Happy Wednesday, Cryptonians! Welcome to today's issue of BEN Beats. Get in tune and don't miss a beat on everything from beginners to pro tips!

Today's Sponsor

I don't know about you, but these days I feel like I'm drowning in information. There's so much to filter out, it's hard to know where to start. But then, a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across Morning Brew This daily newsletter that's been my savior ever since. It's the perfect way to get a bird's eye view of everything that's going on, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

Seriously, The Morning Brew is amazing. It gives you a macro perspective on all the latest news, like how 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings' got a facelift with the help of AI to show off Balenciaga's latest fashion. You gotta check it out!

In the news:

• SBF joked about losing track of as much as $50 million in assets in internal emails, telling another executives: “Such is life.” in internal emails, telling another executive, "Such is life."

• SEC Investor Advisory Committee urges “aggressive” action, deeming most crypto assets has securities.

• a16z crypto publishes a unique report on the state of crypto, showing how user adoption is growing in all crypto verticals.

• The 14th largest Bitcoin holder sent $330M of BTC to an exchange before the price drop below $30k.

• The Winklevoss twins lent about $100M to their crypto platform Gemini in order to cover operational costs.

• Jack Daniels announces it will drop an augmented reality game with music NFTs

Are you ready for one of the biggest crypto events of the year? The Ethereum Shapella upgrade is today! This upgrade is going to address the soaring gas fees and enhance smart contract capabilities. More famously, it will enable the withdrawal of all the ETH that has been staked since Dec 2020.

First, let's talk about why this upgrade is happening!

Ethereum is a blockchain that allows developers to build smart contracts and deploy decentralized applications (dApps). These applications run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which is like a computer that lives on the blockchain.

Why Upgrading?

The problem is that the EVM has become slow and expensive due to increased demand and network congestion. That's where the Shapella upgrade comes in.

The Shapella upgrade is a combination of the Shanghai and Capella upgrades.The Capella upgrade is occurring at the consensus layer, while the Shanghai upgrade is a collection of smaller upgrades at the execution layer, known as Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), that will be rolled out over several months including:

• EIP-4895, which lets validators withdraw their staked ETH. There is about 18 million ETH staked, about 15% of the current total supply.

• EIP-1559, which aims to make transactions cheaper setting a base fee that everyone pays, instead of having users bid on transaction fees like they do now.

• EIP-3651, which will lower gas costs related to Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) payments when accessing the COINBASE address (not the exchange, but the software which allows block builders to receive new tokens on the network).

So, what does all of this mean for you as an Ethereum user or investor?

Bears say:

• Short term, the unlocked ETH will flood the market and create immense selling pressure, as 1M ETH ($1.9B) accrued from staking rewards will be eligible to be withdrawn within 5 days post-Shapella.

• Medium-term, the market flooding will continue as another 3.3M ($6.3B) ETH will be eligible to be withdrawn within the first 54 days post-upgrade.

• Liquid Staking Derivative (LSDs) protocols, which collectively are up 130% this year, may witness a massive drop because the main reason for their use will be remedied after the upgrade.

Bulls say:

• The effects of the withdrawals won’t be significant, as most current stakers are likely to continue staking all or most of their ETH.

• In fact, the staking rate may soar, since users that don’t want to lock their ETH for a long time now have shorter-term options, which would increase ETH buy pressure

• Since ETH withdrawals after Shapella are still not exactly instant, Liquid Staking Derivative protocols will continue to grow in value.

There's more to think about than just the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade. Like, what's happening in the crypto market in general and the current macroeconomics we are facing? But, no matter what, brace yourself for a crazy ride in the crypto world and some sick advances in technology in the next few months.

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Vote Before Thursday April 13th!

Uniswap V3 Launch on zkEVM

Have you heard about the new proposal to authorize Polygon Labs to deploy Uniswap V3 on the Polygon Zero Knowledge EVM rollup known as "zkEVM"?

This could be a big deal for Uniswap, and we need your voice to be heard!

Benefits:

• a transparent user experience and existing Ethereum ecosystem and tooling compatibility

• utilizing cryptographic zero-knowledge technology to provide validation and fast finality of off-chain transaction computations.

• growing a large list of projects that can be built on Uniswap V3

Cast your Vote:

This is our next meta-governance experiment, where the BEN Meta-Delegate (with a massive 2.5 million UNI delegation) will vote based on the poll results.

So subscribers get 1 vote, and we can move the space away from the old plutocratic token-weighted voting system and towards a more fair "1 person = 1 vote" system. Cool, right?

The deadline for voting in the above poll is Thu Apr 13 11:59pm EST

Degens! Find out what top VCs and whales have been buying and selling:

Disclaimer: This newsletter is purely educational and is not intended to be financial advice. Please don't take it as such. This is not an invitation to buy or sell digital assets, nor does it suggest how you should make your financial decisions. Always do your own research.