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Euler Finance exploiter returns another $37.1M worth of ETH and DAI

The exploiter originally drained $195 million worth of ETH and tokens from the protocol but has now returned around $138 million.

The architect of the March 13 Euler Finance exploit returned an additional $26.5 million worth of Ether (ETH) to the Euler Finance deployer account on March 27, on-chain data shows.

At 6:21 pm UTC, an address associated with the attacker sent 7,738.05 ETH (worth approximately $13.2 million at the time it was confirmed) to the Euler deployer account. In the same block, another address associated with the attacker sent an identical amount to the same deployer account, for a total of 15,476.1 ETH (around $26.4 million) returned to the Euler team.

Then, at 6:40 pm UTC, the first wallet sent another transaction to the deployer account for $10.7 million worth of the Dai (DAI) stablecoin. This brings the total of all three transactions to approximately $37.1 million.

Both of these addresses have received funds from the account that Etherscan labels “Euler Finance Exploiter 2,” which seems to imply that they are under the control of the attacker.

These transactions follow a previous return of 58,000 ETH (worth over $101 million at the time) on March 25. In total, the attacker appears to have returned over $138 million worth of crypto assets since the exploit.

Ethereum-based crypto lending protocol Euler Finance was exploited on March 13, and over $195 million worth of ETH and tokens were drained from its smart contracts. Several protocols within the Ethereum ecosystem depended on Euler in one way or another, and at least 11 protocols have announced that they suffered indirect losses from the attack.

According to an analysis by Slowmist, the exploit occurred because of a faulty function that allowed the attacker to donate their lent Dai to a reserve fund. By making this donation, the attacker was able to push their own account into insolvency. A separate account was then used to liquidate the first account at a steep discount, allowing the attacker to profit from this discount.

After draining Dai through this first attack, the attacker then repeated it for multiple tokens, removing over $196 million from the protocol.

Funds stolen from Euler Finance. Source: BlockSec

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Ethereum Shapella upgrade gets new date, making way for un-staking ETH

The upgrade is only for the Sepolia network and a subsequent upgrade for Goerli network would be introduced in March.

Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko announced the Shapella (Shanghai/Capella) upgrade is scheduled for Feb. 28. The Shapella network upgrade will activate on the Sepolia network at epoch 56832.

Shanghai and Capella are the names of the upcoming Ethereum hard fork. Shanghai is the name of the fork on the execution client side, and Capella is the upgrade name on the consensus layer client side.

Some of the key Ethereum improvement proposals (EIP) changes on the execution layer include Warm Coinbase and Beacon chain push withdrawals. The push withdrawals will make way for validator withdrawals from the beacon chain to the EVM via a new "system-level" operation type. On the other hand, WARM Coinbase could be a game changer that could reduce network fees for some of the key network participants called builders.

Coinbase here is the name of the software that builders use to receive new tokens on the network. Every new transaction on the platform needs to interact with the Coinbase software multiple times, The first interaction costs more as the software needs to “warm” up, and then the fees decline as the interactions increase. However, with the introduction of EIP-3651, the Coinbase software will remain warm to begin with, thus requiring a lower gas fee to access it.

Related: Ethereum on-chain data suggests ETH sell pressure could be a non-event after the Shanghai upgrade

Major changes to the consensus layer include full and partial withdrawals for validators and independent state and block historical accumulators, replacing the original singular historical roots.

Partial withdrawal means validators can withdraw Ether (ETH) rewards in excess of 32 Ether and keep validating. In case they want a full withdrawal, validators can fully exit and take all 32 Ether and rewards and stop doing the work

The upcoming upgrade would enable validators to withdraw their staked Ether (ETH) from the Beacon Chain to the execution layer. Moreover, the upgrade would bring changes to the execution layer and consensus layer adding new features, making it a key upgrade following The Merge.

Stakers and non-stakers who operate nodes must, however, upgrade their nodes to the most recent Ethereum client versions in order to take advantage of the Sepolia upgrade. After the deployment of the Sepolia upgrade, the next step would be the release of the Shanghai upgrade on the Ethereum Goerli test network, expected to commence in March.

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Ethereum supply plunges 37% on crypto exchanges post the Merge upgrade

Just weeks before the Shanghai upgrade, the decline in exchange supply is being seen as a bullish sign.

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has seen a constant decline in exchange supply over the past six months post-Merge. The Ethereum network underwent a major upgrade in September 2022, moving from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network in an event called the Merge.

According to on-chain data shared by crypto analytics firm Santiment, the amount of available ETH sitting on exchanges continues to fall. Since the Merge, there is 37% less ETH on exchanges. A constant decline in supply on exchanges is considered a bullish sign, as there is less ETH available to trade or sell.

There was a total of 19.12 million ETH, worth $31.3 billion, on exchanges in September before the Merge. The number has now declined to 13.36 million ETH, worth $19.7 billion, in the second week of February.

Ethereum supply on exchanges. Source: Santiment

A major chunk of the ETH supply is being moved into self-custody, while many traders also prefer staking with the Shanghai upgrade just around the corner. Shanghai, Ethereum’s upcoming update, is scheduled for March. The Shanghai hard fork will integrate more improvement proposals for network enhancements and allow stakers and validators to withdraw their holdings from the Beacon Chain.

Currently, 16 million ETH, or 14% of the total supply, is staked on the Beacon Chain, amounting to approximately $25 billion at current prices — a sizable amount that will gradually become liquid after the Shanghai hard fork.

Related: What's in and what's out for Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade

Apart from a constant decline in ETH supply held on exchanges, ETH’s overall market supply has also declined since it turned deflationary post-London upgrade. The deflationary model comes from a fee-burning mechanism introduced through Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-1559.

Ethereum burn rate. Source: Beacon chain

A total of 2.9 million ETH has been burned since the London upgrade in August 2021, estimated to be worth $4.5 billion in today’s value.

French Authorities Raid 5 Major Banks Over Accusations of Money Laundering and Fiscal Fraud

Ethereum devs create ‘shadow fork’ to test conditions for Ether withdrawals

Developers are attempting to attack the forked testnet with malicious nodes to see if they can find vulnerabilities.

As the proposed date for the Ethereum Shanghai update draws closer, developers have created a testing environment called a “shadow fork,” according to a January 23 tweet thread by Go-Ethereum developer Marius Van Der Wijden. The new testnet appears to have been created in order to test the conditions needed for Ether (ETH) staking withdrawals, which are currently disabled but are intended to become enabled in the update.

The name of the testnet is “Withdrawal-Mainnet-Shadow-Fork-1.” According to Web3 node provider Alchemy, a “shadow fork” is a fork of the mainnet that is intended to be used only for testing purposes.

Van Der Wijden stated that he and another developer named “Potuz” will create malicious nodes that will send bad blocks and messages to other nodes on the testnet and try to convince them to join a false version of the network. For now, the network is running smoothly, but Van Der Wijden has stated that he wants to “see if Potuz and I can break it.” This is apparently being done to see if the upgrade can prevent malicious attacks or if further changes need to be made before it is implemented on mainnet.

Related: Metamask provides liquid staking solutions from Lido and Rocket Pool

The launch of this testnet comes after devs have expressed an increasing urgency to make Ether staking withdrawals a reality. On Jan. 6, they held a meeting during which they agreed to exclude the proposed EVM Object Format (EOF) from the Shanghai upgrade. EOF was intended to make Ethereum easier to upgrade in the future. But because of its complexity, the devs decided to leave it out of Shanghai for fear that it would delay withdrawal implementation.

Over 14.5 million ETH (over $23 billion worth at the time this is being written) has been deposited into the Ethereum staking contract and cannot currently be withdrawn, according to a December, 2022 report by Nansen. In November, 2022, Ethereum devs came under harsh criticism for allegedly moving the goalpost in regards to enabling withdrawals.

The Shanghai upgrade is currently scheduled to be implemented sometime in March.

French Authorities Raid 5 Major Banks Over Accusations of Money Laundering and Fiscal Fraud

How crypto tokens (not Bitcoin) will outperform stocks in 2023, Arca’s CIO explains

Some crypto tokens will perform better than stocks in 2023 as they become less sensitive to macroeconomic factors, according to CIO at Arca Jeff Dorman.

Digital assets will largely decouple from traditional equity markets in 2023, says Chief Investment Officer at Arca, Jeff Dorman.

Discussing his outlook for 2023 in a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Dorman argues that as the global economy enters a recession this year, equities will be negatively affected while some crypto tokens will perform well: the value of the latter, he explained, is determined not only by macroeconomic factors but also by their utility within the respective ecosystems, which would remain unaltered in a recession.

“You're going to see a lot of stocks get punished under the weight of restructurings and under the weight of lower revenues and lower cash flows. And you're actually going to see a lot of tokens do really well”, Dorman explained. 

Crypto's decoupling process from equities may not involve Bitcoin though, which according to Dorman, will remain highly correlated to the stock markets, given its high sensitivity to macro factors such as global liquidity and interest rates. 

“Bitcoin has just become a 24-seven VIX, it's just a trading vehicle now for large funds who want to get in and out of risk on weekends and overnight trading hours”, Dorman pointed out. 

To find out more about Dorman’s crypto predictions for 2023, check out the full interview on our YouTube channel, and don’t forget to subscribe!

French Authorities Raid 5 Major Banks Over Accusations of Money Laundering and Fiscal Fraud

Bitcoin vs Ethereum: Community split between capped supply and deflationary model

Bitcoin proponents argued that Ether's monetary policy has changed at least seven times while BTC has seen zero changes.

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), the top two cryptocurrencies by market capitalization have always been pitted against each other. With the start of the new year, the first debate has surfaced comparing BTC’s capped supply of 21 million and ETH's deflationary supply and which of the two qualifies as more sound money.

An Ethereum-focused Twitter handle called ‘ultra sound money’ compared the issuance supply of both crypto and suggested that “if capped-supply BTC is sound then decreasing-supply ETH is ultrasound.”

The comparison between the two didn’t sit well with Bitcoin proponents who were quick to point out that soundness comes from the credibility of the monetary policy and not an ever-changing one. Dan Held, a popular Bitcoin proponent pointed out the flaw in the argument and noted that a constantly changing one has less credibility. He said:

“Time builds trust with humans, it’s not all about code. According to your logic, if we spun up another crypto with more deflation, that would be “sounder.”

Another Bitcoin proponent questioned the credibility of Ethereum’s monetary policy, reminding that the same monetary policy has “changed a least 11 times in its 7 years of existence.” On the other hand, Bitcoin has not changed its monetary policy in double the time eth has existed.

Ether's historical projected issuance rate, Source: ethhub

Ether became deflationary in Aug. 2021 with the introduction of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)- 1559. The upgrade introduced a burn mechanism that automatically burns a portion of the transaction fee which decreases the overall ETH circulating supply.

In response to the argument by Alex Gladstein that said “admins" can arbitrarily change Ethereum's monetary policy, Independent Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano claimed that every change on the Ethereum network has been approved by the thousands of node operators run by community members.

Leo Glisic, founder of Maitri network said that ETH has become sound money now but BTC won’t hit cap until 2140.

Bitcoiners argument that if a network’s monetary policy can be tweaked multiple times makes it less credible comes from its own past. Bitcoin has faced similar monetary change and tweaking of the original code in the past as well. The most notable one came during the 2017 era when there was a growing demand for increasing the Bitcoin block size to accommodate more transactions per block and make it more scalable.

Related: Bitcoin steps out of 'fear' for the first time in nine months

The majority of the Bitcoin community remained against making any changes to the original code of Satoshi Nakamoto. As a result, the crypto ecosystem saw a hard fork in 2017 leading to the formation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a cryptocurrency with a block size of 8 MB against BTC’s 1 MB. However, today BCH is ranked 26th with very low on-chain development and is currently trading at 97% low from its all-time-high.

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Crypto adoption in 2022: What events moved the industry forward?

While the crypto market in 2022 was hit by a slew of insolvencies and daily volatility, adoption seems to have continued apace on the global level.

It’s no secret that the crypto market was gripped by bearish pressure for the entirety of 2022. However, amid all the volatility and chaos, many positive news stories appeared as well — especially regarding the global adoption of digital assets and crypto-related technologies in general.

Looking back at 2022, here are some key adoption-related events that helped drive the industry last year.

Polygon accrues 200 million addresses despite challenging 2022

Even though an air of financial uncertainty has shrouded the crypto market since the end of 2021, Polygon — a layer-2 scaling solution running alongside the Ethereum blockchain, allowing for speedy transactions and low fees — continued to witness a lot of growth in 2022. To this point, the network’s unique address count recently surpassed the 200 million mark, reaching a new all-time high of 205,420,908 on Dec. 31.

Additionally, the Polygon ecosystem saw its unique address count surge by a whopping 8,783,568 between Dec. 1 and Dec. 31, suggesting that over the last month of 2022 alone, an average of 283,340 new Polygon-related network addresses came into existence daily. Moreover, it bears mentioning that the number of transactions taking place within the network has continued to hover around the 3 million mark.

Growth in Polygon address count throughout 2022. Source: PolygonScan

Lastly, the proof-of-stake project recently announced the release of its final testnet, an improved iteration of its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Major brands continue to enter the Web3 arena

The nonfungible token (NFT) market and the metaverse industry have continued to pique the interest of several fashion and luxury brands. For example, in October, Rolex — a popular watch matchmaker with a global presence — filed for multiple NFT-related trademarks in addition to one for a cryptocurrency exchange. Popular sporting goods giants such as Reebok, Nike and Adidas also made similar moves.

Nike launched a metaverse venture called .Swoosh, a Web3-enabled platform where customers can buy and sell virtual products. The platform will reportedly initially look at community building while hosting the launch of the company’s first virtual collection — comprising footwear, apparel and accessories — sometime during January 2023. Upon its launch, the platform will only allow the use of cash, not digital currencies, with all transactions recorded on the Polygon blockchain.

Adidas released a new line of virtual gear last year along with a picture-for-proof dressing tool allowing avatars from compatible partner collections, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, to be dressed up with their gear. Reebok filed numerous trademark applications in the United States for a wide range of virtual apparel, including footwear, headwear and sports equipment.

Lastly, luxury car manufacturer BMW announced that it, too, had decided to enter the metaverse fray by applying for a trademark for its logo that will be used in relation to its upcoming virtual vehicles, digital retail and other related services.

Total volume of staked Ether continues to grow

Throughout 2022, the total volume of Ether (ETH) locked within the Ethereum ecosystem has continued to climb steadily. Between February and June, the amount of staked ETH rose from just over 9 million to nearly 13 million. As seen from the chart below, the trend plateaued between June and September, only to muster steam once again around mid-September, just before Ethereum’s much-awaited transition to proof-of-stake.

Total value of ETH staked. Source: CryptoQuant

Within the context of the Ethereum network, staking refers to the act of depositing 32 ETH into the network, which allows individuals to accrue validator rights and affords them the ability to earn additional ETH. As a validator, users must perform several duties, such as storing data, processing transactions and adding new blocks to the blockchain to help protect the network for all participants.

Meta integrates support for NFTs

Earlier in May, social media behemoth Instagram revealed its testing program for sharing NFTs for select users across the United States. At the time, a representative for the firm stated that it would create more monetization opportunities for influencers on the platform while introducing NFTs to a larger customer base. A few months later, in August, Instagram decided to expand its NFT operations to over 100 countries across Africa, North America and Asia.

Meta also announced that it would integrate support for third-party projects, including Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet, while extending its NFT offerings to its other core social media platform, Facebook. In November, Instagram’s development team announced that it was testing the ability to mint and sell NFTs with a select group of digital creators. The feature will go live on the Polygon network, with creators and collectors not having to shell out any gas fees initially.

Starbucks’ blockchain-based loyalty program goes live

Starbucks announced the launch of its blockchain-based loyalty program and NFT community, Starbucks Odyssey, to a group of testers in the United States in September. The initiative builds upon the company’s existing loyalty program but uses a decentralized structure built atop the Polygon blockchain.

Starbucks Odyssey is a rewards program that allows users to earn perks and whose scope extends beyond the realm of simply earning free drinks. Odyssey allows customers to interact with a wide array of game-style offerings, allowing them to earn NFTs (referred to as Journey Stamps) in the process. These assets can later be traded and redeemed.

VCs continue to pour money into the Web3 ecosystem

During Q4 2022, Animoca Brands — the firm behind several successful crypto projects, including The Sandbox — created a multibillion-dollar fund to invest in various metaverse projects.

According to Animoca co-founder Yat Siu, the fund will spur the utility of the metaverse and blockchain gaming market. “More people are joining crypto every day, especially in gaming,” he stated, adding: “I’m hoping that this will also drive a scenario where digital property will be recognized like physical property in the legal system.”

In addition to Animoca, other popular firms that have invested heavily in the burgeoning metaverse economy include South Korean venture capital giant Daesung Private Equity. The company recently announced that it had allocated a total of 110 South Korean won ($83.9 million) toward its metaverse-centric fund.

JPMorgan partners with Ripple

American banking giant JPMorgan Chase joined with core Ripple partner Al Fardan Exchange in 2022 in an effort to provide users across the United Arab Emirates access to faster transaction settlement and transfer services.

Al Fardan’s clients will be able to conduct crypto transactions via several popular fiat assets, including the U.S. dollar, British pound and euro.

It is worth highlighting that this partnership comes amid Ripple’s ongoing lawsuit with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The regulatory agency continues to allege that the project’s associated crypto offering, XRP (XRP), is a security and, therefore, subject to the legal and regulatory implications associated with such assets.

Reddit users mint 5 million-plus NFT avatars

Social sharing website Reddit saw its users continue to adopt NFTs at a furious pace last year, even though its sales declined immensely. It is estimated that the Polygon-backed initiative has already witnessed the minting of more than 5 million collectibles to date.

Moreover, it bears mentioning that these avatars aren’t concentrated among high-value NFT collectors (ala whales) and are instead spread out among more than 4 million unique wallets. Lastly, a vast majority of the aforementioned minted NFTs have been offered to Reddit’s high-value users free of cost.

Tiffany enters the crypto sphere

Luxury jewelry and specialty retailer Tiffany & Co. announced in August that it was releasing a limited NFT collection called NFTiff, each of which would be available for a base price of 30 ETH (approximately $36,000). In all, a total of 250 of these NFTs were produced.

Earlier in March, Tiffany purchased an Okapi NFT from Tom Sachs for a reported sum of $380,000. The image has been the company’s Twitter profile photo ever since.

Positive legislation continued to gain traction

Late in 2022, Brazil’s Congress approved a bill seeking to regulate the use of digital currencies for daily payments within its borders, thereby potentially boosting the adoption of crypto within the South American nation. The bill provides legal status to payments made in cryptocurrencies for goods and services but does not grant them status as legal tender.

In a somewhat similar vein, Abdellatif Jouahri, the governor of Morocco’s central bank — Bank Al-Maghrib (BAM) — announced that his country’s key regulatory agencies would soon finalize a comprehensive crypto governance framework. The relevant agencies include the Moroccan Capital Markets Authority and the Supervisory Authority of Insurance and Social Welfare.

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Jouahri revealed that the BAM worked on the document alongside the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Other countries that have either tabled favorable regulations in 2022 or are planning to do so in the near future include India, Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom, among others.

Crypto adoption soars across MENA, Asia and Latin America

According to a study conducted by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region was the fastest-growing market for cryptocurrency adoption last year.

Between July 2021 and June 2022, the region received $566 billion in crypto transactions, a rise of nearly 49% from the year prior. To put things into perspective, there were increases of 40% in Europe, 36% across North America, and 35% across Central and South Asia.

Similarly, Latin America made up 9.1% of the total crypto value received during 2022, reaching a cumulative total of $562 billion while showcasing a growth of 40% between Q3 2021 and Q3 2022. Also, a total of four Latin American countries entered Chainalysis’ top crypto adopters list.

Lastly, Vietnam currently has the world’s highest crypto adoption rate, followed by the Philippines and Ukraine. Other emerging nations that dominated Chainalysis’ adoption index in 2022 include India, Brazil, Thailand and Pakistan.

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Ethereum founder says he hopes Solana gets a ‘chance to thrive’

Vitalik Buterin says that “smart people” have told him Solana has an “earnest” developer community.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin showed sympathy for competitor Solana (SOL) in a Dec. 30 tweet. He said that “smart people” tell him that Solana has “an earnest smart developer community,” and suggested that the opportunists who were involved with the project in the past have been “washed out.”

Buterin also expressed hope that the Solana community “gets its fair chance to thrive.”

The price of SOL has fallen by over 90% since its peak, partially because of the coin’s association with the failed FTX exchange. But Solana developers have argued that FTX’s collapse did not harm the network itself.

Vitalik’s praise for Solana impressed many in the crypto Twitter community. Ari Paul of BlockTower Capital produced a tweet thread that argued more crypto companies should follow Vitalik’s lead, as he explained, “This is how someone behaves who is happy to ‘compete’ on merit, and thinks in positive sum terms. One fun test you can give anyone on almost anything (service providers, fund managers, devs, whatever)[...]Ask them about the competition in positive form.”

Not everyone was happy with Buterin’s statement though. Former poker pro Mike McDonald saw the statement as “virtue signaling.”

Some critics also thought the timing of Buterin’s tweet was suspect. Would he have praised Solana if it was still doing well?

Solana was once dubbed an “Ethereum killer”, partially due to its high scalability. But it has also been criticized by some for being too centralized and unstable.

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Dogecoin devs deny rumor of immediate PoS switch following community concern

The denial was made after critics said the team was going to “kill scrypt miners.”

The developers of Dogecoin (DOGE) have denied rumors that the network is immediately switching to proof-of-stake (PoS), saying that they are merely planning to release a proposal on the topic. The repudiation came on Dec. 29, from the Twitter account of Michi Lumin, Principal Engineer for the Dogecoin Foundation.

Lumin stated that the Dogecoin Foundation does not have the power to upgrade the network without the consent of validators, explaining:

“It is not possible for, nor is it planned for, an individual, organization, or body to "move" or ‘shift’ or ‘change’ #dogecoin to PoS. All that can be done is: it can be outlined, perhaps coded, and given to the community (and validators) to decide to take up or not[…]the repeated sensationalist (to get views/follows) refrain of people saying that #dogecoin ‘is moving to PoS’ is ridiculous, and absolutely not how it works or can work. It will not and can not be done by edict, or force…”

The denial comes after the Rabid Mining Youtube channel had published a video on Dec. 28 titled “What if Dogecoin Moves to PoS?” It was shared on Twitter and Reddit with the comment, “DOGECOIN's Merge To POS Will Kill Scrypt Miners profits by over 60%.”

The video did not say that the Dogecoin team could change the network by “force.” However, it mentioned that “it looks like the Dogecoin Foundation actually has Vitalik on the board as an advisor, and they have it stated that they’re gonna move to proof-of-stake.” The video cautioned miners not to invest in scrypt miners because “all scrypt miners are gonna die” once Dogecoin adopts PoS.

Rabid Mining argued that not only would DOGE move to proof-of-stake, but it would also do so “pretty darn soon,” because a news article from October, 2022 mentioned that a proposal was in the works and because the official Dogecoin Foundation website also talked about the proposal.

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However, this new report from the team denies that the PoS upgrade is a done deal.

Lingering questions about DOGE PoS

Despite this denial from the team, there are still lingering questions as to how or whether proof-of-stake will be implemented for DOGE. The proposal has not yet been released, so current DOGE miners don’t know how it will work.

When Ethereum moved to proof-of-stake, it first launched a “beacon chain” that allowed users to transfer Ether (ETH) from the old PoW network to the new PoS one. Only after a sufficient number of users had staked their ETH on the new chain did miners finally upgrade their software to complete a “merge” of the two networks.

Still, some miners refused to accept the upgrade, and this resulted in a hard fork of Ethereum. The old network came to be called “Ethereum PoW (ETHW),” while the new network maintained the name “Ethereum.”

However, Ethereum PoW experienced an immediate 65% decline in price after the merge was completed. This led to a fall in mining profits, which in turn caused some miners to shut down. This is evidenced by 2miners.com’s chart of the Ethereum PoW hash rate.

Whether something similar happens with Dogecoin remains to be seen, but this recent controversy shows that not everyone is happy about the proposed change.

Circle announces USDC launch for Cosmos via Noble network

BNB Chain now has more unique addresses than Ethereum, developer says

Despite this growth, BNB Chain still has far less unique addresses than Bitcoin.

Unique addresses on the Build and Build (BNB) Chain have now surpassed Ethereum, according to a Dec. 22 statement from the developer.

The developer claims that this makes BNB Chain “the largest layer 1 blockchain in the world.” However, blockchain data shows that the Bitcoin network is still larger than both BNB Chain and Ethereum.

According to Etherscan, Ethereum currently has over 217 million unique addresses. By contrast, BNB Chain has over 233 million unique addresses, according to BscScan. This implies that BNB Chain is larger than Ethereum as judged by this metric.

On the other hand, the Bitcoin network has over 1 billion unique addresses, making it larger than both of these networks combined.

The statement was made as part of BNB Chain’s “Year in Review.” The post also highlighted other significant milestones that the BNB network has reached over the past year. The network capped out at 9.8 million transactions per day in May and reached 2.2 million daily active users (DAUs) in October, with DAUs being defined as the number of unique addresses per day that interact with a smart contract.

The developers credit the network’s success in 2022 to several initiatives implemented this year. The BNB Sidechain protocol allowed decentralized application (Dapp) developers to run their Dapps on separate shards of the network, reducing congestion and lowering transaction costs.

Secondly, the team funded a builder grant and $10 million incentive program for Dapp developers, which led to more Dapps being created for BNB Chain and this, in turn, attracted more users.

Additionally, “soulbound tokens” were introduced, which allowed users to register wallet addresses for Know Your Customer (KYC) purposes by holding non-transferrable tokens in their wallets. The developers claim that this increased BNB Chain’s reputation in the nonfungible token and Web3 gaming community.

Finally, the team credited its growth to the launch of Avenger DAO, an API that alerts users of BNB Chain whenever they interact with contracts flagged as malicious. In the team’s view, this made users feel more safe browsing the BNB network, leading to more user retention.

Despite these successes, BNB Chain is still criticized by many in the blockchain community for being too centralized. The post does mention that the network added 23 validators this year and plans to add 60 more in the coming months, which should help to make the network less centralized than it was before. By comparison, Ethereum has over 400,000 validators.

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