Stories by Robert Stevens
What Is Arbitrum? Speeding Up Ethereum Using Optimistic Rollups
The Ethereum network has a lot going for it—it’s decentralized, reliable, supports smart contracts written in a programming language familiar to many crypto developers, and is home to a thriving decentralized finance (DeFi) industry. However, Ethereum is also slow and expensive to use, and will remain so unless users opt to move to another blockchain (like Solana, Fantom or Avalanche), or until planned Ethereum upgrades speed things up within the next couple of years. While the world waits, a th
What Is 'The Merge'? Ethereum’s Move to Proof of Stake
In September 2022, Ethereum made the transition from a power-hungry, proof-of-work system to an environmentally friendly proof-of-stake system. This switch is known as the "merge.” Here’s what you need to know. What is the merge? The merge changes the way that Ethereum transactions are validated. Previously, Ethereum worked like Bitcoin: transactions were mined by a decentralized network of computers, which raced to solve mathematical puzzles and were rewarded with new coins for doing so. This
What Are Nouns? The Ethereum NFT DAO Building Open-Source IP
Pixel art NFTs are nothing new—one of the first NFT collections, CryptoPunks, pioneered the blocky 8-bit design style. But Nouns is shaking things up with a novel distribution method and open-source IP that has led to the collection's signature pixelated specs popping up everywhere from beer cans to movies. Here’s how Nouns works, and how it has built a multimillion-dollar decentralized brand. What are Nouns? First and foremost, Nouns is an NFT collection, whose owners are part of Nouns DAO, a d
What Are Meebits? Metaverse-Ready NFTs From the Creator of CryptoPunks
Launched in 2017, CryptoPunks were one of the earliest examples of an NFT crypto collectible; a series of 10,000 pixel-art profile pictures (PFPs) with randomized traits. They proved to be a runaway success, with NFT enthusiasts paying tens of millions of dollars for the 24x24 pixel images of apes, aliens and zombies. But for CryptoPunks’ creators Larva Labs, that was only the beginning. In May 2021, Larva Labs returned with Meebits, another Ethereum-based PFP NFT project with double the supply
What Is 'The Merge'? Ethereum’s Move to Proof of Stake
In September 2022, Ethereum made the transition from a power-hungry, proof-of-work system to an environmentally friendly proof-of-stake system. This switch is known as the "merge.” Here’s what you need to know. What is the merge? The merge changes the way that Ethereum transactions are validated. Previously, Ethereum worked like Bitcoin: transactions were mined by a decentralized network of computers, which raced to solve mathematical puzzles and were rewarded with new coins for doing so. This
What Are Fan Tokens? Crypto Assets That Give Fans a Voice
The relationship between fans and the object of their affection—be it a sports team or a band—has traditionally been something of a one-way street. Fans buy tickets and merchandise, the team or band rakes in the cash. Now a new type of cryptocurrency, the fan token, promises to change the dynamics of that relationship. What are fan tokens? Fan tokens are a type of cryptocurrency designed to provide membership benefits to fandoms of sports teams, bands and other groups. Holders of fan tokens are
What are Dynamic NFTs? The ‘Living’ Tokens That Change Over Time
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are unique digital assets that exist as a permanent record on blockchain. But if you thought that meant they were static and unchanging, think again. There is, in fact, a whole genre of living NFTs. Also referred to as dynamic NFTs, these non-fungible tokens can shift and mutate over time, according to programmable features encoded by their developers. “A living NFT is all about dynamism—as opposed to a normal profile picture (PFP) project such as CryptoPunks, which
What Are Ethereum Rollups? A Scaling Solution to Cut Transaction Costs
Even after the latest crypto crash, Ethereum remains expensive for many to use. That’s because the Ethereum blockchain is slow and has maxed out its capacity. Now you must pay through the nose for every additional byte of block space if you are to buy the next "must-have" NFT. Until "Ethereum 2.0," the next generation of the Ethereum blockchain, resolves all of these issues, the community must rely on so-called scaling solutions: technology that speeds up the Ethereum blockchain. Scaling soluti
What Is Terra? The Algorithmic Stablecoin Protocol Explained
Stablecoins are assets pegged to the price of a single asset, typically a fiat currency such as the dollar. The first generation of stablecoins, such as Tether, maintain their price using a basket of assets including fiat reserves. But some advocates of decentralization argue that a centralized entity maintaining a basket of real-world assets introduces a single point of failure into the system. That brings with it risks such as opacity over governance structures and whether the actual reserves
5 Biggest 'Ethereum Killers'
In 2015, a group of crack blockchain developers unleashed the world’s first blockchain for smart contracts: Ethereum. Their creation now hosts decentralized finance applications worth over $100 billion dollars. But although it's achieved much success in its seven-year history, Ethereum has become relatively expensive to use and struggled to become scalable. Thus, rival developers have slung their rifles over their shoulders, taken aim at Ethereum, hummed "Fly Me to the Moon" and squeezed the tri
What Is Optimism? Using Rollups to Help Scale Ethereum
Ethereum has grown to become the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, thanks largely to its support for smart contracts—which underpins a growing ecosystem of decentralized applications (dapps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. But it suffers from a problem: it’s slow and expensive to use, thanks to persistently high transaction fees. While the Ethereum fraternity waits for the roll-out of planned upgrades to the network that will address these issues, scaling soluti
How to Bridge from Ethereum to Layer 2
These days, crypto is composed of layer-1 and layer-2 technologies. Layer 1s are the base layer of a blockchain network—think Solana, Ethereum and Bitcoin. Layer-2 networks sit on top of layer-1 networks. Usually, layer 2s are faster and cheaper than the base layer of the blockchain. Sometimes, they can do things that layer-2 blockchains cannot, such as accept assets from other layer-1 blockchains. You can determine if a technology is layer 1 or not by whether you earn the platform’s native curr
How to Read a Block Explorer
One neat thing about blockchains is that you can see all of the transactions ever processed on them. This feature, unique to public blockchains, will persist for all of time—or, at least, until someone switches the internet off. You can download a blockchain ledger for yourself and sift through it on your computer. But a much easier method is to parse this data with a tool called a blockchain explorer—a website that lets you scan through a blockchain’s entire history. Blockchain explorers suppor
Netflix's 'Trust No One': Who Was QuadrigaCX CEO Gerald Cotten?
Netflix’s latest true crime doc, "Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King", seeks to unravel the mystery of Gerald Cotten, the CEO of crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, who died in 2018. Cotten passed away from complications that arose from Crohn’s disease while on a honeymoon in India—apparently taking some $215 million of customer funds to the grave. Given the mysterious circumstances of his death—and the enormous amount of money he controlled—it’s no surprise that conspiracies quickly sprang up i
What Is Fantom? The Fast Blockchain Taking on Ethereum
Use an Ethereum protocol on a particularly congested day and you'll surely balk at the fees, which can easily surpass the value of your trade if you are, say, swapping crypto worth no more than the change in your pocket. Help is at hand in the form of alternative layer-1 blockchains like Solana, Avalanche, and the subject of today’s lecture: Fantom. Fantom is a smart contract-supporting blockchain, powered by its native FTM token. Following a $40 million raise, Fantom launched its mainnet in Dec
Everything You Need to Know About OpenDAO’s SOS Token Airdrop for OpenSea Users
On Christmas Eve, anyone who had ever spent money on OpenSea could claim a free Ethereum token called SOS, and the amount of SOS they’d get was determined by how much money they had spent on NFTs on OpenSea. By Sunday, about 240,000 people had claimed the token, and it had skyrocketed more than 1,000% in value. The tokens were not dropped by the popular NFT marketplace itself, but by OpenDAO, an independent decentralized autonomous organization that pledges to use some of the tokens it earmarke
America's First Bitcoin ETF Wants Exemption from Trading Restrictions
Less than a week after its blowout launch, ProShares wants to change the way it runs its new Bitcoin futures ETF. ProShares CEO Michael Sapir told Barron’s that his firm has filed for an exemption from trading limits at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where it purchases futures contracts for its Bitcoin ETF, and that ProShares will request permission to invest in other kinds of derivatives contracts. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas corroborated the news on Twitter: “Barron’s article confi
$160M At Risk Due to Bug in DeFi Lending Protocol Compound
Editor's note: This article has been updated with comments from Robert Leshner and Banteg. A week ago, Compound founder Robert Leshner called a bug in his lending protocol’s smart contract a “moral dilemma.” Perhaps for some, but for others today the smart contracts became a vending machine full of free cash. Today, someone exploited a bug in Compound’s Controller contract, which is the part of the protocol that distributes yield farming rewards to users. By calling Compound’s drip() function, t
Binance Lets Customers Move Stock Tokens Before Service Shuts Down
Crypto exchange Binance is allowing European customers to migrate their tokenized stocks to another company. Binance suddenly shut down its tokenized stock service in July after several regulators said the tokens likely constituted illegal securities offerings. Customers in the European Economic Area and Switzerland can now migrate tokenized stock from Binance to CM-Equity AG, the German investment firm that Binance had partnered with to list the tokenized stocks. Customers from other nations,
KuCoin Latest Crypto Exchange to Boot Chinese Mainlanders
KuCoin is the latest cryptocurrency exchange to shut down accounts of mainland Chinese residents after the People’s Bank of China issued another blanket ban on crypto trading last Friday. According to an announcement today, the Seychelles-based exchange first “cleared and refunded users in mainland China” in September 2017 following China’s first ban on crypto exchanges. KuCoin said it had finished removing Chinese users by early October 2017. Last Friday, just after the People’s Bank of China s
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