Vitalik Buterin
Tether also confirms its throwing weight behind the post-Merge Ethereum
Hot on the heels of an official announcement from USD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle Pay, stablecoin giant Tether has now also officially confirmed its support behind Ethereum’s upcoming Merge upgrade and switch to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism-based blockchain. The announcement came on the same day as its stablecoin competitor, who pledged they will only support Ethereum’s highly anticipated upgrade. In an Aug. 9 statement, Tether labeled the Merge one of the “most significant moments in blockchain history” and outlined that it will work in accordance with Ethereum’s upgrade schedule, which is currently slated to go through on Sept. 19. “Tether believes that in order to avoid any disruption to the community, especially when using our tokens in DeFi projects and platforms, it’s imp...
Vitalik Buterin proposes stealth addresses for anonymous NFT ownership
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested there may be a “low-tech approach” to incorporating privacy features ito nonfungible token, or NFT, transactions. In a Monday post on the Ethereum research channel, Buterin implied Merkle trees and Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge, or ZK-SNARKs, were a more complicated method for stealth addresses for ERC-721 tokens, while proposing his own solution. The Ethereum co-founder suggested instead that smart contract wallets could include a method that would allow the sender to essentially mask their address to third parties. “You would be able to eg. send an NFT to vitalik.eth without anyone except me (the new owner) being able to see who the new owner is,” said Buterin. Idea: stealth addresses for ERC721s. A low-te...
Vitalik shows support for Optimism’s governance structure and OP gas proposal
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shown support for Optimism’s new governance structure, noting that proposals such as using the OP token for gas fees shows “explicit representation of non-token-holder interests.” The Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution deployed the first round of its long-awaited OP token airdrop on June 1 as part of its new governance project the “Optimism Collective.” Optimism’s new governance structure involves two parties dubbed the “Token House” and “Citizens’ House.” The former is composed of OP governance token holders and the latter consists of “soul-bound” non-transferrable citizenship NFT owners. While it is unclear if Buterin is fully on board with a proposal from June 2 to utilize the OP governance token for gas fees, or just happy that such a discussion w...
Ethereum Beacon Chain experiences 7 block reorg: What’s going on?
Ahead of the Merge tentatively penciled in for August, Ethereum’s Beacon Chain experienced a seven-block reorganization (reorg) yesterday. According to data from Beacon Scan, on May 25 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 “p...
Vitalik donates $4M to Uni of NSW for pandemic detection tool
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has donated $4 million worth of USD Coin (USDC) to the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to support the development of a pandemic detection tool. The capital, which equates to roughly $5.3 million Aussie dollars, is part of Buterin’s self-described “moonshot anti-COVID effort” dubbed Balvi Filantropic Fund in partnership with the Shiba Inu memecoin project (SHIB) and Crypto Relief. The funds will further support the development of the OISNT-based EPIWATCH tool which utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and open-source data to create early pandemic warning signs. Created by Kirby Institute Professor and Biosecurity Research head Raina MacIntyre the tool scans millions of items of publicly available online data, including social media and news reports ...
Buenos Aires to accept crypto for tax payments, launch DLT-backed citizen profiles
The capital of Argentina and an agglomeration with more than 12 million citizens, Buenos Aires will make blockchain a vital part of its digitalization drive. Specifically, the city will accept public financial transactions in crypto. As city Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta revealed in his Steve Jobs-styled presentation on April 25, the 12-step development plan titled “Buenos Aires +” envisions a significant increase in crypto and blockchain adoption. Con Buenos Aires + vamos a dar un paso más en el camino hacia un Estado facilitador que desburocratice y agilice los procesos. Un camino en el que el Estado sea el que se acerca a la gente, y no al revés. pic.twitter.com/yi6fUMmAUI — Horacio Rodríguez Larreta (@horaciorlarreta) April 26, 2022 The city authorities intend to launch a platf...
Vitalik Buterin quietly donates $5M ETH to aid Ukraine as total tracked crypto donations reach $133M
As told by Aid for Ukraine, a joint initiative created by the Ukrainian government, FTX, Everstake and Kuna to rally crypto donations for the country, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin made $5 million worth of ETH donations to Ukraine in early April. According to the entity, despite the large donation sum, Buterin did not make an announcement regarding the transaction. It was eventually linked to him via the Ethereum Name Service domain name “vitalik.eth,” which served as the origin of the transfer. .@VitalikButerin donated almost $2.5M in $ETH to @_AidForUkraine 2 days ago, and didn’t say a word! He’s also donated $2.5M to @Unchainfund. Thanks for your enormous help, Vitalik, and thank you for creating @ethereum! The #Ethereum community is pic.twitter.com/H...
Vitalik Buterin is worried about Ethereum — Here’s how the community responded
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed his concerns about the blockchain’s future in a recent interview, and attendees of the recent ETHDubai event voiced mixed sentiments toward his perspective on crypto’s perils. In an interview with Time magazine, Buterin pointed out some of his worries regarding the network, including it being populated by players who are only after profit and deviate from the original vision of an egalitarian platform. “If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable,” he said. The recent ETHDubai event at Le Meridien Dubai. Commenting on Buterin’s woes, Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch Network, expressed that he disagrees highly with the Ethereum co-founder. Kunz said that while there are ...
Vitalik Buterin talks crypto’s perils in Time Magazine interview
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin graced the front page of Time Magazine this month after he was interviewed by the publication about the potential perils of the industry he helped tocreate. During the 80-minute interview, Buterin explained the “dystopian potential” of digital assets if implemented incorrectly. Among his biggest worries are overzealous investors, high transaction fees and public displays of wealth by those claiming to have made a fortune trading crypto and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Although Buterin has high hopes for Ethereum — the network powering the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and countless other projects — he fears that his vision of creating a more egalitarian digital economy risks being overtaken by nefarious actors who are only af...
Ethereum’s average and median transaction fee slip, lowest in six months
The infamous transaction fees of the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem underwent a decremental phase from Jan. 10 to record the lowest average and median fees of $14.17 and $5.67 — lowest since September 2021. Data from Blockchair shows that the average transaction fee of ETH in January was $53.03, which at its peak was $70.83 back in May 2021. Just within a month, the average fees saw an almost 73.3% decline as evidenced by the following chart. Additionally, the resultant median transaction fee also witnessed an 81.02% drop from January’s $29.88. In the last six months, ETH’s median transaction fee was seen lowest in September at $6.26. Interestingly enough, the transaction count of the Ethereum network has also come down to numbers that were last seen back in early 2019. Blockchair data sho...
Vitalik Buterin suggests making NFTs ‘soulbound’ like World of Warcraft items
In a blog post published Wednesday, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), expressed his wishes to make nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, soulbound as with the namesake item class in popular MMORPG World of Warcraft, or WoW. In outlining his reasons, Buterin explained that if someone shows they own an NFT that is obtainable by doing X, such as attending an auction, it is not possible to tell if the person attended the auction to obtained it or simply bought the NFT via the secondary market. An example of a soulbound item in WoW | Source: Blizzard Watch The soulbound feature in WoW prevents an item from being traded, mailed or sold at the in-game Auction House to other players. It was designed by developers to prevent “twinking” or passing down gear from high-level to low-lev...
Ethereum white paper predicted DeFi but missed NFTs: Vitalik Buterin
Rounding up the last decade, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin revisited his predictions made over the years, showcasing a knack for being right about abstract ideas than on-production software development issues. Buterin started the Twitter thread by addressing his article dated Jul. 23, 2013 in which he highlighted Bitcoin’s (BTC) key benefits — internationality and censorship resistance. Buterin foresaw Bitcoin’s potential in protecting the citizens’ buying power in countries such as Iran, Argentina, China and Africa. However, Buterin also noticed a rise in stablecoin adoption as he saw Argentinian businesses operating in Tether (USDT). He backed up his decade-old ideas around the negative impacts of Bitcoin regulation. My views today: sure, Bitcoin’s decentralizatio...
