Hello and welcome back to the Web3 Rewind! Per usual with the industry, lots has happened this past week so without further adieu, let’s dive into this week’s news.

What can be said about the merge at this point?

If you’ve followed Ethereum for even a short time you’ve seen a handful of long explainers and short takes on this monumental shift in how the world’s most-used blockchain secures itself. Proof of work. Proof of stake. These seem like big terms but at their essence they’re not; they’re simply ways of describing what underpins the security of a global network of computers.

Proof of work demands computation power and therefore electricity and the utility bills that ensue. Proof of stake demands commitment of crypto-capital and an alignment of values. In other words, trust. Yes, I said it. Trust. In the revolution that Satoshi Nakamoto unleashed in 2009 trust was nowhere to be found. That was the point. Bitcoin ushered in the first truly trustless system for sending value from one person to another. It worked, and by doing so changed the world.

Proof of stake, however, introduces a new equation into the security aspect of a blockchain. It takes a dual approach, the carrot and the stick. It’s the stick part that’s, well, sticky. There is no downside in proof of work mining. While energy costs can be gamed to a degree, the cost of hardware and electricity is an across-the-board sunk cost. So you can’t exactly drive an Escalade through the margins created by PoW mining. But, if you can scale your operations and afford the equipment and electricity, it’s proven to be a good gig.

In PoS, however, there is a downside. A validator can have some of the 32 ether it pledged to the protocol taken away if it acts against the “best” interests of the network or if it’s offline more than an accepted amount. Unlike PoW mining, in PoS a single entity – the validator – can attempt to introduce invalid or reordered transactions to the blockchain history. There are some safeguards against this but for argument’s sake it’s easier to manipulate the history of a blockchain in a PoS environment compared with PoW.

So then, within its very own network Ethereum is asking its users to trust each other. This is as big a philosophical shift as it is a technological shift as the beacon chain is set to welcome Ethereum’s execution layer atop it. All of that said, and we apologize for burying the lead, but none of this seems too troubling. It only seems worth mentioning.

The Ethereum community I’ve covered since 2016 doesn’t do things on time, it gets messy and has anyone checked on Gav lately? But it does get shit done. And done right. The community effort aspect of the Ethereum merge is a less-discussed topic than the technical specs, but seems to be a more salient test of the longevity of what this particular set of web3 degens has committed to. Ethereum rose from nothing due to its community and we at DeCential expect to see it flourish in this next stage of its evolution for the exact same reason. — Matthew Leising, editor in chief, DeCential Media

Binance to end support for USDC, two other stablecoins in favor of its own BUSD

Stablecoins, whether you use them or not, are an integral element of the crypto landscape and have vast implications on the future development of the space and its potential growth. It now appears that private issuers of stablecoins, like the crypto-exchange Binance, are starting to play hard ball. As of this last year, most every major government has either begun researching or in some cases rolling out their own version of a stable coin, also known as a Central Bank Digital Coin, or CBDC. Politics aside, one of the most palpable examples of a CBDC is undoubtedly China’s rollout of its digital Yuan, or e-CNY. This currency has been used by millions of Chinese and continues to have its use extended to millions more. While the long-term impact of e-CNY is yet to be seen on the Chinese economy, what is certain is that this CBDC is not the last that will be used.

In the private market side of the stablecoin discussion, there have been extensive developments in recent months with the downfall of Terra’s Luna algorithmic stablecoin, in addition to the ongoing questions about the veracity of Tether’s USDT stable coin reserves. What is clear from these developments is that the market has yet to determine which stablecoins will maintain mainstream adoption. One major factor in this decision is undoubtedly regulator support for a stablecoin and its tokennomics. With many of the top coins having undergone some sort of regulator scrutiny, it appears that the time is growing short where so many stablecoins can share market cap alongside each on the same exchanges. — Parker Dresdow, DeCential Media

DeCent People Podcast With with Kollectiff’s Tino Vino

Founder and CEO of web3 innovation lab and venture studio Kollectiff, Tino Vivo chats about Kollectiff's approach to bringing brands into the metaverse, developing intellectual property alongside powerhouse agency clients like CAA and UTA, and being a real estate developer for land in the Metaworlds.

You can download and subscribe to the DeCent People podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music and Audible.

El Salvador Had a Bitcoin Revolution. Hardly Anybody Showed Up

El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender last year. That’s about the last simple thing associated with President Nayib Bukele’s plan to put his country on the digital map. The tangle of domestic problems like drug addiction, the need for men of working age to leave for the U.S. to support their families and the trenchant gang problem that migration fosters have made Bitcoin’s introduction to the country hard to analyze. It’s complicated.

One thing is for sure. Bitcoin has given the people of El Salvador something they haven’t had for decades: hope. While that hope is not a large feature of this piece by Bloomberg News, my reporting on El Salvador’s El Zonte, better known as Bitcoin Beach, shows that the road will be long for the Central American country. But at least there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Look for our series on Bitcoin Beach coming later in the fall. — ML

Jess Sloss, Chief Instigator of Seed Club, On Tokens, DAOs, and Driving Value