1confirmation Newsletter - Issue #82
The most commonly used metric to track the growth of adoption of open, global financial applications on Ethereum is total value locked (TVL). But TVL in isolation does not give the full picture. Total number of users over time is equally important and there hasn't been much focus on it to date.
We recently did a deep dive on the total number of users for the top decentralized finance (DeFi) apps on Ethereum. There are currently ~150k DeFi users and at the daily growth rate (0.56%), we’re on pace for one million DeFi users by March 2021 and ten million by May 2022.
Read more: DeFi Usage Numbers
Required reading this week
Gitcoin Grants Round 5 Retrospective
Round 5 of Gitcoin Grants just finished, with $250,000 of matching split between tech, media, and public health. Vitalik Buterin recaps major takeaways.
Mohamed Fouda assesses Bitcoin layer 2 projects such as Lightning Network, BTC-only sidechains, and BTC interoperability bridges.
How Many Entities Hold Bitcoin?
Rafael Schultze-Kraft calculates how many distinct entities, rather than number of addresses, own and use Bitcoin.
History of Ethereum Hard Forks — medium.com
The 10 millionth Ethereum block has just been mined. Luit Hollander looks at the history of Ethereum hard forks that have collectively led to the current Ethereum mainnet blockchain.
Adam Cochran audits the top 10,000 Ethereum addresses to learn about liquidity, profitability, market manipulation, and what whales are doing with their money.
1confirmation portfolio reading this week
'Very Near Launch': Polkadot Founder Gavin Wood Details Network Rollout — www.coindesk.com
Polkadot founder Gavin Wood outlines the steps the network will be taking as it moves to a full launch.
WBTC Approved as Collateral by Maker Governance; Generate Dai Now with Bitcoin — blog.makerdao.com
MKR holders have accepted WBTC (wrapped Bitcoin) as a new collateral asset in the Maker Protocol. WBTC will help bring greater liquidity to the Ethereum and decentralized finance ecosystems and to decentralized exchanges.
Smart Contract Cover Potential Protocol Changes - Nexus Mutual — forum.nexusmutual.io
Nexus Mutual has been live for about 10 months and has paid out its first claims and rejected others. Hugh Karp provides a summary of what’s working well and what needs improvement.
Introducing CKLabs — The Nervos Incubator — medium.com
Following the successful launch of the Nervos Grants Program, Nervos is launching an incubator for applications building on Nervos CKB.