Bitcoin Price: U$48,588.16 (-0.62%)
Ethereum Price: U$3,979.50 (-0.86%)
Anchor Deposits Cross $10B, L2 Stagnation, Ethereum Deployments Slow
- Adoption of Terra and Avalanche has grown significantly throughout 2021, with the latter seeing a surge since its ecosystem incentives kicked off in September. Since Jul. 1, the number of addresses interacting with Avalanche increased by roughly 22x, while addresses using Terra grew by 22%. As a newer chain, Avalanche is bound to have a steeper growth curve, but that doesn’t diminish the tremendous growth the network has seen this year.
- Anchor Protocol hit over $10B in deposits — a result of LUNA’s price hitting all-time highs. Further catalyzing this was the integration of Terra’s stablecoin, UST, into Abracadabra. Recent MIM replenishes on Abracadabra Money fueled deposits into Anchor.
- Abracadabra Money now has over $1B in UST deposits in its “Degenbox” strategy. The strategy deposits 85% of UST from each user into Anchor Protocol to enhance depositor yields. Almost $400M MIM was minted yesterday via Abracadabra’s UST cauldron in just 8 hours.
- Smart contracts deployed on Ethereum took a hit in Jun. 2021, and while there are still over 250K contracts deployed each month, this number is far from where it was in H1 2021.
- The rising costs of deploying contracts has likely played a key role in pushing developers to alternatives networks. Whether this can eventually pick up on Ethereum-centric L2s remains to be seen.
- L2’s are losing market share to L1’s in recent months, despite the migration of DeFi protocols from Ethereum. Most expected L2s to immediately become a hot-spot for developers and users who were priced out of Ethereum mainnet. But to the detriment of Ethereum, other L1s stole the limelight. Ecosystems like Polygon and Avalanche that dedicated a portion of their token treasuries to user incentives were key to making this happen.
- Notable TVL deterrents include absent L2 native tokens, increasing gas costs on mainnet Ethereum, and reduced farming emissions.
- Decentralized exchange protocol Uniswap has gone live on Polygon, an Ethereum-focused scaling platform.
- Last month, Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic submitted a proposal on the Uniswap governance portal to deploy Uniswap v3 on Polygon. The Uniswap community then voted to accept the proposal last week.
- More than 72 million Uniswap (UNI) token holders supported the move, and as a result, Uniswap is now live on Polygon. In other words, Uniswap users can now swap tokens using the Polygon blockchain via Uniswap’s official interface.
Hive Blockchain on track to mine more Bitcoin, less Ether this quarter
- Publicly traded crypto mining firm Hive Blockchain is expecting to produce 6,900 Ether (ETH) and 670 Bitcoin (BTC) for the fiscal quarter ending on Dec. 31, marking a respective drop and increase over that of the previous quarter.
- In a Wednesday notice to shareholders, Hive said it had mined 6,280 Ether from Oct. 1 to Dec. 21 and was on track to mine more than 65 ETH daily for the remainder of 2021. This projected total — 6,900 ETH — would represent a decrease of more than 20% from the 8,688 ETH the company mined from July 1 to Sept. 30. However, Hive is expecting its Bitcoin production to increase by 2% quarterly, from roughly 656 BTC to 670 BTC.
Opera to integrate with Polygon, opening DApp ecosystem to 80M users
- On Wednesday, Opera, an internet browser with Web 3.0 application support and a built-in crypto wallet, announced an upcoming integration with Polygon (MATIC). The integration, which is scheduled to go live in the first quarter of 2022, will first open Polygon’s ecosystem to Opera’s over 80 million users on the Android mobile, then to the rest on other devices and platforms. Polygon is a layer two Ethereum (ETH) scaling solution designed for lower gas fees and faster transaction times.
- Through the integration, Opera users will be able to access Polygon decentralized applications, or DApps, such as Sushiswap, Curve and Aave, as well as blockchain games and nonfungible tokens platforms such as Decentraland, OpenSea and TheSandbox.
Chinese news site Xinhua to mint NFTs on Tencent’s enterprise blockchain
- Xinhua, one of China’s primary news agencies, plans to issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) at noon UTC on Christmas Eve.
- The NFT collection will feature 11 photos taken by journalists during the course of the year, Reuters reported on Wednesday. These 11 photos will be released as limited edition NFTs, totaling 10,000 copies each and will be available for free, the report stated.
- According to The Block Research’s Wolfie Zhao, the 11 photos in the NFT collection memorialize landmark moments for China in 2021 including winning the first gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
