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Pledged Capital and DeepSquare join forces to deploy AI for the next generation of fundraising

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Crypto Research
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DeepSquare and Pledged Capital, two blockchain projects, each pioneer in their own field, announced a partnership aiming to boost fundraising idle funds with artificial intelligence. Milestone based investments is something that Pledged Capital has been working on since the beginning. This approach introduces a trustless third party that holds the funds. Blockchain and more specifically the DeFi space offers many innovative ways to generate interesting yields on those funds such as yield farming, staking, lending/borrowing. There are hundreds of smart contract protocols that allow this like Curve, BENQI or yield aggregators namely Yield Yak on Avalanche. Due to this diversity, finding the best strategy to maximise yield while guaranteeing a certain level of risk is a very time consuming and tedious task. Bringing artificial intelligence in the loop is the next step. AI algorithms will learn the best low risk strategy to maximise the return on the idle fund. This is exactly where DeepSquare HPC and AI features fit in, to use onchain data to train algorithms to optimise the desired requirements of yield vs risk level. The ultimate goal is to create an environment in which both investors and new projects will feel secure and collaborate on the milestone basis in order to grow and achieve goals while taking advantage of DeFi’s wonders. 

The Power Behind Web 3.0, Metaverse and HPC

DeepSquare is a distributed compute cloud, and the community response to big tech giant cloud providers. The open and interoperable grid that DeepSquare is building will allow real competition to take place and allow cloud providers, that are part of the grid, to sell their spare compute resources at their desired prices. On the other hand, in this ecosystem, end users choose where they want to run their computing workloads with a clear and transparent pricing. This inclusive ecosystem also addresses security concerns as users can choose to use providers/ services within desired jurisdictions. DeepSquare is poised to disrupt the cloud-industry and challenge the status quo by turning everything on its head. While hyperscalers rely on closed, centralised systems, DeepSquare promotes transparency and operates in a decentralized and open network centred around a blockchain compute protocol. This is the engine behind HPC, Metaverse and Web3.

“Partnering with Pledged Capital comes natural as both projects come from the decentralised state of mind, and we are in fact quite compatible projects. Bringing our AI expertise and cloud computing technology to meet the vision of decentralised crowdfunding is something we are excited about.” – Diarmuid Daltún, Co-founder and Head of Business Development

Join The Future of The Web With DeepSquare: https://linktr.ee/deepsquare

Decentralized (crowd)funding platform

Pledged Capital is a decentralized trust fund that combines traditional crowdfunding with Blockchain technology with white label services to allow safe and controlled investment. Powered by DAO, Pledged Capital delivers a solution that understands how investments are used. Start-up projects seeking funding can lay out roadmap milestones and timelines according to their actual capacity and contingent upon realistic performance targets, establishing measurable criteria for delivering payments upon only fulfillable promises. It is about taking responsibility. Pledged Capital’s incremental funding system allows for ICO funding to be managed post-raise with milestone-based micropayments and unprecedented investor oversight. Investors will have the opportunity to provide feedback, and vote on the evolution of the project using a smart governance system, based on users behaviour.

“After many years as a crypto-passionate, GEM hunter, and specialist developers in cybersecurity, we understood the importance of using all the tools available in WEB3 to make our investment more reassuring, more secure, and more interactive. The creation of this protocol, combining DeFI, DAO, NFT and social experience, was obvious to us. Associated these uses with AI, in order to find the best return, or to predict the behavior of users, is a very interesting vision, to provide quality investor projects, and for investors, advice, and superior returns. Finding quality partners is not always easy, however, since our meeting with DeepSquare, our possibilities seem limitless.” – Guillaume Provent, CEO & CTO

Join The Future of CrowdFunding With Pledged Capital: pledged-capital.app

Pros and Cons of a Passive Buy and Hold Strategy

By
Crypto Research
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The buy and hold strategy represents a passive investment where an investor buys stocks and keeps them for the long run regardless of market fluctuations.

Passive investing is based on assuming that a market functions efficiently and that buying and keeping investments produces long-term returns. 

But sometimes, that’s not the case; there’s more than meets the eye. Stay tuned to learn the pros and cons of a passive buy and hold strategy!

The Difference Between Active and Passive Investing

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Because investors tend to favor one method, any conversation regarding active or passive investing can soon turn into an argument. 

While passive investment is more prevalent among investors, active investing also has its own set of advantages.

  • Active investing represents an investment strategy that involves ongoing buying and selling. The aim is to purchase and sell stocks to profit from short-term price fluctuations. 
  • Passive investing is buying stocks or other securities and keeping them for a lengthy period. Unlike active investments, passive investors do not attempt to profit from short-term price fluctuations.

Even though both methods have benefits, passive investments have attracted more capital. Simply put, passive investments have outperformed active ones in terms of returns. However, active investments have become more prevalent in the last few years, particularly during market upheavals.

If you plan to step into the crypto world and do passive investing, crypto DCA is a good thing to start with. 

Buy and Hold Strategy vs Active Investing

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The buy and hold strategy has certain benefits over active investing. As we mentioned, it represents a long-term, passive strategy in which investors keep a constant portfolio over time despite short-term fluctuations.

Buy and hold investing has been proven to be very successful. As proof, it has been the favorite investing approach of business titans such as Warren Buffet.

A passive strategy is suitable for investors who do not have much time to investigate financial trends. But if you plan on doing active investing, you will be obligated to check the data constantly.

The biggest downside of the buy and hold approach is that it requires a significant amount of investments which might not be suitable for people or even brands on the budget. 

Crypto Wallet vs Crypto Exchange

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Crypto wallets and crypto exchange are the crypto terms you are likely to hear a lot once you enter the world of digital currencies.

  • A crypto wallet is an app, software, service, or physical device that allows cryptocurrency owners to access and manage their digital assets.
  • Crypto exchange is a platform where customers can buy, sell, and exchange cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets. They can also track the cryptocurrency market changes, monitor prices, and convert fiat money into digital and reverse.

If you decide to invest in your financial independence, sign up to MyWallSt for free, and start your investment today. 

The Pros and Cons of a Passive Buy and Hold Strategy 

Copyright: Unsplash  I Credits:  https://unsplash.com/photos/sM4r-swmcoY 

The key to successful investing is maintaining a well-diversified portfolio, and passive investing via indexing is an excellent way to achieve this goal. 

Before we can move on to the pros and cons of the buy and hold strategy, we need to understand what’s index found and how it works.

What’s Index Found and How It Works?

An index fund represents an exchange-traded or mutual fund. It is designed to follow certain rules to track a specified basket of underlying investments.

Index funds track a target benchmark or index rather than trying to pick winners, thus avoiding the need to continuously buy and sell stocks. 

It provides an easy way to invest in a chosen market since it tends to track an index. The users won’t need to select and monitor individual managers or choose between investment themes.

However, a passive buy-and-hold strategy largely depends on the total market risk. Therefore, it withdraws certain things.

  • Index funds track the market; thus, when the stock market falls, index funds fall with it. 
  • The index found lacks flexibility. Even if the management believes share prices will fall, defensive actions such as lowering a stake in shares are forbidden for index fund managers.

They are limited in terms of performance since they are meant to closely match their benchmark index rather than beat it. Due to financial running expenses, they generally return significantly less due to seldom outperforming the index.

Since the market is constantly changing, and we can never predict how much something will be worth, you can look up crypto and gold price forecast in 2022 and rely on their predictions!

Now that we explained what’s index found, we can move on to the advantages and disadvantages of passive investments. Let’s check them!

Copyright: Unsplash  I Credits: https://unsplash.com/photos/N__BnvQ_w18 

Pros of passive buy and hold strategy:

  • Extremely low fees – Because no one picks stocks, oversight is significantly less costly. Therefore, passive investments and their funds follow the index as their benchmark.
  • Simplicity – Having an index is far simpler to implement and understand than a dynamic strategy that requires ongoing research and adapting.
  • Tax efficiency – The buy-and-hold strategy does not result in a significant capital gains tax bill for the year.
  • Transparency – You will always have a clear view of which assets are in index fund.

Cons of passive buy and hold strategy:

  • Smaller potential for profit – Passive funds will never outperform the market because their main assets are set to track the market. There will be times when a passive fund may beat the market by a little. However, until the market as whole flourishes, it will never produce the high returns that active managers want.
  • Limitations – Passive funds have minimal to no fluctuation and are confined to a certain index or fixed selection of investments. Therefore, investors are locked into those holdings no matter what happens in the market.

The Bottom Line

The passive buy-and-hold strategy is one of the most popular strategies for investing. Choose this account type when you’re looking for a hassle-free balanced investment portfolio and want to invest for the long term. 

In passive strategies, you generally buy the stock once it has bottomed out. It then recovers and retests the old high price. This is what makes passive strategies appealing to many investors.

The main difference between passive and active investment is that you keep the stock for an extended period in passive investing. This is the ultimate goal of buying inexpensive stocks and then waiting for them to rise in value over time.

Transaction capacity of Bitcoin without layer 2

By
Crypto Research
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Because Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, users should be able to pay for the purchase of coffee or pizza with Bitcoin. We will take a closer look at the difficulties and solutions in the next few articles.

This article on transaction speed will explain why Bitcoin cannot facilitate these kinds of transactions on a large scale on its own. Transaction fees and transaction times make it impossible to pay with BTC at the local deli. Fees are auction-based. Miners include the most lucrative transactions in their version of the next block, so transaction senders need to include a large enough payment to have their transaction processed quickly — otherwise, they will have to wait. During price crashes, when everyone and their dog wants to sell BTC at once, prices are at a premium, and desperate sellers bid $100 or more for transaction fees. Recently, fees have oscillated between $1 and $3.

Figure 1: Bitcoin transaction fees rarely breached the $3 mark in Q4 2021

Source: CoinMetrics

Bitcoin transactions are still much cheaper than Ethereum’s, where simple transactions routinely cost more than $10, but the lower price is a sign of less demand, too. A $1 transaction fee is still too much for a coffee purchase. 

Theoretical transactions per second (TPS) on the Bitcoin network

Bitcoin transactions consist of information about the senders, the recipients and the amount, plus some security information. Since a Bitcoin block cannot be larger than 1 megabyte in total, it can include a maximum of 3,500 average-sized transactions. This boils down to a maximum of 5.83 TPS, as a block is mined every 10 minutes.

Some blocks contain smaller transactions, and miners now process Segregated Witness transactions, which optimize space inside a block, making up to 7 TPS possible.

Average transactions per second

Since Bitcoin transactions are slow, somewhat expensive, and faster blockchains exist, the number of actual transactions on Bitcoin rarely reaches the theoretical maximum. In October 2021, the protocol processed 3.18 TPS on average.

The Bitcoin protocol was a bit more active during most of 2020 with 3.85 TPS on average but saw a downturn in usage during the May 2021 crash, from which it has only partly recovered — a fact that is visible in the amount of blockspace used. Blocks are rarely more than half full in the second half of 2021.

Figure 2: Full capacity blocks until July 2021 and only half capacity later

Source:Coinmetrics

Time to finality for Bitcoin Core

Transactions are considered final after they are confirmed three to six times, depending on security requirements. The reasoning behind this is that alternatives could still overtake one block, but the effort needed to write a longer chain and catch up with more than three or six blocks is enormous. 

Six confirmations mean a minimum of 60 minutes until finality. Just two confirmations mean between 10.1 and 20 minutes of waiting time before a merchant would be wise to accept a BTC payment. That’s a long wait for a coffee.

In order to realize Nakamoto’s idea of an “electronic cash system,” his successors had to think about possible solutions to Bitcoin’s scalability problem. One of these solutions is the Lightning network, which is considered the most important layer 2 solution.

This article is an extract from the 80+ page Scaling Report: Does the Future of Decentralized Finance Still Belong to Ethereum? co-published by the Crypto Research Report and Cointelegraph Consulting, written by ten authors and supported by Arcana, Brave, ANote Music, Radix, Fuse, Cryptix, Casper Labs, Coinfinity, Ambire, BitPanda and CakeDEFI.

Phase IX: A New Era of CryptoBlades Earning

By
Crypto Research
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(9.1) Dynamic Minting Price

As of April 20, 2022, CryptoBlades character minting underwent a core update to its pricing and process called Dynamic Minting. Dynamic Minting is a new formula designed to regulate the amount of minting possible. Like the game’s Multi-Farm feature, a constant multiplier oscillates based on activity to control the outflow of minting—each costing more as activity and time go on. There is currently a floor price mechanic in place that does not let the minting price fall beneath a set amount. This amount will be updated as the price doubles from its current value, creating intense deflation over the coming weeks for CryptoBlades’ NFTs.

(9.2) CryptoBlades Genesis Event

The CBC (CryptoBlades Characters) Genesis Event will be the end of CryptoBlades generation one characters being able to be minted, meaning the current characters minted before then will be the only ones of their kind. With this, they will become 100% deflationary, increasing value over time as players continue to burn them using the character burn feature. This step is to dramatically increase generation one NFTs’ value and rewards for each individually. 

(9.3) Implementing New Fee Structure and Increasing Rewards

By playing CryptoBlades, players earn rewards after each successful combat that they can claim for a steady profit. The third step involves implementing a 25% generation one native gas fee on rewards, scaling with players’ earnings. However, this will be counteracted by increasing rewards by 25%. The purpose of this is to use a portion of gas fees to buy back SKILL and permanently fill Gold and Silver Multi-Farms. This liquidity incentive allows CryptoBlades to benefit from every smart chain they deploy to, regardless of involvement from the exchanges or smart chains themselves. It also will provide a permanent solution to multipliers on chains that lack adequate Knighthood partnerships.

(9.4) CryptoBlades Characters Second Generation

However, this is not the end for creating CryptoBlades teams. The second generation of characters will be released. One key difference will be with their own reward and minting structure. These will have similar prices to that of the NFTs currently and be affordable to many. Generation two will utilize its own Multi-Farm apart from generation one. It can be thought of as generation one earning “Gold” and generation two earning “Silver”.

(9.5) IGO Initiative for New Wallets

This will give players funds to craft weapons, spend in the shop, and create dust to power up their blades. They want players to have the most success and fun while earning!

(9.6) Increasing Reforge Bonuses

Existing and future reforge bonuses will be increased providing more incentive to burn weapons, increasing the floor price of CryptoBlades weapon NFTs. More bonuses mean more power which will bring more rewards for players!

(9.7) Multiple Smart Chain Additions

These will provide significant financial incentives for bridging monthly active users. These chains will also be provided with high-quality farm percentages to ensure they maintain the incentive requirements, with a portion of these incentives going directly into the reward pools. This allows our community to work together to achieve the active users’ benchmarks and win these rewards.

(9.8) Launch BAS and/or Avalanche Subnets
These will operate through SKILL token to add permanent utility for SKILL by offering a full suite of GameFi and DeFi services on our chains.

Social Media:

📺 YouTube 📘 Facebook 🕊️ Twitter 📰 Medium

🎮 Discord 🤖 Reddit💃🏻 TikTok

KING and SKILL are both listed at:

🐒 ApeSwap 🥞 PancakeSwap 🏦 LBank

SKILL is also listed at:

⛰ MEXC Global ✖️ XT.COM 🚪 Gate.io 👛 CoinEx

Websites:

👑 Cryptoblade Kingdoms Website

⚔️ Official Cryptoblades Website

📖 Learn How to Play Cryptoblades here

Bitcoin’s Script & Taproot

By
Crypto Research
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Using “hashcash” and other cryptographic approaches, Nakamoto found an ingenious and novel way to set financial incentives in such a way that fraud always leads to more losses than gains. But Bitcoin’s development did not end there!

Bitcoin’s Script programming language

Satoshi Nakamoto foresaw the need for programs to efficiently interact with the Bitcoin blockchain and developed the “Script” programming language.

Script has limited functionality compared to Ethereum’s Solidity or general-purpose languages, such as Rust, used by Solana. The main limitation is that Script prevents programs from looping. Loops are helpful for enumerations or working through datasets, but they can be used to empty wallets quickly in a series of smaller transactions.

Ethereum got to know what the vicious downsides of loops can entail when “The DAO heist” enabled a hacker to steal a large portion of all Ether (ETH) from a poorly designed smart contract.

This limitation makes Script “Turing Incomplete,” a fancy name for not having as many instructions as a general-purpose language. Turing incompleteness makes Bitcoin much more secure because it limits the potential for nasty bugs; however, it hinders what can be developed. There will never be native NFTs or DeFi applications on the Bitcoin network. Clever developers have had to create more complex solutions built atop Bitcoin for security but process elsewhere, so-called layer-two solutions.

Bitcoin Core developers have not been sleeping in the meantime and updated Script to Tapscript with the Taproot upgrade, which allows more complex transactions.

The Taproot update to Bitcoin Core

The “Block wars” over Bitcoin’s block size in 2017 left a deep and lasting wound on developers and stifled innovation. Bitcoin’s Taproot update is as much a healing process as it is a big step forward for the network’s technology.

Updates used to need a one-year announcement period during which miners could signify their approval. The “Speedy Trial” overlay in the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 8 reduced this timeframe to three months.

After the third try, 90% of miners signalled approval of BIP-340 and BIP-342, known as the Taproot update, on June 12, 2021. The update was locked in on Nov. 14 and went live without a hitch. The corresponding software updates to nodes propagated through the network in the months afterwards.

Taproot features two significant upgrades:

  1. Schnorr signatures: Replacing ECDSA signatures, Schnorr’s algorithm allows keys to sign transactions in aggregate. Bitcoin becomes more private this way because transactions signed by multiple parties are indistinguishable from single-signer transactions. They also enable Bitcoin scripts to sign transactions, expanding the possibilities of Bitcoin native programs.
  2. Tapscript: Expands the functionality of the Script programming language to facilitate more complex transaction conditions, helping the Lightning Network and other layer-two solutions become more private and efficient.

Most importantly of all, Bitcoin developers may have found a new confidence in their ability to innovate and fully support miners.

This confidence is key to keeping Bitcoin relevant with meaningful innovation in the future.

This article is an extract from the 80+ page Scaling Report: Does the Future of Decentralized Finance Still Belong to Ethereum? co-published by the Crypto Research Report and Cointelegraph Consulting, written by ten authors and supported by Arcana, Brave, ANote Music, Radix, Fuse, Cryptix, Casper Labs, Coinfinity, Ambire, BitPanda and CakeDEFI.

The Bitcoin Consensus Mechanism

By
Crypto Research
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The Bitcoin core developers have proven cautious about making changes to the foundation created by Nakamoto. Back in 2016/2017, when it took six days for transactions to settle, some users demanded a remedy in the form of larger block sizes to allow for more transactions per second.

This proposal did not meet developer support or miner acceptance. The situation became untenable for some, and Bitcoin Cash was born as a result of this confrontation. Bitcoin Cash increased the block size eightfold and can process up to 250 transactions per second (TPS).

How Bitcoin miners agree on transactions

Bitcoin uses the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus, which was first implemented in Hashcash. PoW forces miners to try quintillions of different numbers (called nonces), which get appended to the data in a block, and are then hashed using the SHA256 cryptographic function. The resulting hash is 256 bit (32 characters) long and changes radically with even the slightest alteration of the underlying data.

Hashing is a sound way to make data tamper-proof. The Bitcoin protocol only accepts hashes with a certain number of leading “0” characters. Since SHA256 is a unidirectional function, miners cannot work backwards from the desired hash to a fitting nonce but must try different numbers until one produces the desired result.

The number of leading 0s is set to such a length that all the miners in the world combined can only compute one block every 10 minutes on average. This is Bitcoin’s block time.

The Bitcoin hash rate is a measure of network security — currently at 185 EH/s (185*10^18)

Every block is linked to the block before, hence the moniker “blockchain.” Other miners verify a submitted block to ensure the same coins are not sent twice, or from an address a user doesn’t control. Only if they agree can a miner claim their rewards. Fraudulent activity means doing all the calculations in vain and wasted work.

Miners follow the longest possible chain of blocks. If an alternative version is proposed, it would need to recalculate all the blocks from the point of deviation onwards and overtake the main chain to write a different transaction history, known as a 51% attack, because the attacker would need the majority of the entire network’s hashing power to succeed. Hackers could use such an attack to reroute payments and empty wallets without controlling their private keys. 

Since the Bitcoin Core network currently has an astounding 185 quintillion hashes per second capacity, it is not economically possible to mount such an attack.

This article is an extract from the 80+ page Scaling Report: Does the Future of Decentralized Finance Still Belong to Ethereum? co-published by the Crypto Research Report and Cointelegraph Consulting, written by ten authors and supported by Arcana, Brave, ANote Music, Radix, Fuse, Cryptix, Casper Labs, Coinfinity, Ambire, BitPanda and CakeDEFI.

AVAX vs. Polygon: Who comes on TOP?

By
Crypto Research
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Ethereum is undoubtedly the largest blockchain ecosystem of protocols, DApps, and protocols. However, it is slow and costly. This has led to the emergence of blockchains that seek to reduce Ethereum gas fees and boost crypto transactions. This is where Avalanche and Polygon come in. The two blockchains seek to connect Ethereum intraoperative blockchains, minimize transaction costs, and increase speed.  But which one is better? 

Before we compare and contrast the two, here is brief information about each.

About Avalanche and Polygon

Avalanche is an open platform launched in September 2020. It supports the creation of DeFi and other smart contracts applications. Avalanche is often regarded as one of the “Ethereum killers” and most Avax predictions out there expect for the cryptocurrency to strengthen its position on the market during 2022.

Polygon is a layer two scaling solution for Ethereum. It is built on Ethereum and works alongside the slow and expensive blockchain. Polygon had its origin in India, but big crypto investors like Mark Cuban have invested in its ecosystem. 

The two blockchains support the creation and interoperability of chains on the Ethereum network. But how do they differ, and which is worth investing in?

Let’s find out. 

1. Chains Supported 

Avalanches comprise three blockchains with distinct functionalities. 

  • Contract Chain (C-Chain) Enables developers to easily create EVM compatible smart contracts and port applications.
  • Platform Chain (P-chain)- coordinates validators and supports the creation of subnets. 
  • Exchange chain – Supports trading of assets with AVAX as transaction fees.

On the other hand, Polygon enhances the scalability of the blockchains by supporting multi chains in the Ethereum ecosystem. It leverages validators to perform off-chain transactions before finalizing on Ethereum’s main chain. This significantly reduces strain on the mainnet, effectively boosting speed and reducing transaction costs. 

The platform has standalone and secured chains.

  • Stand-alone chain – Ethereum compatible and self-sovereign proof of stake chains 
  • Secure chains – use professional validators to boost security

2. Use Cases

Avalanches have three use cases: 

  1. Pay network fees on the avalanche blockchain. The transaction charges are based on Ethereum’s gas fee model EIP-1559. 
  2. Staking – allows users to participate in the validation and secure the blockchain.
  3.  The third use case is technical and involves using AVAX as a basic account unit for avalanche multiple subnets.

Besides these use cases, Avalanche is home to numerous dApps, gaming, and NFTs. Avalanche also supports metaverse. Avalanche is the fourth largest DeFi with some Ethereum based protocols such as Sushiswap and Aave lending protocol. The protocols have an $11 billion worth of total locked value. The main decentralized exchanges are Trader Joe, with $1.47 billion of assets locked into its liquidity pool.

Similarly, Polygon supports the creation of games, DeFi platforms, and NFTs. For instance, Polygon Studios has migrated games from Web 2.0 to 3.0. Similarly, NFT marketplaces such as Opensea enable the trading of NFTs on the Polygon network. Polygon is also emerging as one of the leading DeFi platforms with $5 billion in total locked value (TVL). 

 3. Blockchain Projects

Both blockchains have hundreds of projects running on their networks. The projects span Defi, gambling, collectible, marketplaces, social and games. Comparatively, Polygon takes the lead with over 900 projects while avalanche has over 200 projects. Despite this fact, Matic current predictions are not as optimistic as Avalanche.

The biggest project on the Polygon is ApeSwap Decentralized finance, with $5 billion total value assets. On the other hand, Teddy Cash leads on the Avalanche platform.

3. Consensus Mechanism

Avalanches use proof of stake consensus networks. Users with over 2000 nodes can run validators nodes to get AVAX rewards. Stakers with less can join forces to become a single validator. Polygon uses a proof of stake and selects transaction validators randomly.

4. Tokens

Polygon has a maximum supply of 10 billion coins, while the total AVAX supply is 395 million tokens. The Avalanche Network has a market cap of $25.7 billion and ranks 10th, followed closely by Polygons at sixteenth place. 

An AVAX coin costs $96.22 while MATIC is trading at $1.68. Polygon has a market cap of $12 billion.

5. Speed 

Polygon blockchain is way faster than Avalanche, with a processing speed of 65000 transactions per second (TPS) against Avalanche’s 45000 tps. 

6. Gas fees

Polygon’s average gas fee is currently $0.000181. In 2021, the price increased significantly after launching Sunflower Farmers play-to-earn game. Polygon’s gas fees surpassed 700 gewi. 

The Avalanche base fee varies between 0.001 to 1 avax depending on the subchain. The minimum base fee is 0.00005887 and has no upper bound. Avalanche price hit $10 last year after backers turned Ethereum critics.

Final Note 

Polygon and Avax have numerous similarities. Their growth is not far apart either. In fact, they have a correlation coefficient of 0.82.

However, their growth trajectory is not the same. Avalanche is an incredibly fast smart contract platform. It is also eco-friendly and low cost. 

On the other hand, Polygon has a flexible network that supports the creation of multiple chains. It is an easy-to-use platform for scaling and infrastructure development of Ethereum platforms. 

The avalanche is already bigger than the polygon and could continue dominating MATIC for quite some time.

Real-World Use and Adoption of Bitcoin

By
Crypto Research
-

Bitcoin’s market capitalization has been above $1 trillion since February 2021, although it briefly dipped below that mark during the May 2021 downturn. But what about other metrics in regards to Bitcoins use and growth? In this article we will take a look at them!

Unique Bitcoin addresses

Bitcoin addresses are created by calculating a public and private key pair that conforms to the protocol’s specifications. The private key can then unlock the funds associated with its corresponding addresses, which is mathematically derived from the private key. 

The address only becomes publicly visible when funds have been sent. Before, it only existed as a possibility. Theoretically, another user could generate the same private key but with infinitesimally slim chances. Bitcoin’s pay-to-public-key hash address format can have a total of 1.4 * 10^48 possible addresses.

Looking at active addresses is more relevant for this comparison. Around 800,000 active Bitcoin addresses exist as of December 2021. In the last six months, the number grew 25% but is still not back to the peak of 1 million active addresses registered in January 2021.

Figure 3: Bitcoin active addresses fluctuate around 800,000

Source: Messari.io

The 100 richest Bitcoin addresses control around 15% of all BTC. Some of those haven’t moved their coins in years. Hodl (Hold On to your coins for Dear Life) culture is a strong force behind the digital asset.

Bitcoin protocol revenue and price-to-sales ratio

Miner revenue comes in the form of transaction fees and block rewards. Since Bitcoin’s protocol can only process seven transactions per second, fee revenue is a fraction of block rewards. Except for short bursts of intense interest, transaction fees rarely cross the 3% threshold of miner profits. 

Figure 4: Transaction fees as a percentage of block rewards. 40% spike in Jan 2018, 25% in May 2021

Source: CoinMetrics

In 2021, transaction fees were just short of $450 million. Bitcoin’s market capitalization is 2,200 times more than transaction fees, but just 70 times more than block rewards and transaction fees combined, assuming an average price of $43,000 per BTC. Solana, for comparison, has a P/S multiple of 30,909x.

Staking and lending rates for BTC

Thanks to the wonders of decentralized finance, precious Bitcoin can be put to work. Flexible staking can yield up to 6% rewards on Celsius. Locking withdrawals for 90 days can increase yields to 7.5% on Binance Earn.

Bitcoin can be bridged to the Ethereum network, controlled by a smart contract called Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC). This wBTC can, in turn, be lent to Aave, but it currently yields less than 0.25% interest due to immense liquidity and little demand — a bullish signal representing investor faith.

DeFiChain(1), a DeFi application secured on the Bitcoin blockchain, offers up to 106% yield when providing liquidity to its exchange pools. Rewards are paid out in DFI, the project’s native coin.

Bitcoin initial coin distribution breakdown

Bitcoin has never had any initial coin distribution. Satoshi Nakamoto set up a Bitcoin node on his computer and at least one other and started mining blocks as a background process.

While the competition to mine blocks escalated rapidly and soon led to the use of dedicated mining hardware(2), the only “initial coin distribution” was the first-mover advantage that Nakamoto had. Research by the BitMEX(3) exchange attributes between 600,000 to 700,000 BTC to the mysterious founder entity. None of these coins have ever moved from their original addresses. 

Only 2.8%–3.5% of all BTC belong to the founder, and they’ve never sold a single coin — a display of strength and purity of principle.

  1. More information about Decentralized Exchanges here
  2. Learn more about Antminer here
  3. Does Satoshi have a million bitcoin? | BitMEX Blog

This article is an extract from the 80+ page Scaling Report: Does the Future of Decentralized Finance Still Belong to Ethereum? co-published by the Crypto Research Report and Cointelegraph Consulting, written by ten authors and supported by Arcana, Brave, ANote Music, Radix, Fuse, Cryptix, Casper Labs, Coinfinity, Ambire, BitPanda and CakeDEFI.

Introducing Bolstyr, The Future of Content Creation

By
Crypto Research
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With Web 3.0 buzzing throughout the crypto space and tech industry, many developers and enthusiasts are working to create and integrate the internet and modern technology into decentralized protocols. Crypto gaming, social media, and content creation are at the forefront of this wave, and with the rising popularity of crypto, it’s no surprise how quickly this movement is picking up momentum. Crypto gaming was the talk of 2021,  social media seeing glimpses of  NFTs and crypto integration earlier this year. Following in stride is an emerging content creation and subscription platform called Bolstyr. Bolstyr is a content creation platform with a system that is fully sustained through advertising sinks, trading fees, and industry-leading content creator incentives that are driven entirely by its native token, BOL, which is aimed to launch in Q2 of 2022. 

Bolstyr will be revolutionary for content creators and their fans. As businesses struggle to obtain prime rates for subscription processing via credit card, they must charge high commissions to pay intermediary parties. Combining that with the untapped potential to utilize the $2 trillion cryptocurrency market to pay content creators without using costly off-ramps, you create the perfect environment for users to subscribe to creators while allowing creators to earn every penny they deserve. The platform fees of competitors like Patreon and Onlyfans do not allow the same earning potential. For professional Filipino-American MMA fighter and Bolstyr Brand Ambassador Mark Striegl, he stated it was one of the main reasons he didn’t create on either platform and why he was so quick to jump on the opportunity to join Bolstyr. 

Overall, Bolstyr has been in development for nearly a year. Alongside their Brand Ambassadors is a strong team of employees and advisors. CEO of Riveted Games, Philip Devine, and Kevin Abdulrahman, a motivational speaker to fortune 500 companies and leading governments, are two advisors supporting the project alongside the CEO, Aaron Hutton, and his team. Bolstyr’s website and token whitelist launched on March 22, 2022, as this is the official beginning of an auspicious project. 


Website: https://bolstyr.io/

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Bitcoin and DeFi

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Crypto Research
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Bitcoin’s design has specific limitations that make much of what Ethereum’s goals are impossible. However, these very limitations make Bitcoin more secure and stable. In a more poetic way, you could say that Bitcoin is the wise grandfather of modern cryptocurrencies. And although it comes across as old-fashioned, its principled nature makes it trustworthy and gives it a natural authority.

Bitcoin is the mother of all blockchains and still the largest crypto asset. Due to limited programmability, decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFT) are only available on Bitcoin’s layer-two solutions. DeFiChain and the Lightning Network show that Bitcoin may be able to capture some of the DeFi market.

Going back to Day 1, someone or a group of persons with the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” created Bitcoin. The network went live on the Jan. 3, 2009, implementing the seminal white paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-To-Peer Electronic Cash System”(1) that was published a few months earlier in 2008.

Satoshi Nakamoto released his genius white paper in 2008

Leaning on previous research from Hashcash and others, Nakamoto found a genius and novel way to set economic incentives in such a way that fraud always leads to more loss than gain. Central authorities become unnecessary, and participants can interact with the network without knowing about other participants. Bitcoin is called “trustless” for that reason. 

The cryptocurrency sparked a revolution in thinking about financial transactions, economic incentives and collaboration that bloomed into a $2.5-trillion industry in just the next 12 years.

Completely open-source and maintained by a tiny group of core developers, who work on a pro-bono basis and are financed with donations, the Bitcoin blockchain has never suffered any global outage in its existence and now secures more than $1 trillion in assets. Its codebase, Bitcoin Core, has been cloned 105 times to create copycats and alternatives(2). Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision are noteworthy; others were quick grabs for investor attention and pre-mined tokens — aka scams.

Bitcoin’s price and market capitalization

One of the best investments in the last decade was buying Bitcoin early. Initially traded for cents per BTC, the price exploded to more than $68,800 in November 2021. 

The Bitcoin community still celebrates its humble beginnings with the “Bitcoin pizza day” on May 22, the day that a young engineer named Laszlo Hanyecz paid a fellow user 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas.

BTC’s price grew from $0.06 to $68,800 in 12 years

Bitcoin is a deflationary token, and only 21 million BTC will ever exist. New Bitcoin is created as a reward for miners finding a solution to computation-intensive cryptographical problems. The first to submit such a solution in the form of a fully formed Bitcoin block (a package of transaction data) receives a reward in the form of newly minted coins. On average, one block is discovered every 10 minutes and currently yields a 6.25-BTC reward.

Nakamoto laid out a plan to incentivize early adopters. From block 0 to block 210,000, every block received 50 BTC. The following 210,000 blocks got half of that, or 25 BTC, and so on until the most recent “Bitcoin halving” on May 11, 2020, which halved the block reward to 6.25 BTC. The next halving is in 2024, and each subsequent halving will happen every 210,000 blocks, or approximately every four years, until miners mine the last Bitcoin in 2140. Bitcoin is currently inflationary and will remain so for the next 123 years, albeit at decreasing inflation levels.

As of December 2021, 18.9 million BTC is in circulation(3), and 328,500 (~900 each day) is mined each year, an effective inflation rate of 1.7%. Bitcoin’s market capitalization has been above $1 trillion since February 2021, although it briefly dipped below that mark during the May 2021 downturn.

  1.  See “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin.org
  2.  Learn more about Bitcoin Fork Count here
  3. See “How Many Bitcoins Are There Now in Circulation?”, Buy Bitcoin Worldwide

This article is an extract from the 80+ page Scaling Report: Does the Future of Decentralized Finance Still Belong to Ethereum? co-published by the Crypto Research Report and Cointelegraph Consulting, written by ten authors and supported by Arcana, Brave, ANote Music, Radix, Fuse, Cryptix, Casper Labs, Coinfinity, Ambire, BitPanda and CakeDEFI.

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