Recovering After Resting

The meme mania that started with the GameStop saga last year found its way into the crypto space thanks to Dogecoin ($DOGE.X). The meme crypto rose over  11,000% in 2021, ending the year in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap. 

A similar story is told about Shiba Inu ($SHIB.X), another canine-based meme crypto. Except, this Ethereum-based token managed to grow twice as fast – flipping its fiercest rival, Dogecoin, in terms of market capitalization within mere months.

However, the canine currencies are not in vogue anymore – the two most popular memecoins have fallen out of the top 10 cryptos and have only lost value since the start of the year.

Dogecoin ($DOGE.X), which ranks on the crypto ranking at number 13, had a knock-on effect with new crypto investors – it brought millions of new investors into the space, thanks to its ridiculous history. And when Tesla CEO Elon Musk embraced its use as a “People’s Currency”, it went to the moon. The Dogefather openly supported the token and was instrumental in pumping the price to new heights. That’s why some even invested their entire savings and became Doge millionaires. 

In order to maintain the momentum, Dogecoin started a new foundation to support its development in August 2021 to promote growth through advocacy, governance, and trademark protection. It got support from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. 

Although those efforts seem to be struggling because the token is 84% down from its peak – it sits at $0.11 and is struggling to rebound (much like the rest of the crypto market).

Shiba Inu ($SHIB.X), an Ethereum-based alternative to Dogecoin that was born in 2020, bears a similar plotline. The token performed well in the second half of 2021 when it partnered with NowPayments.io to facilitate the burn of a percentage of tokens in each transaction. As a result, the price of the token increased overnight. The token also entered the NFT world with the launch of 10,000 NFTs on its decentralized exchange ShibaSwap. 

However, since hitting its peak in October 2021, the token has dropped 74% from its all-time high, trading at $0.00002197. 

The moment for memecoins appears to have gone – at least in a relative sense.  A portion of this might be faulted on the “hype cycle” of memecoins – their ridiculous names, outsized promises, and lack of delivery have damaged some semblance of credibility. 

Dogecoin hasn’t become the people’s money and Shiba didn’t go to $0.01. That’s not to say they can’t, but while Doge and Shiba hodlers were talking about going to the moon, blockchain networks such as Polygon, Terra, and Polkadot chose a different path: building the future. So far, it looks like that strategy is paying off in a more substantial way than praying for tendies. 

ConsenSys, the creator of crypto wallet MetaMask, wants to redesign the wallet and has raised funds for that purpose. The $450 million investment round nearly doubled ConsenSys’ valuation to $7 billion in a raise featuring participation from ParaFi Capital, Microsoft, SoftBank, and Temasek. 

The funding round comes amid allegations levied by ConsenSys shareholders that its founder, Joseph Lubin, illegally transferred assets from ConsenSys Mesh (the company’s venture arm) to ​​ConsenSys Software Incorporated (the parent entity to MetaMask) in the transaction. The group, which claims to represent more than 50% of ConsenSys Mesh shareholders, is urging a Swiss court to conduct an independent audit of the privately-traded company.

With that said, ConsenSys aims to earn yields on assets by using its own financial infrastructure, protocols, and staking. It will reportedly launch a plug-in system as part of its raise and subsequent redesign of MetaMask, which can be integrated with a wide range of blockchain protocols and account security schemes.

For these developments, the company will use the fund toward hiring more than 600 new employees. It has nearly 700 full-time employees and hopes to have more than 1,000 by the end of 2022. Additionally, the firm announced the creation of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and the launch of a MetaMask native token.

“This round takes in digital assets as well as fiat and converts immediately to ETH. Next round will be our ‘Series ETH’ where we will assist investors in getting fully crypto native to contribute ETH as a symbol of and commitment to the ongoing paradigm shift,” said CEO Joseph Lubin on the latest funding round.

To summarize, the crypto giant plans to leverage a number of different trends, including DeFi protocols, NFTs, bridges, wallets, token launches, web3, and more. It’s going to be interesting to see how the plan coincides with the allegations by the shareholders in the future.

Ethereum – already the most popular and valuable blockchain for dapps, DeFi, and NFT projects – is getting more popular. That’s great, but it also means that Ethereum is getting more expensive, inaccessible, and slow. You can call them growing pains, but crypto experts would call them scaling troubles.

Which, as it turns out, is a major issue in the blockchain world. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to scaling, either. Ethereum will try its hand at solving them by moving from a Proof of Work network to a Proof of Stake network later this year. However, there are other tools in their toolbox – and one of the strongest emergent options are rollups. Specifically, Zero-Knowledge rollups and Optimistic rollups.

As their name implies, rollups are designed to bundle up lots of transactions into one transaction. In effect, rollups execute transactions on layer-2 solutions, then settle them (and their transaction data) on the layer-1 network. If you need a refresher on the difference between Layer-1 and Layer-2, click here.)

One kind of rollup, Zero-Knowledge rollups (or ZK-Rollups),  bundles up transactions and generates a “validity proof” for that bundle – you can think of these bundles as a block on top of a block – which proves that all the transactions are authentic, then puts them on the layer-1 (e.g: Ethereum). The foremost names in ZK rollup research are Polygon Hermez, ZKSync, Loopring, and StarkWare. 

The other kind, Optimistic rollups, has some benefits and drawbacks – for one, they don’t have to generate a proof (unless something is wrong, in which case they’ll generate a fraud proof), which means they’re faster and better at accomplishing the “scaling” part of the scaling solution. They can also execute smart contracts,  but Optimistic rollups have a challenge period, which means transactions can take longer periods of time. Optimistic rollups are already being tested in the wild – namely on the Optimism layer-2 network and on Arbitrum.

Research into both zk rollups and Optimistic rollups are still ongoing – however, they have enormous potential to affect change in the future of blockchain tech. We might even come to benefit from that uptake in speed and security in just a few years’ time. 

Takeaway: As blockchain technology continues to develop, the question becomes which blockchain network offers greater speed and space. The ZK-rollups and Optimistic rollups are just the dawn of the next phase of blockchain technology that offers speed and cheap transactions to developers and investors both. It remains to be seen whether or not both are able to match the ever-growing crypto space.

Within a few years, you might be able to enjoy banking services in the metaverse. Following in the footsteps of JPMorgan, HSBC has become the latest financial institution to enter the metaverse by acquiring virtual real estate in The Sandbox. The bank will purchase a piece of virtual land that will be developed to attract sports, e-sports, and gaming fans. 

Details of the virtual plot have not yet been released, but an image posted on The Sandbox’s blog shows a pixelated plot of land with an HSBC rugby stadium.

 “At HSBC, we see great potential to create new experiences through emerging platforms, opening up a world of opportunity for our current and future customers and for the communities we serve,” wrote Suresh Balaji, HSBC’s chief marketing officer for the Asia-Pacific region.

 After the news broke, $SAND.X, the native token of The Sandbox, gained over 13%, trading at $3.10.

 A number of big brands have joined The Sandbox’s metaverse, including Gucci, Warner Music Group, and Ubisoft. JPMorgan entered the metaverse through Decentraland, a rival to The Sandbox. It’s going to be interesting to wait and see how the battle for banking in the metaverse plays out.