Luc Smits van Oyen
Weekly crypto news: Terra 2.0 successfully launched
What an interesting week it has been for cryptocurrencies! The past week (May 27, 2022 to June 3) was full of price fluctuations, good news and also bad news.
For example, the Solana network went offline for the umpteenth time this year, this time due to a bug. On the other hand, we received positive news about the development of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, among other things.
In terms of prices, it was the same volatile market that we have already seen in recent weeks. Bitcoin was at a low of €26,400 last Friday, reached a high of €30,000 on Tuesday, and is back at €28,000 at the time of writing. So all in all, it did see a slight increase in price over the past 7 days.
However, most eyes this week were on the launch of Terra 2.0, which took place last Saturday. After Terra's huge loss of face last month, the launch of Terra 2.0 was relatively successful, to say the least. You can read more about it and all the other important crypto news from the past week below!
Terra 2.0, a fork of the original Terra blockchain, is now officially live and LUNA (2.0) has been distributed to rights holders. The new Luna was dropped to existing owners of the old Luna coin (known as 'Terra Classic') and to owners of TerraUSD (known as 'TerraClassicUSD').
For the past month, Terra has been on the front pages of all crypto news after its stablecoin TerraUSD detached itself from the dollar. This ultimately led to huge losses for people who owned LUNA and UST. There was no hope left to revive the old blockchain, so the decision was made for a new blockchain without algorithmic stablecoin. This is to prevent the network from going down the same way again.
The new LUNA is already listed on all major crypto exchanges and now trades for €6.08. In comparison, Terra Classic (the old LUNA) is still trading for less than one thousandth of a cent. So in that respect, the launch of Terra 2.0 has certainly gone well, but there will be a long way to go before confidence in the network returns.
Although the price of bitcoin (BTC) has been in a downward trend for months now, we see the underlying network continuing to grow. This can also be seen in the strong growth of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, a so-called layer-2 scaling network for faster BTC transactions.
According to Lightning Network Statistics, the network's total capacity reached 3,907 BTC last weekend, a new all-time high (ATH).
The LN grew by nearly 6% over the past 30 days. In fact, it is a growth of a whopping 180% from a year ago, when the total Lightning Network capacity stood at around 1,388 BTC.
Lightning Labs launched the peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol in 2018 to address the well-known problem regarding the Bitcoin network's low transaction speed. Lightning Network's adoption was slow at first, but has accelerated over the past year.
Ethereum's (ETH) move to proof-of-stake (PoS) is getting closer. The project's developers are busy testing and "the first dress rehearsal" will take place soon. This is what Ethereum developer Tim Beiko announced recently.
Developers who develop blockchains work with testnets. These are networks that have the characteristics of mainnets in which things can be tested, a test environment in other words. Ropsten is one of Ethereum's testnets and is the "longest-lived proof-of-work testnet," according to Beiko.
That Ropsten will go through this transition is an important step. Previously, testnet Kiln successfully transitioned to PoS. Beiko calls Ropsten's transition "the first dress rehearsal" because after this there will only be two test nets before the main network will realize the Merge.
The Merge is a step in the update process of Ethereum. It is the moment when the network makes the transition to PoS with which Ethereum miners will officially be a thing of the past. Exactly when the Merge will take place on the main network is not known. However, August was mentioned as the earliest month in which it could happen.
Solana experiences second outage in a month
Validators in the network did not process new blocks for several hours. Applications built on Solana's blockchain were taken offline as a result.
In recent years, Solana has gained traction in the NFT and DeFi ecosystems because it is cheaper and faster to use than Ethereum. Its blockchain processes 50,000 transactions per second, and its average cost per transaction is $0.00025, according to its website. Ethereum can only handle roughly 13 transactions per second, and its transaction fees are significantly more expensive than on Solana.
But the last year and a half has shown that there is a trade-off for the faster and cheaper transactions, as the Solana blockchain has failed several times.
This was the main crypto news summary of this week! Earlier this week we also wrote about the auction of the Eurovision Song Contest trophy to a crypto group. Do you want to know more about this? Then read the article 'Eurovision winner auctions off trophy to crypto group to support Ukraine'.
For example, the Solana network went offline for the umpteenth time this year, this time due to a bug. On the other hand, we received positive news about the development of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, among other things.
In terms of prices, it was the same volatile market that we have already seen in recent weeks. Bitcoin was at a low of €26,400 last Friday, reached a high of €30,000 on Tuesday, and is back at €28,000 at the time of writing. So all in all, it did see a slight increase in price over the past 7 days.
However, most eyes this week were on the launch of Terra 2.0, which took place last Saturday. After Terra's huge loss of face last month, the launch of Terra 2.0 was relatively successful, to say the least. You can read more about it and all the other important crypto news from the past week below!
Terra 2.0 launches with LUNA airdrop
Terra 2.0, a fork of the original Terra blockchain, is now officially live and LUNA (2.0) has been distributed to rights holders. The new Luna was dropped to existing owners of the old Luna coin (known as 'Terra Classic') and to owners of TerraUSD (known as 'TerraClassicUSD').
For the past month, Terra has been on the front pages of all crypto news after its stablecoin TerraUSD detached itself from the dollar. This ultimately led to huge losses for people who owned LUNA and UST. There was no hope left to revive the old blockchain, so the decision was made for a new blockchain without algorithmic stablecoin. This is to prevent the network from going down the same way again.
The new LUNA is already listed on all major crypto exchanges and now trades for €6.08. In comparison, Terra Classic (the old LUNA) is still trading for less than one thousandth of a cent. So in that respect, the launch of Terra 2.0 has certainly gone well, but there will be a long way to go before confidence in the network returns.
Bitcoin Lightning Network capacity continues to grow
Although the price of bitcoin (BTC) has been in a downward trend for months now, we see the underlying network continuing to grow. This can also be seen in the strong growth of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, a so-called layer-2 scaling network for faster BTC transactions.
According to Lightning Network Statistics, the network's total capacity reached 3,907 BTC last weekend, a new all-time high (ATH).
The LN grew by nearly 6% over the past 30 days. In fact, it is a growth of a whopping 180% from a year ago, when the total Lightning Network capacity stood at around 1,388 BTC.
Lightning Labs launched the peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol in 2018 to address the well-known problem regarding the Bitcoin network's low transaction speed. Lightning Network's adoption was slow at first, but has accelerated over the past year.
Ethereum Ropsten Merge on the horizon.
Ethereum's (ETH) move to proof-of-stake (PoS) is getting closer. The project's developers are busy testing and "the first dress rehearsal" will take place soon. This is what Ethereum developer Tim Beiko announced recently.
Developers who develop blockchains work with testnets. These are networks that have the characteristics of mainnets in which things can be tested, a test environment in other words. Ropsten is one of Ethereum's testnets and is the "longest-lived proof-of-work testnet," according to Beiko.
That Ropsten will go through this transition is an important step. Previously, testnet Kiln successfully transitioned to PoS. Beiko calls Ropsten's transition "the first dress rehearsal" because after this there will only be two test nets before the main network will realize the Merge.
The Merge is a step in the update process of Ethereum. It is the moment when the network makes the transition to PoS with which Ethereum miners will officially be a thing of the past. Exactly when the Merge will take place on the main network is not known. However, August was mentioned as the earliest month in which it could happen.
Solana experiences second outage in a month
Solana fell more than 12% on Wednesday as the blockchain experienced its second outage in a month.
Validators in the network did not process new blocks for several hours. Applications built on Solana's blockchain were taken offline as a result.
In recent years, Solana has gained traction in the NFT and DeFi ecosystems because it is cheaper and faster to use than Ethereum. Its blockchain processes 50,000 transactions per second, and its average cost per transaction is $0.00025, according to its website. Ethereum can only handle roughly 13 transactions per second, and its transaction fees are significantly more expensive than on Solana.
But the last year and a half has shown that there is a trade-off for the faster and cheaper transactions, as the Solana blockchain has failed several times.
This was the main crypto news summary of this week! Earlier this week we also wrote about the auction of the Eurovision Song Contest trophy to a crypto group. Do you want to know more about this? Then read the article 'Eurovision winner auctions off trophy to crypto group to support Ukraine'.