The Ethereum community appears to have taken a bullish view of Coinbase’s newly announced layer-2 network, Base, which has been described as a “massive confidence vote” and a “watershed moment” for the blockchain network. Secured on Ethereum and powered by layer-2 network Optimism, Base aims to eventually become a network for building decentralized applications (DApps) on the blockchain. The layer-2 network is currently in its testnet phase, according to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. 0/ Hello world. Meet Base, an Ethereum L2 that offers a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly way for anyone, anywhere, to build decentralized apps. Our goal with Base is …

On Feb 23, crypto exchange Coinbase announced the launch of Base — an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network. The company claimed this new network will offer a low-cost, secure, and developer-friendly environment for building decentralized apps (dApps) on the blockchain. According to Coinbase, Base is designed to be a bridge for users into the crypto economy, offering access to other L1 ecosystems like Solana and making it interoperable with other chains. It will also provide access to Coinbase's products, users, and tools, as well as easy fiat onramps and powerful acquisition tools. The company plans to progressively decentralize the chain …

Members of the Uniswap community voted in favor of deploying Uniswap v3 on Boba Network's layer-2 protocol on Ethereum. Gaining over 51 million votes, the proposal submitted by Boba Foundation and FranklinDAO to deploy Uniswap v3 in Boba Network passed. This means that the Boba Network will be the sixth chain to deploy Uniswap v3, with the deployment scheduled to proceed in the coming weeks. The move was backed by several entities such as GFX Labs, Blockchain at Michigan, Gauntlet and ConsenSys. According to Alan Chiu, the co-founder and CEO of Enya Labs, a core contributor to Boba Network, the …

Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution StarkWare announced plans to open source its proprietary Starknet Prover under the Apache 2.0 license, which has processed 327 million transactions and minted 95 million nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to date. The prover is the crucial engine Starkware uses to roll up hundreds of thousands of transactions and compress them into a tiny cryptographic proof written on the Ethereum blockchain. “We think of the Prover as the magic wand of Stark technology. It wondrously generates the proofs that allow unimaginable scaling,” said Eli Ben-Sasson, president and co-founder of Starkware. Starkware has faced criticism from the crypto …

Despite the recent negative crypto and macroeconomic newsflow, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization broke above $1 trillion on Jan. 21. An encouraging sign is that derivatives metrics are not showing increased demand from bearish traders at the moment. Bitcoin (BTC) price gained 8% on the week, stabilizing near the $23,100 level at 18:00 UTC on Jan. 27 as the markets weighed the potential impact of Genesis Capital's bankruptcy on Jan. 19. One area of concern is Genesis Capital's largest debtor is Digital Currency Group (DCG), which happens to be its parent company. Consequently, Grayscale funds management could be at risk, …

About two months after the FTX collapse, the Solana network is stronger than ever, according to Austin Federa, the head of strategy and communications at the Solana Foundation. Federa defines the recent SOL token price crash as a short-term market reaction to the perceived connection between Solana and the defunct crypto exchange FTX. While FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was invested in many Solana-based projects, Federa pointed out he didn't have any influence on the network’s operations and fundamentals. “The external perception was that there was a very close relationship between the Solana network and FTX, which wasn't the case," Federa …

Ethereum layer-2 networks have gone through an explosive growth phase over the past couple of months a trend that is set to continue in 2023. According to recent data, the leading layer-2 networks have seen an increase in daily active users which has translated into a growth in fees for the respective ecosystems. According to analytics provider Token Terminal, Polygon leads the pack with 313,457 daily active users as of Jan. 17. Additionally, the metric spiked to over 600,000 daily active users earlier in January. It marks a 30% increase in activity since the beginning of October 2022 which has …

Shiba Inu is hoping to become more than just a Dogecoin-inspired meme cryptocurrency as it comes closer to launching its layer-2 network. Meanwhile, its native token SHIB has emerged as one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies so far in 2023. SHIB price jumps 60% in 2023 SHIB's price has rallied nearly 60% year-to-date (YTD) to $0.00001294, its highest since early November 2022. The gains started appearing mainly due to favorable macro conditions that prompted similar rallies elsewhere in the crypto market. Nonetheless, the Shiba Inu price rally picked up momentum as investors assessed its announcement of the upcoming beta release of …

The developers of the dog-themed token Shiba Inu (SHIB) posted an update to inform its community about its upcoming beta release of Shibarium, a layer-2 network that will run on top of the Ethereum mainnet. In an announcement, SHIB developers shared information about layer-2 blockchains and highlighted that Shibarium is being built to provide a tool to allow the community to build and grow the project and fulfill its founder’s vision. While some believe that the creation of Shibarium is a way to increase the meme token’s price, the developers noted that this wasn’t the goal. They wrote: “Patience is …

Ethereum layer-2 scaling protocol Polygon (MATIC) is carrying out performance testing of zero-knowledge rollup (zk rollups) technology ahead of full integration with its mainnet. The development of the technology, called Polygon zkEVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), has been ongoing for over three years by the Polygon Hermez team. The team has already confirmed that zero-knowledge proofs are possible on Ethereum, by generating over 12,000 zk-proofs in a primary version of the zkEVM testnet. David Schwartz, project lead of Polygon zkEVM and PolygonID, unpacked the development of the functionality in correspondence with Cointelegraph. Layer-2 platforms have continued to evolve and improve functionality …

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization reached its highest level in over two months on Jan. 13 after breaking above the $900 billion mark on Jan. 12. While the 15.5% year-to-date gain sounds promising, the level is still 50% below the $1.88 trillion crypto market cap seen before the Terra-Luna ecosystem collapsed in April 2022. “Hopeful skepticism” is probably the best description of most investors' sentiment at the moment, especially after the recent struggles of recapturing a $1 trillion market capitalization in early November. That rally to $1 trillion was followed by a 27.6% correction in three days and it invalidated …

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. The DeFi ecosystem started 2023 on a bullish note, similar to the broader cryptocurrency market. However, the bullish start to the year didn’t diminish the damage caused by vulnerabilities and attacks in 2022. A new research report has highlighted that DeFi was the most vulnerable crypto ecosystem, at the receiving end of 113 exploits out of the total 167. On top of that, blockchain security experts have warned the trend could continue in 2023. …