Ethereum

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you the most significant developments from the past week. The past week in DeFi was filled with artificial intelligence (AI)-centered developments on Etherscan, Polygon’s latest security update and on-chain sleuth ZachXBT’s ongoing lawsuit supported by multiple

A few months ago Pepecoin came and went, bringing quick, unimaginable riches to early investors and turning late comers into reluctant bag holders. While the chart resembles the standard crypto pump-and-dump scheme, PEPE’s price action this week suggests that the frog-themed token could be the newest contender to Dogecoin (DOGE) in the memecoin sector. Dogecoin

Since its inception in 2016, Casa promoted multi-signature self-custody of BTC in the industry with its flagship Bitcoin vault allowing users to store the cryptocurrency using up to five keys for more distributed security. Casa’s service originally catered to Bitcoin ‘whales’ that were willing to spend $10,000 a year on custody, before opening its service

Starknet, a zero knowledge layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum is one step closer to becoming fully Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible pending an August testnet launch of Kakarot, a new zkEVM. On June 3, the Kakarot team announced it had received new backing from Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, Ledger co-founder Nicholas Bacca and Starkware. We

Immutable Games’ Web3 trading card game Gods Unchained is now listed on the Epic Games Store and is available to its 230 million customers, according to a June 21 announcement. Gods Unchained is a collectible trading card game similar to Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering Arena but with cards players can own and trade. Each

BlackRock’s application for a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) has encouraged other financial firms to follow suit. First, it was the New York-based asset management fund WisdomTree which made a new filing on June 21 for a Bitcoin ETF. This was then followed by investment manager Invesco, which reactivated its application for a spot

Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic has proposed upgrading the Polygon proof-of-stake (PoS) network to a “zkEVM validium” version, according to a June 20 forum post. If the upgrade is implemented, the new version will rely on zero-knowledge proofs to increase security. HUGE UPDATE ON #Polygon Polygon may go through some huge changes in near future. @MihailoBjelic

Ethereum core developers plan to implement a 64-fold increase in the minimum amount of staked Ether (ETH) required to become a validator, from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH. The proposal was made during a June 15 Ethereum core developer consensus meeting by Ethereum Foundation researcher Michael Neuder. The researcher noted that although the current limit of

Zero knowledge proofs have been hailed as a major advancement for blockchain technology but the efficacy of these protocols will require streamlined data availability solutions to unlock their full potential. Anurag Arjun, co-founder of Polygon and blockchain data availability protocol Avail, highlighted the importance of data availability for ZK rollups in an interview with Cointelegraph.

Summary: Ethereum Foundation researcher Michael Neuder proposed increasing the validator balance cap from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. The idea being considered within the developer community would stem the growing active validator set size and optimize network efficiency. Increasing the limits of validator balances would also make room for auto-compounding of rewards, allowing validators to

Ever since the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) was launched in 2017, Web3 users have been able to replace the long strings of characters that make up a crypto address with a more easily memorized blockchain username or Web3 domain name. For example, Ethereum (ETH) users can now send crypto to the network’s founder, Vitalik Buterin,

On June 19, Ethereum block explorer and analytics platform Etherscan launched a new tool, dubbed “Code Reader,” that utilizes artificial intelligence to retrieve and interpret the source code of a specific contract address. After user prompt input, Code Reader generates a response via OpenAI’s large language model (LLM), providing insight into the contract’s source code

Ethereum users have been given another way to create nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and other digital assets on the blockchain with the launch of a new protocol. Launched on June 17 the protocol, dubbed “Ethscriptions,” is a nod to the Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals protocol — where assets are known as “inscriptions.” Ethscriptions was developed by music

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has warned that as Ripple’s case against the United States financial watchdog comes “to a close,” it is only the beginning of the battle for many others in the crypto industry, emphasizing that the fight for clarity “has to continue.’ Following a lengthy back and forth between Ripple and the United

While Arbitrum’s governance token ARB has been in a consistent downturn since the airdrop in late March, its ecosystem shows healthy growth.  A recent Nansen report shows that Arbitrum’s activity improved after the airdrop, stabilizing “at a level higher” than before the airdrop. The daily active users, gas fees and transaction count maintained consistent higher

dApp Store Kit, which was initially incubated by Polygon Labs, will integrate Ready Games’ mobile game development toolkit to help developers roll out Web3 games. dApp Store Kit’s toolkit for deploying EVM-compatible DApp stores will combine with Ready Games, allowing developers to integrate Web3 on-chain support. This will include the ability to integrate wallets and