Welcome to the Protocol, Coindesk’s weekly wrapping of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I am Ben Schiller, Coindesk’s opinion and contains editor.
In this number:
- Ethereums Wall Street Cheerleader
- Avalanche cuts off fees by 75%
- The violence integrates Bitcoin
- UBS TESTER ZKSYNC for gold
This article is shown in the latest edition of The protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the technology behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here To get it in your inbox every Wednesday.
Network news
Ethereums Wall Street guy: Ethereum faces an identity crisis. Its native token, ether (ETH), is underpinned against competitors, and long -time builders begin to question whether the chain’s technology falls afterwards – and whether its society loses focus. The Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit that stewards Ethereum’s development, has been blamed for many of the network’s matches. Co -founder Vitalik Barterin is at the forefront of a massive leadership shakes the organization, but his central influence over the process has given rise to his own controversy. Meanwhile, rival ecosystems like Solana utilize uncertainty, attract top talent and surpass ETH on the market. In the middle of this turbulence, a new project, Etherealize, aims to bring Eth to Wall Street. Founded by former banker Vivek Raman, Etherealize is trying to bridge the traditional economy and Ethereum and place ETH as a serious asset class. Raman, who spent a decade in banking before discovering crypto, believes his traditional financing background gives him a unique perspective. He has spent over the past four years laying the foundation of Etherealize and choosing to launch in January-a time of increased market optimism driven by expectations of a crypticly-related White House, even when Ethereum seizes internal disputes and pricing. In an interview with Coindesk’s Margaux Nijkerk, Raman talks about how he came to create etherealization, how this group markets ETH on Wall Street and discusses banks’ views on LAG-2 rollups. Read more.
Avalanche reduces user costs: The cost of using Avalanche, a defi-focused smart contract Blockchain, has fallen since the implementation of the Avalanche9000 upgrade on December 16 and sent up the number of transactions by more than a third. Since the upgrade, Proof-of-Stake Blockchains use fees known as gas on average on average approx. 75% less than in the months in advance, data from flipside and bitquery show. The number of transactions has increased by 38% to an average of 354,691 a day. Avalanche, the world’s fifth largest smart contract Blockchain of the market value of its original token Avax, boasts a multi-structure of C-chain that handles smart contracts, p-chain for controlling efforts and validator coordination and x-chain to treat the treatment of asset transfers. The upgrade included seven improvement suggestions, including ACP-125, which lowered the base fee to run smart contracts on C-chain to 1 Navax from 25 Navax. A Navax is a billionth of an Avax. The upgrade also replaced the hefty validator fee of 2,000 AVAX with a monthly subscription of 1 to 10 Avax, opening doors for projects of all sizes to introduce LAG 1 (L1) protocols in avalanches. The goal of the upgrade was to make any component of Avalanche Tech Stack cheaper by reducing C-chain fees and removing capital requirements for L1 validators, Stephen Buttolph, Ava Labs’ Chief Protocol Architect, told Decrypt in November. Read more.
UBS TESTS ZKSYNC: Swiss bank giant UBS said it ended a proof-of-concept of its UBS Key4 Gold offering at Ethereum Layer-2 network Zksync. The simulation performed on a ZKSync test network is a sign of renewed interest in blockchain technology among traditional financial institutions. This is not UBS ‘first experiment with blockchain. The bank previously launched a tokenized money market investment fund, Umint, which is also built at Ethereum. UBS ‘Key4 Gold is one of the bank’s offerings that lets its Swiss clients buy a direct claim for physical gold. “It allows for fractional gold investments with pricing of real time, deep liquidity, safe physical storage and optional physical delivery,” the team said in a press release shared with Coindesk. The project is already available on the bank’s private blockchain, UBS Gold Network, but the team was looking for ways to scale its project while retaining its privacy. “They came to the conclusion that only zero-knowledge made sense to them, and therefore they would really put this into practice for a product that they already have live and what it might look like if they use valid instead, “Pearl Imbach, a senior business development manager at Matter Labs, the largest developer company behind Zksync, Coindesk told in an interview. Zksync is a zero-knowledge rollup, a type of layer 2 scaling system aimed at increasing the speed of blockchain transactions and reducing their fees using zero-knowledge cryptography. One validum is another type of layer-2 that is similar to it for a merger but stores the data about these transactions off-chain. The test transaction can signal that UBS could take a closer look at using Layer-2 technologies to run some of its activities. However, the bank did not say if they would come out with their own Layer-2, and Matter Labs’ Imbach told Coindesk that a merger may not be the right fit for them. “Is this the right product [for UBS]? Maybe not, but it’s something we just talk about openly and think about what could actually be a good use of use for them, ”IMBACH COINDKEK said. Read more.
The violence brings BTC: Arbitumum, one of the leading Layer-2 networks, has announced a new integration with Bitcoin through Bitcoinos, a smart contract system for the leading crypto. The integration allows for a “hybrid rollup” that provides several ways for Bitcoin holders to interact with Ethereum. “Bitcoinos’ integration with Arbitum demonstrates how our technology can support innovative Bitcoin ecosystem expansion,” said Nina Rong, head of partnerships at the Arbitum Foundation. “This collaboration shows the ability of arbitum to enable trust -free bridal formation and programmability for Bitcoin, while maintaining the network’s core security principles. We are pleased to see Bitcoinos gearing our network to lock the massive $ 2 billion Bitcoin liquidity pool to DEFI and SMART CONTRACT -Applications. ” The violence already has the highest tvl for any Ethereum L2 (about $ 16 billion) as well as 8,333 wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC).
Money Center
Top cats
- Taproot Wizards will spend $ 30 million in new financing to build an ecosystem of applications using OP_CAT Bitcoin Improvement proposal, an Ethereum-like smart contract functionality for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin runs down payments
- The amount of ransom paid in Bitcoin decreases when more victims refuse to pay, chain analysis said.
Legislative and politics
- Fresh stablecoin legislation comes to the US Senate, the first of many expected crypto bills to be filed in the coming weeks. The Bill of Senator Hagty from Tennessee divides supervisory responsibility for stableco -issuers between states and the federal government.
