Gold Nugget #1
BlockGPT, Memes and Ethereum Hiccups
🔥 Hot + Trending
(#FunnyNotFunny) 🐸 Meme token trading leads to all-time-high of ETH burning: https://ultrasound.money
The community is torn apart: 1. trading tokens requires gas fees / 2. many trades lead to congestion and high fees / 3. high fees hurt the onboarding of new users / 4. each transaction burns ETH and reduces the supply / 5. demand for ETH increases / (go back to 1.)
Everybody knows hypes come and go in crypto and this one seems to be no different. We view the meme token trading as another scalability test for the Ethereum mainnet which furthermore underlines the need for Layer-2 solutions. But please no custom Layer-1 blockchain, we are beyond that phase.
(#SepaOnChain) 💰 Monerium connects on-chain stablecoin to SEPA payment and is gaining traction: https://twitter.com/SebVentures/status/1654385540903362563
Very interesting experiments to combine the existing payment system with blockchain technology. The concept is important for hybrid DApps in the future as regulatory concerns will be reduced.
Of course we tested the system and were excited to see a SEPA payment made in the morning, was already processed and resulted in an ERC-20 token “EURe” transfer in the afternoon. Wow! 🤯
(#FunnyExperiments) BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin and Ordinals are congesting the Bitcoin blockchain.. Devs think about stepping in: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-May/021620.html
BRC-20 tokens look like a proof-of-concept. They show what is possible on the Bitcoin blockchain but other blockchains are way more suitable for token use cases. Bitcoin should probably keep the focus on being a peer-to-peer digital currency.
(#CommunicationSkills) Lisk foundation converts 1000 BTC to ETH long-term:
https://twitter.com/maxkordek/status/1656629386689363970
Good to see that they announced this transparently and upfront.. Other projects got huge backlashes from the community as “suddenly” the admin wallet transferred huge amount of funds where everybody was suspecting a hack.
(#NothingToSeeHere) Ethereum Beacon Chain experienced a hiccup and delayed block finalization for about 30min (to clarify things: this is not a halt, downtime or fork) https://ethstaker.notion.site/Finality-issue-updates-May-2023-3cb4d74e67c04d1f9ed31659e48c314b
Sad to see misinformation spreading and framing the delay of block finalization as a halt of the Ethereum blockchain. Transactions were executed without downtime.
Furthermore this event showed the resilience of a distributed and decentralized system. Especially client diversity helped a lot to prevent bigger failures. Maintaining such a protocol is an impressive feat. Kudos to all the developers and people involved!
🔍 Analytics + Security
(#BeyondOrdinary) Attack on Ordinal Inscriptions on the Bitcoin Blockchain: https://twitter.com/dannydiekroeger/status/1654259984375615490
It also serves as an argument why ownership should be described in a structured way (e.g. using a token standard) instead of relying on fragile constructs such as the social agreement and common assumptions that Ordinals are based on.
(#BustingTheBubble) Bubble maps for investigating contracts and their holders: https://app.bubblemaps.io/eth/
Addictive as bubble wrap: Nice visualization of on-chain interactions!
Cryptotwitter recommended the bubble maps for spotting scam tokens where you can easily see suspicious trading activity.
OpenSea Pro also integrated it into their platform:
🎓 Research + Academia
(#BlockchAIn) Interpretation of raw on-chain data with semantic analysis: "Know Your Transactions: Real-time and Generic Transaction Semantic Representation on Blockchain & Web3 Ecosystem" https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3543507.3583537
Using machine learning to analyze the enormous amount of on-chain data just makes sense. Vector embeddings are used for transaction and account classification and other semantic interpretations.
There are various developments that motivate to look beyond raw blockchain data: The usage of multi-signature wallets, multisend calls or internal transactions require a more nuanced interpretation of the data at hand.
(#BlockchainDetective) BlockGPT: Using large language models to find suspicious transactions using machine learning: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.12749.pdf
BlockGPT is an anomaly detection tool for the Ethereum blockchain and looks like an interesting concept for creating real-time analysis systems.
We were wondering: What are “attacks” if the “code is law”? Sounds more like a bug that is exploited. Nonetheless, if the developer did not expect this to happen, the analysis could reveal code areas that should be reviewed.
💡 Concepts + Ideas
(#BeyondTheMultiSig) Create token infrastructure for on-chain teams: https://hedgey.finance/
We did not test the app ourselves yet, but it looks like an interesting approach to further create decentralized organizations.
Furthermore, it seems to be used by big blockchain projects such as Gitcoin, Gnosis, ShapeShift or BanklessDAO.