Arbitrum: Arise!

The long awaited and highly anticipated Layer 2 scaling solution Arbitrum has finally released its mainnet on the Ethereum blockchain. After many months of buildup from developers and hype via cryptotwitter, this smart-contract protocol will utilize Optimistic Rollups to help process transactions on Ethereum and help decrease network congestion and the forsaken gas fees that have crippled ETH this past year. Perhaps the recent release of EIP-1559 coupled with Arbitrum will be the dual-savior to Ethereum and put an end to its scaling and mass adoption issues. One thing is certain; This release gives optimism to ETH and foreshadows its continued position as the dominant DeFi ecosystem.

Solana: Cant Stop Wont Stop

The wildly popular and rising star Solana (SOL) soared to the top of the charts this past week, gaining a collective market cap of $34 billion USD at the time of this article being written, placing this DeFi blockchain and ‘Proof of History’ (PoH can be defined as encoding time as data in a replicated state) at #8 in market cap ranking. What caused this rookie to take off like a SpaceX Rocket? Our guess is the recent return of NFT hype - Solana allows users to host, trade, and show-off their NFTs on its platform. We’ll see if Solana can keep its spot at the top, with or without NFT craze propping it up!

Metamask Hits 10 Million Active Users

The go-to DeFi wallet Metamask has reportedly hit 10 million active users in the month of August 2021. In a new press release, Metamask attributed this heroic milestone to “the rapid adoption of Ethereum smart contract technology, the continued expansion of DeFi protocols and the successful launch of its token swap solution,”. Looking back at past data, just one year ago in July 2020 Metamask hit 1 million users for the first time. This exponential yearly growth can likely be attributed to the massive increase of interest in cryptocurrency and the shifting mindset of the general public towards decentralized finance- Lets see if Metamask will be able to keep this momentum going into 2022!