Ep. 97: So, What Did I Miss? (Weekly News)

Oct 26

Recorded live on 𝕏 Spaces October 25th, 2023

I'm back after a busy period of travel and ecosystem development! I waste no time diving into the recent crypto market pump, the GC meeting minutes, major milestones and metrics, the need for hype, some exciting technical updates, a deep dive into Hedera's tokenomics, domains and the breakthrough Hedera WalletConnect SDK coming soon!

Tune in live on 𝕏 Spaces Wednesdays at 12pm ET / 9am PT for the weekly news. Recordings available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube and other major platforms the following day.

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Top Stories of The Week

1. Bitcoin Wakes up Leading a Pump
A chain of events was set off on the evening of October 23rd which lead to a spot ETF being listed on the DTCC website, Bitcoin price surging to $35k, the SEC suing BlackRock, the ETF being removed from the DTCC website before ultimately being listed again. It's clear there is incredible excitement surrounding spot BTC ETFs, but the question is where does Hedera and HBAR come into all of this?

2. Questions Swirl Regarding GC Pipeline
The September 2023 meeting minutes for the Hedera governing council have been approved and published. Inside were details regarding strategy for 2024 but most interestingly, details regarding a $50k (worth of HBAR) reward to folks who can successfully onboard a new governing council member. It's been made clear that there is a healthy pipeline, but this new bounty reward surprised the Hedera community. You can see the full minutes here.

3. 25 Billion Transaction Milestone
The Hedera mainnet hit a considerable milestone of 25 billion transactions and we got some cool numbers to review. Although HCS represents 99% of transactions, it only accounts for 83% of revenue, meaning there is real growth in HTS and HSCS. We also got some exciting projections from Shayne, CEO of the HBAR Foundation during the HBAR Foundry live interview including Rob Allen. Bottom line, Hedera has 10x revenue year over year... impressive!

4. Messari ""State of Hedera"" Q3 Report
The Hedera network reports 67% of HBAR in circulation due to rapid growth. Market capitalization rose 8%, and revenue hit $1 million, a 29% increase. Daily active addresses dropped 38% to 8.5k, but transactions surged 37% to 98.7 million. DeFi value grew 28%, and NFT addresses jumped 161% to 1.3k. However, crypto and HSCS transactions fell 41%. Daily active smart contracts peaked at 158 in Q1 2023 but averaged 94 by Q3. DEX volume increased 16%. You can read the full report here.

5. The Need for Hashgraph Hype
We've got TVL, TVR but what about FUN? The infamous slogan of Hedera reads ""all substance, no hype"", but in a bear market it's dumb to assume we don't need hype. Times have changed, lessons have been learned and it's clear that for Hedera to survive as a network and attract retail adoption, more effort needs to be made by Hedera and the community to raise awareness of exciting things happening in the ecosystem. It's time to switch things up and have some fun!

6. Smart Contract Verification & ChatGPT
The Hedera network offers the HashScan tool to verify if a smart contract's bytecode matches its source files. This verification boosts trust, detects vulnerabilities, ensures post-deployment integrity, meets regulatory standards, and simplifies user interactions. Also, the Hedera GPT plugin was updated to support new queries like NFT mints, TPS and the holdings of a particular account.

7. Stablecoin Studio Analytics
Live on testnet is a new analytics dashboard for activity regarding the Hedera Stablecoin Studio, a breakthrough service leveraging HTS and smart contracts with an ecosystem of banks, oracles and reserve management. This dashboard will offer transparency to the community and a demo can be found via Brady's recent post on X.

8. A Deeper Look at Hedera Tokenomics
A fascinating video has emerged in the community outlining a new equation that can be used to help predict the price of HBAR. The video delves into Hedera's tokenomics, explaining how the treasury, foundation, nodes, and various factors like velocity and circulating supply influence the price and utility of HBAR, with projections indicating a focus on transaction volume and network growth by 2025. Watch the video here.

9. Hedera Domain Dillema Continues
For an open, free market in the Hedera domain ecosystem, an objective community managed entity would be required to administer the repository of domains. With one provider controlling this registry, it raises many challenges for the Hedera domain ecosystem and will ultimately lead to further fragmentation. A great example is: imagine if GoDaddy controlled the repository of Web2 domains? How do you think healthy competition would survive? It's why we have ICANN in the web2 world, so lets help educate each other! I share my thoughts on this episode.

10. Hedera WalletConnect SDK is Coming
In an exciting update that took the Hedera community by storm, leading Hedera wallet providers are jointly developing the reference implementations (library/SDK) of the official Hedera WalletConnect spec as a working group. I talk about my involvement in this initiative and share my excitement regarding the impact this will have for the entire ecosystem! View the announcement.