[Daily] Litecoin has 100 plans

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. As Microsoft continues to defend a human-hating ChatGPT, hundreds of fake AI chatbot tokens have flooded the crypto market. Several of these tokens have millions in market cap, despite no formal association with the OG chatbot. You know what’s coming.

As of Tuesday, 8PM IST

The markets slipped into the red. Bitcoin fell as the market sentiment turned bearish. Ethereum was down as the bears pulled it below $1,700. Nasdaq fell in early trade. Back home, Sensex and Nifty ended lower ahead of the release of the US Fed minutes. 

Litecoin Perks Up

It’s been an eventful week for Litecoin. The token’s hash rate hit an all-time high, whales are active, and now there is the Ordinals buzz. Ordinals, the Bitcoin-centric NFT project, has launched on the Litecoin network. 

How’s LTC reacted?Litecoin rallied over 5% in the past week. The OG silver to Bitcoin’s gold, the token is up 40% since the start of the year. It even hit $100 in the first week of February, but slipped soon after. The current developments may help push beyond $100 once again. 

What led to it?A couple of factors have supported LTC’s rally:

1. Litecoin’s computational power or hash rate hit a new peak. The higher the hash rate, the higher is the value of LTC. It means more miners are active on the network. 

2. Whales are on buy mode which has fuelled hopes of LTC. Typically, when whales buy, other investors follow. 

3. Ordinals’ debut on Litecoin increased the use cases of the token. So far, the project stuck to Bitcoin and created over 154,000 inscriptions (NFTs basically). Ordinals on Litecoin means more transactions which makes the token valuable. 

From being just a payment token, Litecoin wants to be the one-stop shop for all crypto enthusiasts. 

Lido’s V2 Works Its Magic

Lido Finance has a lot going on. There’s the Shanghai upgrade of Ethereum plus it has its own V2 upgrade to handle. LDO rose over 18% amidst the excitement around liquid staking. 

FYI Liquid staking allows users to stake Ether while still having access to the tokens through a staked alternative. So in Ether’s case, you will get staked Ether. 

What will V2 do?The V2 upgrade will make Lido even more decentralised. Right now, Lido uses a concept where a DAO selects node operators and includes them in a smart contract. The upgrade will enable anyone to create plugins that can be attached to the main staking router system. In essence, it will bring a diverse set of validators into the ecosystem. An increase in the number of validators may also quicken the pace of transactions. 

Why does it matter?Lido has the largest share of staked Ether among all liquid staking protocols. Millions of staked tokens will get unstaked under Shanghai, so Lido has to process a lot of it. Plus, the regulator’s crackdown on centralised staking means more tokens will flow into Lido.  

The Rise Of Modular Blockchain

What are some consistent issues that keep popping up with different blockchains? The lack of proper decentralisation and the lack of interoperability. Even between large blockchain projects. Some entities that enable these transactions have collapsed. And others might follow. So what is the solution? Modular blockchains. 

Ok. But what is it?It is blockchain architecture that separates data and processing elements. The data, transaction processing and consensus processing are separate. These functions exist in modules that can come from different parties and then link together. Achieving true decentralisation. 

On the riseMany interoperable solutions are now available. Ones to watch out for this year:

• THORchain’s RUNE token

• Threshold, launching in Q1 2023

• Omnichain portability protocol LayerZero

• Celestia, a modular consensus and data network

The Metaverse Privacy Nightmare

The perception of privacy is an evolving concept. The metaverse is set to overhaul how we look at it today. But getting there is not easy. And new research suggests it may well be impossible. 

Major findingsThe study looked at 2.5 million anonymised VR data recordings. With only 100 seconds of data, over 50,000 players of the Beat Saber app could be uniquely identified with more than 94% accuracy. 

Digital fingerprints everywhereThe big issue with the metaverse is that there are so many touchpoints. So many places that users interact with. AR, VER, XR (Extended reality) devices are collecting a host of data. This makes it nearly impossible to know what data is getting collected where. And with each movement of your hand, eyes, and even brain potentially recorded, there’s no telling how all this data will be processed. The time to figure out privacy protections is now. 

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