The Protocol: Bitcoin Halving Spectacular, With Runes, ‘Epic Sat,’ Stacks Nakamoto

Last week, people all over the world were filled with anticipation as they prepared to witness the solar eclipse. Similarly, the Bitcoin community is currently buzzing with excitement as we approach the quadrennial halving event. Based on current projections, this significant occurrence could take place within the next few days, potentially even on the humorous date of April 20th. According to the Bitcoin halving timer on NiceHash’s website, this is when we can expect the halving to happen.

In contrast, the current Bitcoin halving event stands out distinctly from the one that occurred in May 2020 during the initial Covid lockdowns when people were forced to stay at home and explore new technologies such as Zoom for social interactions. This time, real-life celebrations for the halving are being organized in cities like Denver and Costa Rica.

An alternate perspective to ponder: The unique flavor of recent events includes the surge of project launches and profitable on-chain competitions coinciding with the halving period. This phenomenon might be seen as an indication of the “building on Bitcoin” trend, ignited by last year’s debut of the Ordinals protocol and Robin Linus’s BitVM reveal. The upcoming halving may bring a dose of oddity, silliness, or merely technical complexity. Peruse our preview articles for more insights in Network News. Enjoy the halving!

Also this week:

Solana’s patch, Vitalik’s privacy plea, rare “Satoshi-era” bitcoin.
Crypto VC firms are obsessing over DePIN, our Lyllah Ledesma writes.
Top picks from the past week’s Protocol Village column: AO Ventures, Kraken, Suku, Internet Computer Protocol, Layer N.
$135M of blockchain project fundraisings: Nebra, Berachain, Puffer, Crypto Valley Exchange, Mayan Finance.

The Protocol: Bitcoin Halving Spectacular, With Runes, 'Epic Sat,' Stacks Nakamoto

Network news

HALVING, A BALL: Please see below our previews of the various launches and competitions timed to coincide with the Bitcoin halving. Barely any of this stuff existed four years ago, when the last halving took place. There’s also some market predictions:

Runes, Casey Rodarmor’s Protocol for ‘Sh!tcoins’ on Bitcoin, Set to Go Live at Halving
Bitcoin Halving Has Crypto Miners Racing for ‘Epic Sat’ Potentially Worth Millions
OG Bitcoin L2 Stacks Is Getting a Major Overhaul
What Bitcoiners Are Saying About the Upcoming Bitcoin Halving=
Goldman Cautions Against Extrapolating Previous Bitcoin Halving Cycles for Price Predictions
Bitcoin’s Outperformance Means Some of Expected Post-Halving Rally May Have Come Early: JPMorgan
Buy Bitcoin Miners Ahead of the Halving, Bernstein Says

You can find all of CoinDesk’s articles about the Bitcoin halving on this dedicated page. (Or, Check out this page for a collection of CoinDesk’s Bitcoin halving articles.)

SOL PATCH: Solana developers released an upgrade to their blockchain platform in response to the heavy network traffic issues that have persisted for several months.

PECTRA is short for PRAGUE-ELECTRA. Ethereum developers, following the successful implementation of the recent Berlin upgrade, are now focusing on the next major update called “Pectra.” This name is a blend of “Prague,” the capital city of Czech Republic, and “Electra,” a star, reflecting Ethereum’s naming pattern. According to recent announcements from the team, Pectra is expected to incorporate Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 3074, which proposes significant code modifications aimed at enhancing the user experience (UX) of Ethereum wallets. (Reported by Margaux Nijkerk.)

BITCOIN MINED IN ‘SATOSHI ERA’ MOVED AFTER 14 YEARS: A cryptocurrency miner from the early days transferred 50 bitcoins (BTC) recently, marking one of the infrequent occurrences where coins mined during the “Satoshi era” have been moved. With a current value exceeding $3 million, these holdings were split between two wallets and subsequently sent to Coinbase (COIN), according to data from Lookonchain.

Mind your own business.)

The reported salary range for a senior crypto engineer at U.S. firms averages between $187,000 and $236,000, while international companies offer an average of $137,000 to $186,000 based on recent data from Dragonfly’s compensation study.

L2s LAYER ON: High-profile crypto projects keep launching their own layer-2 chains.

Crypto Exchange OKX’s Polygon-Powered Layer 2, ‘X Layer,’ Hits Public Mainnet
Worldcoin, Sam Altman’s Crypto Project, Is Building a Layer-2 Chain

Chart shows an acceleration in the number of layer-2 chains launched each quarter, from the just-released “On-Chain Report Q1 2024” by QuickNode and Artemis, citing data from L2Beat (L2Beat/QuickNode/Artemis)

Protocol Village

Top picks of the past week from our Protocol Village column, highlighting key blockchain tech upgrades and news.

Community Labs CEO Tate Berenbaum (Community Labs)

Tate Berenbaum, the teenager who is said to have amassed $30 million for crypto company Community Labs, has announced the establishment of AO Ventures. This new initiative is an incubator program lasting ten weeks, designed to nurture progress within Arweave and AO. According to Berenbaum’s announcement: “Over thirty-five million dollars have already been pledged towards the investment fund. The program is set to begin in April and will conclude with a Demo Day in June.”

FIRST ON COINDESK: Kraken, the second-biggest U.S.-based crypto exchange, has developed its own wallet, catching up to its rival Coinbase in the product arena and joining a saturated field that also includes major players like MetaMask, Ledger and Trezor. The new self-custodial “Kraken Wallet” is being releasing Wednesday and will be available to both Kraken users and non-users, CoinDesk is first to report. The wallet will initially support eight blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Optimism, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon and Dogecoin.

In partnership with Alchemy and Privy, Suku, which offers Web3 solutions, has introduced SukuPay. This is described as a “straightforward, no-cost, and completely non-custodial method for global money transfers,” allowing users to send and receive funds easily using only a phone number. Account abstraction is utilized in SukuPay, eliminating the need for wallet creation or seed phrase memorization while maintaining a non-custodial experience. There are no fees involved, and it runs on the fast Polygon Proof of Stake network, utilizing the USDC stablecoin.

The creators of Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) announced that integrating threshold-Schnorr will enable users to inscribe Runes, transact BRC-20 tokens, and unlock the complete capability of Bitcoin-driven DeFi and Web3. ICP is poised to serve as the foundation layer for Bitcoin.

In simpler terms, Layer N, which is a layer-2 network on Ethereum, recently launched its testnet. This comes after securing $5 million in funding from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The objective of Layer N is to create a network consisting of rollups, all connected by a common communication and liquidity layer. By enhancing the execution layer for various applications, Layer N aspires to deliver optimal performance while ensuring user-friendly experiences remains a priority.

Feature

‘DePIN’ Is Venture Capitalists’ Latest Crypto Obsession. Can It Match the Hype?

A significant portion of the cryptocurrency world exists in the abstract, be it metaphorically or actually: data traversing blockchains, fluctuating prices depicted on graphs, and various other immaterial aspects.

An exciting new development that is generating significant interest among venture capitalists is the ability to operate infrastructure using blockchain technology. Initiatives such as the Helium project, which creates a wireless network through a token-based system, and Filecoin’s decentralized data storage solution, are prime examples of this trend.

A less common label for this concept is “decentralized physical infrastructure networks,” often abbreviated as DePIN. There’s been significant investment in this area, hinting at its potential. As per a report from Crypto.com, the leading DePIN projects have collectively secured over $1 billion in funding.

Click here for the full story by Lyllah Ledesma

Money Center

Fundraisings

Schematic of Nebra’s “universal proof aggregation” protocol (Nebra)

Nebra, an organization focusing on enhancing privacy and capacity in blockchain technology via zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), announced the completion of a $4.5 million financing round. This round was spearheaded by Nascent and Bankless Ventures, with contributions from prominent angel investors including Tim Beiko from Ethereum Foundation, Kartik Talwar from ETHGlobal, Nick White from Celestia, Sandy Peng, and Haichen Shen from Scroll.

The Berachain blockchain platform successfully completed an oversubscribed Series B funding round, raising a total of $100 million. Framework Ventures, an early venture capital firm in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) sector, and the Abu Dhabi branch of Brevan Howard Digital took the lead in this investment round.

The liquid staking project named Puffer has secured $18 million in its Series A financing, with Brevan Howard Digital and Electric Capital spearheading the investment.

In a seed funding round, 6MV and Borderless took the lead, investing a total of $3 million in Mayan Finance – an innovative cross-chain swap auction platform based on Solana.

CVEX, the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform based in Crypto Valley, has successfully secured $7 million through its pre-seed and seed funding rounds. This financial influx will support the development of crypto futures and options trading services offered by the protocol.

In a seed funding round, 6MV and Borderless took the lead, contributing a total of $3 million to Mayan Finance, a cross-chain auction protocol based on Solana.

Data and Tokens

The SEC’s Suit Against Uniswap Is an Opening Attack Against DeFi

Avail, Blockchain Data Availability Project, Sketches Out Eligibility for Token Airdrop

Chaos at MarginFi Shakes up Solana DeFi’s Borrow-and-Lend Landscape

Ethena Labs Divides Opinion as High Yield Stirs Memories of Terra

Gold-Backed PAXG Token Spikes to $2.9K Amid Geopolitical Tensions

Sticky Liquidity in DOGE and SHIB Suggests Meme Tokens Have Staying Power

Ether.Fi Inks $500M Restaking Deal With RedStone Oracles

Pepe Coin Spikes on Coinbase International Plan to List Perpetual Futures

Willem Schroé: Building Botanix, a Bitcoin Layer 2 That Brings the EVM to Bitcoin

Calendar

April 18-19: Token2049, Dubai.

April 20 (estimate): Next Bitcoin halving.

May 9-10: Bitcoin Asia, Hong Kong.

May 29-31: Consensus, Austin Texas.

May 29-31: Bitcoin Seoul.

June 11-13: Apex, the XRP Ledger Developer Summit, Amsterdam.

July 8-11: EthCC, Brussels.

July 25-27: Bitcoin 2024, Nashville.

Aug. 19-21: Web3 Summit, Berlin.

Sept. 19-21: Solana Breakpoint, Singapore.

Sept. 1-7: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul.

Sept. 30-Oct. 2: Messari Mainnet, New York.

Oct. 9-11: Permissionless, Salt Lake City.

Oct. 21-22: Cosmoverse, Dubai.

Oct. 23-24: Cardano Summit, Dubai.

Oct. 30-31: Chainlink SmartCon, Hong Kong

Nov 12-14: Devcon 7, Bangkok.

Nov. 20-21: North American Blockchain Summit, Dallas.

Feb. 19-20, 2025: ConsensusHK, Hong Kong

2024-04-17 22:04