Welcome to the first of our weekly article series on the week’s most relevant crypto news. Keeping up with the latest industry news is key to making strategic moves with your crypto assets. With this new article series, we hope to help users catch all the important information conveniently. For this first edition, we will be covering all the market news you need to know in the week of 5 – 9 September 2022, including the Ethereum Merge, Binance and Solana new movements, market predictions, and more. Let’s dive in!
Ethereum Merge Officially Has a Date
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has announced on Twitter that the Ethereum Merge is expected to take place “around 13 – 15 September 2022”. Finally, this highly anticipated event is officially dated. The Ethereum Merge is where the Ethereum network will transition from its long-standing Proof-of-Work protocol to Proof-of-Stake.
This major milestone is expected to have a huge impact on the crypto market and bring staking to the forefront of the industry. Especially as Ethereum has always been the most popular blockchain for developers to build sidechains with different consensus algorithms (such as Proof-of-Stake). With Ethereum itself finally embracing Proof-of-Stake, the future is look bright, especially for the staking market.
As announced, Moonstake is actively monitoring the development of Ethereum network and we will work hard to start supporting the Ethereum Merge as soon as possible. Stay tuned!
U.K. Elects Pro-Crypto Prime Minister Looking to Accelerate Nation’s Adoption of Blockchain and Digital Assets
Liz Truss, the new U.K. Prime Minister, is a known proponent of cryptocurrency and blockchain. In a past campaign debate, Truss shared her plans to foster blockchain development in the country which include “ensuring that customs duties are not imposed on electronic transmissions and creating great opportunities in areas such as blockchain” for the goal of “creating a world-leading ecosystem that supports businesses of all sizes across the UK and leading the world in data and digital trade”. This is fantastic news for global crypto adoption and will hopefully liven up the spirits of the crypto market.
Crypto Market is Slow, But Adoption is Picking Up More Than Ever
Even though the market has been in a long slump, adoption has actually been picking up the pace. A trademark and patent attorney recently revealed that a total of 3,600 trademark applications for cryptocurrencies were lodged as of August. This is a 2.3% rise from the 3,516 total filings of the entirety of last year. For other fields in crypto, it is reported that more than 5,800 trademark applications have been filed for NFTs (280% increase) and 4,150 applications for the metaverse and Web3 (223% rise). With Facebook formally rebranding as Meta and Instagram enabling NFT-focused features on its platform, the growth of crypto is still looking to be unstoppable despite the price turmoil. Keep calm and don’t stop BUIDLing!
Solana to Use Move Programming Language Developed by Facebook for Protocol Development
As a popular emerging chain in recent years, Solana has been attracting much attention from crypto users and even the mainstream media. However, its trading volume has been declining recently due to a combination of mixed reception among some developer communities and the ongoing crypto winter.
To combat critic-fueled FUD, the Solana team has recently announced a proposal to use Move, a smart contract programming language developed by Facebook that focuses on interoperability and security, in its protocol development from now on. Coupled with milestone DeFi collaborations, this could signal a new era of renewed interest and growth for Solana and SOL.
Are you currently a part of or interested in the Solana ecosystem? Would you like Moonstake to add support for SOL on our staking platform? Let us know!
Binance to Release New zkBNB Chain with “Zero-Knowledge Proof” Scaling Technology
Scalability has always been one of the biggest challenges in blockchain, and the market leader Binance has recently announced its plans to address this issue. zkBNB will be a new chain that utilizes “zero-knowledge proof” technology to solve long-running problems with blockchain networks including poor transactions per second (TPS), finality, transaction costs, and general scalability. Zero-knowledge proof isn’t a new technology, but its implementation in crypto is still relatively new. It will be exciting to see what this new development of Binance will bring to the crypto market!
KPMG Assesses the Current Crypto Market and Predicts Future Trends
One of the Big Four accounting associations, KPMG, has recently shared a report of the current crypto market as well as its assessments of potential future shifts in investor behavior. Most notably, the firm stated that in the second half of this year, crypto investors might try switching to different projects, turning away from NFTs and more towards blockchain infrastructure and blockchain financial technology. Specifically, they noted growing interest in compliance and transaction traceability-related products, as well as stablecoins due to their low-risk nature compared to the rest of the industry.
With all this being said, how are you feeling about this year’s crypto market situation? Have you formulated any strategies for the rest of the year yet?
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We hope you enjoy this carefully curated news roundup by Moonstake, as our team strives to only bring the most relevant information for your crypto experience. See you next week!
About Moonstake
Moonstake is the world’s leading staking service provider that develops and operates decentralized wallet services for businesses and individuals.
Since its launch in April 2020, Moonstake has partnered with 27 leading platform providers, including Cardano’s constituent Emurgo, developer of the Polkadot-connected blockchain Astar Network Stake Technologies, and the TRON Network with over 50 million users. In May 2021, Moonstake further enhanced its corporate credibility by becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of OIO Holdings Limited, a company listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.
Using blockchain technology, Moonstake aims to progress toward a world where anyone can easily make use of highly secure and reliable digital asset management tools.
About Moonstake’s staking business
For the staking industry, which has grown into a 630-billion dollar market as of September 2021, Moonstake provides a decentralized staking service that does not require user deposits, and supports nodes around the world in addition to its own validator nodes. Moonstake currently supports the staking of 17 blockchains. With a total staking assets of 1.8 billion USD and a global user base, the company ranked third out of more than 10,000 providers worldwide in June of the same year.
