Ethereum

The volume of Ether staked keeps reaching new heights since the Shapella upgrade in April, crossing 23 million Ether locked in June.  According to data from analytics firm Nansen, a total of 23.3 million Ether (ETH) was staked as of June 27, amounting to $43.1 billion at the time of writing and representing nearly 20% of the

Web3 lending platform Maple Finance has announced the launch of a direct lending program, according to a June 28 fact sheet from the platform’s development team. The program is intended to replace services previously provided by Celsius, BlockFi and other now-bankrupt lenders. The first lending pool will be available sometime in July, the company stated.

Ether (ETH) price faced strong resistance at $1,920 after the 17.5% rally between June 15 and June 22. A number of factors contributed to the limited upside, including worsening macroeconomic conditions, the regulatory cryptocurrency environment, and weaker demand for decentralized applications (DApps) on the Ethereum network. ETH price faces macroeconomic headwinds On June 26, a

Worldcoin is the cause of a slew of Safe deployments to the Optimism (OP) network over the past week, according to a June 27 social media post from Tiago Sada, head of product for Worldcoin developer Tools for Humanity. The deployments had caused a stir on Twitter, as users wondered who was causing them and

A Web3 app launched on June 27 lets users prove their social credibility using blockchain technology, according to an announcement from the app’s development team. Called “Quivr,” it lets users connect apps they regularly use, such as Spotify, Steam, Apple Music and others. Based on their behavior in these apps, Quivr generates blockchain badges that

Transactions on the Optimism network surged 67% following its June 7 “Bedrock” upgrade, according to a June 26 Twitter thread from blockchain analytics firm Nansen. The network had been seeing less than 300,000 transactions per day before the upgrade, but this figure increased to over 550,000 by the middle of June. Since Optimism’s Bedrock upgrade

Ethereum zero-knowledge proof scaling system zkSync Era has unveiled its answer to Optimism’s Superchain concept in the form of ZK Stack. It’s a modular framework for a series of ZK-powered custom blockchains called yperchains, which will operate as a new layer on top of the existing layer-2 protocol. The chains will be composable and interoperable,

Huobi co-founder sues own company for copyright infringement According to local news reports on June 21, Leon Lin Li, former co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the company in Hong Kong. Li claims that despite selling his majority stake to an entity controlled by Chinese blockchain personality Justin

Bitcoin (BTC) made a new 52-week high on June 23, indicating that bulls are on fire. Buyers have managed to hold onto a large part of the gains made during the week, signaling that they are in no hurry to book profits. Bitcoin climbed 16% this week, outperforming the S&P 500 Index, which fell 1.39%.

Winklevoss twins’ cryptocurrency exchange Gemini continues to actively expand its services across the world, debuting Ethereum staking in the United Kingdom. On June 23, Gemini officially announced the expansion of Gemini Staking Pro in the United Kingdom. The service allows institutions and high-net-worth individuals to become Ethereum validators by locking up at least 32 Ether

Ethereum’s on-chain movements indicate bullish pressure building around Ether as its exchange balances reached an all-time low and staking deposits keep surging.  Ether’s (ETH) technical charts suggest that the asset can reclaim $3,000 if buyers are able to push above the resistance between $1,900 and $2,000. ETH held on exchanges hits an all-time low Exchange

Following the issuer’s decision to temporarily halt mints and redemptions through its banking partner, Prime Trust, a trader has taken advantage of the situation by initiating an on-chain short position on the stablecoin TrueUSD (TUSD). According to on-chain data, an Ethereum user utilized Aave’s V2 lending platform by depositing 7.5 million USDC, a stablecoin, as

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you the most significant developments from the past week. The past week in DeFi was filled with artificial intelligence (AI)-centered developments on Etherscan, Polygon’s latest security update and on-chain sleuth ZachXBT’s ongoing lawsuit supported by multiple

A few months ago Pepecoin came and went, bringing quick, unimaginable riches to early investors and turning late comers into reluctant bag holders. While the chart resembles the standard crypto pump-and-dump scheme, PEPE’s price action this week suggests that the frog-themed token could be the newest contender to Dogecoin (DOGE) in the memecoin sector. Dogecoin

Since its inception in 2016, Casa promoted multi-signature self-custody of BTC in the industry with its flagship Bitcoin vault allowing users to store the cryptocurrency using up to five keys for more distributed security. Casa’s service originally catered to Bitcoin ‘whales’ that were willing to spend $10,000 a year on custody, before opening its service

Starknet, a zero knowledge layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum is one step closer to becoming fully Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible pending an August testnet launch of Kakarot, a new zkEVM. On June 3, the Kakarot team announced it had received new backing from Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, Ledger co-founder Nicholas Bacca and Starkware. We

Immutable Games’ Web3 trading card game Gods Unchained is now listed on the Epic Games Store and is available to its 230 million customers, according to a June 21 announcement. Gods Unchained is a collectible trading card game similar to Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering Arena but with cards players can own and trade. Each

BlackRock’s application for a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) has encouraged other financial firms to follow suit. First, it was the New York-based asset management fund WisdomTree which made a new filing on June 21 for a Bitcoin ETF. This was then followed by investment manager Invesco, which reactivated its application for a spot

Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic has proposed upgrading the Polygon proof-of-stake (PoS) network to a “zkEVM validium” version, according to a June 20 forum post. If the upgrade is implemented, the new version will rely on zero-knowledge proofs to increase security. HUGE UPDATE ON #Polygon Polygon may go through some huge changes in near future. @MihailoBjelic

Ethereum core developers plan to implement a 64-fold increase in the minimum amount of staked Ether (ETH) required to become a validator, from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH. The proposal was made during a June 15 Ethereum core developer consensus meeting by Ethereum Foundation researcher Michael Neuder. The researcher noted that although the current limit of