Mediaboss Marketing

A little over a month ago, Ethereum underwent a major technology upgrade that allowed investors to withdraw their "staked," or locked up, coins on the network for the first time ever. The change, known as Shanghai or Shapella, was meant to bring more liquidity to the network by allowing investors to withdraw their staked assets. There were initial concerns about potential sell pressure that might hit the market as a result. However, more liquidity also means developers can create better and more differentiated applications on the network. Ether 's price has fallen about 14% over the past month, though it's still up more than 50% year to date, according to Coin Metrics. Many of the down moves have been more closely tied to investor concerns about the economy and the likelihood of a recession, as well as the health of the U.S. banking sector. Staking trends have beaten expectations, however. As of Tuesday, the total amount of ether staked is about 18.2 million, and there are about 573,000 validators on the network, who are earning an average return of 5.5%, according to Beaconcha.in, an Ethereum blockchain data tracker. Fees on Ethereum are the highest they've been in a year, according to CryptoQuant, which leads to higher yields for investors who stake their ether. The total value of ether staked has risen, while the supply has fallen dramatically. "In the month since [Shapella], Ethereum has seen record staking inflows, so more and more investors are recognizing ETH, especially staking ETH, as a competitor to U.S. T-bills with an equivalent 5% yield and now a duration below 30 days," said Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck. "After the initial backlog of withdrawals the backlog to withdraw ETH is now down to zero days and there's a 30-day backlog to enter the staking queue. So compared to what expectations were a month ago, we've flipped completely," he added. The backlog of withdrawals in April was dominated by the crypto exchange Kraken, which was forced to get out of the staking business by the Securities and Exchange Commission in February. There's a limited number of investors who can withdraw their coins at any given time due to the two-day "unbonding" period the amount of time a blockchain delegator waits before they can move or sell their tokens and a variable exit queue that changes based on the number of participants in line. Some expected that post-Shapella, investors would wait as long as 30 days to 60 days to exit. Here's what else has happened in the month since Shapella: 1. Staked ETH is at record highs The total volume of staked ether has hit a record high of 21 million ETH, and the daily volume of ether being staked is at its highest since November 2020, according to CryptoQuant. Many worried that with the new ability to withdraw their locked up funds, investors would take the opportunity immediately and dump millions of ether onto the market, Owen Lau, an analyst at Oppenheimer said. "It looks like the initial selling pressure is done, and people feel more comfortable about the staking now," he said. "And that's how you attract more investors to come back in." 2. Higher fees As network activity spiked, fees surged to their highest level in a year, according to CryptoQuant. Some skeptics believed ether yields could decline with a rise in staking, Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani pointed out in a note Monday. So far, however, ETH fees have outpaced the growth in the amount of ether staked, leading to higher yields, he said. 3. More depositors on the network The number of new stakers has accelerated since Shapella. The number of unique depositors has grown about 8% since April 12, with people being more willing to lock up their funds for a return now that they're also able to withdraw them, according to CryptoQuant's Julio Moreno.

Link:

It's been a month since the big Shapella upgrade. Here's how ... - CNBC

The launch of BRC-20 tokens and Ordinals NFTs on Bitcoin has transformed the No. 1 blockchain overnight into a clunkier version of Ethereum.

The core developers and miners who signed off on the networks Taproot upgrade in November 2021 never envisaged this would be the result. Bitcoin now suffers from many of the same problems that have bedeviled Ethereum for years, including scammy memecoins and shitcoins, NFTs of monkey pictures hogging block space and skyrocketing transaction fees.

The network is even having to deal with incidences of miner extractable value (MEV), whereby miners profit by reordering pending transactions.

Im kind of upset at myself for not realizing, says Quantum Economics founder Mati Greenspan, a Bitcoiner since 2013.

It took these guys starting to hype up JPEGs on Bitcoin until I was like: Oh shit, what did we just do? He laughs ruefully.

Some Bitcoiners on Bitcointalk and Twitter refer to the impact of Ordinal NFTs and BRC-20 tokens as an attack on Bitcoin, an exploit of Taproot, or simply as spam clogging up the network.

Its sparked a fierce debate over whether unexpected outcomes are precisely the sort of outcomes you should expect from a permissionless protocol, or whether something needs to be done to get rid of them.

BRC-20 tokens were only launched by anonymous developer Domo back on March 8. They use Ordinal inscriptions of JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data to deploy token contracts, mint tokens and transfer tokens. Some argue this is horribly inefficient and costs four times as much in transaction fees as if they just used binary.

Alongside the inefficiencies, theres also a gold rush for minting memecoins. Someone will deploy a contract with a ticker for a new token and a max supply, and then traders rush in to mint as many as possible in the series, on a first come, first served basis, at whatever fee rate gets them priority. These tokens have already surpassed $1 billion in market cap even though Domo argues they will be worthless.

But they are here to stay at least in the short term with major wallets already adding support for BRC-20 tokens. And newer developments, such as the launch of a Uniswap fork that amassed $500,000 in trading of smart BRC-20 tokens (SBRC-20) in just a few days, suggest that the building of a permissionless new ecosystem on Bitcoin is set to continue.

Greenspan points out that while the flurry of interest has seen Bitcoin transactions hit an all-time high, the number of unique addresses plummeted, meaning fewer people are accessing the network. And while transaction fee revenue has overtaken the block reward seen by many as the only way to ensure Bitcoins security after another couple of halvings it comes with a lot of issues.

I spoke to one miner yesterday who said his revenue has doubled, which is nice, especially ahead of the halving, so its good for miners, but its terrible for the countries of Nigeria and El Salvador, for example, where, suddenly, the average cost to send a transaction is $30, he says. The dream of financial inclusion on Bitcoin has been temporarily postponed.

Read also: What its actually like to use Bitcoin in El Salvador

Interestingly, this isnt the first time someone has put a token or NFTs onto Bitcoin. Counterparty led the way with NFTs on Bitcoin, with Spells of Genesis and Rare Pepes in 2015 and 2016. And stablecoin Tether also launched a token on Bitcoin back in 2014 via the Mastercoin protocol (which later became Omni).

On Bitcointalk, there is much discussion of fighting off the attack on Bitcoin, with some claiming its the work of malicious Bitcoin SV devs. Users are talking about a soft fork to enforce strict Taproot validation script size, ways the protocol can filter out what they see as spam or even a hard fork to reverse Taproot.

Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr stated that action should have been taken months ago. Spam filtration has been a standard part of Bitcoin Core since Day 1. Its a mistake that the existing filters werent extended to Taproot transactions [] since this is a bugfix, it doesnt really even need to wait for a major release.

Glassnodes lead on-chain analyst, Checkmate, tells Magazine that he believes this sort of censorship is against the entire ethos of Bitcoin and notes there are already optional mempool rules enabling node operators to filter ordinals if they choose.

From my view, any attempt to ban or censor these transactions is far more of an attack on Bitcoin than leaving them be. They are within consensus rules, and when a loud minority of individuals want to change the rules to stop something they dont like, that is the real attack.

But podcaster Chris Blec made the case on Twitter that limiting transaction types to ensure the health of the network wasnt censorship.

If it doesnt depend on the content of the message or the sender of the message, then its not censorship, he said.

Hass McCook, a former member of the Bitcoin Mining Council and a Bitcoin true believer, is no fan of Ordinals but thinks trying to get rid of them is a step too far, saying:

The only thing more important than Bitcoin is freedom. My general take is I personally dont like it and dont see value in it. But I dont want to censor it. I think that could go down a very dark path.

If the protocol allows for something and somebody is happy to pay to do that thing, then it is what it is.

Andrew Poelstra, director of research for Blockstream, is one of the inventors of Taproot. He doesnt like the upgrades toxic offspring either but doesnt see any practical way to stop them.

As near as I can tell, there is no sensible way to prevent people from storing arbitrary data in witnesses without incentivizing even worse behavior and/or breaking legitimate use cases, he wrote.

Read also: Is Bitcoin a religion? If not, it soon could be

Its not going to be possible just to ban useless data, he said, noting that people could just hide useless data like NFTs inside of useful data like dummy signatures or public keys.

Doing so would incur a 2x cost to them, but if 2x is enough to incentivize storage, then theres no need to have this discussion because they will be forced to stop due to fee market competition anyway.

The best-case scenario and the most likely, according to interviewees for this piece is that interest in the tokens and NFTs will die down as the memecoin fad plays out.

Network congestion on Bitcoin is not a new thing, right? says Greenspan. It usually comes with hype. But also it leaves when the hype is over.

Whats most likely to happen is people are gonna run out of money.

But if Ordinals continue to have an outsized impact on the network, theres always the nuclear option of forking Bitcoin to modify or remove Taproot. Blec and many others have raised the possibility, though it seems mostly hypothetical at this stage.

Greenspan says, while its always possible to implement a hard fork, itll split the network. And nobody wants that.

McCook says the market chose Bitcoin, rather than Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV during the scaling wars in 2017, and he predicts the current version would win over a fork with Taproot.

Id take the Ordinals one. So, even though I dont find any value in Ordinals, maybe I need to inscribe something in the future that I need to have absolute censorship resistance, he says.

This could potentially have pretty powerful implications. Lets say Julian Assange decided to do his WikiLeaks info dump as an inscription, this is a very useful thing.

Greenspan also believes the benefits of using Bitcoin to store data have only just begun to be explored.

People are now aware that Bitcoin has the ability to store files. And Im excited to see what, you know, forward-thinking developers will do with this new tool. More than just creating memes.

When he released BRC-20, Domo added, I believe there are almost certainly better design choices and optimization improvements to be made.

Plenty of people agree. One of the easiest improvements would be to use binary rather than the JSON format, which developer John W. Ratcliff argues is one of the most inefficient data formats anyone could use. He believes this would reduce BRC-20 tokens from 89 bytes to 19.

This means that they are paying over four times as much in fees to commit these BRC-20 tokens than necessary, he said.

Hashrate Index researcher Colin Harper says that using binary code could reduce bandwidth by as much as 80%. However, this wouldnt entirely solve the problem, as Bitcoin influencer Udi Wertheimer points out, given the spike in fees is due to token minting degens bidding up fees to get their transaction prioritized into order to mint or snatch up low serial number tokens before the supply runs out.

Theres also another way to issue assets on Bitcoin called Taro, which Domo says is a better solution. Taproot Asset Representation Overlay is a proposed protocol that will allow people to issue digital assets on Bitcoin that can be transferred to Lightning for fast and cheap transactions.

Read also: Attack of the zkEVMs! Cryptos 10x moment

A much more radical and experimental approach is being taken by Trustless Computer, which is behind a Uniswap v2 fork called Trustless Market that enabled $500,000 worth of swaps in its first three days.

The projects documentation states its working toward a Turing-complete virtual machine called BVM built on top of Bitcoin to enable a DeFi ecosystem.

Core team member @punk3700 tells Magazine it is not a layer 2, its a protocol within layer 1 that works like Ordinals but uses SBRC-20s.

Instead of writing text files to Bitcoin, Trustless Computer writes smart contract transactions to Bitcoin. Raw files vs. programs/logic/apps. He claims this cuts down the bandwidth required for the tokens by 80%90%.

I think the BRC-20 in their current form (using text files) are a flash in the pan, he says. You cant use paper and pen to build an alternative scalable financial instrument.

Our SBRC-20 implementation is different. We use smart contracts, the same ERC-20 smart contract on Ethereum. It works exactly as programmed.

Ordinals is v0.1 of what is possible on Bitcoin. Trustless Computer shows that you can build a full DApp ecosystem on Bitcoin.

He expects that well see MakerDAO, Aave, Compound and other smart contracts deployed soon, which, if it works as he claims it will, would be a huge change for Bitcoin.

While the project has recieved coverage in other major crypto news outlets, Magazine hasnt verified their tech works as promised, and the extent to which you can integrate smart contracts with Bitcoin is debatable, so tread carefully.

The influx of NFTs and token minting on Bitcoin has shown the blockchain remains unable to scale to deal with increased demand, meaning the more popular it gets, the worse it works.

The Lightning Network is usually touted as the solution, but Nostr creator Fiatjaf noted it has been unable to cope with the recent fee spike. Channels are too fragile, it costs a lot to open a channel under a high fee environment, to run a routing node and so on, he wrote, stating that users instead had to rely on the centralized Lightning providers.

Greenspan believes that gradual progress toward scaling is the only safe solution to ensure Bitcoin remains bulletproof.

Weve seen Segway; weve seen Taproot. I mean, these are, these are good progressions and steady scaling. Which is whats best usually for a decentralized network of this size. You dont want to rush things because you might break them. As weve seen.

Read Also: Reformed altcoin slayer Eric Wall on shitposting and scaling Ethereum

Various parties, including StarkWare and blockchain researcher Eric Wall, have been investigating scaling Bitcoin using zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups, which is Ethereums plan to solve its very similar challenges.

But ironically, while the surge in demand caused by Ordinals has shown that further scaling is required, its also made it much less likely the community would agree to a new hard fork to enable ZK-rollups. After all, they voted for Taproot and look what happened?

I doubt that will ever happen, says Checkmate.

I am also skeptical of even a soft fork since the unintended consequences of the witness discount have woken everyone up to the risks of change.

Subscribe

The most engaging reads in blockchain. Delivered once a week.

Based in Melbourne, Andrew Fenton is a journalist and editor covering cryptocurrency and blockchain. He has worked as a national entertainment writer for News Corp Australia, on SA Weekend as a film journalist, and at The Melbourne Weekly.

More here:

Ordinals turned Bitcoin into a worse version of Ethereum: Can we fix ... - Cointelegraph

Subscribe to updates Unsubscribe from updates

The world of Fintech is continuously growing, so naturally, that means the technology part of the industry is continuously growing too. Every year something new and exciting develops from crypto thanks to its ever-evolving nature and the hard work of the teams behind them, but its also thanks to the blockchain.

The blockchain is everything, and its important to know exactly which projects play a large role in improving it. This article will talk about how the tech implemented by top cryptos Ethereum (ETH) and Polkadot (DOT) contributes to this, as well as how new 2023 cryptos like DogeMiyagi (MIYAGI) take part in that too.

Both of these top crypto platforms are similar in various ways, which is likely part of the reason theyve been part of many different ground-breaking changes in crypto tech. Ethereum is the biggest blockchain network in the world and hosts the second biggest crypto on the market, with Ether coming after Bitcoin alone in market cap.

Something tech-related that sets Ethereum apart from the many Layer-1 networks that have arisen in order to compete with it, is its Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM. The EVM, at its core, is a runtime environment that executes smart contracts, acting similarly to a virtual sandbox where developers can use state-of-the-art functions to develop the best decentralized applications. The smart contracts are written with a programming language called Solidity. Solidity is like a versatile tool that allows developers to craft intricate smart contracts with all sorts of fancy features.

Polkadot is similarly a blockchain platform, though unlike Ethereum, which acts as a host to protocols and other cryptos, Polkadot works as a hub that connects otherwise incompatible networks together, allowing users to perform transactions and transfer their assets across in a secure manner without any loss of speed or data. Instead of relying on a single chain, Polkadot connects multiple specialized blockchains called parachains.

At the heart of Polkadots brilliance lies the relay chain. The relay chain maintains consensus and provides security for the entire Polkadot ecosystem. Its like the gatekeeper of a secret garden, ensuring that everything runs smoothly and securely. Polkadot also brings a magical touch of interoperability to the table. It allows parachains to communicate and share data with ease, creating a harmonious symphony of blockchain connectivity.

While meme coin newcomer DogeMiyagi isnt as blockchain-related as Ethereum and Polkdaot, they are still connected on a level that is encouraging much of the support this project is currently receiving despite still being in early presale. You see, its more than just another meme coin. The platform is directly connected to Ethereum as it is powered by it, meaning it reaps all the benefits that come from Ethereums technology. Everything outlined in its future, from the huge 5 stage token burn to the planned NFT marketplace, will be established using the best of the blockchain abilities.

DogeMiyagi is also much more than that. As Ethereum moves away from the PoW consensus that many older cryptos were built on, such as Bitcoin (BTC) itself, the coins hosted on its network will use the environmentally friendly PoS consensus too, which of course, means DogeMiyagi will also. On top of that, the platform will launch its own Killer Swap Machine, which will allow the community to swap their cryptos without any unnecessary go-betweens.

The blockchain will continue to evolve, and alongside it, the technology that allows it to run in the first place. It will rapidly integrate itself with our day-to-day lives, and crypto will continue to become a norm encountered by us all, regardless of any interest you may have in the market itself. With that in mind, it only makes sense to invest in the projects that are pushing this change, as well as ones like DogeMiyagi that will benefit from it the most.

For More On DogeMiyagi:

Website: https://dogemiyagi.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_Dogemiyagi_

Telegram: https://t.me/dogemiyagi

Read more here:

Clash of The Blockchain Titans! How Ethereum, Polkadot, and DogeMiyagi are All Breaking Technological Ground - Coin Rivet

Innovation is a hallmark of the crypto space, and there is always something new happening. To survive in a fierce and unpredictable market, staying ahead of the game is crucial.

With Ethereum (ETH) dominating the smart contract platform market, alternative protocols such as Solana (SOL) are betting on unique strategies to attract new users. Meanwhile, a new meme coin, PAT WARS (PAWS), is entering the market, combining cat memes and Star Wars references to create a user-centric platform.

Lets dive deeper into these exciting developments.

As the competition to dethrone Ethereum intensifies, Solana is betting on in-person Hacker Houses to draw in new developers and investors. With network congestion and high gas fees affecting Ethereum, alternative smart contract platforms are looking for ways to gain an edge. Solanas Hacker Houses, hosted by the Solana Foundation, have become an integral part of its ecosystem.

These events provide a rare opportunity for the Solana community to come together and collaborate in person, something that is increasingly rare in a world dominated by online channels. These international events, which now number 29, were first established as a loose association of programmers at Breakpoint Lisbon in 2021.

By placing bets on this unique strategy, Solana hopes to gain an advantage over its competitors.

Ethereum has cemented its position in the market thanks to its pioneering smart contracts and decentralized applications. Its first-mover advantage has allowed it to build a self-sustaining ecosystem that consistently attracts new users and developers.

Popular decentralized applications like Uniswap, Compound, and Aave have emerged as key players in the DeFi sector, further solidifying ETHs foothold.

Despite the emergence of newer cryptocurrencies boasting advanced technology, Ethereums wide array of applications, ranging from DeFi to NFTs, has enabled it to maintain sustained relevance.

PAT WARS (PAWS) is a new meme coin that has just launched its presale.

Combining cat memes and Star Wars references, PAT WARS aims to achieve balance in the cryptocurrency universe through an innovative and user-centric platform. The four Jedi Cats led project is built on the Ethereum platform and has an impressive ecosystem.

PAWS holders govern the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and make decisions together to steer the projects spaceship. Additionally, PAT WARS has an NFT collection featuring each of the four Jedi Cats, granting access to exclusive content, events, and immersive experiences.

Although it is unclear whether PAWS will emulate other popular meme coins, its original mashup of cat memes and Star Wars themes may draw a devoted following.

The crypto space is constantly evolving, and it will be exciting to see what new innovations emerge in the coming years. One notable area of innovation is in the development of Layer 2 scaling solutions, which aim to address some of the scalability issues that have plagued blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Solana and PAT WARS stand a good chance at longevity if they continue to innovate and change with the tide.

Website: https://www.patwars.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PATWARSOfficial

Telegram: https://t.me/PATWARS

Read the original post:

Think Cryptocurrency, Think Innovation: Ethereum, Solana And PAT ... - Analytics Insight

AI is already becoming part of everyday life (WireImage)

Most stories that imagine a world where artificial intelligence supersedes our own involve machines waging war on humanity. In these tales we become slaves, pets or a biological underclass to our mechanical betters. As companies plough more resources into generative AI, experts in the field are warning of the corrosive effect the technology might have on our civilisation. Long before we are forced to form guerrilla groups to take back the planet, there are some more present (but equally troubling) problems with which to contend.

We are currently at the start of a new era in technology. This one promises to be more revolutionary and disruptive than the invention of the internet, the smartphone or cloud computing. AI is already re-shaping things like education, publishing, and the arts. Soon it will deeply affect the things that sustain us as a civilisation. That is law, democracy, human rights, and geopolitics.

Consider the few early experiments when it comes to crime and AI. Last year, researchers from the University of Chicago created an AI model that analysed incidents of crime in the city, taking in data from between 2014 and 2016. Then they programmed the AI to predict the pattern of crime in the coming weeks. The experiment showed that this method was able to predict crime with 90 per cent accuracy.

If this method was rolled out broadly in cities, it makes sense to assume that police forces could better deploy and drastically reduce things like violence, vandalism, and drugs. Perhaps, but there is a fear that this sort of approach confirms biases. For instance, the more crimes are reported, the more police patrol a particular area. More police usually means more arrests.

If were concerned about human biases being replicated in our AI systems, the problem gets worse as the technology is more heavily relied upon by leaders and governments.

Writing in The Economist, Yuval Noah Harari predicts that we will see the impact of AI in politics as soon as the next US election: Forget about school essays. Think of the next American presidential race in 2024, and try to imagine the impact of AI tools that can be made to mass-produce political content, fake-news stories and scriptures for new cults.

Story continues

Indeed, some are already concerned at the projected wave of fabricated images and automated disinformation that might blight democracy. Crucially, its the speed with which they can be created that is alarming - fact checkers might not be able to keep up.

When it comes to the big decisions, some start-ups are already allowing bots to call the shots (see AIsthetic Apparel, a t-shirt company run by GPT-4, the most advanced form of ChatGPT). But things would become altogether scarier were elected officials to punch knotty policy problems into a language model before acting on what is thrown back.

The fast-evolving world of AI offers an increasing set of opportunities for administrations that wish to subjugate citizens. Specifically, autocrats will have better tools to centralise information and monitor those within their borders. In this future, AI could be used to predict dissent and enable the state to stamp it out fast and with little fuss.

Perhaps the biggest fear isnt that AI will help dictators, but that it will become one itself. Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the godfather of AI, left his job at Google at the start of May, publicly joining the group of experts who warn of dire consequences should a superintelligence emerge.

Hinton worries that we will arrive at this point sooner than we might think and that the AI threat may be more urgent than even climate change: With climate change, its very easy to recommend what you should do: you just stop burning carbon. For this its not at all clear what you should do.

Our human civilisation is at a crossroads and the stakes are high. A fight against machines wont look like anything from a sci-fi film. Its a war that will be waged with regulation, laws and sensible debate. And when the minds that helped create the beast are taking up arms against it, its a battle that may have already begun.

Read the original:
The threat of AI: Just how dangerous is artificial intelligence? - Yahoo Eurosport UK