One of the Two Main Gateways to Ethereum is Getting Neglected

Good morning defiers! Here’s what’s up in DeFi:

• Parity Technologies is reducing support for its Ethereum client
• Connext V2 wants to make Ethereum payments more seamless
• Market makers get paid to trade in new DEX

Parity Says It’s Prioritizing Polkadot Over Ethereum Client

One of the two main Ethereum clients is being neglected. Parity Technologies, the firm behind Ethereum’s Parity client, is focusing most of its resources on building Polkadot, a soon-to-be-launched blockchain which many view as a competitor to Ethereum –though Parity itself says it’s not.

The Ethereum community had long suspected this, but yesterday it became clear when a Parity developer said this in response to a user who was having trouble with the client:

We can't fix this issue just by putting more internal resources on parity-ethereum because there's little/no incentive to do so, other than maintaining goodwill, honestly. It is not Parity's flagship project, that's Polkadot, and unfortunately there are no resources for us to make drastic changes (…)

So, why does this matter? Ethereum has long prided itself in having two robust clients, Geth, built with Google’s Go language, and Parity, built with Rust (clients are the software implementations through which developers interact with the chain). This architecture makes Ethereum safer because if anything goes wrong with one software implementation, the other one will keep the network running. This actually happened in the 2016 so-called Shanghai attacks.

The community was indignant, especially because the Ethereum Foundation in January gave Parity Technologies a $5 million grant. Parity’s Peter Mauric said the grant was for work on Ewasm and sharding (which will be included in Eth2) , among other things, not for work on the Parity client for Eth1.

Ethereans should find a more sustainable way to fund developers, as Ethereum’s public client has “depended primarily on free work,” he said.

It might have been naive to expect a company building a potential Ethereum competitor to continue dedicating much resources to an Ethereum client, especially since public blockchain clients don’t make any money. Geth relies on the EF.

A for-profit company would be incentivized to support Ethereum infrastructure for free if it’s in their direct interest for the Etheruem ecosystem to grow, and that’s why it makes sense for ConsenSys to support Pantheon, a less-used client.

A third route could be for the community to fund it. Of course, Ameem Soleimani already proposed a DAO for that.

Ameen Soleimani 👹 @ameensolMoloch RFP - A Rust team to take over Parity maintenance from @ParityTech. Probably will need to fork it and rebrand it too.

Edward Ward @EddardZKStarkSo Parity are gradually abandoning Ethereum support? Can't say I'm surprised but it is disappointing. https://t.co/Tildshd8k42:23 PM ∙ Sep 23, 201966Likes15Retweets

Connext V2 Means Payments on Ethereum Get Easier

Ethereum infrastructure company Connext said it released its version two to mainnet, so that it’s natively integrated on Ethereum wallets and reduces the need for users to trust the application.

Connext uses state channels, a Layer 2 similar to what the Lightning Network uses on Bitcoin, which allow users to make from cross-border transfers to micropayments instantly and cheaply.

Dolomite is the New DEX in Town

Decentralized exchange Dolomite launched with a series of firsts:

• First DEX to natively integrate Wyre for fiat conversions.
• First DEX to offer negative maker fees.
• Eliminates the need to wrap ETH, approve tokens, and even hold ETH

It’s also the first to launch on the Loopring Protocol. Being able to buy crypto with fiat on the same app is a big step forward from existing DEXes, which require going through centralized exchanges first. Another difference is that market makers get paid to trade, 0.1 percent for each trade, and the trading process will be a lot smoother without having to hold ETH.

Kyber, Uniswap and Bancor are the main decentralized trading platforms. With already low volume, we’ll see if another player means the space is getting too crowded.

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About the author: I’m Camila Russo, a financial journalist writing a book on Ethereum with Harper Collins. I was previously at Bloomberg News in New York, Madrid and Buenos Aires covering markets. I’ve extensively covered crypto and finance, and now I’m diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.