Gas Prices In today’s post we are going to take a look at what gas prices are on a network such as Ethereum (ETH). Gas powers the transactions and is how you pay your transaction fees, so it is important to understand them beyond just a couple of numbers that somehow work out to a price, as you can employ strategies to help minimize your costs. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance…
The Lightning Network In today’s post, we are going to take a look at the Lightning Network, a layer 2 blockchain technology that aims to become the payment network for cryptos such as Bitcoin (BTC). The goal is to provide faster and cheaper transactions than can be achieved on the underlying blockchain. https://lightning.network/ https://ninjawingnut.xyz/category/crypto/blockchain/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial…
Ethereum Fee Burn (EIP-1559) In today’s article, I am going to explore the upcoming change to the Ethereum (ETH) network that will bring a number of changes to the way transaction fees work. It is a pretty big change, and has a number of moving parts to it, beyond just the adding of a burn. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day job is as a telecommunications software…
Vampire Attacks The topic for today’s post is going to be vampire attacks. These are an interesting event that occurs in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) when one protocol drains liquidity from another. These are not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s definitely something to understand what is happening before you dive into one. https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/06/22/defi/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day job is as a…
Ethereum 2.0 For today’s topic, I am going to explore Ethereum (ETH) and the upcoming changes to it’s network that make up the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. These changes are set to solve a number of issues that the Ethereum (ETH) network suffers from. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day job is as a telecommunications software engineer. Treat everything you read here as…
Thorchain The topic for today is going to be Thorchain, a Decentralized Exchange (DEX) that allows for doing swaps between different native cryptocurrencies. And it does it without the use of a wrapped version of the cryptos, it does it directly across the blockchains. https://thorchain.org/ https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/05/26/cex-vs-dex/ https://ninjawingnut.xyz/category/crypto/blockchain/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance…
The Graph Today’s article is going to explore The Graph, which provides an indexing protocol for blockchains. It provides a way to search data that is stored in the ledger quickly, without having to rely on a centralized solution like Etherscan. https://thegraph.com/ https://ninjawingnut.xyz/category/crypto/blockchain/ https://etherscan.io/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day job is as a telecommunications…
Binance Smart Chain (BSC) For today’s post I am going to take a look at the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), a smart contract enabled blockchain that is modelled after Ethereum’s. It offers greater transaction throughput, and cheaper gas prices, but does sacrifice some things like decentralization. https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/06/01/smart-contracts/ https://ninjawingnut.xyz/category/crypto/blockchain/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/…
Flash Loans Today I am taking a look at a flash loans, a feature in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) that lets people borrow very large sums of crypto, for very short periods of time. https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/06/22/defi/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day job is as a telecommunications software engineer. Treat everything you read here as some educational resources and not financial advice. What Are Flash Loans…
Iron Finance Today we are going to take a look at what happened with Iron Finance, and why the events that played out mirror a bank run in the traditional finance world. For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day job is as a telecommunications software engineer. Treat everything you read here as some educational resources and not financial advice. Preface To start, I am not writing about this to knock the developers,…
Chainlink Today I am going to explore Chainlink, a blockchain service that allows a Decentralized Application (DApp) to get real world data from a decentralized oracle service, instead of needing to rely on a centralized solution in order to get access to that data. https://chain.link/ https://ninjawingnut.xyz/category/crypto/blockchain/ https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/06/15/decentralized-applications/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work…
DeFi Derivatives For today’s article I am going to take a look at what derivatives are and how they handled in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) world. These are relatively the same as their centralized counterparts, but of course with all of the perks of being decentralized. https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/06/22/defi/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day job is as a telecommunications software engineer. Treat…
DeFi Money Markets Today I am going to take a look at how money markets work in Decentralized Finance (DeFi). These are the places you can borrow and lend crypto and either make returns or pay interest, depending on which side of that line you find yourself. https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/06/22/defi/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day job is as a telecommunications software engineer. Treat everything you read…
Ampleforth The topic of today’s post is the Ampleforth (AMPL) token, a very interesting algorithmic stablecoin. It uses an interesting elastic supply mechanic as it’s method of rebasing to maintain it’s peg. There is even community governance, so it’s a pretty interesting project. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ampleforth/ https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/06/10/stablecoins/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day…
Why Is DeFi Expensive In a previous article, I talked about gas prices, I talked a little bit about what determines how much gas you pay for a transaction. Earlier today, I was talking to a friend, who was complaining about needing to pay $5 in gas to withdraw from a position on Pancake Bunny, and I realized I didn’t really go very deep on why certain things take so much gas to do on the network. And I know all you Ethereum users just started laughing at me for complaining…
Sushi Today I am taking a look at Sushi, a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol that is more than just a DEX. It has a number of interested features kicking about the platform, and I think it’s worth taking a look at just what they have to offer. https://www.sushi.com/ https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/06/22/defi/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial advisor, I don’t even work in finance at all. My day job is as a telecommunications software engineer. Treat everything…
Layer 2 Scaling For today’s article, I am going to take a closer look at layer 2 scaling. I’ve mentioned it a number of times in previous articles, as one of the ways to help increase transaction speeds and lower costs, but I’ve never really dived into what it actually means, or talked about any of the real examples of it, other than when I talked about The Lightning Network. https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/07/02/lightning-network/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a…
Polygon Commit Chain In yesterday’s article about Layer 2 Scaling, I eluded to the fact that Polygon uses it’s own flavor of the plasma framework, and today I am going to explore that a little deeper, because it’s becoming quite a large player, and I think it’s important to understand how some of the core functionality works. https://ninjawingnut.xyz/2021/07/29/layer-2-scaling/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/polygon/ For the usual disclosure, I am not a financial…
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