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ETH Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Says The Merge Could Happen in August, There’s Also ‘Risk of Delay’

21/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

Following the statements from Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon at the Permissionless conference, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has further confirmed The Merge will likely happen in August. Buterin noted, however, that it’s quite possible there’s still a risk of delay, and The Merge could happen in September or October 2022.

The Merge Could Happen in August, Buterin Says

Just recently, Vitalik Buterin spoke at the ETH Shanghai Web 3.0 Developer Summit and Ethereum’s co-founder discussed the highly-anticipated proof-of-stake (PoS) transition. The Merge is scheduled to go live on Ethereum’s testnet Ropsten in 18 days on June 8, 2022.
During the ETH Shanghai Summit, Buterin explained that the transition will be a major test for the entire Ethereum ecosystem. “This will be a major test, larger than any of the tests that we have done before,” Buterin stressed. “Taking a large existing test network with many applications with proof-of-work, moving into proof-of-stake.”

Furthermore, Buterin confirmed that The Merge may be implemented by August, as ETH software developer Preston Van Loon had said the same at the Permissionless conference. However, while Buterin did mention the month of August, he also eluded to delays.
“If there are no problems then the merge will happen in August,” the Ethereum co-founder said. “But of course, there’s always a risk of problems. There’s also a risk of delays. And so September is possible and October is possible as well,” Buterin added.
Meanwhile, The Merge is the first of Ethereum’s major upgrades following the London upgrade, which implemented ETH’s burn mechanism. Following The Merge, Ethereum will implement The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and finally The Splurge.
The Surge aims to help improve scaling by leveraging zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups) via sharding techniques. Ethereum’s The Verge transition will apply Verkle trees in order to achieve statelessness by using the Merkle proof upgrade.

The Purge will add an EVM simplification track and eliminate historical data and technical debt, according to the Ethereum roadmap. Finally, The Splurge revolves around “Miscellaneous but important extras.”
Buterin also talked about The Surge and noted that after these two upgrades (Merge & Surge), Ethereum will be “a great system.”

What do you think about Vitalik Buterin’s comments about The Merge and the Ethereum roadmap? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Cumulative NFT Sales Among 18 Blockchain Networks Surpass $36 Billion

20/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

Cumulative NFT Sales Among 18 Blockchain Networks Surpasses $36 Billion

Statistics recorded this week show that the aggregate number of non-fungible token (NFT) sales, settled across more than a dozen different blockchains, has officially surpassed $36 billion. While there are 18 competing blockchains offering NFTs, Ethereum-based NFT sales dominate by more than 75%. While Ronin commands the second-largest amount of NFT sales, NFTs from the game Axie Infinity have been the top-selling collection for quite some time, with more than $4 billion in global sales to date.

$36 Billion in All-Time NFT Sales, Ethereum Dominates Sales by More Than 75%

The world of blockchain-based digital collectibles has been a force to reckon with as the NFT ecosystem has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. This week’s metrics indicate that all-time NFT sales have surpassed $36 billion to date.

The $36 billion in sales recorded on cryptoslam.io’s NFT dashboard stems from 18 different blockchains like Ethereum, Ronin, Solana, Avalanche, Wax, Polygon, and Flow to name a few. Ethereum’s $27 billion in NFT sales, however, represents 75.02% of the total number of sales across all the chains.

The top blockchains in terms of all-time NFT sales besides Ethereum include Ronin ($4B), Solana ($2.2B), Flow ($1B), Polygon ($591M), Wax ($430M), Avalanche ($277M), Immutablex ($98.7M), Palm ($50.5M), and Tezos ($40.4M). All-time NFT sales from the top nine blockchains add up to approximately 24.61% of the non-Ethereum-based NFT sales.

The remaining nine blockchains below Tezo’s position only represent 0.37% of the $36 billion in all-time NFT sales volume. Ethereum’s 1,300,118 NFT buyers and Ronin’s 1,742,207 NFT buyers are the only two chains with more than a million unique NFT buyers.

Out of the $36 billion in NFT sales, the top NFT collection in terms of all-time sales is Axie Infinity, which has seen more than $4 billion in sales. The second-largest collection in terms of sales is Cryptopunks, which has seen $2.24 billion in sales.

Cryptopunks is followed by Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) which has recorded $2.12 billion in all-time sales. BAYC is followed by Mutant Ape Yacht Club ($1.52M), Artblocks ($1.25M), NBA Top Shot ($1M), Otherdeeds ($906K), Azuki ($756K), Clonex ($671K), and Veefriends ($538K).

Most Expensive NFTs Stem from Veefriends, BAYC, Cryptopunks, Cyberkong — Opensea Still Commands the Most Amount of Sales by an NFT Marketplace

All-time sales metrics from cryptoslam.io’s dashboard indicate that the most expensive NFT sold is Veefriends’ “Thoughtful Three Horned Harpik,” which sold for 100,000 ether or $316 million. The Veefriends NFT is followed by Cryptopunk 5822 which sold for 8,000 ether or $23.7 million.

Five of the most expensive NFTs sold out of the top ten are BAYC NFTs and two are Cryptopunks. Other collections in the most expensive NFT top ten list included Meebits 10,761 and Cyberkong VX 8252.

Out of all the NFTs sold, most are purchased on the NFT marketplace Opensea with the market Looksrare following the platform’s lead. Other notable NFT marketplaces include Magic Eden, Flow’s NBA Top Shot market, Mobox, Solanart, Wax’s Atomicmarket, Bloctobay, and Rarible.

While billions of dollars worth of NFTs have been sold during the last few weeks, NFT sales have been dropping significantly. Weekly NFT trade volumes are down and weekly NFT sales have also floundered during the past few weeks. If the crypto economy is truly in a bear market cycle it will be interesting to see how the NFT industry handles the downturn.

What do you think about the 18 blockchains recording $36 billion in all-time NFT sales? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

L1 Ethereum Network Fees Drop to Levels Not Seen in Over 2 Months, L2 Fees Follow

17/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

Ethereum network fees have dropped a great deal this week, sliding under $10 per transaction to levels not seen since March 10, 2022. On May 17, the average ethereum transfer fee is 0.0027 ether or $5.68 per transaction. The cheaper fees on layer one (L1) have made it so layer two (L2) fees have been between $0.02 and $1.13 per transfer.

Ethereum’s Onchain Fees Slide Lower Following a Brief Spike Last Week

This week is an optimal time to send ether or use the Ethereum network to swap coins as onchain transfer fees have dropped below the $10 mark. In fact, ether fees on average on May 17, 2022, are roughly around 0.0027 ether or $5.68 per transaction.

L1 fees on Ethereum have not been this low in 68 days, or since March 10. The lower fees follow a brief spike that took place during the Terra blockchain carnage on May 12, as fees were $31.19 per transfer on average that day.

With average network fees down this week, both median fees using L1 and L2 have dropped a great deal as well. At the time of writing on Tuesday morning (ET), the median network fee to transact on Ethereum is 0.0012 ether or $2.59 per transfer.

Median fees have dropped as low as $1.01, according to etherscan metrics on Tuesday. Etherscan data indicates that an Opensea sale could cost around $9.72 today, a decentralized exchange (dex) swap will cost $8.86, and transferring an ERC20 token will cost $2.60.

Ethereum’s L2 Fees Follow Drop in Onchain Transfer Costs

As usual, because onchain fees are cheaper, L2 fees have also seen a significant drop over the last five days since May 12. For instance, it costs roughly $0.02 per transfer using the Metis Network and roughly $0.10 to swap tokens.

While Metis is the cheapest L2, Loopring transfer fees are only $0.03 per ether transfer, and swapping tokens via Loopring will cost around $0.52. Zksync transfers are around $0.05 on Tuesday and swapping a coin will cost $0.13. The most expensive L2 today is Arbitrum One, as transfer fees are around $0.25 and a coin swap on Arbitrum is around $0.35.

The lower ether fees follow the network’s all-time hashrate high on May 13, 2022, at block 14,770,231. The network’s computational power hit 1.27 petahash per second (PH/s) that day, and continues to ride high.

Ethereum’s value has lost 41.8% year-to-date but ETH is still up over 482,570% since October 20, 2015, or roughly six years ago. ETH’s market valuation is 18.4% of the entire crypto economy’s net USD value, with a market capitalization of around $253 billion.

What do you think about Ethereum network fees sliding to new lows not seen in over two months? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Lido Deploys Additional Curve Pool to Improve Liquidity Around Bonded ETH Peg

13/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

On Friday, the value locked in decentralized finance (defi) protocols dropped to a low of $110.35 billion after there was more than $200 billion total value locked (TVL) eight days ago on May 5. One specific defi protocol called Lido, a liquid staking platform and the second largest defi application in terms of TVL size today, has lost significant value losing 49.66% during the past week.

Curve’s stETH:ETH Peg Skews, Lido Adds New Pool With Liquidity Incentives

While being exposed to the Terra blockchain blunder, Lido’s bonded ethereum tokens have been under pressure due to an imbalance on Curve’s bonded ethereum (stETH) and ethereum pool. The liquid staking defi protocol Lido announced that it was deploying liquidity incentives to Curve Finance in order to improve the imbalance that has been taking place around the stETH:ETH peg.

“We are deploying an additional Curve Finance pool to improve the liquidity around the stETH:ETH peg,” Lido tweeted on May 12, 2022. “This new pool will feature an additional 1M LDO in incentives for the next week and is currently almost empty, suggesting high rewards to initial depositors.” Before the announcement, Curve’s stETH:ETH pool was showing a 2% discount amid the chaos surrounding the Terra blockchain.

Crypto journalist Colin ‘Wu’ Blockchain explained what was taking place on Thursday. “The ETH/stETH asset ratio in Curve’s largest TVL steth (ETH+stETH) pool is skewed,” the journalist tweeted. “ETH/stETH=36.48%/63.52%, people are exchanging stETH back to ETH. Users who are using stETH for leveraged staking need to be aware of potential de-pegging risks.”

Team Plans to Migrate Curve and Balancer Pools, Lido’s TVL Shed $10.26 Billion in a Week’s Time

In the same Twitter thread, Lido described the firm’s plan to mitigate the issue on Curve’s platform. “[The plan is to] migrate liquidity from the existing Curve and Balancer pools to a new one (recommended deposit ratio at current rate is 13 stETH for every 1 wETH) to maximise rewards,” Lido added on Thursday. “The new pool contains 1,000,000 LDO for the next week in rewards.”

Some people questioned the move to create a new pool on the largest defi protocol in terms of value locked. “Is it a good idea? UST was attacked during liquidity migration,” one individual asked.

The liquid staking application Lido also had significant exposure to the Terra blockchain and 49.66% in value has left the platform since last week according to defillama.com stats. Lido currently holds $9.13 billion in value but on May 5, it held $19.39 billion. $10.26 billion has been removed from Lido’s TVL since May 5 and $4,130 in LUNA remains.

What do you think about Lido adding liquidity incentives to Curve’s pool? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Independent Russian News Site Meduza Raises Over $200,000 in Crypto

11/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

Pressure from the Kremlin and sanctions from the West have forced Russian news outlet Meduza to increasingly rely on cryptocurrency donations to fund its independent journalism. As the restrictions imposed over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine have prevented its Russian readers from contributing in fiat currency, the Riga-based website now accepts several digital coins.

Meduza Pulls Journalists out of Russia, Seeks Crypto Support

The war in Ukraine has affected Russian-language news site Meduza in more than one way, a report by Bloomberg reveals. Soon after the Kremlin launched its “special military operation,” President Vladimir Putin’s administration clamped down on independent reporting on the conflict and the media outlet has sought help to resettle its 25 journalists in Latvia.

The small Baltic nation of around 2 million, which has a large Russian speaking minority, has become a hub for exiled Russian media. Western sanctions, however, do not allow Meduza’s 30,000 Russian readers who supported it before the conflict to send funds through Stripe, after the payment processor suspended services in the Russian Federation to comply with the penalties.

The war and the sanctions have forced Meduza to turn to its international audience and ask for financial help in U.S. dollars, euros, or cryptocurrency. It now accepts card payments, bank wires, Paypal transfers, and multiple coins including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), the stablecoin tether (USDT), and the privacy-oriented monero (XMR). The report notes that the provided BTC and ETH wallets have already accumulated about $230,000 worth of cryptocurrency.

Commenting on the situation, the news portal’s editor-in-chief Ivan Kolpakov pointed out that Meduza is currently raising only around half of what it needs to develop. While declining to reveal the total amount of donations, he noted that the website is soliciting crypto and relying entirely on money from foreigners for the first time and stated:

We couldn’t predict that the sanctions of Western governments will come first and destroy our crowdfunding.

Independent Russian media outlets have faced unprecedented pressure from authorities in Moscow and as a result some have shut down, while others have been blocked by the Russian state. The Novaya Gazeta newspaper suspended publication in March after receiving warnings about its coverage, and the Ekho Moskvy radio station had its FM frequency handed over to the state-run Sputnik.

Meduza, which was founded in the Latvian capital after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, during another media crackdown, was labeled last year a “foreign agent” by the Russian government. The designation, which targets Russian media receiving funding from abroad, had already hurt its advertising revenue before the new sanctions effectively ended Russian donations.

Do you expect other independent Russian publications to turn to cryptocurrency donations to fund their reporting? Tell us in the comments section below.