Uniswap, the biggest automated market maker in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, has opened up its code for developers to fork after the expiration of its Business Source License (BSL) on April 1, according to the protocol’s documentation. The two-year BSL license was created to protect the author’s right to profit from their creations, preventing the code from being used for commercial purposes. The expiration of the BSL license now allows developers to deploy their own decentralized exchange (DEX) using the Uniswap V3 protocol.
Uniswap V3’s new license, the “General Public License,” now applies to the protocol. Developers who want to fork the code will need to use an “Additional Use Grant,” which is a production exemption that is meant to accommodate the needs of both open-source and commercial developers.
Uniswap is widely used by traders, token creators, and liquidity providers in the DeFi space for swapping tokens. Its native token, UNI, is popular among investors looking to gain exposure to the DeFi market. Earlier this month, Uniswap officially went live on the BNB Chain, Binance’s smart contract blockchain, after over 55 million UNI tokenholders voted in favor of a governance proposal by 0x Plasma Labs to deploy the protocol on the BNB Chain. This move allows Uniswap users to access BNB Chain’s ecosystem for trading and swapping tokens, as well as tap into a liquidity pool with BNB Chain’s DeFi developer community.
Uniswap’s decision to make its code available for forking is significant for the DeFi ecosystem, as it allows developers to create new and innovative DEXs that can integrate with the Uniswap V3 protocol. This move is expected to result in a proliferation of DEXs, each with its own unique features, contributing to the growth and maturity of the DeFi space.
While the expiration of the BSL license is a welcome development for developers, it also underscores the need for blockchain projects to carefully consider the licenses they choose to use. The BSL license has been criticized by some in the open-source community for its restrictive nature, and it remains to be seen whether other projects will follow Uniswap’s lead in using the license. Nonetheless, the expiration of the BSL license is a positive development for the Uniswap community, as it opens up new avenues for innovation and growth.
After an update to the validator software on February 25, the Solana network saw a decrease in the rate at which blocks were produced. Transactions were disrupted as a consequence of the event, which prompted validators to downgrade the software in an effort to restore network speed.
At around 6:00 AM (UTC), a technical problem began, which prompted validators to downgrade to version 1.13 in an attempt to get transactions back up throughout the network. However, the downgrade was not sufficient to return Solana to regular operations, and as a result, the decision had to be made to restart the network on version v1.13.6.
“A considerable delay in block production was reported by the network about the same time as an upgrade to the validator software was being implemented. The engineers are currently investigating the underlying reason of the problem “Noting Solana’s webpage for the compass
The problem is related to the upgrading from version 1.13 to version 1.14, which slowed down the process of finalizing blocks. The Solana network is in the process of being restarted, and in order for activities to continue, it is essential to have 80 percent of active stake online:
“As additional validators finish their restart, this number will climb in accordance with the amount of stake they have delegated: this implies that bigger validators such as CEX have a disproportionately high influence on restart timeframes.”
Within the first few hours after the issue was reported, Solana’s validators got together and brainstormed potential solutions to the problem. Infrastructure provider Chorus One pointed out in a Tweeter that the event “demonstrated how really decentralized the network is.” The first chorus continued: “If we didn’t have to spend so much time debating, we could get back up in an hour. However, every step along the route is up to controversy, including whether or not to downgrade, whether or not to restart, and whether to transition from an approach of downgrading to one of restarting. Voting occurs. In the end, it takes us between 8 and 10 hours to recuperate, rather than only 1.”
This is a developing story, and further information will be posted as it becomes available. Please check back for updates.
Cardano (ADA) reached a major milestone in its roadmap on Sep. 13 as its blockchain successfully launched Plutus-powered smart contracts as a part of the Alonzo hard fork.
The Alonzo hard fork has been highly anticipated in the Cardano community as well as the cryptocurrency sphere at large.
The smart contract functionality is meant to allow Cardano to become a platform on which developers can build decentralized applications (DApps) and even mint nonfungible tokens (NFTs). This milestone has been hailed as the point in the development of the network where the “mission truly begins.”
However, the news of the successful execution of this milestone didn’t prevent the network’s native token, Cardano (ADA), from falling into the wider slump that has gripped the crypto market since Bitcoin (BTC) flashed crashed below $43,000 on Sep. 7. In the aftermath of the Alonzo hard fork on Sep. 10, ADA dropped 10% to hit an intraday low of $2.3 while BTC and Ether (ETH) only fell 4% and 6.97%, respectively.
Marie Tatibouet, the chief marketing officer of crypto exchange Gate.io, told Cointelegraph:
“This changes everything for Cardano! For the longest time, Cardano was known as the smart contract platform without the smart contracts, but now the critics will have to change that narrative. With the advent of actual contracts, Cardano’s utility and usability goes through the roof.”
Cardano developer activity amongst the highest
According to a report by Outlier Ventures titled, “Blockchain Development Trends Q2 2020/21,” Cardano is one of the most actively developed blockchains out there, with the highest average monthly commits per month on Github code repositories at 701 commits per month (CPM).
The average CPM for all protocols considered in the report is 107 CPM. These “commits” essentially represent any additions or amendments made to the network’s source code on Github.
In terms of these commits, Ethereum comes in second with 447 CPM, IOTA stands third with 394 CPM with Filecoin and Flow rounding up the top five with 368 CPM and 306 CPM, respectively. This shows that Cardano is 555% more active than Ethereum and 317% than the average of all the blockchain networks connected.
In terms of the total number of developers building a particular blockchain network, Ethereum is still ranked at the top with 168 monthly active developers (MAD). Cardano follows closely in second place with 165 MAD, showing a higher year-over-year increase of 31.8%. The network already has the functionality that allows the creation of NFTs. According to data provided by Cardano to Cointelegraph, there have been 780,436 NFTs minted on the network.
Such an active developer community is a testament to how fast the network is developing and adapting to the changing needs of the ecosystem. Cardano has a high developer count with the highest development activities amongst similar blockchain protocols thus improving the security and transparency of the network. The Alonzo hard fork bringing in the smart contract functionality will only push these trends to greater heights.
Cardano DApps are still on the distant horizon
Even though the Alonzo upgrade, a part of the Goguen phase of Cardano’s roadmap, allows developers to deploy Plutus-powered smart contracts on the network, the network hasn’t quite reached that stage.
Despite the belief in the market that over 2,000 smart contracts have been deployed on the network, according to data from Vercel app, a third-party data provider that uses data from adapools.org, there are only 26 Plutus-powered smart contracts that have been deployed at the time of writing.
There is also a market-wide perception that these smart contracts are in timelock. But, a spokesperson from Cardano clarified to Cointelegraph that the network has had timelock scripts since the Allegra era of the project’s roadmap. These time-locked scripts are used for activities like aiding NFT minting by making NFTs run unique for-instance and multisig schemes. Smart contracts highly differ from these scripts and cannot be placed “in timelock.”
Hunain Nasser, senior analyst at OKEx Insights — the research team at cryptocurrency exchange OKEx — told Cointelegraph:
“Timelocks are used to protect users from changes made to contracts after they are created. Not all 2,300 or so scripts seen on the Cardano network are actual apps, most of them are minting policies for tokens and NFTs on the Cardano network, and they are time locked to prevent changes.”
However, timelocks can be used once DApps are created and widely used. They can also be used to provide users alerts once any changes to a smart contract are triggered. This feature prevents the implementation of these changes instantly, giving users time to review them and act on them if necessary before they get implemented.
It remains to be seen how fast real utility could come to the Cardano network in terms of DApps and other decentralized finance features. But it also could be a case of managing expectations. Johnny Lyu, CEO of crypto exchange KuCoin, told Cointelegraph that even though the Alonzo upgrade is a landmark event for Cardano, one shouldn’t expect lightning-fast achievements in a short period of time.
“Users need to be patient, and developers need to move on and do a lot of work to prevent mistakes that can lead to hacks and loss of funds on smart contracts.”
An instance of smart contracts being fast-tracked into a network can be witnessed in the case of the Binance Smart Chain, the most recent one being the $12.7 million BTC hack from the pNetwork.
Related:DeFi hacks on Binance Smart Chain rise as TVL and volumes increase
“At the same time, I believe that after launch, it will take more than two years for DApps to be deployed and operate at full scale on Cardano, as it was with the Ethereum network, “ Lyu said, adding “I think everyone is ready to start now and offer some new products and applications to users, but it is necessary to make sure that they are safe.”
Since Cardano is a blockchain project that has always focused on the fundamentals, one might assume that they will allow funds to flow through smart contracts only once they are deemed safe and secure. The Founder of Five Binaries, Marek Mahut, who ran the first smart contract on Cardano said that “Safety and scalability are major features for any developer. Cardano’s accounting technology, eUTXO, provides a novel approach, which makes writing secure smart contracts easier.”
The Cardano Foundation is held the Cardano Summit 2021 on Sept. 25–26. IOHK, the blockchain research and development company that backs Cardano’s infrastructure, discussed the planned upgrades and improvements to the smart contract functionality at this summit. It remains to be seen when the deployment of actual DApps can be done on the network, but it’s not an instantaneous process.
Ethereum transaction protocol Eden Network has raised $17.4 million in seed funding from some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds, underscoring the need to address ongoing challenges facing the block production economy.
The funds will be used to support the adoption of Eden Network among developers, miners and users, the company announced Wednesday. The network claims all users will benefit from its ordering rules thanks to an improved block production system.
The investment round was led by Multicoin Capital with participation from Alameda Research, Jump Capital, Wintermute, GSR and DeFiance Capital. Genesis Capital executive Joshua Lim and Andre Cronje of Yearn.finance also participated as angel investors.
Eden officially launched along with Ethereum’s London hard fork on Sunday, claiming to represent more than half of the network’s hash power. That assertion means more Eden blocks are being produced on Ethereum than non-Eden blocks. Users can stake the protocol’s native EDEN tokens to gain access to priority block space and the Eden Relay Remote Procedure Call, which allows transactions to be submitted privately.
Related:Ethereum London hard fork goes live
Eden is attempting to democratize miner extractable revenue, or MEV, which measures a miner’s ability to profit from arbitrarily deciding where and when transactions occur. As Cointelegraph reported in October 2020, researchers have already uncovered Ethereum block manipulation as a means to exploit certain DeFi protocols. In the wake of the London hard fork, several mining pools have begun resorting to MEV to increase their net revenues. This move may pose a direct challenge to EIP-1559’s promise of lower gas fees.
Nevertheless, the anticipation and trigger of the London hard fork have been overwhelmingly bullish for Ether (ETH). The second-largest crypto reached above $4,000 last week for the first time since May. As Cointelegraph recently reported, Bloomberg senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone believes $5,000 ETH is likely in the near term. The outlook likely hasn’t changed in the wake of a sizable flash crash for ETH and the broader cryptocurrency market on Tuesday.
The bullish momentum across the cryptocurrency market continued to build on Sept. 3 as a market-wide rally lifted the prices of most altcoins and boosted Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) above their respective resistance levels at $51,000 and $4,000.
The recent price gains seen in the altcoin market show no sign of slowing down and several altcoins gained more than 30% on Friday.
Top 7 coins with the highest 24-hour price change. Source:Cointelegraph Markets Pro
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the best performers over the past 24-hours were Polymath (POLY), Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA) and XYO Network.
Polymath rallies as its ‘Polymesh’ mainnet launch approaches
Polymath is an Ethereum-based project focused on digital asset management.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $0.345 on Sep. 1, the price of POLY rallied 56% to an intraday high at $0.54 on Sept. 3 as its 24-hour trading volume exploded by 2,040%.
POLY/USD 4-hour chart. Source:TradingView
The sudden burst of momentum for the project comes following the Sept. 1 upgrade to the Polymesh incentivized testnet which puts the project one step closer to the full launch of the Polymesh mainnet.
Bitcoin Cash ABC rebrands to eCash
Bitcoin Cash ABC, formerly known as Bitcoin Cash (BCH), recently underwent a rebrand to eCash (XEC).
The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. BCHA price. Source:Cointelegraph Markets Pro
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for BCHA climbed into the green zone on Aug. 29 and reached a peak of 81 on Aug. 30, around 74 hours before its price increased 78% over the next day.
Excitement for the project comes following its official rebranding to eCash which also included a token revaluation that increased the circulating supply from 21 million to 21 trillion.
Related:Bitcoin price overcomes $50K, stocks slide after disappointing US jobs report
XYO Network benefits from a new collaboration
The XYO Network is a decentralized network of devices that anonymously collect and validate geospatial data and record it on the XYO blockchain.
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, market conditions for XYO have been favorable for some time.
VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. XYO price. Source:Cointelegraph Markets Pro
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for XYO began to pick up on Sept. 1 and reached a high of 77 around seven hours before the price increased 285% over the next day.
This price spike comes after the XYO community got a boost to its visibility on Sept. 1 after CoinApp launched a campaign allowing users to earn XYO tokens for participating in a case study on the application.
The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.289 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 41.5%.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
A major consensus bug has affected more than half the Ethereum network’s nodes, causing those running older versions of Geth to split from the main network.
According to Ethereum software developer Marius van der Wijden, an attacker exploited a vulnerability affecting earlier versions of Geth, one of Ethereum’s software clients. According to the developer, Geth clients and Ethereum nodes running software v1.10.7 or earlier are at risk of splitting from the network.
“Infura and the big exchanges seem to be on the good side of the fork, so all transactions through metamask should be golden,” said van der Wijden. “Users that run validators need to update their nodes quickly (in the next 10h I think) as they would otherwise vote on invalid committees.”
A chain split has occurred on the Ethereum mainnet. The issue was resolved in the v1.10.8 release announced previously. Please update your nodes, if you haven’t already!
— Go Ethereum (@go_ethereum) August 27, 2021
Related:Ethereum London hard fork goes live
Binance Smart Chain’s Twitter account and others had previously warned Geth clients to update to v1.10.8, which claimed to have a hotfix for the vulnerability in the earlier versions. Ethereum Virtual Machine- or EVM-compatible chains may also be at risk.
“Stay away from doing [transactions] for a while till confirmed, unless you are sure you are submitting to latest Geth,” advised Yearn.finance founder Andre Cronje.
After a 13% rise in two days, Bitcoin’s (BTC) market capitalization surpassed $800 billion to reach its highest value in 79 days. During the same timeframe, Ether (ETH) accumulated a 45% gain in two weeks, placing the network’s market capitalization at $340 billion.
Positive expectations for the London hard fork and its potential deflationary effect undoubtedly played a role, but some investors continue to question how Ether’s valuation stacks against Bitcoin. Some, including Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead, expect Ether to outpace Bitcoin as the largest cryptocurrency.
Market participants may have also been excited after Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari suggested that the Fed may stick with the asset-purchase program a bit longer. The reason cited was the Delta variant’s spread and its potential harm to the labor market.
Kashkari said:
“Delta could discourage people from returning to jobs that require in-person interaction and keep kids out of schools.”
Extending the stimulus for longer raises the inflationary risk, which increases the attractiveness of scarce assets like real estate, commodities, stocks, and cryptocurrencies. However, the impact of these macroeconomic changes should equally impact Bitcoin and Ether.
Active addresses give Bitcoin a clear lead
Comparing some of Ethereum’s metrics could shed some light on whether Ether’s 58% discount is justified. The first step should be to measure the number of active addresses, excluding low amounts.
Addresses with $1,000 or higher balances. Source: CoinMetrics
As shown above, Bitcoin has 6 million addresses worth $1,000 or higher, and 3.67 million have been created since 2020. Meanwhile, Ether has less than half at 2.7 million addresses with $1,000. The altcoin’s growth has also been slower, with 2.4 million of those created since 2020.
This metric is 55% lower for Ether, and this corroborates the market capitalization gap. However, this analysis does not include how much large clients have invested. Although there is no good way to estimate this number, measuring cryptocurrency exchange-traded products could be a good proxy.
Ether lags on exchange-traded products
Publicly traded crypto products. Source: Bloomberg and Investing.com
After aggregating data from multiple exchange-traded instruments, the result is telling. Bitcoin dominates with $32.3 billion in assets under management, while Ether totals $11.7 billion. Grayscale GBTC plays a vital role in this discrepancy because its product was launched in September 2013.
Meanwhile, Ether’s first exchange-traded product came in October 2017, when the XBT Provider Ether Tracker was launched. This difference partially explains why Ether’s total is 64% lower than Bitcoin’s.
Futures open interest justifies the price gap
Lastly, one should compare the futures markets data. Open interest is the best metric of professional investors’ actual positions because it measures market participants’ total number of contracts.
An investor could have bought $50 million worth of futures and sold the entire position a couple of days later. This $100 million in traded volume does not currently represent any market exposure; therefore, it should be disregarded.
Bitcoin futures aggregate open interest. Source: Bybt
Bitcoin futures open interest currently amounts to $14.2 billion, down from a $27.7 billion peak on April 13. Binance exchange leads with $3.4 billion, followed by FTX with another $2.3 billion.
Ether futures aggregate open interest. Source: Bybt
On the other hand, the open interest on Ether futures peaked about a month later at $10.8 billion, and the indicator currently stands at $7.6 billion. Therefore, it is 46% lower than Bitcoin’s, which further explains the valuation discount.
Related:Ethereum market cap hits $337 billion, surpassing Nestle, P&G, and Roche
Other metrics like on-chain data and miner revenues show a more balanced situation, but both cryptocurrencies have different use cases. For example, 54% of the Bitcoin supply has remained untouched for longer than one year.
The truth is that any indicator has a downside, and there is no definitive valuation metric to determine whether a cryptocurrency is above or below its fair value. However, the three metrics analyzed suggest that Ether’s upside, when priced in Bitcoin, does not signal a “flippening” anytime soon.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of theauthorand do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
The latter half of 2020 has seen record Bitcoin (BTC) prices and a number of key regulatory developments, such as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s, or OCC’s, approval of crypto custody at national banks. Legal policy for the digital asset industry currently faces an uncertain future, however, as a number of government roles are set to change heading into 2020, according to former Coinbase exec and current acting leader of the OCC, Brain Brooks.
“I can’t speak to the specific price movement, but I’ll tell you what I’m worried about,” Brooks told CNBC in a Friday interview, fielding a question on his primary interest regarding Bitcoin’s blazing highs. Brooks explained:
“All of this is happening in an environment where we’re about to have a change of presidential administrations and there’s calls on Capitol Hill to dismantle some of the regulatory protections we’ve put in place with this stuff.”
Recent weeks have shown a number of crypto regulatory proposals, including rumors of a ban or limitations on self-custodied crypto wallets. Multiple congressional leaders responded with concern against the possible action. A new bill proposal also seeks to place stringent regulatory requirements on stablecoins.
“My agency has tried to make it safer for people to custody in national banks,” Brooks said. “We’ve talked about banks supporting some of these stablecoin projects,” he added. “If those protections aren’t in place, I really worry about the environment for these kinds of things.” Brooks pointed toward a desire for retaining safety within the crypto space.
Brooks’ strides toward crypto industry safety and growth were met with recent backlash expressed in the form of a letter from several congresspeople in early November. Several government leaders lobbied that the OCC concentrated too much on the sector under Brooks’ watch.
In his CNBC interview, Brooks noted crypto is at a crossroad in terms of regulation. “We’re at a really critical inflection point right now,” Brooks said. “It’s kind of a fork in the road.” The OCC leader said one road looks to increase safety for people in the market by targeting the ecosystem surrounding illegal crypto transactions. He described banks as vital to the equation.
The second road looks more dire for the crypto space. “The other path, which is a very real potential here, is that we politicize some of these tech issues, whether it’s crypto or fintech more broadly,” Brooks explained, adding:
“We politicize it by undoing all of the good work this administration has done to make it safer, to make it more real, and if we do those things, as for example, Chairwoman Maxine Waters’ letter recently suggested, then I’m not sure if we have enough of a foundation to move forward here. So it’s all about consolidating regulatory gains and consumer protections that we’ve tried to put in place.”
In early December, Waters sent out a letter requesting a halt on financial regulatory developments until government positions are solidified in 2021. Waters made a splash in the crypto space back in 2019, when she halted Facebook’s Libra (now called Diem) after its white paper release.
