The Control - Issue #29
The mania around tokens has shown no signs of slowing down so far in 2018. The Ether total market cap has soared past the market cap of Goldman Sachs to an all-time high and there's now 121 tokens that have a total market value of over $250M.
People are signing up on sites like Binance and Poloniex in droves to buy new coins in hopes of finding the next Bitcoin or Ethereum. Unfortunately, there's not much diligence being done by new crypto investors; a lot of people are likely going to lose a lot of money as a result.
We recently shared our simple framework for evaluating new projects. If you don't have a strong perspective on the team, product, community, and token mechanics, you should probably hold off buying that new coin that your friend told you is going to the moon: Our Process for Evaluating New Tokens
Required viewing this week
Vitalik Buterin, Creator Of Ethereum, On The Big Guy Vs. The Little Guy — www.forbes.com
Outside of Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik has arguably had the biggest impact on blockchains of anyone in the world. Laura Shin from Forbes does a great job interviewing him in the latest episode of her podcase.
Getting Started With Maker! — www.reddit.com
A decentralized stablecoin is sorely needed. Maker is one of the most interesting stablecoin projects and this thread describes how to get started.
What's the best way I can start learning how to write Ethereum contracts? — www.reddit.com
This is a fantastic thread for those interested in learning how to write Ethereum smart contracts. CryptoZombies and this video series are good starting points.
Mainnet beta is here! 🎉 – Paradex — medium.com
Decentralized exchanges are starting to see significant product usage (see 0xTracker for volume). Paradex is one DEX that just went live on mainnet worth checking out,
Mercury in 2018 – Mercury Protocol — medium.com
The Mercury Team is quietly implementing GMT into the Dust App. It's just Testnet coins for now, but when live on mainnet it could be the first fully functioning mobile app with native incentives built in. As Telegram and Signal work on their own token systems, 2018 is going to be a big year for mobile + tokens.
⚡ Lightning Network Megathread ⚡ — www.reddit.com
Layer-2 scalability solutions like Lightning Network (Bitcoin) and Raiden (Ethereum) are increasing in importance this year. This thread tells you everything you need to know about the Lightning Network.
This newsletter is curated by 1confirmation, an early stage crypto fund that supports founders fueling the decentralization of the web and society