Few traders would argue against the fact that Bitcoin (BTC) is in a bull market, but there is less consensus on whether the market is in the midst of an "altcoin season." A quick view of Crypto Twitter shows the schism between traders who are certain we are halfway through alt season and those who believe it has yet to begin. Typically, traders rely on a wide swath of indicators and metrics, like Bitcoin’s total market capitalization versus the total altcoin market cap, Bitcoin’s dominance rate, and whether low-cap altcoins have rallied by a certain percentage. As is the nature …

On the latest episode of Blockchain and Booze, Draper Gorem Holm’s Adam Levy sits down with three leaders in the blockchain industry to talk about layer-two solutions on the Ethereum network. Levy is joined by Stani Kulechov of Aave, Jack O’Holleran of Skale and Antonio Juliano of dYdX. What began as a discussion on high fees quickly transitioned into a greater commentary on the potential power of decentralized finance. The Ethereum conundrum For those not familiar with the Ethereum situation, it’s becoming prohibitively expensive to send transitions on-chain. At the time of publication, the average cost of sending an Ethereum …

A new cross-chain automated protocol based on Ethereum and Polkadot says it is using two parachains in its quest to deliver interoperability and layer-two scaling. KwikSwap enables users to swap tokens, create new markets and participate in yield farming by providing liquidity and engaging in staking. The project’s objective is to provide developers, liquidity providers and traders with an opportunity to participate in a decentralized financial marketplace that is open and accessible to all. At present, KwikSwap’s focus is on developing and integrating its testnet on Plasm and Acala Network — with both layer-two scaling solutions described as “best in …

Just a day after two decentralized finance powerhouses announced layer-two integrations via the Polygon sidechain, a major nonfungible token and gaming title has today followed suit. In a blog post this morning, NFT-powered virtual world and video game Decentraland announced a token bridge enabling users to move native MANA tokens to Polygon and back. At the time of publication, MANA is the 80th ranked token by marketcap and has risen 3750% on the year to $1.01, per Coingecko. This is just the first step in what will be a significantly larger migration, as the project intends to enable all Decentraland …

As Ethereum gas fees soar and the demand for scalability reaches fever pitch, layer-two scaling solution StarkWare has announced on Wednesday a $75 million Series B funding round led by Paradigm, Three Arrows, Alameda Research, Pantera Capital and Sequoia, among others. The team announced the raise in a tweet: Announcing our $75M Series B, led by @paradigm, with new investors (Three Arrows & @AlamedaResearch), and old ones too (@PanteraCapital, @sequoia, @foundersfund, @DCVC, @Wing_VC). — StarkWare (@StarkWareLtd) March 24, 2021 StarkWare, which previously raised $30 million in 2018, offers zero-knowledge rollup technology allowing for off-chain computation and beefed up transactional throughput, …

Though Ether’s (ETH) value has continued to showcase increasing signs of stability around the $1,800 range over the past fortnight or so, users of the premier altcoin’s network have been faced with rising gas fees as well as increasing network congestion issues. To put things into perspective, since summer last year, a time when the DeFi boom was starting to peak, Ethereum’s network fees have more than doubled. While this fee increase quite directly relates to ETH’s increasing value, there is no denying that it also clearly shows growing demand for ERC-20 tokens, stablecoins, as well as various decentralized finance-based …

At the end of 2019, research firm Forrester and Big Four firm Ernst & Young, or EY, published a report surveying the adoption of public blockchains by enterprises. Findings revealed that 75% of respondents were likely to use a public blockchain in the future. Although this was the case, the report also found that most enterprises were still using private blockchains to ensure security, privacy and scalability. What was also noted in the survey as the top three concerns regarding public blockchain networks were a lack of maturity, security and privacy issues. Fast forward to 2021 — these concerns remain. …

In previous bull markets, one of the most consistent price movers for cryptocurrency projects was being listed on Coinbase, a phenomenon that became known as the 'Coinbase effect’. The recent announcement that Polygon (MATIC), SKALE (SKL) and SushiSwap (SUSHI) would be added to the exchange and begin trading on March 11 has proven that the Coinbase effect remains potent as the tokens witnessed record trading volume and double-digit price movements since the listing took place. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that SKL has been the biggest beneficiary of the Coinbase effect, increasing more than 200% since the announcement …

The Dai stablecoin produced by decentralized lending protocol MakerDAO is getting some speed and fee enhancements with its forthcoming upgrade on layer-two. Ethereum scaling solutions provider Optimism will provide the technology as announced on the MakerDAO forum on March 9. Co-founder and CTO of gaming firm Bellwood Studios Sam MacPherson explained the "MakerDAO community will be launching an ‘official’ DAI on Optimism L2" and that the Optimism Dai Bridge would offer improvements on other implementations. He stated that currently, Optimism requires a seven day lockup period when withdrawing tokens back to layer-one (Ethereum) as the rollups rely on publishing the …

Polygon-based DEX QuickSwap has attracted more than $105 million in worth of liquidity since the start of 2021. The Uniswap clone began the year with only $300,000 worth of assets locked in its protocol, with more than three quarters of the exchange’s total value locked being added in the past fortnight. QuickSwap is currently the leading second-layer decentralized exchange by daily volume with $38.5 million worth of trades over the past 24 hours. The second-largest L2 DEX by volume is Loopring with $8.4 million, followed by ZKSwap with $2.5 million. L2 DEX trading volume in the last 24hrs: 1 @QuickswapDEX …

In an ongoing effort to battle escalating transaction fees while creating a unified ecosystem, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a solution for a particular type of cross-rollup scaling. The proposal outlines how two protocols using rollups can communicate with each other while maintaining interconnectivity and composability. Rollups are layer-two solutions that are essentially smart contract networks that process and store transaction data off the main chain. However, there are a number of different rollup types, with each using unique smart contracts such as optimistic and zero-knowledge. While a number of DeFi projects have deployed layer-two rollups, such as Loopring …

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have rapidly become the new hot topic in the cryptocurrency sector, as evidenced by Litecoin (LTC) creator Charlie Lee comparing the current spike in NFT interest to the ICO mania of 2017. The recent pullback in the cryptocurrency market hit decentralized finance tokens (DeFi) pretty hard, but as Bitcoin's (BTC) price recovered the $50,000, DeFi and NFT tokens bounced back rapidly. One project that has successfully capitalized on the DeFi and NFT boom is Aavegotchi. The project benefits from its association with Aave, while also focusing on the creation of value-infused NFTs that are limited in minting. …