Archive for the ‘Ethereum’ Category

The importance of L2 interoperability for the Ethereum blockchain – The Cryptonomist

By now everyone is aware of the scalability and interoperability limits of the Ethereum blockchain, which at every peak of the bull market end up damaging the user experience.

The development of the L2 chain landscape, built on top of the main L1, is partially solving these problems by offering blockspace at a reduced cost.

However, the increasingly massive presence of these second-level networks creates damage at the level of liquidity fragmentation, making the cryptographic ecosystem increasingly dispersive.

The future of the Ethereum blockchain definitely depends on L2 networks, but these must necessarily focus on increasing mutual interoperability.

Lets see everything in detail below.

The advent of the Ethereum blockchain in July 2015 completely revolutionized the landscape of digital assets by introducing a much more sophisticated layer compared to Bitcoin.

Over the years, Ethereum has powered thousands of cryptographic protocols thanks to the possibility of implementing smart contract, completely innovating the cryptographic industry.

However, 9 years after its debut on the market, this L1 chain continues to deal with its main Achilles heel: scalability.

In fact, despite Ethereum being a highly interoperable programmable blockchain thanks to its EVM nature, it does not boast a high throughput for transactions.

This is a very large limit because it prevents the blockchain from supporting a large amount of traffic, and makes its cost of use unsustainable.

Especially in bull market cycles, where the attention to cryptocurrencies is greater, Ethereum often requires enormous fees to execute transactions.

As we can see in the following Etherscan chart, the cost of using the chain, commonly referred to as gas, has often reached peaks above 200 gwei.

We remind you that gwei is the unit of measurement for gas cost: 1 gwei corresponds to 0.000000001 Ether.

If we observe this chart closely, we notice how in the last two years the situation regarding gas price on Ethereum has slightly adjusted.

The strong expansion of the L2 chain has indeed helped the main layer to distribute the traffic over more blockspace, limiting queues and high fees.

Especially from 2023 onwards, the growth of new second-layer networks has allowed for an overall increase in the scalability of the cryptographic ecosystem, while simultaneously consuming less gas.

The settlement requests on Ethereums L1 grew exponentially in the middle of the second year, when the L2 trend reached incredible levels.

According to the Coingecko ranking, there are currently 46 different L2 solutions, for a TVL of 40 billion dollars.

A lot of attention for the Ethereum L2 sector is channeled towards those networks of the Zk-EVM type, which implement the so-called zero-knowledge proofs.

Although this is actually a rather dated topic, it has only become popular in the blockchain space in recent years.

Today, most of the L2 developed on Ethereum are rollup (optimistic or zk) that shift the burden of data processing off-chain by sending verification batches to the L1.

Given the success of this cryptographic technology, Vitalik Buterin himself thought a few months ago to make Ethereum a Zk-EVM chain.

In fact, with an update, it could make this built-in feature, allowing the integration of ZK-SNARKs computational proofs also at the execution level.

This would make the main network much more scalable than it is at the moment, capable among other things of validating transactions with maximum focus on privacy.

The idea of Vitalik, as brilliant and ambitious as it is, involves very complex structural changes.

For example, a change to the rule being proposed would require the addition of a pre-state root and a post-state root to each block entering the consensus layer.

This means that each block gets a special type of cryptographic proof that shows that the transactions in the block are valid and therefore correctly updates the state of the blockchain.

Another solution would require the separation of different parts of the execution blocks, introducing the calculation via GPU to validate the ZK-SNARKS proofs.

This would make Ethereum a hybrid chain where the consensus remains on PoS and the execution of cryptographic proofs is powered by PoW.

Overall, all these possible implementations require significant trade-offs to the Ethereum blockchain.

At the moment, no decision has been made yet: the challenge of the coming years will be focused on making the chain more scalable, while keeping the code structure lean.

For now, the presence of L2 solves a substantial part of the scalability of the Ethereum blockchain, making a ZK-EVM update on L1 not strictly necessary.

The large quantity of second-layer networks seems to be sufficient at the moment to meet all the blockspace requests made by the community.

That said, in the future it will be necessary to improve the level of throughput, but for now L2 seems like an excellent compromise to avoid complicating Ethereums code too much.

The only problem that absolutely needs to be remedied concerns the fragmentation of liquidity on the various L2s, which often act as single agents.

Many rollups operate in fact in isolation without interoperability, making it complex to transfer funds from one chain to another without going through the main layer.

For example, the ZK Stack chains are interoperable only with other ZK Stack chains. Then, even within a single ecosystem, the technological implementations, wallet integrations, and user interfaces are still in a very early stage.

Approximately 40 billion dollars, according to data from L2 Beat, are fragmented across more than 50 different L2 blockchains.

To address the problem of fragmentation, end users and developers must be able to exchange information about crypto-assets between L2 economically and quickly, without having to stop Ethereum L1.

This remains one of the main challenges that Vitalik and his team must face as soon as possible if they want to make Ethereum a highly interoperable environment.

High interoperability would require that all assets on L2 can be freely moved to any network and decentralized application in the ecosystem.

This would lead to an unprecedented liquidity efficiency, capable of supporting the expansion of the blockchain sector as a whole.

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The importance of L2 interoperability for the Ethereum blockchain - The Cryptonomist

US ethereum spot ETF ruling could come as soon as this week or next – report – ForexLive

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US ethereum spot ETF ruling could come as soon as this week or next - report - ForexLive

Crypto: Ethereum Drops Despite Growing Interest in ETFs in the United States! – Cointribune EN

Sun 07 Jul 2024 3 min of reading by Eddy S.

A recent survey highlights a fascinating trend: Americans interest in Ethereum-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is on the rise! If the SEC approved the launch of an Ethereum ETF, nearly a quarter of voters would consider investing in this crypto.

The launch of an Ethereum ETF in the United States could boost investments in digital assets. Although the future of these ETFs is uncertain, their introduction could accelerate the maturity of the crypto market and its widespread adoption.

The arrival of an Ethereum ETF could broaden the interest in cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin. In the crypto market, anticipation is rising around the launch of the Ethereum ETF, likely scheduled for July 15. This crucial step could trigger a wave of investments and mark a historic milestone in the adoption of cryptocurrencies. Experts predict a massive influx of capital, with estimates reaching up to $15 billion in the first few months. If the SEC gives its green light, this event could not only validate Ethereum as a major investment asset but also open the door to a new era of blockchain-based financial products.

Crypto is gaining importance among American voters. Since the beginning of the year, a third of likely voters are more receptive to crypto, and 47% believe it will eventually be part of their investment portfolio.

Despite the excitement generated by the imminent launch of Ethereum ETFs, ETH crypto is currently experiencing a significant drop of 1.72% in the last 24 hours and is trading around $3,014. After losing a key support, Ethereum risks falling even further, with short-term forecasts seeing a drop to $2,900.

The Ethereum ETF represents a major opportunity for the crypto market, attracting the attention of traditional investors and voters. With growing interest in emerging technologies and the anticipation of clear regulation, the future of Ethereum ETFs is promising. It could mark a major turning point in digital investment in the United States.

Maximize your Cointribune experience with our 'Read to Earn' program! Earn points for each article you read and gain access to exclusive rewards. Sign up now and start accruing benefits.

The world is evolving and adaptation is the best weapon to survive in this undulating universe. Originally a crypto community manager, I am interested in anything that is directly or indirectly related to blockchain and its derivatives. To share my experience and promote a field that I am passionate about, nothing is better than writing informative and relaxed articles.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

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Crypto: Ethereum Drops Despite Growing Interest in ETFs in the United States! - Cointribune EN

TON Application Chain and Polygon team up to launch new TON L2 – Cointelegraph

Correction:The headline originally stated that TON and Polygon had teamed up to create anEthereum L2. This has been corrected.

The TON Application Chain (TAC) and Polygon Labs are set to bring Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) functionality to the TON ecosystem.

In a July 9 announcement, the TON Application Chain and Polygon announced that the TON L2 had integrated Polygon CDK and the interoperability protocol Agglayer to bring EVM-compatible decentralized applications (DApps) to TAC.

It aims to increase the range of applications available to the TON networksusers, including decentralized finance (DeFi), gaming, and identity solutions.

TAC CEOPavel Altukhov told Cointelegraph that EVM compatibility breaks down barriers to using the TON Network and expects there to be substantial interest in DeFi and GameFi applications following the integration.

Additionally, he noted the recent integration of USDT on TON as well as the rise of Tap-to-Earn applications that came along with a project called Notcoin.

"The expansion of the mini apps ecosystem has driven the growth of 5.8 million monthly active on-chain wallets on Telegram. TAC's integration is expected to amplify this demand further," he added.

By utilizing applications like Wallet in Telegram, the EVM-compatible integration will see Ethereum developers granted access to a large number of users on Telegram, allowing them to implement more real-world crypto applications. Some of the potential use cases cited by the team include DeFi applications, gaming and decentralized identity solutions.

In a July 6 post to X, Messari noted that the number of daily active addresses on the TON network had surpassed Ethereum during the month of June.

TACs founding team includes Curve founder Michael Egerov and the team behind The Open Protocol (TOP), which offers crypto wallet functionality from within the Telegram app.

Moving forward, Altukhov said TAC was looking to raise an additional $5 million in an external funding round.

The statement describes TAC as a layer-2 network built on TON designed to bring EVM-based decentralized applications to TON and Telegram users.

Despite the recent success of the TON ecosystem which has been bolstered by a significant uptick in trading activity of new tokens on the network there has also been a rise in phishing attacks on the blockchain.

Related: Binance integrates USDT on TON, opens transactions

On June 24, SlowMist founder Yu Xian warned the Telegram ecosystem was too free, with phishing links spread through the platforms message groups, airdrops and other deceptive methods.

Although the Telegram messenger typically requires phone numbers to be tied to an account, Xian explained that phishing risks were higher for users with anonymous numbers.

Users of this nature do not have accounts linked to SIM cards, and as such, their accounts can be lost if they are phished by bad actors on the platform.

As of April, Telegram has an estimated 196 million daily active users and 800 million monthly active users,according to BankMyCell.

Update (July 9 at 11:37 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include comments from TAC CEOPavel Altukhov.

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TON Application Chain and Polygon team up to launch new TON L2 - Cointelegraph

Tron develops gas-free stablecoin for Ethereum and Tron chains – Cointelegraph

Tron founder Justin Sun has revealed that his team is building a gasless stablecoin solution to make peer-to-peer transfers free for all.

Sun hopes to integrate the stablecoin solution on the Tron blockchainin the fourth quarter, followed by Ethereum and other Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible public chains soon after.

Transfers can be made without paying any gas tokens, with the fees being entirely covered by the stablecoins themselves, Sun explained in a July 6 X post.

However, he didnt explain how the mechanism would work.

Sun believes the gas-free stablecoins could be a game-changer for companies looking to offer stablecoin services:

Tron currently leads the peer-to-peer stablecoin transfer market and is consistently processing two to three times the volume of second-placed Ethereum, blockchain analytics firm Artemis highlighted in a June 27 X post.

Tron is home to more than $50 billion of Tethers (USDT) $112 billion in value issued across multiple blockchains, DefiLlama data shows.

Related: Stablecoins to make up 10% of money in the next decade or so: Circle CEO

Trons solution could compete with PayPals PYUSD,which allows certain United States-based users to make cross-border payments for free.

Circles USD Coin (USDC) on Ethereum layer-2 Base via Coinbase Wallet also allows free transfers.

Circle and cryptocurrency exchange Binance recently removed support for USDC on Tron, perhaps providing Tron with an incentive to build a solution of their own.

Tron is also considering building a Bitcoin layer-2 solution that would support a wrapped version of Tether potentially enabling billions of dollars to flow into the Bitcoin ecosystem.

For the time being, Tron is leveraging existing cross-chain protocols to bridge USDT and other tokens between Bitcoin and Tron.

Magazine: The real risks to Ethenas stablecoin model (are not the ones you think)

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Tron develops gas-free stablecoin for Ethereum and Tron chains - Cointelegraph