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Ethereum Beacon Chain experiences 7 block reorg: What’s going on?
“This reorg is not an indicator of a flawed fork choice, but a non-trivial segmentation of updated vs out of date client software” suggested Core Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon.
Ahead of the Merge tentatively penciled in for August, Ethereum’s Beacon Chain experienced a seven-block reorganization, or reorg, on Wednesday.
According to data from Beacon Scan, on Wednesday, seven blocks from number 3,887,075 to 3,887,081 were knocked out of the Beacon Chain between 08:55:23 to 08:56:35 am UTC.
The term reorg refers to an event in which a block that was part of the canonical chain, such as the Beacon Chain, gets knocked off the chain due to a competing block beating it out.
It can be the result of a malicious attack from a miner with high resources or a bug. Such incidents see the chain unintentionally fork or duplicate.
On this occasion, developers believe that the issue is due to circumstance rather than something serious such as a security issue or fundamental flaw, with a “proposer boost fork” being highlighted in particular. This term refers to a method in which specific proposers are given priority for selecting the next block in the blockchain. Read More
Swinburne Uni brings Web3 firms to class
The industry will be able to “tap into future talent” as the partnership sees Judo Bank and Web3 firm Banxa co-creating content, hosting lectures, providing case studies, and even giving students access to their networks.
Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology has partnered with two financial technology firms which will provide its students exposure to the financial technology and cryptocurrency business world.
The partnership is between Swinburne and small business loan provider Judo Bank along with Banxa, a payment service provider with a fiat-to-crypto platform whose clients include Binance, KuCoin, and hardware wallet Trezor, among others.
Students of the university’s Master of Financial Technology (fintech) course will be “exposed to real-life examples and cases across the spectrum of financial services,” Dimitrios Salampasis Swinburne’s director of the master of fintech told Cointelegraph.
Salampasis said Judo Bank is “one of the most innovative fintech unicorns, one of the very few unicorns in Australia,” while Banxa is a “massively interesting organization” that is “very serious in the job that they do in the blockchain and the crypto space:”
“This space is very new. I mean, when I put together the course a couple of years ago, we didn’t really know what that would mean. Other universities around the globe have different fintech offerings, but I believe, particularly for the fintech space, you need some proper working experience.” Read More
MetaMask Taps Asset Reality to Help Users Recover Stolen Funds
The new partnership will potentially make legal actions against scam operations much easier for victims as they would be able to join forces together and split the litigation expenses.
Crypto wallet Metamask is partnering with Asset Reality – a platform for accessing and recovering seized crypto and digital assets, to help users recover stolen assets. The service is free of charge, but users need to pay relevant litigation fees.
Recovering Stolen Crypto:
Metamask, with over 30 million monthly active users, is one of the largest non-custodial wallets accessed by global users. The rise of popularity, however, has led to increasing cases of scams and phishing targeting early crypto users. Since Metamask doesn’t have access to users’ funds, tackling scams involving stolen assets has been particularly challenging. Cryptocurrency’s decentralized nature – based upon pseudo-anonymousness and immutability – has made it difficult for entities to track and recover the stolen funds.
The new partnership aims to help users recover their digital assets, with Asset Reality responsible for investigating the scam operations, according to the official announcement. The new service will be available for all Metamask users globally. Victims, the release noted, need to report their losses through the official Metamask platform to kick off the recovery process. Read More
Partisia Brings Multi-Party Computations to Polygon
The Partisia Blockchain network has announced a formal partnership with the Ethereum layer-1 solution Polygon. As per the deal terms, Partisia Blockchain will introduce its privacy-based computations and features on Polygon. A new smart contract will be introduced to help developers build secure privacy infrastructures.
Although Ethereum has become one of the largest blockchain networks globally, it still has setbacks in terms of cost-effectiveness and performance. It led to creation of a new set of crypto startups known as layer-1 solutions. These layer-2 solutions are built to address specific issues in the Ethereum blockchain.
Polygon is one such project developed to enhance the throughput and bring down the gas fees for developers on Ethereum. The network was launched back in 2017 as Matic before being renamed Polygon in 2021 for a global appeal. Thanks to a more accommodative and sustainable environment offered for developers from DeFi and NFT spaces, the network is currently leading the industry.
The success of Polygon is mainly dependent on its layered infrastructure to execute various functions. This four-layered infrastructure involves an Ethereum layer, a security layer, a Polygon network layer, and, finally, an execution layer. Apart from their various functions, these layers offer developers much-needed flexibility while developing projects. Read More
We have a lot to be grateful for within Markethive. It’s like stepping out of the rat race into an oasis of humanity at its best. As an inbound marketing, business-based blockchain platform with an inherent entrepreneurial spirit, we have all the tools to get our message out to the whole world. We have a social media interface with a collaborative ethos rarely experienced on legacy social media.
We are starting to see new integrations in the blogging section in preparation for the customized, more intuitive interface and dashboard of Markethive and, of course, the Markethive Wallet that will facilitate the Merchant accounts for members as well as personal transactions, the Vault, etc.
The new-look Blogcasting Hub is located at the top of all blogs in the system. Blogcasting is a term introduced by Markethive and is an enhanced broadcasting system. In the traditional broadcasting sense, only the people who physically subscribe to your blog or newsletter are usually notified of your updates via email.
With this blogcasting system, your social networks are informed of your blog as and when you publish them. What this means is the potential reach is into the millions. Read More
Buterin: How to create algo stablecoins that don’t turn into Ponzis or collapse
“What we need is not stablecoin boosterism or stablecoin doomerism, but rather a return to principles-based thinking,” Vitalik Buterin emphasized.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared two thought experiments on how to evaluate whether an algorithmic (algo) stablecoin is sustainable.
Buterin’s comments were sparked by the multi-billion dollar losses caused by the collapse of the Terra ecosystem and its algo stablecoin TerraUSD (UST).
In a Wednesday blog post, Buterin noted that the increased amount of scrutiny placed on crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) since the Terra crash is “highly welcome,” but he warned against writing off all algo-stablecoins entirely.
“What we need is not stablecoin boosterism or stablecoin doomerism, but rather a return to principles-based thinking,” he said:
“While there are plenty of automated stablecoin designs that are fundamentally flawed and doomed to collapse eventually, and plenty more that can survive theoretically but are highly risky, there are also many stablecoins that are highly robust in theory, and have survived extreme tests of crypto market conditions in practice.” Read More
How Web 3.0 Will Propel The Video Gaming Industry To The Next Era Of Innovations
Video gaming has become an increasingly popular activity with more people adopting digital ecosystems. As per the latest statistics, this industry grew by over 14.4% between 2020 and 2021 to record a total valuation of $178.73 billion. This figure is estimated to hit $268 billion within the next three years.
So, what is behind this growth? While there are many driving factors, the covid lockdowns played a significant role in the current adoption trend. Today, we have over 3.2 billion gamers globally, most of whom started to game more frequently during the pandemic. A recent analysis by Statista revealed that,
‘Video gamers in the United States reported that they spent 45 percent more time playing video games amid the quarantine than in the previous week.’
Besides the lockdowns, innovative technologies such as blockchain and virtual reality (VR) have added more life to the traditional gaming industry. Blockchain, for instance, has been touted as the building block for the Web 3.0 gaming economy, which features Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse.
In a recent keynote address, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella compared the metaverse to the early internet days, noting there is a lot of untapped potential,
“When we talk about the metaverse, we’re describing both a new platform and a new application type, similar to how we talked about the web and websites in the early ’90s,” Read More
Is DeFi a Public Good?
In crypto, specifically DeFi, this distinction is a bit less clear.
One of the more interesting considerations in the world of crypto—one championed as a bastion of transparency and open-source code—is whether a decentralized platform qualifies as a public good.
If it’s a public good, then the service should be open to anyone and everyone. What’s more, using such a service doesn’t make it scarcer for others, and, usually, a public good is beneficial to just about everyone. Examples include clean air or the Internet.
The opposite of a public good is, well, a private good: a slice of pizza from the Italian restaurant on your corner or a ticket to the movies. You have to pay for that. There are only so many pizza slices and tickets to “Top Gun.”
In crypto, specifically DeFi, this distinction is a bit less clear. Read More
MoneyGram CEO Sees Stablecoin As Future of Payments as Service Needs Grow
Alex Holmes, the CEO of traditional cross-border payments giant MoneyGram, admitted that stablecoins are likely to be the future of payments because of their growing market demands.
In an interview with Bloomberg media, the executive said that he sees stablecoins might become a major medium of exchange.
The growth of the total supply of stablecoins in the previous year has shown stability, which some market participants like Holmes and his MoneyGram believe signals a long-term path for more success and innovation of existing crypto-collateralized Stablecoins.
As a result, MoneyGram disclosed on Sunday its plans to widen the adoption of digital currencies. The popular International money transfer services company said that it is making preparations to launch a service, through a partnership with the Stellar blockchain, which would allow users to send stablecoins and easily convert them to hard currency.
During the interview, Holmes said: "The world of crypto and the world of fiat are not really compatible today. We're trying to be a bridge from the crypto world to the fiat world."
Holmes further stated that once the service is fully launched, users with digital wallets on the Stellar blockchain would be able to convert their holdings into USDC stablecoin, which can then be cashed out through MoneyGram's network. 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.
