This Week in Blockfolio Signal - Major News from Ethereum, Litecoin, 0x, ZCash, Dash, Enigma, and Enjin
Every week we comb through hundreds of Blockfolio Signals to bring you the most significant team updates with brief analyses to help you understand the latest developments in blockchain.
But first, in macro crypto news this week:
FED Weighs Launching USD Stablecoin to Counter China’s Moves
German Banks Authorized to Store and Sell Cryptocurrency
France to Test Central Bank Digital Currency in Q1 of 2020
64% of Bitcoin Supply Has Not Moved Since 2018, 20% Since 2014
KPMG Launches DLT Supply Chain Tool in Australia, China, and Japan
HSBC to Digitize $20 Billion Worth of Assets on a Blockchain Platform
Top Blockfolio Signals of the past week:
Ethreum Layer 2 Scaling Solution Launched
The Litecoin Foundation Launches Fund for Confidential Transactions
0x v3 with Staking Goes Live on Ethereum Mainnet
Zcash to Launch Blossom Upgrade on December 11th
Dash to Power New Remittance Platform in Mexico
Enigma and Chainlink Announce Collaboration
Microsoft Teams up With Enjin to Offer Crypto Collectible Rewards
Ethreum Layer 2 Scaling Solution Launched
“Today Matter Labs launched “ZK Sync,” a testnet for their “zk rollup” layer 2 scaling solution.
ZK rollups work by posting transaction data on Ethereum and then a layer2 chain batches many transactions into a zero knowledge proof on Ethereum.
This week’s Ethereum’s “Istanbul” network upgrade will change the cost of an operation that will allow rollup solutions on Ethereum to reach 3000 transactions per second, as compared to Ethereum’s current limit of 35 ETH transfers per second.”
— Evan Van Ness, Ethereum
Summary
The latest Ethereum hard fork, Istanbul, is bringing Layer 2 solutions to the network — this time in the form of a payment channel.
Cryptographic research hub Matter Labs released the testnet of ZK-Sync, in what the firm claims is a step toward making blockchains compete with centralized systems for handling millions of transactions a day.
Based on Rollups, the Layer 2 solution uses zero-knowledge proofs (also known as zk-SNARKs) and recent changes to the Ethereum network from the Istanbul hard fork for implementation. A full programming framework launch is slated for January 2020.
A sidechain was created for Ethereum transactions to interact with one another without touching the mainchain. By operating off-chain in smart contract-based escrow accounts, ZK-Sync transactions settle more quickly and have the potential to cost less.
zk-SNARKs can be used to prove the total holdings of a contract without revealing its inner workings. By packaging transactions off-chain and stamping them with a cryptographic proof for validity, Matter Labs says Layer 2 solutions like ZK-Sync have the possibility to scale Ethereum’s current payment network.
In order to create a protocol that was both censorship-resistant and could scale at mass, Matter Labs constructed its own zk-SNARK variant, Redshift, which includes more trustless features than alternatives.
Significance
While it is only in testnet, any potential scaling solution for the Ethereum network is a significant advance for the #2 cryptocurrency and top smart contract blockchain. Scaling has been the major hurdle for Ethereum, although the Matter Labs solution also reduces costs and improves privacy.
This comes a week after Akomba Labs conducted a test on the Ethereum network that shows it can make block propagation at least twice as fast. IDEX, the top decentralized exchange for ERC-20 tokens, also announced they are launching a new DEX on top of Rollup technology, which is only made possible through Ethereum’s latest “Istanbul” hard fork.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $148. View ETH on Blockfolio.
Litecoin is Getting Funding for Confidential Transactions
“The Litecoin Foundation Launches a Dedicated Fund for Confidential Transactions.”
— Franklyn Richards, Core Litecoin Team
Summary
Donations raised from the community for this fund will go towards sponsoring David Burkett to implement the changes into Litecoin. Burkett is the lead developer on the Litecoin Extension block MimbleWimble proposal and developer of Grin++ a C++ implementation of the MW.
The org has, as of writing, raised just over $5,000 in Bitcoin and Litecoin from 21 donators in the first couple of days. The goal of the proposal is to raise $6k/month for 12 months for David Burkett for a total of $72k.
Charlie Lee has stepped forward to match the amount raised each month in order to provide additional support.
Confidential transactions as described by one of its pioneers, Bitcoin Developer Gregory Maxwell, obfuscates the amounts being transacted over the network but not where coins are being sent.
Significance
This effort is significant as it will usher in a major new feature for the Litecoin protocol. The encryption is special because it is still possible to verify that no tokens have been created or destroyed within a transaction but without revealing the exact transaction amounts. Charlie Lee sees it as a comprehensive and safe solution to the fungibility problem, the final hurdle for cryptocurrencies to be ‘sound money’. If proven successful with Litecoin, Confidential Transactions could eventually be implemented within Bitcoin.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $45.39. View LTC on Blockfolio.
0x v3 is Now Live on the Ethereum Mainnet
“Implementing 0x v3 is an exciting new chapter for our protocol & community, as this upgrade includes ZRX staking and a powerful set of bridge contracts that aggregate liquidity from 0x and other DEX networks.
With Liquidity Bridges, 0x becomes a one-stop shop to source the best prices for popular & long-tail trading pairs across DEXs.
We will offer a single integration endpoint, 0x API, that simplifies the dev experience tapping into both off & on-chain liquidity.
Stay tuned and learn more about all the exciting features included in v3 below!”
— Matt Taylor, Marketing Lead
Summary
This upgrade includes ZRX staking and a powerful set of bridge contracts that aggregate liquidity from 0x and other DEX networks like Kyber, Uniswap, and Oasis.
0x will offer a single integration endpoint, 0x API, that simplifies the dev experience tapping into both off & on-chain liquidity.
The new staking mechanism grants 0x market makers (MMs) ownership in the protocol & encourages participation in governance by giving MMs rewards (in ETH) and additional voting power for providing liquidity.
Every ZRX holder may earn staking rewards as well by delegating tokens to MM pools. 0x will also be releasing a ZRX dashboard that simplifies creating staking pools and delegating tokens to MM pools.
Significance
This is a major upgrade for the 0x protocol with the implementation of staking and bridge contracts to aggregate liquidity. The aggregated liquidity benefits not only 0x, but the entire community of decentralized exchange, which benefits the ecosystem as a whole. This could help to increase the adoption of cryptocurrency, as decentralized solutions can remove third-party custody risk and protect user privacy.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.25. View ZRX on Blockfolio.
Zcash to Launch Blossom Upgrade on December 11th
“The next major Zcash upgrade improves speed, scalability and capacity; and it is scheduled to activate on or around Dec. 11, 2019, at block height 653600.
This mandatory network upgrade, called Blossom, is designed to improve scalability and user experience by cutting block times in half (to about 75 seconds), making transaction confirmations faster, doubling network throughput and keeping transaction fees low.”
— Josh Swihart, VP Marketing and Business Development
Summary
This mandatory network upgrade is designed to improve scalability and user experience by cutting block times in half (to about 75 seconds), making transaction confirmations faster, doubling network throughput and keeping transaction fees low.
To keep the emission rate and halving schedule of Zcash unchanged, the halved block times also require that the per-block reward be halved. The emission rate per time, however, remains unchanged.
Significance
This is the first major upgrade in a year and the third ever for one of the top privacy coins. Users demanded stronger performance and Zcash is delivering with Blossom which improves speed, throughput, and scalability.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $27.39. View ZEC on Blockfolio.
Dash to Power New Remittance Platform in Mexico
“Cubobit Launches RemeZaZa Dash-Powered Remittance Platform for Mexico.”
— Michael Seitz, Marketing Manager
Summary
Cubobit, a Mexican cryptocurrency exchange that integrated Dash in August, has debuted a new Dash-exclusive remittance service, RemeZaZa, enabling users to send remittances to Mexico in minutes.
Recipients have a Dash address associated with their account. Upon receiving a transaction it converts instantly to Mexican pesos, funding their debit card, bank account, or debit account within five minutes. This completes the international funds transfer faster than major remittance competitors, many of which take hours or days to transfer.
Dash’s speed thanks to InstantSend makes it an ideal tool for sending near-instant remittances.
Significance
This launch could help Dash make significant progress in expansion into the Latin American remittance market. Remittances are the largest and most important income source for Mexico, bigger than any industry including oil, and are a key focus use case for Dash. $35 billion of remittances are expected to be sent from the US to Mexico in 2019 alone.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $55.24. View DASH on Blockfolio.
Enigma and Chainlink Announce Collaboration
“NEW: The Enigma and Chainlink teams are happy to announce a new collaboration and integration, maximizing the combined and independent power of Enigma’s secure computation protocol and Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network.”
— Guy Zyskind, Co-Founder and CEO
Summary
The Enigma and Chainlink teams are happy to announce a new collaboration, focusing on the integration of their protocols to enable powerful new use cases for secret smart contracts.
They are exploring how Chainlink’s price oracles can be directly integrated with Enigma’s secure computation protocol to improve usability and end-user experience. One key use is facilitating ENG/ETH gas price conversion with Chainlink oracles.
More complex integrations can maximize the combined power of Enigma’s secure computation protocol and Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network. One such integration is the use of Chainlink nodes to submit oracle data as tasks to Secret Contracts.
Application developers will be able to use APIs available via Chainlink to trigger events in their contracts.
Significance
The combination of these two platforms offers the potential for significant synergies that can address the critical challenges facing the adoption of decentralized technologies and smart contracts. These challenges are primarily privacy, scalability, and usability. Several use cases become available to developers by combining Chainlink’s decentralized oracles with Enigma’s secret computation framework. These types of partnerships can help to improve usability and increase the adoption of blockchain technologies.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.47. View ENG on Blockfolio.
Microsoft Teams up With Enjin to Offer Crypto Collectible Rewards
“Do good work, earn a ‘badger.’ That’s the idea behind a new incentives scheme launched by Microsoft in partnership with blockchain gaming project Enjin.”
— Bryana Kortendick, VP of Marketing & Communications
Summary
Dubbed Azure Heroes, it is billed as a “new and fun way to earn digital collectibles for meaningful impact in the technical community.”
Azure Heroes rewards Azure community members for positive actions, such as coaching, making demos, providing sample code, making posts about Azure or completing challenges.
Participants with demonstrable contributions will be handed badges, in this case, “badgers,” across various categories. These include community leadership, content, mentorship, and innovators.
Issuance and transactions of the badger collectibles will be carried out on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing winners to hold them as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Image from Microsoft/Enjin
Significance
The collaboration shows Microsoft’s continued interest in blockchain technology and helps to increase exposure for Enjin given the size of the Azure userbase. It also helps to build community and reward contributors, demonstrating another excellent use case for blockchain technology.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $0.09. View ENJ on Blockfolio.
Quote of the Week:
“German banks will be able to offer their clients custody services for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies starting next year.
First they ignore you, then they laugh you, then they fight you, then they just decide to hold bitcoin.
Buy a hardware wallet instead.”
— Rhythm Trader
Thanks for joining us and we look forward to bringing you our top Blockfolio Signals again next week.
Jason Hamlin
Ecosystem Insights & Development @ Blockfolio
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