Why ship app, when you can write manifestos instead, amirite? Or so the Ethereum Foundation & Co. must have thought as they sat down to create the trustlessness manifesto. This piece of writing is stored in a smart contract, making it ineditable, while giving anyone inclined the ability to sign it if they so wish. But before signing it, you probably want to know what this is all about.
In case you, like many others in crypto, have forgotten that this industry rose from the ashes of a financial system that misused the trust placed in it, this document is here to remind us that the goal is to build systems that remove the middleman and still allow people to cooperate.
Naturally, the current state of crypto infrastructure is far from such ideals; wherever you go, blockchains and their dApps rely on centralized middlemen. All of this is usually swept under the rug, and the only time outrage ensues is when the likes of infura decide to block users from sanctioned countries.
Takeaway: Whether the manifesto changes anything remains to be seen. At least it's a nice marketing tool to distinguish the network from those other alt L1s.
Zcash was first mined in 2016 by a group of developers who believed that what Bitcoin lacked was privacy. Nine years later, their moment in the spotlight has come.
In the recent market bloodbath, the price of Zcash rose by 1,500% in October alone, surpassing Monero to become the top privacy coin by market cap. This comes at a time when privacy is suddenly important in crypto again, not least because governments invest heavily in surveillance.
My first reaction when seeing even Solana fan bois shilling their Zcash bags was skepticism. But there's one indication that this isn't just an artificial market manipulation act: the growing amount of shielded supply.
Shielding in Zcash refers to the act of obfuscating transaction details, requiring active engagement with the underlying protocol, which suggests genuine usage. That's not to say, it might not be coinciding with more nefarious motives...
Takeaway: This price appears to have reached levels not justified by the tech. Therefore, if you care to invest in privacy, you're better off reading a book about it, such as "Privacy is power."
Uniswap is another OG project in crypto, running a successful DEX that eventually expanded to have its own chain. Ever since they launched their UNI token, the idea has been floated around of eventually giving tokenholders a share of the network revenue. The sexy title of this idea is: fee switch, as it requires turning on protocol fees.
While simple to execute tech-wise, in the past, the proposal has been rejected and got frequently delayed for regulatory reasons, mainly the risk of UNI becoming a security. With a new administration in the White House, it appears the fee switch is now closer than ever, breathing life into the UNI token (38% rise) and hope into holders.
If this new proposal is agreed on, it'd be a big win for token holders as it'd establish a clear value accrual mechanism between the token and the success of the protocol, something that's quite rare. Estimates predict up to $150 million in potential annualized buybacks.
Takeaway: Not a bad time for Uniswap to get this over the line, as they're losing market share on L2s like Base and to Solana DeFi protocols. Either way, a win for crypto to have real value accrue to a token.
Fun Fact: Uniswap's logo is a unicorn, which is a mythical creature that became very popular in the Middle Ages. So popular that kings and queens would spend fortunes on purchasing unicorn horns. Of course, this was just a medieval fraud, and most of these supposed unicorn horns were either tusks from a walrus or a horn from a narwhal.
