9/10/22 FAL Weekly Digest
The FAL Weekly Digest is a source for this week’s biggest cryptocurrency-related news and updates. This newsletter features excerpts and links to this past week’s biggest news articles written by members of FAL Consulting’s writing team or gathered from other listed sources.
Ethereum Development Update
The Merge
Ethereum’s mainnet went through the Bellatrix upgrade portion of The Merge. This upgrade is on the consensus layer, or the Beacon Chain (proof-of-stake chain). Bellatrix is expected to be the final pre-merge update, preparing the network for the Paris upgrade which will bring the switch to proof-of-stake. The Paris upgrade is expected between September 13-20.
Paris will upgrade the execution layer’s portion of the transition. Once the execution layer reaches or exceeds the TTD, the next block will be produced by a Beacon Chain validator. Once this first block is produced and finalized on the Beacon Chain (proof-of-stake chain), The Merge is considered complete.
The merge is still expected to happen around Sep 13-15. What's happening today is the Bellatrix hard fork, which *prepares* the chain for the merge. Still important though - make sure to update your clients!
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 6, 2022
The switch to proof-of-stake is expected to cut the network’s power consumption significantly. The mining process involves the use of ASIC (Application-specific integrated circuit) miners, which are made to only mine certain cryptocurrencies. These machines require a lot of power and are very costly.
Staking requires no initial investment besides the amount being staked. To run a node or act as a network validator, a certain amount must be staked. The Merge should also introduce lower fees eventually.
ETH mining pools are shutting down
Ethermine, the largest Ethereum mining pool, is ending ETH mining on September 15, 2022 (The Merge is expected between September 13-20). Ethermine is already offering staking, ahead of The Merge, with $24,857,543 worth of ETH already staked. At the moment, mining pools are not yet open, but non-custodial solo staking is available with a minimum of 32 ETH staked.
As of yesterday, Ethermine is still outputting a hashrate of 256.5 TH/s (Terra hash per second) with 210,259 active workers. Last week on August 30, the pool was outputting a hashrate of 264.6 TH/s with 223,711 active workers, suggesting that many have already repurposed their mining operations ahead of The Merge.
Hive Blockchain is exploring options to repurpose its GPU mining operations
The Canadian mining firm provided a production update for August 2022 in which it stated that they already commenced analysis of several GPU mining-capable coins and would be implementing beta-testing later this week, prior to The Merge. The firm's main operations mine Bitcoin with ASIC miners. Their Bitcoin production for August 2022 totaled 518.8 BTC.
Hive’s GPU mining operations capable of mining Ethereum was able to produce 6.3 TH/s. This would, at the time of writing, produce around $4.6 million per month minus power costs.
Mining
White House releases report on Climate and Energy Implications of Crypto-assets in the US
According to the report, the global electricity usage by crypto mining in August 2022 exceeded the annual electric usage of certain countries including Argentina and Australia. Instead of suggesting banning crypto mining or proof-of-work networks, the report outlined the need for coordinated efforts to enact legislation and regulation to ensure efficient and safe crypto mining. The report recommended that we’d need to reduce global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net-zero by mid-century to prevent severe climate-driven damages to human health, ecosystems, and infrastructure.
The report also outlines a few “potential uses of blockchain technology that could support climate monitoring or mitigating technologies.”
Bitcoin mining stocks are up
Some Bitcoin mining stocks saw double-digit gains yesterday, including Riot Blockchain, Hut 8, Hive Blockchain, and Argo Blockchain.
One of Bitcoins largest mining pools suspended withdrawals
Poolin is a Bitcoin mining pool that also offers an internal wallet service called PoolinWallet. The service announced, on Sept. 5 through Medium, that they will be pausing all withdrawals, flash trades, and internal transfers within Poolin systems.
This action is being taken in an attempt to preserve assets and stabilize their liquidity issues. The announcement was brief and ensured users that their assets in PoolinWallet are safe and that they would provide the community with more details and more feasible solutions within a week.
Shortly after the initial announcement, Poolin also announced promotional fee adjustments and assured customers that the company’s net worth is positive.
While withdrawals from Pool Accounts will be paused, regular mining and direct payouts from the mining pools are not affected. The payout of current BTC and ETH balances on the pool will also be temporarily suspended while other coins are not affected. A snapshot was taken of the balances on September 6. Daily mined coins after the 6th was and will be normally paid out.
Partnerships
Axie Infinity is now secured by Google Cloud
The custom Ethereum side chain, Ronin, is pivotal to the foundation of the popular NFT game Axie Infinity and in developer Sky Mavis's attempt to further decentralize the Web3-centric program, it has teamed up with a Web2 giant.
Sky Mavis announced that it had entered into a partnership with Google Cloud that will see the cloud computing department of arguably one of the most important companies in the world, run a validator node on Ronin. In short, Google Cloud will help process transactions and secure the sidechain network.
According to a press release, Google Cloud has been the NFT startup's “strategic cloud partner” since 2020, with this new agreement further deepening the company's ties to each other. The cloud solutions firm Searce will also help in the partnership.
Google will become the Ronins network 18th validator, which has doubled in numbers since Axie lost $552 million worth of cryptocurrency in a massive hack back in March.
Sky Mavis says its goal is to reach 21 validators for Ronin since the attack firms like Web3 gaming guild startup Yield Guild Games, blockchain analytics firms Nansen and DappRadar, as well as leading metaverse investor and game publisher Animoca Brands, have all become validators.
Googles Cloud services are also partnered with other blockchain-based software companies, such as validating transactions for video platform startup Theta Labs and joining the governing council for Hedera Hashgraph. In May, the department announced the creation of its own Web3 team focused on powering blockchain applications.
Brave partners with Unstoppable Domains to bring more support for decentralized websites
Brave’s integration with Unstoppable Domains will function just as normal web2 addresses but will be hosted on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS is a decentralized peer-to-peer (p2p) network. NFT projects are stored on IPFS networks. With this, the decentralized websites (both the domain and content) will be fully owned by users. Unstoppable will cover gas fees for hosting. Web hosting services can cost hundreds per year in the web2 space. While this is a big jump from simply connecting wallets, this is still just a small step toward the full capabilities of web3.
Brave offers a web browser and crypto wallet that work together. The browser focuses on privacy and security while rewarding users for opting to watch advertisements. Brave browser rewards users in Basic Attention Token (BAT). Brave is free, open source, and available on PC, Mac, and Mobile platforms.
Unstoppable Domains bridges web2 and web3 through the use of blockchain domains. These blockchain domains only need to be purchased once for lifetime ownership, without any renewal fees. Regular web domains must be renewed every year, with the possibility of losing the domain. These domains are essentially leased to users and owned by domain registrar companies such as Alphabet (Google) and GoDaddy.
NFTs
FIFA to release NFT platform on Algorand
The platform, FIFA+ Collect, will launch later this month on the Algorand blockchain and according to FIFA, it will feature affordable, inclusive, and accessible NFTs depicting notable soccer moments, art, and imagery.
Proof of stake network Algorand (ALGO) has upgraded its network’s mainnet transaction capacity to 6,000 transactions per second (tps), according to a press release shared with CryptoSlate. The upgrade places the Layer 1 protocol as one of the fastest in crypto. Compared to it, Bitcoin (BTC) processes five tps, Ethereum (ETH) only processes about ten tps, and this is unlikely to increase post-merge. Previously, the network had a transaction capacity of 1,200 tps.
Read more on Info Hub (Premium)
Sony Music files trademark application for NFTs
Sony Music Entertainment owns multiple music labels including Columbia Records. The company filed a trademark application for the use of the Columbia Records logo for many NFT-related releases.
NFTs will be used to authenticate downloads of audio and audiovisual recordings authenticated by NFTs. Downloadables will include podcasts, music videos, live performances, and album-related artwork. The trademark will also allow Sony Music to use the logo for marketing, promotional, and music/podcast production purposes.
Japanese government rewards mayors with NFTs
During an annual award ceremony held to recognize and celebrate initiatives taken by local authorities, several mayors received NFT’s as “supplementary prizes”.
Cryptonews reported that seven mayors were given NFT awards for their government’s digital economy-themed proposals.
One of these awards went to the Mayor of Sakata whose government proposed that local deliveries be made by electric vehicles. Another award went to the mayor of Maebashi whose government proposed a platform to detect real-time traffic condition changes using mobile phone cameras.
The NFT awards provided a segway to announce new digital initiatives that will award those that utilize digital technology to solve local issues.
LG launched an NFT platform
South Korean electronics manufacturer, LG, launched its own NFT marketplace called “LG Art Labs” a few days ago. The marketplace is available through LG televisions running webOS 5.0. The marketplace allows users to buy, sell, and trade NFTs right on their couch.
Wallypto, LG’s in-app crypto wallet developed by the Hedera network last September, handles transactions on the app.
“Wallypto, built on Hedera, has been developing since September 2021,” Chris Jo, senior vice president, head of platform business at LG Electronics home entertainment company, told TechCrunch. “Its beta version of the wallet launched this week in August.”
The partnership between LG and Hedra was announced in 2020 when LG joined the Hedera governing council, including industry giants such as IBM and Google.
Market
Market Cap: $1.044 T; up from $973.02 B last week
24h Volume: $81.945 B; up from $44.852 B last week
BTC Dominance: 39%; up from 38.8% last week
ETH Dominance: 20.1%; up from 19.5% last week
None of our posts or newsletters are meant to be taken as financial advice.
