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Ethereum Merge prompts miners and mining pools to make a choice
The Ethereum Merge to PoS is slated for the third week of September, eliminating PoW mining. Experts weigh in on how mining pools and miners will be impacted.
The Ethereum blockchain is all set to make its highly anticipated transition from its current proof-of-work (PoW) mining consensus to proof-of-stake (PoS). The Merge date is officially scheduled for Sept. 15–16 after the successful final Goerli testnet integration to the Beacon Chain on Aug. 11.
At present, miners can create new Ether (ETH) by pledging a huge amount of computing power. After the Merge, however, network participants, known as validators, will be required to instead pledge large amounts of pre-existing ETH to validate blocks, creating more ETH and earning staking rewards.
The three-phase transition process began on Dec. 1, 2020, with the launch of the Beacon Chain. Phase 0 of the process marked the beginning of the PoS transition, where validators started staking their ETH for the first time. However, Phase 0 didn’t impact the Ethereum mainnet.
In anticipation of the Merge, there has been active chatter about what will happen to the PoW chain after the mainnet transitions to PoS. Many centralized exchanges have thrown their support behind the Merge but have stated that if PoW-based chains gain traction from miners, then exchanges will list the forked chain and support them. Read More
NFTs democratize music industry and redistribute song rights
EDM artist R3HAB and music community anotherblock are using NFTs to share song royalties with everyone involved in the process of launching a song — including fans.
The music industry continues to find inventive ways to integrate decentralized technology into new releases to benefit both artists and their fans.
Electronic dance music (EDM) artist R3HAB and blockchain-based music community anotherblock released a single on Friday with the idea of “democratizing music rights.” The nonfungible token (NFT) included in the drop allows holders to earn royalties based on streaming popularity.
The single, “Weekend on a Tuesday,” debuted bundled with an exclusive NFT. Each of the 250 NFTs available entitles the holder to a 0.02% share in the streaming revenue. Anotherblock’s platform provides a value tracking tool so holders can estimate payouts and overall value.
Many artists have been using digital assets as a way to connect with their fan base through extra exclusives tied to the NFT. Typically, extras include artwork, additional music or behind-the-scenes material.
Anotherblock CEO Michel D. Traore told Cointelegraph that this way of implementing NFTs allows those who create value around songs to take part in receiving some of it back.
“Music rights’ value is created by people loving and listening to the music, and doing things with it. Why shouldn't [they] be able to own rights if they create the value by listening to it. They should be able to get some of the upside as well.”
The idea behind this vision of spreading the value from primarily record labels and music catalogs to include more of the artists themselves and also the fans can be looked at as a "democratization" of the music industry. Read More
Ethereum's Pivot to Proof-of-Stake Consensus Worries Users About the Possibility of Protocol Level Censorship
The upcoming consensus change that Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is planning to execute in September has worried many users about the possibility of censorship happening at a protocol level. This means that, even by interacting directly with smart contracts, blacklisted addresses would not be able to transact or operate in the base layer.
Incoming Merge Event Triggers Worries in Crypto Circles:
The Merge, Ethereum’s migration from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm has raised concerns about the future of the chain when it comes to censorship. After the addresses of the smart contracts of Tornado Cash, a privacy-centred mixing protocol, were sanctioned and blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the privacy and censorship-resistant character of Ethereum has been in the spotlight.
Gabriel Shapiro, the general counsellor at Delphi Digital, believes that big validators of Ethereum will try to push for a measure that brings censorship to a protocol level. This would allow them to operate in compliance with rules, and also avoid being penalized for not including illegal transactions. About this issue, he stated these entities “can’t self-help by merely avoiding facilitation of blocks containing U.S.-sanctioned transactions, because under certain conditions they might be dramatically slashed from doing so.” Read More
Why Doesn’t Wall Street Understand Bitcoin? Goldman Sachs Veteran Explains
A man who spent 13 years on Wall Street claims that people in legacy finance do not understand the history or properties of money.
John Haar – a former member of Goldman Sachs’ Asset Management division – published an article detailing what he perceived were commonly held views about Bitcoin, sound money, and economics on Wall Street.
He listed multiple reasons for which members of traditional finance either object to or fail to appreciate Bitcoin’s potential as global money.
Ignorance of Economic History:
As explained in a blog post for Swan on Monday, Haar said that “virtually no one” has spent time understanding the history or fundamentals of money. For example, they do not grasp the characteristics that made gold historically dominant money: durability, divisibility, recognizability, portability, and scarcity.
By extension, this impairs Wall Street’s understanding of Bitcoin – which is often referred to as “digital gold” for possessing these qualities even more strongly.
Haar boils the lack of understanding down to education:
“To the extent that those working in traditional finance have any opinions about the history or fundamentals of money, it’s almost entirely shaped by Keynesian economics,” he said, “and perhaps by MMT in more recent years.”
Keynesian economic theory and modern-monetary theory both advocate for centralized control of a nation’s money supply to manage the economy. Read More
A democratic society values a free-flowing media ecosystem. A healthy media ecosystem is one of the characteristics of a democratic society. Mass media outlets such as newspapers and cable TV networks were prominent in the past. Today, the internet and social media platforms allow for greater communication across society.
Journalism, investigative correspondents, and even freelance writers are essential to that ecosystem. High-quality reporting revealing brutal truths and users' scope and exposure on social media to either create or access information are forces that can drive genuine societal change. And even keep the power structures in check.
Despite the positive aspects mentioned above, harmful practices and negative external forces related to the media ecosystem often eclipse them. These issues are usually easy to recognize once they’re identified. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge them and spread awareness about their potential risks.
Doing so will help you make informed decisions about how you use media and how it can impact your life and the lives of others. The following are a few issues pervasive in many digital news sites, forums, and social media platforms. Read More
Markethive Media has embraced blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, building an ecosystem that belongs to “we the people,” eliminating many of the issues plagued by media outlets today. With its meritocratic culture, dynamic social media interface, and growing community, Markethive is enhancing and bringing the platform into the future internet with new technology and interfaces, but still in keeping with the human touch.
Can Web3 be hacked? Is the decentralized internet safer?
Security stands as one of the most crucial features as, in a Web3-powered world, tools and applications hosted over the blockchains go mainstream.
Web3 came into existence posed as a blockchain-powered disruption to the current state of the internet. Yet, as a nascent technology, a fog of assumptions plagues discussions about the real capabilities of Web3 and its role in our day-to-day lives.
Considering the promise of a decentralized internet using public blockchains, a complete transition to Web3 would require scrutiny across several factors. Out of the lot, security stands as one of the most crucial features as, in a Web3-powered world, tools and applications hosted over the blockchains go mainstream.
While the blockchains that host Web3 applications remain impenetrable from being hostage to attackers, hackers target the vulnerabilities within the project’s smart contracts. Smart contract attacks on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms have surged, with a recent study revealing that approximately $1.6 billion in cryptocurrencies was stolen in the first quarter of 2022 alone.
Although DeFi is a subset of the Web3 spectrum, it reflects the biggest vulnerability within the ecosystem. As a result, Web3 entrepreneurs need to redirect their marketing budget to the development of the core system.
As seen throughout the year, vulnerabilities that allow hackers to drain vast amounts of assets result in impermanent losses for the investors and may cause an indirect collapse of related ecosystems. Read More
Telegram CEO Proposes Auctioning Usernames, Links As NFTs
Inspired by the $3 million TON domain sale, he wants to “add a little bit of Web 3.0 to Telegram.”
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has proposed bringing its platform usernames and channel links to market as NFTs.
In a Monday post to his personal Telegram channel, which has 651,000 subscribers, Durov suggested that millions of reserved Telegram addresses could be auctioned as assets on the blockchain.
“This would create a new platform where username holders could transfer them to interested parties in protected deals – with ownership secured on the blockchain via NFT-like smart contracts,” he explained.
Durov wrote that he was inspired by The Open Network (TON)’s recent sale of over 2,000 .ton domain names. The sale totalled 2,392,002 Toncoin, each of which trades for $1.29 at writing time, netting approximately $3 million.
The highest grossing name in the sale was wallet.ton, which alone sold for 215,250 Toncoin. The runner-up domain names, casino.ton and bank.ton, sold for 200,000 and 157,500 Toncoin, respectively. Read More
What’s going on with Cardano’s testnet and Vasil hard fork?
The issues surrounding the Cardano Vasil hard fork have been “incredibly corrosive and damaging,” according to founder Charles Hoskinson, who’s looking to put the controversy to an end.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has continued to refute claims that the Cardano’s testnet is “catastrophically broken,” implying the need to finally move forward with the long-delayed Vasil hard fork.
In a Twitter thread on Sunday, Hoskinson shared his frustration concerning some of the videos claiming Cardano’s testnet has a “catastrophic” issue, which stems from a Friday thread from Cardano ecosystem developer Adam Dean.
The developer claimed that the testnet is “catastrophically broken” due to an undiscovered bug in Cardano’s Node v 1.35.2 that creates incompatible forks — which had managed to slip under the radar of the previous testing.
Following the bug, Cardano released its new client software, Cardano Node v1.35.3, on two separate testnets.
However, Dean noted that because the majority of operators upgraded to v1.35.2 to simulate the Vasil hard fork, v1.35.3 is also “incompatible and incapable of syncing” with the original testnet, and the two testnets are “without a block history.”
Hoskinson has, however, argued that the coding issue found on that node version had been removed in the 1.35.3 update, sharing his frustration that further testing would lead to further delays of the hard fork:
“We of course could as a community delay the launch of Vasil for a few months to retest code that’s already been tested a dozen times and is already running. Is that worth it to all the DApp developers who have been waiting for this update for almost a year now?” Read More
Leading anti-ageing event set to feature blockchain as part of core programming
Crypto’s inclusion at non-web3-focused events indicates a growing interest in the blockchain’s applications beyond finance.
Crypto conferences have continued to take the world by storm, being the epicentre for revolutionary concepts, gathering places for headline speakers, and entertainment for the wider population, with side events featuring the world's most-known celebrities. With so much attention being drawn to these events, many organizations have recognized their impact in not only promoting cryptocurrencies themselves but also in demonstrating the asset’s utility in other industries.
Consider some examples. In the most recent 2022 Grammys, the world saw a prestigious music award ceremony also become the location of thought-provoking discussions on NFTs. Not to mention, The World Economic Forum's Davos event ended up focusing on the power of blockchain and Web3.0. Taken together, events like these prove that those beyond the crypto community care about what the blockchain means for their future.
The Longevity Science Foundation is another one of the organizations embracing the power of crypto and discussing it in related events, like the Ageing Research & Drug Discovery (ARDD) conference, to help fund longevity research. The event, which has occurred for nine consecutive years, will be held in Copenhagen from August 29th to September 2nd, where hundreds of in-person attendees and thousands of virtual ones are expected to attend.
Here, emerging technologies are designed to play a central role in the program while simultaneously exemplifying the ins and outs of the ageing process. Read More
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
