CWC Newsletter #35 (July 13, 2020)
By Taylor Ryker, Analyst
Weekly Review of the Blockchain Ecosystem
Before I begin, please check out these news outlets for the past weekly updates and announcements in the EOS and EOSIO space: EOS Nation's Hot Sauce, EOSWriter's Twitter Review, Crypto Peter's Moran Post, and EOS Go's What Happened This Week on EOSIO.
Top Blockchain Headlines from Last Week:
1. Expected Delay of Ethereum 2.0's Phase 0
2. Avalanche ICO Experiences DDOS Attack
3. Latamlink and Consensys in the Latin American Blockchain Space
4. DAPP Market Report by DAPP Review
5. Coinbase's Upcoming IPO and Assisting the Secret Service
6. Block.one's New Investments & Voting Updates
7. DAPP Network and Reddit and Chainlink Bounties
8. Newdex's Decentralized Finance Fund
9. WAX Labs Worker Proposal Fund
1. Expected Delay of Ethereum 2.0's Phase 0
The Block reported that Ethereum 2.0's Phase 0 may not go live until 2021, which many in the Ethereum community hoped would launch in 2020. Pushing the release to 2021 is due to current delays of upgrading Eth 2.0's 'multi-client' approach. Also, Ethereum Foundation's Justin Drake explained last week that testing for Phase 0 will take at least 4-6 months from July 2020, with 2-3 months of running smoothly a public testnet with 3+ clients and 2-3 months of issuing a bug bounty program.
In regards to Drake's timeline for launching Eth 2.0 in early 2021, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, responded: "For what it's worth, I personally quite disagree with this and I would favor launching phase 0 significantly before that date regardless of level of readiness." However, Ethereum should be cautious in fully testing its software because in the first-half of 2020, many decentralized finance applications experienced hacks due to security flaws in the application and base-level token standards.
2. Avalanche ICO Experiences DDOS Attack
Avalanche (AVAX), a blockchain that is purported to have solved Ethereum's scalability issue, experienced a DDOS attack during its public crowd-sale last week. Founded by former Cornell professor Emin Gun Sirer and his team called AVA Labs, AVAX "is the first next-generation blockchain using Proof-of-Stake to deliver at the scale that decentralized finance demands."
After the DDOS attack which prevented retail investors to buy AVAX tokens, AVA Labs announced that the crowd-sale would be pushed back to July 15, 2020 at 10am ET (UTC-4) until July 29, 2020 at 10am ET.
3. Latamlink and Consensys in the Latin American Blockchain Space
Latamlink, an alliance of 3 EOS Latin American Block Producers (EOS Costa Rica, EOS Argentina, and EOS Venezuela), and Consensys, a leading company in the Ethereum ecosystem, are vying for the services of LACChain, a blockchain framework that has the backing of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and a host of public and private entities across Latin America and the Caribbean.
EOS Costa Rica is set to unveil a testnet for LACChain, which may provide a testing ground to link Ethereum with EOSIO technologies. This partnership between Ethereum and EOS may function well because each blockchain have different strengths and use-cases.
The decision to look at EOS and Ethereum can after failed attempts to adopt other leading blockchain platforms. IDB Labs started out with Quorum but it didn't work, then they tried Hyperledger and IDB Labs found it that it was a perfect match either.
4. EOS DAPP Market Report by DAPP Review
Quotes from EOS Go's article on DAPP Review: Apparently the transaction volume of dApps on EOS reached $2.02 billion, which is an increase of 16.7% compared to Q1, where the volume was around $1.75 billion. In addition, the average Daily Active Addresses (DAA) for Q2 is 18,520, an increase of 62.3% over Q1. Unfortunately, the Dapp Review team pointed out that this value could be inflated due to some EOS based casino dApps using bots to manipulate their statistics. Although this "tactic" is common for dApps in the same category (Casino and Risk) also on Ethereum and Tron.
Note that the transaction volume is dominated by Exchange dApps, which reaches as much as $1.57 billion with an increase of 25.3%. The remaining $439 million comes from Casino dApps, an increase of 8.8%.
As for the dApps Games: Crypto Dynasty, Upland, and Chainz Arena won the title as the most popular games on EOS. In total, Games category reached a transaction volume of $1.88 million, an increase of 85.1%. Numbers that look very promising, however we should check if they come from real players, or from bots and dApps that recycle their volume.
5. Coinbase's Upcoming IPO and Assisting the Secret Service
Quotes from Cointelegraph article: Coinbase, Inc. is reportedly preparing for a U.S. stock market listing that could come this year, according to Reuters reporting.
According to Reuters sources, preparations for a listing are underway but still need the green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission. If successful, this would mark the first time that a cryptocurrency exchange would be listed on traditional markets. Some mining companies have conducted or are preparing for initial public offerings, with Canaan doing so late last year.
It is yet unclear if Coinbase will opt for an initial public offering to accompany public trading. While raising additional capital is often associated with listing, its existing shares could simply be made available for trading with no additional funding.
Quotes from the Block's article: Coinbase is providing its blockchain analytics software to the U.S. Secret Service, according to a public record obtained by The Block.
The Secret Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is charged with conducting financial crime investigations in addition to protecting the nation's top leaders.
The record shows that the Secret Service awarded a four-year contract to Coinbase in May in order to use its blockchain analytics software, called Coinbase Analytics. The contract is worth $183,750 in total and ends on May 9, 2024.
6. Block.one's New Investments & Voting Updates
Finlab EOSVC announced a seven-digit seed financing for ZkSystems, which provides software for industrial manufacturers to help transform into leading digital service providers by building out their offering of digital services.
Galaxy Interactive tweeted on July 10, 2020: "In partnership with Block.one via the Galaxy EOS VC Fund, we're focused on enabling the next wave of interactive entertainment by investing in cloud-native content & infrastructure like blockchain that we think lays the foundation for the metaverse."
According to EOS Nation, Block.one has adjusted their voting for Block Producers. The voting period will now be 2 week rather than every week and past Block Producers who received votes are still eligible and qualified for future votes. It is a welcoming sight to see that Block.one and the Public Blockchain Engagement are still invested in the governance of the EOS mainnet.
7. DAPP Network and Reddit and Chainlink Bounties
The team at LiquidApps announced early last week that they are hosting a DAPP challenge with a winning prize of 1 million DAPP tokens (~$15,000 USD) for the team or developer who is able to leverage the DAPP Network to scale Reddit's blockchain goals on Ethereum. EOS Nation has also stated that they will add an additional 1 million DAPP to the prize pot.
Secondly, LiquidApps also announced another bounty challenge for any team or developer to showcase a connection between Chainlink and the DAPP Network's LiquidOracles. The winning team or individual can earn up to 350,000 DAPP tokens.
8. Newdex's Decentralized Finance Fund
Quotes from Newdex's announcement: Newdex has officially set up the EOS ecological DeFi special development fund. The fund is named "Newdex Seed," which is used for the incubation of EOS ecological DeFi projects. If interested, please see their announcement.
Newdex Seed will provide 3,000-10,000 EOS initial start-up funds for each project that has passed the application, in order to obtain a certain proportion of the project's coins (or use a certain proportion of the project's earnings to buy back and burn NDX). The coins obtained by Newdex Seed will be used for NDX buy-back and burning or airdrop.
9. WAX Labs Worker Proposal Fund
Quotes from WAX post: Introducing WAX Labs, a worker proposal system designed to grow the WAX Blockchain through decentralization and innovation. There are presently more than 75 million WAX tokens worth millions of dollars in the WAX Labs fund, which is allocated towards compensating developers who build upon the WAX Blockchain over many years, making WAX Labs the largest community-owned worker proposal system in the entire blockchain ecosystem.
With such a well funded worker proposal system, WAX hopes to build the most extensive network of blockchain developers in the world.
Candidates can submit their projects for consideration, and WAX Token holders can vote on them, here.
WAX Labs incentivizes developers to build new projects on WAX, work on community needs, patches, and upgrades. In exchange for their time and effort contributing to the development of WAX, these developers will be eligible to receive WAX Tokens from the WAX Labs fund, which will provide support for WAX development efforts for many years to come. Projects that will have a clear positive and measurable impact on the WAX ecosystem are eligible to be funded.
Disclaimer: KJ Kingsley is not a financial advisor and holds the digital tokens or cryptocurrencies represented in the content above. This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this post constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by myself to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the author’s employers.