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Coinbase is launching its own layer-2 network, called ‘Base’
US crypto exchange Coinbase is launching its own Ethereum layer-2 network, called Base.
The NASDAQ-listed company says the new network will provide a low-cost and developer-friendly environment for creating decentralised apps (DApps).
Base has been designed as a bridge to onboard users into the crypto economy, providing access to other layer-1 blockchains like Solana and making it interoperable with other networks.
The network will also serve as the “onchain home” of Coinbase, providing access to the company’s products and tools while featuring easy on-ramps for fiat currencies.
There are no plans to issue a new token for Base, it will use ETH as its native gas token.
Base will be built on the “OP Stack” used by Optimism, with plans to start highly centralised and gradually decentralise over time. Read More
Alchemy Launches Dapp Builder for the Next Billion Web3 Developers
The blockchain developer says its new tool can spin up decentralized applications in 4 minutes.
The goal of mass adoption is a common refrain for the blockchain industry, but there’s a steep learning curve in onboarding the masses to Web3. Alchemy hopes its new Create Web3 Dapp or CW3D platform will help bring more people into decentralized technologies.
“Our overall mission and vision is to bring blockchain or Web3 to a billion people,” Elan Halpern, Product Manager at Alchemy, told Decrypt in an interview. “The way we really see that happening is by empowering developers.”
For Halpern, bringing Web3 to the masses starts with getting developers excited about creating the products that people will use.
“There’s kind of this flywheel lifecycle where, if you want my grandmother to be able to use a Web3 application, there has to be a product that she’s actually excited about using,” Halpern said. “And in order for there to be the product, a developer has to be excited about building that product.” Read More
Trezor to produce chips for hardware wallets to shorten supply cycle
Trezor wants to respond quickly to demand-triggering events like the FTX collapse by taking control of wallet chip production.
Hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor is accelerating the production of new Trezor wallets by producing its own wallet silicon chips.
Trezor officially announced on Feb. 27 that the firm would start facilitating the production of its key component, the chip wrapper, in its flagship product — the Trezor Model T.
The move aims to significantly optimize Trezor wallets’ production, reducing lead times in the supply cycle from two years to several months.
The optimization will also eliminate delays in shipping finished products and protect consumers from exposure to price fluctuations based on component supply and demand, Trezor said. As previously reported, demand for Trezor wallets spiked by at least 300% after the FTX collapse in November 2022, as crypto investors rushed to move their crypto holdings from centralized crypto exchanges. Read More
The evolution of DeFi: Is a fully on-chain order book DEX a possibility?
Proving their supremacy when it comes to investor security and prioritizing investor interests is where decentralized finance has the ability to shine.
For most retail crypto investors, centralized digital marketplaces like Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and many more have been the preferred gateway to the world of cryptocurrency trading. However, as leaked customer data like the recent Gemini case and misappropriated funds like the FTX debacle continue to plague the space, crypto investors have been looking into alternatives. According to a Delphi Digital analysis following the FTX crash, DEX tokens saw a 24% uptick, and CEX tokens saw a 2% decline.
The lack of transparency in how CEX operations are run has become a major driver for this trend shift. What’s more, a lot of platforms claim complete decentralization when in fact, there’s a centralized element to them. But do DEXs have what it takes to take over the crypto exchange space?
The centralized control over customer funds that companies running CEXs have combined with a lack of transparency of what goes on behind the scenes at these businesses is the most concerning aspect of centralized trading at the moment. This centralization, unfortunately, allows for the misappropriation of customer funds to happen, as was the case with FTX.
The surge of automated market makers (AMMs) was led by Uniswap, showing the crypto world the potential of DEXs. Order book DEXs such as dYdX that use zk-rollups to implement order books off-chain introduced an alternative solution to replace centralized exchanges. The uprise in DEXs is just the beginning. Read More
Markethive Leading The Way In Web 3 Social & Market Media
Web 3.0 is the next generation of the internet which people envision will be more decentralized and permissionless. One that's built on decentralized protocols, where users help with content creation and the governance of the web itself. They also have the ability to own a part of the network, so you can think of it as a Read-Write-Own Internet.
There are already several technologies that could serve as the backbone for a Web 3 world. Most point to blockchains like Elrond, Cardano, or Ethereum, for example, but other distributed technologies like IPFS can also be used to decentralize networks.
Thousands of dApps (decentralized applications) are already being built in the Web 3 environment. These often include native tokens to add value to the application to those who hold the tokens. These native crypto assets allow those who participate in the network to share in the value generated from it.
Web 3 promises a decentralized alternative where we are all users, owners, and developers. This quote from Fabric Ventures sums it up beautifully,
“Web 3.0 enables a future where distributed users and machines are able to interact with data, value, and other counterparties via a substrate of peer-to-peer networks without the need for third parties—the result: a composable human-centric & privacy-preserving computing fabric for the next wave of the web.” Read More
Game Engine Unity Adds Verified Web3 Toolbox for MetaMask, Solana, Dapper Labs
The 3D gaming tech company is highlighting Web3 tools for its massive game developer community.
Unity, one of the most popular game developer engines for creating 3D game environments, has added a “decentralization” category in its Asset Store to show devs the kinds of Web3 tools and protocols they can integrate into their video games.
The page includes 13 different “verified solutions” that Unity says it has vetted for developer use. While the complete list can be found in Unity’s official announcement, it includes Algorand, Aptos Labs, Dapper Labs, ImmutableX, Solana, Tezos, and ConsenSys products Infura and MetaMask in the virtual toolbox.
Unity’s interest in and embrace of Web3 gaming tools is a huge and necessary step for the future of blockchain games. Many indie developers use Unity for developing games, and Web3 titles like The Sandbox, Decentraland, and Dogamí were also made using Unity’s software. Read More
Solana plans to improve its blockchain: Here’s how
After a network-wide slowdown left users frantic, Solana released plans to improve its latest network upgrade.
The Solana network experienced a noticeable slowdown in block production after its most recent 1.14 network update on Feb. 25. In an immediate response to transaction disruptions, validators downgraded the software to up performance levels.
However, on Feb. 28, Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder and CEO of Solana Labs, released another statement about how the ecosystem plans to improve its recent network upgrades. The major focus of the plan is on stability as the network continues its transition.
The statement laid out a six-step plan for engineers to help streamline the process and revealed that an adversarial team had been formed, which comprises one-third of the Solana engineering team.
This team was formed to build additional hooks and instrumentation into the validator code and target exploits throughout the underlying protocols. Read More
Breaking barriers: This protocol brings interoperability and easy swaps across chains
This protocol aims to cut out intermediaries and bring fast and easy asset exchanges across chains.
Interoperability remains a persistent issue in the world of gazillion blockchains and interesting protocols and projects. The need for interoperability leads to many practical problems, one of which comes down to token liquidity and crypto swapping between blockchains.
One of the projects tackling this is Maya Protocol, a decentralized liquidity protocol. Its goal is to enable noncustodial and efficient native swaps across blockchains. In simpler terms, this translates to a protocol that enables its users to swap native assets without the need to lock liquidity on a third-party platform like a bridge or wrapped tokens like WETH. For instance, a BTC holder can easily swap these tokens into ETH through Maya without having to wrap them and transfer them through bridges.
Some innovations the project is built on include liquidity nodes and an increased number of integrated chains for higher interoperability, including names like Dash, Kujira, Osmosis and potentially Cardano. Liquidity nodes allow operators to not only support the network but also benefit from double capital efficiency, as their assets are also participating in liquidity pooling.
March 7 marks the start of the project’s fair launch, commencing the liquidity auction simultaneously. Investors and supporters of the protocol can then participate in the liquidity auction with native BTC, ETH (including USDC and USDT) and RUNE. According to the developers, the pros of a fair launch approach bring better transparency, a permissionless approach to participation and reduced volatility. What is more, with fair launches, all investors get access to the network and its native token at the same time, meaning there are no early investors or teams that have an advantage over retail users. Read More
Ledger Stax Hands-On Review: A Hardware Wallet With iPod Design Flourishes
Decrypt spent some quality time with Ledger’s new crypto hardware wallet at NFT Paris. Here are our first impressions.
If there’s one word that could be used to describe the majority of crypto hardware wallets to date, it’s “functional.” Resembling USB sticks, remote car key fobs, and pocket calculators, their appearance belies the sometimes eye-watering amounts of money they secure.
With its latest device, the Stax, French hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger is aiming to change all that—this is a polished-looking piece of kit that wouldn’t look out of place next to an iPhone.
Decrypt got to handle the Ledger Stax at the NFT Paris conference, and while it was only a brief look at the device, here are our first impressions ahead of a full, in-depth review. Read More
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
