Scalability
Ethereum scaling solution Optimism upgrades governance structure
The Optimism Foundation has unveiled a new governance structure and token as part of its ongoing efforts to bring scalability and cost efficiency to Ethereum (ETH), the world’s largest smart contract platform. The “Optimism Collective” was introduced Tuesday afternoon in a lengthy post that outlined its mission and governance mandate. Described as a “large-scale experiment in digital democratic governance,” the Optimism Collective essentially comprises a band of communities and stakeholders committed to improving Ethereum’s technical capabilities. According to the details, the Optimism Collective will be governed by two components: the Citizens’ House and the Token House. The Citizens’ House will “facilitate and govern a process to distribute retroactive public goods funding” via rev...
Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman discusses the untapped potential of DeFi
Arthur Breitman, the co-founder of layer-1 protocol Tezos (XTZ), spoke with Cointelegraph’s Jackson DuMont at the Paris Blockchain Week Summit (PBWS) last week about what it would take to unlock the true potential of decentralized finance, or DeFi. Breitman delivered a keynote speech following this interview about the company’s strategy. Related: Paris Blockchain Week, April 14: Latest updates from the Cointelegraph team on the ground According to Breitman, “people haven’t really tapped into DeFi for real-world assets being tokenized.” When he says real-world assets, he means stocks, real estate, digital art or “anything you can think of.” While calling for a merge of traditional financial securitization and DeFi applications, Breitman also be...
Here’s how Ether options traders could prepare for the proof-of-stake migration
Ethereum’s long-awaited transition away from proof-of-work (PoW) mining has recently suffered another delay and is expected to occur in the second half of 2022. Ethereum developer Tim Beiko stated on April 13 that “it won’t be June, but likely in the few months after. No firm date yet, but we’re definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum.” An automated increase in mining difficulty designed to make PoW mining less attractive is set to become active around May. Known as the “difficulty bomb,” it will eventually make blocks “unbearably slow,” forcing the upgrade to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. Such news might have negatively impacted Ether’s (ETH) price, but it creates an immense opportunity for those betting on the ...
Cash App and Chivo help drive Lightning payment volume up 400%
A new report highlights how the Lightning Network has grown in popularity as a way of transferring digital assets quickly and efficiently around the globe. CNBC today told the story of Alena Vorobiova, a Ukrainian refugee currently seeking sanctuary in Poland. Vorobiova used Lightning to transfer $100 worth of Bitcoin from Miami, where it was then withdrawn from an ATM in the equivalent Polish currency — all within the space of three minutes. That’s the sort of low cost, high speed transaction that has seen the Layer 2 scaling solution for Bitcoin grow 410% in payment volume over the past year. According to the report published by Arcane Research, the number of payments that occurred on the Lightning Network in the past year doubled while the total value of those payments quadrupled....
Bitcoin transaction fees hit decade lows, here’s why
It’s a great time to move Bitcoin (BTC) between wallets and exchanges. Bitcoin transaction fees have hit all-time lows in BTC, according to research by Galaxy Digital. #bitcoin fees are at all-time lows. the craziest thing? fall 2021 was the first bull run not accompanied by a major spike in fees. how is that possible? what does it mean? here’s a thread explaining the most confounding (and awesome) chart in bitcoin. (remember june 2021) pic.twitter.com/gnWssTckX2 — Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) April 5, 2022 As shown on the graph below, the Bitcoin mean transaction fee has plummeted to 0.00004541 Bitcoin ($2.06) in 2022, while the median is 0.00001292 Bitcoin ($0.59) which is the lowest of any year except 2011, according to the report. Graph to show the fees trending down ...
Optimism saves users $1B in fees, raises $150M in Series B
Popular Ethereum scaling solution Optimism has announced a $150 million Series B funding round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Paradigm at a total valuation of $1.65 billion. According to a blog post from Optimism, the Layer 2 (L2) solution has saved users of the Ethereum network over $1 billion in gas fees. The funding will be used to expand the Optimism team and go towards working on reducing network fees even further. Fees on the Optimism network were reduced by a cumulative 30% last year, and now the team is contributing work towards an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP-4844) for Shard Blob Transactions, which may potentially reduce Ethereum network fees by up to 100x in the near future. Today on Ethereum #AllCoreDevs, our very own @protolambda presented EIP-4844: Shard...
What is the Algorand blockchain, and how does it work?
What is Algorand? Algorand is a blockchain network created in 2017 by Silvio Micali, an MIT professor who won the Turing Award for his work in cryptography. Algorand is a decentralized permissionless blockchain protocol that anyone can use to develop applications and transfer value. The Algorand protocol is powered by a novel consensus algorithm that enables fast, secure and scalable transactions. Algorand addresses the common issues that most older blockchains have, specifically concerning scalability and consensus. The blockchain uses Pure proof-of-stake (PPoS), a consensus protocol that selects validators at random according to the weight of their stake in ALGO coins. What is Algorand trying to solve? The Algorand protocol is designed to solve three of the biggest problems most blockcha...
2 key Bitcoin price metrics suggest BTC is primed to reclaim $40,000
Cryptocurrencies had a volatile week after Bitcoin’s (BTC) sudden crash to $33,000 on Jan. 24. However, the sharp 9% drop fully recovered within 8 hours after BTC price regained the $36,000 support. On Jan. 26, Bitcoin rallied to $38,960 but it could not sustain the level and corrected by 8.8% in the following 8 hours. When factoring in the recent ups and downs, Bitcoin managed to only gain a meager 1.6% over the past seven days. Even with the considerable price swings, the aggregate futures contracts liquidations were relatively low. Longs (buyers) had $570 million futures terminated, while shorts (sellers) faced $690 million. Data shows that Bitcoin futures represented 41% of the total $1.25 billion liquidations. Regulatory winds could be limiting BTC’s price recovery The total cry...
Polygon (MATIC) sees a strong oversold bounce after $250B crypto market rebound
Polygon (MATIC) emerged as one of the best performers among high-ranking cryptocurrencies on Jan. 26 as the price rose nearly 17% to reach an intraday high at $1.825. The gains surfaced amid a synchronous rebound across the crypto market that started on Jan. 24. In detail, investors and traders poured in over $250 billion across digital assets, benefiting Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and many others in the process. Performance of the top-fifteen cryptocurrencies in the last 15 days. Source: TradingView Polygon, a secondary scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain, also cashed in on the crypto market rebound. The valuation of its native token, MATIC, rose from as low as $9.77 billion on Jan.24 to as high as $13.58 billion two days later. Meanwhile, its price jumped from $1....
ZK-rollups step into the limelight after the quest to scale Ethereum evolves
Scalability on the Ethereum (ETH) network has been a point of contention within the cryptocurrency ecosystem for years, primarily due to high fees and network congestion during periods of peak demand. The latest solution to emerge as the final fix to Ethereum’s scalability woes are Zero-knowledge rollups (ZK rollups), a form of scaling that runs computations off-chain and submits them on-chain via a validity proof. Zk rollup season — cryptowarlord.eth ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (@CryptoWarlordd) December 7, 2021 Earlier in the year, protocols that opted to use optimistic rollups such as Optimism and Arbitrum dominated the headlines and were touted as the best solution to scaling on Ethereum, but aside from Arbitrum, the hype for those protocols has quieted down and traders have pointed out that even opti...
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