Ethereum’s new roadmap and upcoming updates

Concerns around Bitcoin’s energy use however unscientific have continued to draw environmentally conscious investors to the second biggest crypto on the Block which is of course Ethereum.

This is probably a part of why ETH rallied so hard last week.

Fidelity opening its doors to ETH likely contributed and they’re eyeing the crypto space more than ever.

You may also know that Fidelity’s move will inspire other asset managers to follow suit in offering ETH to clients.

Ironically enough Ethereum’s increasing on-chain censorship is likely also making it more appealing to institutional investors, that’s because having a cryptocurrency that is fully compliant AKA controllable is their desire.

Thankfully fighting against on-chain censorship is a part of Ethereum’s new roadmap as explained by Vitalik on Twitter: the Ethereum roadmap contains a new phase called “The Scourge”.

In Vitalik’s own words The Scourge will quote “ensure reliable and fair credibly neutral transaction inclusion”.

The Scourge will also address maximal extractable value or Mev issues on Ethereum to quickly recap the next stage.

In Ethereum’s roadmap is the surge which focuses on scalability AKA making Ethereum faster through the use of zero knowledge roll ups.

Once the surge is complete Ethereum should be able to process over 100 000 transactions per second.

Now the second stage was originally The Verge but it has been bumped down into third place with the scourge taking precedence now.

This makes sense given that on-chain censorship is a more urgent matter than data storage and node size optimization which is the focus of the Verge.

On that note I should point out that Ethereum’s updated roadmap doesn’t contain any dates.

In fact it suggests that all these Ethereum upgrades are being worked on in parallel to that end it contains a little progress bar for each individual milestone in every stage.

In any case The Verge will be followed by The Purge which involves further optimizing data storage and deleting any old or unused data on the Ethereum blockchain.

This is important because the Ethereum blockchain contains lots of dead smart contracts from its early days which bloat its size.

Finally we have the Splurge which includes all future improvements to Ethereum.

The roadmap notes upgrades to the Ethereum virtual machine, changes to the transaction fee, Burns of eip1559 and the introduction of verifiable delay functions as areas of focus of all ethereum’s upcoming stages.

The Scourge and The Purge are arguably the most important that’s because they are intertwined the former concerns the censorship of transactions and the latter concerns the storage of transactions which affects censorship especially in the longer term.

DeFi Lending Platform TrueFi Announces First Default on BUSD Loan

TrueFi announced the first default on its $3.4 million BUSD loan from Blockwater Associates today, vowing to take the matter to court.

On October 10, the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform TrueFi issued a notice of default to Blockwater Technologies for failing to make a scheduled payment on its $3.4 million BUSD loan. In the past week, the TrueFi credit group had been trying to reach an out-of-court settlement with Blockwater, which would have entailed increasing the borrowing rate and extending maturity.

However, they found that a court-supervised administrative proceeding could provide a more favorable outcome for stakeholders. This is TrueFi’s first and only declared credit default to date. The credit group said it remains vigilant and proactive in current macro conditions.

Many lending platforms have shut down this year because investors has been pulling their money out of cryptocurrency. In the second quarter, there were mass withdrawals which led to the collapse of companies such as Celsius Networks and Voyager Digital.

TrueFi noted that it would stay in talks with Blockwater Technologies’ associates. The goal is to obtain the most optimal outcome for lenders and stakeholders alike. As stated in the official announcement from TrueFi:

“Blockwater has completed 8 payments totalling $645,405 towards loan repayment. $2,967,458 remains due at the time of the default. The Blockwater default does not affect lenders in TrueFi’s USDC, TUSD, USDT stablecoin lending pools, nor any of TrueFi’s capital market portfolios.”

To date, TrueFi has originated $1.7 billion in unsecured loans and have so far collected full repayment on all 136 outstanding loans, amounting to $1.5 billion. In total, these Repayments have generated over $34 million in interest for the lenders.

The TrueFi group said that its loan book is holding up well and they have been actively working to renew loans. Furthermore, they also offer lenders certain protections against default under the TrueFi SAFU program. The TrueFiSAFU oversees a fund specifically set aside to help lenders who are affected by defaults.

Additionally, they offer a staked TRU slashing service “which could appropriate up to 10% of the staked TRU for the benefit of lenders who are affected by a default. This is all under the direction of the DAO.”