😎 Just a Few Updates
Hey everyone! This week I’m adding a new section to the newsletter — ‘On-chain Activity’ (it lives under the Project Spotlight section). This section will be a quick fire report of the most interesting on-chain activities from the last 7 days. I’ll work on improving the content that’s included over the coming weeks but if you have any ideas please feel free to reach out!
I’d like to thank Brian Flynn for the original idea. Oh and if you’re into crypto-collectibles (or NFTs as the cool kids call it) go subscribe to his awesome newsletter!
I also published a blog post this week titled ‘Why Ether is Valuable’. The piece speaks to a topic that I feel is under-discussed in the Ethereum community. I received a lot of great feedback and I’m really excited to keep writing about topics in the crypto ecosystem going forward.
One last thing — I’m attending EDCON Sydney in April and I’m looking forward to seeing many people in the crypto community there! If you’re thinking about going, head here to register and buy your ticket (currently 10% off when paying via ETH or tokens).
- Anthony
News of the Week
👍 Ledger Announces New Mobile Hardware Wallet
The crypto wallet company revealed its new, Bluetooth-enabled Nano X device Sunday at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
The added Bluetooth means that the Nano X can readily be used with mobile devices, which has been a pain point for many users of the company’s current wallet, the Ledger S.
The Ledger Nano X can store the apps for up to 100 crypto assets, a six-fold increase over the Nano S.
The past few days have showered plenty of favorable attention on a new trading platform called DX.Exchange, with glowing profiles by Bloomberg News and CNBC. The only problem is that the site, which allows people to trade currencies and digitized versions of Apple, Tesla, and other stocks, has been leaking oodles of account login credentials and personal user information.
Ars Technica fed this information back to DX.Exchange and they responded immediately by introducing a security patch to rectify the issue.
Reddit user /u/Priest_of_Satoshi also created a thread outlining a huge number of red flags about the exchange.
😔 Cryptocurrency Ransom Demanded for Wife of Norwegian Tycoon
The wife of a wealthy Norwegian businessman has been kidnapped, and demands have been made for a hefty ransom paid in cryptocurrency, the police revealed this week.
Anne-Elisabeth Falkevik Hagen went missing on Oct. 31 from her home near Oslo, and international police investigations and back-channel negotiations with the people believed to be her captors have so far failed to secure her release.
A scarcely decipherable ransom note was left for Mr. Hagen, containing death threats and requests for $10 million worth of Monero (1.4% of the total supply).
Crypto exchange ShapeShift has announced a round of layoffs, citing a range of difficulties including a tough market climate.
In a blog post published Tuesday, CEO Erik Voorhees wrote that the startup had laid off 37 employees, or a third of its staff. He described the process as “a deep and painful reduction, mirrored across many crypto companies in this latest bear market cycle.”
In one of the most transparent testimonies of its kind to date, Voorhees detailed several problems that worked against Shapeshift heading into this decision. Besides the mounting legal concerns that have impeded the entire industry, Voorhees contended that the company grew too fast and spread out its efforts into too many product areas (such as CoinCap, it’s CoinMarketCap competitor, and KeepKey, an acquisition).
Bitmain Technology, the world’s biggest maker of cryptocurrency mining rigs, is poised to name a new CEO to replace company co-founders Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan, people with knowledge of the matter said.
The potential successor is Wang Haichao, who currently holds the position of product engineering director at the Beijing-based company, but has already taken over duties from co-CEO Wu and Zhan in a transition period that started in December, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
There is no timetable yet for Wang to take over the CEO position from Wu and Zhan, who will remain as the company’s co-chairs, one of the people said.
⛏️ Ethereum Classic Suffers 51% Attack
Ethereum classic saw more than 100 blocks “reorganized” during a 51 percent attack last Sunday, according to at least two different block explorers — Bitfly (Etherchain) and Blockscout. Coinbase said in its blog post that it detected some 88,500 ETC being double-spent (totaling some $460,000).
Project Updates
Ethereum Constantinople Upgrade Announcement
The Ethereum network will be undergoing a scheduled upgrade at block number 7,080,000, which is predicted to occur on Wednesday, January 16, 2019. The exact date is subject to change depending on block times between now and then and could be activated 1–2 days before or after.
A countdown timer can be seen at https://amberdata.io/blocks/7080000. You can monitor the network upgrade in real time at http://forkmon.ethdevops.io/.
Please update your nodes before this date!
Veil is a peer-to-peer prediction market and derivatives platform built on top of Augur, 0x, and Ethereum.
This week, the team announced that they have raised a seed round of capital led by Paradigm with participation from Sequoia Capital and 1confirmation.
Veil will be launching on Mainnet on January 15th 2019!
Counterfactual Development Update #1
Counterfactuals first development update includes details on the Counterfactual Playground, research and dapp developments.
Cryptokitties X Gods Unchained
The CryptoKitties team has partnered with Gods Unchained to release special items in each game. The crossover event will make available Gods Unchained-themed cats in CryptoKitties and CryptoKitties-related perks in Gods Unchained.
FOAM in 2018, a Year in Review
Ryan John King details all of the FOAM teams accomplishments throughout 2018 including: the release of Proof of Location, the Spatial Index Visualizer, the FOAM Ethereum stack and much more.
The newly released SDK enables higher quality content creation and improves the developer experience for Decentraland.
What’s New in Eth2 by Ben Edgington — 11 January 2019
Ben’s Summary: If the beacon chain spec were a building: the foundation is done, the walls are up, the roof is on, the windows are mostly there. Now it’s just a push to finish up the plumbing, the wiring, the plastering and decorations.
Introducing the 0x Market Maker Program
The 0x team announced the launch of their Market Maker program this week. The goal of the Program is to bring additional liquidity to the 0x ecosystem by providing comprehensive tutorials, monetary incentives, and dedicated support from the 0x Engineering Team.
Parity Receives Grant from Ethereum Foundation
The Ethereum Foundation announced this week that they have given a scalability, usability and security grant of five million dollars (USD) to Parity Technologies.
Developers at the Ethereum Foundation and at a start-up called Matter Inc have launched on testnet a Plasma scaling solution that uses ZKSNARKs to allow for 500 transactions a second or more.
Cryptoeconomics.study is an initiative to teach people about Cryptoeconomics (who would of thought)! Kevin Ho gives us an update on what the team has been working on lately.
Status Desktop Released in Alpha
Status’ desktop client is available for download by clicking here. It is alpha software so it may contain vulnerabilities.
Project Spotlight
Scout — Data Insights for Blockchains
Scout enables Ethereum protocol teams to create dashboards and tables of their data on the blockchain and share them with the community. Think of Scout as a customized, user-friendly, internal “Block Explorer”.
On-Chain Activity (Last 7 Days)
- Richard Burton bought CDP #420 from Mike McDonald and now “vanity CDPs” are all the rage.
- After Richard bought #420, someone opened thousands of CDPs in an attempt to “mine” for vanity numbers.
- The supply APR for DAI is still around 4% on Compound — people seem to be sleeping on this!
- Mike McDonalds new tool shows the Uniswap ETH liquidity by token.
- CDP #5199 (2nd largest by collateral amount) locked an additional ~37,000 ETH up as collateral over the last 7 days.
- Top 5 Total USD Traded for NFTs over the last 7 days
Ecosystem Bits
Blog Posts
- Exploring Decentralized Networks Through Memetics (Part 1)
- The Constantinople Upgrade: What You Need to Know
- We Need Better Terms for Everything in Cryptocurrency
- How bloXroute Achieves Its Performance
- A Conversation with MakerDAO’s “Head of Oracles” — Mariano Conti
- Keepers Reboot — Observations & Forward Looking Trends
- Joe Lubin: The Next Killer App is a Killer Ecosystem
- DAO & The Future of Content
- Fun With Funding: Contributing To A Gitcoin Grant
- What P2P Markets Are Better Decentralized?
- Will Successful dApps Compromise Their Host?
- Token Bonding Curve Design Parameters
- The Cryptoeconomic Circle
- CANTO :: Overview
- Ethereum Constantinople: Everything You Need To Know
- Uniswap: A Good Deal for Liquidity Providers?
Podcasts
- Nick Johnson: Future of the Ethereum Name Service and thoughts on ProgPOW — Into the Ether
- ConsenSys — The Distributed Incubator which Jumpstarted the Ethereum Ecosystem — Epicenter
Misc
Feedback
Thanks for reading. We’d love to get your feedback so please send an email to info@ethhub.io and we’ll be sure to get back to you! :)
