Hi readers, it has been a couple of tumultuous weeks in the blockchain space. The Stakin team has been working hard to keep up with every emergency update, adjusting and ensuring our nodes are up and running at all times, and participating in governance discussions to find the best solutions for all parties involved. That said, here are some of the highlights of the last two weeks:
- Stakin x Regen Network Twitter Spaces
- Juno Veritas Upgrade
- Solana Staking on Trust Wallet went live
- SKALEverse V2 Roll Out & Ruby Exchange Europe
- RAW Airdrop Is Now Claimable
- Cronos Chain Mainnet Upgrade
- Polkadex Has Secured a Parachain Slot on Polkadot
- Terra $LUNA & UST
- Kava Network's USDX has lost its parity with the US dollar
Stakin x Regen Network Twitter Spaces
Let’s kick off with some great news. Together with the Regen Network, the Stakin team hosted a Twitter Spaces discussing the ins and outs of the road towards a greener and more sustainable proof-of-stake ecosystem.
What do validators do? How do they participate in chain governance? What can be done to improve ecosystem resilience? Join us for a Twitter Space to discuss this and more with @JoshAFairhead @dave_fortson @cjremus https://t.co/onFpTXA6Df pic.twitter.com/fjzQw4fXHb
— Regen Foundation (@RegenFdn) May 2, 2022
Juno Veritas Upgrade
In other good news, on the 10th of May 2022 the Juno Network chain Veritas Upgrade was successfully completed. The upgrade fixes issues with governance-based IBC client updates, finalizes the Unity proposal fund transfer, and relocates the funds from a placeholder address to the Unity smart contract.
The voting round for Proposal 23 on Juno is currently underway. If you haven’t voted yet, we invite you to please have a look at Mintscan.
Solana Staking On Trust Wallet is Live
Furthermore, Solana fans can now stake their $SOL even easier as the well-known multi-asset wallet Trust Wallet has implemented staking for the chain. You can now stake your $SOL directly from the dashboard. If you wonder how to go about this, have a look at our latest article.
Stakin
SKALEverse V2 Roll Out & Ruby Exchange Europe
On the third of May, SKALE successfully transformed its ecosystem from a network of siloed L2 chains to a high performance modular L1 hybrid network of scalable interconnected blockchains. The network currently has 12 chains live and is in the process of launching 8 new chains over the next two weeks, bringing the grand total to 20 SKALE Chains.
To put this in context, more SKALE Chains will be operational in two weeks than all other major EVM Networks combined. This is especially useful in a world where EVM capacity is limited, as monolithic Layer 1 chains fill up and are forced to raise fees or suffer from serious performance issues.
For all the information on the SKALEverse roll-out, have a look at the article below.
Jack O’Holleran
Moreover, with the release of SKALE V2, a new and infinitely scalable ecosystem of interconnected SKALE Chains is born. The SKALEVERSE provides a brand-new environment for Ethereum-based DApps and DeFi services, complete with all the challenges and opportunities that entails.
The issue of each bridge from Ethereum Mainnet to an SKALE Chain having a different wrapping standard for tokens migrated across it is critical to resolve. Since, assets would be fragmented into as many and incompatible versions as there are Mainnet bridges.
Therefore, with the Ruby Exchange Europe initiative of which Stakin is a participant, we aim to establish a default Mainnet bridge, and thus the social consensus and network effect to ensure there is a single version of each main token, which can then be used interchangeably by every DApp across the SKALE network. For more information, have a look at the blog post below.
Ruby
RAW Fairdrop is Still Claimable
In other news, this is your friendly reminder to claim your $RAW DAO assets if you haven’t already. Claiming was enabled on May 1st, and users can now obtain their allocation immediately. The claim window ends on June 1st 2022. Kindly note that unclaimed tokens will be sent back to the DAO for later use, and thus it is not possible to claim them at a later date. All the ins and outs can be found here.
Cronos Chain Mainnet Upgrade
Another successful upgrade aside from the Juno Veritas one happened on the 10th of May. The Cronos Chain Mainnet successfully upgraded to v0.7.0 also known as Huygens. The upgrade included several major bug fixes, upgraded node storage performance and dynamic fee structure for gas fee optimization, which is paving the way for accelerated growth on the blockchain.
Polkadex Has Secured a Parachain Slot on Polkadot
On Friday, May 6th, Polkadex won the 16th Polkadot parachain auction! Polkadex not only secured a parachain slot, but also became the largest crowd loan (in total DOT contributed) in batch 3 of the Polkadot parachain auctions, with 973,324 DOT (almost $14 million at Friday's prices) loaned to the Polkadex crowd loan by more than 2,300 contributors in over 6,000 contributions.
Terra $LUNA and UST
There have been many people, newsletters, Twitter feeds and more dedicated to the $LUNA and UST situation. Thus, in this newsletter, we will keep it short and quickly update you on what occurred and what most likely will happen next. We’d also like to point you to the official Terra Ecosystem Revival Plan, which you can find here.
So, what happened? Well, in a nutshell, only a few months after Freddie Raynolds wrote a detailed guide highlighting the possibility of someone destroying the Terra Ecosystem with $1 billion spread across multiple days (and Terra’s Do Kwon stating this was simply impossible), Terra’s stablecoin $UST slightly lost its peg to 0.98 USD on the 9th of May. The 10th of May saw a massive bank run, which led the $UST to drop further to $0.60. As widespread panic started to kick-in among LUNAtics, and the blockchain space alike, the attackers further unloaded their position, causing $UST to reach $0.22 on the 12th of May, and eventually hit $0.15 on May 14th.
While nothing is a hundred percent certain, the attackers allegedly prepared by borrowing $100,000 BTC from Gemini and managed to accumulate $1 billion of $UST from Terra Money.
Thereafter, it was all a matter of waiting for the right time. When Terra announced that it was going to move $150 million of $UST out of the 3pool preparing for the launch of their 4pool, the attackers saw the perfect opportunity. While $UST was pulled from Curve Finance, $BTC was in a downwards trend, causing $UST to de-peg slightly, alarming a few people. However, the Luna Foundation Guard proceeded to sell some $BTC to re-peg $UST. Knowing this, the attackers dumped $BTC and $UST, while shorting $BTC, $UST and $LUNA. This combination lead to a tragic downwards spiral.
As Anchor held a large amount of $LUNA, the attackers knew that with this spiral, they triggered a massive sell-off, as this would cause exceeding repayment rates on the platform. Which, would further break the peg and destroy both $LUNA and $UST. Once the dump was complete, the attackers were able to buy back $BTC at a gigantic discount to repay their loans. Thus, allowing them to pocket the difference while printing separate bags of profit from their short positions.
In their wake, they left a devastated ecosystem and crushed LUNA investors. As validators, Stakin has been highly involved in the discussion around what will be next, and where to go from here. Many decentralized validators have contributed to this discussion. For all the recent updates, we’d like to invite you to follow the news via the official Terra channels.
Kava Network's USDX Has Lost Parity With The US Dollar
On May 13th, 2022 The Block Crypto reported that Kava Network’s native decentralized stablecoin USDX has lost its parity with the US dollar. USDX fell to nearly 0.55 on the previous Wednesday and continued to trade below its supposed dollar peg. It is unclear what caused USDX to lose its dollar parity. Unlike Terra's algorithmic stablecoins, Kava Network's USDX can be minted as a loan backed by collateral reserves.
Vishal Chawla
Before we end this newsletter, here’s a word from Stakin CEO and Co-Founder, Edouard Lavidalle.
Hi Stakin community 💙
The past days have been eventful for all of us, I hope you are well.
Crypto is hyper volatile, and this is the kind of fun we all signed up for as well.
There’s been a lot of panic on the markets triggered by the Luna meltdown, UST and also the broader macro environment. We’re evaluating a range of proposals with the community, and other validators to potentially help Luna and UST to bounce back, but both markets and the own intrinsic mechanics of Terra are at play here.
Markets can be painful, managing risks, taking profits and cutting losses can be difficult. We should all support each other's during these times.
We’ve been building our staking service for the past 3 years with all of you. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without your help and support as delegators.
Despite our exposure to Terra as a validator, Stakin is a healthy company and if you are delegating with us on any of the 30+ networks that we support, rest assured that our team is fully dedicated. Our infra has been running smoothly, and we’ve done some upgrades on key networks to alleviate the congestion. We’re building for the long term, and we’re super excited to have our delegators and community alongside the adventure.
The crypto ecosystem will bounce back in due time, with hopefully some great learnings from the past days. Wagmi 🙌
DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. Staking, delegation, and cryptocurrencies involve a high degree of risk, and there is always the possibility of loss, including the failure of all staked digital assets. Additionally, delegators are at risk of slashing in case of security or liveness faults on some protocols. We advise you to do your due diligence before choosing a validator.
