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  • Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cosmos and more week 23 2023

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cosmos and more week 23 2023

Keeping you updated on crypto, web3 and blockchain

June 17, 2023

TLDR: USDT deviated minorly from its peg. Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams has outlined the vision for Uniswap V4, the next version of the Uniswap protocol. El Salvador unleashes $1 Billion Bitcoin Mining Project, Frax Finance is launching its own L2.

Bitcoin Highlights of the Week

“With an initial investment of $250 million and a total commitment of $1 billion, the park will have a capacity of 169MW of photovoltaic solar energy and 72MW of wind energy” - Bitcoin Magazine

2. Strike enhances their infrastructure and users can now P2P sats to any other Strike user, including all of the new global markets.

3. Zion Social Network, a decentralized social media app, has introduced a new feature that allows users to make bitcoin payments using the Lightning Network within private direct messages.

4. ZEBEDEE has released an alpha version of its app upgrade, Social, which aims to transform social media engagement and content into monetary value. Creators on the platform will keep 99% of their earnings, providing a fair and value-driven experience.

5. Ambos unveils LINER (Lightning Network Rate), an index designed to measure bitcoin yield and cost on the Lightning Network. LINER serves as a benchmark interest rate for bitcoin without credit risk.

7. Riot Platforms awarded Research Grant to Tobin C. Harding, a prominent open-source developer, in order to support Harding's work on Bitcoin libraries written in the Rust programming language.

8. Stakwork, a micro-task platform that pays out users for completing simple tasks using the Lightning Network and bitcoin, pledges $180K to fund Bitcoin development.

9. Commerce Block introduce Mercury Layer, a new Bitcoin Layer 2 initiative inspired by Somsen Ruben’s statechains paper.

10. BitGo Holdings, Inc., has revealed its plans to acquire Prime Core Technologies, Inc., the parent company of Prime Trust, in a move aimed at providing secure and regulated services to Prime Trust clients.

11. Bitcoin has grown so that it is now possible to donate to a US Presidential Candidate with Bitcoin Lightning.

12. Video of a store of Comas in Lima, Peru accepting Bitcoin.

13. Video of buying a Tap Beer with Lightning at the Bitcoin Prague conference.

Ethereum Highlights of the Week

Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade:

  • Latest all core devs – consensus (ACDC) call video. Notes from Christine Kim:

    • Deneb scope: EIP7044 (perpetually valid signed voluntary exits) & EIP4788 (beacon root in EVM); considered for inclusion: EIP7045 (increase max attestation inclusion slot) & EIP6988 (prevent slashed validator being elected block proposer)

    • Discussion on reorgs increasing and proposal to change sub-slot timing for block production, attestation & aggregation

    • Discussion on staking with more than 32 ETH per validator

  • EIP4844:

  • Consensus-specs v1.4.0-alpha.3: patch to increase BLOB_SIDECAR_SUBNET_COUNT to 6

Layer 1

Client releases

For Stakers

Research

Layer 2

EIPs/Standards

  • ERCs:

Stuff for developers

  • Foundry:

    • Pre-v1 updates: fuzz-runs CLI flag, 0 basefee, batch transactions on Optimism and readCallers cheatcode

    • Fuzzy DeFi: code properties for Uniswap v2, Olympus DAO & Compound v2 forks

    • Forge-safe: build Safe multisig batch transactions using Forge scripting

  • OpenZeppelin Contracts v4.9.2: MerkleProof library patch, potential issue in multiproof leaf validation

  • Uniswap v4: customize liquidity pools using hooks, flash accounting using ERC1153 (transient storage) in Dencun upgrade, work in progress, 4 year business source license

    • V4-template: template for creating Uniswap v4 hooks

    • Huff hooks: Uniswap v4 hooks library in Huff, work in progress

  • Bytecode.zip: deploy zipped & wrapper contracts from the browser

  • Titanoboa (Vyper interpreter) jupyter notebooks integration: sign via browser

  • Ethers.js ENS multicoin provider plugin 

  • ABIType: adds conversion from JSON ABIs to human-readable ABIs at runtime & type-level

  • RainbowKit v1.0.2: adds WalletConnect v2 support

  • 4byte collider: script to find function signatures with colliding 4byte selectors 

  • Wallet Test Framework: switched to viem and added more tests

  • Passkey based Account Abstraction signer for contract wallets

Security

Ecosystem

Enterprise

  • BOCI (Bank of China) issued CNH 200 million ($28M) in tokenized notes

Notable at app layer

Cosmos Highlights of the Week

Informal recently raised $5.3M!

Informal has long been a contributor to open-source development. This first funding round was led by CCMC Global, and the funds will be used to enhance the security auditing division of the company.

Nolus Protocol joined Cointelegraph Accelerator!

Congrats to the Nolus team for joining the Cointelegraph Accelerator program! Nolus aims is to make crypto lending available to the average user with its new concept of DeFi Lease.

The SEC considers assets such as $ATOM as securities

This week, the SEC accused Binance US of providing trading for securities, such as $ATOM. This is the very first time we’ve seen such classification & we don’t understand the reasoning behind it.

Caldera introduces the Taro testnet!

Taro is the 1st rollup to use Celestia for DA with the OP Stack.

Taro is a fully-fledged rollup settling on the Ethereum Goerli Testnet, complete with a faucet, bridge, and block explorer.

Argus Labs raised $10M!

Argus Labs, founded by @smsunarto, has recently raised $10M. Alongside this, they have announced the development of the World Engine, an SDK aimed at helping developers create their own gaming ecosystems using blockchain.

Other Highlights of the Week

Tether depeg

This week, leading stablecoin Tether (USDT) deviated minorly from its peg this week, also causing a heavy imbalance to Curve’s 3Pool – indicating a sudden exodus from the token. 

The move came as Tether attempted to front-run news from CoinDesk, who allegedly obtained the company’s quarterly financial reports from the New York Attorney General’s office. 

According to Bloomberg, the documents confirm that the company once held securities issued by Chinese companies as part of its reserves – information that was widely speculated at the time.

USDT is still trading slightly off-peg at around $0.998 at the time of writing.

Uniswap v4

Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams has outlined the vision for Uniswap V4, the next version of the Uniswap protocol. 

The draft code for V4 has been released and will be evaluated over the coming months, with new version offering greater customization through the use of "hooks" – plugins that allow developers to build pools with their own rules and functionality. 

V4 also introduces a more efficient architecture that reduces the cost of creating pools by 99% and eliminates the need to transfer tokens between different smart contracts. 

Uniswap V4 will coexist alongside V3 on the Ethereum blockchain, and its development and governance will be led by the Uniswap community. 

Frax Finance is launching its own L2

Frax Finance has revealed plans to launch its own Layer 2 blockchain, called Fraxchain. 

The network will focus on decentralized finance and will utilize a Layer 2 rollup model, publishing state roots to the Ethereum mainnet for security. Transaction fees on Fraxchain will be paid using the Frax stablecoin and Frax Ether, a liquid staking derivative. 

Fraxchain will also feature decentralized sequencers, which will be operated by entities chosen through governance voting, allowing for a more decentralized approach compared to other Layer 2 solutions.

The chain is expected to be operational by the end of the year and will be governed by holders of Frax Shares (FXS) tokens.

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