“Ethereum successfully launched yet another dress-rehearsal testnet for the upcoming Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0, dubbed Zinken. The launch occurred on Monday at 12 P.M. UTC and unlike previous attempts, was a smooth launch with enough participation and no major bugs.
This was the confirmation that the developers needed to go ahead with the mainnet launch. Vitalik Buterin, who was also present during the call, added that the team may still do a few more rehearsals, but they’d likely be reserved to developers.
Danny Ryan, the Ethereum Foundation’s lead coordinator for Ethereum 2.0, was optimistic that a 2020 launch may be forthcoming:
That’s my impression [that a 2020 launch is on target].”
See Also: Zinken Launch (Livestream)
It’s Time to Launch the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain
“We’ve spent the last nine months testing the life out of this thing. The year began with huge, long-running single client testnets: Sapphire, Topaz and Onyx networks run by Prysmatic Labs. In April, there were small multi-client networks: Schlesi, Witti and Altona.
And then the big one, the Medalla testnet. It has been running for over two months, with four different client implementations involved throughout that time. It continues to run today with over 50,000 validators actively participating, making it one of the largest decentralized consensus networks in existence.
Four high-quality, audited and battle-tested clients are currently available to run at beacon chain launch: Teku, Lighthouse, Nimbus and Prysm. Each has its own flavor and target user base. For example, Teku, the Eth 2.0 client from ConsenSys, has been designed and built primarily with institutional and professional stakers in mind.
We have tested everything else in every way we can: the deposit contract has been formally verified; the deposit tools have been audited; the specification has been audited; the beacon chain has been formally modeled; the node discovery protocol has been audited; the networking protocol has been audited; the crypto-economics have been simulated; we are running incentivized attack nets; we’ve been doing fuzz testing; every client has undergone at least one third-party security audit. Hundreds of pairs of eyes have scrutinized the whole process over the last year.
However, the real beacon chain will have real rewards and real penalties, and we simply can’t simulate these with testnets. This is why it is now time to go live with the beacon chain. We’ve tested these things as far as we can in the lab: Now it’s time to run it in the wild.“
See Also: Danny Ryan: Eth1 Integration into Eth2 – The Future of Ethereum Mainnet (Video Presentation)
“The move increases the trust’s transparency – and potentially its liquidity. Accredited investors who hold the trust will be able to sell after only a six-month lockup instead of the usual 12.
We’re seeing interest from investors who have become more comfortable with digital currencies through bitcoin exposure, and are now looking at how else they can diversify within the asset class.”
See Also: Bitcoin and Ether Rally After Grayscale’s ETH Trust Becomes SEC-Reporting
See Also: DeFi Project Aave Raises $25M From Blockchain.com and Other Investors
“Aztec 2.0 is both a scaling and a privacy solution rolled into one. The layer two solution adopted by Aztec relies on zkRollups, similar to Loopring or ZkSync.
The team says that the rollup can reach 300 transactions per second while allowing shielded ERC-20 token transactions and private interactions with decentralized finance protocols.
The network is currently live on the Ropsten testnet with no specific indications as to its mainnet release, though Walton-Pocock alluded to a launch before the end of the year.”
See Also: Aztec: zkRollup Layer 2 + Privacy
See Also: Curve + zkSync L2: Ethereum’s first user-defined ZK rollup smart contract!
“Catnip is a project of AugurDAO [offering] a simpler, lower-fee prediction market experience built on Augur and Balancer. Catnip features a simple Uniswap-style UI that will be familiar to any DeFi user.
We used foundry.finance to tokenize outcome shares in Augur markets, put them into a Balancer AMM pool, and then made a custom UI to let users swap via this pool. Trading is 100% non-custodial and market resolution is 100% decentralized, using Augur as the settlement and oracle layer.
We’re starting with just one market on the 2020 U.S. presidential election to concentrate liquidity around the world’s most predicted event. We already have over 300k in liquidity in our Balancer pool. This means you can buy 1k DAI worth of yTrump or nTrump outcome tokens at ~1% slippage.”
See Also: Catnip
“Over the last month or two, something strange has been happening. Like a vegan eating a steak, dai has been gobbling up huge amounts of centralized stablecoins as collateral.
MakerDAO’s ingestion of centralized stablecoins is part of its strategy for bringing Dai back in line with its $1 target. It’s a bold plan, but it could come at a price. MakerDAO could face pressure to import more of the traditional banking system’s rules.
If MakerDAO ingests even more of FinCEN-registered USDC’s stablecoins, will nervous USDC execs start pushing MakerDAO to register with FinCEN?
Or maybe regulators will use centralized stablecoins as a Trojan horse for exerting control over MakerDAO. For instance, they could tell MakerDAO to apply for a banking charter on pain of USDC being ordered to drop MakerDAO as a customer, or to conform to consumer lending laws.”
“Securitize is teaming up with a protocol called Tinlake from Centrifuge, which uses a clever system of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to enable real-world assets to participate in DeFi.
But there’s a catch: Digital securities, like their traditional counterparts, are regulated and have several control mechanisms that must be enforced.
Tinlake’s smart contracts pool together NFTs that represent real-world assets. The Securitize Tinlake integration will be strictly for wallets that are associated with Securitize ID, so that the person on either side of a trade is known.
If you go and buy Apple shares on Robinhood, the only thing you can do is just to wait for them to appreciate over time. But if these DeFi protocols become available over time for security tokens, as we think will happen, then suddenly there are other avenues for you to make money besides just holding on and waiting.“
“Pelosi said the Trump administration’s $1.8 trillion proposal still lacks adequate funding and has no plan for national testing and contact tracing.
Some in the GOP were reluctant to back the president’s proposal, instead voicing support for a much smaller package.”
“The guidelines will offer tax authorities guardrails for clarifying their local treatment of cryptocurrencies while also accounting for “international [exchanges].”
OECD said questions surrounding wallet providers, as well as crypto income not derived from sales (staking rewards, perhaps) may feature in the report. It plans for G20 members to review the framework in 2021.”
“The technical firm behind privacy cryptocurrency zcash (ZEC) is in the process of transitioning to a non-profit, called the Bootstrap Project, after a majority of shareholders elected to donate their holdings in the company.
The donation will allow the ECC to more fully embrace a central plank in ZIP 1014 – that of all future mining revenue furthering zcash’s potential as an asset, and not enriching founders or early investors. Those involved in the project’s 2016 launch garnered 15% of mining revenue under the old scheme.
Outside observers suggest the move may be in keeping with the progressive decentralization ethos designed to keep regulators at bay.”
“Kate Winslet has signed on to star and produce Fake!, a movie based on an unpublished book by Jen McAdam and Douglas Thompson. McAdam, a victim of the OneCoin scheme, will be a producer on the film.
Fake! will be written and directed by Scott Z. Burns, who helmed The Report, a political drama based on the CIA’s report on torture post 9/11, and wrote the 2011 pandemic movie Contagion, which also starred Winslet.
A TV show based on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) podcast about Ignatova is also in development.”
The Disrupt 