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In addition, the national ISM manufacturing survey, released during the long July 4 weekend, fell to its weakest level since May 2020.

If Musk wants to build an instant cross-border network, he’ll find central bank real-time systems have moved on quite a bit since his days at PayPal, says J.P. Koning.

Starknet, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, is preparing to launch an upgrade this month to boost its capacity for transactions per second.

Scheduled for launch around July 13, the “Quantum Leap” upgrade aims to elevate the network’s sequencer transaction rate to “several hundred” per second. This would mark a significant upswing from current levels, according to the team at StarkWare, a key network contributor.

Currently undergoing testing, Starknet version 12.0 awaits approval from the Starknet community through an ongoing vote. If it passes the community validation, the upgrade will be deployed to the mainnet. After a dedicated period of engineering by StarkWare, LambdaClass, and other participants within the Starknet ecosystem, the upgrade was first released on the Goerli testnet on July 3.

“Starknet’s new version, Quantum Leap, is exactly what the name suggests – a leap in TPS, the likes of which nobody has yet achieved in the Ethereum ecosystem,” said Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder of StarkWare.

Starknet, a decentralized Layer 2 network, utilizes a solution classified as a Zero Knowledge roll-up, which condenses multiple transactions on an off-chain layer and publishes them together on the Ethereum network. StarkWare was the original architect of Starknet, employing the Stark cryptographic proofs mechanism invented by the team. Today, StarkWare is among a collaborative group of contributors shaping Starknet’s evolution, with the network’s operations and roadmap now under the purview of the Starknet Foundation.

Enhancing Ethereum’s scalability with Starknet

While the upgrade is expected to position Starknet at the top of the TPS leaderboards for Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions, it will also improve latency, with an expected time-to-inclusion of under 15 seconds under normal conditions. According to StarkWare, this is expected to help scale DeFi applications and the gaming niche by facilitating faster transactions and greater throughput for users.

The Starknet roadmap includes plans for version 13.0 later this year that aims to cut down transaction costs. Version 14, meanwhile, will introduce a system where developers can pay extra to prioritize transactions, thereby creating a marketplace for block space on the Layer 2 network.

Ben-Sasson added that a major focus for the Starknet network in the future will also be leveraging the account abstraction feature. The mechanism could enable innovative integrations within crypto apps, such as the use of two-factor authentication for signing crypto transactions and wallet recovery.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

BTC has proved incredibly resilient to the perils of the past year, including FTX’s demise. But there are some macroeconomic surprises that could erect obstacles to further gains.

The years-to-profitability ratio is a good way to evaluate a level-1 blockchain.

The startup is working to build ZK technology that can be used en masse for AI applications.

The upgrade will increase the number of transactions per second the blockchain can handle as well as reduce the time-to-inclusion.

The Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) has risen by 57% since asset management giant BlackRock filed for a spot bitcoin ETF on June 15.

Shares in Grayscale’s flagship Bitcoin Trust rose from $13 on June 15 to trade at $20.46 today, according to data from TradingView. In comparison, bitcoin rose 21% from around $25,000 to a current price of $30,300 during the same time period.

Meanwhile, GBTC’s discount to net asset value — meaning the market price of each share is lower than the value of the bitcoin it represents — is trading below 30% for the first time since July last year. It’s currently at 29.3%, according to The Block’s data dashboard.

The discount was 41.7% before BlackRock’s application and has been steadily narrowing. GBTC historically traded at a premium until 2021’s crypto credit crunch.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rejected Grayscale’s proposal to convert GBTC to a spot ETF last year, with the asset manager suing the agency over the decision. However, BlackRock’s filing, followed by applications from Invesco, WisdomTree, Valkyrie and Fidelity have renewed optimism for a conversion, potentially explaining the outperformance of GBTC.

“Grayscale’s proposal to convert GBTC into a spot bitcoin ETF was rejected last year, and although Grayscale has been fighting the decision, there has been no final ruling,” Rebecca Stevens, research analyst at The Block Research said last month, as the daily trading volume of GBTC began to spike following BlackRock’s filing. “Optimism around BlackRock being successful in their bid for a spot bitcoin ETF would then pave a clearer way for Grayscale to get their non-redeemable trust shares changed, too.”

GBTC is also pushed higher than bitcoin year-to-date, up 144.3% compared to bitcoin’s price gain of 83.7%, according to TradingView.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Altcoins belonging to bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network are on the move, just days after liquidators received approval to convert altcoins to bitcoin and ether.

So far, around $74 million of altcoins including Synthetix, Uniswap and ZRX were moved from one wallet to another. This included some stablecoins isuch as USDC and USDT. In one case, tokens were sent on to a wallet associated with market making firm Wintermute.

On June 30, a New York court agreed that Celsius could start converting its altcoins into bitcoin and ether from July 1. It’s unclear if it will be selling all of its tokens and what proportion of each coin it will be buying.

According to crypto data platform Arkham, the Celsius wallets contain around $615 million of crypto, including $296 million of bitcoin and $120 million of ether. They also have $100 million (in paper value) of Celsius’ own token CEL and around $30 million of stablecoins. This leaves around $69 million across the remaining altcoins.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Projects like TrueUSD and Paxos are turning to Chainlink to give users transparency into their reserves, but their numbers remain difficult to verify.