ETH Weekly Report | Goerli test network has completed the merger; Ethereum is expected to merge on September 15 (8.8-8.14)

Author | Qin Xiaofeng

Editor | Hao Fangzhou

Produced | Odaily

1. Overall overview

Author | Qin Xiaofeng

Editor | Hao Fangzhou

Produced | Odaily1. Overall overview

From the current perspectives of all parties, most of the supporters of the fork are Ethereum miners, mining pools (f2pool), and even the shadow of the activities of mining machine manufacturers; while exchanges are basically neutral, OKX, Binance, Bitwell and other platforms are all Said that if a new fork coin is generated, it will be listed after the evaluation if it meets the conditions; capital (DCG), top DeFi projects (AAVE, Chainlink), wallet applications (Argent, DeBank) and stable coins (USDC, USDT) etc. clearly stated that it only supports the Ethereum POS chain, and does not support forked projects such as Ethereum PoW. For details, please click to read

Second, the secondary market

1. Spot market

Second, the secondary market

(ETH daily chart, picture from OKX)

1. Spot market

image description

OKlink data2. Large transaction

3. Rich list address

OKlink data3. Rich list address

3. Ecology and technology

1. Technological progress

OKlink data

It shows that the current pledge rate of ETH in the entire network is 11.14%, an increase of 91,695 ETH compared with last week; from the perspective of the distribution of holding addresses, exchanges accounted for 9.92%, which remained basically unchanged; DeFi projects accounted for 17.03%, a decrease of 0.28% month-on-month; Large addresses (the top 1,000 addresses and excluding exchanges and DeFi projects) accounted for 39.65%, up 0.07% month-on-month; other addresses accounted for 33.43%, up 0.22% month-on-month.

3. Ecology and technology

1. Technological progress

(1) The Ethereum Goerli test network has been merged
On August 11, the Ethereum Goerli testnet was merged. Goerli is the last of the three public testnets for Ethereum, after which the mainnet merger is expected to happen sometime in late September. Then, Ethereum developer Marius VanDerWiiden tweeted that due to two different terminal blocks and a large number of unupdated nodes, there was some confusion on the network after the merger of the Ethereum Goerli testnet. The team is currently looking into what went wrong, but looks good for now.
(2) Ethereum Foundation: The estimated date of mainnet merger may have an error of up to one week, and the final adjustment will be made next week

- August 18: EL and CL teams cut the mainnet software version;

2. Voice of the Community

- August 23: Client resources, EF blog, and other community and infrastructure final parameters and release announcements;

- September 6th: Bellatrix mainnet upgrade.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted that the total terminal difficulty has been set to 58750000000000000000000. This means that the Ethereum PoW network now has a (roughly) fixed amount of hashrate to mine. bordel.wtf predicts that the merger will happen around September 15th, the exact date depends on the hash value; after the Ethereum PoS merger (The Merge), through rollups, the gas fee may be reduced to between $0.002 and $0.05.

(1) Vitalik: The merger can make encrypted payments mainstream again

3. Project trends

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said on Monday that once we have the technology to scale, it will actually be possible to really try to make cryptocurrency payments mainstream again. "Cryptocurrency payments have become a bit less popular after 2018, and transaction fees are obviously one of the reasons for that," he said. Buterin believes that in the future, transaction costs may drop to $0.05, or even as low as 0.2 cents. Ethereum developers expect that after the merger, they will shift their focus to scaling the network. (Forkast)

(2) V God: The potential Ethereum PoW fork is unlikely to gain long-term widespread adoption

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin (V God) said that the potential Ethereum PoW fork is unlikely to gain long-term widespread adoption. Buterin said he didn't see the organic side of the plan, claiming it was just "a couple of outsiders who basically owned the exchange, mainly trying to make a quick buck." V God said: "I don't think this (Ethereum PoW fork) will be adopted in a large number and for a long time." But he admitted that "in the meantime, there may be some problems in some markets", adding, "I hope No matter what happens, it’s not going to cause people to lose money.” This may refer to the exchange’s launch of IOU products, which allow traders to bet on the value of forked tokens. There are currently three exchanges offering such products. In addition, Vitalik also talked about ETC, saying that it provides "excellent community and excellent product" for those who support the value and preference of PoW. (The Block)

3. Project trends

(1) The cumulative turnover of Element 2.0 in the past four months exceeded 20,000 Ethereum

According to data from Dune Analytics, since April 15, the multi-chain transaction volume of Element2.0 has reached 30 million US dollars, worth about 20,000 Ethereum, and a total of 10,826 unique user addresses have completed 76,671 transactions. Among them, the total transaction volume of Ethereum reached 17.7 million US dollars, and the total transaction volume of BNB Chain reached 9.96 million US dollars.

(2) Founder of StarkWare: Recursive validity proof can roll up up to 60 million transactions on Ethereum

StarkWare founder Eli Ben-Sasson said its new recursive proof of validity could theoretically roll up up to 60 million transactions on the ethereum blockchain. Earlier in a speech he announced the start of production of StarkWare's new recursive validity proof technology. Recursive validity proofs can further scale transaction throughput by at least 10x compared to standard Validium scaling, noting that they have already rolled up 600,000 NFT mints on the ImmutableX protocol.

"We can at least get to 6 million, and that's in the short term. It's an easy thing to do," Ben-Sasson said, adding that with more engineering and tweaking, that number could go up to 60 million, and said: “I think it is also very possible to reduce latency by another 5 to 10 times.” (Cointelegraph)

(3) U.S. OFAC included Tornado Cash and several Ethereum and USDC addresses on the sanctions list

According to official sources, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed Tornado Cash on the Sanctions List (SDN), including its website and multiple Ethereum and USDC wallet addresses. All U.S. individuals and entities are prohibited from interacting with Tornado Cash or any Ethereum wallet address tied to the protocol. Information disclosed on the official website of the U.S. Department of the Treasury shows that since its establishment in 2019, Tornado Cash has been used in virtual currency money laundering activities worth more than $7 billion. “Treasury will continue to take aggressive action against mixers who assist criminals in laundering virtual currencies,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury Brian E. Nelson.

Data from Dune Analytics shows that nearly 3.5 million ETHs have been deposited on the Ethereum mixing platform Tornado Cash, up to 3,489,693 so far, and the total transaction fee income has exceeded 18 million US dollars (18,104,516 US dollars). In addition, the current number of independent deposit users of Tornado Cash is 12,243, and the number of independent withdrawal users is 58,660.

(5) Ethereum researcher Anton Wahrstätter proposes a new proposal for ERC-721 extensions

Inspired by Vitalik Buterin's non-transferable Soulbound token idea, ethereum researcher Anton Wahrstätter has come up with a new proposal for an ERC-721 extension that would implement "stealth" addresses to obscure public blockchain transactions involving NFTs. To implement stealth addresses for ERC-721 tokens (Ethereum’s current standard for NFT tokens), Wahrstätter proposes using a privacy-focused encryption technique called zk-SNARKs. (Decrypt)

DeFiLlama 4. Borrowing

5. Mining

(data from etherchain.org)

etherchain.org5. Mining

4. News

image description

(data from etherchain.org)

The data shows that last week, the average computing power increased by 1.1% month-on-month, temporarily reported at 942TH/s; the average mining difficulty increased by 2.9% month-on-month, temporarily reported at 12174T; the activity on the chain decreased by 18% month-on-month, and the total mining revenue decreased by 1% month-on-month; As of August 8, Ethereum gas fees hit their lowest level since 2020 for 38 consecutive days, and on-chain transaction fees fell below $5.4. News

(1) Numerous institutions express their views on the fork of Ethereum

In the past week, the discussion on the hard fork of Ethereum to retain the POW mining mechanism has aroused strong concern in the entire community. Various forces have expressed their views on this topic one after another:

From the current perspectives of all parties, most of the supporters of the fork are Ethereum miners, mining pools (f2pool), and even the shadow of the activities of mining machine manufacturers; while exchanges are basically neutral, OKX, Binance, Bitwell and other platforms are all Said that if a new fork coin is generated, it will be listed after the evaluation if it meets the conditions; capital (DCG), top DeFi projects (AAVE, Chainlink), wallet applications (Argent, DeBank) and stable coins (USDC, USDT) etc. clearly stated that it only supports the Ethereum POS chain, and does not support forked projects such as Ethereum PoW. For details, please click to read

"Ethereum merger is imminent, fork interest parties gather, what should ordinary users do? "

(2) JPMorgan Chase: The cryptocurrency market has reached the bottom of the cycle

The cryptocurrency market appears to have reached a cycle bottom after bitcoin fell 75% from its peak, JPMorgan said in a report. The analyst said that what we think is really driving the recent strength in the cryptocurrency market is the Ethereum merger and the positive data following the launch of the Sapolia testnet in early July and the Ropsten testnet in June, suggesting that it is feasible for the merger to happen in 2022. A successful ethereum merger later this year should help boost sentiment in the crypto market. Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said in an interview that considering the upcoming merger, the upper limit of the price range of Ethereum may reach $ 2,200 or higher. (Business Insider)

(3) V God: Used Tornado Cash to donate to Ukraine, aiming to protect the recipient

Vitalik Buterin publicly admitted to using Tornado Cash to donate to Ukraine. Vitalik Buterin clarified that he uses Tornado Cash to protect the recipient of the funds, not himself. Buterin took part in a Twitter discussion outlining legitimate Tornado Cash use cases and the benefits of financial privacy, including making donations to Ukraine without notifying the Russian government, which Buterin said he has used to make private donations to Ukraine. (Cryptobriefing)

(4) Data: Ethereum has risen by 80% within a month, or will continue to rise

According to data provided by Santiment, the price of Ethereum has surged by about 80% in the past month, and other altcoins have also performed well since June. Its analyst team says there is a good chance this growth will continue. Earlier on Saturday, ethereum revisited the $2,000 price mark, last seen in June. According to Glassnode data, the proportion of Ethereum profit addresses (7-day MA) reached 60.046%, which is a one-month high. (U. Today)
(5) The activity on the Ethereum chain has reached a new low in the past five years