Značka: Vitalik

Vitalik: People still 'underrate' the superiority of crypto payments

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggests the superiority of cryptocurrency for payments is often “underrated” compared to fiat, pointing to the convenience of international payments and payments to charities as key examples. Buterin made the comments in a Twitter thread on Aug. 24, explaining that it’s not just resistance to censorship, but also convenience that makes cryptocurrencies “superior” when it comes to international business, charity, and even payments within countries. People continue to underrate how often cryptocurrency payments are superior not even because of censorship resistance but just because they’re so much more convenient.Big boost to international business and charity, and sometimes even payments within countries.— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 24, 2022Cryptocurrency adoption in payments has been growing globally. A report from data platform PYMNTS titled “Paying With Cryptocurrency” in July found that among businesses surveyed with annual income exceeding $1 billion, 85% said they are adopting crypto payments to find and gain new customers. The availability of crypto debit cards has also been growing quickly, with Binance recently partnering with Mastercard to announce a prepaid card for Argentinians. Many of these cards, such as Wirex’s, even reward users with crypto cashback for paying through the card and facilitate spending of several major cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, as well as the withdrawal of cash from ATMs. As pointed out by Vitalik, cryptocurrencies are also particularly useful when transferring money internationally and for charitable donations. Traditionally when done using fiat currency, international payments can take a long time to process and results in large fees. The war in Ukraine is one great example of its usefulness in this regard, with Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov having tweeted on Aug. 18 that $54 million has been raised by nonprofit and activist group Aid For Ukraine alone. However, not everyone has been as bullish about crypto’s use as means of payment, with common objections including price volatility, ease of use, and regulatory risk, as well as high-transaction fees and long processing times for certain cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. While it can vary, the Bitcoin blockchain handles approximately five transactions per second (TPS), and averages fees of $0.819 as of Aug 24, while Ethereum is currently handling around 29.3 TPS with average fees of $1.57. Visa on the other hand claims to be able to handle 24,000 transactions per second and charges between 1.4 and 2.5% per transaction. Related: Ukraine has shown the value cryptocurrency offers to real peopleThe development of the lightning network, a layer-2 solution built on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain, could be a solution for Bitcoin’s lagging TPS, while Ethereum has been looking to layer-2 roll-up technology, such as ZK-rollups to vastly reduce fees and processing times.Stablecoins, cryptocurrencies designed to be pegged to another asset (such as the United States dollar), have also become a popular medium of exchange, particularly in emerging economies.

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Facebook's metaverse will ‘misfire,’ says Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin doesn’t believe that any of the existing attempts by corporations to create a Metaverse are “going anywhere,” pointing to Meta as being one he believes will “misfire.” Responding to a tweet from Dialectic co-founder Dean Eigenmann, who believes venture capitalists may be wrong about what constitutes an ideal metaverse, Buterin said that while he believes “The metaverse is going to happen,” he doesn’t think any of the current attempts from corporates such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta are “going anywhere.”The “metaverse” is going to happen but I don’t think any of the existing corporate attempts to intentionally create the metaverse are going anywhere. https://t.co/tVUfq4CWmP— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 30, 2022The Metaverse is generally described as a highly-interactive 3D online world focused on social connection, with some looking to eventually be powered by augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Buterin’s comments come despite a number of successful metaverse projects recently being launched on blockchain technology like Decentraland (MANA) and The Sandbox (SAND). However, Buterin stated that its use cases are still not clear, adding that he didn’t think Meta’s attempt at creating a metaverse will be successful in its current form. “We don’t really know the definition of ‘the metaverse’ yet, it’s far too early to know what people actually want. So anything Facebook creates now will misfire.”Meta has built a number of AR and VR applications, such as the Meta Horizons Workroom, a VR room for colleagues to connect and collaborate on ideas. Meta has also built first-generational smart glasses that allow users to connect to the metaverse by recording audio and video and being surrounded by virtual worlds.My critique is deeper than “Metaverse Wikipedia will beat Metaverse Encyclopedia Britannica”. It’s that we don’t really know the definition of “the metaverse” yet, it’s far too early to know what people actually want. So anything Facebook creates now will misfire.— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 31, 2022

Other critics are of the view that centralized metaverses such as those proposed by Meta and Microsoft may affect the decentralization of ownership of goods and services within those metaverses. On the other hand, metaverse developers like Decentraland and Sandbox have come together with several Web3 projects to launch the Open Metaverse Alliance (OMA3), which focuses on building more transparent, inclusive, decentralized and democratized metaverses. Related: 34% of gamers want to use crypto in the metaverse, despite the backlashThe Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF) also strives to build on these values and establish standards for a more open and interoperable metaverse. Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alibaba, Unity and Sony are among the 35 tech companies that became members of the MSF.This reflects well Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to stakeholders in October last year, where he said that the Metaverse is the next chapter for the internet, adding, “We’re seen as a social media company, but in our DNA, we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier.” 

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A key Ethereum price metric hits a 6 month low as ETH falls below $3K

Ether (ETH) price lost the $3,600 support on Jan. 5 as minutes from the Federal Reserve’s December FOMC meeting showed that the regulator was committed to decreasing its balance sheet and increasing interest rates in 2022.Even with that looming overhead, Ether has problems of its own, more specifically, the ongoing $40 and higher average transaction fees. On Jan. 3 Vitalik Buterin said that Ethereum needs to be more lightweight in terms of blockchain data so that more people can manage and use it.The concerning part of Vitalik’s interview was the status of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which is merely halfway implemented after six years. The subsequent roadmap phases include the “merge” and “surge” phases, followed by “full sharding implementation.” When implemented, they will lead to an 80% estimated completion of the network upgrade, according to Buterin.Ether price at Coinbase, USD. Source: TradingViewFor those analyzing Ether’s performance over the past 3 months, the current pricing seems appealing because the cryptocurrency is currently down 34% from its $4,870 all-time high. However, this short-sighted view disregards the 560% gain Ether had accrued up till Nov. 10, 2021.Furthermore, the network’s adjusted total value locked (TVL) has dropped by 17% since Ether’s price peak.Ethereum network total value locked, USD. Source: DefiLlamaAs shown above, the network’s TVL dropped from $166 billion to the current $138 billion. Meanwhile, competing smart contract networks like Terra saw their TVL increase from $11 billion to $18.7 billion. Fantom also increased the value locked on its smart contracts from $5 billion to $9 billion.Due to network upgrade delays, worsening macroeconomic conditions and a 3-month long price correction, professional traders are clearly becoming frustrated and anxious.Ether futures are at the edge of turning bearishQuarterly futures are usually the preferred instruments of whales and arbitrage desks due to their settlement date and the price difference from spot markets. However, the contract’s biggest advantage is the lack of a fluctuating funding rate.These fixed-month contracts usually trade at a slight premium to spot markets, indicating that sellers request more money to withhold settlement longer. Therefore, futures should trade at a 5% to 15% annualized premium in healthy markets. This situation is technically defined as “contango” and is not exclusive to crypto markets.Ether futures 3-month annualized premium. Source: LaevitasAs displayed above, Ether’s futures contracts premium has come down from 20% on Oct. 21 to a meager 5.5%, just slightly above the neutral market threshold. Although the basis indicator remains positive, it reached the lowest level in 6 months.The crash below $3,000 on Jan. 10 was enough to drain any bullish sentiment and more importantly, the Ethereum network’s high fees and delayed upgrades might have scared away some investors. Currently, data shows little sign that bears are ready to take the helm. If this was the case, the Ether futures premium would have turned negative.The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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Vitalik Buterin gives thumbs down to cross-chain applications

In a Reddit post on Friday, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), outlined critical security concerns surrounding cross-chain bridges in the blockchain ecosystem. As told by Buterin, storing native assets directly-chain (Ethereum on Ethereum, Solana on Solana, etc.) provides a certain degree of immunity against 51% attacks. Even if hackers manage to censor or reverse transactions, they cannot propose blocks to take away one’s crypto.The rule also applies to the Ethereum application. For example, if hackers launch a 51% attack (by controlling 51% of all circulating ETH supply) while an investor swaps 100 ETH for 320,000 DAI stablecoin, the end state remains invariant, i.e., the investor would always get either 100 ETH or 320,000 DAI.However, Buterin continued, that the same level of security does not apply to cross-chain bridges. In the example he raised, if an attacker deposited their own ETH onto a Solana (SOL) bridge to obtain Solana-wrapped Ether (WETH) and then reverted that transaction on the Ethereum side as soon as the Solana side confirmed it, it would incur devastating losses on other users whose tokens are locked in the SOL-WETH contract, as the wrapped tokens are no longer backed by the original on a 1:1 ratio.Buterin further outlined how the security exploit could scale negatively as more bridges are added into a cross-chain network. In a theoretical network comprising 100 chains, the high level of interdepency and overlapping derivatives would mean that a 51% attack on one chain, especially a small-cap one, can cause a system-wide contagion. According to Crypto 51, it costs as much as $1.78 million an hour for hackers to mount a 51% attack vector against the Ethereum network. However, the cost drops to as little as $13,846 per hour for blockchains such as Bitcoin Cash.My argument for why the future will be *multi-chain*, but it will not be *cross-chain*: there are fundamental limits to the security of bridges that hop across multiple “zones of sovereignty”. From https://t.co/3g1GUvuA3A: pic.twitter.com/tEYz8vb59b— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 7, 2022Related: Vitalik proposes new ‘multidimensional’ Ethereum fee structure

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