BlackRock’s spot Ether ETF amasses nearly $900M since launch

August 7, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Crypto industry ‘destined’ to be BTC-focused due to regulators: Michael Saylor

June 14, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The MicroStrategy co-founder believes crypto-related regulatory enforcement action will play in Bitcoin's favor.

Enforcement actions on cryptocurrency firms by regulators in the United States could result in a Bitcoin (BTC)-focused industry that will push its price over $250,000, according to MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor.

In a June 13 Bloomberg interview, the Bitcoin bull explained recent enforcement actions from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will eventually play in Bitcoin’s favor — the only crypto excluded from being a security by SEC chair Gary Gensler.

Saylor added U.S. regulators "don't see a legitimate path forward for cryptocurrencies" adding "they don't have any love" for stablecoins, crypto-tokens or crypto-based derivatives.

Saylor said crypto exchanges would be the catalysts behind the significant price surge:

“[The SEC’s] view is crypto exchanges should trade and hold pure digital commodities like Bitcoin and so the entire industry is kind of destined to be rationalized down to a Bitcoin-focused industry with maybe a half a dozen to a dozen other proof of work tokens.”

“The next logical step is for Bitcoin to 10x from here and then 10x again,” he claimed.

Regulatory clarity is going to drive #Bitcoin adoption by eliminating the confusion & anxiety that has been holding back institutional investors. Bitcoin dominance will continue to grow as the #Crypto industry rationalizes around $BTC and goes mainstream. pic.twitter.com/Foq4lpderj
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) June 13, 2023

Saylor noted Bitcoin’s market share increased from 40% to 48% in 2023 which may be attributed in part to the SEC’s enforcement activity and having now labeled 68 cryptocurrencies as securities — none of which are proof-of-work.

In the future, Saylor believes this dominance will increase to 80% as “mega institutional money” will flow into crypto after “confusion and anxiety” over crypto disappears.

Saylor and other Bitcoin-centric advocates have been met with considerable criticism, however.

Anthony Sassano, host of The Daily Gwei recently called out “Bitcoiners” that are pleased to see the SEC file lawsuits against Coinbase and other exchanges that list tokens considered to be unregistered securities by the SEC.

Incredibly embarrassing to see how many Bitcoiners who self-identify as "cypherpunks" are absolutely salivating at the fact that the SEC is going after Coinbase.

No company in this industry has done more for Bitcoin adoption than Coinbase.
— sassal.eth (@sassal0x) June 7, 2023

Ethereum-based wallet MetaMask and many others also believe a “multichain future” is inevitable because different blockchains serve different purposes.

Mike McGlone, senior macro strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence explained in early May that a “deflationary bust” is impacting the commodities market and bank deposits — and that crypto may be the next domino to fall.

Cryptos Could Be the Next Assets to Drop in Deflation Dominoes - It's been a year of rebounds for just about everything that fell in 2022, with #cryptos tops among high-beta performers, but a deflationary bust may be gaining fuel as seen in plunging #commodities and bank deposits pic.twitter.com/H871jqA5xc
— Mike McGlone (@mikemcglone11) May 3, 2023

In January, economist Lyn Alden told Cointelegraph there is “considerable danger ahead” for Bitcoin in the second half of 2023, stating that when the U.S. resolves its debt issue, significant liquidity will be pulled out of markets:

“At that point, both the Treasury and Fed will be sucking liquidity out of the system, and that would create a vulnerable time for risk assets in general, including BTC.”

Magazine: $3.4B of Bitcoin in a popcorn tin — The Silk Road hacker’s story

Coinbase new blockchain seen as ‘massive confidence vote’ for Ethereum

February 24, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Anthony Sassano

One Ethereum bull hopes the launch will help onboard a host of other crypto companies and financial institutions onto Ethereum.

The Ethereum community appears to have taken a bullish view of Coinbase’s newly announced layer-2 network, Base, which has been described as a “massive confidence vote” and a “watershed moment” for the blockchain network.

Secured on Ethereum and powered by layer-2 network Optimism, Base aims to eventually become a network for building decentralized applications (DApps) on the blockchain. The layer-2 network is currently in its testnet phase, according to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

0/ Hello world.

Meet Base, an Ethereum L2 that offers a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly way for anyone, anywhere, to build decentralized apps.

Our goal with Base is to make onchain the next online and onboard 1B+ users into the cryptoeconomy.https://t.co/Znuu3o3pJw
— Base (@BuildOnBase) February 23, 2023

Members of the crypto community such as Ryan Sean Adams, host of the Bankless Show, believe the move “is a massive vote of confidence for Ethereum,” which could set a precedent for cryptocurrency companies and financial institutions to use Ethereum as the settlement layer of choice.

2/ This sets precedent that other crypto companies will follow, then Fintechs, then banks. Eventually the world will use Ethereum as a settlement and property rights system.
— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS - rsa.eth (@RyanSAdams) February 23, 2023

Coinbase has approximately 110 million verified users and has partnered with 245,000 companies in over 100 countries since it was founded in 2012. Its cryptocurrency exchange is the second largest in terms of trading volume, behind Binance according to CoinGecko.

“If Coinbase converts 20% of its 110m verified users to Layer 2 users in the coming years, this alone will 10x the total number of crypto native users,” Adams added.

Adam also commended Coinbase for opting to open-source Base and believes the new layer-2 network will bring about even more block space demand on Ethereum.

Coinbase just announced that they are launching a layer 2, named Base, on Ethereum and powered by Optimism.

Ethereum is becoming the world's settlement layer.
— sassal.eth (@sassal0x) February 23, 2023

Meanwhile, Sebastien Guillemot, co-founder of blockchain infrastructure firm dcSpark, suggested that Coinbase made a wise decision to go with a layer 2 as opposed to an independent sidechain, noting that “almost all” cryptocurrency transactions and value locked on Ethereum resides on layer 2s these days.

Coinbase announced Base, a new L2 (based on the Optimism L2)

L2s continue to dominate the industry

- Almost all txs in crypto are on L2s
- Almost all TVL in crypto are on L2s
- More devs working on L2s than basically every L1

Sidechains (which aren't L2s) are a waste of time
— Sebastien Guillemot (@SebastienGllmt) February 23, 2023

Ryan Watkins, the co-founder of crypto-focused hedge fund Syncracy Capital, described the news in a Feb. 23 tweet as a “watershed moment” in the Ethereum rollup ecosystem. He added that there was “likely no one better” positioned than Coinbase to onboard the next 10 million users and institutions to Ethereum.

Not everyone was bullish though.

Gabriel Shapiro, general counsel of investment firm Delphi Labs, explained in a Feb. 23 Twitter post that launching a centralized layer-2 network “opens the door” to unwanted SEC scrutiny.

“A centralized L2 that trades lots of tokens any number of which could be alleged securities, or does lots of DeFi transactions that arguably might alleged to be regulated (securities swaps etc), opens the door to the SEC making new kinds of secondary market claims,” wrote Shapiro, adding:

“imo, this will accelerate the SEC's "secondary market" agenda re: blockchain securities issues, because they can't let an SEC registrant "get away with" potential violations & build up a legal arbitrage strategy right under the SEC's nose.”

Shapiro’s concerns come as the SEC has recently upped its enforcement efforts against several stablecoin issuers and staking service providers of late.

Regarding the launch of Base, the lawyer opined that it could be a “bad step for them” and inflict “collateral damage” on the rest of the ecosystem, particularly in the event that the SEC finds a vulnerability to expose:

overall, if indeed Coinbase's motives are regulatory in nature, it's not only a bad step for them, but could threaten dangerous collateral damage to the rest of the ecosystem

if their motives are regulatory, they should've waited till all the infra can be really decentralized
— _gabrielShapir0 (@lex_node) February 23, 2023

Ordinals protocol sparks debate over NFT’s place in the Bitcoin ecosystem

January 30, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Adam Back

The community has been divided as to whether the NFT-like "digital artifacts" are the right fit for the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The recent launch of a nonfungible token (NFT) protocol on the Bitcoin mainnet has the crypto community divided over whether it’ll be good for the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The protocol, referred to as “Ordinals,” was created by software engineer Casey Rodarmor, who officially launched the program on the Bitcoin mainnet following a Jan. 21 blog post.

The protocol essentially allows for the Bitcoin version of NFTs — described as “digital artifacts” on the Bitcoin network.

These “digital artificats” can comprise of JPEG-like images, PDFs, video and audio formats.

*Meme-inspired, NFT-like “digital artifacts” are now being inscripted on the Bitcoin network. Source:* *Ordinals.*

The introduction of the protocol has the Bitcoin community divided however, with some arguing that it would offer more financial use cases for Bitcoin, while others say its straying away from Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer cash system.

Bitcoin bull Dan Held was one of those on board with the development, noting that it would drive demand for block space, and thus fees, while bringing more use cases to Bitcoin.

Why it's good:
- Brings more financial use cases to Bitcoin
- Drives more demand for block space (aka fees)

My take:
- If you pay a tx fee, it's not spam.
- Bitcoin is permissionless. Can't stop anyone from building it anyway.
— Dan Held (@danheld) January 29, 2023

Some have pointed out that these NFT-like structures have taken up block space on the Bitcoin network, which could drive up transaction fees.

BREAKING: NFTs ON #BITCOIN

Ordinals are taking up most of the BLOCKSPACE pic.twitter.com/Gxwq4vV8MI
— Bitcoin News ⚡ (@BitcoinNewsCom) January 29, 2023

Among those include “Bitcoin is Saving” on Twitter, suggesting to its 237,600 followers on Jan. 29 that “privileged wealthy white” people’s desire to put JPEGs as status symbols may exclude marginalized people from participating in the Bitcoin network.

Cryptocurrency researcher Eric Wall disagreed with the opinion that the in-built block size limit will prevent a rise in transaction fees.

Others, such as Blockstream CEO and Bitcoin core developer Adam Back wasn’t happy with meme culture being brought to Bitcoin, who suggested the developers to take the “stupidity” elsewhere:

"you can't stop them" well ofc! bitcoin is designed to be censor resistant. doesn't stop us mildly commenting on the sheer waste and stupidity of an encoding. at least do something efficient. otherwise it's another proof of consumption of block-space thingy.
— Adam Back (@adam3us) January 29, 2023

However, Ethereum bull and host of The Daily Gwei Anthony Sassano took a shot at the Blockstream CEO for wanting “undesirable” transactions to be censored — which many believe goes against the ethos of Bitcoin:

Adam Back and Luke Dashjr are both Bitcoin core developers who have encouraged censorship over the last 48 hours of these "undesirable" transactions

So no, it isn't just Bitcoin maximalists - it's actual Bitcoin core developers
— sassal.eth (@sassal0x) January 30, 2023

In a blog post, Rodarmor explained that the NFT-like structures are created by inscribing satoshis — the native currency of the Bitcoin network — with arbitrary content.

These inscribed satoshis — which are cryptographically represented by a string of numbers — can then be secured or transferred to other Bitcoin addresses, according to notes in Ordinal’s technical documentation:

“Inscribing is done by sending the satoshi to be inscribed in a transaction that reveals the inscription content on-chain. This content is then inextricably linked to that satoshi, turning it into an immutable digital artifact that can be tracked, transferred, hoarded, bought, sold, lost, and rediscovered.”

The inscriptions take place on the Bitcoin mainnet, no sidechain or separate token is needed, the document states.

Inscriptions are finally ready for Bitcoin mainnet.

Inscriptions are like NFTs, but are true digital artifacts: decentralized, immutable, always on-chain, and native to Bitcoin. https://t.co/a4dK7zdITS
— Casey Rodarmor (@rodarmor) January 20, 2023

It appears that only 277 digital artifacts have been inscripted thus far, according to the Ordinals website.

Interestingly, Rodarmor — admitted in an Aug. 25 interview on Hell Money Podcast that Ordinals was created to bring memes to life on Bitcoin:

“This is 100% a meme-driven development.”

Crypto Twitter calls for calm after wETH insolvency joke goes viral

November 28, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Anthony Sassano

Ethereum bull Anthony Sassano and Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann were among those explaining later that the Wrapped Ethereum (wETH) FUD was part of an inside joke.

An inside joke about the “insolvency” of Wrapped Ethereum (wETH) over the weekend has forced influencers to explain it was just a “shitpost” after members of the community took it as real.

The wETH insolvency FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) seemingly began to make the rounds on Nov. 26, with false rumors alleging that wETH isn’t backed 1:1 by Ether (ETH) and is insolvent.

Blockchain developer and contributor to the ERC-721A token standard “cygaar” was one of the first to spread the joke, before confirming in a subsequent post that it was in fact a “shitpost” to see who was reading his content.

This is really a test to see who’s been reading my content.
— cygaar (@0xCygaar) November 26, 2022

In fact, only a day before, cygaar tweeted that “WETH cannot ever go insolvent” and that “WETH will always be swappable 1:1 with ETH.”

Ethereum bull and host of The Daily Gwei Anthony Sassano also joined in on the wETH joke with his own parody post on Nov. 27, but had to clarify later that the initial post was “shitpost/ meme” after reading the replies.

Reading the replies I feel like I should clarify

This is a shitpost/meme - there is nothing wrong with WETH and you can always redeem 1 ETH for 1 WETH

Though if you don't believe me I'll buy all of your WETH right now for 0.3 ETH

Sell me all you want

Then go fuck off
— sassal.eth (@sassal0x) November 27, 2022

Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann was another one to get in on the joke, claiming in a Nov. 27 Tweet to his 38,800 Twitter followers that wETH is no longer fully backed by ETH and that “we might see a bank run on redeeming WETH soon.”

Hours later, he said he hoped the joke “did not cause too much confusion,” linking to a thread that explained the joke for those who weren't in the know.

I hope this joke did not caused too much confusion. If you need more context find it here:https://t.co/KDN3NvdO2z
— Martin Köppelmann (@koeppelmann) November 27, 2022

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Markus Thielen, the head of research at crypto financial services platform Matrixport has also confirmed that there is little to no truth to the WETH “shitposts.”

wETH’s logic is automated by smart contracts and it isn’t controlled by a centralized entity, he explained:

“I am not too concerned about WETH as it's a smart contract and not stored by a centralized exchange. Since the smart contract is open source, it can be checked for bugs or flaws.”

On the other hand, recent FUD against Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) could be warranted, said Thielen, referring to rumors that FTX may have printed 100,000 wBTC out of thin air, as FTX’s Nov. 11 bankruptcy filing does not show any BTC on FTX’s balance sheet.

“WBTC is completely different and here the concerns are valid,” Thielen explained.

wETH is a wrapped version of ETH that is pegged at a 1:1 ratio, which aims to solve interoperability issues on Ethereum-compatible blockchains by allowing for ERC-20 tokens to be exchanged more easily.

wETH was introduced as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network for this reason, as ETH follows different rules and thus cannot be directly traded with ERC-20 tokens.

Despite the lighthearted humor behind the jokes, “Dankrad Feist” suggested to his 15,500 Twitter followers in a Nov. 27 Tweet that the comments should be marked “more clearly as jokes” as it “may not be obvious to outsiders.”

A lot of people making jokes about WETH.

Please be aware it may not be obvious to outsiders that it's completely different from bridged assets and there is literally almost zero risk. I think it would be better to mark these more clearly as jokes.
— Dankrad Feist (@dankrad) November 27, 2022

wETH is currently priced at $1,196, at a current ratio of 0.999:1 to ETH, according to data from Coinmarketcap.

CZ and Saylor urge for crypto self-custody amid increasing uncertainty

November 14, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Anthony Sassano

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said self-custody is a “fundamental human right,” while Michael Saylor said self-custody is necessary to prevent powerful actors from accumulating and abusing power.

Industry heavyweights have urged crypto investors and traders to self-custody their crypto assets amid the significant market uncertainty brought on by the collapse of FTX.

In a Nov. 13 tweet to his 7.6 million followers, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao pushed the crypto community to store their own crypto via self-custody crypto wallets.

“Self custody is a fundamental human right. You are free to do it anytime. Just make sure you do do it right,” he said, recommending investors to start with small amounts in order to learn the technology and tooling first:

Self custody is a fundamental human right.
You are free to do it at any time.
Just make sure you do do it right.
Recommend start with small amounts to learn the tech/tools first.
Mistakes here can be very costly.
Stay #SAFU
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) November 13, 2022

Speaking to Cointelegraph during the Pacific Bitcoin conference on Nov. 10-11, MicroStrategy executive chairman Michael Saylor also discussed the merits of self-custody given the current market environment.

Saylor suggested that self-custody not only provides investors with property rights, it also prevents powerful actors from corrupting the network and its participants:

“In systems where there is no self-custody, the custodians accumulate too much power and then they can abuse that power.”

“So self-custody is very valuable for this broad middle class, as it tends to create [...] this power of checks and balances on every other actor in the system that causes them to be in continual competition to provide transparency and virtue,” he explained.

Backstage interview with the charming Michael @saylor ⚡️

✅ check @Cointelegraph to read his advice on how to handle the bear market

@pacificbitcoin

pic.twitter.com/yWZmEsgQar
— Joe Nakamoto (@JoeNakamoto) November 11, 2022

Saylor also made the argument that self-custody plays an important role in maintaining the integrity and security of blockchains because it increases decentralization:

“If you can’t self-custody your coin, there’s no way to establish a decentralized network.”

The recent events that transpired last week appear to have already pushed many investors and traders towards self-custody solutions.

Since the sudden collapse of FTX in early November, the number of Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals on centralized exchanges reached a 17-month high, according to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode:

#Bitcoin $BTC Number of Exchange Withdrawals (7d MA) just reached a 17-month high of 3,424.315

View metric:https://t.co/QyB7zouWee pic.twitter.com/Su4biTEM7h
— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) November 13, 2022

While at the same time, net inflows into self-custody wallets have soared.

Smart contract wallet Safe — previously Gnosis Safe — reported over $800 million in net inflows since last Tuesday when the FTX saga began to spiral out of control:

Over $800M net in-flows into @Safe since last Tuesday. $325M on Thursday alone. Looks like a flight to self-custody. pic.twitter.com/hiuij9dp7s
— lukasschor.eth | Safe (@SchorLukas) November 13, 2022

The outflow from centralized exchanges caused by the FTX meltdown also created problems for hardware-based cryptocurrency wallet provider Ledger — who were temporarily unable to process a mass influx of inflows due to scalability issues.

The token of the Binance-acquired self-custody wallet Trust Wallet (TWT) also increased 84% to $2.19 over the last 48 hours before cooling off to $1.83, according to CoinGecko.

The token allows token holders to participate in deciding how the wallet operates and what technical updates are to be made.

Investor confidence in centralized exchanges took another hit on Nov. 13 when Crypto.com accidentally sent 320,000 ETH to Gate.io.

Ethereum bull and host of The Daily Gwei Anthony Sassano on Nov. 13 called out the crypto exchange over its mistake and later stated that investors should not store assets on centralized exchanges “for longer than you need to.”

Meanwhile, Blockchain Association head of policy Jake Chervinsky said that self-custody education should be one of the first things newcomers learn, while Bitcoin proponent Dan Held told his 642,800 Twitter followers that self-custody is a crucial element to self-sovereignty:

Self custody your Bitcoin and run a full node.

That’s how you achieve self sovereignty.

Don’t trust, verify.
— Dan Held (@danheld) November 12, 2022

Binance Proof-of-Reserve pledge gains support following FTX crisis

November 9, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Acquisition

The call for a more detailed disclosure of liquidity through the use of "Proof-of-Reserves" has been backed by many high-profile industry figures.

Following the liquidity crisis and acquisition of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said his exchange will soon start a Proof-of-Reserves audit system to allow verification of its digital asset holdings.

In a Nov. 8 Twitter post, Zhao pledged to implement a Proof-of-Reserve mechanism at Binance to provide “full transparency” through the use of Merkle Trees — a data structure used to encode blockchain data more efficiently and securely.

All crypto exchanges should do merkle-tree proof-of-reserves.

Banks run on fractional reserves.
Crypto exchanges should not.@Binance will start to do proof-of-reserves soon. Full transparency.
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) November 8, 2022

A Proof-of-Reserve audit is ordinarily conducted by an independent third party to ensure the custodian’s assets are owned as claimed.

The Binance CEO’s intention to implement Proof-of-Reserves comes after Binance agreed to buy rival cryptocurrency exchange FTX on Nov. 8, who’s been rumored to be on the brink of financial collapse despite CEO Sam Bankman-Fried initially dismissing the claims.

Cointelegraph contacted Binance to confirm if the exchange had begun implementing a Proof-of-Reserve system but did not immediately receive a response.

Chainlink (LINK) CEO Sergey Nazarov expressed his views in a Nov. 8 tweet that a cryptographic-based Proof-of-Reserves mechanism could paint investors with a more clear picture of the solvency situation of a trading venue or financial firm, and “is becoming the new industry standard.”

It is clear that cryptographically proving the solvency of trading venues and financial institutions is becoming the new industry standard. Proof of Reserves is a great example of a cryptographically guaranteed financial world that starts in crypto going on to mainstream finance. https://t.co/eZw1pj5706
— Sergey Nazarov (@SergeyNazarov) November 8, 2022

Meanwhile, crypto exchange Kraken has already implemented its “advanced cryptographic accounting procedure” to allow users to verify their token balances since Feb. 2022.

Crypto exchange OKX also announced its plans to roll out a Merkle tree-based Proof-of-Reserves audit system in a Nov. 8 Twitter post —- something they consider to be an “important step” in establishing a “baseline trust” in the industry.

The idea of more Proof-of-Reserve audits received near-full backing from the Twitter community, with crypto industry figures weighing in on the move by Binance.

Host of The Daily Gwei podcast, Anthony Sassano, and founder of open-source crypto exchange ShapeShift, Erik Voorhees, both suggested Proof-of-Reserves are already integrated into decentralized finance (DeFi) and automated by smart contracts.

Transparent proof-of-reserves:

✅ Wild West Defi
❌ Regulated and Compliant Centralized Exchanges https://t.co/T8QxZ4VOTE
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) November 7, 2022

The founder of crypto market intelligence platform Messari, Ryan Selkis, took things one step further, arguing that regulators should direct their attention to focus on the more centralized players in the industry.

The fact we are debating DeFi protocol regulation before responsible disclosures like proof-of-reserves and liquidity from the mega-funds like a16z and Alameda shows just how far off the ball we are on policy right now.
— Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) November 8, 2022

But not all agreed. Antonio Juliano, founder of crypto derivatives trading platform dYdX argued that a Proof-of-Reserves wouldn’t disclose all necessary information needed to verify an exchange's holdings.

The issue is that CEXs *can’t* do proof of reserves

So what if you show a wallet with $20B? How do you know the sum of user balances isn’t $30B?

How do you know if the entity has outstanding loans? How do you know what contracts they’ve entered into? https://t.co/lbL6YGD5Ze
— Antonio | dYdX (@AntonioMJuliano) November 8, 2022

‘Not even a single TX has been censored on ETH’ — Cyber Capital founder

October 18, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Anthony Sassano

Bons noted that even with 50% OFAC compliance among Ethereum validators, blocks will still be produced within 30 seconds.

Ethereum bulls have hit back against claims the network has become prone to censorship post-Merge, with one arguing that “not even a single” transaction has been censored on the network.

In a 19-part thread to his 29,100 followers on Oct. 17, Cyber Capital founder and CIO Justin Bons argued that contrary to “what some Bitcoiners are falsely claiming,” not a single transaction on Ethereum has been stopped as a result of Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions.

Bons was referring to recent reports suggesting Ethereum has become too reliant on OFAC-compliant Miner Extractable Value (MEV)-Boost relays since the Merge.

Last week, it was reported that more than 51% of Ethereum blocks are now complying with the U.S. sanctions after transitioning to proof-of-stake (PoS).

The crypto-fund manager argued that despite the increasing presence of OFAC-compliant MEV-Boost relays, it only becomes censorship when producers refuse to build on non-compliant blocks, though that would result in forking and splitting of the chain, explaining:

“Even with 50% OFAC compliance, a non-compliant ETH TX will be confirmed within 30 sec! Compared to BTC's more variable 10min!”

Bons further argued it only takes one contributing validator to include what may be an OFAC-sanctioned transaction in the canonical chain.

“This means that a very small minority of validators/miners can counter such censorship over both ETH & BTC! Easily less than 1% can prevent censorship,” he explained.

Having attributed most of this backlash to “Bitcoiners,” Bons also argued that Ethereum with its new PoS consensus mechanism is “less vulnerable” and “far more secure” than Bitcoin under proof-of-work (PoW) because institutional players are not economically incentivized to try split the chain.

Ethereum developers have also working to improve Ethereum’s censorship resistance too — with Ethereum developer Terence Tsao of Prysmatic Labs on Oct. 17 announcing that he and fellow developer Marius van der Wijden had begun building a solution to address the issue:

Together with the legend @vdWijden, we have started prototyping features to enable the proposer to select between a local block and a builder block with the highest fee.
The first step for censorship resistance️https://t.co/HyzUBZuB6V https://t.co/GGuAIegW5H
— terence.eth (@terencechain) October 17, 2022

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently proposed a Partial Block Auction solution, where a block builder only has the right to decide some of the contents of the block.

Ethereum research and development organization Flashbots is also looking to soon roll out its fully decentralized and EVM-compatible block builder — Single Unifying Auctions for Value Expression (SUAVE) – in order to combat censorship issues.

Ethereum protocol upgrades in order of importance over the next 6-12 months:

- Beacon Chain withdrawals
- PBS/crLists/related censorship-resistance upgrades
- Proto-danksharding (EIP-4844)

Just my humble opinion - censorship resistance is more important than scaling right now
— sassal.eth ️ (@sassal0x) October 15, 2022

On Aug. 8, the United States Treasury Department added more than 40 cryptocurrency addresses allegedly connected to controversial mixer Tornado Cash to the Specially Designated Nationals list of OFAC, effectively barring U.S. residents from using the mixing service.

Ethereum’s Bellatrix upgrade hiccups jangle nerves… but it’ll be right on the night

September 7, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Anthony Sassano

The Bellatrix upgrade was the last major upgrade before the Ethereum Merge, which will transition the network’s consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake.

The Bellatrix upgrade preparing Ethereum for the Merge was successfully completed on Sept. 6 - however concerns were raised over an almost one in ten missed block rate across the last 600 slots.

The Bellatrix upgrade updated Ethereum consensus layer clients at epoch 144896 on the Beacon Chain prior to the upcoming Merge scheduled for sometime next week .

However, 5% of the validators dropped offline during the hard fork, which contributed to the 9% missed block rate, according to Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann. This led some observers to question the network’s readiness for the big switch to proof of stake.

Missed block rate in the last 600 slots: >9%
Historically this rate has been around ~0.5%. It shows that Bellatrix caused some issues for some validators. Nothing dramatic but still a number to keep an eye on.
— Martin Köppelmann (@koeppelmann) September 6, 2022

Köppelmann added that the 9% figure was 1700% higher than the historical missed block rate of 0.5%. The issue may be related to the 25.6% of clients that Ethernodes cites at “not ready” for The Merge.

*Percentage of Ethereum Clients that are Merge ready. Source: Ethernodes.*

Partner of Cinneamhain Ventures Adam Cochran said he hoped the “big spike” in missed blocks would get debugged before the Merge proper, adding that “we really don’t want to be seeing unexpected issues at this late stage.”

But not everyone is concerned. Anthony Sassano, founder of the Daily Gwei said that having only 5% of validators falling off the network was actually an “an amazing result” and confidently stated “there’s not actually much that can go catastrophically wrong.” with the Merge.

“I would say that the ‘worst case scenario’ would be if the chain just halts because the switchover from PoW to PoS didn’t work at all - this would then require some sort of coordinated human intervention to fix."

“Though if we see things like validators dropping off the network due to configuration issues, missed blocks/slots or some clients having major bugs, these things wouldn’t be cause for major concern as they are relatively easy to recover from,” he added.

So to recap, post-Bellatrix, a few stats:
- network participation rate is 94.94%
- number of active validators is 403766
- number of offline validators 17743
- and client diversity for consensus layer clients page will be updated tomorrow so we can check again then
— Christine Kim (@christine_dkim) September 6, 2022

The Bellatrix upgrade is one of the last steps prior to the Merge and enables Ethereum consensus layer clients to execute transactions on the Beacon Chain.

The Ethereum Merge will transition the network to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which is set to make the network more efficient and secure.

Plan B’s Stock-to-Flow Price Model Denounced by Vitalik Buterin, Says Model Can Be ‘Harmful’

June 22, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Anthony Sassano

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