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Here are your πβs for today:
51% of Ethereum blocks are being censored
ApeCoin DAO to delay staking?
Trending articles
NFT of the day
51% OF ETHEREUM BLOCKS ARE BEING CENSORED
Last month, the Ethereum Foundation pulled off an important milestone, when they completed βThe Merge,β which updated their consensus mechanism from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.
Many touted this change as a win, as it would now make Ethereum ESG compliant, and marked the completion of the first phase of the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap. However, it appears that this update may be creating a new set of problems.
For starters, many have pointed out that a small amount of staking pools are responsible for a sizable percentage of staked ETH. Most notably, Lido Finance and Coinbase are responsible for 31% and 15% of all staked ETH respectively. In a PoS consensus mechanism, this level of concentration in stake pools is concerning from a network centralization standpoint.
Now another problem appears to be arising on the Ethereum network, this time around censorship. According to mevwatch.info, in the last 24 hours 51% of blocks produced on Ethereum have followed the US Treasury Departmentβs Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) compliance recommendations.
What this means, is that the majority of blocks produced over the past day, were delivered by relays that screened out transactions associated with Tornado Cash, a DeFi mixer service that was sanctioned by the US back in August.
At the heart of this censorship, is the fact that 57% of all blocks validated on Ethereum use a MEV-Boost software (MEV = Maximal extractable Value), and of those, an additional 81% used a project called Flashbotβs relay. Flashbot has decided that they will exclude all Tornado Cash transactions to remain OFAC compliant.
This is all getting a bit complicated, so letβs summarize by honing in on the key issue at play here. The entire premise of Blockchains are that they are decentralized, permissionless and censorship resistant.
After the Merge, is appears that Ethereumβs consensus mechanism is more centralized, and may even be censoring a large amount of transactions. Today that censorship is around a single project. However, if this trend continues, it wonβt be long until the US government (or other organization) is completely dictating the network. If Ethereumβs continues on this trend, then it will take us all back to a centrally controlled network model.
Ethereum needs to reverse course soon, otherwise, their dominance in the Web3 space will quickly begin to fade.
APECOIN DAO TO DELAY STAKING?
One of the most exciting trends from the past year in Web3 was the explosion of DAOs or βDecentralized Autonomous Organizationsβ. DAOs represent a new way for organizations to operate that is borderless, decentralized and more reliant on code than the trust of other humans.
We saw DAOs arise for many objectives, ranging from buying the US constitution to raising awareness for creators.
Out of all of the DAOs launched this year, few had more hype behind them than the ApeCoin DAO. Launched off the back of the wildly successful Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, the DAO represented a way for the BAYC community to expand their ecosystem with new features and to put decision making back in the hands of their community.
The DAO has created itβs own forum for discussing new proposals and voting on them with APE coin. Theyβve even created a special board of BAYC holders with strong backgrounds in Web3 and Tech, such as Alexis Ohanian, the cofounder of Reddit.
However, the DAO is beginning to run up against some of the frictions that decentralized governance creates. The biggest launch for ApeCoin DAO this year is supposed to be its staking program, but itβs October 31st deadline appears to be in jeopardy.
A new proposal in by Maaria Bajwa (one of the board members), has suggested delaying the launch of staking until a proper bounty program has been launched. The program would allocate 1 million APE ($4.5 million) to potential bounties and last 2-4 weeks.
While the proposal appears to make sense on the surface, it has received some pushback from the community. Specifically, this proposal would delay staking by another month, and many are asking why this wasnβt suggested sooner?
Overall, the ApeCoin DAO is a great experiment in decentralized governance that is worth keeping an eye on. While decentralized organizations come with benefits, they also come with downsides too. Only time will tell, if this model works for the BAYC community.
TRENDING ARTICLES
[Coindesk] Bitcoin Fails to Produce 1 Block for Over an Hour: An 85-minute block interval left more than 13,000 transactions stuck in a pending state on Monday.
[The Block] Cameron Winklevoss steps down from Gemini Europe's leadership: The internal shift follows Geminiβs approval as a virtual assets service provider on October 11.
[Blockworks] South Korea To Roll Out Blockchain-based Identity: The South Korean government will launch digital blockchain-based IDs via citizensβ phones as it prepares for post-pandemic era
NFT OF THE DAY
For my next layer-1 blockchain report I am researching Elrond. I asked the community for some recommendations on top NFT collections on Elrond, and received A TON of suggestions.
After some exploration, I decided to highlight the Drifters NFT collection. Aside from their awesome anime artwork, they also have launched staking and are building a video game called βAevitasβ, in which you will be able to use your NFTs.
Above is a photo of Drifter Innovator #686, one of the highest ranked NFTs in the collection according to deadrare.io.
Stay tuned for my full report on the Elrond blockchain launching soon.