This week has been one of the historical ones in Web3 space, with Ethereum successfully executing The Merge, an upgrade transitioning from the original proof-of-work to proof-of-stake mechanism and reducing energy consumption by ~99.95%. The Crypto market did not see much improvement, with Bitcoin struggling to cross the $20,000 mark. In the run-up to the Merge, the price of the blockchain’s native token was up 4% but remains down 15.5% on the month. Tether announced the launching of tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar (“USD₮”) on the NEAR Network. This and more news from the world of Web3 by Shreya Rath.
Crypto Market this week
This week also saw Bitcoin trading below $20,000 mark for the last four weeks. In the run-up to the Merge, the price of the blockchain’s native token was up 4%, but remains down 15.5% on the month. While Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was quoted on the Bankless podcast as saying ether was “not going to be priced in pretty much until after [the Merge] happens”, traders appeared to disagree.
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As per CoinMarketCap, the global crypto market cap is $958.90B, a 0.96% decrease over the last day. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is $68.22B, which makes a 21.70% decrease. The total volume in DeFi is currently $5.05B, 7.40% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. The volume of all stablecoins is now $62.24B, which is 91.24% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. Bitcoin’s dominance is currently 39.38%, an increase of 0.23% over the day.
The DeFi crypto market cap is $47.40B, a 16.59% decrease over the last day.
The Merge happened, what’s next?
The Ethereum Merge is the biggest event in the Web3 space resulting in a massive upgrade that will help the blockchain run efficiently while adding new features.So here’s the statement from the Ethereum Foundation:The Merge was executed on September 15, 2022. This much-awaited Ethereum transition to proof-of-stake consensus was successfully completed. This was indeed a historical moment – it eliminated the need for energy-intensive mining and enabled the network to be secured using staked ETH. More scalability, security, and sustainability – Ethereum’s vision was accomplished.
What will The Merge facilitate? Upgrade from the original proof-of-work mechanism to proof-of-stake Original Ethereum Mainnet merging with a separate proof-of-stake blockchain called the Beacon Chain, now existing as one chain.Reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by ~99.95%.
Read more about the Merge
Ethereum’s ‘The Merge’ Vs Cardano’s ‘Vasil Hard Fork’: 5 things you should know
Ethereum to switch to Proof-of-Stake in September 2022
Over 30,000 people globally joined the “Ethereum Mainnet Merge Viewing Party” on YouTube hosted live by the Ethereum Foundation.
The Merge is expected to reduce Ethereum’s electricity consumption by 99.99%. Based on this assumption, CCRI estimates Polygon’s post-merge emissions from activities on the underlying Ethereum base layer will be about 6.09 tCO2e, or the equivalent of a round trip from Munich to San Francisco in business class. Apart from reduced energy consumption, the Merge will provide a boost to the entire Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space.
The Polygon network, which is a decentralised Ethereum scaling platform, has announced that the Merge will erase 60,000 Tonnes of Polygon’s Carbon footprint. The blog mentions Polygon Network’s annual carbon emissions has mentioned through July 2022 stood at 60,953.26 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), according to a CCRI estimate. This puts the total emissions for the chain since its inception at 94,782 tCO2e.Layer 2 protocols like Polygon increase the complexity of calculating carbon footprint as they have to fully account for emissions from their own network as well as activities on the underlying Layer 1, Ethereum. Here is how it breaks down:
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Devin Finzer, CEO of OpenSea, says he does not mind the dip in business? Read why he feels so
Crypto winter is here and has impacted the entire spectrum of Web3 business. However, the year started with a different flavour, with crypto and NFT seeing a boom. In Q1 of this year, as per a blog in OpenSea authored by Devin Finzer, CEO of OpenSea, the NFT space exploded, and volume on the marketplace grew 600x from the January prior.
At the time, it often felt like we were running in place: we were scrambling to keep the website up, stay in tune with our community, and work through our customer support queue…..since NFTs are denominated in cryptocurrencies, crashes in the market have an impact (in fact, the year we started building OpenSea, the price of Ether dropped from $1300 to $90). But a closer look at the data tells a more nuanced story. For example, our volume is still 10x higher than it was in January 2021, and 40x higher than it was just 24 months ago. And between August 2021 (in the midst of the first NFT boom) and August 2022 (well into the 2022 “winter”), monthly on-chain participants on OpenSea grew more than 80%.*
The NFT market might seem overall gloomy for the time being, but it could be a matter of time. Devin believes there’s a huge opportunity, and their long-term vision makes it possible to separate good ideas from hype, builders from speculators, and the signal from noise.The next bull run might give us a clearer picture.
Tether (USD₮) Launches on Near Network
Tether Operations Limited (“Tether”), the company operating the blockchain-enabled platform tether.to that powers the first and most widely used stablecoin, has launched Tether tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar (“USD₮”) on the NEAR Network.NEAR is a smart contract-capable blockchain designed to provide the ideal environment for dApps which is enabled by its unique scaling solution. The network just hit a milestone of 700 projects now building on NEAR, making it a great ecosystem for Tether to launch a new version of USD₮. As of July, NEAR Foundation reports that the NEAR network has been used for 300,000 to 400,000 transactions per day.
Solana introduces Nitro
Solana has announced that Nitro is building a Layer 2 for Solana that combines Solana’s powerful execution environment and rapidly expanding developer community with the thriving Cosmos and IBC ecosystem. Nitro will serve as the gateway between Solana and Cosmos.Nitro will feature Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) compatibility, which will enable developers to launch their Solana dApps on Cosmos easily and instantly access the broader IBC ecosystem.
Ribbon Lend — Ribbon’s expansion into the credit market
Ribbon Lend can be thought of as “uncollateralized Aave”, allowing depositors to lend unsecured to institutional market makers of their choosing with high liquidity.
Ribbon Lend allows users to get:
1. High yields from unsecured lending
2. No lockups, using Aave’s money market model
3. Off-chain enforcement/credit underwriting 4. Built-in insurance
Solana and Polygon announce winners of Summer Camp Hackathon
The Solana Foundation announced the results of the Solana Summer Camp Hackathon. With participants from across the world, it brought together crypto pioneers and developers and launched projects on the Solana blockchain spanning Payments, DeFi, Mobile, Gaming, DAOs, and everything in-between.
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Polygon has also announced the winners of Polygon’s BUIDL IT Summer 2022 hackathon!. Over 650 projects were submitted for prizes and bounties.Cratch, a social media platform for live streaming, video sharing, and content creation in the Metaverse, received the first prize
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