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Jeff Benson

Jeff Benson

Jeff worked full-time at Decrypt from 2020 to 2022. He has also had bylines in Digital Privacy News, Sunset, and Via magazine.

Stories by Jeff Benson

  • crypto-trading c Rodrigo Martinez/Decrypt 2022

    What is Proof of Stake? How it Differs From Proof of Work

    Mining cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin is an energy-intensive business. But it doesn’t have to be. Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin and Litecoin, secure their networks using the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. An alternative consensus mechanism used by cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum is called proof-of-stake (PoS), which radically reduces the blockchain’s carbon footprint. In this article we’ll explore what consensus mechanisms are, and how proof-of-stake differs fr...

  • Image: Shutterstock

    Vitalik Buterin Has an NFT Collection? Quadratic Funding Drop Pulls In Millions

    Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin is a Web3 luminary, so word today of an NFT collection featuring his apparent stamp of approval has set Crypto Twitter ablaze—and led to surging sales of the NFTs to the tune of several million dollars' worth. The NFT collection, which celebrates Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin’s contributions to a popular Web3 funding model, was created by Metalabel in collaboration with Web3 funding platform Gitcoin. The open edition mint launched on March 1, but NFT traders m...

    NewsNFTs
    4 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Gitcoin Founder Kevin Owocki. Image: MCON 2021

    Gitcoin Co-Founder Kevin Owocki Unveils ReFi Incubator Supermodular

    Kevin Owocki is something of a celebrity at ETHDenver, the Web3 hackathon and conference taking place this week in Colorado’s capital. Now the Gitcoin co-founder and erstwhile CEO is using the event to go public with his latest venture: Supermodular. Supermodular aims to be a venture studio for regenerative Web3 projects. Whereas millions of people lassoed onto decentralized finance during crypto’s bull market, Supermodular wants to focus instead on regenerative finance projects. Popularized by...

    NewsBusiness
    3 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • crypto-trading c Rodrigo Martinez/Decrypt 2022

    What Is a Decentralized Exchange (DEX)?

    A decentralized exchange or DEX is a place where people can go to trade cryptocurrencies without an intermediary. To better identify what a decentralized exchange is, it’s important to first understand how centralized exchanges work. How Do Centralized Exchanges Work? A centralized exchange such as Binance or Coinbase is a site or app where people can buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrencies and tokens listed on that exchange. Let’s say you want to buy some Bitcoin. You can go to an exchange, sign u...

    Courses
    6 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is a set of financial services built using smart contracts.

    What Is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?

    Decentralized finance has been touted as a possible solution to lowering the barrier of entry for those who struggled to access bank accounts. And more recently, it's being utilized by cryptocurrency owners for another purpose: to make more money. But isn’t all of crypto decentralized finance, anyway? Sort of. The DeFi movement refers to a specific genre of financial product that champions decentralization above all else, and uses lucrative incentive mechanisms to encourage investors to play alo...

    Courses
    4 min read
    Ki Chong Tran, Matt Hussey, Jeff Benson
  • Image: Dallas Cowboys

    Blockchain.com Shopping Assets to Fill $270M Hole From Three Arrows Capital: Sources

    Blockchain.com, the early Bitcoin wallet provider and exchange that boasted a $14 billion valuation as recently as last March, has been attempting to sell off assets in a scramble for capital.  Decrypt has learned from multiple sources of calls in December and January on which Blockchain.com senior executives have shopped parts of its business, including to Coinbase. Decrypt has also seen a private email setting up one of these calls. A spokesperson for Blockchain.com denied that such calls have...

    NewsBusiness
    7 min read
    Daniel Roberts, Jeff Benson, Stacy Jones
  • bitcoin-blockchain-secure rodrigo martinez

    What Makes the Bitcoin Blockchain Secure?

    Name a company, and, odds are, it’s been hacked. With 71% of hacks being financially motivated, it begs the question: Can the Bitcoin network be hacked, too? After all, it’s a tempting target. We never like to say never at Decrypt, but the answer is: pretty much no. Indeed, Bitcoin has proven remarkably resilient to shocks and stresses throughout its history. And while crypto exchanges have been hacked with depressing frequency, and their stores of Bitcoin redistributed, actually compromising an...

    Courses
    4 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • COMPUTER NETWORK c. Rodrigo Martinez/Decrypt

    What Is Aave? Inside the DeFi Lending Protocol

    Aave is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that lets people lend and borrow cryptocurrencies and real-world assets (RWAs) without having to go through a centralized intermediary. When they lend, they earn interest; when they borrow, they pay interest. Aave was originally built atop the Ethereum network, with all the tokens on the network also using the Ethereum blockchain to process transactions; they are known as ERC20 tokens. Aave has since expanded to other chains, including Avalanche, F...

  • Ethereum. Image: Shutterstock

    Ethereum Merge Coming in August 'If Everything Goes to Plan': Core Dev

    Don't get your hopes up too much, but Ethereum's move to proof of stake could be in the cards for this summer. Ethereum core developer Preston Van Loon told a panel at the Permissionless conference today that there's momentum behind finalizing the move in the next three months. "As far as we know, if everything goes to plan, August—it just makes sense," said Van Loon. "If we don't have to move [the difficulty bomb], let's do it as soon as we can." Ethereum Foundation Justin Drake, also on the pa...

    NewsCoins
    4 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Avoiding the crash. Image: Shutterstock

    The Big 'Winner' From the Crypto Crash? USDC Stablecoin

    When Terra and its UST stablecoin collapsed last week in tandem with a marketwide crypto crash, things looked very shaky for crypto in general and stablecoins in particular. But the crash produced at least one winner in terms of market cap and, potentially, reputation: USDC stablecoin. As UST was headed for zero and USDT (Tether) was processing billions in redemptions, USDC was padding its market cap. At the start of the crash on May 8, USD Coin had a market capitalization between $48 billion an...

    NewsCoins
    5 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Mike Novogratz on Messari Mainnet 2021 panel

    Terra Investor Mike Novogratz Breaks Silence on UST, LUNA Collapse

    There's been one person notably absent from the conversation about the collapse of Terra's $18 billion algorithmic stablecoin and $30 billion network token, LUNA: investor Mike Novogratz. After not tweeting since May 8, right around when things started going pear-shaped for Terra, the founder and CEO of crypto investing firm Galaxy Digital today tweeted a memo to shareholders and stakeholders describing how it all fell apart.   Explained Novogratz, who typically composes one to tweets per day, "...

    NewsBusiness
    2 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Portrait of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Image: Matthew Reamer/Das Magazin/Foundation

    Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin Opens Up About 'Contradictions' in His Web3 Values

    One might expect the inventor of the world's second-largest cryptocurrency to boast about its successes. But Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is instead preoccupied figuring out how he feels about his creation, which has become the epicenter for DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs. In a Twitter thread Monday evening, Buterin lays out 10 contradictions in his values that he is mulling over—and most of them deal, directly or indirectly, with what Web3 and Ethereum should be. For one thing, Buterin admits that...

    NewsTechnology
    4 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Fork. Image: Shutterstock

    Do Kwon Wants to Fork LUNA's Blockchain to Make 'Terra Classic'

    Terra Network co-creator Do Kwon is trying to revive the fallen blockchain after its UST stablecoin de-pegged from the dollar and the LUNA governance token went from nearly $100 to fractions of a penny in a week. His most recent proposal—after Terra users debated his previous plan to redistribute tokens and abandon UST stablecoin—is to split the blockchain into two in a similar manner to Ethereum's fork from Ethereum Classic.  The proposal, made today and titled "Terra Ecosystem Revival Plan 2,"...

    NewsCoins
    4 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Heartbroken. Image: Shutterstock

    Do Kwon Says He's 'Heartbroken' Over Terra Demise

    Do Kwon is known for an aggressive social media strategy, but the Terra co-creator has been uncharacteristically silent for the past few days as the network careened into catastrophe. Today, hours after Kwon proposed a "Terra ecosystem revival plan" to the network's research forum, he returned to Twitter for the first time in two days to express sadness for how things have played out. "I am heartbroken about the pain my invention has brought on all of you," he tweeted, stating that he's spent mu...

    NewsCoins
    2 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Fire up the money printer. Image: Shutterstock

    Justin Sun Promotes High-Yield, Terra-Inspired Stablecoin on Tron

    Tron blockchain creator Justin Sun announced via Twitter today that traders can now earn rewards for depositing the network's recently launched USDD, an algorithmic stablecoin designed to work like Terra's all-but-defunct UST, to Tron-based lending protocol JustLend. For depositing USDD, they'll earn yield in both USDD and the JUST stablecoin.  JustLend is a lending protocol on Tron akin to, say, Compound on Ethereum. But whereas Compound currently offers APY rates mostly in the low single digit...

    NewsDeFi
    5 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Do Kwon in January 2021 (via Delphi Media video)

    Do Kwon Resurfaces to Propose Clean Slate for Terra—Without UST Stablecoin

    After a short absence from Twitter and social media, Terra co-creator Do Kwon emerged on Friday to propose an "ecosystem revival plan" for the network. In it, he suggests that UST is not coming back—and the Terra blockchain must redistribute tokens to move forward. "The holders of Luna have so severely been liquidated and diluted that we will lack the ecosystem to build back up from the ashes," writes Kwon on the Terra research forum. "While a decentralized economy does need decentralized money,...

    NewsCoins
    2 min read
    Jeff Benson

  • What Is Taproot? The Privacy-Focused Bitcoin Upgrade.

    What is Taproot? It's not a carrot or a turnip, but a Bitcoin update that promises to keep some transaction details buried deep in the metaphorical soil.  Taproot, which went live in November 2021, was the biggest Bitcoin upgrade since 2017. That upgrade led to a hard fork of the network—splitting the Bitcoin blockchain in two. Though Taproot wasn't quite as contentious, it's worth understanding how it altered the world's biggest blockchain network. What was addressed? The Bitcoin blockchain is...

  • Heading for the exit. Image: Shutterstockl

    Ethereum Gas Prices Soar as Traders Head for the Stablecoin Exits

    Ethereum gas prices more than doubled from Tuesday to Wednesday and are on track to double again today, per data from blockchain explorer Etherscan.  Much of the cause for the increase are transfers involving the addresses of centralized stablecoins, Tether and USDC. Tether stablecoin transactions have accumulated the most in fees over the last 24 hours, besting trades on decentralized exchanges Uniswap and 1inch; USDC stablecoin ranks fourth.  That's notable because, for much of the last year,...

    NewsCoins
    3 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Bitcoin and Ethereum. Image: Shutterstock

    Bitcoin Hits Lowest Price Since 2020 as Ethereum Nears $2,000

    The price of Ethereum dropped by nearly 10% in 24 hours to put it under the $2,100 mark for the first time since July 2021. Nearly simultaneously, Bitcoin extended its losses by 7% to hit $28,170—its lowest point since December 2020, when it was in the midst of a massive New Year's rally. In what's shaping up to be one of the cryptocurrency market's worst weeks in history, Bitcoin and Ethereum have lost 28% and 30% of their value, respectively, in the past seven days. Those aren't anywhere near...

    NewsMarkets
    2 min read
    Jeff Benson
  • Where to now? Image: Shutterstock

    After the Collapse of Terra's UST, What's Next for Algorithmic Stablecoins?

    On Monday, the Federal Reserve released a report that identified three assets with funding risks: certain money market funds, some bond funds, and stablecoins. The latter sector, it said, "remains exposed to liquidity risks" and "vulnerable to runs."  That same day, Terra's UST stablecoin lost over 30% of its value during a bank run hastened by low liquidity on the network's primary lending protocol, Anchor. Two days later, the stablecoin has drifted even further from its peg, while Terra's nati...

    Deep DivesLong Reads
    6 min read
    Jeff Benson
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