🚀 The EIP-4844 Trade: Eth, Arb & OP

PLUS 18 DeFi Insights 👀

GM Legends,

An interesting week with Azuki’s copycat collection, Sui “selling staking tokens”, J Powell’s announcing more rate hikes and bear market panic as Bitcoin dipped below $30,000 at one point.

We have seen a relatively quiet week from SEC shenanigans which I hope do not pop up next week as July 4th celebrations kick in for many.

Today we look at Ethereum’s next BIG catalyst, Cancun aka EIP-4844 aka Proto-Danksharding aka thanks for the lower gas prices!

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The big story.
🏝 The EIP-4844 Trade: Eth, Arb & OP

DeFi insights.
🖼 YoloNolo introducing Nolo perps for discord
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🫠 GM degen podcast: Protectorate Protocol an NFT-Fi blue chip in the making?

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🐮 Maple Finance fills the Blockfi, Celcius void 
🐻 Paysafe Payment Solutions halts Binance support
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Plus Twitter reads from @twMatt, @BackTheBunny and @WatcherGuru!

🔥 The big story.
To make you think.

🏝 The EIP-4844 Trade: Eth, Arb & OP

So this tweet from Sandra got me thinking about a trip to Canun this morning and how Ethereum loves to play out towards an upcoming narrative.

Earlier this year Ethereum went through its Shanghai Upgrade (which we wrote about here) which enabled stakers to unstake from the Beacon chain. It also inspired a Liquidating Staking Derivatives (LSD) season, which is a narrative we are continuing to see play out.

The next chapter in the Ethereum story is the long-awaited Cancun upgrade which goes live sometime later this year.

In today's big story, we’ll recap what Cancun is, why you should care and what this might mean for your crypto portfolio.

What is the Cancun Upgrade?

Gas fees are the single biggest issue that Ethereum faces at the moment and if you’ve ever experienced bull run gas on Ethereum you’ll know what I mean.

Apart from building the world's most usable blockchain, the Ethereum Foundation is driving a lot of time and effort to solve the daily frustration of high gas prices vs other blockchains.

Cancun-Deneb (Cancun for short) is supposed to be the first step towards it. For the techies out there, Cancun refers to the upgrade on the smart contract execution layers and Deneb, to the upgrade to the PoS consensus layer.

Cancun opens the gateway to Danksharding by first releasing Proto-Danksharding or more formally known as EIP-4884.

If Proto-Danksharding is the starter then Danksharding is the main course. To start, Proto-Danksharding will specifically focus on reducing the fees on “Roll-Ups”... reducing gas fees from pennies to peanuts.

But how? They going to do it with Blobs aka Binary Large Object transactions as data gets stored in the consensus layer vs the execution layer to then be deleted, thus making it cheaper.

Why should you care?

From pennies to peanuts.

Gas fees will drop considerably across layer 2 roll-ups like Arbitrum and Optimism and, to be honest, that’s not massively bullish in my humble opinion but it’s an important consideration.

Think of it like this: every time Ethereum has a major upgrade… something related to that upgrade catches a bid.

  • The Merge → ETH and even ETHC caught a bid plus that random anon ETHPOW coin

  • Shanghai → sparked LSD season

  • Cancun → ARB and OP & their top alts could perform well

I wouldn’t be surprised if off the back of “Cancun Season” we see bullish news released about Arbitrum Orbit and Optimism’s super chain ecosystem as well as Polygon making an award appearance with some form of zkEVM catalyst.

Ahhh and Coinbase, let’s not forget Coinbase in all of this.

They have dedicated a serious amount of engineering brain power to develop and test EIP-4844 because…

“We see EIP-4844 as a key enabler for bringing our customers into the cryptoeconomy with a secure, easy to use experience that is faster and cheaper”

I’ll speculate that Coinbase’s layer 2 Base will be completed around the time of EIP-4844 going live as they have a vested interest in shipping normies from the exchange to Base.

Some wildcards to keep an eye on, are METIS top players, Mantle, Linea and zk-rollups such as zkSync, StarkNet and Scroll.

Our take.

NGL, I had completely forgotten about this trade and digging into it has been a great reminder of what’s still yet to come for Ethereum and its Layer 2 ecosystem.

The icing on the cake would be the “perfectly” timed media assault and release of an SEC-approved Spot Ethereum ETF.

Imagine the smell.

Cancun upgrade, SEC Ethereum ETF approval and Coinbases Base going live.

👀 DeFi insights.
Project updates, governance reports and industry secrets.

The World of DeFi

  • Bitcoin - Michael Saylor bought more. (Twitter)

  • Dolomite - Rolls out Phase 1 of the “Zap” feature. (Twitter)

  • dYdX - Public testnet launches July 5th. (The Block)

  • Dymension - Incentivised testnet coming soon. (Twitter)

  • Flowmatic Labs - The HybriDEX first look and demo. (Medium)

  • Kava - 2 weeks until mainnet launch. (Twitter)

  • Maverick Protocol - Token launched. (Twitter)

  • Parallax Finance - Building Andromeda on GMX. (Twitter)

  • Pendle Finance - Launches second wstETH pool on Arbitrum and the vePendle number crunching Calculator. (Twitter)

  • PepesGame - Releases info on campaigns “Degen of the week” and “bring your own degen.” (Twitter)

  • Plutus DAO - V2 tokenomics upgrade announced. (Twitter | Medium)

  • Protectorate Protocol - The 72hr Dutch auction “Event Horizon” went live. (Twitter)

  • Radix - Babylon upgrade announcement, launching September. (Twitter)

  • SpartaDEX - First IDO announced on Sparta Pad. (Twitter)

  • Speedrun HXRO - V1 goes live. Learn & build on HXRONetworks SDK’s. (Twitter)

  • Thena Finance - Crypto Linn leaks perp dex alpha. (Twitter)

  • Yearn Finance - Deep dive thread on Yearn V3 vs UniSwap V4. (Twitter)

  • YoloNolo - Introducing Nolo perps empowering discord traders. (Medium)

  • Zeta Markets - Mobilising Mad Lads for the Mad Wars, snapshot July 5th. (Twitter)

Governance Updates

  • MakerDAO - A new executive proposal has been released featuring BlockTower Andromeda Updates, GUSD PSM Parameter Changes, and more. (Twitter)

  • Scroll - Temperature check to deploy Aave v3 has passed. (Twitter)

  • Yearn Finance - Proposal to activate veYFI rewards with oYFI Gauges. (Governance)

🫠 GM degen.
The latest GM degen podcast.

Grant sat down with Magnus and 0xOmnia from Protocoate Protocol, a future blue-chip of NFT-Fi, taking a look at what “Event Horizon” is, how the protocol works and why it has blue-chip potential.

🗞 In the news.
The important bits.

  • Maple Finance fills the Blockfi, Celcius void through Maple Direct lending services offering loans directly to some borrowers. (Cointelegraph)

  • Paysafe Payment Solutions halts Binance support on September 25th affecting Euro residents’ deposits and withdrawals. (Coindesk)

  • North Carolina House pass the bill to commission a study on holding Bitcoin. (Cointelegraph)

  • Global CBDC rollout warning from Cato Institutes President Peter Goettler stating “Governments are pursuing the exact opposite: more centralisation, surveillance and control.” (DailyHodl)

  • The Great 2023 BTC ETF Race heats up as Cathy Woods the ARK filing to match Blackrocks by adding a surveillance-sharing agreement to address potential market manipulation. (Decrypt)

  • FTX Reloaded as CEO John Ray begins discussions with potential bidders to finance FTX 2.0 as the FTT token surges 35%(Cointelegraph)

👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?!

The US celebrates independence day next week meaning markets will be shut on Tuesday, here are the key events happening:

🐥 Twitter reads.
In case you missed it.

@twMatt gives the real talk on what it means to be a founder.

@BackTheBunny, an emotional eye-opening thread with lessons we can all learn from.

@WatcherGuru reveals an inside look at Elon’s “Walrus” attack.

And on that note, thanks for reading, catcha apes in the next edition!

blocmates team 🫡

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