1confirmation Newsletter - Issue #64
The total market cap of cryptocurrencies has increased 2.67x from its 2018 low, currently sitting at $267B. A notable trend within that time period is that the ETH/BTC price is at a 2-year low. Bitcoin maximalists claim this supports their belief that the only cryptocurrency that will have significant long-term value is BTC and that ETH along with all of the altcoins are worthless. ETH supporters argue that the fundamentals for Ethereum as a platform for innovation is stronger than ever and the price of ETH will ultimately reflect those strong fundamentals over the long-term.
There’s no denying that in 2019, the majority of the innovation happening in our industry is happening in the Ethereum ecosystem. Whether or not this will positively impact the price of ETH in the long-term is a different question and an important one.
Required reading this week
Becoming Decentralized Enough: The Case For DAOs — www.tokendaily.co
Mohamed Fouda discusses why all DeFi products will eventually have to decide either to distribute control of the protocol to a DAO or clearly become a centralized company that offers non-custodial services using a public blockchain.
The great Ethereum funding debate — research.circle.com
The discussion of EIP-2025 on a recent core dev call sparked a heated debate within the community. Ria Bhutoria and Wilson Withiam explain why and highlight alternative, less contentious funding models.
Responding to Firefox 0-days in the wild — blog.coinbase.com
In mid-June, a sophisticated attack leveraging two Firefox 0-day vulnerabilities, spear phishing, and social engineering targeted Coinbase's employees. Coinbase Security detected and blocked the attack and talks about how the attack unfolded.
Cryptocurrency in China: Over the Counter, Under the Table — www.coindesk.com
Between headlines like “China Bans Bitcoin,” “China Bans Crypto Exchanges,” and “China Bans Bitcoin Mining,” Dovey Wan demystifies the confusion surrounding the legal status of cryptocurrencies in China.
The future of decentralized finance — lindajxie.com
Linda Xie covers where DeFi is headed and some of the interesting possibilities that can come about.
Randomness in blockchain protocols — nearprotocol.com
Alexander Skidanov discusses why randomness is important, why designing randomness is hard, and how randomness is implemented in various protocols.
1confirmation portfolio reading this week
On the interrelationship between the security budget and the business prospects of the Cosmos network — forum.cosmos.network
Meher Roy discusses whether validators charging 0% are harmful to the success of the Cosmos Hub.
Augur shares its upcoming affiliate program for v2 where users can earn referral rewards in the form of trading fees for sharing links to Augur markets on other websites.
Getting started with dYdX — Borrowing — medium.com
dYdX explains how to borrow assets on dYdX and dives into two important concepts: global lending pools and collateralization.