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Recently, I spoke with Filipe Gonalves, chief of DeFi at Web3 infrastructure provider Ankr. Filipe told me about features that make Ankr's liquid staking technology different from other projects in the field and shared his future plans and recent achievements. Don't miss this piece!

U.Today: Hi Filipe, thank you for joining the interview. Can you tell us about your background and when you joined Ankr?

Filipe Gonalves: Sure. I joined Ankr about two years ago. Before that I worked for eight years as a wealth manager mostly in Switzerland, in Swiss banks. My background is mostly banking.

U.Today: What's your role at Ankr?

Filipe Gonalves: I'm currently the chief of DeFi at Ankr. I am the product owner of liquid staking and also lead the DeFi strategy of Ankr.

U.Today: Can you tell us about Ankr and what Ankr's infrastructure includes?

Filipe Gonalves: Ankr is a Web3 infrastructure provider. It started early on by offering node services as it became commoditized. It basically evolved two main product lines, with one product line more for developers to run RPC nodes. These nodes are obviously important to consume information from the blockchain and send transactions. The other product line was the evolution of a validator node, which is liquid staking. We actually created that in December 2020. That was more than two years ago, when Ethereum 2.0 started. Those are the two product lines. Since then, we have evolved a bit, and now we're offering app chains-as-a-service. We supported two projects to create on their own sidechain, on BNB Chain. We're now also supporting Polygon Supernets, and we also have SDK gaming. We are focused on infrastructure in general. The only exception is maybe liquid staking, where it's less developer focused and more focused on Defi users. But we still perceive Ankr as a kind of money infrastructure. We believe it's really a very important piece of the ecosystem.

U.Today: What makes Ankr's liquid staking technology different from other projects?

Filipe Gonalves: We were actually pioneers in liquid staking. We were the first ones to launch on Ethereum. We were also, to my knowledge, the first ones to enable liquid staking on other proof-of-stake chains outside Ethereum, where the dynamic is very different because you can unstake. That was very new at the time, almost two years ago. We started on Avalanche. Since then, if you go on DefiLlama, you will see there are more than 60 liquid staking protocols. In terms of tech, there is a bit less differentiation.

Since we're pioneers, we've been thinking about how to improve liquid staking for a very long time. We definitely have a very exciting roadmap. Maybe the most notable difference right now is that we have our own bridge. We enable ankrETH currently on five chains. A lot of providers work with third-party bridges, and they don't necessarily have full control of their own bridge. This is one of the differences. We also have so-called flash unstaking to provide immediate liquidity on BNB Chain that will soon be expanded to other chains.

U.Today: Can you give us more details on Ankr's Ethereum liquid staking solutions?

Filipe Gonalves: Sure. Ankr Ethereum liquid staking solution is the first liquid staking product we had in December 2020. I think it had a very decent TVL at that time, knowing that the big disadvantage that we might have at Ankr when compared to pure liquid staking protocols is that we don't have a token that we can dilute indefinitely. Ankr was created almost five years ago, and it's still here, which I think is quite a big success. But we've been historically less aggressive on, for example, farming rewards. Despite that, we managed to keep an organic, sizable amount of staked Ethereum. We also enabled the unstaking of ankrETH after the Shanghai upgrade, which reduces massively the liquidity risk of ETH liquid staking. We did it a few hours after the Shanghai upgrade was activated. We have a few upgrades that we're also planning to make in the short term.

U.Today: In your opinion, what new developments can we expect to see in the area of liquid staking technology in the future?

Filipe Gonalves: In terms of liquid staking itself, I think there are very interesting liquid staking solutions. It started with Frax, where they basically introduced the concept that maybe you don't really need to stake 100% of your assets maybe you can stake 90% of it, and the other 10% can be used to deposit in liquidity pools. We're currently studying this in a bit more conservative way, through flash unstaking. In the near future, you can expect that we might decrease liquid staking fees. We're just going to keep unstaked some amount that will always be available in a flash unstaking pool, and people will be able to unstake immediately and pay a fee that goes to the liquid stakers.

That's a way to improve the liquidity without being stuck in that game of diluting the token of a liquid staking project indefinitely. We are also going multichain. Last week, we introduced ankrETH Avalanche and Polygon, and we're going to continue with the Polygon zkEVM, and then that will evolve into flash unstaking and multichain into what we call omni-chain liquid staking. It's basically the ability to stake your ETH on, let's say, Fantom, and you get ankrETH on Fantom directly. Obviously, we can do that because we control our Ankr bridge and we will upgrade it to enable that kind of cross-chain experience. I think it's going to be very relevant for ETH since there is a significant amount of ETH tokens and liquidity in most chains. It is probably one of the most used assets, so why not ETH liquid staking on other chains instead of ETH since you cannot use it to pay gas fees most of the time, except on some Layer 2s. That was the tech side.

In terms of use cases, there is a major emergence of new use cases right now. It's mostly about liquidity pools and yield farming, and if you have enough liquidity, you can leverage it if it is accepted as collateral on lending platforms. Today we enabled a protocol called Midas Capital; it does isolated lending. It's interesting because it's kind of a playground where you can fully control the interest rate model and the assets that you put there if you create an isolated lending pool. There, we're going to basically create borrowing demand for ankrBNB and make sure that whoever is lending ankrBNB in that lending pool is earning lending interest. Then, you earn lending interest plus staking rewards to boost your yield. I think that's very relevant. There are more and more volatile pools against liquid staking, and we started that with ankrBNB, for example, where we're the largest liquid staking provider on that chain. There is a restaking happening on Layer 2s. That's the concept of EigenLayer. I personally believe the concept of restaking is going to be replicated on many other Layer 2s and app chains because it's so much cheaper to attract crypto economic security for a Layer 2. I think that's very difficult unless you have incredible VCs and backers. Just using the liquid staking token of the Layer 1 is probably the most capital-efficient solution and the least risky one. I think that's it for liquid staking in general. I can deep dive a little bit more into the ETH part if you're interested.

U.Today: Yeah, let's do it.

Filipe Gonalves: For ETH liquid staking, as I said before, we're going multichain now, which is unstakable. The liquidity risk is lower. We're increasing the diversity of node operators for ETH liquid staking, with SSV and Obol. They use DVT, and it decreases the risk of slashing through different technologies. In parallel, we have been working on what we call an ETH validator hub. It will be a kind of a marketplace where you can delegate validation keys to node operators, basically making it as open as possible with as few rules as possible. AnkrETH can be one of the users of that marketplace.

The liquid staking provider can be Ankr, but it can also be white-labeled liquid staking solutions from Ankr clients or anyone else who might want to delegate to a node operator. A node operator will be able to charge a fee on the staking rewards automatically. It will have its own insurance pool that is tied to that node operator and, basically, they're free to use whatever token they want. Let's say if you're Coin98 and you're running a validator node, you could say, I'm just putting my C98 tokens as insurance, to make it more trustworthy. We're then adding flash unstaking on Ethereum, but also for ETH liquid staking deployed on other chains to then enable omni-chain liquid staking. You can also work with some partners to enable the restaking concept. You can then get the benefit from having gas fees from the Layer 2s on top of the staking rewards of the Layer 1.

U.Today: What has been the most exciting aspect of Ankr in 2023 so far?

Filipe Gonalves: The most exciting thing right now is obviously the Shanghai upgrade because it's finally decreasing the risk of ETH liquid staking. Just to give you a context for staking, we intentionally were not aggressive on farming rewards and due to this, we had discounted ETH liquid staking from quite some time. We did it intentionally and focused on other chains like BNB, where we became the leader. Now, it's less risky. We're actually pretty excited to bring ankrETH to other chains and then combine it with our liquid staking solutions that we have on those chains. We are combining Avalanche liquid staking from Ankr with ankrETH on liquidity pools on Avalanche to create volatile pools where people will realize that they don't necessarily need to hold ETH on Avalanche. It has no utility. Instead, they can just hold ankrETH, and the gas fees are lower. We're pretty excited about that. It's the same multichain evolution for 2023. The ability to enhance significantly the liquidity of liquid staking with flash unstaking is also something we're pretty excited about. We are already doing it to a very small extent to test the functioning on BNB Chain, and we're soon ready to roll this out to all our liquid staking solutions on all the chains.

U.Today: I have some cross-cutting questions. I ask everyone I interview these questions, so I hope you don't mind answering them. What are your favorite projects in the crypto field?

Filipe Gonalves: Lately it's been Thena on BNB Chain. I specifically like the execution of the team. I think they did a great job gaining traction on BNB Chain without necessarily being a BNB Chain OG. They came from another chain and tried to impose themselves on that market. I think they have done quite a notable job in terms of go-to-market and how they've been collaborating with partners not necessary the DEX, because it's already been forked on other chains, but the execution. In terms of product, helio.money has an interesting concept of accepting BNB as collateral, running a strategy in the background and then redistributing that yield to the stablecoin's stakers. I think that's a very interesting way to capture the staking rewards of Layer 1s and enable them for stablecoins. I think it's an interesting model that can evolve in a very interesting way.

U.Today: Do you have a crypto portfolio?

Filipe Gonalves: Yeah, I have two. I mostly have Bitcoin and tokens of Layer 1s and obviously a yield farm.

U.Today: Can you name 3-5 of them?

Filipe Gonalves: Sure. I'm obviously overweight on Bitcoin, which I use as collateral to then borrow tokens that I don't already have, like Ethereum, MATIC, BNB, FTM and Avalanche. I might borrow them against BNB as well. Then I just basically do liquid staking with it. I also pair them up together. If I see that there is interesting APY on ankrBNB, ankrETH on Thena, I might deposit liquidity, and I try to be more diligent in terms of yield. I extract the yield I converted into stablecoins and then I put it in my second portfolio, which is only composed of stablecoins. I try to really be diligent about extracting yield from stablecoins and also from volatile tokens.

U.Today: One last question: What will the Bitcoin price be one year from now, in your opinion? Just a guess.

Filipe Gonalves: Honestly, nobody really has a clue about projections, but I think a level where I would feel satisfied about the evolution would be if we can reach 40K by the end of the year. It seems like a possibility that is not completely unfeasible. I think that would be a very nice evolution after the last year where we basically dropped from 40K 12 months ago. If we can get back up to that level, I think that would be pretty good.

U.Today: I agree. Thank you so much for your time.

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Ankr's Chief of DeFi on Liquid Staking, Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade and Their Exciting Roadmap - U.Today

Ethereum (ETH) Co-founder Clashes with Cardano Founder Over His Work at Ethereum.

The founder of the LUKSO network had insinuated that Cardano founder Hoskinson did not contribute to Ethereum.

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano and co-founder of Ethereum, recently had a clash of words with Fabian Vogelsteller, another Ethereum co-founder and founder of the LUKSO blockchain. Vogelsteller had recently indicated that Hoskinson made no meaningful contributions to Ethereum.

Notably, three of Ethereums co-founders, Hoskinson, Vogelsteller, and Gavin Wood, left Ethereum and launched their respective networks. Responding to a two-year-old tweet that compared the progress of these networks, Vogelsteller noted that the comparison is only between LUKSO, the chain he founded, and Gavin Woods Polkadot network.

He stressed that Hoskinson cannot be regarded as an Ethereum co-founder because He built literally nothing for Ethereum that I am aware of. According to Vogelsteller, Hoskinson was only fortunate to be at the right place at the right time hanging out.

To buttress his point, Vogelsteller argued that he had been involved in Ethereum long before the network was formed and is fully aware of who made valuable contributions to the launch. He mentioned that the primary work that birthed the network was done before 2014, when most of the co-founders were onboard.

Responding to Vogelsteller, Hoskinson employed his usual tactic of sarcasm, expressing gratitude to Vogelsteller for his comments. [] given my profound incompetence, Id love to meet the people behind Cardano. Pretty cool project to just somehow self-manifest, Hoskinson sarcastically remarked.

I suppose Switzerland just materialized out of the ether, he said.

It bears mentioning that Hoskinson is regarded as one of the biggest contributors to Ethereum, helping to launch the Ethereum Foundation and the ICO in June 2014, which raised 31,000 BTC.

Hoskinson registered the Foundation in Switzerland and served as CEO briefly before leaving to form IOHK in 2015 and Cardano in 2017. Hoskinson left due to disagreement on whether Ethereum should be for-profit or non-profit. He had argued that the project should be for-profit, while Vitalik Buterin disagreed. While there are reports that Hoskinson left willingly, others claim Buterin fired him.

The recent incident with Vogelsteller is not the first public disagreement between two Ethereum co-founders, as Hoskinson and Buterin had also thrown subtle jabs at each other in the past. Last December, as The Crypto Basic reported, Hoskinson sarcastically swipedat Buterin over his comments on Elon Musks search for a new Twitter CEO.

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Disclaimer: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basics opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.

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Cardano Founder Responds to Criticism of 'Building Nothing for ... - The Crypto Basic

In 2023, Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) has been one of the best-performing cryptos. Up 57% for the year, Ethereum now trades at a price around $1,900. Even better, Ethereum recently completed its first major technological upgrade after The Merge and seems to be well positioned for future growth.

If you are thinking about buying Ethereum now, there are two different metrics to consider. One metric will let you know how Ethereum currently stacks up against its blockchain peers, while another will let you know how Ethereum's transition into a proof-of-stake blockchain is going. Let's dive in.

The first metric to consider is Total Value Locked (TVL), which is a popular gauge of overall blockchain activity. It measures the total value of crypto assets deposited into smart contracts and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. The higher the number, the better.

And Ethereum does not disappoint. According to the latest data from DeFi Llama, which tracks TVL over time, Ethereum remains the dominant market leader in the blockchain space. Ethereum ranks No. 1, with almost $29 billion in TVL. The next closest competitor is Tron (CRYPTO:TRX), with just $5.4 billion in TVL. Overall, Ethereum accounts for nearly 59% of all TVL in the blockchain world.That's the sign of a true market behemoth.

Image source: Getty Images.

Even when you drill down into the TVL number, things look good. For example, DeFi Llama provides a time series of TVL data, so it's possible to see how things are going since The Merge back in September. Seven months ago, Ethereum had a 56% share of blockchain TVL, so its market share percentagehas actually slightly increased since then.This is a good sign that Ethereum has not slowed down at all since The Merge.

The next metric to consider is staking market cap, which measures how much of a particular crypto has been staked. For Ethereum, this is an important consideration because The Merge was all about transitioning from a proof-of-work blockchain into a proof-of-stake blockchain. By analyzing the staking market cap, as well as other peripheral metrics related to staking, it's possible to gauge how well this transition is going.

The staking market cap for Ethereum right now is $34.3 billion, which ranks No. 1 among all blockchains, and it's not even close.The next closest competitor is Cardano (CRYPTO:ADA), with $9.4 billion. The only drawback here is that the staking ratio, which compares staking market cap to overall market cap, remains relatively low for Ethereum, at just 14.9%. Cardano, by way of comparison, has a staking ratio of 65%.

However, I'm willing to cut Ethereum a break on this for two reasons. One, staking has only officially existed on Ethereum since September, when The Merge took place. Other blockchains have had staking in place for years. Cardano, for example, has had staking since 2017. Secondly, the whole point of Ethereum's new upgrade in March was to make staking more attractive to users by addressing a key issue left unresolved by The Merge. So nobody really expected Ethereum's staking numbers to improve dramatically until the upgrade was completed.

And, by all indications, staking has been a smashing success for Ethereum since March. As soon as the tech upgrade related to staking was completed, institutional investors were beating down the door to stake over $1 billion on Ethereum. Given Ethereum's massive new influx of staking activity, I fully expect the blockchain's staking market cap to rise in the coming months.

Overall, the numbers appear to paint a positive picture for Ethereum. According to TVL, Ethereum remains the dominant Layer 1 blockchain. According to the staking market cap, Ethereum is doing an excellent job with its proof-of-stake transition. Putting it all together, it appears Ethereum hasn't skipped a beat at all after The Merge.

Thus, if you are looking for a crypto to buy and hold for the long term, look no further than Ethereum. The underlying numbers look quite enticing, and the future growth prospects are simply unmatched.

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Ethereum in 2 Figures: Is It a Buy? - The Motley Fool

Ethereum price came under pressure on Monday after the collapse of First Republic Bank (FRC). ETH pulled back to a low of $1,827 as investors also waited for the upcoming interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve. It remains about 107% above the lowest level in 2022.

The biggest financial news on Monday was thecollapse of First Republic Bank, the second-biggest bank to fall in the US. This collapse happened a week after the company announced that it lost over $100 billion in the first quarter. In a statement, FDIC said that the company will be acquired by JP Morgan, the biggest company in the US.

The collapse of First Republic makes 2023 the worst year for banks since the 2008 financial crisis. We have seen banks like Signature, Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse, and Silvergate Bank collapse.

These collapses are positive for Ethereum and other cryptocurrency prices for two reasons. First, the collapse could mean that many people will move to cryptocurrencies likeBitcoin and ETH. While Bitcoin will benefit more in this transition, otheraltcoins like Ethereum will also benefit since cryptocurrencies have a positive correlation.

Second, the collapse means that the Federal Reserve will likely consider the health of the banking sector when it starts its meeting on Tuesday. Minutes published last month showed that several officials were concerned about the banking crisis.

Therefore, there is a likelihood that the Fed will consider pausing its interest rates in this meeting. The alternative is that the bank will decide to hike rates by 0.25% and then point to a strategic pause in the near term.

A change of tune by the Federal Reserve will be bullish for Bitcoin and Ethereum prices. Historically, cryptocurrencies tend to do well when the Fed is pivoting.

The daily chart shows that the ETH price has been in a bullish trend in the past few weeks. The coin has moved above the 50-day and 25-day exponential moving averages. This is a bullish sign. It has moved above the ascending trendline shown in green.

It has also moved slightly below the key resistance level at $2,032, which was the highest point on August 12 last year. It is at the 23.6% Fibonacci Retracement level. Therefore, there is a likelihood that Ethereum will have a bullish breakout as buyers target the key resistance point at $2,500.

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Ethereum price prediction: Here's why FRC collapse matters - CoinJournal

05/1 update below. This post was originally published on April 29

BitcoinBTC, ethereum and other major cryptocurrencies have rocketed higher so far this year (despite a stark warning that China, Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve could "destroy all value of bitcoin").

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The bitcoin price has doubled from its late 2022 lows to around $30,000 per bitcoin while ethereum and other top ten cryptocurrencies BNBBNB, XRPXRP, cardano, dogecoin, polygon and solana have added a combined $200 billion to the crypto marketfueling hopes "crypto winter" could finally be over.

Now, technology investor Balaji Srinivasan has explained the rationale behind his $1 million bitcoin price bet, telling a bitcoin and crypto conference that he's "burning a million to tell you they're printing trillions."

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Srinivasan, an early bitcoin investor and former chief technology officer at crypto exchange Coinbase, made headlines in March when he predicted the U.S. dollar would enter a hyperinflationary death spiral and the bitcoin price would climb to $1 million by June 16an increase of over 3,000% from its current level that would give bitcoin a market capitalization of around $20 trillion.

However, he's now dialed that back but remains highly skeptical of the U.S. financial system due to the proliferation of money printing by the government to prop up fragile banks, calling his bet a "directional signal" to "raise awareness of the fiat crisis."

05/1 update: Srinivasan has denied he's "backtracking" on this bitcoin bet, posting to Twitter: "I said 10% chance fiat crisis happens in months, 70% chance in years, 19% chance in decades, 1% in centuries. But 10% is very high, and worth drawing attention to. Others also believe the probability of sovereign default is at all time highs."

The U.S. government is currently approaching a debt ceiling, with the deadline to raise the $31.4 trillion limit fast approaching and causing concern for investors.

Srinivasan also said he'd give an update to his bet "soon," adding: "Markets also put the probability of U.S. sovereign default at all time highs. And that's just debt-ceiling-driven explicit default. Doesn't include all the routes to monetizing debt."

"I dont know how many monthsyearswe have," Balaji said during Coindesk's Consensus conference this week. "If you think like a trader, you think that too early is the same as being wrong. If you think like a prepper, hell is truth seen too late."

Just to quantify it, I think we have a 10% chance of a very serious issue in months, 70% in years, 19% in decades, and 1% it takes a century or so on," Balaji said, referring to a so-called "black swan"-style event. "Could it be that it takes 900 days or even 90 months? It's possible, I don't have a 100% probability on it. I may be wrong, but I'm burning a million to tell you they're printing trillions."

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This week, the banking crisis that saw the demise of Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse and crypto-friendly banks Signature and Silvergate earlier this year has hit San Francisco-based First Republic.

Government officials and agencies are in talks to rescue First Republic after it suffered $100 billion of outflows and its share price crashed by 98% this year while interest ratesthat have rocketed at a historical pace over the last 12 monthshave heavily weighed on the value of the bank's mortgage book and other assets.

"Trust the Fed, end up dead," Balaji added. "Fed lied, banks died."

Fresh concerns swirling around the U.S. banking system have pushed the bitcoin price higher this week, reflecting a similar bitcoin, ethereum, BNB, XRP, polygon, dogecoin and solana price boom earlier this year during the Silicon Valley Bank banking crisis.

"The revelation of First Republic Banks fragile business condition has fueled bitcoins rally through $29,000, however, the price was rejected at the $30,000 psychological level on Wednesday and has been struggling to break past that level ever since," Yuya Hasegawa, bitcoin and crypto market analyst at Toky0-based Bitbank, said in an emailed note.

I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business around the world. As the founding editor of Verdict.co.uk I reported on how technology is changing business, political trends, and the latest culture and lifestyle. I have covered the rise of bitcoin and cryptocurrency since 2012 and have charted its emergence as a niche technology into the greatest threat to the established financial system the world has ever seen and the most important new technology since the internet itself. I have worked and written for CityAM, the Financial Times, and the New Statesman, amongst others. Follow me on Twitter @billybambrough or email me on billyATbillybambrough.com.Disclosure: I occasionally hold some small amount of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

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Theyre Printing TrillionsCrypto Now Braced For A $20 Trillion Black Swan After Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, XRP, Cardano, Dogecoin, Polygon And Solana...