As we enter Week 4 of year 2021 you are probably asking yourself what to expect of this week. In times where Bitcoin is still slowly recovering from its sub-$30,000 plunge and Ether seems to have topped out at around $1,400 there are seemingly not so many investment opportunities. However, in reality, you do not have to scroll too far down the list of top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization to find some projects that are set to benefit from the increased attention and updates deployed this week.
1. ChainLink (LINK)
ChainLink provides data and price oracles, which are essential for the normal function of smart contract-enabled blockchain platforms. ChainLink’s price and real-world data oracles have seen numerous implementations and their popularity is still increasing. Their oracles are one of the most reliable and trustworthy and the connection with smart contracts is end-to-end secured, leaving very little space for the manipulation of the execution of smart contracts. The platform incentivises providers of good data feeds while the nodes that submit bad data will see their staked LINK tokens slashed. The project launched in 2017, when it also raised $32 million of funding through an ICO. The ChainLink mainnet went live on May 30, 2019 and the network’s native LINK token has a total supply of 1 billion tokens. ChainLink is developing a framework, that would allow developers to build customized decentralized oracles.
Largest Crypto Asset Manager Has Eyes on ChainLink
According to documents published by Bizapedia, Grayscale has filed six new Trust filings in recent months. The leaked filings show that the largest crypto asset manager is eying Chainlink, Decentraland, Filecoin, Livepeer, Tezos, and Basic Attention Token. Neither Grayscale nor Chainlink have made any comment let alone confirmed the alleged ‘Grayscale Chainlink Trust’ product, but the idea does not seem so far-fetched. The news come shortly after LINK, the native token of the world’s largest oracle service, surged towards its new all-time high price last week. The speculations regarding the Grayscale’s Chainlink Trust have caused LINK to further surge, pushing its all-time high price further up above $25.70 on January 25. If Greyscale decides to launch a Chainlink trust, it will likely work in a similar manner than the existing crypto trusts, where the asset manager holds a fixed amount of coins or token per the trust’s share. Such fund would allow accredited investors to purchase LINK via regulated OTC brokers in the U.S. and likely provide enough fuel to trigger a new LINK rally. Some industry insiders speculate that Grayscale could push the LINK price to $100 shortly. That would also quadruple LINK’s total market capitalization, which currently stands at $9.4 billion.
2. Cosmos (ATOM)
Cosmos is developing a network of blockchains that would facilitate the interoperability of multiple, otherwise incompatible, blockchain applications and cryptocurrencies. The scalable blockchain network built for developers had grown from a small ICO into a thriving ecosystem. The network’s native cryptocurrency ATOM has a market capitalization just shy of $1.7 billion.
Cosmos Community to Conclude Voting on the Stargate Upgrade
The Cosmos team are currently performing the last tests and optimisations of the upgrade of their platform while Cosmos validators and delegators are soon set to conclude the voting on the proposal related to the Cosmos Hub upgrade. Voting began on January 12 at 3:16:59 UTC, meaning that the 14-day voting period ends on January 26 at 3:16:59 UTC. If the outcome of the vote is affirmative, Cosmoshub-3 will be upgraded to Cosmoshub-4 (also called Stargate) on January 28 at 06:00 UTC. The current tally results along with the link to the GitHub repository link can be accessed here.
3. Tezos (XTZ)
Launched in September 2018, following an initial coin offering that raised $232 million in 2017, Tezos is a decentralized smart contract and application network that utilizes a proof-of-stake consensus model. The Tezos protocol has three main layers: the network layer, the transaction layer, and the consensus layer. Tezos also features an on-chain governance system allowing holders to take part in the decision-making process. What makes Tezos blockchain stand out among other similar blockchains is its efficient network upgrade process as the protocol allows major upgrades to be implemented without having to undergo a hard fork.
Tezos Announced a new DAO Framework
On January 21, Tezos project announced the launch of Homebase, a new project that allows Tezos (XTZ) users to easily set up and interact with decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). The platform, which allows anyone to establish a community governance structure on Tezos. The initial release of Homebase included two DAO templates; the TreasuryDAO, which facilitates the creation and decentralized management of a community treasury and the RegistryDAO, which allows users to govern arbitrary smart contracts, such as parameter governance in a DeFi protocol. Homebase is built on a new DAO framework called BaseDAO, which will allow users to create and finetune DAOs so that they are optimized for the decentralized governance of resources, registries, and/or rules. In response to the announcement, the price of Tezos surged from a local low of $2.40 on January 22 to as high as $3.40 on January 23. However, XTZ has since faced a slight correction and is currently trading around $3.00. Nevertheless, in addition to the DAO platform announcement, Tezos is one of the six cryptocurrencies rumoured to have a shot at being featured in its own Greyscale Trust. Furthermore, Tezos developers are currently working on the next protocol upgrade that could boost XTZ price further up. Among other things, the upgrade dubbed “Edo”, is set to bring Zcash-like privacy features to Tezos.
