Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

Ethereum ERC-721 Contracts Surge Amid NFT Boom

The total number of Ethereum ERC-721 smart contracts, which form the backbone of most non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the blockchain, has reached a new all-time high on the heels of the current NFT boom, according to CoinMetrics report published on Tuesday.　　Per the report, the number of ERC-721 smart contracts has recently reached a new all-time high of around 19,000 as a result of the latest “NFT mania.”　　ERC-721 is the Ethereum standard for creating NFTs, non-interchangeable tokens that are cryptographically unique. Theyve been used to create digital items with scarcity, including artwork, video game assets, and music. In recent months, the NFT space has expanded considerably, with trading volume across the top three NFT marketplaces reaching $342 million in February alone, up from $12 million in December 2020, according to DappRadar.　　“The NFT market has gone from virtually non-existent to a flourishing multi-million dollar decentralized marketplace just in the last few months,” analyst Mati Greenspan, founder of crypto analytics outfit Quantum Economics, told Decrypt.　　The number of Ethereum ERC-721 smart contracts has skyrocketed. Image: Coin Metrics　　However, despite the uptick in sales volume, NFTs remain a relatively small slice of the Ethereum pie. Although the number of ERC-721 contracts has surged to around 19,000,

2021-03-26Deep Dive

Unmarshal Announces Polkastarter IDO And Frontier Partnership

Unmarshal, multichain DeFi Data Network, has made the news for two important reasons. Firstly, the whitelist for Polkastarter IDO is now open, and second, their strategic partnership with Frontier, a chain agnostic DeFi aggregation layer.　　Unmarshal recently closed its funding round and raised $2.6 Million backed by industry big-wigs such as Woodstock, Black Edge, GBV, NGC, and Spark. The next phase is to make their native token, $MARSH, available to their community through the Polkastarter IDO.　　What Is Unmarshal？　　The Unmarshal network facilitates seamless access to data on the blockchain by providing smart data solutions for DeFi applications. Currently, it provides added support for Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Elrond, PolkaDot, and Substrate-based projects such as StaFi. The protocol combines its functionality with these platforms and addresses the large data limitations of DeFi applications.　　Their token $MARSH has three prominent use cases:　　Data consumers using Unmarshal can stake these tokens for infrastructure service.　　Indexers can stake $MARSH token to become node operators to provide indexing and query processing.　　Reward tokens for network contributors and their services to the network.　　Frontiers Partnership With Unmarshal　　Two days after the IDO announcement, Unmarshal is in the news again for their strategic partnership with Frontier. The partnership will provide users with a powerful aggregation

2021-03-26Deep Dive

Crypto Must Apply Safety Lessons of the Existing Financial System

There is a revealing, albeit slightly morbid, maxim that “safety standards are written in blood.” Humans and human-created systems generally tend to be reactive rather than proactive when it comes to developing protective rules. Nevertheless, today‘s construction workers and consumers are more shielded from danger than those of the past because we’ve learned from prior mistakes.　　Rick McDonell was the executive secretary of the Financial Action Task Force from 2007 until 2016. Prior to that, he was chief of the United Nations Global Program against Money Laundering at the UNODC. He is now executive director of ACAMS, the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists.　　The same dynamic exists in financial regulation, where it could be said that “financial standards are written in fraud.” For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission didnt exist in the first iterations of the stock market. It was only after “Black Tuesday,” the 1929 stock market crash so severe that it was a major contributing factor to the Great Depression, that new laws and regulations were introduced that continue to define modern finance. But the world has morphed into two: the real world and the virtual world. The old rules do not suit either of them.　　Parts of

2021-03-26Deep Dive

Can Uniswap v3 prevent forks? Top lawyer breakdowns its license

After the release of Uniswap v2 in May 2020, several competitors for the DEX emerged, forking its codebase, launching new incentives, and their own governance model to attract users. Sushiswap is perhaps the most important.　　To prevent something similar, the third iteration of the automated market maker will be released with a Business Source License 1.1. The license will expire after two years unless the community decides to accelerate its expiration. It will then adopt a GPL 2.0 open-source license.　　With a tentative deployment date of May 5, General Counsel for Compound Finance, Jake Chervisnsky, believes it is possible that Uniswap v3 could prevent further forks, for a trade-off.　　Chervinsky señala que es importante que los protocolos de finanzas descentralizadas operen con licencias de código abierto. Sin embargo, indica que la licencia de negocio de Uniswap no será “inútil” como muchos piensan. El experto afirmó:　　“This is where people say ”good luck enforcing copyright against anon devs,“ as if Uniswap‘s BSL 1.1 license is useless. Wrong, for a few reasons. First, most dev teams aren’t fully anonymous. Like it or not, anonymity is tough to maintain, especially when a project succeeds.”　　In addition, Chervinsky said that the developers of a successful project have a difficult

2021-03-26Deep Dive

Will Ethereum Moving To PoS Spark Another Ugly Split In Bitcoin?

Pierre Rochard, a Bitcoin strategist at Kraken and co-founder at Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, sparked an interesting debate on Twitter on a potential tiff emerging in the Bitcoin community. According to Rochard, Ethereums transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) may trigger a potential future conflict in the Bitcoin community.　　“When Ethereum switches from proof-of-work mining to proof-of-stake, theyre going to push the ”green“ anti-Bitcoin narrative *hard*. Its going to be well funded and highly coordinated. If you thought the 2017 scaling debate was ugly, this is going to be much, much nastier.”　　What Is Rochard On About？　　Right now, both Bitcoin and Ethereum utilize the PoW consensus algorithm for maintaining the overall network. In PoW, you use your computer resources to solve cryptographically challenging puzzles. If successful, you get to add your block to the main blockchain and receive a block reward. While this process is highly secure, it can be expensive and highly wasteful. In fact, the Bitcoin network consumes more energy than the country of Austria!　　Ethereum Moving To PoS　　The proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism turns this entire mining process virtual. In this situation, a users hash power is directly related to the size of their stake or coin age, instead of the amount

2021-03-26Deep Dive

IBM Ventures Further Into Crypto Custody With METACO, Deutsche Bank Tie-Ups

IBM, known for pitching banks and blue-chip firms on private blockchain technology (the sectors equivalent of alcohol-free beer) is taking decisive steps toward working with the hard stuff.　　The 110-year-old computing giant is licensing its software to METACO, a Switzerland-based firm that specializes in custodying digital assets for financial institutions, the companies said Thursday. This is the business of safeguarding the cryptographic private keys that control a cryptocurrency wallet, the 21st-century version of protecting a vault full of gold bars.　　Separately, Deutsche Bank, Europe‘s eighth-largest bank, is enlisting IBM’s help to build its planned crypto custody and trading services offering, two people familiar with the arrangement told CoinDesk. The parties are close but no deal is signed yet.　　These are not IBM‘s first steps into crypto custody; Big Blue has been quietly making moves into digital asset safekeeping since at least early 2019. Most recently, IBM’s Cloud Hyper Protect was teaming up with Zug, Switzerland-based decentralized finance (DeFi) data oracle, DIA (Decentralised Information Asset).　　IBMs further wading into these waters speaks to a broader change in the posture of corporates toward crypto. In the late 2010s, the preferred approach for banks and other large companies was to try to shoehorn blockchain, the decentralized recordkeeping

2021-03-25Deep Dive

Is Coinbase Taking Care Of Its Customers?

Coinbase is the most well-known fiat on-off ramp app for major cryptocurrencies and is looking to go public with an IPO in the next few weeks. However, is all as it should be for such a giant of the crypto space？ Some of Coinbase‘s customers certainly don’t think so.　　According to an article published by the New York Times, Coinbase customers are suffering hacks and worse still, the $100 billion valued company has done little to help.　　The article highlights some worrying incidents. One entailed a customer who received a text from an unknown number on his phone. Concerned that his phone was being hacked, he tried to login and check his Coinbase account that contained $100,000 in cryptocurrencies.　　He was unable to do so and contacted Coinbase for help. After investigation, the company told him that an attacker had reset his password and stolen all the funds on his account. The customer told of his shock that Coinbase security was unable to stop the theft.　　The customer, who was a lawyer, and also a former employee of Coinbase, began to plead with his former colleagues to investigate the case and urged Coinbase to reimburse the funds. He reported that he received minimal assistance

2021-03-25Deep Dive

Goldman Files to Offer Notes Linked to an ARK ETF That May Have Bitcoin Exposure

Goldman Sachs dipped another toe into the cryptocurrency pool by filing to offer notes linked to the performance of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that may have exposure to cryptos such as bitcoin (BTC, -4.12%).　　In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Goldman said it plans on offering $15.7 million of the “autocallable contingent coupon ETF-linked notes due 2026.”　　Payout on the notes would be dependent on the performance of the ARK Innovation ETF, an actively managed fund offered by Cathie Woods ARK Investment Management.　　The ARK Innovation ETFs strategy involves exposure to companies that are capitalizing on disruptive innovation and developing technologies, including blockchain.　　The ETF may also have exposure to cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin, indirectly through an investment in a grantor trust, according to the filing.　　The filing continues a trend by Goldman of offering structured notes with payouts tied to the performance of other instruments or funds with possible bitcoin exposure and that trend seems to be accelerating. A keyword search of such filings yielded 81 results from 2021 with no results showing up for prior years. Of the 81 results from 2021, 15 were from January, 28 were from February and 38 were from March.　　The filing comes weeks after

2021-03-25Deep Dive

StarkWare Raises $75 Million for Scaling Products

StarkWare has raised $75 million in its series B funding round, according to an announcement from the firm on Twitter.　　Top VC Funds Lead Series B　　Paradigm led this round of funding, just as it did during StarkWares Series A round in 2018. Other returning investors include Pantera Capital, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, DCVC, and Wing Capital.　　StarkWare also attracted Three Arrows Capital and Alameda Research as investors for the first time.　　Previous seed rounds and funding rounds have raised approximately $36 million for StarkWare. The new batch of $75 million brings the companys total raised capital up to $111 million.　　StarkWare has also partnered with notable Ethereum firms and projects such as ConsenSys, Infura, and Metamask.　　Scaling Ethereum　　StarkWare has numerous projects underway, largely focused around ZK-starks, which are used to scale up blockchains like Ethereum.　　Ethereum has suffered from numerous congestion issues, largely brought on by the rising popularity of DeFi apps in the summer of 2020. The Ethereum network is now saturated by thousands of retail investors who are using DeFi exchanges and dApps in search of lucrative financial opportunities.　　Ethereum also has native scaling improvements underway, such as proof-of-stake and sharding. However, StarkWare is one of the most notable second-layer efforts working on the issue.

2021-03-25Deep Dive

New NFT platform returns power and autonomy to photographers

A new decentralized NFT platform is vowing to give back power and autonomy to photographers — enabling them to prove ownership of their work and avoid the hefty commissions that are charged by major online marketplaces.　　The team behind Unique.Photo says the site has been built in response to the challenging environment that experienced photographers face. Copyright infringement is a widespread issue, and the proliferation of third-party platforms has made it increasingly difficult for professionals to secure and control their income.　　Launching in May 2021, the permissionless marketplace is the next milestone in the creation of an ecosystem that is tailored to creative industries. As reported by Cointelegraph, this journey began with the launch of Unique.One, which is designed to make it easier for artists to mint their own NFTs.　　How it works　　Unique.Photo is designed to be managed by the community it serves — and the ultimate objective is to ensure that the platforms users eventually become owners.　　The founders believe blockchain technology can solve some of the biggest problems that modern photographers face — facilitating peer-to-peer transactions and fairer terms. Photographers who sell their work in NFT form receive payments instantly, and no longer have to wait for periodic payments from traditional outlets.　　NFTs

2021-03-25Deep Dive

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