This Week in Blockfolio Signal — Cardano, Theta Network, IOTA, Dash, Enjin, Fantom, Power Ledger, Origin
Every week we comb through hundreds of Blockfolio Signals to bring you the most significant team updates with brief analyses to help you understand the latest developments in blockchain.
Macro crypto news this week:
- Kings of Leon Drop NFT Album 🎶
- Volkswagen Pilots Blockchain to Integrate EVs with Power Grids
- Dallas Mavericks to Accept Dogecoin for Tickets and Merchandise
- Brave Acquires Tailcat to Offer Privacy-Focused Search Alternative
- Original Banksy Burned and Turned into an NFT
- Musician Grimes’ Debut NFT Auction Generates $5.8M
- PayPal in Talks to Buy Crypto Storage Firm Curv for $500 Million
- Goldman Sachs Restarts Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
- CBOE Seeks Approval to List and Trade VanEck’s Bitcoin ETF
Top Blockfolio Signals of the past week:
- Cardano Completes ‘Mary’ Hardfork Upgrade
- Theta Welcomes Sony Europe as Enterprise Validator Node
- IOTA and Horizen Partner to Expand IOTA Oracles
- RAS Bank in Brazil Adds Dash to All Banking Services
- Enjin Introduces Jumpnet to Tackle Soaring Gas Fees & Scaling Issues
- Fantom Onboards SushiSwap and Cream Finance
- Power Ledger Partners with India’s Largest Integrated Power Company
- Origin Protocol Hosts First Tokenized Album Auction
Cardano Completes ‘Mary’ Hardfork Upgrade
“MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!: Did you notice anything? No? Good! We can confirm that the Cardano ‘Mary’ protocol update was successfully applied to the Cardano mainnet tonight at 21:44:51 UTC via a managed hard fork combinator event.”
— Niels Schoof, Community Manager
Summary
- The ‘Mary’ protocol upgrade was implemented using Cardano’s hard fork combinator technology. It brings native tokens and multi-asset capability.
- The upgrades come with a new Daedalus Flight version for testing, which will be the first Cardano wallet with integrated multi-asset capability.
- Native tokens bring multi-asset support to Cardano, allowing users to create uniquely defined (custom) tokens and carry out transactions with them directly on the Cardano blockchain.
- Developers, businesses, and applications can create general-purpose (fungible) or specialized (non-fungible) tokens to achieve commercial or business objectives.
Significance
Because native tokens do not require smart contracts to transfer their value, users will be able to send, receive, and burn their tokens without paying the transaction fees required for a smart contract or adding event-handling logic to track transactions. This opens the door for digital collectibles and decentralized finance on the Cardano platform.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $1.21. View ADA on Blockfolio.
Theta Welcomes Sony Europe as the Newest Enterprise Validator Node
“Welcome Sony Europe as the newest Theta Enterprise Validator Node!”
— Wes Levitt, Head of Strategy
Summary
- Sony Europe’s research and development group, the Center Europe Brussels Laboratory, has joined Theta’s enterprise validator and governance council program.
- As part of the development, Sony will operate an enterprise validator node located in Europe to validate network transactions on Theta’s proof-of-stake consensus protocol.
- Sony Europe will also act as a member of the governance council to participate in strategic technology planning and ensure the network’s security and stability.
Significance
This is an important milestone as Theta Network is quickly moving towards full decentralization with 14 enterprise validators. Sony is a large global brand and Theta expects deeper strategic collaboration in DLT development with Sony in areas like decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $3.74. View THETA on Blockfolio.
IOTA Launches Smart Contracts Alpha and Partners with Horizen on Oracles
“IOTA Smart Contracts Alpha is here! Our first major release of Smart Contracts enabling our #ecosystem to start to build. Our journey to bring IOTA’s feeless and scalable DAG to Digital Assets, DEX’s, NFT’s, Oracles and dApps has begun.”
“Horizen and IOTA partner to expand IOTA Oracles to new #blockchains! IOTA Oracles functionality will soon be available to dApps on Horizen sidechains. We anticipate more blockchains will incorporate IOTA Oracles in the near future.”
— Thabata Dias, Social Media Manager
Summary
- The scale and nature of improvements over the previous “pre-alpha” version of IOTA smart contracts are significant.
- This includes the integration of a multi-chain environment, secured by the Tangle, the “Layer 1”: Subnetworks, comprised of Wasp nodes “committees”, can run many blockchains in parallel on top of it without losing perspective of the environments that secures IOTA digital assets.
- The first goal of the Horizen partnership is to make the IOTA Oracles functionality available to applications on Horizen sidechains.
- IOTA Oracles bring off-chain data to decentralized applications and smart contracts on the IOTA network, and are designed to securely bridge between the digital and the physical world in a permissionless way.
Significance
IOTA’s approach to smart contracts addresses the inefficiencies like the inability for parallel and scalable execution, the inability to run “foreign” smart contracts on different virtual machines, and being hindered by volatile and sometimes prohibitive fees. The Horizen partnership is the first example of other distributed ledgers leveraging IOTA Oracles for the purposes of real-world, industrial use cases.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signals: $1.19. View IOTA on Blockfolio.
RAS Bank in Brazil Adds Dash to All Banking Services
“RAS Bank in Brazil adds Dash to all Banking Services
RAS Bank, a full service digital bank in Brazil has added Dash to its services allowing users to conduct their banking activities both in fiat and Dash. This integration provides many services for both users and businesses in the country and region. These services include: point of sale, bill payments, card services, OTC, and an exchange among others.
To celebrate the partnership, 100 customized Dash Visa debit cards will be produced and provided to the first 100 Dash users to sign up with RAS Bank.”
— Mark Mason, Dash Press Room Manager
Summary
- RAS Bank is a full-service digital bank allowing users to manage their accounts in Brazilian Reais and in four cryptocurrencies including Dash.
- Brazilian residents and citizens can now open an account, deposit, withdraw their BRL and Dash. Users can purchase Dash and even conduct large OTC trades of Dash. RAS Bank customers can also pay their bills (such as utilities) in Brazil with Dash.
- A debit card that will allow users to spend their Dash and make purchases online or at physical stores via the VISA network. Any business can now accept crypto without any complication, due to auto-conversion of crypto into fiat, deposited into the merchant account.
Significance
This is an important integration from Dash’s perspective for healthy growth in Brazil and Latin America. From supporting the underbanked populations of the region to allowing more banking functions for the Dash Network, this integration also brings multiple services to the Brazilian Dash user.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signal: $200. View DASH on Blockfolio.
Enjin Introduces Jumpnet to Tackle Soaring Gas Fees and Scaling Issues
“Enjin is looking to tackle issues of scaling and interoperability, as well as soaring Ethereum fees, with two new blockchain solutions.”
— Bryana Kortendick, VP of Operations & Communications
Summary
- Dubbed JumpNet and Efinity, the two scaling solutions will increase support for NFTs while removing Ethereum’s expensive gas fees.
- JumpNet is a private version of the Ethereum blockchain with a Proof of Authority (PoA) method of consensus, enabling instant, secure, and gasless on-chain transactions.
- The bridging network enables users to move their Enjin Coins (ENJ) from the Ethereum network to JumpNet. By transferring the tokens onto JumpNet’s bridging smart contracts, users will be able to lock their tokens on Ethereum and then unlock a corresponding amount on the other side.
- Users will be able to mint NFTs using the Enjin-developed ERC-1155 standard without the gas usually required. They can then send and receive tokens via Enjin’s wallet or trade them on its NFT marketplace.
- Efinity is expected to become Enjin’s public blockchain. Creators on Efinity can mint multi-chain tokens and move them to other compatible blockchains. The project also aims to enable users of different blockchains to move their tokens on to Efinity using trustless bridging smart contracts.
Significance
This will allow Enjin users to choose if they want free transactions on JumpNet or trustlessness on Ethereum and Efinity. These technologies will enable developers to reach mainstream users without worrying about unpredictable business overhead caused by gas fees. Furthermore, Enjin is evolving into a multi-chain ecosystem for NFTs.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signals: $1.22. View ENJ on Blockfolio.
Fantom Onboards SushiSwap and Cream Finance
“SushiSwap has been deployed on Fantom mainnet at https://staging.sushi.com.
You can now add liquidity and trade any ERC20 token supported on mainnet using SushiSwap.
The liquidity pools for wFTM/USDC and wFTM/wETH have been seeded so that the community can interact with them right away.
Rather than forking, Fantom is focusing on the bedrock infrastructure and collaborating with teams that have better experience in building DeFi applications. We’re purely focused on making the environment as close to the actual experience of building on Ethereum as possible.”
“C.R.E.A.M. is live on Fantom. This allows users to lend, and borrow on using C.R.E.A.M. on Fantom just like they would on Ethereum.
Having a money market such as C.R.E.A.M. on the network will be essential for composability. Lending and borrowing, together with AMM DEX, stands at the core of the DeFi space.”
— Michael Chen, Chief Marketing Officer
Summary
- SushiSwap has been deployed on Fantom mainnet at https://staging.sushi.com. Investors can now add liquidity and trade any ERC20 token supported on mainnet using SushiSwap.
- Rather than forking, Fantom is focusing on the bedrock infrastructure and collaborating with teams that have better experience in building DeFi applications. They are focused on making the environment as close to the actual experience of building on Ethereum as possible.
- CreamdotFinance is live on Fantom. This allows users to lend, and borrow on using Cream on Fantom just like they would on Ethereum. Having a money market on the network is essential for composability.
- 19 assets are supported including wFTM, CREAM, WETH, wBTC, DAI, USDC, YFI, SUSHI, AAVE, CRV, BAND, KP3R, sUSD, COVER, HEGIC, LINK, SNX, SFI, FRAX.
Significance
SushiSwap on Fantom brings lower fees and faster transactions for swaps, while Cream offers money market functionality. This new strategy sees Fantom collaborating with current DeFi platforms to bring them to the Fantom blockchain, rather than creating their own versions. This should equate to a faster ramp-up of adoption for Fantom.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signals: $0.45. View FTM on Blockfolio.
Power Ledger Partners with India’s Largest Integrated Power Company
“We’ve partnered with India’s largest integrated power company Tata Power DDL and India Smart Grid Forum on the first live solar energy trading project in Delhi. This is an important milestone in India’s rapid adoption of renewable energy.”
— Clare Lee, Community Manager
Summary
- The project will bolster India’s rapid adoption of renewable energy; powered by Power Ledger and India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF).
- Power Ledger’s blockchain-enabled technology facilitates peer-to-peer (P2P) trading of solar power from over 2MW of solar PV systems. The first pilot of its kind in Delhi currently in progress between 65 prosumers and 75 consumer sites in the capital — 140 buildings and counting.
- The full-scale P2P trading trial will test out various trading logics and continue until June 2021, with recommendations provided to the Regulator.
Significance
This is a landmark project that sees Power Ledger partnering with one of India’s largest power companies and the Government of NCT of Delhi. It marks the first live solar energy trading project in Delhi and will facilitate peer-to-peer trading of electricity from over 2 MW of solar PV.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signals: $0.30. View POWR on Blockfolio.
Origin Protocol Hosts First Tokenized Album Auction
“The auction for the world’s first tokenized album has finished, and history has been made! Acclaimed producer and musician 3LAU sold 33 NFT collections for a total of $11,684,101 on Origin’s Dshop platform.”
— Matthew Liu, Cofounder
Summary
- For the first time in history, a collection of NFTs representing a best-selling album was auctioned for over $11 million.
- The auction allowed fans to bid to win 1 of 33 NFTs redeemable for special edition vinyl, unreleased music, and bonus song NFTs.
- The top bidder will receive the NFT, redeemable for a custom-created song by 3LAU, access to unreleased music, a bonus physical vinyl, and a chance to collaborate with 3LAU on a new single, tokenized as a 1 of 1 song NFT.
Significance
This is the first auction of a tokenized album by a major artist and was a huge success considering the $11.6 million that it attracted. This likely sets the stage for future NFT auctions by acclaimed artists and positions Origin as a blockchain-powered marketplace for artists to sell NFTs.
Price at the time of Blockfolio Signals: $0.34. View OGN on Blockfolio.
Quote of the Week:
“All the pension funds will have to own some Bitcoin.”
— Tim Draper
Chart of the Week:
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Jason Hamlin
Ecosystem Insights & Development @ Blockfolio
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