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⌐◪-◪ → Ethereum developers plan to roll out the much-anticipated Dencun upgrade in less than 24 hours!

The core upgrade here is EIP-4844 proto-danksharding, which uses “blobs” as a new way for rollups to post transaction data. This upgrade alone could reduce scaling network fees by up to 75%.

Another major addition is EIP-1153 Transient Storage, which allows storage to be used only for the duration of a transaction — which enables cleaner smart contracts, saves gas, and simplifies the EVM design.

Those are the main upgrades, but if you want a full breakdown check out this thread from Cygaar.

Fun Fact: “Dencun” is a blend of Cancun and Daneb, to commemorate two separate upgrades merged as one.

⌐◪-◪ → Grayscale wants the SEC’s permission to launch a Bitcoin “mini” trust under the ticker “BTC”.

The mini will have lower fees and will be seeded by a percentage of GBTC shares. This means existing GBTC investors would benefit from a lower total blended fees without having to pay capital gains for transferring funds.

This move comes after Grayscale’s trading volume dropped to its lowest point on Friday, while its competitors BlackRock and Fidelity accounted for 69% of daily volume.

This is clearly an attempt to stop losing funds to competitors by lowering fees. I just don’t understand why it requires a new “mini” fund, instead of just lowering fees directly in the main fund.

I’m sure there’s a good reason, and it probably has something to do with GBTCs origins as a trust (pre-ETF conversion), but right now that reason isn’t clear to me.

One thing is clear though, low fees are a deciding factor for investors. Shocker.

⌐◪-◪ → The legendary MMORPG MapleStory just announced a partnership with Ava Labs, and plans to launch “MapleStory N” on a dedicated Avalanche subnet.

Their parent company, Nexon, is the largest game studio in Korea, and they just committed $100M to leverage blockchain technology to expand their franchise to web3.

The company has already seen massive success with mobile games, generating over $600M in cumulative sales from their recent mobile game “MapleStory M”.

For context: the team migrated to Avalanche from Polygon, citing the network’s security and previous success onboarding web3 games.

With 20+ years of experience building games for their die-hard fanbase, MapleStory N could very well end up being the most successful web3 game of all time.

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