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Ethereum Name Service Interest Peaks; Details

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The Ethereum Name Service is having its greatest month ever in terms of new registrations, account renewals, and revenue, thanks to community awareness and low gas fees.

The data for the Web3 domain service thus far in May were tweeted on Monday by Nick Johnson, the principal developer of Ethereum Name Service (ENS). “And there’s still a week left in May,” he added, stressing that figures were on track to break prior highs.

According to Johnson, one of the main reasons for the rising interest in ENS domains is that it is a place where people can “build shared communities without any overarching framework imposed on them beforehand.”

Ethereum Name Service domains are on the rise

ENS is a 2017 open-source blockchain technology that allows users to digitally identify their Ethereum wallets. Each name is an a.eth-encoded nonfungible token (NFT) that can be used as an address, a cryptographic hash, or a website URL.

So far in May, 304,968 new registrations, 13,260 renewals, and $3,165.85 in revenue have been reported, according to Johnson’s data. All of these numbers are higher than previous highs.

Low gas expenses, according to Johnson, “certainly have an impact” on greater onboarding and renewal rates. According to gasprice.io, sending a quick transaction on Ethereum costs roughly 22 GWEI or $0.92 at the time of writing.

Since April, when social groups like the ENS 10k Club attracted a lot of attention, interest in ENS domains has been rapidly increasing. The 10k Club was created by owners of ENS domains with numbers ranging from 0-9999. Both new registrations and renewals have almost quadrupled since then.

Due to ENS’s record-high revenues and a market slump, the ENS decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) plans to set aside assets for future development. The income set aside for development and maintenance “indefinitely” would let the project weather further market instability, according to Johnson:

However, ENS prices have not reflected the optimistic metrics. Since the establishment of the.eth domain in November 2021, the token has been steadily declining.

OpenSea Deploy New Web3 “Seaport” Marketplace On Ethereum

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NFT kingpin OpenSea unveiled Seaport, a new web3 marketplace protocol for safely and efficiently buying and selling NFTs. Build for all builders, creators, and collectors of NFTs, the platform claimed that the core smart contract is open source with no contract owner, upgradeability, or other special privileges. 

Unlike conventional NFT marketplace where users can trade digital collectibles via only crypto as a medium of exchange, Seaport enables users to offer an array of payment tokens like ETH / ERC20 / ERC721 / ERC1155.

In order for that offer to be accepted, a number of items must be received by the recipients indicated by the offerer. One can assume it to be a modern version of a Barter system.

Besides that, the newly launched OpenSea protocol will allow specific trades and swaps. Twitteratis appeared to be puzzled by the new features.

One user tried to offer his interpretation by saying that users can open “channels” and set criteria such as “I’ll swap this BAYC for three Azuki’s + 20 eth” and if someone deposits those matching assets, the trade occurs.

Not only that, the Seaport protocol has introduced the “tipping” as long as the amount does not exceed that of the original offer.

“This allows alternative interfaces to include their own fees and can be combined with zones to support listings with dynamic amounts and recipients, as well as other novel applications like on-chain English auctions,” the blog read.

OpenSea’s open-source new protocol isn’t the first?

The world’s largest NFT marketplace also stated that this is just the beginning for Seaport. “We built the initial version of the protocol to unlock use cases and optimizations that creators and collectors expect from a modern web3 marketplace,” it added.

Having said that, some drew a comparison with the leading DEX Uniswap’s V3 launch. Solidity Developer Shegen tweeted,

“The @opensea Seaport launch is basically a UniSwap v3 moment for NFTs in terms of market efficiency and access to better tools for the general public.”

On May 5th, 2021, UniSwap V3 was unveiled on the Ethereum mainnet. The DEX’s latest version brought forth the new concept of multiple pools per pair of tokens, each with a different swap fee.

Ethereum’s Core Dev Hints That the Merge Might Happen in August

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The switch to proof of stake for Ethereum could happen this summer.

Preston Van Loon, an Ethereum core developer, said on a panel at the Permissionless conference that the shift will likely come to a completion in the next three months.

“As far as we know, August, if everything goes according to plan, it just makes sense,” Van Loon added. “If we don’t have to move the difficulty bomb, let’s do it as soon as we can.”

According to a tweet from event co-host Bankless, Ethereum Foundation Justin Drake, who was also on the panel, there is a “strong desire to make this happen before the difficulty bomb in August.”

The much-awaited Ethereum merge

Ethereum core developers decided not to upgrade the network in early May to avoid the so-called “difficulty bomb,” which would soon begin to degrade the network. It’s a blockchain component that purposely slows down the network.

The idea was to push developers to pursue proof of stake while also making it difficult for miners to stay on the proof-of-work chain following the transition. This month, core developers decided not to divert their attention away from The Merge, which is now being tested.
Its successful completion would obviate the need to defuse the difficulty bomb.

Ethereum currently uses a proof-of-work mechanism, in which miners compete to solve complex puzzles in order to validate transactions. This necessitates a significant amount of computer processing power and energy.

Ethereum is meant to become more eco-friendly and efficient by switching to proof-of-stake, where transactions are authenticated by those who contribute, or “stake,” to the network.

ethereum merge
Ethereum’s Core Dev Hints That the Merge Might Happen in August 2

Proof of stake provides various advantages over proof of work in terms of keeping the network secure and decentralized. Proof-of-stake consensus should make it easier to engage in network management, allowing for more profound decentralization and increased security.

But the actual reason people are waiting for The Merge is that it is predicted to reduce ETH issuance by 90%. Less ETH in circulation implies less supply and more demand, which should push the coin’s price upward. According to CoinMarketCap data, 1 ETH is currently trading at $2,024.

Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin Still Believes That the Layer 2 Fees Are Expensive

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In response to a tweet about layer-two costs, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that many of the networks are still excessively costly.

Ryan Sean Adams, an Ethereum supporter and industry expert, shared a snapshot of the top layer-two platforms and their network fees on May 3.

Arbitrum One had the highest fee of $0.85 for sending ETH and $1.19 for a token swap, while the Metis Network had the lowest fee of $0.02 for sending ETH and $0.15 for a token swap. Buterin responded to the tweet with the following:

“Needs to get under $0.05 to be truly acceptable imo. But we’re definitely making great progress, and even proto-danksharding may be enough to get us there for a while!”

Ethereum fees still at the top

Buterin has maintained his position in a 2017 interview that “the Internet of Money should not cost 5 cents per transaction.”

Buterin introduced Proto-Danksharding with EIP-4844 in February as a way to enhance the Ethereum Consensus Layer sharding method. The update allows a new form of transaction known as a “blob-carrying transaction,” which carries additional data that the Ethereum Virtual Machine does not have access to (EVM).

According to L2fees, the current cost of transferring ETH on the major layer-two networks is between $0.02 and $1.96, indicating that there is still a long way to go before the average reaches the level that Vitalik considers acceptable.

Nonetheless, they are all less expensive than transferring on layer-one Ethereum, which, according to Etherscan, costs roughly $2.50 on average.

On May 3, BitInfoCharts reported an average transaction price of roughly $16, indicating that Ethereum remains prohibitively expensive for everyday use.

When Yuga Labs started their newest NFT collection on May 1, average gas fees soared to an all-time high of over $200, eliciting even more indignation from the crypto community.

The total value locked across all L2 networks has decreased to a little over $6 billion, according to the L2beat layer-two tracker. Since the beginning of April, when it was at an all-time high of $7.4 billion, it has dropped 18 percent.

With 57 percent of the TVL, Arbitrum is the market leader, which is remarkable given that it is one of the most costly L2 networks to utilize.

The dYdX exchange is in the second position with a 16 percent market share and just under $1 billion in TVL locked up, while Optimism is in third place with a ten percent market share and roughly $622 million in TVL locked up.

Ethereum crumbles as Otherside NFTs sell for a record-breaking $317M

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Ethereum [ETH] buckled under pressure during the record-shattering sale of Otherdeed non-fungible tokens [NFTs] on Yuga labs’s new project, the Otherside metaverse. As the world’s largest NFT mint unfolded, ETH gas prices surge to 8000 Gwei, data from Etherscan block explorer showed.

For the record, Otherdeed NFTs could be minted only in APE, it also required ETH for gas fees. The minting mechanics set by Yuga Labs intended the sale of NFTs in phases keeping note of the gas price. However, that didnt go smoothly as anticipated.

Chaos soon descended where Ethereum users tried to buy NFTs at the same time and outbid each other by using the network’s transaction fees.

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That caused the fees on the blockchain to spike to unprecedented levels, in addition to users experiencing failed transactions due to blockchain bottlenecks.

High mint fees caused many to complain they were unable to make purchases.

Ethereum’s high gas fees act as spoiler

Yuga Labs then took to Twitter saying that the Otherside metaverse may be looking to migrate away from Ethereum to its own Layer 1 blockchain to improve scalability.

“We’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while. It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale.”

For those that lost their ETH holdings in gas due to failed transactions, Yuga Labs has promised to refund the gas amount back to the users.

The mint price cost 305 ApeCoin, worth nearly $5,800 at the time of mint. It raked in 16.7 million ApeCoin [$317 million], making it a all-time largest NFT mint.

For those unfamiliar, a mint is a public offering in which NFTs are sold through a smart contract on a blockchain like Ethereum.

Todays’s event highlighted Ethereum’s exorbitant gas fees which have been a long-standing concern among the community.

The Ethereum serenity upgrade is currently in the second phase, which includes a number of activities, including migrating to a PoS protocol and sharding chains. Once these two upgrades are completed, the ETH’s chain speed is expected to increase drastically, and bring down the gas fee significantly.

Ethereum Foundation Treasury reserve includes 1.3B ETH and $300M Fiat: Report

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The Ethereum Foundation [EF] released a report on Monday, detailing its reserves and investments in both crypto and fiat, as of March-end. The non-profit foundation said it held more than $1.6 billion in treasury assets in end-March.

Out of a total of $1.6 billion EF treasury, nearly $1.3 billion comprises ether reserves, which represented over 0.297% of the total ether supply as of March 31. Around $303 million accounted for non-crypto assets and investments. Some $11 million was held in other cryptocurrencies.

At the time of writing this post, the foundation did not disclose any further details on the composition of the assets. But did elaborate on how it deals during a market downturn.

We also increase our non-crypto savings in response to rising ETH prices. This provides a greater safety margin for our core budget and would enable us to continue funding non-core but high-leverage projects through a market downturn.

The holdings included 39,168 ether already committed to client teams building on Ethereum, according to the report.

The Ethereum Foundation is a non-profit organization that’s focused on growth within the Ethereum ecosystem. The team provides projects with grants to fund other teams working outside of the core EF domain. Apart from that it also manages delegated domain allocation and leverages third-party funding techniques.

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The foundation funds research and development on Ethereum and related technologies. According to the report, in 2021, it invested a total of roughly $48 million, of that $20 million was in the form of external funding which included, grants, third-party funding, bounties, sponsorships, etc.

Eth developers, agencies, and teams involved in the foundation’s activities netted a total of $5.1 million in 2021, the report noted.

As a matter of fact, Research and development of layer 1 blockchains, saw spending of over $21 million last year, which included research on main net upgrade, security, mechanism design, and grants to external clients.

Ethereum’s long-awaited Merge might get pushed back

That said, the highly anticipated Merge to Proof-of-Stake on Ethereum might get delayed. Ethereum Foundation member Tim Beiko tweeted on Tuesday night that the upcoming Merge would not take place by June, as was previously thought.

Despite the delay, Beiko still hopes that the Merge will take place “soon.”

Ethereum’s Former Developer Virgil Griffith Sentenced to 63 Months in Prisons

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Virgil Griffith, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, was sentenced to 63 to 78 months in jail. He was accused in 2019 of breaking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which carries a potential penalty of 20 years in prison.

For distributing blockchain technology to the wrong people, Virgil Griffith has been sentenced to at least a half-decade in jail.

New York Southern District Judge Kevin Castel ordered the punishment against Ethereum developer Griffith.

Virgil Griffith will face 5+ years of imprisonment

Virgil Griffith pleaded guilty in September 2021 to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from exporting “goods, services, or technology to the DPRK (North Korea) without first obtaining a license from the Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).”

Griffith was unable to obtain authorization to travel to North Korea from U.S. officials in early 2019, but he traveled nonetheless in April for the “Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference” in Pyongyang.

He delivered presentations at the conference, disguised as a North Korean, about how the government could utilize cryptocurrency to circumvent sanctions and launder money.

He also demonstrated how smart contracts might be utilized to aid the country in nuclear weapons talks with the United States.

Griffith’s defense team presented evidence of reasons that may have caused him to act irrationally in an attempt to reduce his sentence.

According to a clinical examination, Virgil Griffith was diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

Griffiths’ defense team said that his diagnosis of OCPD and NPD explained his “obsession” with North Korea and was perhaps the reason he ignored warnings from friends, family, and the government about his trip to the nation.

Griffith was detained by the FBI in November 2019, a few months after returning from the conference.

Prior to his arrest, he met with the Bureau numerous times to discuss his trip, including presenting them with photos of himself making presentations at the conference.

North Korea has gotten more skilled in its use of crypto to evade sanctions and steal millions of dollars through hacks and attacks.

According to research released in January by Chainalysis, North Korean hackers stole approximately $400 million in 2021 through exchange breaches and ransomware, using a complex laundering scheme combining decentralized exchange swaps and several crypto tumblers.

Will 2022 be Ethereum’s make-or-break year?

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Ethereum is embarking on a new journey for a more scalable, secure, and sustainable network. The network after the completion of “The Merge” and the arrival of its new consensus mechanism represents a major milestone in its multi-year journey to bring Ethereum 2.0 live.

Some experts are pondering if 2022 will be the “make or break year” for the world’s second-largest blockchain network. Also, can the highly anticipated update to its network trigger a decentralized finance [DeFi] summer for 2022?

According to Ethereum’s website, the merge is scheduled to take place this quarter [Q2 2022]. That said, feverish excitement is building online. Data from Google Trends shows interest in the topic has hit a 12-month high, and the query ” Ethereum Merge” has been searched 100 times on March 28.

Ilan Solot of Tagus Capital Multi-Strategy Fund told in an interview that “FOMO [fear of missing out] is kicking for ETH pre-merge.”

Moreover, widespread coverage of the climate benefits has also contributed. The Ethereum Foundation claimed Ethereum 2.0 will lower carbon emissions to 0.07 kilograms per transaction [roughly 17,000 times more efficient than Bitcoin], making the altcoin the clear favorite for green investors.

What is the Merge?

Ethereum will transform from a proof-of-work [POW] consensus mechanism to a new proof-of-stake [POS] method through the merge.

The blockchain now operates two parallel chains -the legacy “Mainnet” [based on POW] and the new “Beacon Chain” [POS]. Once the two merge, it will migrate to the Beacon Chain, and staking will totally replace mining as the consensus mechanism.

Ethereum merge will reverberate the DeFi world

Analyst Kjetil Hove Pettersen of Kryptovault predicted that ETH will be more volatile than Bitcoin over the course of this year. “Focusing on ETH’s price jumps in the short term may grab headlines, but the real takeaway is the merge’s effect on the broader de-fi ecosystem.”

It is to be noted that Ethereum acts as the base layer for almost 3000 decentralized apps, altcoins such as Shiba Inu to Layer2 scaling solutions like MATIC to metaverse tokens like MANA.

The network also supports numerous non-fungible token projects [NFTs ], and decentralized autonomous organizations [DAOs]. With stakes running high on the merge, the global DeFi community is hoping for a smooth transition.

Cryptocurrencies Including Bitcoin and Ethereum Accepted as Fees in this School in Dubai

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Following the global acceptance of cryptocurrencies, a new school in Dubai has revealed ambitions to accept the fledgling asset class as a means of tuition payment.

Parents and guardians will be able to pay tuition fees for their children in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum, according to local news site Zawya.

Citizens School, which is set to open in September 2022, has stated that parents and guardians will be able to pay tuition fees for their children in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

This is the first time that parents in the Middle East will be able to pay for education with digital currency.

Cryptocurrencies will revolutionize the educational sector

Citizens Schools established a cooperation with a cryptocurrency payment provider that would aid in the translation of all bitcoin and Ethereum payments to Dirhams, with the goal of providing more flexible payment options for parents.

Citizens School, which will open its doors in September 2022, will accept payments in the two major cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), giving parents a variety of payment alternatives.

Citizens School will also accept traditional means of payment as well as interest-free monthly payment alternatives.

Cryptocurrency payments are accepted through a partnership with a digital currency company that processes cryptocurrency payments and converts them to Dirhams immediately (AED).

“Introducing the possibility to pay tuition fees using cryptocurrency goes beyond merely giving another payment option,” said Hisham Hodroge, CEO of Citizens School.

“Its goal is to pique people’s interest in emerging trends and game-changing technology that will have a significant impact on the lives of future generations. It’s also a way to pique interest in blockchain technologies, which Citizens School plans to use in the future across numerous parts of its academic and administrative operations.”

Educational institution showing their drive towards the acceptance of cryptocurrencies is a big leap toward global adoption. Last month a South Korean university announced that it will be issuing NFT degrees to its students.

Global acceptance of crypto is nearing. Countries and institutions that fail to realize their true potential will fall behind.

TenX CEO likely stole $11B Ethereum from 2016 DAO hack

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A crypto-journalist claims to have solved one of cryptocurrency’s biggest mysteries. She is said to have evidence about who hacked The DAO in June 2016, taking 3.6 million ether from its treasury and causing a controversial Ethereum network hard split.

Laura Shin, presenter of the Unchained podcast and author of “The Cryptopians,” is identifying TenX co-founder Toby Hoenisch as the attacker. She claims that he rejected the accusation in an email. She also adds that he never followed through on a commitment to give details debunking her findings.

Shin used Chainalysis to track funds from the hack to a Bitcoin mixer. It was then tracked to an obscure privacy currency called Grin, which was subsequently withdrawn to a Grin node linked to both Hoenisch and TenX.

The DAO attack that changed Ethereum’s fate

The DAO attack is seen as a watershed point in Ethereum’s history. It anticipated a slew of additional incidents involving unscrupulous actors misusing smart contracts in recent years.

The majority of the Ethereum community finally decided to undo the hack. But few dissenters who clung to a rigid “code is law” ethic resisted, resulting in the original network being renamed Ethereum Classic.

According to Shin, Hoenisch posted social media messages at the time promoting Ethereum Classic and insulting Ethereum developer Vitalik Buterin over the attack.

Shin told Forbes, her former employer, that the evidence she obtained was “very good” and that her research partners were “incredibly, extremely confident” in their findings.

$11 billion is no joke

When Shin informed him about her findings last week, Julian Hosp, Hoenisch’s co-founder at TenX, was taken aback.

He wrote that he sat “totally astonished” for half a minute. “Was he technically capable? Yes. Could I imagine it? Heck no – but that’s what all neighbors of serial killers say too!!”

In a YouTube broadcast, Hosp remarked, “It seemed astounding to me that he was the one who pulled it off.” “I mean, we’re talking about $11 billion at today’s pricing.” That’s a ridiculous sum of money.”

Looking back at his emails, Hoenisch appeared to be cash-strapped the week before the attack and cash-flushed three days later, according to Hosp.

The shocking revelations have made waves. Hackers who exploit and loot the money will think thrice before taking such actions. With advanced tracking systems and a single error from the hacker’s side, it’s not that hard to catch the culprit.