SF Newsletter - March Issue
Launch of Solana Beach V2, HydraDX nodes, Anchor - stable interest rates in crypto, and more!
Hey there,
Welcome to our second NL issue - we hope it finds you well! March has been yet another exciting month in crypto, so let’s jump right in.
From now on, we would like to include some statistics about our validator nodes into the NL in order to provide you with more analytical insights into our operations. We’d love to know what you think about that, so please let us know! The data is provided by Staking Rewards
Composition of USD amount staked at Staking Facilities
The pie chart shows how the amount of $647,38 Mio. ‘Total Assets Staked’ at Staking Facilities is composed of given current asset prices (March 31st, 2021).
Percentage staked across the whole network
Compare the share of staked tokens (in % of the Circulating Supply) across the whole network for each of our portfolio projects.
Nominal vs. Real APY of each network
Nominal and Real APY often differ quite significantly. Compare the APYs within and across our portfolio projects.
More subgraphs are migrating to The Graphs' decentralized network
April will be an important month for The Graph network as it marks the starting point for the mainnet migration process, which happens in three phases:
Phase 1: Migration Bootstrapping
Phase 2: Production Dapps
Phase 3: Curation Live
The whole process is expected to last several months during which we will see more subgraphs moving from the hosted service to The Graphs decentralized mainnet, ultimately bringing the network out of beta. You can learn more about the migration process in this blog post.
You can now stake your DOT via Ledger Live
You can now stake your DOT directly via the Ledger Live app, making it the fifth Proof-of-Stake network, for which Ledger Live offers a staking solution within the app. You can now manage all of your DOTs operations such as sending, receiving, and nominating without having to use an additional interface such as Polkadot JS. You can learn how to do so in this official guide by the Polkadot team.
Skale supported in ConsenSys' suite of Enterprise blockchain solutions
ConsenSys Codefi is set out to power the evolution of commerce and finance via an application suite that is tailored (but not limited) to the needs of financial institutions and large corporations. With Skale now being part of the ConsenSys Partner program, entities working with ConsenSys Codefi have exposure to Skale and are able to use its' Ethereum scaling solutions.
IBC transfers are live on the Cosmos Hub
After a successful launch of Inter-Blockchain-Communication (IBC) on the Cosmos Hub back in February, token transfers for IBC connected blockchains are now also enabled on the Cosmos Hub as of March 29th. The Cosmos Hub is well on its’ way to be the backbone of an ‘Internet of Blockchains’ with projects such as the Gravity DEX (AMM DEX Liquidity Module) getting ready for an audit of its’ codebase. Congratulations to the whole Cosmos community on reaching yet another milestone!
OKEx, MXC, and the Solana Foundation team up
The southeast cryptocurrency exchanges OKEx and MXC are partnering with the Solana Foundation to fund projects building on top of the Solana blockchain. While focusing on DeFi projects, the $40 Million reserved for strategic investments are also going to be used for projects that expand the resources required to bring new decentralized apps (dapps) and protocols to market.
Lido is expanding and adds support for the Terra blockchain
Lido recently increased their Ethereum 2.0 validator set by onboarding new validators. Furthermore, Lido is now also supporting liquid staking for the Terra blockchain, making it a multichain liquid staking solution. LUNA holders, the native token of the Terra blockchain, can stake via Lido to receive bLUNA, which is a liquid staking token pegged 1:1 with LUNA that is staked with whitelisted Lido validators. Do Kwon (Cofounder of Terraform Labs) and Vasiliy Shapovalov (CTO of p2p validators, the initiators of Lido) recently joined CryptoCobain for a live stream in which they talk about liquid staking, DeFi, stablecoins, and more!
Tezos - 1000 days of mainnet
March 26th marked the 1000th day of the Tezos mainnet and with the recent Edo upgrade, we are curious to see how the Tezos DeFi ecosystem will evolve. Another milestone was hit on March 29th with 300.000 smart contract calls being hit (up from ~100k in February!).
Edgeware - Tokyo Upgrade
Edgeware completed its' Tokyo upgrade on March 26th. Tokyo bridges Edgeware and Ethereum, which means that with Tokyo being live, EVM is now also live on mainnet. This ultimately gives users two smart contract languages. Tokyo opens up EVM tooling, dapps, and infrastructure to the Edgeware ecosystem.
Dfinity Genesis Launch Event
After Bronze, Copper, Tungsten, and Sodium, Mercury marks the last milestone of Dfinitys’ release schedule. Mercury was initiated on December 18th last year as it launched the ‘Internet Computer Alpha Mainnet’. Once several steps (aka. ‘gates’, 15 in total) have been completed, the Network Nervous System (NNS) will trigger Genesis by releasing ICP utility tokens. You can sign up to get notified ahead of time and serve yourselves a spot in the Genesis Launch event here.
We are participating in the HydraDX Snakenet
In our last issue, we wrote about the HydraDX Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool (LBP), which turned out to be the most successful LBP yet on Balancer - wow!
HydraDX is a Substrate-based, open, and permissionless cross-chain liquidity protocol for the Polkadot ecosystem. It is built as a parachain to provide a native swap solution for substrate-based assets as well as cross-chain interoperability with other networks such as Ethereum. Since HydraDX fits quite well in our vision of a multichain web3 ecosystem, we are participating in their incentivized testnet, Snakenet. Snakenet is set to take place in several phases until it transitions into mainnet.
As an HDX token-holder, you can participate in Snakenet as a nominator for which you earn rewards. During Snakenet, HDX token transfers are disabled and the HydraDX team holds Sudo keys. These are security measures until the network runs stable and everything has been tested thoroughly. While staking rewards can be earned right away, slashing will be implemented in later stages. You can learn more in this official Snakenet walkthrough.
On our HydraDX subpage, you find more information as well as guides on how to become a nominator and how you can swap your xHDX (ERC-20) token for HDX (in case you participated in the HydraDX LBP). Furthermore, you can find FAQs that help you to get started and to properly maintain your staking operations.
Our node addresses:
SF hydra-01: 7JBpBbmEHa1FahqchyoefBq1Tx1Wbxj9AA8uYYfqMX3GKepe
SF hydra-02: 7JEVC9zxSWiV2WVE3YrzgdNRbS5Tra5DuPgKWGCJLcQev5VY
SF hydra-03: 7Lzt2oxZiPdwzTKKZFEV6xfhyfJhMsqyQkwK9EHhy8cHXyLa
SF hydra-04: 7L1oarejYuUiUNrktmTQxjZWzHbGs7yn7mqZDEQgWKkeNtmZ
Solana Beach Version 2 is live!
On March 24th we went live with Solana Beach v2, which is now a full-fledged block explorer through which you can explore, analyze, and track the Solana network. Given the high-throughput and performance of the Solana blockchain, this was not an easy task and required a fair amount of backend work, which we topped off with an overhaul of the frontend. For V2, we closely worked with the team over at VGNG and could not have been more pleased about the collaboration.
We will constantly evolve and improve Solana Beach to make it the go-to blockexplorer for the Solana ecosystem. In case you have any feedback and/or feature ideas, please let us know!
GRTiQ Indexer Interview
In a recent interview by GRTiQ, our team members Gary and Robert share some insights about what it means to be an indexer on The Graph network. GRTiQ is a community resource dedicated to serving delegators of the network as a knowledge base. The team conducts regular interviews with different stakeholders such as indexers or curators. Furthermore, they provide:
market analytics
indexer research
curated library of educational content
guides & tutorials for delegators
Regulation & Taxation of Digital Assets - Event Recap
On March 2nd we co-hosted an event dedicated to discuss the regulation and taxation of digital assets together with the European Blockchain Association. We welcomed three industry experts, namely Werner Hoffmann (CEO & Co-Founder of Pekuna), Florian Wimmer (CEO & Co-Founder of Blockpit) as well as Dr. Markus Kaulartz (lawyer at CMS Hasche Sigle). We distilled the most important insights into this blog post and want to thank the panelist as well as all the participants for taking the time to join us for the event - we had a great time picking the panelists' brains as well as networking with everyone after the event.
The 'Crypto Transformation' - The Money Movement Podcast by Circle
The Money Movement Podcast by Circle is moderated by Jeremy Allaire and regularly hosts interesting guests. Given the current bull cycle, we figured that episode 30 is a great episode to listen to as it provides a bird's eye view on the potential of blockchain technology, beyond pure hype and speculation. Together with Balaji Srinivasan and Ian Lee, Jeremy talks about the 'Crypto Transformation' - there is a lot to take away from this episode!
Anchor Launch
On March 17th, the long-anticipated savings protocol, Anchor launched on the Terra blockchain (learn more about Terra here). At the time of writing, the protocol already crossed $500 Million in Total-Value-Locked (TVL). Since a picture is worth a thousand words, check out the video below to learn more about Anchor:
‘Krypto Steuerreport’ by Blockpit & KPMG (German)
Blockpit recently published an 84-page PDF that answers the most important questions about crypto taxes and provides readers with an overview of the taxation of various incomes and transactions. You can download the guide for free here. Please note that the report is written in German.
IOTA Foundation joins the European Blockchain Association (link)
"What Happens When Cryptocurrencies Earn Interest?" (link)
The former Cryptium Labs team start Heliax (research & development company) & Anoma Protocol
“Visa moves to allow payment settlements using cryptocurrency” (Link)