ethOS Releases Phone Operating System
ethOS 1.0 supports a local Ethereum Light Node and Over The Air (OTA) updates.
ethOS phone operating system.
Voyager files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
2.5m ETH burned since EIP-1559.
Immutable expands L2 fiat off-ramp.
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Ethereum OS, an open-source ethereum operating system project, announced the beta release of its mobile operating system. Users with an OEM unlocked Google Pixel 3, 3XL, or 5a can use the ethOS web installer to install a crypto native operating system. ethOS 1.0 supports a local Ethereum Light Node and Over The Air (OTA) updates. Users can install native dApps, make crypto payments, and have ENS integration. ethOS is planning to integrate XMTP for decentralized messaging as well as an application for minting NFTs directly from the device’s camera roll.
Crypto lending platform Voyager has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Voyager CEO Stephen Ehrlich posted a Twitter thread announcing that customers will be refunded in a combination of assets. This includes part of the crypto in their account, proceeds from the 3AC recovery, common shares in the company, and Voyager tokens. In late 2021, Voyager had $1.3 billion worth of assets under management. In March, the company provided 3AC with a $1 billion loan consisting of 15,250 BTC and $350 million USDC. In June, the company revealed that 3AC had defaulted on its loan and owes Voyager $654 million worth of assets. 3AC later filed for Chapter 15 Bankruptcy, protecting its U.S. assets. Citing the unpaid loan, Voyager suspended trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards for all accounts on July 1st.
Since the implementation of EIP-1559, Ethereum has burned more than 2.5 million ETH, currently worth about $3.1 billion. EIP-1559 provided a new transaction pricing mechanism with fixed-per-block network fees, known as the base gas fee, which is burned. The EIP was implemented during the Ethereum London hard fork, which occurred 11 months ago on August 5, 2021. To date, roughly 20% of Ethereum transactions still use the legacy gas fee option, which sends 100% of the gas fee to the miner. Some hardware wallets such as Trezor and Ledger applications still use the legacy option.
Immutable released its crypto-to-fiat off-ramp integration with Moonpay as an SDK available to developers building on ImmutableX. The product allows users to sell ETH held on their L2 Immutable wallet directly for fiat. The funds are then deposited directly into a user’s bank account via Moonpay. Users must still pay a 1% Moonpay transaction fee for each trade. The crypto-to-fiat functionality is available in the Immutable SDK v1.21.3. ImmutableX is an L2 scaling solution being built on StarkEx. MoonPay is a fiat gateway for buying and selling crypto and NFTs.
Gitcoin facilitated $9.4 million in value transfer for Q2 2022. Gitcoin Grants Round 14 in June marked the platform’s largest round to date with over $1 million contributed. Gitcoin has facilitated a total of $63.5 million for open-source software projects. To date, Gitcoin has helped more than 10,000 unique earners.
Arbitrum Multidimensional Fee Standard
The standard sets best practices for implementing a two-dimensional fee system on L2 infrastructure.
Arbitrum two-dimensional fee standard.
Rocket Pool surpasses 200k staked ETH.
HTC releases a metaverse phone.
Coinbase Commerce adds ETH to payment options.
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Arbitrum published a post describing its plan for creating a multidimensional fee standard. The standard will be a set of best practices for implementing a two-dimensional fee system for L2 infrastructure. When users transact on Arbitrum, they are responsible for paying both the L1 gas fee for calldata and the L2 gas fee for off-chain computation. The current infrastructure on Ethereum only has inputs for a single gas price and gas limit, hence it's only one dimensional. To compensate, the L2 gas fee has to cover fees on both L1 and L2. Arbitrum’s node gas estimator increases the L2 gas limit field to cover both dimensions. It results in a confusing user experience. Arbitrum hopes for Ethereum tooling to change for an L2 world.
Rocket Pool, a decentralized Ethereum staking protocol, now has more than 200k ETH locked on the beacon chain. There are more than 1,283 node operators and 6,092 minpools live on the protocol. Rocket Pool offers liquid ETH stakers ~4% APR on their deposits. rETH, Rocket Pool’s liquid staking token, suffered a slight de-peg on secondary markets during the LUNA collapse. It has since recovered most of its value. Unlike Lido, Rocket Pool has a max deposit pool capacity of 2,000 ETH. Funds in the deposit pool are matched with mini pools, which provide 16 ETH, to create Ethereum staking validators.
HTC launched a new metaverse phone with a built-in digital asset wallet. Coined “Desire 22 Pro,” the device comes with pre-installed applications from HTC’s metaverse arm Viverse. With Viverse apps, users can create virtual avatars and manage crypto assets on Ethereum and Polygon. The device also comes with a virtual reality (VR) headset pairing feature. Desire 22 Pro is available in Taiwan, Japan and Europe. HTC is a Taiwanese-based consumer electronics company and is among the early phone makers to experiment with blockchain technology.
ZigZag announced plans for InvisibL3, an app-specific L3 ZK-rollup for private transactions on StarkNet. The layer will be an add-on to the ZigZag exchange, which currently supports trades on the zkSync network. Trades on ZigZag are currently publicly viewable on-chain, revealing the addresses and amounts for each trade. Private transactions on ZigZag will prevent the tracing of addresses and trade amounts for both the maker and the taker. It will also allow users to hide the origin of their funds when moving to another wallet. ZigZag is a decentralized non-custodial order book exchange powered by ZK-rollups.
Coinbase Commerce, a platform that allows merchants to accept crypto payments in a peer-to-peer way, has added support for seven new tokens including ETH. The commerce platform also offers free payments from Coinbase users to Commerce merchants. Coinbase is also implementing a dapp wallet in the Coinbase app, allowing users to trade using DEXs.
Coinbase Supports Gray Glacier Upgrade
The upgrade gives core developers approximately three months to execute the Merge.
Coinbase supports Gray Glacier.
Immutable launches $IMX staking.
L2 Beat launches a community forum.
Nethermind releases v1.13.4.
Devcon VI ticket presale auction.
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Coinbas announced support for Ethereum’s Gray Glacier hard fork. The purpose of the upgrade is to push the difficulty bomb on Ethereum’s current PoW chain. This comes amid another delay in the Merge. The upgrade pushes the difficulty bomb by 700,000 blocks, giving core developers approximately three months to execute the merge. The Gray Glacier upgrade went smoothly without any major issues. Only a small fraction of Ethereum nodes did not upgrade in time. The difficulty bomb is a mechanism intended to make PoW mining much more difficult and unprofitable amid the switch to the beacon chain.
Immutable has announced the launch of its $IMX staking program. 20% of Immutable’s 2% marketplace fee is allocated toward the staking pool. Users who hold at least 10 $IMX tokens in their L2 wallet and make an NFT trade during the staking cycle will be eligible to receive a share of the fee revenue in proportion to their staked amount. The project plans to release a dedicated staking dashboard in September. After the first phase of staking, rewards will be distributed every 14 days. Immutable is an NFT-focused L2 blockchain built on StarkEx, StarkWare’s scalability engine. StarkEx uses a STARK-proof system to validate transactions.
Ethereum L2 data and research website L2 Beat has launched a forum, with the first post discussing the overhaul of the Total Value Locked (TVL) metric. L2 Beat faces several challenges when determining TVL, including manipulated tokens, accounting for tokens minted on L2, counting native tokens, and the lack of a clear definition of TVL across platforms. L2 Beat proposes the addition of a new metric, Assets Under Management (AUM), which tracks the total value that would be lost if the L2 disappeared without a way to recover funds. L2 Beat also plans to filter out small-cap tokens and will implement a whitelist for any token that is not in the top 300 market cap. The forum is still open for community feedback.
Nethermind, an Ethereum execution layer client, has released v1.13.4 with an updated Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) of 17,000,000,000,000,000 for the Sepolia testnet. The release also included updates to make SnapSync the default sync method on Mainnet, Goerli, and Ropsten. SnapSync is a tool for efficiently syncing blockchain nodes.
The presale auction and raffle for Devcon VI tickets opens this week on July 5th. Devcon is the world’s largest Ethereum developer conference and will take place in Bogota, Columbia from October 11th-14th. The auction will be run on Arbitrum with ETH being the only form of payment. The 20 highest bidders will each receive a ticket and 80 tickets will be raffled to the remaining bidders for purchase at the reserve price. Everyone who participates in the auction will receive a POAP NFT. General admission tickets will be sold in waves later this month. Devcon also offers a discount for builders, students, and LATAM residents (application required). DeFi dashboard Zerion is currently running a challenge for a chance to win a trip to Devcon VI.