Historical archive · 2020 · 21 briefings
21 original, source-linked historical crypto briefings published in 2020.
DeFi · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 24, 2020
Aave flash loans let a smart contract borrow assets without upfront collateral if the loan is returned with its fee within the same transaction.
Read the briefing →Bitcoin · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 30, 2020
BIP 340 defines Schnorr signatures over the secp256k1 curve, including encoding and verification rules for Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade.
Read the briefing →Bitcoin · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 31, 2020
BIP 341 defines SegWit version 1 outputs that commit to a public key and optionally a Merkle root of script conditions.
Read the briefing →Bitcoin · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 25, 2020
BIP 342 introduces Tapscript, adapting Bitcoin Script validation to Taproot’s version-1 witness rules and Schnorr signatures.
Read the briefing →Bitcoin · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 30, 2020
BIP 350 specifies Bech32m, an updated checksum variant for witness address versions beyond version 0.
Read the briefing →Bitcoin · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 31, 2020
BIP 85 specifies deterministic derivation of entropy values that applications can turn into their own secrets or mnemonic phrases.
Read the briefing →Stablecoins · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 24, 2020
Maker governance added USDC as collateral during 2020, showing how a decentralized stablecoin system could rely partly on centrally issued assets.
Read the briefing →DeFi · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 28, 2020
Compound’s COMP governance token enabled holders to propose and vote on protocol changes under defined governance rules.
Read the briefing →DeFi · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 28, 2020
Curve’s StableSwap design combines constant-sum behavior near balance with a constant-product curve farther away, aiming to reduce slippage for similarly priced assets.
Read the briefing →DeFi · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 31, 2020
Many DeFi systems use delegated voting so token holders can assign governance power to representatives who participate in proposal decisions.
Read the briefing →NFTs · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 24, 2020
EIP-2981 defines a way for NFT contracts to signal royalty recipient and amount information to marketplaces.
Read the briefing →Layer 2 · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 28, 2020
Ethereum’s scaling strategy evolved toward supporting many rollups that execute transactions while using Ethereum as a settlement and data layer.
Read the briefing →DeFi · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 28, 2020
Lido’s stETH represented a claim associated with ETH deposited into its staking system, allowing holders to use a liquid token while validator operations ran separately.
Read the briefing →DeFi · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 29, 2020
DeFi contracts often rely on external price feeds because blockchains cannot independently observe off-chain market prices.
Read the briefing →DeFi · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 26, 2020
During 2020, lending, trading and liquidity protocols increasingly used one another’s tokens and contracts as inputs to new applications.
Read the briefing →Ethereum · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 26, 2020
Ethereum launched the Beacon Chain on December 1, 2020 as a separate proof-of-stake network running alongside the proof-of-work mainnet.
Read the briefing →Policy · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 25, 2020
In October 2020, the CFTC announced charges against BitMEX entities and executives concerning alleged operation of an unregistered trading platform and related controls.
Read the briefing →Policy · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 26, 2020
On December 22, 2020, the SEC filed a complaint alleging that Ripple and two executives conducted an unregistered securities offering involving XRP.
Read the briefing →DeFi · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 26, 2020
Uniswap v2 added direct token pairs, oracle improvements and flash swaps that let contracts receive assets and repay within one transaction.
Read the briefing →DeFi · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 24, 2020
Yearn’s vault model pooled deposits and delegated strategy execution to contracts and governance-approved operators.
Read the briefing →Layer 2 · Historical retrospective · Published Dec 30, 2020
A ZK rollup submits compressed transaction data and a cryptographic proof that the state transition followed specified rules.
Read the briefing →The archived publication dates for these retrospectives fall in 2020.