereum to its corporate treasury.
NFTs are unique blockchain tokens that signify ownership over an asset, like an image or a domain name. KPMG Canada has purchased two NFTs so far: It bought World of Women #2681 and minted kpmgca.eth. It paid 25 ETH ($70,000) for Woman #2681, who has blue skin and wavy hair.
“Women are underrepresented in the world of all things crypto, which makes us proud to make our first NFT acquisition in a collection that supports women,” KPMG Partner and National Risk Consulting Leader Nancy Chase said in a statement.
KPMG’s Cryptoassets and Blockchain Services co-leader Kareem Sadek believes NFTs have "numerous use cases," citing marketing, talent recruitment, philanthropy, and connecting with customers.
Not only does KPMG Canada believe in “the continued growth of NFTs,” but the firm also wants to help clients build corporate strategies around NFT acquisition and storage.
As to whether KPMG will purchase more NFTs in the future, Sadek told Decrypt that the company will look into NFT collections that “align with KPMG in Canada’s values and brand, and we will look for creative ways to invest in the space and support the right causes.”
https://decrypt.co/94027/kpmg-canada-buys-world-of-women-ethereum-nft-ens-domain-name
Leading English-language newspaper in Ukraine launches crypto donations
by Kollen Post
February 28, 2022, 11:13AM EST · 1 min read
One of Ukraine's main English-language news outlets has begun soliciting cryptocurrency donations to fund its work.
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/135632/leading-english-language-newspaper-in-ukraine-launches-crypto-donations?utm_source=basicrss&utm_medium=rss
Ukraine Crypto Crowdfunding Effort Hits $20 Million: Report
Cryptocurrency donations sent to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion have exceeded $20 million, according to blockchain analytics platform Elliptic.
By Scott Chipolina
Feb 28, 2022
2 min read
https://decrypt.co/93990/ukraine-crypto-crowdfunding-effort-hits-20-million-report
Ukraine's official Twitter account posts pleas for crypto donations amid Russian invasion
by Michael McSweeney
February 26, 2022, 11:36AM EST · 3 min read
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/135569/ukraines-official-twitter-account-posts-pleas-for-crypto-donations-amid-russian-invasion?utm_source=basicrss&utm_medium=rss
Ethereum Mining Pool Flexpool Halts All Services to Russia in Wake of Ukraine Invasion
The pool is possibly the first of its kind to cut services to Russian users.
By Eliza Gkritsi
Feb 25, 2022 at 5:38 a.m. EST
Updated Feb 25, 2022 at 2:11 p.m. EST
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/02/25/ethereum-mining-pool-flexpool-halts-all-services-to-russia-in-wake-of-ukraine-invasion/
BUIDLing Among the Chaos: What Devs Discussed at ETHDenver
Tracy Wang
Feb 23, 2022
High school students, Web 2 converts and crypto founders spent a week building the future of finance in a jam-packed venue. What comes next?
The 10-day ETHDenver conference wrapped up Sunday afternoon with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin donning a furry buffalo-unicorn costume on stage as he judged the conference’s hackathon finalists.
This year, ETHDenver drew thousands of developers – known as “BUIDLers” in cryptoland – to the Mile High City, despite ETH prices that dipped and dipped some more over the course of the week.
While the usual crypto conference debauchery occurred in Denver, this year’s conference stood out due to the sheer amount of actual building that occurred. Legions of T-shirt clad engineers were littered about hotel conference rooms, word-of-mouth hacker houses or the oversized bean bag chairs scattered throughout The Castle, an antiquated Chrysler showroom turned event space that hosted the majority of the show.
“ETHDenver is one of my favorite conferences because it’s super developer-focused,” said jacobc.eth, an operations lead at crypto wallet firm MetaMask and a guest judge for the ETHDenver hackathon. “Most crypto conferences are just people shilling their project’s token.” This one was for the hackers.
In this context, the term “hacking” means coding, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the word’s more internet-native definition: “exercising skill to the limit,” as hackathon projects are typically churned out in a span of mere hours or days.
“The culture at ETHDenver is around people building in an open source way that is really fun and celebratory,” jacobc.eth told CoinDesk in an interview at the conference.
CoinDesk spoke to a variety of attendees ranging from protocol founders to high school students, from Web 2 defectors to female code-shippers.
Full of starry-eyed optimism for the future of Web 3 and crypto, simply put, they came to Denver to BUIDL.
Meet the BUIDLers
It’s been over two years since Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of the $5.5 billion Near Protocol, says he’s seen his co-founder, Alex Skidanov, in person. The two finally crossed paths last week at ETHDenver and spent a few hours hacking together, just like old times.
“It brought us back to the days when we started Near in a room with a whiteboard,” Polosukhin told CoinDesk.
Polosukhin wasn’t the only prominent founder in attendance – Ethereum’s own Vitalik Buterin was spotted aiding developer teams, visiting hacker houses and even voicing his view on the Canadian trucker fiasco. (His fashion also made headlines.)
“I got to speak with Vitalik,” said Byeongjun Moon, a high school hacker and founder of PadawanDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization that sponsors budding crypto enthusiasts (who must be under 25 years old) to attend blockchain conferences.
“We sent about 70 young people to ETHDenver this year,” Moon, 16, told CoinDesk. The conference helped him “realize the importance of diverse perspectives in moving Ethereum forward.” Moon says he’s been involved with Ethereum since 2014, when he was just 9 years old.
Another developer, Konrad Gnat, came to ETHDenver seeking a new challenge after working for years in Web 2. He says this is the 10th Ethereum-related hackathon (including virtual ones) he’s attended since May 2021.
“I’ve built up a skill set in Web 2 already where now I feel confident building whatever I want,” he told CoinDesk at the post-conference ski retreat in Breckenridge. “In Web 3, you’re only limited by your imagination. It’s about skating to where the puck will be, not where it is.”
In-person networking
With February also marking the two-year anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic, the conference also marked the first time many project contributors have met their virtual collaborators in real life.
“Remote work has its benefits, but the iteration is slower,” said Near’s Polosukhin. “These types of events are important. It brings a bunch of creative people together.”
In addition to in-person collaboration, many attendees touted the importance of face-to-face networking. Despite the jam-packed days of panels and workshops, many attendees made time to attend a myriad of side events.
“ETH Denver was like next-level networking and bonding,” said Thy-Diep “Yip” Ta, co-founder of Unit Network, who participated in the hackathon as a delegate from the all-women H.E.R. DAO and also received a sponsorship from the team behind the Harmony blockchain.
The events are typically co-hosted by crypto exchanges, blockchain projects, DAOs, protocols or venture capital firms, and vary in scope from unassuming cocktail parties to nightclub raves featuring artists such as Tiesto (sponsored this year, somewhat improbably, by Bacon Coin).
Ta’s hackathon submission, Proof of Meditation, is a decentralized application (dapp) that takes a user’s heart rate during meditation sessions to generate unique pixel art NFTs. It won a prize in the “Impact” category.
She says she started each day with either a morning swim at 6:15 a.m. or a yoga meditation session at the H.E.R. DAO hacker house.
“The well-being sessions were super vital to keep the calm amidst the chaos,” Ta told CoinDesk.
Big incentives
Sponsorship recipients like Ta typically receive free airfare and accommodations from the sponsoring entity (typically a well-capitalized layer 1 blockchain) to attend the conference.
Skale, an Ethereum scaling solution, announced a $100 million ecosystem fund last Friday, a testament to the big incentives blockchain projects use to lure developers into building projects in their ecosystems.
“Our hackers are grinding,” Skale co-founder Jack O’Holleran told CoinDesk in an interview during the conference. “So far, they’ve made over 20 submissions on Skale.”
Last Thursday, data-querying project The Graph announced a similar $205 million ecosystem fund to support dapp development using its technology.
One day later, the Algorand Foundation announced it would award $20 million to developers building Ethereum-compatibility solutions or developer tooling for Algorand.
“The job of the foundation is to build good fertile ground for people to get involved with Algorand,” said Staci Warden, CEO of the Algorand Foundation. “That means grant-giving and providing assistance, including technical assistance.”
That’s up to folks like Ryan Fox, a member of Algorand’s developer relations, or “DevRel,” team. They’re more-extroverted builders (“developers who also like to talk to people,” per Near’s Polosukhin) who crucially serve as a project’s brand evangelists, fielding technical questions at booths or providing on-site technical assistance to builders during the hackathon.
“We had incredible engagement with devs using Reach to design and deploy their smart contracts to both Algorand and Ethereum simultaneously,” Fox told CoinDesk. “Beyond Web 3, the buzz focused on interoperability.”
Reach is a programming language that allows developers to use a few lines of JavaScript code to write Solidity smart contracts, the technical underpinnings of everything from non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to decentralized exchanges.
Near launched its new Web 3 startup platform Pagoda on Sunday. Pagoda is a set of tools to help developers more easily develop applications for Near.
“With Pagoda, we’re opening Near up to JavaScript developers,” said Marieke Flament, CEO of the Near Foundation. “We believe that’s what opens the door to be mainstream and increase the overall pool of talent.”
A ‘growth flywheel’
Many prominent developers compared the energy of the conference to the early days of Web 2, a term that refers to the reigning tech giants such as Google, Facebook or Amazon.
For many projects, that meant new product launches aimed at integrations or tools that streamlined the development process for engineers.
Jacobc.eth said MetaMask’s new Snaps system was inspired by a strategy used by Google Chrome, which he claimed provided the best developer tools to build websites during the rise of Web 2. As a result, many of today’s most popular websites were built on Chrome.
“It just created a growth flywheel,” he told CoinDesk.
Launched last week, MetaMask Snaps, available only on the developer build of MetaMask, allows third-party projects, such as Solana or Cosmos, to create their own application programming interfaces (APIs) for for the popular Ethereum wallet.
“There are a lot of teams here building using Snaps,” said jacobc.eth. “Some are being built by third-party teams, some by anonymous devs, some are being built in-house by our own team.”
On Tuesday, Ethereum sidechain Polygon announced the launch of Finity, a user interface (UI) development tool that offers Polygon developers a suite of “tried-and-tested assets, elements, and templates, with a focus on 3D design,” according to a press release.
“It’s wild right now,” said Skale’s O’Holleran. “There’s so many people building in Web 3 – everyone from the brilliant hackers in a college dorm room to the largest corporations.”
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/02/23/buidling-among-the-chaos-what-devs-discussed-at-ethdenver/
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