1. Berlin hard fork goes live on Ethereum

The Facts:

• The Berlin hard fork went live at block no. 12’244’000 on April 15.
• The hard fork includes four Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs 2565, 2929, 2718, and 2930), with changes to gas costs and new transaction types.
• The launch caused an issue with OpenEthereum nodes, which has since been resolved.

Why it’s important:

• The Berlin hard fork includes technical upgrades that change the gas cost of some operations and potentially makes the network more resilient to denial-of-service attacks.
• This was the last hard fork before the highly anticipated London hard fork (expected in summer), which includes EIP-1559.

2. Coinbase shares start trading on Nasdaq

The Facts:

• Coinbase shares started trading under the ticker COIN on Nasdaq on April 14.
• After an initial rise above $400, COIN ended the trading session at a price of $328.28, implying a market capitalization of $85 billion.
• ARK Investment Management has purchased $246 million worth of shares on the day of listing.

Why it’s important:

• The listing of Coinbase shares on Nasdaq marks the first time that a major crypto company is traded and valued on the open market.
• It also brings further attention to the crypto space, and interest from institutions continues to rise at an unparalleled pace.

3. Gary Gensler confirmed as SEC Chairman

The Facts:

• Gary Gensler was proposed to head the SEC in January of this year.
• The U.S. Senate has now confirmed Gary Gensler as Chairman of the SEC on April 14. Gary Gensler is well-versed in the area of digital assets and blockchain and has taught classes on the subject at MIT.
• In other news from the SEC, commissioner Hester Peirce has also unveiled a revised version of the “safe harbor” proposal, which would provide a three-year grace period to token sales under certain conditions.

Why it’s important:

• With an expert on digital assets as the Chairman, the SEC seems well equipped to bring the space forward and provide regulatory guidelines that further clarify open legal questions.
• The crypto community has closely followed developments at the SEC, since the regulatory status of tokens as securities or not may have wide reaching market impacts on those tokens.

4. ConsenSys raises $65 million from JP Morgan, UBS, Mastercard and more

The Facts:

• In a recent funding round, ConsenSys, an Ethereum blockchain solutions provider, has raised $65 million from investors such as JP Morgan or Mastercard.
• Among the contributors are also crypto-native names such as the Maker Foundation, Protocol Labs, or Alameda Research.
• ConsenSys supports various Ethereum projects and is the company behind brand names such as MetaMask or Infura.

Why it’s important:

• This latest seed round highlights that traditional finance companies are actively exploring and engaging in the crypto space.
• With the additional funding, ConsenSys can accelerate its mission to build out Ethereum infrastructure and applications, which in turn should further improve stability and user experience on Ethereum.

5. DeFi growth: Compound breaches $10 billion TVL

The Facts:

• Compound became the first DeFi protocol to surpass $10 billion in total value locked.
• Total value locked across DeFi protocols is closing in on $60 billion.
• The DeFi ecosystem constantly grows, last week through the addition of Liquity, a decentralized borrowing protocol.

Why it’s important:

• After the initial hype in the “DeFi summer” of 2020, the total value locked in DeFi protocols continued to grow at an astounding pace.
• With protocols deploying their layer 2 solutions on Ethereum (or plans to do so in the near future), it will be interesting to see whether low-fee DeFi interactions can further vitalize the space.

In other News:

• VanEck launches new digital-asset companies focused ETF (via The Block)
• Grayscale tops $50 billion, on track to pass largest commodity ETFs (via Cointelegraph)
• Over 10’000 blacklisted BTC from Bitfinex hack on the move (via Cointelegraph)