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According to a recent ‘temperature check’ voting proposal on Uniswap’s governance forum, the Uniswap DAO is in support of investing 3 million UNI ($12 million) from its treasury for a 20% share of a potential governance token from Starknet-based decentralized exchange Ekubo.
Moody Salem, the founder of Ekubo and former engineer lead at Uniswap, stated
“We at Ekubo, Inc. believe this is a vitally important step in the decentralization of Uniswap protocol development, effectively onboarding the Ekubo team as core developers.”
The vote on Snapshot has 21 million UNI tokens for and 12 million tokens against, meaning 63% of tokens that voted were in favor of the move. Five token holders compromised 97% of the vote in favor of the move. There were more than 3,500 votes in total.
Salem said he was a former engineer lead at Uniswap – and the fifth employee at the company – before starting Ekubo and that he contributed considerably to its codebase.
Ekubo is a decentralized exchange on Starknet and has $2.5 million of value locked in its smart contracts, per DefiLama.
If the proposal passes a proper vote, the 3 million tokens, which will be liquid, will be used to fund Ekubo’s operations as well as contribution to the Uniswap protocol, Salem said. “Much of the work will be to deliver public goods to the Starknet ecosystem, including standard token, governance, and incentives contracts written in Cairo, all of which are necessary to scale Starknet to the same level of usage as competing L2s,” he added.
Salem said Ekubo will create a governance token within one month following the proposal passing, with 20% of its supply going to the Uniswap DAO’s treasury. Ekubo will have control over the remaining tokens and any potential distribution. The token will be native to Starknet. The proposal will also require Uniswap’s license to be updated, giving Ekubo a grant for unlimited use of Uniswap v4.
Bitcoin Whales Take Charge As Number Of $100k Transactions Surge
According to data tracked by blockchain analytics firm IntoTheBlock, a number of transactions in involving a movement of at least $100,000 worth of BTC on the Bitcoin blockchain rose to a year-to-date high of 23,400 last week. Notably, the timing of this milestone coincides with BTC’s price topping the $35,000-mark last week.
IntoTheBlock stated,
“The bitcoin spot ETF applications appear to have increased whales’ and institutions’ appetite for bitcoin. Transactions of over $100k had previously spiked in late June after Blackrock’s ETF filing and have now surpassed that level as Bitcoin sets new yearly highs.
They also added:
“The recent rise in institutional activity might be a harbinger for what comes in 2024.”
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is widely expected to approve several spot-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) early next year. Analysts expect the impending financialization of BTC through ETFs to boost the cryptocurrency’s market value to $42,000 and higher.
Blockchain data show retail investors have also become more active in recent weeks.
According to data tracked by Deutsche Digital Assets, small entities’ onchain activity index, a metric to gauge retail investor activity, tapped a new year-to-date high of 1.5 last week.
“We saw an increasing activity both in small and large BTC wallet entities that implies that especially smaller investors are increasingly flocking into the market,” André Dragosch, head of research at Deutsche Digital Assets, said in a note to clients. This can be seen in the significant increase in the median value of transfer volumes on the bitcoin blockchain, which is indicative of small investor participation.
“Note that (new) small investor participation is a necessary condition for a sustained bull market in crypto assets,” Dragosch added.
According to a recent study conducted by the United Nations, there is a direct correlation between the price of Bitcoin and the energy needed for mining operations. Specifically, researchers evaluated the activities of 76 Bitcoin mining nations during the 2020-2021 period and found that the global Bitcoin mining network consumed 173,42 terawatt-hours of electricity.
The report notes, “A 400% increase in Bitcoin’s price from 2021 to 2022 triggered a 140% increase in the energy consumption of the worldwide Bitcoin mining network.”
However, members of the crypto community like Nic Carter has criticized the UN report for citing “completely fake academia in their papers”. Specifically, Carter was referencing the citation of the “Mora et al. 2018’ paper, which had overestimated the carbon emission levels of Bitcoin mining rigs by including unprofitable mining rigs in their analysis.
The top 10 bitcoin mining nations at the time as per the UN report were China, United States, Kazakhstan, Russia, Malaysia, Canada, Germany, Iran, Ireland and Singapore.
Recently, Genesis Digital Assets Limited, a mining and data center company with over 400 megawatts (MW) of power generation worldwide, opened a new data center in Sweden running 1,900 Bitcoin mining machines, driven by the country’s burgeoning renewable energy surplus.
Christian Anders, founder of BT.CX, told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin mining is not very common due to high energy prices. However, he added:
“Sweden, Finland, and Norway have a surplus of energy and negative energy prices from time to time, and primarily renewable energy in the form of hydropower in a remote location which is hard to distribute.”
In parallel, Bitcoin mining equipment manufacturers continue to deliver energy-efficient hardware. At the World Digital Mining Summit on Sept. 22, Bitcoin miners shared their plans to help decarbonize the crypto ecosystem.
Bitmain rolled out its efficiency-focused antminer S21, while Nazar Khan, chief operating officer of TerraWulf, highlighted that the role Bitcoin rig manufacturers play “is locating our Bitcoin mining loads in places where that’s happening and how do we facilitate that decarbonization process.”
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