Weekly news from Kusama & Polkadot & Ethereum #46
We bring you each and every week important and interesting information from Polkadot, Kusama and related parachains. But sometimes, in the cryptosphere happens something that goes far beyond our small dotted pond. The Merge is certainly one of them, the (successful) Ethereum transition to PoS is certainly a big thing not just for Ethereum, but for all the crypto industry as a whole.
1. Ethereum: The Merge hard fork successfully executed
The biggest smart contract platform, Ethereum, has successfully transitioned from PoW to PoS by The Merge hard fork. Let’s take a look at some information and interesting facts:
- Ethereum has so far been using the energy-intensive Proof of Work (PoW) consensus
- miners using expensive hardware to solve complex problems in order to get a reward for the block mined
- in Proof of Stake (PoS) on Ethereum, anyone who locks the 32 ETH (over $40k) required to activate the validation software can be a validator
- the final step in the transition from PoW to PoS was to migrate the entire history of the current Ethereum PoW blockchain and merge it with the Beacon chain
- the Merge hard fork is not the end of Ethereum’s evolution, the next big challenge will be sharding, where the network will be split into 64 chains (shards), spreading the load of the network and increasing its throughput and number of transactions per second
- sharding solution is planned for 2023
So what are the implications of Ethereum hardfork The Merge?
- 99.9% lower energy consumption
- reduction of global electricity consumption by 0.2%
- radical reduction in new ETH issuance (up to 500k ETH/year) and inflation (-1.8%)
- transaction prices will not decrease thanks to the Merge, this was not even its goal, there are still more upgrades to come before Ethereum is developed
Besides The Merge, Ethereum plans in recent years other upgrades. Namely, The Surge, The Verge, The Purge and The Splurge, which will result in higher scalability and smoothening network operations.
By the way, for staking Ethereum, you don’t even need 32 ETH. By using Bifrost App, your minimum for staking is 0,1 ETH, for which you will receive ~3.5% APR staking rewards + liquid vETH token. Everything is on the Ethereum network so no bridging is needed.
2. Watr protocol has won the 27th parachain auction on Polkadot
Watr protocol is the winner of the 27th auction on the Polkadot network by earning 125k DOT worth ~$788k. As you can see from the data illustrated by parachains.info, there were a few more projects, that wanted to succeed in this auction.
Watr is a blockchain protocol and open ecosystem decentralized application (dApp) enabling real-world asset transparency, funding, and trade. Watr is the Digital Commons for ethical commodities, including carbon credits, agricultural commodities, metals, and energy.
With Watr, you can find retail and commercial application cases for provenance, identification, funding, and trade. Watr’s plan is to deploy widely in Africa. Their collaborating partner is Parity Technologies.
3. Zeitgeist App for prediction markets is now live
Zeitgeist App finally went live in mid-September, while it already owns a parachain slot on Kusama. Now you can use Zeitgeist prediction markets and bet on popular or any interesting topics.
You can search for your favorite prediction market or pick from popular topics such as sports, governance, politics, or crypto.
Let’s check some examples of what you can bet on. Pick the winner of the US Senate midterms, the number of tornadoes in the US in November ’22 or even a bet on if aUSD stablecoin will come back to worth above $0.98 on January the 1st of 2023.
As you can see, there could be anything to bet on! You can also create a prediction market yourself as you wish.
You can search for your favorite prediction market or pick from popular topics such as sports, governance, politics, or crypto.
Let’s check some examples of what you can bet on. Pick the winner of the US Senate midterms, the number of tornadoes in the US in November ’22 or even a bet on if aUSD stablecoin will come back to worth above $0.98 on January the 1st of 2023.
As you can see, there could be anything to bet on! You can also create a prediction market yourself as you wish.
4. Bifrost launched RainDOT: mint your own vDOT and earn Raindrop points
On September 16th, the third vToken based on the SLP protocol went live at the Bifrost app. From that time, users can now mint derivative token vDOT from the original DOT token. This liquid staking solution ensures users receive seamless liquidity access combined with the staking rewards of the DOT token.
Bifrost launched the vDOT campaign called RainDOT — Rainbow Boost lands on Polkadot and ends up on September 23rd, 2022.
RainDOT Campaign Period:
Open: 16 September 2022
Close: 23 September 2022 | 10 AM UTC
Airdrop: 24 September 2022
RainDOT is a point system that benefits user behavior on Bifrost. More interaction with Bifrost on Polkadot, more RainDOTs. The accumulation of Raindrops will entitle you to BNC drops, the NFT whitelist and other community perks and privileges. The incentive behaviors and their Raindrops that qualify for this campaign are as follows.
Incentives to Gain Raindrops
- earn 200 Raindrops for every 1 vDOT minted
- addresses who have participated in DOT decentralized staking can get 500 Raindrops for free unconditionally
- after inviting DOT Staking friends to successfully claim 500 Raindrops, the inviter and the invitee will each receive 200 Raindrops
vDOT Minting Multiplier
Multiply your Raindrops by staking DOT from September 13th, 2022. The more you stake, the higher the multiplication level:
- 10 DOT = 5% multiplier
- 100 DOT = 10% multiplier
- 1000 DOT = 15% multiplier
- 5000 DOT = 20% https://bifrost.app/dashboard/boostmultiplier
- 10000 DOT = 25% multiplier
BNC Staking Multiplier
Similarly, you can multiply your Raindrops by staking BNC:
- staking over 100 BNC= 5% multiplier
- staking over 1000 BNC= 10% multiplier
- staking over 10000 BNC= 20% multiplier
- staking over 100000 BNC= 40% multiplier
vDOT Farming
While farming with a single-token lossless farming module, vDOT farming has no impermanent loss risk at all. Users participating in vDOT Farming receive a much higher APR than usual during the RainDOT event. vDOT Farming will last for seven days with a total incentive of up to 15000 BNC.
NFT Whitelist
RainDOT will release 200 Back to Asgard NFT whitelists based on Raindrop rankings. Users who hold the Back to Asgard NFT whitelist can enjoy discounts on NFT incubator purchases. The total number of NFT whitelists is 1000.
According to the Bifrost chain, 121,551 vDOT have been successfully minted within 30 hours of the vDOT minting launch.
5. Astar is building a Cross-Virtual Machine (XVM)
Astar Network is building a Cross-Virtual Machine (XVM) to enable development across EVM and WASM smart contracts. With XVM, developers can write in both Solidity and ink! to build new dApps on Astar and Shiden networks.
Last month, Astar successfully performed EVM-to-WASM interaction via their XVM pallet, which will be followed by completing WASM-to-EVM interaction and enabling bidirectional XVM on Shiden Network.
XVM is a powerful tool for experimental development, allowing interaction between WASM and EVM smart contracts. Building an XVM pallet within Substrate will unlock the untapped potential of Polkadot and Kusama for developers.
Projects can use XVM on Astar to interact with code and contracts on Substrate, integrate with assets and parachains across the Polkadot, create new experiences for users through complex smart contracts or leverage native tools, such as Swanky Suite and OpenBrush.
6. Bit.Country Pioneer App is now live: build your own metaverse
Bit.Country Pioneer App is finally live. You can try it now, no login is required, but connecting your Web3 wallet is essential.
You can stake NEER token as the only method to earn BIT, mint your own NFT collection purchase or sell NFTs, build your own metaverse, craft NFT metaverse objects, do the modifications of the metaverse home page or customize estates.
Bit.Country focuses on enabling everyone to start their own metaverse with the 3D world, NFTs or play-to-earn communities. In Bit.Country, simply everyone can start their own metaverse for their fans, followers or community members on Telegram & Facebook groups or Twitter followers.
7. Crust Files landing page launched, use your first personal Web3 storage
Crust Files landing page has been launched. You can now login into Crust Files with any Web3 wallets, including Polkadot JS, Wallet Connect, Crust Wallet or Metamask (using Ethereum, Moonriver, Polygon or BSC).
Crust Filles allows users to try their first Web3 cloud storage. Users can upload and store files in IPFS via Crust’s decentralized storage network, use file sharing with friends via direct links, use encrypted storage called Vault or even monetize their own data with the Pay2Download function.
What does it mean to be a Trial User or have a Premium account? It depends if 40 MB of storage is enough for you. Premium users got upload size of 1 GB and they need to download Crust Wallet and Deposit CRU tokens to get the Premium.
Crust is your first personal Web3.0 storage in the Metaverse.
Consider supporting us by the nomination of your tokens to the Kusama or Polkadot validator going by the POLKADOTTERS name.
