Aug. 2, 2023

Exploring the tech behind crypto

one block at a time

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Hi, Bradley Keoun here, editor of The Protocol.

Blockchain "halvings" aren't the sexiest topic in digital-asset technology, but they play a crucial role in the design and incentive structures of some of the biggest and most popular projects, including Bitcoin. On Wednesday, a 12-year-old blockchain called Litecoin underwent the third halving in its history, and our Frederick Munawa has the story – not only what happened, and how it works, but why it matters. One factoid that bears repeating is that the Dogecoin blockchain – a favorite of Elon Musk's – gets its security for new transactions from Litecoin via a special mechanism called "merged mining."

We also have the latest on:

An exploit of the protocol Curve, due to a software vulnerability, that is now rattling the entire decentralized-finance sector.
Scrutiny of Worldcoin and its iris-scanning orb.
U.S. presidential candidates' jockeying to make Bitcoin-friendly comments.

Litecoin's 'Halving' Is Milestone for Vintage Blockchain, Reminder of Project's Importance for Dogecoin

Litecoin creator Charlie Lee (R) and his brother Bobby Lee speak on a livestream about silver collector card. (CoinDesk)

Litecoin, one of the oldest and largest blockchains, underwent the third "halving" in its 12-year history, a key milestone for a project often referred to as "digital silver" in comparison to Bitcoin's reputation as "digital gold."

The event in the blockchain's lifecycle was expected, since it was programmed into the decentralized network's underlying coding – prescribed to happen roughly every four years. Technically it meant that the "block subsidy" – the predetermined reward miners receive for processing transactions and securing the network – went down from 12.5 litecoin (LTC) to 6.25 LTC.

While the cut in rewards can reduce incentives for miners to continue working on the network, the process is designed to be gradual over many years; eventually, the thinking goes, a rising number of transactions on the network will lead to more fees, which can be used to pay the miners. Sometimes, though, the impact of these things can be longer-term; at press time the LTC price was down 6.3% over the past 24 hours.

Few crypto analysts see Litecoin – a 2011 fork of Bitcoin – as one of the most technologically promising blockchains, but its vintage status and staying power have kept the project on the minds of crypto veterans. The native LTC cryptocurrency still ranks as one of the industry's most valuable, at about $7 billion.

Litecoin is also notable because it helps secure the Dogecoin blockchain, which despite being created as a joke in 2014, has become a top-20 project with a market capitalization of $14 billion. Dogecoin has become a frequent talking point of the billionaire Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and the owner of X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Read the full piece by Frederick Munawa

Network News

The decentalized stablecoin exchange Curve's "total value locked" or TVL – the amount of collateral on the protocol – was hit last year by the FTX collapse, and has taken another leg down following this week's "re-entrancy" exploit. (DefiLlama)

CURVE NERVES: A cyber exploit that drained at least $70 million from the stablecoin exchange Curve Finance rocked the blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) industry and sparked follow-on dramas now gripping crypto markets. Chief among those is the risk of liquidation of $168 million of the protocol's native CRV tokens pledged as collateral by Curve founder Michael Egorov. The collateral backs loans from multiple DeFi protocols, including the lender Aave. "Given the interconnected nature of DeFi, if Egorov's position is liquidated that could put pressure on other decentralized lending protocols as well as CRV's price," CoinDesk reported. Traders in the market for crypto perpetual futures piled into "short" CRV positions, betting that the token's price will fall, even after a 30% decline so far – while also bidding up the rival project Uniswap's UNI tokens. Some niche players in the Ethereum ecosystem benefited from the chaos, reaping a windfall from the spike in transactions as traders rushed to reallocate money away from Curve; validators of the blockchain, tasked with confirming transactions, racked up a record amount of so-called maximal extractable value rewards or MEV – a type of extra profits available to middlemen. The suspense grew Wednesday as one DeFi protocol, Abracadabra Finance, proposed to raise interest rates aggressively on an $18M loan to Egorov.

WORLDCOIN WAVE: Last week's launch of Worldcoin's WLD token has continued to shake up the crypto landscape – certainly in terms of hype, but also in transactional activity, speculation, skepticism and scrutiny. Activity from the project helped push transactions on the layer-2 blockchain Optimism – which Worldcoin is based on – past those of the rival network Arbitrum for the first time in six months. The hype, of course, stems partly from Worldcoin co-founder Sam Altman's association with OpenAI, the company behind the suddenly-everybody's-talking-about-it AI bot ChatGPT. Skeptics (including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin) have worried aloud about biometric data being concentrated in the hands of a centralized actor, even in encrypted form. CoinDesk's Michael Casey noted in a column last week that the privacy concerns might be overblown – since "We store far more data on our iPhones using similar device-localized cryptographic protections." Whatever the case, Jake Brukhman, CEO of CoinFund, a venture capital firm backing the project, told CoinDesk TV last week that the project could end up with a mainstream distribution even wider than the number of holders of bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency and the largest by market value. But on Wednesday, officials in Kenya suspended Worldcoin's operations, citing its concerns with the project's "collection of eyeball/iris data." Regulators in Europe are also making inquiries.

BITCOIN CANDIDATES. Candidates for the 2024 U.S. presidential race continue to court the bitcoin vote with policy comments and pledges supportive of the original and still-largest-by-far cryptocurrency. Ron DeSantis, Florida governor and Republican U.S. presidential candidate for 2024, said President Joe Biden is waging a "war on bitcoin and cryptocurrency," pledging to end it if elected. Longshot Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican, repeated that he is a fan of bitcoin but wouldn't use it as a commodity to help stabilize the U.S. dollar. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democratic contender who previously has said he might use bitcoin to stabilize the dollar, suggested in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that arguments against the blockchain's use based on environmental arguments should not be "used as a smokescreen to curtain freedom to transact."

BALD, a new memecoin that's suddenly getting extreme action in crypto markets, appears to be linked to a wallet belonging to Alameda Research, a trading firm that was part of Sam Bankman-Fried's business empire prior to its collapse last year. Blockchain analysts suggested that, given restrictions placed on Bankman-Fried's computer activities by U.S. authorities while his criminal court case is pending, the activity might pertain to a different Alameda associate.

Also:

Ripple's partial victory in its long-running suit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations of illegal securities sales was rejected as a precedent by federal Judge Jed Rakoff of the District Court for the Southern District of New York, in a separate case involving Terraform Labs. (ICYMI: Read our Sam Kessler's news analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the XRP Ledger's blockchain technology.)
Richard Scheuler aka Richard Heart, the twerking crypto promoter behind Hex token and PulseChain, was sued by the SEC, with charges of improper securities offerings and allegations of fraud.
Allen Ginsberg's poetry gets new life in art exhibit relying on AI tool trained on his body of literary work.
Margot Robbie, in interview related to her starring role in Barbie, said that director Greta Gerwig had described two producers of the blockbuster film (including Robbie's husband) as "such Kens" for talking about bitcoin.

Protocol Village

Highlighting blockchain tech upgrades and developments.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (Coinbase)

Coinbase, publicly traded U.S. crypto exchange and wallet provider, is exploring how to allow customers to use Bitcoin's Lightning Network for payments.
Avail, specialist in blockchain data availability, open-sources prototype for "OpEVM" software development kit, allowing developers to build their own sovereign blockchains, working atop Aval's data availability layer, with decentralized sequencers.
Shibarium, soon-to-be-launched layer-2 blockchain focused on Shiba Inu ecosystem, gets live bridge for testing, allowing for token transfers back and forth with Ethereum.
PancakeSwap, decentralized exchange on BNB Chain, Ethereum, Polygon zkEVM and Aptos, has expanded to zkSync Era layer-2 blockchain.
Beam, crypto wallet developed by fintech firm Eco and backed by the crypto exchange Coinbase and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, goes live, featuring "account abstraction" with Ethereum's ERC-4337 standard.
Alchemy Pay, crypto-to-fiat payment gateway, says partnership with Checkout.com will allow users to buy and sell digital assets through Visa and Mastercard using Alchemy Pay Ramp and NFT Checkout.
Celo Foundation says Google Cloud's Blockchain Node Engine is now running one of its network validators.

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Money Center

Fundraisings

Hi, crypto payments application with Ethereum sidechain, raises $30M in strategic investment, forges partnership with metaverse gaming and venture capital giant Animoca Brands. (Animoca)
Solv Protocol, Singapore-based on-chain fund protocol, raises $6M, to expand team and continue development of technology designed to help organizations raise money through creation, usage and sale of financial products. (Laser Digital (part of Nomura Securities), UOB Venture Management, Mirana Ventures, Emirates Consortium, Matrix Partners, Apollo Capital, HashCIB, Geek Cartel and Bytetrade Labs.)

Deals and grants

Arbitrum community votes on two governance proposals covering $5M of ARB tokens from project's nearly $4B treasury, for grant programs to fund development in the layer-2 blockchain's ecosystem.
Avalanche Foundation pledged to buy $50M of tokenized assets minted on the network, adding fuel to one of crypto's hottest trends this year.
Yuga Labs, creator behind Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, agreed to acquire Los Angeles-based Roar Studios in an effort to expand its Otherside metaverse.

Data and tokens

Paradigm Capital, Andreesen Horowitz, early backers of the decentralized stablecoin protocol MakerDAO, have transferred more than $10M of the project's MKR tokens to new blockchain addresses, raising speculation that the investors might cash out following a price rally of 73% in just one month.
Parrot Finance, Solana-based DeFi protocol targeted by activist investors, will buy back its PRT tokens, after community vote to return slice of treasury valued north of $70M.
Kin (KIN) price surges after community vote to burn trillions of the tokens, a week after Ted Livingston, former CEO of messaging app Kik, had introduced Code, which is built around KIN.

Digital Tokens Render, Fetch.ai Outperform Market as Buzz Grows Over AI

Is the growing interest in AI fueling a surge in prices for crypto tokens related to computing protocols? Not all, but several key members of the CoinDesk Computing Index (CPU) are turning heads with their relative market performance. The CPU index covers 28 tokens related to computing protocols, including projects that aim to decentralize the sharing, storing and transmission of data. Year-to-date, the CPU has gained 41% – trailing a 63% gain in the broad CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) of digital assets. But there are a few standouts, as detailed by Tracy Stephens of CoinDesk Indices in a blog post. Render Token (RNDR), a distributed GPU rendering network, has quadrupled. Fetch.Ai (FET), a decentralized machine learning network, has doubled, as have the data marketplace Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) and The Graph (GRT), a data indexing protocol. "All four protocols relate to big data and increasing computational power, two necessities for large language models, which require vast computational resources to learn complicated patterns," according to Stephens.