Fork yes

Gm, degens. You know things are getting dire in the crypto markets when companies start betting on BTS NFTs to get them through crypto winter. The parent company of South Korean exchange Upbit is focusing on a joint NFT venture with the entertainment agency behind the K-pop group. Now if only the BTS Army would start buying…

Today: Cardano’s major upgrade, Gavin Newsom's veto, and yet another bankruptcy. Let’s get into it.

—Vincent & Angelina

May the Fork Be With You

Last Thursday, Cardano’s much anticipated Vasil hard fork finally went live after months of delays. And it went fan-forking-tastic.

Vasil is the second major blockchain upgrade to take place this month following Ethereum’s Merge in mid-September. Like the Merge for Ethereum, Vasil is being touted as a windfall of enhancements for Cardano.

Some of the biggest changes for Cardano post-Vasil:

• Upgraded scripting language. Cardano moved from Plutus Core to Plutus V2, making it possible for Cardano devs to write smart contracts with less code. Bonus: Plutus V2 also means reduced transaction fees and more efficient DApps.

• Diffusion pipelining. This improves block propagation time (the time it takes for newly published blocks to be shared with the entire Cardano network). The faster blocks are shared, the higher network throughput.

• Faster block validation. This enhances system performance without compromising security.

Big picture: Vasil significantly improves network performance, functionality, and scalability. The five-day hard fork process ends today, giving developers full access to Cardano’s new capabilities nearly a week after the initial upgrade.

The Cardano community was stoked for the hard fork and celebrated it as a major success. Leading up to Vasil, marketing intelligence platform Santiment recorded a spike in social media chatter about the network.

What’s next? Much like the Merge, Vasil involves a lot of wait and see—the promises are big, but it’s all about followthrough. Still, there’s reason for optimism: Vasil is good news for 1) developing DeFi projects running on Cardano because it makes smart contracts more efficient and cost effective and 2) minting NFTs on the Cardano chain now that the network is less congested.

Up next for Cardano: the 2023 launch of Hydra, a layer 2 protocol set to drastically increase Cardano’s scalability and interoperability. —Angelina

Newsom Scores a Win for Crypto

California: where jacked actors become governors, distinct seasons aren’t really a thing, and politicians are actually open to crypto. Or so it seems…

Last Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed what he called a “premature” crypto regulation and licensing bill that would have considerably hamstrung California’s crypto industry. The bill, which passed the California State Assembly and Senate last month before Newsom shut it down, would have…

• Created an even stricter licensing regime for anyone wishing to facilitate crypto transactions.

• Required California-based entities to limit interactions to bank-issued stablecoins only.

• Forced stablecoin issuers to be fully backed by reserves.

Newsom vetoed the bill, claiming that “a more flexible approach is needed to ensure regulatory oversight” and adding that California should “remain a competitive place for companies to invest and innovate.”

A win for crypto: Newsom’s veto was welcomed by the crypto community, which feared that the oversight bill would be California’s version of New York's stifling BitLicense regime.

Zoom out: California’s stance on crypto deserves special attention given its influential role in the national crypto economy—one-fourth of all blockchain businesses in North America are California-based. As a hub for technological innovation, the Golden State’s future crypto regulation is bound to influence global regulatory trends. —Angelina

Compute North’s Business Goes South

Compute North became the first major crypto miner to file for bankruptcy last week.

Zoom out: While the crypto industry has concentrated on crypto lenders imploding, numerous miners are facing financial constraints. Mining profits have been squeezed by rising mining difficulty, a global energy shortage, and the crypto bear market.

For Compute North, the icing on the bankruptcy cake was the breakdown of its relationship with its biggest lender, Generate Capital. Generate seized some of Compute North's assets and rolled back funding, citing "technical events of default."

The bankruptcy has been weighing on shares of other mining firms that used Compute North for hosting as investors try to guess what happens next. —Vincent

In other news:

• The CFTC’s action against Ooki DAO raises a key question: Can you be held liable for voting in a DAO?

• China arrested 93 individuals for alleged crypto laundering, busting what it claims was a $5.6 billion laundering ring.

• A Chinese university has created a metaverse major.

• The cofounder of failed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX has launched a DeFi lending protocol.

• FIFA releases NFTs ahead of the World Cup.

And that’s what you need on your crypto radar today. We hope you give yourself permission to dance this week and tune back in on Friday for more Coinsider Radar. See ya!