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While traditional polls missed the market, Polymarket had accurately predicted Trump’s election.
But it didn’t go unnoticed. Yesterday, FBI raided Polymarket’s founder Shayne Coplan’s home yesterday, seizing his phone and electronics.
It’s giving serious political payback vibes. A lot of people are theorizing it’s a final FU by the democrats.
But Shayne isn’t shaken. Like a true crypto founder, he’s back to shitposting on X with a new phone.
Here’s what we got today:
- Beam chain. What you need to know about Ethereum’s new plan.
- Profit taking 101. A simple system for you to follow.
- Around the web. Polymer Labs released an IBC-like solution for Ethereum rollups, Espresso launched its mainnet, and more.
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Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
Update
Beam Chain: Justin Drake’s New Plan for Ethereum
The room was packed. At DevCon, the annual Ethereum Developer Conference, this was THE TALK everyone was buzzing about.
Justin Drake, one of Ethereum’s top researchers, was about to reveal a new roadmap he’d teased as his “most ambitious initiative” yet. Expectations were sky-high, almost electric. The organizers even seemed a little nervous about crowd control.
But as Justin wrapped up, reactions were mixed. Some were excited, others left wanting more.
So, what happened? Justin’s talk introduced Beam Chain, a new consensus layer for Ethereum, built with zero-knowledge (ZK) technology.
If you’re confused by this nerdspeak, here’s the simple version: Ethereum has two layers — the Execution Layer, where transactions are processed, and the Consensus Layer, which secures the network and ensures the truth is agreed on.
With Beam Chain, Justin aims to upgrade Ethereum’s Consensus Layer. While the technical details get quite dense, here are the key benefits for users:
- Faster confirmations: Transaction confirmations could be reduced to just 4 seconds from the current 12s.
- Decentralization boost: Beam Chain would maintain or even improve Ethereum’s decentralization.
- Reduced extraction by bots: Certain bots that extract value from users (reorg-based MEV) would be removed.
- Lower staking requirements: The minimum ETH required to stake could drop from 32 ETH to just 1 ETH. This makes staking more accessible.
- Quantum resistance: Beam Chain would make Ethereum resistant to quantum computing threats—future-proofing Ethereum for decades to come.
For nerds who want even more details, you can check out Justin’s presentation here. He also shared a clear timeline for achieving this vision, aiming for a 2029 rollout.
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Criticism and Responses
The presentation wasn’t without its critics. Sifting through the noise on X, two main concerns have emerged:
#1. Timing. Justin’s plan is going to take about five years to finish. Many people consider this to be too slow. You know we all have extreme A.D.D.
Justin’s response? The five-year timeline is a conservative estimate. If things go smoothly, they can ship it faster.
#2. Priority. Ethereum isn’t taking the risk of Solana eating its lunch seriously. If ETH wants to compete with Solana, it has to become faster and cheaper. But the Ethereum Foundation isn’t doing that.
That being said, this is largely a criticism of the Ethereum Foundation as a whole, not just Justin’s talk. His roadmap was focused on optimizing a single component of the roadmap, the consensus layer.
And there are several plans to improve Ethereum as a whole as well:
- Ethereum researchers do agree that improving Layer 1 (L1) is important. (But development on Ethereum is still way slower than on Solana.)
- Ethereum’s biggest problem is fragmentation. The solution is already here. It’ll be adopted in 2025.
- Preconfirmations and based rollups are on the way. They’ll add more value to Ethereum L1 validators.
- For a full look at Ethereum’s development plans, Vitalik has shared a six-part blog series covering the entire roadmap. Read it here.
At the end of the day, this presentation didn’t change any minds overnight. ETH bulls, already sold on Ethereum’s L2 vision, are now likely even more bullish, while ETH bears on X are even more bearish.
Right now, everyone’s kinda upset that ETH’s price action lately. ETH’s price has been lagging behind Bitcoin and Solana by quite a bit. And a 5 year timeline seems slow.
But with billions and billions of dollars on the line, you can’t “move fast and break things”.
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Guide
Taking Profits in the Bull Market
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I’ve been through several cycles by now. The #1 mistake I’ve seen people make is they don’t take profits.
At some point, the party stops. You want to end the cycle with actualy money, and not just “screenshot gains.” So, how do you actually take profits?
Here are some guidelines to help you create your own system.
1. Don’t try to time the top. No one, I mean no one can time the top. I don’t give a shit if you think Coinbase app hitting #1 in the app store is the top. You can dollar cost average out. Once you feel the market’s getting too hot, you can start cashing out month by month into fiat or stablecoins.
2. Take profits into majors and stables. Taking profits and putting it into a high risk memecoin isn’t taking profits my guy.
3. Creating formulas. I’m a huge fan of following formulas. It keeps it simple because you’re not relying on your emotions.
I created a few examples below.
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We all have a different risk profile. So, you have to experiment and figure out what works for you.
Oh one more tip, I’m far more aggressive earlier in the cycle (like right now). It means I take profits later. Whereas later on in the cycle, I become more conservative.
Profit-taking is about making gains real and staying in the game long-term. Remember, the bull market rewards the disciplined just as much as the daring.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Pendle introduced Boros, previously known as Pendle v3. It’ll enable yield trading on funding rates.
Zerion Wallet introduced free transactions on their L2, ZERϴ Network. The L2 has a built-in spam defense called Onchain DNA.
Spark relaunched as the first star of the Sky ecosystem (previously MakerDAO). They are deploying scalable liquidity and yield in DeFi.
Peaq, an L1 purposely built and optimized for DePINs and machine RWA, has launched the $PEAQ staking feature.
Pear Protocol has released a new intent-based product. It’ll give fee rebates in $ETH and automatically add Intent-based fees to the staking pool.
PayPal USD (PYUSD) integrated with LayerZero to connect across chains. It enables seamless PYUSD interaction between Ethereum and Solana.
M^0 Foundation is expanding $M to the Base chain. They’ll be using Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT) framework.
PancakeSwap teased a new feature allowing users to swap directly from their messaging app.
Taiko is now secured by multi-proofs. They’ve implemented multiple Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proofs powered by Risc Zero and Succinct Labs.
mETH Protocol has announced rewards for $COOK holders. The rewards will be given in $cmETH.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
XION, a wallet-less L1 blockchain aiming for mainstream adoption, has released its airdrop allocation checker.
WalletConnect has announced that the WalletConnect Token ($WCT) claim and stake will go live on November 26th.
Pell Network and Core DAO have announced a testnet campaign. Users can earn Core Ignition Sparks and Pell Airdrop Points (PAP).
🚀 New Launches
Polymer Labs has launched the Polymer Hub Mainnet. Similar to IBC on Cosmos, it’ll enable real-time rollup interoperability for Ethereum.
Espresso Systems launched their mainnet. It’s a shared sequencer for rollups that’ll allow rollups that opt-in to interoperate like a fast single chain.
Rome Protocol released their testnet. It uses Solana as the shared sequencer for L2s. It makes Solana and ETH ecosystem transactions composable.
Argent, a smart wallet on StarkNet, launched the Argent Card. It is now in the alpha phase. General access will be live in 2025.
Avara, the parent company behind Aave and Lens, launched a new wallet application called Family. It has many user-friendly features.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Where are we in the crypto cycle?
- Insider secrets of memecoin cabals.
- Avoid these emotional traps of the bull market.
- Solana market structures enable products only possible on Solana.
- A list of the top signals to watch out for in the future.
😂 Meme
