Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance (DeFi) newsletter.
Ether (ETH) is burning at a rapid rate. Read on to discover the statistics behind Ethereum’s pursuit of deflationary mechanics.
What you’re about to read is a shorter, more succinct version of the newsletter. For a comprehensive summary of DeFi’s developments over the last week, subscribe below.
$4.24 billion in ETH burned since EIP-1559 event
Blockchain analytics platform CryptoRank shared quantitative data this week that revealed an excess of 1 million Ether, worth approximately $4.24 billion, has been burned since August’s implementation of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559.
Also referred to as the London hard fork, the event marked a significant evolution of Ethereum’s fee structure so that each transaction burns a portion of the base fee. A simple case study of this process is the record of block 13,689,874, which cost the user 98 Gwei in gas fees and burned 0.68 ETH.
@Ethereum transaction fee-burning mechanism has removed 1M #ETH from the network’s circulation since it came into effect.
https://t.co/oLDJyg9PyC pic.twitter.com/FwkmI8lL6x
— CryptoRank Platform (@CryptoRank_io) November 24, 2021
As visible in the above graphic, the world’s most popular nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace, OpenSea, has been the largest contributor to burned ETH with $467 million. This figure is closely followed by Ethereum transfers and Uniswap v2, each of which has recorded $414 million and $393 million, respectively.
Despite the seismic exodus of token supply over the past few months, Ethereum still remains an inflationary asset, according to data from UltraSound. The platform reveals that, on an all-time perspective, 3.3 million ETH is burned every year compared to 5.4 million ETH being issued, a balance that is resulting in a supply growth of 1.8% per annum.
However, by tightening the parameters to a 30-day period, the data informs that ETH burning totals 4.7 million per year while supply growth is significantly reduced at 0.6%. These are insights that both portray signs of progress toward deflation in the coming years.
Square release decentralized Bitcoin exchange white paper
The CEO of Twitter and payments service Square, Jack Dorsey, publicized Square’s highly anticipated white paper this week, an initiative that proposes to create a decentralized Bitcoin exchange titled tbDEX.
Despite advocating as a decentralized model, the platform will in fact differ from traditional decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in so much that users will be required to input Know Your Customer (KYC) information. Once the user has submitted this personal data, only then will they be able to engage in typical Web 3.0 functionalities of connecting wallets and trading digital assets.
The white paper cites stringent regulatory requirements as one of the fundamental reasons for adopting a non-trustless infrastructure but has provided stern assurances that the protocol will not be governed or accessible by any centralized entity in addition to there being no consideration for a utility token.
Instead of a trustless model, there will be a so-called “messaging protocol” that employs software such as the public key infrastructure widely across the internet to foster network trust. In light of this, the tbDEX white paper is regarded as an inaugural iteration, with the team requesting public commentary and open discourse on its proposal.
“Our goal is censorship resistance, unpermissioned access, and the maximization of competition for liquidity — with the ultimate goal of commoditizing it around the world… nothing in principle precludes anonymous transactions for financial privacy on the tbDEX network.”
Grayscale envision the metaverse as a $1-trillion opportunity
Crypto investment giant Grayscale published a bullish report this week declaring the metaverse space to be one of the greatest opportunities for growth following a tenfold increase of active metaverse wallets from the beginning of 2020 to June 2021.
Furthermore, the researchers noted a multitude of factors that could instigate the sector’s growth, from an increase in leisure time among the younger generations and cultural shifts on how we interact with technology to the advancement of community-centric Web 3.0 play-to-earn (P2E) models.
Co-authored by the firm’s head of research, David Grider, alongside research analyst Matt Maximo, the report expresses technical optimism for the growth of metaverse worlds, concluding that the emerging market could expand to a valuation of $1 trillion over the coming years, and citing Decentraland on nine occasions to affirm this thesis.
“Compared to other Web 3.0 and Web 2.0 segments, Metaverse virtual world users are still in their early innings, but if current growth rates remain on their current trajectory, this emerging segment has the potential to become mainstream in the coming years.”
Token performances
Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total value locked (TVL) has decreased 3.2% across the week to a figure of $154.59 billion.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView reveals DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization suffered bearish declines across the last seven days.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) evaded the market bloodshed this week to record gains of 38.37%. Curve DAO Token (CRV) achieved a healthy 19.7%, while Ankr (ANKR)posted similar results with 16.67%.
Analysis and hot topics from the last week:
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us again next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.
