The Phoenix rises from the ashes
There’s no single word to explain the turn of events in the past week or the month of May. It all feels too surreal and even crazy to grasp your head around it. After the chaotic crash of Terra earlier this month, the community has resurrected the network dubbed Terra 2.0 within a period of fewer than two weeks.
Block 1 of the brand new Terra blockchain (with a chain_id of “Phoenix-1”) was officially produced at 06:00 AM UTC on May 28th, 2022! With the launch of the new chain, those who were eligible for the $LUNA airdrop can view their wallet balances on the new chain by selecting the “Phoenix-1” network in their Terra Station browser extension.
So, here’s what the turn of events looks like now:
In the 2nd week of May, Terra’s stablecoin depegged and resulted in a crash of the total Terra ecosystem wiping away over $40 billion of wealth
With the death spiral, the total supply of Luna expands beyond trillions, pushing the price of $Luna in fractions of cents
Any lingering hope of pegging the stablecoin UST or restituting holders is lost as LFG announces they have practically nothing left from their massive $3 billion war chest
The community and Terra builders get together to fork the chain, airdrop earlier users with new $Luna ditching the stablecoin mechanism with a war cry of #TerraIsMoreThanUST
The community successfully revives the ecosystem with the rebirth of Terra with a total supply of 1 billion new $Luna
The new $Luna pumps more than 50% in a day, making the fully-diluted market cap of the new $Luna over $10 billion
Mind you, all this happened within a span of three weeks. But, at this point in the story, you may want to take another hit on your bong
Now listen to this, there are rumors of a new algo stablecoin to be launched on Terra 2.0
This week in Web3 Wednesdays:
💰 Future of web3 wallets: social logins & recovery
🇲🇽 Tether launches its fait-backed stablecoin USDT on Polygon
🦊 Immutable-X activates protocol fees
🤫 Ethereum Name Service: utility or privacy hazard?
🔢 Great Resource: ZK Research Library
⛓️ Worth a read: Layer-1 chains report
💰 Future of web3 wallets: social logins & recovery
Let’s make it clear if we plan to onboard the next one billion users to web3, the current state of web3 wallets are not going to cut it.
The state of web3 in its current form with complex UX, seed phrases and private keys is going to only scare new users if not anything else. To make web3 mainstream, we don't want users to get confused by long seed phrases every time a user sets up a new wallet.
We need familiar authentication methods to provide security to private keys in a non-custodial way.
The future of wallets is smart contract wallets with social logins and a seamless user experience.
But how can it be made possible?
Check out this Twitter thread with great insights by Sachin, CTO of Biconomy.
🇲🇽 Tether launches its fait-backed stablecoin USDT on Polygon
Expanding its reach in the crypto market, Tether has launched its USDT stablecoin on Polygon (formerly Matic Network)
With this announcement, Polygon became the 11th blockchain network where USDT will be available natively, after Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Algorand, Tron, Omni, EOS, Liquid Network, Kusama, and Bitcoin Cash Standard Ledger Protocol.
Additionally, Tether has also announced a new stablecoin pegged to Mexican Peso - MXNT.
MXNT is Tether’s first foray into Latin America and joins the company’s other pegged coins — USDT (U.S. dollar), EURT (euro), and CNHT (China’s yuan).
🦊 Immutable-X activates protocol fees
Immutable-X, a dedicated layer-2 chain for NFTs, has activated its protocol fees to accrue the value of $IMX stakers.
As the protocol mentioned in its latest blog, the protocol fee isn’t a gas fee, nor do you need to pay it in $IMX directly — it’s a simple exchange fee on transactions paid in the trade currency.
Part of this fee is allocated to Immutable and part to the $IMX staking rewards pool.
This is interesting because Immutable has created a unique fee model with a better cost structure for gamers while doing away with market-based pricing. Thus enabling reliable cost-of-trades/mints that will allow giant games to build large businesses with NFTs as the backbone.
Learn more about Immutable’s fee structure on their latest Medium blog
🤫 Ethereum Name Service: utility or privacy hazard?
Ethereum Name Service or ENS has a simple use-case - make Ethereum addresses human-readable, and that is a great use-case. Known as the most widely integrated blockchain naming standard, ENS allows you to own your username, store an avatar and other profile data, and use it across services.
However, according to the latest report by Decrypt, ENS is also turning out to be a privacy hazard resulting in revealing the real-world identity of people owning ENS domains linked to their Ethereum wallet.
Decrypt analyzed 133,000 Ethereum names and their respective balances and found it was possible to identify several high-profile people, even if they weren’t using their real names.
Decrypt was also able to see business deals and watch people’s movements using just the blockchain.
Read the complete report here
🔢 Great Resource: ZK Research Library
Zero-knowledge proofs are one of the crypto concepts that I still have a hard time wrapping my head around after being part of the crypto ecosystem for more than two years. Even if you try learning ZK proofs in general or ZK-rollups, it’s hard to find the right resources to get you started.
Well, not anymore. After diving into zero-knowledge and noticing a lack of an expansive collection of resources, @exp_table and @87rascal on Twitter have created a library of ZK Research tutorials, papers, videos, implementations, and much more.
Check out the ZK Research Library here
⛓️ Worth a read: Layer-1 chains report
Delta Fund has published a report describing what a layer-1 blockchain is, what the characteristic properties of a blockchain are, why there are multiple layer-1 blockchains, and the unique aspects of some popular layer-1 blockchains.
If you’re just getting started with the web3 world and confused about multiple layer-1 chains and their respective ecosystems and feeling all lost.
Check out this brief report to get an understanding of various layer-1 chains