Transaction fees, crypto investing & blockchain developer activity
In Weekly Blockchain Insights, we share the most interesting Blockchain Tweets, research, and crypto discussions from all blockchain ecosystems from the past week. This week’s blockchain insights focus on the overall crypto and blockchain market, cryptocurrency investing, blockchain scaling, and transaction fees. Make sure to sign up for the newsletter below and get all blockchain insights to your inbox.
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Blockchain Market Overview
Last week Outlier Ventures and Digital Asset Research published research about blockchain developer activity based on Github activity. These analyses can be used as a good indicator and trend analyses for the general industry but it’s not perfect since not all development activity is included.
Excited to share our first ‘#Blockchain Developer Trends 2020’ report from @theo_turner 🙌
Providing an in-depth analysis of #developer data revealing a year of meteoric rises and falls.
Download it here 👉https://t.co/PIdYur7YWF#ATOM #DOT #ETH #Crypto pic.twitter.com/PZOrHM6a6f
— Outlier Ventures (@OVioHQ) June 11, 2020
Today DAR published a report that is a collation of key GitHub metrics across 178 of the top public digital assets by market cap, recent transaction volume, and institutional interest.https://t.co/I7kZLAvEPv
— Digital Asset Research (@DAR_crypto) June 11, 2020
Regan Bozman shared a great list of blockchain funds and funded projects at dovemountaindata.com. Spreadsheets and curated lists such as this make the blockchain industry much more accessible. Consequently, we added the blockchain investor list to our collection of great lists.
1/ I'm excited to launch Dove Mountain Data https://t.co/g2OP6GTfOs
Dove Mountain Data is the most comprehensive database of crypto investors and their investments – and it's totally free. My goal is to make fundraising in the space more transparent.
— Regan Bozman (@reganbozman) June 9, 2020
Another great list is shared at KYCnot.me. This list showcases exchanges that do not require KYC or AML checks for Bitcoin and Monero. This should make it easier to buy, sell, and use crypto without the need to identify yourself and preserve each individual’s privacy.
This new project is cataloguing privacy preserving bitcoin exchanges that don't require KYC: https://t.co/VoyWq2ITyg
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) June 12, 2020
Current Blockchain Discussions
Blockchain fees or transaction fees were one of the most discussed topics last week. These transaction fees must be as little as possible for users while being large enough for people to secure the network and prevent attacks on the network. The number of transaction fees are in direct correlation to the willingness to pay for using the network – the current demand.
One of the most important metrics: Total fees paid to use the network. #Ethereum has flipped #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/K7Rg75KrFf
— Holger 🌈 🐬 (@rohmeo_de) June 9, 2020
Most blockchains are great databases to track and trace any kind of transactions. Some crypto analytics companies utilize already very advanced methods to track, trace, and identify users. The general interpretation of fees and actions on the blockchain is not that easy. Blockchains are permissionless, accessible to anyone and one can make thousands of transactions, batch transactions, or even send very high transactions when the network doesn’t even require it.
Recently 3 Ethereum transactions had $5.7 million of total FEES paid. Most interesting theory is hackers got access to an exchange's funds but can't steal due to whitelisted addresses so they're spending the exchange's money w/ high fees demanding a ransom https://t.co/ScHrI0jGq5
— Linda Xie (@ljxie) June 12, 2020
Another milestone for the crypto industry was reached in Germany when the German Stock Exchange XETRA listed BTCE. This is another step to enable many more people to invest in Bitcoin & crypto.
BREAKING NEWS!!
The German Stock Exchange just listed a fully #Bitcoin settled product BTCE!
Everyone can now invest in $BTC from their stock dashboard! 🤩
— MMCrypto (@MMcrypto) June 9, 2020
One of various options to scale layer 1 blockchain protocols is to utilize layer 2 solutions. MatterLabs provided a great overview of 5 different approaches, their advantages & disadvantages.
A great comparison of layer 2 scaling solutions.
Options:
👉 State channels
👉 Sidechains
👉 Plasma
👉 Optimistic Rollups
👉 Validium
👉 zkRollupWhat's included?
✅Security
✅Performance
✅Usability
✅Smart contracts
✅Privacy#ethereum #blockchain @ethereum @the_matter_labs https://t.co/vxqgBVTxVJ— Blockchain-Comparison.com (@BCComparison) June 12, 2020
Crypto investing
DEX tokens are outperforming tokens from centralized exchanges for a number of reasons. While volumes are much smaller than on centralized exchanges and the value capture is not yet as high as on centralized exchanges, the growth of DEXs and DEX tokens & the integration in DeFi is strong.
1/ DEX tokens on an absolute tear this with 5x the returns of centralized exchange tokens
This comes as we're seeing 2 major trends play out:
1. DEXs are comprising a larger % of overall trading volume
2. Major upgrades have or will occur in the near future to narrow the gap pic.twitter.com/LWSwHDnAnJ— Jack Purdy (@jpurd17) June 10, 2020
An interesting opinion was shared about Bitcoin’s positioning compared to traditional markets. Usually, Bitcoin is seen as highly volatile, as risky but currently other markets are also perceived as volatile and risky and Bitcoin – being antifragile – might just be the hedge for that.
Gradually, Then Suddenly (#15): Bitcoin is Antifragile
As a currency system, bitcoin benefits from stress, disorder, volatility and randomness. It is the antifragile competitor to the inherently fragile legacy monetary system.https://t.co/Dz56LrX3kT
— Parker Lewis (@parkeralewis) June 12, 2020
While there are still only a few hundred active DeFi users, more and more protocols are evolving and enabling open finance. The total market cap of DeFi seems relatively small compared to some or any layer 1 protocols (Post by Spencer Noon click here).
1/ Number of newly deployed DeFi assets per month. Looks exponential to me 🤔
Of course, @UniswapProtocol is leading the way, but @tokensets and @BalancerLabs are catching up! pic.twitter.com/jh4Zdy2a8w
— evgeny.eth (@evgeth_) June 12, 2020
Cryptocurrency investing requires financial knowledge. Make sure to study the basics first before getting into trading, learn about Dollar-Cost Averaging and risk management.
No matter how big your portfolio is, you’ll need to exercise proper risk management.
Calculating position sizing isn’t based on some arbitrary strategy. It involves determining account risk and looking at where a trade idea is invalidated before entering.https://t.co/ygDBynKRqT
— Binance (@binance) June 14, 2020
Blockchain Events
Gitcoin Grants Round 6 starts on Monday with a matching amount of 175,000 USD. This matching funding is intended for public goods and utilizes quadratic funding mechanisms.
Take a look at Gitcoin 👉 click here!