The Next Big Thing in the ETH Domain

In recent months, there has been a significant increase in interest and adoption of Web3 domain name services like the Ethereum Name Service ("ENS") and Unstoppable Domains. Over the previous three months, ENS has outperformed ETH by over 40% thanks to the sharp increase in .eth domain name registrations.

It is predicted that there are two more avenues for investors to get visibility if they share the belief that Web3 domain name services will supply the essential infrastructure for further user growth and adoption inside Web3. As in the Dotcom Era, investors can buy premium names in advance that they believe will increase in value later on. Investing in the underlying platforms' tokens, like ENS, might be safer. Let us explore in detail the next big things in the ETH domains.

Recent Positive Developments for Ethereum

Franklin Templeton, which is among the biggest asset management companies in the world, has entered the competition to create an Ethereum [ETH] spot ETF. The price of ETH has gone up from $2,428 to $2,645. This proves the growing institutional interest in cryptocurrency. This can be seen as a significant vote of confidence for Ethereum's long-term potential and development. 

Ethereum Completes the Merge

The Ethereum Merge, a momentous occasion commemorated on the calendars of all cryptocurrency enthusiasts, happened on September 15, 2022. 

While the Beacon chain operated in parallel using proof-of-stake, the Ethereum main net was secured by proof-of-work with all its smart contracts, accounts, and blockchain data. These two systems were combined during the Merge process, which permanently replaced proof-of-work with proof-of-stake. Following the Ethereum merger, both chains are now part of a single chain. The Merge has become more ecologically friendly by cutting the supply of its native token, ether (ETH), and reducing energy consumption by about 99.95%.

How will the Ethereum Merge affect Eth 2?

The word "Eth2" is no longer used. Eth1 and Eth2 are merged into a single chain following the Ethereum merger. Hence, there is no longer a need to distinguish between the two because there is now only one Ethereum network. Eth 1 is in charge of execution and transactions, and Eth 2 is in charge of consensus and PoS consensus.

Individuals or groups intending to deceive or harm others for personal gain have taken advantage of users' uncertainty over Eth1 and Eth2 to mislead them into exchanging their ETH for "Eth2" tokens. Before the Eth2 update, scam artists attempted to persuade customers to move their ETH. It is necessary to alter the unclear terminology to eliminate this fraud vector and contribute to the ecosystem's security.

What Comes Next for Ethereum Following the Merger?

Following the Merge, Ethereum has a detailed strategy in place that emphasizes security and scalability enhancements, the ongoing evolution of proof-of-stake consensus, and the deployment of significant updates like Splurge, Verge, Purge, and Surge.

Enhancements in Scalability and Security

The updates are intended to maximize transaction processing, increasing speed and enhancing system effectiveness. Security-wise, plans are being developed to strengthen network resilience against such attacks. PoS makes a substantial contribution to improving system security in addition to helping to lower power consumption.

Progression Of Ethereum's Proof-of-Stake Consensus

Following the Merge, Ethereum intends to keep improving its proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. Switching from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake paradigm is essential to the Ethereum network's growth and endurance. With proof-of-stake, validators who hold and "stake" their ETH are responsible for validating transactions rather than energy-intensive mining operations. Among the many advantages of this strategy are lower energy usage and higher network security.

Application of the Updates for Surge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge

Ethereum's capabilities and user experience will be significantly improved by these updates, which go by the names Surge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge.

Surge upgrade: This upgrade aims to employ sharding technologies to improve scalability. The Ethereum network can execute transactions and smart contracts in parallel thanks to sharding, which boosts transaction throughput and speed.

Verge update: The goal is to strengthen Ethereum blockchain security. It adds sophisticated cryptography methods and improved encryption processes to safeguard users' assets and data from intrusions.

Purge Update: The Purge update fixes problems with Ethereum network gas fees. Introducing changes to the gas pricing structure ensures an optimal allocation of network resources while lowering the cost of transactions for users.

Splurge Update: The goal of the Splurge update is to enhance user experience across the Ethereum network. It enhances the UI, development tools, and general usability of Ethereum-based decentralized applications (dApps).

The Next Big Thing in the ETH Domain

Significantly, this blossoming has made the smart contract platform the early front-runner in terms of DeFi, non-fungible tokens, stablecoins, Layer-2 blockchain scalability solutions, and more. Due to Ethereum's status as the leading platform for these cutting-edge blockchain possibilities, developers are drawn to it like a metaphorical gravity well as a result of these advancements.

Having said that, interesting new Ethereum-based projects are still emerging at a breakneck speed, making it challenging sometimes to keep up with everything noteworthy. Would you like to play catch-up? These Ethereum projects are more recent and should be on your radar because they could last for many years.

Balancer

Balancer is an automated market maker (AMM) protocol introduced to the Ethereum mainnet this spring. It allows users to create customizable liquidity pools. While balancer pools can handle up to eight tokens with variable weightings, popular AMM Uniswap allows only two-token pools with a 1:1 weighting of assets.

Liquidity providers now have more options for monetizing their idle Ethereum-based tokens, giving them greater flexibility. In addition, Balancer has launched a liquidity mining campaign to bootstrap the protocol that pays Balancer LPs with BAL governance tokens.

Loopring Pay

Ethereum now has the most scalable and secure trading and transfer option with Loopring. For its three years of existence, Loopring has been a DEX protocol. Ethereum is in more need of Layer-2 scaling solutions than ever to meet the rising demand as the platform has become more and more popular. Loopring Pay fills that need.

Created by the Loopring team, Loopring Pay is live and enables immediate, free ETH and ERC20 transaction sending. The new service is based on zkRollups technology, a breakthrough in Layer-2 scalability that uses zero-knowledge validity proofs to manage compute off-chain while storing data on-chain. These rollups represent some of Ethereum's most promising scalability solutions, and Loopring Pay demonstrates their immediate potential.

UMA's Synths 

UMA protocol uses synthetic assets to create decentralized international financial marketplaces. The UMA team debuted its first synthetic assets this year, which include a valuable ETHBTC token that mirrors the ETH/BTC price ratio. The token's smart contract is based on a reference index rather than an on-chain price feed from an oracle, which makes it invaluable.

Recently, a UMA token minting interface was made available to users, enabling them to conveniently track information about previously deployed synths, manufacture synthetic tokens, deposit and withdraw collateral, and redeem tokens. Thanks to these synthetic assets, the Ethereum ecosystem now has many new trading opportunities.

renBTC

While tokenized bitcoin initiatives gather momentum around Ethereum, more centralized initiatives like WBTC, whose underlying bitcoin funds are held in custody by BitGo, have dominated the ERC20 BTC market.

The Ren team has responded to the growing need for tokenized Bitcoin projects that are non-custodial and trustless with renBTC. Users can mint renBTC 1:1 with real Bitcoin utilizing the RenVM network. The benefit is that this tokenized bitcoin can be used profitably in Ethereum's developing DeFi initiatives, for example, by providing Uniswap liquidity.

Omen

Gnosis's DXdao group led Omen, a decentralized predictions market platform. Anyone can use this dApp to establish prediction markets for whatever questions they want to ask.

Other blockchain prediction projects have usually depended on traditional order books, while Omen uses an automated market maker (AMM) technology to match trades, much like Uniswap, to help with liquidity. Furthermore, Omen's developers purposefully made the platform open-ended and modular to grow naturally over time. Another difference between the project and its primary peer, Augur, which has created its internal oracle, is the latter's reliance on other oracles.

DeversiFi

DeversiFi 2.0, a "high-speed, self-custodial exchange" that protects user privacy and processes over 9,000 Ethereum transactions per second, was introduced by the DeversiFi team last month.

Validium technology from StarkWare, a Layer-2 scalability solution that manages data storage off-chain and computes using zero-knowledge proofs, powers the new exchange. Validium is one of Ethereum's most promising scaling innovations, along with zkRollups, Optimistic Rollups, and Plasma. DeversiFi is highlighting Validium, the most recent of these innovations, for consumers worldwide. Look for additional projects to use Validium if DeversiFi 2.0 takes off.

InfiNFT

Introducing InfiNFT, a brand-new token minting platform that enables users to mint NFTs with fully on-chain metadata maintenance—on-chain being synonymous with greater transparency, security, and verifiability.

The NFT industry is growing. Thus, it's more crucial than ever to think about how to preserve NFTs for future generations. By minting tokens via a combination of Ethereum, the Arweave blockchain, and the IPFS decentralized storage solution, InfiNFT directly addresses this issue. Miners may relax knowing that their NFTs will be safe indefinitely without manually pin files to IPFS later. 

Promising Future

Ethereum staking began to gain traction in 2023 despite the longest downturn in the cryptocurrency market. Going forward, we anticipate that the Ethereum staking market will continue to grow. Staking platforms that are tailored to the individual requirements of institutional investors are becoming more and more frictionless. Staked assets are being leveraged by a growing number of new primitives that DeFi users see, such as advanced interest rate trading.

Though nothing in the cryptocurrency space moves in a straight line, the long-term potential of the Ethereum staking market is a cause for excitement.